Yarns Without Threads 

'The water's flat and brown. The sand's made of shells. It's been raped by those whelk farmers. The sea, I mean. Raped by those fucking seafood fishermen.'

Lily pointed towards the sea. The man she spoke to was fat and smelled of fish, but he had a good tan and a big prick. He was on his way to the beach.

Lily sat astride her mountain bike. She was seventeen. She was conducting her own little war, but she didn't know what she was fighting about, not yet, at least. She had widely spaced eyes. At school they'd called her Miss Piggy, because of her strange eyes and because her parents ran a farm. They kept wild boar. Although, as Lily often observed, wild boar actually had eyes that were quite extraordinarily close together. ...

Lily pointed. 'That's the Swale. It's a nature reserve.'

'I know.'

The man looked uncomfortable. He made as if to surreptitiously cover over his genitals with his hands. Lily noticed. 'You've nothing there that I haven't seen countless times before.'

He grimaced.

She rubbed her arms. 'Fuck, it's cold. You must be freezing.'

'I'm just going in for a quick dip.'

'Like I was saying,' Lily continued, ignoring his response, 'that's the Swale, and that there's the Blockhouse. Right over there, beyond where you can see is the Ferry Inn and the church. Harty church.'

'I know.'

Lily scowled. 'Would you stop saying "I know" all the time?'

'But I do know. I'm renting one of the prefabs. I'm living in Sheppey now.'

'Yeah, well, what you don't know, apparently,' Lily said, smiling, 'is that I can report you to the police for walking down this road naked.'

The man, under considerable duress, tried his best to hold his own. 'That's my prefab,' he said bullishly, 'I mean I'm renting it. So this here is the front of my house. And that...' he pointed, 'is the nudist beach.'

'But this,' Lily indicated with a flourish, 'this is the sign that says you must put on clothes to go beyond that point. See?'

'But there's no one about.'

'I'm about. And someone else lives in that prefab. Your neighbour. He's short and bald and he's always well covered. He would probably also be disgusted if he saw you this way.'

'I'm not disgusting, I'm just naked. And this is a nudist beach.'

'That is a nudist beach. This is the public highway' The man said nothing. Lily appraised him, coolly. 'I've lived around here a long while. See those over there?'

She pointed at a cluster of houses; small, purpose-built chalets. He nodded. 'That's where you people go.'

'Pardon?'

'The Hamlet. It's fenced off, see? That's where all the temporary people go. Nobody permanent has anything to do with them. We think they're weird.'

He glanced over at the chalets as though he hadn't truly noticed them before. 'Perhaps they think you're weird.'

'What?'

Lily crossed her arms.

'I'm going to the beach now. It's too cold to stand around talking.'

'Fine.'

'... I didn't like the look of him. I mean, he was naked. I thought he might turn nasty so I jumped into the sea to avoid him.'

Even Sara found this last bit difficult to comprehend.

'You jumped into the sea? Why didn't you just ride home?'

'I dunno. I was angry, I suppose. He's a sicko. This is a small place. There's the nudist beach, which attracts the worst kind of people anyway. And now there's this man. Attracted by the nudity. You know? Like this is a sewer. Our home.'

Sara shook her head. 'It's not good, certainly.'

'It's terrible.'

'I don't want you going down there again.'

'Oh no,' Lily smiled at this, her eyes icy, 'no one stops me from going where I want to go and doing what I want to do. No bloody pervert, anyway.

Sara felt vexed by Lily's moral certainty. 'Go and get changed. You'll catch your death.'

Lily had dripped a puddle on to the kitchen flags. She held up her hands. Her knuckles were purple with cold.

'I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the human body in its natural state,' she said piously. 'I'm not suggesting that for a moment. But what I am saying, though, is that one thing leads to another.'

She sounded just like her father.

'I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the human body in its natural state,' Sara said staunchly, 'but what I am saying is that enough's enough. My daughter is seventeen. She has a right to travel on a public highway without encountering this kind of thing.'

Luke was fully dressed. It was hard to believe that he would even consider walking a public highway stark naked.

'Maybe you should step inside for a moment.'

...

'The thing is . . .' she cleared her throat, 'most of the people who live around here were upset about the nudist beach. It was a concession to the Hamlet.' Sara pointed, uselessly, because it was pitch dark now. 'I mean, the fenced-off chalets. And in general the rest of us don't have that much to do with them. They tend to come and go. Summer weekends mainly. They aren't what I'd call the community proper.'

The squeal of seagulls alerted Jim to the arrival of a woman and a man on a distant section of the beach. They were disrobing. Jim observed them, unobtrusively, from the corner of his eye. Ronny continued to sort the shells, oblivious. The couple undressed completely and then ran into the sea. The cold made the woman yell and the man laugh. Ronny looked up.

'Are they naked?'

'That's the nudist beach. There's a sign over there to say exactly where the nudist zone begins and ends.'

'How come those chalets are all fenced off?' Ronny asked, catching up, readjusting the log under his right arm and then nodding towards the hamlet.

'It's a private community. They think the locals are all freaks. Anti-social. Inbred. So they put the fence up to distinguish themselves. And we tend to think they're weird because they put up the fence and because they come here principally on summer weekends to use the nudist beach.'

Lily stopped walking. 'That way is the nature reserve, but if we head straight on we reach the beach.'

'What kind of beach?'

'Shell. It's OK. There's a nudist section which is good for a laugh.'

Connie nodded. 'That'll be handy. I haven't brought a costume.'

Lily stared at her. 'You're planning to go swimming?'

'Sure. Why not?'

Lily merely snorted and strode on.

Jim saw her - way off at first - from the far end of the beach. But even at that distance he could see her savage mouth working, tearing, jabbering, as she strode out, swinging her long arms, kicking up sand with her skinny legs. She repelled him. She was unpredictable, stunted, somehow, and raging. He wanted her to leave them alone. Ronny especially. She would drain him dry if she could. He hated this idea. Lily suckling and guzzling.

He watched her. She was expostulating with her hands. She was with a friend. The friend was disrobing.

'But you don't have a towel,' Lily was saying.

'It's windy. I'll dry off soon enough.'

'What if someone comes along?'

'Should that be a problem?'

Connie wore pale linen trousers and a turquoise shirt. She pulled off her trousers. Her knees were both bruised, but she didn't care.

'Will you come in with me?'

'Fuck off!'

'Go on!'

Lily pointed. 'I know those two over there. I'm not stripping in front of them.'

'Fine.'

Connie unbuttoned her shirt. Underneath she wore no bra and a g-string. 'You could swim in your underwear,' she wheedled. Lily scowled at Connie's non-existent bikini line without replying.

'What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' she said, 'and if you don't mind I've actually got some other things to do.'

She stalked off, stiff-backed and bristling. Connie smiled after her.

Jim nodded slightly at Lily's greeting but he didn't speak. Lily' pointed. 'Would you believe that?'

'What?'

He stared over at Connie without much attention. She was paler than the shells. Very pale. But distant.

'She's a relative. If my dad saw her he'd shit himself.'

'Your dad?'

'He's anti-nudity.'

Jim remained silent.

...

The sea was cold. It reached just above Connie's knees. She debated whether she would swim. The undertow was quite powerful. An unexpectedly large wave hit her. She gasped. Some seaweed caught around her ankle. As she bent over to remove it, she turned and glanced back across the beach. In the distance she saw Lily sitting next to a person in a hat. Someone else stood just beyond them. A man. His hand was raised. But before she could focus in on him properly, another wave hit her. She fell back into it with a small yelp and started swimming.