Thursday 17 November 2011

Eaten By The Sea

EATEN BY THE SEA



Blink.

He saw the lighthouse before he reached the top of the dunes and with that first flash he remembered the last time he had seen it. Forty odd years of time - years of joy and fear, tragedy, death, and birth - collapsed into an interval between blinks

He had gone to sea in his yearning youth and had been drawn back to the bay by an itch, which had become a longing, a compulsion to plant his feet on the beach where he had spent so many happy summers.

He had thought that the crescent of the bay would be deserted in the early morning, but he saw something blue - and a big hat - the figure of a woman in the distance. A stranger on his shore.

The woman saw the stranger on the dune top path. She lived in the big white house on the cliff overlooking this remote bay where she had spent all of her summers as a child. She loved the mystery and spirituality of the shore and walked it every day.

Blink.

As a child he had counted and was thrilled when ...eleven, twelve, thirteen, always coincided with another blink from the lighthouse, thirteen intense seconds when time was the prisoner of the child. And summers were a lifetime.

He watched the woman in the distance strolling along the shore in his direction.

She meandered over the patches of dark and light on the washed smooth shore and areas where the to-ing fro-ing sea had made ridges - which she sometimes imagined as a map of mountains with valleys of dry sand.

Blink.

Memories inhabited the air as if they had been waiting for him.

In his first summer in the bay a little ship had beached; a coaster, fresh painted and newly riveted - a pretty little ship, he remembered. Over the hot weeks, when rocks had been warm to the touch, he had watched in fascination as men came wearing bowler hats and suits and Wellingtons. Salvagers came and took things away. Then looters came and pulled and ripped and cut manageable pieces until the little ship had resembled a mortally wounded beast.

He remembered how the hulk had listed and settled comfortably into the soft beach and begin to rust.

When wading, the woman still got a thrill when she felt the soft tickly sand on her naked soles. The past became the present for a fleeting moment when she suddenly experienced the gritty taste of sand in egg sandwiches. Smiling at the memory she saw in her mind her picnicking parents watching, in past picture-postcard days..

She watched the stranger.

The high exposed planes of the dunes always made her think it was as if the land had broken off and fallen into the sea, and she had watched him descend them in a sliding lope, leaving elongated troughs down the pyramid of silvery sand. He was on the beach now, walking, stopping, walking, getting nearer to her

Blink

There had been a little girl, he remembered. It had become their ship, and It had made her very sad to see it disfigured. He watched the woman. He could see now that her big hat was made of straw and tied under her chin. She was wading at the sea
s edge and picking up shells - sometimes scampering when odd waves raced further up the beach.

In that first childhood summer a boy had rescued her when she was lying on the beach near to the sea. He had thought that she was dead, or ill, or had fallen asleep and in danger of drowning. She was just hugging the earth. They had laughed about it. He, too, spent summers here, and they spent blissfully happy days exploring together, summer after summer, and he talked of the ship, and how he would go to sea and...

Blink.

...He remembered how that little girl had made him promise that one day, when they were grown up, they would live in the white house and have their precious bay to themselves every day; not just in the summer, but for ever. He tried to remember ... yes ... we would be about ten.

Waves pitched and toppled with a thump in the retreating foam of jostling recollections. Another memory came as if bidden ... they had left notes for each other in their favourite cave.

The silent open mouths of the caves were behind the woman, mute voyeurs of untellable tales.

She had held on to his hand in the caves because she had been scared. She remembered the briny smell inside the frightening caverns, and remembered, too, the flotsam left by the sea every day, like presents for them to find...

Blink.

...He had taken her deep into a cave once and run away and now, above the sea, he heard her echoing scream and felt a pang of guilt.

She ambled along the beach, getting closer to him, this intruder visiting her shore. She stopped; stood still; listened to the sea and to the screeching terns, and watched a long unbroken roller prowling out to sea, the slate sea like taut skin on muscle as if it was alive.

She hadnt thought of her rescuer for ...oh... many years. They had spent every summer here until ...

Before the memory of that day could flood her mind she remembered that their first real date had been on the bus up the coast to the harbour...

Blink.

The memory of her rushed in like the seventh wave racing up the beach and for a moment he felt the warm feel of her hand in his when he had pulled her away from the shrieking gulls clamouring in the harbour, some swooping to snatch hot battered fish from her newspaper and ...

... She remembered how she had squealed when she saw the silver glitter of twitching fish spilling from nets onto the quayside near to her feet

Blink.

... He had been her hero that day. If only she had known how the unnerving beat of the gulls wings and their guiltless, uncomplicated savagery had upset him.

She watched him throwing stones - watched them arc-ing and kissing the sea, arc-ing and kissing and arc-ing...

Blink.

... for him, watching the stone soar during each arc, time stretched, and in those moments he was at sea again - remembering the pleasure of solitude, remembering how anonymous ships would pass, full of anonymous people unaware that a mile to starboard other souls were skimming briefly into their existence ...

