As he got out of bed and stumbled down to the kitchen, John decided to just put it behind him. He was finishing off his second bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes when there was a knock at the door. Laura dried her hands on a tea towel and went to answer it.
"Someone for you," she said as she walked back into the kitchen. John stood up, but for a moment he could not move at all, paralysed by the thought of walking to the door and seeing the old man there, his face radiating menace in the way that some people do body odour.
Then he said to himself: John, stop it, stop it now. He walked to the front door and there was Simon, this time without his bike, leaning against the door frame and staring out into the street and singing softly to himself.
"All right," Simon said, without bothering to turn around. "Thought you might want to come out with me and Sal, you not knowing anyone like."
Sal? thought John. "How—I mean yeah, love to. Now? And how did you know where I live?"
"Aye, now, if you like. Thought we could go down the beach, see what there is to find. Tide's out. Always fossils and that down there."
"And what the sea brings in," a girl's voice said, and John stuck his head out of the front door to see her. She was leaning on the front wall, hands in the pockets of her jeans, trying to outdo Simon for nonchalance. She must have been a couple of years older than Simon, but one look told John that she was his sister. She had the same narrow face, the same green eyes, the same way of looking at John with her head tilted to one side, like a bird. "Sea brings all sorts in."
"Our Sal," Simon said, nodding at her. "Sal, John." John nodded at her, and she returned the same nod, the universal greeting of late childhood, non-committal, studied in its deliberate casual coolness. John ducked back into the house, grabbed his coat, a fierce feeling of happiness inside him. Simon wasn't a relative, charged with cheering John up; he wasn't a friend of the family suffocating him with well intentioned pity. Simon had called round just because he thought—well, John didn't know what he thought, but he didn't care, after what the last few months had been like, he didn't much care at all. And there wasn't just Simon. There was Sal, and that sideways look from under her hair.
"I'm going out with my friends," he said, and he couldn't help but grin when he said it.
"Cool. You have a good time, yeah?"
"Yeah", John said. When he came out of the front door, Simon and Sal fell in on either side of him.
"We'll go down the steps on the side of the harbour wall," Simon said. "Then round the headland and onto the beach. Bit slippy that way, not supposed to, but it's quicker than climbing all the way up the cliff path, then all the way down again."
"Can't go this way most times," Sal chimed in. "Would get a bit wet."
"Bit drowned more like," Simon said. "Only do it when the tide's right out, like now. Time we're finished we won't be able to go back that way, it'll be under again, we'll have to go back the cliff path. You been down on the beach yet?"
"No," John said, "I've only been here one full day, really. I went up on the cliffs yesterday, walked right along around the bay, right on the cliff edge." He regretted saying this straight away. Simon and Sal would know where the path ran, and saying 'right on the cliff edge' made it sound like he was trying too hard, trying to impress. But they didn't say anything, no look passed between the two of them.
"You seen much of the village, then?" Simon asked.
"Got lost a couple of times in it yesterday, must have seen some bits of it half a dozen times over," John said, and they all laughed.
"Bit of a maze if you're not used to it," Simon said.
"Bit of a maze if you are," his sister added.
"Got rescued by a dog," John said. "Not a St Bernard, though. Big black dog, like a Labrador only bigger, something like that, don't really know dogs. Thought it was going to bite a chunk out of me, but it was kind enough to show me the way home. Should buy it some biscuits or something really."
"Black dog?" said Simon. "Big one?" He drew breath in through his teeth.
"What?" John said.
"Ghost dog of Saltcliff, that is. Bad omen."
John felt a hot twist in his stomach, but then he saw Simon laughing, felt Sal lean across behind him and take a swipe at her brother. "Si, stop it."
"Sorry mate," Simon said, still laughing, "couldn't resist. Probably Becky, from the sound of it, she's a big old mutt belongs to Alan who runs the Ship Inn, always wandering about. Daft as a brush, but harmless."
"Oh." John said. "Right. Does Becky have glowing red eyes then, like this one did?" and they all laughed and shoved at each other and started running down the street together, towards the harbour, alternating barks and ghostly whoops.
#
They scrambled down the slippery iron rungs of a rusting ladder that clung to the wet stone of the harbour wall, and onto something that was not quite beach, not quite mud, not quite sea.
"Walk along the big stones, out of the mud," Simon said, "or your trainers'll be wrecked."
They hopped from stone to stone through the slush of sand and water and mud, concentrating hard, trying not to slip. John could smell rotting seaweed and the old damp smell of the harbour wall. They reached the jutting cliff of the headland, and John wondered if they would be able to get round, as the waves raced in towards it, leaving only a few metres of visible sand. But the tide was on its way out, and the gap widened as they neared it, and as they made their way around the headland the coast seemed to drop away inland. There in front of them was the great arc of the bay, sand and pools and rocks shimmering in the morning sun as it kissed the wetness left behind by the receding tide. John squatted down low on his heels, and looked across the expanse of the beach. It seemed to go on for ever.
"Brilliant, eh," Simon said. "Best in the world."
