The important thing is not to deviate. The most important thing I should say. Some of the others, they curve, I’ve seen them. Sometimes I approach them about it in the pub at night. They deny it. Or the don’t care. One or the other. Mostly the other. They tell me to take me pint and buzz off.
    Those are the worst nights. When I drink alone.
    I go in early nowadays. This week we are doing down by the beach. It’s Summer and even by nine o’clock the crowds are beginning to swell. Sometimes when the crowds are too much you have to do a curve however hard you try. Those are the worst days. Even worse than those nights in the pub.
    This morning, it is five o’clock on the bell when I let myself into the hanger. Mr Bentwhistle is here. He is leant over the map. I retrieve my notebook and I ask him who I’m with today. He takes his pipe out of his mouth and smoke he doesn’t take follows. He says, “You’re working with Cheryl today.”
    “Really?” I say.
    Mr Bentwhistle doesn’t answer questions such as really. He merely nods his head.
     “Wow, Cheryl,” I say. “Thanks. Cheryl. Thanks.”
    I quickly choose an odometer and head out of the hanger.
    It is almost dawn. I can feel it.


“Hi Cheryl,” I say.
    Cheryl is sitting cross-legged on the seawall smoking a fag. Below her waves crash. Above her is sky. In the middle is her.
     “Give us a drag,” I say.
    Cheryl passes me the cigarette and I take half a lungful.
     “So where are we today?” says Cheryl.
    I don’t answer but I pass Cheryl up the notebook. Cheryl is a navigator. That is her job. I am just a pusher. As a rule, the navigators don’t have much to do with the pushers but Cheryl is an exception.
    Cheryl looks up from the book.
     “We’ve got a few awkward corners and a hillock or two but the rest looks straight forward.”
    “Great,” I say.
    The other great thing about Cheryl is that she doesn’t mention my father. The others they are always mentioning it. On and on.
     “If we start now,” says Cheryl, “then we should be finished by 11.”
     “That’s great,” I say. “I’m wanting to go down and see Mandrake after. I’ve promised him some buns.”
    Cheryl tosses the half butt of her fag onto the ground and then half turns. From here you can see Mandrake’s hut.
     “Is it true what they say about him?”
     “Nah,” I say and then I shrug my shoulders. “Well, mostly. But some things can have different meanings depending on the way you say them.”
     “So he really is a…”
     “Come on,” I say, “the crowds’ll be getting up if we don’t start soon.”
    And this is the key. Cheryl, as a navigator, hates the crowds as much as me.
    So we start.
    I have the odometer held out in front of me, it’s wheel click, click, clicking and Cheryl is next to me book in one hand, map in the other.
    The first bit is easy. It’s a straight trawl down to Jackson. There is no-one about and we cover the distance in flat-out time. Flat-out time is one of the terms we use. It means that a distance is covered with no unscheduled stops or deviations. At Jackson we pause.
     “How far is it?” says Cheryl.
    I look down at the counter on the odometer. “One thousand six hundred and fifty four metres.”
     “Centimetres?” says Cheryl.
     “None.”
    Cheryl makes a note in her book. Then I risk a question.
     “How far should it be?”
     “One thousand six hundred and forty-eight.”
     “So we’re six up?”
     “Looks like it,” says Cheryl.
     “Is that good or bad?”
     “Depends which way you look at it,” says Cheryl. “Come on, this way.”
    We head up Laputa away from the beach. I turn and give the front a final stare. Goodbye seagulls, goodbye sand, I say. See you again, I say. But only in my mind.
     “We’ll be back to the beach later,” says Cheryl, watching me looking.
     “I guessed that,” I say.
     “You don’t mind the beach,” says Cheryl. “Even after what happened with your father?”
    Cheryl has mentioned it. My father, after all. But not like the others. “I love the beach,” I say. “It’s a reminder.”
     “I suppose,” says Cheryl and then we are off again.
    We turn right at the top of Laputa, left at the end of Peatree and then carry straight on and over into Greenbags. At the end of each section we stop and Cheryl records the distance in the notebook. Cheryl is one of the best navigators and we encounter no major problems.
