by Chris Ward
Joan grinned. ‘Weren’t those the days?’
‘We had some good times.’
‘We had a lot of good times. But, since you were asking, I’m not sure about awkward, but I wouldn’t go expecting locals’ rates. It’s been a while, but he might be a bit salty about everything.’ Joan leaned across and nudged Grace’s arm, making the car swerve dangerously close to a thorny hedge. ‘After all, you went off to the big city to go to university and make something of yourself, leaving him behind in a nowhere seaside village.’
‘And look how that worked out. It turns out a degree in history is only good enough to wait tables, and meanwhile, my uneducated, country bumpkin ex becomes the owner of the most popular pub in the area.’
‘Don’t worry, there are a few nerds from school still around. I’m sure we can find someone who’ll let you play the sympathy card.’
‘Shut up!’
As she hacked into another blind corner, Joan had tears in her eyes and a wide grin on her face.
‘It’s so good to have you back, Graceful. Here we are. Just as you remember.’
7
Return
Blue Sands was split into two parts. Upper Blue Sands was a little village a mile from the beach, set back from the hill’s crest in a flat hollow surrounding a church, apparently because a long, long time ago that would have made it hidden from Vikings cruising up and down the coast. Blue Sands Cove, on the other hand, was the name given to the cluster of houses and businesses catering to tourists which surrounded the beach itself, a flat stretch of golden sand with a paved promenade a quarter of a mile long. Back in the valley and along the hills that rose to either side, where the beach was cut off by a pair of jutting headlands, a number of expensive holiday homes poked up out of the scattering of woodland, ensuring that all the best views of the cove, besides the one from the road, were exclusive to toffs from up country.
‘We’ll do a quick swing through the cove just so you can remember what it looks like,’ Joan said, as they came around a corner to face the upper stretch of the Hill of Suffering. It looked steeper than Grace remembered, dropping seemingly sheer towards the beach before hitting the annoying cutback a third of the way up which was famous for derailing cycling attempts. In fact, seeing it with her teenage years far behind her, she could understand why it was common to see taxis ferrying people up and down in midsummer, even though no local would be seen dead in one. The thought of trying to walk it made the back of her neck tickle.
Locals joked that the cutback was to slow drivers coming down, and that the gate directly opposite the road had the outlines of dozens who had failed, but the geological truth was that just through the gate was a lump of jutting granite ten feet high that the road builders had not bothered to move, perhaps out of laziness or lack of leadership. And now, like one of those annoying bumps in a straight line caused by a nock in a ruler, the road wound out around the corner of the field in which the rock stood, before cutting back around, dropping again towards the beach in the steepest section, and then swinging around a corner to bring the promenade and the shoreline into view.
‘You remember the Singing Rock?’ Joan said, slowing the car as they reached the bottom of the upper section of hill, so that they could see through the overgrown gateway. ‘Every night, wasn’t it? On the lash, we’d be in there, climbing up that thing, singing like muppets until the dawn.’
‘Or the cops came out.’
‘That was once. Only once. And it was Julia’s dad, so he just told us to shut up and go home.’
‘He actually joined us for a song.’
Joan laughed. ‘Couldn’t do that now, with people filming everything on smartphones. Can’t have any fun anymore, can you?’
‘Do the kids still climb it?’
Joan shook her head. ‘The farmer, Bill Clifford, he put a padlock on the gate and some barbed wire over the top. Kids were going in there, getting hammered, and leaving all their crap behind.’
‘We used to stuff ours in the beach bins.’
‘The council took them away. Fascists.’
Grace shook her head. ‘Not like it used to be, is it?’
Joan sighed and moved the car on, cutting around the jutting field hedge of the Singing Rock, past the turning that led to the coast road heading south, down the steepest section of the hill and around the corner at the bottom.
‘Some things change,’ Joan said, grinning, ‘but some things never change.’
Grace smiled at the promenade stretching away in front of them. ‘Just how I remember.’
The tide was high, gentle breakers lapping at a pristine stretch of sand below a jumble of rocks. Along the promenade that followed the line of the road and on the beach, people strolled, walked their dogs, stood talking in groups as the sun hung low in the sky. Just behind the promenade, halfway along a line of small shops, lights shone from the windows of the Low Anchor, the cove’s most popular pub and site of much teenage mischief.
‘Do you want to stop for a pint?’ Joan said. ‘Mum’s cooking dinner, but we can squeeze in half an hour. I did say you’re staying at mine tonight? I’m not having you alone in that chalet on your first night back.’
Grace laughed. ‘Just let me get a little sleep, though. I couldn’t sleep on the train. I was too excited. I think I’ll pass on the pub, though. I’m not ready to see Daniel right now. I’d rather build up to it.’
‘Gotcha. We’ll do a quick turn of the beachfront then head up. Don’t worry, Dad’s got plenty of beers in.’
