Storm Surge

by David Rees

  The cottage was a world quite different from The King’s Head. It had a musty smell which he associated with churches, with very old people. It was full of ancient family relics, old china and old glass neatly stacked on open shelves; an old table he hardly ever saw properly as it was always covered with a thick red velvet cloth; armchairs, from which the springs had long since gone; a dim sixty-watt light with no shade, flypaper dangling from it; pots of home-made jam and home-preserved fruit; souvenirs everywhere, inscribed jugs ‘Time and tide wait for no man’, ‘A present from Aldeburgh’, in a row on the harmonium. The most ancient relics he often thought were his grandparents themselves, Fred and Bessy Brown, both in their mid-eighties, slow and creaking with arthritis.

  Grandpa was asleep in his armchair, but Peter’s hand lifting the latch woke him. ‘Bess! Come and see who’s here!’ he shouted, as if he had not set eyes on Peter for months. He saw him every evening in The King’s Head.

  ‘I can’t come in,’ came a thin, querulous voice from the kitchen. ‘I’m baking. You see to it, Fred. Get rid of him, whoever it is.'

  ‘She’s going to Tilbury next week, boy,’ Grandpa explained. To your great-aunt Sal. She always takes her own food with her. In case Sal tries to poison her off, I reckon. Daft, isn’t it?’

  ‘So you’ll be on your own? Does Mum know?’

  ‘I shall be right as rain. Always enjoy myself when the old girl goes off for a day or two. I’ll be down in that there pub every night till closing time.’ He laughed, which turned into a prolonged fit of coughing and wheezing; his face went purple, and he spat into the fire. ‘Too much smoking when I were young as you are,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Don’t you ever start that nonsense, boy.’

  ‘Grandpa, there’s something wrong with the tide. The creek's half full though it’s low water.’

  ‘Was it now? Hasn’t done that for years. Means a very high tide tonight, top of the walls. Might even come over a bit. Nothing to worry about, with them walls. They’ll keep her out. ’Twas different in ’97, but you’ve heard me tell you about that time of day many a time. Now, talk about what's important. How’s my first great-grandson?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him yet. He was only born yesterday,Grandpa.’

  ‘They say he looks like Charley. Glad of that. Didn’t want him looking like David’s wife, Colchester girl. They don’t make good-lookers in Colchester. Glad he’s a boy, too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Always make boys in the Brown family. Hasn’t been a girl for a hundred and two years, Aunt Honor that was, and no good came of her.’

  ‘Why, what did she do? ’

  Went bad in London. Wicked place, London.’

  Grandma came in. She was wearing an old hat, as she invariably did indoors. It was fastened to her hair with a huge hat-pin. Peter couldn’t remember when he had seen her bare-headed. He wondered if she wore it in bed.

  ‘Well, Fred! Why didn’t you tell me who it was?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me, that’s for why.’

  ‘You old fool! Are you hungry, Peter?’ She went into the kitchen, and returned with a plate of apple turnovers. ‘My old aunt Alice’s recipe. Going to take them up Sal’s, show her what cooking is. She eats nothing but things out of tins.’ Peter tried one. It was delicious.

  ‘You can take some home with you. Charley looks as if he could do with a feed-up. You going to church tonight?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Youth Club tonight.’

  ‘You should go. Not often we have a service on the island. Only once a month. Not like the old days.’

  ‘That Susan Allgood, she go to your club? ’ Grandpa asked. ‘Seen you walk her home a time or two.’

  Peter blushed. ‘Nothing in that,’ he muttered.

  ‘My grand-dad married an Allgood. Elizabeth Allgood she was. Your Susan would be her great-great-great-niece. She would be that, yes. Nice old girl she was.’

  ‘Fred, do leave off. You’re making the lad embarrassed. What an old gossip you are! Always on about that time of day you are. By the by, you are taking me to church, aren’t you?’

  ‘Me? I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Fred!’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ He eased himself onto his feet and moved slowly to the door. ‘Just going to make sure them chickens are shut up proper, Bessy. It’s going to be a rough night, and we don’t want them flying out to sea.’

  ‘I’d best be on my way too,’ said Peter.