    At Greenbags stands a public toilet and as I am busting I ask Cheryl if she wouldn’t mind watching the odometer for a sec. If I was with anybody else I wouldn’t trust them. Given half the chance a lot of the navigators will do what is called ‘spinning the wheel’. This is where they lift the odometer off the ground and spin the wheel, thereby recording a distance and yet there being no actual physical movement.
    Navigators are paid by the metre, pushers by the hour.
     “Sure,” says Cheryl. She looks at her watch. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
    In the toilet there are eight urinals, four stalls and one mop. My father used to be able to piss while doing a handstand. He met my mother at the circus. They weren’t performing, just watching. They went alone and left together.
    When I come out of the toilet Cheryl looks at me funny.
     “What’s that on your shirt?”
    I don’t look down. “Water,” I say.
     “How’d you do that?”
     “The tap,” I say. “I turned it the wrong way.”
     “If you say so,” says Cheryl and we are off again.
    Hawthorn.
    Ingles.
    Sebastopol.
    The beach.
    The beach is where we started and the beach is where we end. That’s one of the things I like about Mr Bentwhistle. There is always a circularity to his planning, an underlying completeness.
    I am almost happy now. We will finish on time and already I am thinking of my meeting with Mandrake but then it happens.
    This. That.
    Which changes everything.


It is Cheryl who sees him first.
     “Cripes,” she says and I look up. I have been looking down, concentrating on the odometer and going in a straight line.
     “What’s that?” she says but I know that it is not really a question as I can see what that is.
    Seawall. Rows of deckchairs. Flat-back truck. Man.
     “They shouldn’t be there,” says Cheryl. “What are we going to do?”
     “Ask him to move.”
     “Go on then,” says Cheryl and she takes out her cigarettes.
    If a navigator and a pusher should encounter a blockage then it is the pusher who should principally unblock.
    Rule 5A.
     “Excuse me,” I say to the man. “Excuse me.”
    The man unfolds himself from the deckchair he is erecting. He is brown like the dashboard of an expensive automobile. He is shirtless and his chest tapers to a point and ends in a button.
     “Yeah?” he says.
     “You’re in the way,” I say.
     “Of what?” The man looks past me. Cheryl is standing beside the seawall dragging on a fag. Next to the man and his sea of chairs she doesn’t look like much.
     “We’re measuring,” I say. “Where your chairs are, that’s our last bit for the day.”
    The man sucks in air and then turns. He turns again. He looks back at me.
     “Looks to be about 25 feet.”
     “We measure in metres,” I say. “If you could just clear a path and then we’ll be done.”
     “Do you know how long it took me to put out these deckchairs?”
    I like games. I look at the chairs, then I look at the back of the truck. It’s quite high. He would have had to take each chair off individually. Set it individually in an upright position.
     “Two hours and forty-eight minutes?” I say.
     “Are you trying to be funny?”
     “No,” I say and then I hear footsteps behind me. I turn and see with horror that Cheryl is walking towards us and she has left the odometer lying flat on the floor. Anybody could come up now and run off with it. Then what would we do?
     “Is there a problem?”
    I’ve got two problems now I think.
     “He won’t move.” I say to Cheryl.
     “I’ve been here all morning,” says the man. “Can’t you go round?”
     “He won’t do a curve,” says Cheryl.
     “I’ve been here all sodding morning,” says the man.
     “What will we do?” I say. “I’m not curving.”
     “Nobody’s asking you to,” says Cheryl. She takes the cigarette out of her mouth. “Look. This is the last bit.” Cheryl walks over to the seawall and grinds her cigarette into it leaving a long black streak. “And this is as far as we’ve got. We’ll come back and do the rest in the morning.”
     “But I might not be with you tomorrow.”
     “You will,” says Cheryl. “I’ll sort it.”
     “Really?”
     “Absolutely,” says Cheryl. “For your father.”