The long hot summers of her youth seemed to have lasted for ever, but when her ship, their ship, disappeared that last summer - that summer as a lipsticked teenager - she realised that they had gone in a flash...

Blink.

On his visits to the land he had been happy in the knowledge that he would soon be back at sea. But this time he was marooned forever. The rhythm of the sea, the song he loved and had lived with, suddenly unsettled him, like unfinished musical phrases - as if part of a larger, cosmic, unknowable rhythm - wanting and waiting for that contentment of the home key...

... The roller that had transfixed her smashed itself onto the sand in front of her with a loud violent thump, and for a moment, remembering their pretty little ship, she shared the seas simmering anger.

Each year the hulk of their little ship was less and less visible and every summer in her childhood memory she remembered it being further up the beach. The sea had crept inches and then yards up the shore slowly devouring the ageing face of the earth, and their pretty ship had sunk into the soft bed; and then it was gone - as if in stop frame photography - frame by frame - images summer by summer - gone; eaten by the sea in a moment.

Blink.

The flash reminded him that the lighthouse had marked its passing. Every thirteen seconds, unconcerned and passionless, when one of its beams faced the once fresh painted ship, there had been a blink, a matter of fact punctuation mark.

She remembered how they had looked every day for the hulk of their ship. It became a ritual that summer, as if they couldnt believe that it had gone, hoping that it would reappear. It had felt like the end of something ...


Blink.

... his little girl of all the summers before was suddenly grown up in that summer when they had looked in vain for their ship.

He wandered along the shore toward the woman and they were very close now, these two strangers on the great expanse of this remote bay.

She caressed the bladders of the seaweed in her fingers and remembered the sandcastles the boy had built for her - and how sometimes she had stamped on them in a fit of pique ...

Blink.

At his feet, a section of tree from an unknown forest had been deposited on the shining wet sand. Two branches had grown side by side like thighs and countless caresses of the sea had smoothed and shaped them...

...And the tang of seaweed always reminded her ... of sex ...

Blink.

...A wave came and licked and lapped and swirled around the trunks erotic curves and he remembered the warmth and shape of her body - that first exhilarating experience of longing youth, the forbidden bulge, pubic hair, her warm, plump buttocks...



She strolled a small semi circle around the stranger, not too near nor too far, giving him space, thinking that if she caught his eye he might speak. Handsome, she thought, sneaking him a look as she walked by.

She lingered briefly, hitching up her long dress and wading into the rippling skirt of the sea .

...the reverie of his first love was still warm in his mind when he looked to where the woman was and met her enquiring gaze. He counted between the blinks from the lighthouse. One, two, three...mmm, trim - like the cut of her jib...eight, nine...good looking - for her age...ten...wonder if she will speak....twelve, thirteen.

They each turned away and walked.

Blink.

Sometimes, rising and falling on a heaving sea , when he was the only one awake in the vast blackness of the ocean, he had thought of that girl of distant youth, about their last time together.

For a few years she had wondered if her seaman would ever return. The last time she saw him was that summer when their ship disappeared. The day before their last day they had gone to their cave, that echoing cavern of childhood awe, and now of lovers tryst. She had worn her mothers make-up. And he had looked suddenly so grown up. They had smoked cigarettes and drunk wine, and he had groped and fumbled. He showed her, proudly, his stiffness and mumbled breathless crudities and she had given in to his pleas. In his callow impatient lust he prodded and missed and stabbed and missed and then; and then it had hurt, it was uncomfortable, and she had been disappointed.

Blink.

After that first sexual experience in their cave they had walked along this same light and dark beach, many waves ago. He had held her round the waist, keeping her close to him, as if they were one, and sometimes holding hands - pulling and parting, uncoordinated, when odd waves rushed in.

He felt glad that he had visited his Bay. His memories had come to him, some rushing, some lingering.

He wished he had come earlier to see the sunrise.

I must come earlier tomorrow, she thought, remembering their last few hours. They had watched, speechless with awe, the huge red ball rising out of the sea and hovering, and it had bled - like wet watercolour paint - into the sinless white soul of the day. They thought it was the most incredible thing they had ever seen and they were so happy in that moment, before they had to say goodbye.

I hope he is happy. He got what he wanted, the sea.

He looked back as he walked to the dunes. The woman was writing in the wet sand near the seas edge; behind her the arc of the earth a single thick brush stroke of inky violet on the horizon.

She had remembered something else they used to do, she and that little boy.

She waited for that odd wave - the seventh, or tenth, she could never remember - that odd wave that rushes further up the beach than the others, and when it came it washed away the letters she had carved with her finger.

She saw the stranger on the dunes.



He waved.

He took one last look.

At the beach.

At the woman.

At the lighthouse.

Blink.




© billhaddowallen

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