Sal was already away, moving fast off across the beach. As she walked her footprints changed. At first they left holes, which sucked at her foot and then filled with water, and then they left just the outline of her trainers raised upon the sand, and then she hit the firmer sand and there was nothing there at all to mark her passing. They began to spread out as the going became better, running and jumping along the beach, each lost in their own private world of freedom, yet still together. Sal walked along the tide line out ahead of them, eyes fixed to the ground, Simon hopped from rock to rock over pools of water so clear that it was almost not there at all, John walked between the two of them, kicking at stones, happier than he had been for days.
Simon came leaping over towards him, arms outstretched for balance, hair whipped one way and then the other by the breeze that raced in from the sea and made everything clean, everything fresh. Above him, the curve of the sky went on forever.
"All right?" he said, breathless, when he reached John.
"Yeah. This is amazing. And there's no-one else here, it's like it's all for us."
"This early in the year you don’t get many," Simon said. "Even in season, they all stop down near where the path down from the cliff comes out, stop on the sandy bits. Keep walking down this way towards Hob's Hole and there's never more than one or two, they can't be bothered to walk this far."
"What's Hob's Hole?" John asked. Simon pointed down the beach to a shadow in the cliff, a darkness in the rock.
"See there? Opening in the cliff? There's a cave in there, not deep, but there's a hole in the floor goes down forever, supposedly. Where folk from the village used to bring their babies when they were ill, throw summat down, hope the Hob would take the whooping cough off of the little 'uns. Supposed to bring luck if you walk around the hole clockwise, too, Hob gives you his blessing."
"Who's the Hob? A giant biscuit that lives in a cave? I am the Hob Nob, and I will cure you." John boomed, making them both laugh.
"You know what a Hob is," Simon said, looking a little embarrassed and not explaining further.
"Er...something you cook on?"
Simon snorted. "Southerners."
"Well go on then, d
on't keep me in the dark." John knew that Simon was reluctant to tell, and was enjoying pushing him. He had a fair idea what a hob would be, but wanted to make Simon explain. Revenge for the tourist jokes.
"You mean you don't know?"
"Would I be asking if I did?"
"It's...you know. A hob. Like a goblin."
"A goblin."
"Yeah, stuff in legends, you know, like, like—"
"A fairy?"
"Nah, sort of more like, ah—"
"A pixie? A wee little pixie with bells on its boots?" John broke away laughing, as Simon kicked up a great cloud of wet sand, trying to hit him with it, and then they tore down the beach towards Sal, John shouting, "Help, help, there's a pixie after me". They reached her and collapsed in a giggling heap on the sand.
"You sod," Simon said. "You knew all along, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but it was fun making you try and explain it."
"Sal, you tell him. Tell him what a hob is."
"One of the old things," she said. "Part of the place. S'what folk really believe round here."
Had she said believe, John thought? Or believed?
"A spirit of the land, people thought it was. Back before science explained everything, back before there was a why and a how for everything, there was what people had believed in for centuries, longer, more than just what they talked about in church. Think about it, you've got a baby, dying, and there's no such thing as antibiotics and no such thing as the health service, you're going to take your chances with wise women and their herbs, or a hob in a never-ending hole that you know cured your neighbour's baby only two harvests before."
Simon stooped down and shifted some of the rounded pebbles to one side, making them clack together.
"Nah," he said.
"What?" John asked, but Simon did not answer, just moved around the pool, sifting through the stones, searching.
"Yeah!" Simon straightened up with a stone in his hand, held it out towards John. At first John didn't think much of it. It was a dull grey pebble. Some of the other stones had shone amber or blue, still varnished by the wetness of the retreating sea that would be back to claim them in just a few hours. Others had been interesting shapes, curved, like a pistol with a handle, flat, saucer-shaped, perfect for skipping out over the tops of the waves in a series of white splashes. But then Simon brought it closer still and John saw the delicate shadows, the curves that bent in on themselves like a maze, the fingerprints of time.
"Wow!" he said. "That's really cool. Lets have a look."
Simon dropped it into his hand. "Keep it. Millions of them on the beach, find 'em every time. Ammonite, that one is. Lived millions of years ago. Swam about, happy as anything, eating whatever they ate—"
"Kentucky Fried Chicken, I heard," John said.
"That or McDonalds—and then one day it snuffs it, drops to the bottom of the sea, gets covered in mud, and more mud and more mud, and millions of years pass and—"
"Some scruffy kid picks it up off the beach."
"And gives it to a thick tourist who wouldn't know a fossil from car park gravel. Keep it. Got millions."
"Ta," John said. "Let's see what else we can find."
The two boys spent the next twenty minutes shifting stones about, seizing on likely suspects, shouting when they found something good. Sal kept on walking the tide line, stooping every now and then to examine something more closely, once in a while picking something up and stowing it in a carrier bag she'd produced from her coat pocket.
Eventually John and Simon got bored. What had seemed at the start like something John could do all day, all week, lost its shine after finding the tenth fossil. They had stumbled into a few rock pools too, and their jeans clung dank and clammy around their calves. It was time to do something else.