     “Thanks,” I say. Then I think of one possible complication. I turn to look at the man.
     “Will you be here in the morning?”
     “I might be,” he says. “Depends.”


“Depends,” I say.
    I’m in Mandrake’s hut. He’s on one side of the table, I’m on the other. The buns are between us.
     “And?” says Mandrake.
     “That’s it,” I say. I reach over and take a bun, one with a cherry on the top. “Just depends.”
    Mandrake stands up. He doesn’t seem very impressed by my story I can tell.
     “If he’s there tomorrow,” I say, “then we won’t be able to measure.”
     “This Cheryl,” says Mandrake, “is she fit?”
     “I’m being serious.”
     “So am I,” says Mandrake. “Do you know how long I’ve been in this hut?”
    I don’t answer that question. Mandrake knows I know the answer. And besides we are getting off the point.
     “I want you to make me a love potion,” I say.
     “I can’t,” says Mandrake.
     “You’re a magician, aren’t you?”
     “Yes, but not that kind.”
     “Then what kind?”
    Mandrake comes back to the table and takes one of the cakes. He opens his mouth wide and pushes the cake inside. He closes his mouth and then speaks showering crumbs.
     “Look, I made a cake disappear.”
     “It’s in your mouth,” I say. “Some of it. The rest is in your stomach. The rest again is in the air like bits. Are you going to help me or not?”
     “You’re no fun anymore.”
     “If I can make that man love me,” I say, “then he will move his deckchairs. It stands to reason.”
    Mandrake sits down. We only have the one bun left now.
     “You’re off to uni after the hols, aren’t you?”
    I nod my head.
     “So why is this so important to you? You’re only measuring. Why can’t you be more like the others?”
     “Why can’t you?”
     “Fair point.”
     “I do quite like this man,” I say. “He has eyes like Lunn Polly.”
     “What?” says Mandrake.
     “You know, makes you want to go on holiday. I’ve never been in love. I want to know what it’s like, just once, and then I’ll keep quite about it. Promise.”
     “Look,” says Mandrake, “I’ll race you to the last cake.”
     “So you’ll help me?”
     “On three.”
     “Please.”
     “One.”
     “Pretty please.
     “Two.”
     “I’ll bring you cakes forever.”
     “Three.”
    And all of a sudden the cake shimmers on the table and then changes into a chocolate éclair.
     “It’s the best I can do,” says Mandrake. “Get him to eat it. But I’m not promising anything.”


“Is that for me?” says Cheryl.
    She is sitting on the seawall cross-legged smoking a fag. Behind her today, the sea is raging.
     “It’s for that man,” I say. “I got it from Mandrake.”
     “Oh,” says Cheryl. “I see. So then it is true.”
    I shrug. “As true as anything.”
    Cheryl pauses the cigarette for a moment and then smiles.
     “Do you think he could make me bigger?”
    I look Cheryl up and down. “In what sense? You seem to be about the right size.”
     “My breasts,” says Cheryl. “I’ve always wanted them bigger.”
     “He’s not that kind of magician.”
     “Then what kind is he?”
    I think for a minute. “He makes cakes disappear.”
     “It doesn’t sound very inspiring. And what about your éclair?”
     “That’s different. Mandrake and I go back a long way.”
     “Oh,” says Cheryl. “For someone who’s got the reputation of being a loner you seem to have an awful lot of people who care about you.”
     “Just Mandrake really.”
     “And me,” says Cheryl.
     “Oh,” I say and then feeling quite embarrassed I pick up the odometer and making quite sure the counter is off I wheel it up and down uselessly for a bit.
     “That’s enough,” says Cheryl.
     “Right,” I say. “Actually, Mandrake asked if you were fit.”
    Cheryl laughs and then puts her head on one side. “Am I?”
    I nod my head.


To the left the sea is still raging. White spume races itself until it is tired and then slips back into its mother. Cheryl and I walk along the seashore. There is nobody about. Yet. Except in the distance, small, but getting bigger we see the man unloading his deckchairs one by one onto the pavement, on and on.


