The manuscript was written back in 2012 and is a bit naive, with lots of over-description, but I hope you enjoy it.
THE BEACHCOMBERS
Chapter One
It was bitter cold that morning, but this did not deter Tom and
Alice. With Benji they strolled out of
Edgecliff Villas towards the North Beach at 7 a.m. The streets that greeted them were not the
carnival of noise and seedy commerce of the previous evening, but an eerie
quietude, broken only by the whirr of a milk float and the occasional barking
of a neighbourhood dog. This was a
Northern seaside town in the late Autumn.
Benji, always excited to be walked, strained at the leash and panted,
his tongue flapping and his head lurching left and right, like a shadow boxer,
determined to make contact with any sign of pavement life. Now and then another dog-walker would appear,
and Benji would quickly go into attack mode, barking and yelping furiously at
the opposing dog before Tom could calm him.
From the distance, the sea was a dark blue, and at its deepest like
black. Where it touched the sky, it
deposed into a band of orange and yellow that signalled the Sun but the sky was
still grey and purple, only now just breaking into the paler blue that meant
dawn. As they walked closer to the
seafront, grey outlines of distant ships were discernible and they saw the first
fishing vessels leave the harbour and venture out to water. The beach itself was reached from the
Promenade via a series of steep steps that were only revealed at low tide. The stone was greased with green-coloured
slime and galls that made each step precarious.
Tom carried Benji down the steps while Alice trailed carefully behind
them. Below, waves crashed and rolled,
and pounded the shore line. The old man
stood and watched them from behind the sea wall under the shelter of the cliffs
that towered toward the sky. The beach
itself seemed to stretch along the coastline as far as the eye could see. To the north stood the steepest cliffs they
had ever seen pocked by mysterious caves and coves, and in the far distance a
headland that could be reached only across dangerous shingle-laden sands that would be
deluged in high tide. To the south the
beaches were populated by shore fishermen, and beyond them lay the marshes and
flatlands that lined the bay and marked the rough, windswept coast for many miles down to the spurn.
“Let's go north, to the headland”, Tom said.
“What, all that way...? Nooo...it's
miles” shouted Alice.
“Come on....”, Tom insisted.
They struggled through the soft sandy bank by the sea wall but soon
reached the harder low foreshore. Beyond
it, the water seemed like the azore of a clear October sky, green, dark
and a little murky in places, bright in others, and it shimmered with the
fledgling yellow light of the morning.
Tom marched on, determined to make progress, while Benji and Alice
playfully ran in and out of the sea as the waves crept up the shoreline. Benji yelped whenever he was caught by the
water and, running higher up the beach, shook himself dry before chasing Alice
again. Soon it started to rain, but the
wind took care of most of it, blowing the droplets into the blueish-green drink
before it could lash their faces.
Eventually the beach started to narrow and became only pebble and
rock. They saw huge concrete
slabs submerged in the mud and leaning into the
cliffs. They appeared to have been part
of some man-made structure. The sea had
made fissures in them and where it had eroded the rocks there were cracks
and crevices, hiding places for crab and lobster.
Tom first saw the old man talking to Alice. Benji was running around the stranger
frantically, yapping and jumping up at him.
Tom walked back towards them.
“Hello...”, he shouted.
“Aye, mornin'...”, the
old man replied, nodding his head slightly in acknowledgement and quickly
letting out two puffs of smoke as he re-breathed and bit into his pipe. “Goin' to the headland, are yee?”, he peered
down at the eldest one knowingly.
“That's what the young lassie here tells me.”
Tom nodded back. The old man had
what seemed like a funny voice. It
sounded like an Irish accent, but he couldn't quite place it.
“That's right. Up to the headland”.
“Arrr....well, yees, yer wanting to be careful. Out here, the
weather's getting' bad and the tide'll be in before yer know it.”
The old man had a full head of grey hair that was dark at the roots and
was combed rightwards from a side parting, making it look like a pleasant wave
rolling across his pink scalp. His
bright green eyes were scrunched-up and seemed to evince an almost permanent
state of curiosity. His face appeared
weathered and he was unshaven, but his manner was somehow keen and
penetrating. Every now and then, he
would gently lift his tobacco pipe out of his mouth to speak, and at the end of
each sentence he would plonk it back there with a flourish, taking a quick
breath before lifting it out and speaking again.
“Where do you live then?” Alice asked, in a slightly impertinent tone.
“Oh, over there, in the chalet.” The old man pointed back to a row of
brightly-coloured beach huts near the sea wall.
“You live in one of those huts!” cried Alice in astonishment.
“Yes, it does fine for me.”
“But why….?”
“Alice, stop it….” interrupted Tom, but the old man seemed
unembarrassed.
“Oh well, I own the Sands Café, you see, and in my case I stay nice and
warm there.” He bit the pipe again and
this time Tom noticed the smoke emitting from the bowl was a blueish colour. Tom made a mental note of this but decided
not to ask the old man what it was.
“Anyhow”, the old man continued, “if yer goin’ up to the headland, be
sure yer back down here ‘fore noon. Tide’ll
get yer otherwise. If you come back this
way, stop by the café. I’ll have a mug
of cocoa for each of yer.” And at that,
the old man walked off.
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