  ‘Take them turnovers. Wait a minute and I’ll find you a bag. And that reminds me, I’ve got something for your ma.’ She went upstairs, unsteady as Grandpa, pausing for breath. Peter pulled a book from the shelf. It was a cookery book, published in 1820. He was just reading a recipe for fruit cake which began Take twenty eggs’ when Grandma returned, holding a patchwork quilt.

  ‘I’ve just finished this,’ she said, smoothing it out flat with long strokes of her hands. ‘It’s a cold winter, and it’ll be colder yet. Someone down at home might be in need of it.’

  ‘It’s beautiful! A lovely thing! Can I have it? For my own?’

  ‘Of course you can, boy.’ Grandma looked foolishly pleased. ‘But it’s nothing special. I’ve made dozens of them in my time.’

  ‘It is special!’

  ‘Tell your ma not to wash it, never. It’ll spoil.’

  Peter struggled home. The wind was rumbling under corrugated iron roofs, tearing at the ash tree, throwing cold sleet in his face. He clutched the quilt tightly to himself. It was not often that any of the grandsons returned home from Grandma’s empty-handed.

  ‘Can I get up now?’

  ‘Yes, it’s finished.’ Martin threw down the paper on which he had been sketching. She came over to look.

  ‘Not bad. I think that’s the fifty-third drawing you’ve done of me.’

  ‘You should be flattered.’

  ‘I’ll go and make tea.’ Ann went into the kitchen. Martin picked up the Sunday Times, glanced at it and put it down.

  ‘Listen to that wind!’ The windows jumped in their frames and the door was impatient of its catch; even the flames of the paraffin heater flickered. The lampshade swung gently, casting shadows over the posters on the walls. Martin loved this room. Their books, his pictures stacked against the wall, their surfboards, the furniture, his paints, nothing else; nothing more needed. He looked out into the street. It was a road occupied mostly by immigrant families from the West Indies who worked in the port. Two dingy Victorian terraces, two floors each and an attic; Ann’s flat was an attic, with a view of grey slate roofs, television aerials, other windows, the level horizon beyond. Down below was his car, an old banger twelve years old that sometimes worked.

  ‘Martin! Come in here and look at the sea.’

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’ He joined her in the kitchen. At the back they looked out onto a tattered, overgrown garden, at the end of which was the railway embankment. Beyond that was flat ground, mostly allotments, with several sheds, chicken coops, even a few-pigsties. They had once been woken up in the night by a pig squealing, and until they realized what it was they clung to each other in terror, thinking that one of their neighbours was being murdered in cold blood. On the far side of the allotments was the inevitable sea wall.

  ‘Can’t see anything wrong with it.’

  'Don’t you think there’s too much sea? It’s just about low water now.’

  : ‘Can’t see much at all; it will soon be dark. It looks rough, certainly. Lots of white.’

  Martin returned to the newspaper, not very interested in the state of the tide. Ann brought in the tea.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘An article on marriage.’

  ‘Ah.’ She sat on the arm of Martin’s chair. ‘Does the author approve?’

  ‘Yes. Why, don’t you?’

  ‘Not again, Martin, please. Yes, but not yet, Aren’t you cold?’

  ‘No.’ He wore old jeans and old T-shirts in all weathers, never a vest or a sw
eater, unless it was really Arctic. He put the paper down, yawned and stretched. ‘I suppose we’d better get ready to go over to the pub soon.’

  ‘I wish it was summer. Are we going to Newquay again?’

  ‘Barman and waitress. I enjoyed it.’

  ‘You enjoyed the surfing you mean. Prancing about in that wet suit. Do you know that cost us about half what you earned?’

  ‘You were nicer than the surf. What did you mean, yes, but not yet?’ He pulled her down from the arm of the chair onto his lap, and kissed her. ‘I love you, Miss Betts. I want to marry you. I want you for ever.’

  ‘There’s no such thing. Don’t pretend.’

  There is.’

  ‘I love you, Mr Brown, ever or not.’

  ‘We’re good lovers. That’s not pretence.’

  Aaron was lying in the great square bath after the game, splashing about happily with the rest of the team. This was the best time, the hot water thawing the cold out of stiff muscles, inches of mud dissolving or peeling back from the skin. He could lie back and float in a sensuous trance, all thought evaporating out of his mind. It was bliss. Or mess about, ducking people, smacking their bottoms, singing lewd songs; or discuss the game with other men who like him were no longer the important different cogs of a team or pattern, but ghosts shrouded in steam. It amused him to think how his sensitive brother Martin cringed every time he described it. They had won, against a team who should have beaten them, Aaron, on the left wing, had not scored, but he was not displeased with his performance.