“So you’re here then?” I say.
     “Looks like it,” says the man.
    He is shirtless again, which surprises me because it is not a shirtless day.
     “I brought you something,” I say. I hold out the éclair.
    The man looks at it and then looks at me. “I’ve already had my breakfast. Two rashers of bacon in an open bap.”
     “Then think of it as a treat.”
     “I don’t like sweet things, right enough.”
    The man nods over to Cheryl where she is sitting on the seawall, exactly above the black mark she made the day before. She looks like the wrong point of an exclamation mark.
     “Why don’t you give it to her? She looks like she could do with feeding up.”
     “Can’t you move your deckchairs a bit?” I say. “We only need about a metre gap.”
     “Sorry,” says the man. “No can do.”
     “Please.”
    He shakes his head. I can see that he means it. I go back over to Cheryl.
     “He won’t move,” I say, “and he won’t eat the éclair.”
     “What are you going to do?”
     “Don’t know. I’m stumped.”
     “Why don’t we just wait?”
     “What for?”
     “He can’t stay there forever.”
     “I suppose.”
     “And I doubt the deckchairs will stay on the pavement anyway.”
     “What do you mean?”
     “Stands to reason. People come down to the beach. They don’t want to sit on the sand. They hire a deckchair from the man. They take the deckchair down to the beach. Deckchair on beach equals no deckchair on pavement. Ergo measurement is possible.”
     “You’re a wonder Cheryl,” I say.
     “I try my best.”
    So we wait.
    After two hours the man comes up to us.
     “Why don’t you pull up a pew?”
    I take it by pew that he means one of the deckchairs. I can see what he’s saying. Now that I look at the deckchairs again there is something church-like about their order, hanging out under the alter of the sky.
     “I’m fine on the wall,” says Cheryl.
     “Ok,” I say.
    After all, two hours have passed. The man may be beginning to be peckish. He might be tempted by the éclair.
    I go over and sit down on one of the chairs. The man sits down right next to me. From somewhere he pulls out a box and leans over.
     “Sandwich?” he says.
    Uselessly I hold up the éclair and shake my head.
     “They’re good ‘uns.”
     “What time do you think you’ll get busy?” I say.
    The man looks up at the sky, looks level at me. “Don’t think we’ll be busy today. Not beach going weather I reckon.”
    I look up to the sky too. Clouds like thunder bellow silently.
     “So why don’t you pack up and go home?”
     “It’s my job,” says the man.
     “Fair enough,” I say.
     “You sure you don’t want a sandwich?”
     “Go on then.”
    I take one and take a bite. It’s cheese and ham.
     “You know what this reminds me of?” says the man.
     “No,” I say.
     “The great deckchair wars of ’64.”
     “Don’t know them. It was before my time.”
     “Mine too. But they’re kind of a legend. It was back in the days before cheap air travel. Do you want to hear about them?”
    I think for a while. People don’t usually tell me stories, not me. “Can you hang on a minute? I’ll go and speak to my friend.”
    The man nods and takes another sandwich from the box. I push myself up and go over to Cheryl.
     “He’s not moving,” I say.
     “What are you going to do?”
     “He wants to tell me a story. Look, will you do me a favour?”
     “Sure, what?”
     “I usually go to Mandrake’s around now. He’ll be getting peckish. Can you take him this éclair?”
     “But…”
     “Just take it,” I say. “I’ve got a feeling I’ll be ok. I like him. I don’t think I need the éclair.”
     “Ok,” says Cheryl. “Cheers.” She pulls me to her, kisses me on the nose and then is off. I go back and sit down on the deckchair next to the man.
     “The great deckchair wars of ’64,” I say.
     “As I say,” says the man, “in them days deckchairs was big business. People use to come to places like this regular. They’d heard of abroad but it was alien to them. So here would be packed, kids with candyfloss, fathers shifting gears, mothers looking for that something that would take them back to when they were kids with candyfloss. And deckchairs. Everybody wanted their own deckchair to sit down on the beach.