"Let's go and hassle Sal," Simon said, so they raced off across the wet stones again, out onto the sand, following the stinking ribbon of seaweed that marked the tide line until they reached her. She stopped and turned to face them, laughing at their wet legs.
"You two been paddling, then?"
"Found all sorts, haven't we John?" Simon said. "Fossil hunting."
"Thousands," John said. "The bottom's falling out of all of my pockets." He could hear himself rattling when he walked, and it reminded him of a holiday a long time ago, endless golden Cornish beaches, green sea, a long walk and his dad carrying him on the way back, complaining that he was getting heavier as he got older, not realising that John's pockets were stuffed with 'treasure' which probably weighed about the same as he did. "What you found, Sal?" Her carrier bag looked full. She held it open for them to look in. Simon snorted and turned away.
"More crap! Boring."
John looked in, puzzled. The bag was full of rubbish. Not interesting rubbish, but just junk. A soft drink can, half polished to a metallic shine by the waves. A blue plastic container. A white polystyrene tray. An orange skein of plastic netting.
"Um, great." He didn't know what to say.
"Think it’s boring, John?"
"Uh, well, no, not boring, just—I think I'm missing something here."
Sal squatted down, emptied the bag out onto the sand. She motioned beside her and John crouched too. Simon yawned ostentatiously and walked away, throwing stones as high and as far out to sea as he could.
"Coke can," Sal said.
"Um, yeah." John said.
"See where the writing's left on it, here?" She held it out to him, and he bent close. He could smell the shampoo on her hair, and it was fresh, like the wind off the sea.
"Yeah, I can see. French."
"French," she said, as if it meant something. Next she held up the plastic netting. "Probably from round here. Might not be though. No way of telling. Look at this though." She held out the blue plastic container, which looked as if it had once held oil, or bleach, or something like that. The label had been long washed away, but there was writing stencilled on to the plastic in raised and flowing letters that John could not read.
"Chinese? Dunno. Not Chinese," he said.
"Arabic," Sal said, with the same degree of meaning.
"Stuff from all over."
She nodded, looking at him as if he had said something important. He felt as if he ought to go on, say something clever. He couldn't think of anything. "Yes, all over. Different countries and um, different languages." She still stared. He obviously hadn't got it yet.
"The sea," she said. "It moves in patterns, all over the world. Touching every shore, every ship. And because of us it's full, as Simon so beautifully puts it, of crap. Some of this stuff is just off ships—this Arabic stuff, I reckon off a freighter or something, but this—" she picked up the coke can again—"this was probably dropped in some river in France, the Loire or the Seine, by some litterbug kid, and it's floated down river, out to sea, through storms and all sorts, and been washed up here. The whole world, connected. Stuff like this, it affects the animals that live there, the fish and the whales—" now she held up the plastic netting—"strangled by what we leave. We're fighting a battle, to keep the seas alive. And knowledge is a weapon, just like any gun. More powerful. So I walk the beach and I learn about the sea, and how stupid we are."
"Stupid?"
"As a species," she smiled. "Not us in particular. Well, maybe Simon. Definitely Simon."
"Hey, I heard that." Simon wandered past, made a face at Sal, and walked off again, scanning the rocks.
"I never thought about it much," John said. "Not like you have. You know, to me it's just always been the sea. Wherever you go. Always the same."
"But it isn't the same," Sal said. "It touches everywhere, but it changes all the time too. And it won't be the same ever again, because of what we do to it."
"Stuff like this, you mean." John gestured towards a tangle of blue plastic.
"That and more. Pollution. Global warming and changes to sea levels. Salinity." She grinned. "See, I'm born to it."
John looked at her, blank.
&n
bsp; "Salinity? Hello? What's my name?"
John blushed. "Sorry. Not with it, today."
"Tell me if I'm boring you."
"No, you're not," John said, and he really meant it, because he'd have been quite happy to stand there on the beach with her all day, listening to her talk, watching her hair blowing around her face.
She stared out at the sea, watching it slide in, out, as if she could read something in the slow procession of the waves.
"It's like our life," she said.
"What?" John said, and then desperately cast around for something more intelligent to say, something to show that he was on the same wavelength. "The sea?"
"Yeah. It always feels the same, like it's always going to be the same day after day. But then a sea change comes, and nothing is ever the same again. Not ever."
"And when it comes, there's nothing you can do to stop it."
Sal turned and looked at John for a moment. Then she nodded, as if she approved of what she had seen. "You know," she said, and then she looked back out at the sea.
"Yeah," John said. "I know."
"She finished the lecture yet?' Simon had got bored of looking for fossils he hadn't found, and had walked back along the beach to join them.
"Was interesting, actually."
"S'all right, you can tell her what you really thought. I do."
"You're really into this," John said to Sal, not wanting to lose the conversation with her.
"What I'm going to do. Get my A Levels year after next, go on and do oceanography at uni. All I've ever wanted to do, ever since I was little."
Sea Change Page 4