  John Hewitt, hobbling on crutches, his right leg in plaster from groin to ankle, was waiting for him. He had broken two bones in a nasty fall a fortnight ago; it had been a rough game and John swore that the opposing centre half had deliberately kicked him.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come in this weather,’ Aaron said. ‘And standing on that leg all the time.’

  ‘Only two stations from home,’ John puffed and panted. ‘I wanted to see you, Ron.’

  ‘Strange without you this afternoon.’

  ‘I need a break. It’s a drag sitting indoors doing nothing all day.’

  Aaron helped him. They caught a bus into town.

  ‘We’ll eat at Mount’s Café, then the flicks, then a quick drink before the pubs shut. Don’t let me leave this sports bag in the cinema.’

  ‘Sounds fine,’ John grunted.

  ‘And perhaps we can find a couple of girls.’

  ‘With my leg in this state? Not a chance.’

  ‘Put you out of action?’ Aaron laughed. ‘Good thing too.’

  The King’s Head was an old pub. Peter’s bedroom was called King Charles’s room, and though the present house was not more than a hundred years old this did not stop him as a child from having nightmares about the king on stormy nights. When the wind sobbed and the sea thundered and the curtains fluttered it was all too easy to imagine Charles’s headless ghost standing at the foot of his bed.

  There was only one bar, and on a night such as this with the sound of waves almost on the doorstep and the wind in the chimney it was a cheerful sight; there was only a handful of customers, but they would probably stay till closing time. The light gleamed on the bottles and glasses behind the bar, and the flames of the fire danced in the glass on the pictures on the walls ― copies of ancient maps of Flatsea and Oozedam ― on Charley’s precious collection of horse-brasses, and on the king’s grave face framed above the mantelpiece.

  Martin climbed on a chair and took this picture down. He looked unusually smart in flared blue trousers, a new flowered shirt, and instead of beads, an iron cross dangling from a chain round his neck. He replaced King Charles with a painting of his own, a landscape of Flatsea in summer: soft white clouds, a gentle sea, flowers in the marshes.

  ‘Is it straight, Ann?’

  ‘A bit to your left.’

  Peter came into the bar. ‘That’s better,’ he said, admiring the picture. ‘Much more suitable. It’s good, Martin.’

  ‘It’s a present for Mum.’

  ‘She’ll like that.’ He looked at it for a moment. ‘I must be off.’

  ‘Don’t be late back.’

  ‘I won’t. We’ll give you a hand with the washing-up.’

  As he opened the door, a tremendous gust of wind blew Grandpa into the pub. The old man leaned against the door to shut it.

  ‘What a night! Gale’s worse than ever. You’re not going into town, lad, surely? You’ll never get back.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. Aren’t you supposed to be in church?’

  ‘I said I’d take her. Didn’t say I’d go in. Gave her the slip at the church door, had a natter with Alf Brookfield, then came down here. Pint of bitter, Ann.’

  ‘You’re an old rogue, Grandpa. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, boy. And make sure you’re back well before high water or you and that Allgood girl will be spending a breezy night on Flatsea Station. ’Tain’t a night for that sort of caper.’

  Peter went.

  ‘Think he’s all right, Martin?’

  'Why not?’

  ‘Tide didn’t flow properly on the ebb. It might come over the walls about half ten.’ He noticed Martin’s alarmed face, and added, ‘Not to worry. It won’t come in here. Only do that if them walls crumble, and that won’t happen.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course I’m sure. Haven’t lived all my life here without learning something about wind and water. ’Tis nothing to worry about. What you do on a night like this is make sure the animals are locked up last, case the wind blows a door in, bring the boats this side of the wall, and people already done that. Talking about it outside the church. Mum and Dad get off all right?’

  ‘Yes. Mum didn’t want to go this morning, Peter said, and nagged about it all afternoon, but the old man wasn’t going to miss the first sight of his grandson. Then when Peter told him that the tide was still several feet higher than it should be at low water he thought he should stay. So Mum changed her mind and said she wanted to go!’

  ‘Rum, people are, when they fall out.’

  ‘You can say that again. Particularly those two. I’m glad I wasn’t here.'