     “The deckchairs back then were controlled by the Lenzies. It was money all right. You could make up to £200 in one day and even double that on nights they had fireworks. They used to have magnificent fireworks here, really magnificent. People came from all over to see them explode.
     “That year, the year of ’64, the person who was mostly in charge of the chairs was young Johnny Lenzie. Looking after the chairs was called ‘manning the decks’ and that’s what he did.
     “By all accounts this Johnny Lenzie was a cocky bugger but he had the character to pull it off without causing disgruntlement. It was said that he could manage 200 chairs all at once. He would remember who had paid and who hadn’t with just a glance. And God help you if you’d said you’d paid and you hadn’t. This one time Johnny took three on all at once and gave them quite a ducking. And he got his sixpence.
     “Now during this Summer, the Summer of ’64, Johnny he met a girl. It happens to all of us only some go for it more than others. Johnny called this girl Tina, for that was her name. And pretty soon people got to be calling them Johnny and Tina for that was what they were. One to the other, for ever and ever.
     “From then on, while Johnny manned his decks, Tina would be by his side, sitting. When Johnny was near they talked and when he was far, doing his rounds, she read. She liked the works of Fleming, those books about Bond and she called Johnny my double 0.
     “All was well for a time and then it wasn’t. It went bad. It was different in those days. Tina’s father caught Johnny and his daughter together one day. They were out on the boating lake. Johnny was rowing and Tina’s hand was trailing in the water. Tina’s father thought Johnny was some kind of boat chauffeur but then he heard his daughter laugh and he knew he was mistaken because he knew that kind of laugh.
     “That night there were red eyes in Tina’s house. Some were red eyes of anger and some were red eyes of tears. I won’t give him up, said Tina. I won’t. He is not a bum. He makes £200 cash a day and he manages 200 chairs. More when there’s works. £200, said Tina’s father, that’s nothing. I make that in minutes. I won’t have my daughter going out with the deckchair man. It’s one up from being a gypsy. He’s not a gypsy, said Tina and I wouldn’t care if he was. But anyway, he’s not. We’ll see, said Tina’s father and Tina went to her room.
     “The next day Tina didn’t tell Johnny about what had happened but when Johnny was near she wanted him nearer and when he was far she gazed at him over the top of her book. Oh my double 0, she said. Oh my double 0. For she knew that when her father said we’ll see he meant it, she would see. Tina’s father was a powerful man.
     “It was Johnny who saw it first and he pointed it out to Tina. Look, he said, a big truck, the like I’ve never seen of before. Oh no, said Tina for she knew something was up. And she was right, it was.
     “Two men jumped from out of the truck and onto the pavement and they started to unload deckchairs. Brand new, spanking in the sun. What’s this? said Johnny but he knew what it was. It’ll be all right, said Tina. Course, said Johnny but he wasn’t so sure. He saw them erecting a paying desk. It had a ray of bulbs around it, each one a different colour, and even in the sunshine they twinkled like anemones.
     “Johnny could manage 200 chairs a day but the next day he managed only 50. All day Tina sat with her finger in the crease of her book. It doesn’t matter if you’re poor, she said. I won’t be poor, said Johnny. He did a cartwheel. Then he jumped up and down. Look, this is me, I’m Johnny. It really doesn’t matter, said Tina. It doesn’t have to not matter, said Johnny, because there is nothing to matter about.
     “The next day there was only 15 chairs not on Johnny’s patch. For most of the day he sat with Tina. Tina couldn’t read. Johnny was speechless. Every now and again Tina would find her eyes wandering to the queue at the paying in desk. It seemed always to have a beginning and an end like an awful long story. We could always try advertising, said Tina. Advertise what? said Johnny. The chairs, said Tina. They’re just chairs, said Johnny. What’s to advertise? You know, said Tina, add a little pizzazz. Did Bond have pizzazz? said Johnny. Well no, said Tina. Well then, said Johnny. I’m not changing. My family have had this spot for years. I’m not changing. People will come back.
     “People didn’t come back. One day Johnny had only three customers and that was the three boys he had ducked previously. They had heard about Johnny and his downfall and they wanted to try their luck. Where are your sixpences? said Johnny. Yeah, you and who’s army, said the boys. Johnny tried to duck them but this time they ducked him right back. As he walked up from the beach Tina passed him a towel. I’m not changing, said Johnny. Not for anyone, so don’t even ask.
     “It all came to an end the night of the big fireworks. Johnny took Tina out on the lake during the day and rowed from side to side six times and then he went home and put on his tie. It had a cat on it with a smiley face. On the works nights Johnny always wore a tie. You look smart, said Tina. Do I? said Johnny. Very smart, said Tina. My double 00. But. But? said Johnny. I can’t be with you tonight, said Tina. It’s the big night, said Johnny. I… said Tina. Yes? said Johnny. I have to help my father, said Tina. He wants me to put out the chairs. What chairs? said Johnny and then all at once he knew. Oh Tina, he said, why didn’t you tell me? I couldn’t, said Tina. She tried to touch Johnny but he was too far away now. She tried to hold on to him but her arms wouldn’t reach. You have to choose, said Johnny. You have to choose, me or your father. I can’t, said Tina. I can’t. You have to, said Johnny. Oh Johnny, said Tina and that was her choice.
     “That night Johnny put out his chairs and nobody came. He didn’t sell a single chair. He stood there all alone and he watched Tina. He loved Tina and he always would. She had asked him to change and he couldn’t. He had asked her to make a choice and she did. For years he was here. For years you could see him. One man, manning his decks, and then one day he wasn’t. But that I think is another story. The end.”
    The man on the deckchair stands up and stretches. He puts his hand out and looks up at the sky.
     “That’s it, I’m off. It’s starting to rain.”
     “I thought it was your job to stay here?” I say.
     “Rule 8C,” says the man. “In case of high winds or rain chairs must be stowed. Give us a hand.”
    So I do. He starts at one end and I start at the other and pretty soon we have the chairs put away.
     “Thanks for that,” says the man.
     “That’s ok,” I say.
     “By the way, you haven’t mentioned my story. What did you think of it?”
     “Actually,” I say, “I’m quite familiar with it. I believe you got bits of it wrong.”
     “Did I? Which bits?”
     “Well for a start, the date, and also this Johnny and Tina they had a son.”
     “I didn’t know that.”
     “Doesn’t matter. I liked your version. It was nice. You got the right sense, how Johnny wouldn’t change. I like that bit.”
     “If you so say. Look do you want to go for a drink later?”
     “Sure,” I say.
     “Meet you here, about eight?”
    I nod my head. Then I watch as the man gets in the truck and pulls off.
    The rain is coming down in buckets now, thousands of tiny explosions on the pavement. I fight my way through it back to where the odometer is lying flat and I pick it up.
    I wheel it over to where Cheryl has made the mark that is now sliding off the wall and I flick on the counter. Then I start.
    I move forward.
    Some things I realise are in front. And some are behind. That which is behind you should leave there. That which is in front you should welcome with open arms.
    I measure. I go straight. I don’t deviate. I don’t do a curve.
    I miss my dad but I am happy. I think.



About the author:
Drew Gummerson is 33 and lives in Leicester, England. In 2002 his first novel ‘The Lodger’ was published. It was a finalist in the Lambda Awards in the States. Drew’s short fiction has been published in ‘Death Comes Easy; The Gay Times Book of Short Stories 4’, ‘Serendipity: The Gay Times Book of New Writing’, ‘Best Gay Erotica 2005’ Cleis Press, Aesthetica Magazine, The Gay Read, www.thisisitmag.co.uk, www.openwidemagazine.co.uk, www.pulp.net, www.blithe.com, www.megaera.org, www.zygoteinmycoffee.com, www.laurahird.com and www.forbiddenfruitzine.com.

Drew is currently working with Zuluspice to turn a number of his short stories into short films.

Website: http://freespace.virgin.net/d.gummerson

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