  The door opened. Bill Allgood and two other men came in. The curious state of the ebb tide was the main topic of conversation. Nobody was quite sure what it signified, and they were afraid of the conclusions their thoughts led to, conclusions that seemed so unlikely that they dismissed them. No one wanted to be the first to be accused of panic.

  ‘Think I was doing the right thing, Fred, letting young Susan out?’

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said Grandpa. ‘She’s with our Peter. Suppose the worst did happen, just suppose there was a breach in that wall, they might be better off staying out the night in Oozedam. Your sister-in-law would put them up wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Maybe you’re right. Joan would, certainly.’

  But they all remained uneasy. Although the talk turned to other things, they did not listen to each other as much as they normally did. When the wind struck the windows with a gust that really shook them, or swept the smoke down the chimney into the room, they stopped and listened in silence, then rose half-heartedly, wondering if they ought to leave, but knowing there was nothing they could do if they did. More islanders came in and reported that the sea was already coming over the wall at Dangie Point, the far end of the island, more than two hours before high water. But it was expected there. It was the most exposed part of the island, open to the full force of sea and gale. Nobody lived there. In any case the wall was firm, and it was only the wind blowing the sea over the tops; nothing serious. Then a large party of people came in from Oozedam, town people in three cars out for a night’s entertainment. They had noticed nothing unusual on their drive over, apart from tree branches on the road. They brought in a different atmosphere, suits and smart dresses, different accents; Martin and Ann were kept busy serving vodka and lime, gin and tonic. No, they had heard no flood warnings in Oozedam; nor was there any
thing on the radio. They found the locals’ concern rather amusing. Grandpa and his friends ordered more pints and crowded round the fire, sucking on their pipes. At half past nine Grandpa stood up to go.

  ‘What time will Charley and Doris be back, Martin?’

  ‘About half ten, I think they said. Though I should think it might be earlier, as Dad was worried.’

  ‘Good. That’s before high tide. Well, I’d better go and face the music, I suppose.’ He reached for his walking-stick.

  Martin laughed. ‘Music is right. Grandma will be playing hymns on the harmonium as it’s Sunday night. Look after yourself.’

  ‘I will, don’t you worry. ’Night, Martin, ’Night, Ann. Bill, are you coming? You can see me back. My legs aren’t as good as they were for a storm like this.’

  'He just wants safety in numbers,’ Martin said, ‘for when he sees old Bessy. She’ll throw the saucepans at him.’

  Bill grinned. ‘Come on then, you old boozer, let’s be having you. ’Night, all.’

  All the locals left before closing time. ‘Unheard of,’ Martin said, but they obviously wanted to make sure their houses were secure, and reassure their wives. The Oozedam crowd drifted away soon after ten; the last to go were two young men who had been trying all evening to chat up Ann.

  ‘I hope your parents won’t be long,’ she said, as Martin collected up the ash-trays and dirty glasses. ‘I don’t want to be marooned here for the night.’

  ‘They’ll be here soon. They’d phone if anything was wrong.’

  He went to the window. The wind was blowing sleet against the glass; it melted in long streaks.

  ‘I hate the roar of that sea,’ said Ann. ‘I can hear it above the wind. It sounds as if it’s longing to drown us.’

  ‘Here they are,’ he said with a sigh of relief. The door opened. It was Peter and Susan.

  Peter went to a Youth Club in Oozedam every Sunday night. He enjoyed playing table-tennis or snooker with his mates, or sitting in a group absorbing the talk, though he contributed little himself to the conversation. Sometimes there were dances, and he liked these too, more for the music than the dancing. He stood at the back, tapping his feet and listening, hardly ever asking a girl to dance. Susan was the only complication. Because they were the only two islanders who attended, and therefore came in on the same train, and left together, people assumed that Susan was his girl. He didn’t mind their thinking this, for it gave him a kind of status in the group, but it was not true. Susan didn’t seem interested in him in that way at all, and he could not decide whether or not he thought anything more of her than someone who just happened to be with him often. He always walked her home, sometimes holding hands, but that was all. ‘How do you know when to kiss a girl for the first time?’ he had once asked Aaron, who was changing into his trendiest clothes, obviously getting ready for a date. His brother had looked at him rather witheringly, and replied ‘You play that by ear,’ as if it was a new number for his guitar. It was not an answer that helped much.