As they drove past the pub, weaving around several cars which had disobeyed traffic rules to park along the promenade—another thing that hadn’t changed—Grace glanced up at the windows, wondering if she’d catch a glimpse of Daniel. She saw an elderly couple sat at one window table, but of her ex-boyfriend there was no sign. Probably just as well. While ten years had eased the pain of it, Grace had glossed over their breakup for Joan’s benefit. She wasn’t sure she’d ever got over the handsome surfer who had been the first person to capture her heart. She still thought of him often, even though they’d had no contact since her first departure from Blue Sands. She was glad he had done well for himself. She only wished she could say the same.
‘Seen enough for one day? I reckon it’s dinner time. Mum and Dad can’t wait to see you again.’
‘Sounds good.’
As they reached the end of the promenade, where Joan did a U-turn in the gravel track where locals took boats down on to the beach, Grace tried again to get a glimpse of Daniel through the pub windows.
I’m sorry I broke your heart, she thought, as the car sped past, Joan accelerating far harder than necessary into the Hill of Suffering’s bottom corner. But if it makes you feel better, I broke my own at the same time.
8
Old things and memories
Home.
It felt crazy to be back, but in a way it felt right. Blue Sands was where Grace had grown up, and for all its faults, nothing made her feel alive more than the sight of the sun peeking above the hills in the early morning, the crash of the sea on the shore, the call of the herring gulls as they terrorised some poor unsuspecting tourist.
All these years away, trying to dig herself some kind of life in Bristol, yet it took barely a few hours back in the old village before she felt layers of stress lifting off her shoulders like departing birds.
Dinner with Joan’s parents, Ron and Belinda Turner, was a quirky affair. Known for their summer parties back in the day, the Turners had settled down, and by the end of a hearty roast dinner only three bottles of wine had been drunk between them. Grace and Joan sat up talking long after Joan’s parents had gone to bed, but while ten years ago they might have pulled an all-nighter, now Grace was done by midnight, and let Joan show her down the hall to a guest bedroom. They hugged each other good night, then with a smile, Joan asked Grace to wheel her down to her own bedroom and help her get into bed, even though Joan grumpily insisted she had a method of rolling sideways
out of the chair which really didn’t require any assistance. It was a sobering moment, and it was a long time before she could sleep, as she stared at the ceiling, thinking about how much had changed.
Nursing less of a hangover than she might have expected, Grace was up before everyone else the next morning, and after leaving a short note on the kitchen counter, headed out for a walk around the village.
On the surface, it looked much the same. There was scaffolding up the church tower, and two new houses on a corner where an old farm shed had once stood, rotting away in a field, but most of the buildings remained unchanged. A few new cars stood in the driveways of houses that had once belonged to friends, while the grass was long and unkempt in a few others. The Whelans, whose twin boys Grace had gone to playschool with, had gone, their big house on the corner next to the newsagent with a FOR SALE sign poking out of the lawn at an angle. And the old Spar where Grace and Joan had once been caught trying to shoplift Mars Bars—a literal slap on the wrist by the local copper might not have derailed their teenage years of mayhem but had certainly turned them away from a life of crime—was now a sparkling boutique café, with signboards outside offering soy lattes, as well as one nostalgic throwback called The Old Heart Attack, a full fat, full sugar monstrosity topped with handmade marshmallows, local cream and chocolate from trees grown in the Eden Project. Grace made a note to check it out; if Joan was a frequent customer it would explain why she had filled out a little.
Otherwise, the village looked much as it always had. Grace walked the length of the small high street, then looped back through the interlinking residential streets that made up a de facto estate, to where the old combined village library and museum stood, a small two-storey building perched on the edge of a hill. It had been owned by the Davis family back in the day, Frank being the drama teacher at Grace and Joan’s school, and his wife, Tina, a school counsellor. Their son, Paul, had been in Grace’s form, a quiet boy always with his head in a book, too boring for any of the local bullies to take notice.
As Grace paused to look at the view of the valley beyond the car park to the library’s rear, through the windows she noticed someone inside, already stacking books onto shelves. In case the person wondered what she was doing, she quickly made herself scarce, heading back up the street, cutting through a series of alleys between the cluster of houses, and then walking up to the top of Melrose Hill, where a small picnic area stood on a flattened area at the top of a field, with a panoramic view of Blue Sands Cove below.
To the north, the jutting headland rose to a small peak then flattened out, dipping back towards the sea, where a small, automatic lighthouse was built on the last buttress above the water, a rock known as Blue Point. To the south, the cliffs stretched further out into the bay, ending in an inaccessible lump known as Sharker’s Rock. It was where older men went to fish, or brave local kids to jump off the rocks into the rising swell of the Atlantic. From her vantage point, Grace could see the grey rolls of swell breaking over the rocks, sending up showers of spray.
Closer, the gentle curve of sand and the promenade at the back of the foreshore were just visible above the slope of the field. The sea was at low tide, revealing a stretch of dark orange sand scattered with patches of seaweed-covered rocks. A couple of people walked among them, occasionally bending to peer into rock pools, while a pair of dogs raced each other along the glistening sand nearby.
From here, most of the houses and shops back from the shore were hidden out of view, but the roof of the Low Anchor was just visible. Grace gave a little shake of her head. She hadn’t given it a thought that she might bump into Daniel Woakes again. He had always loved Blue Sands in a way that had almost made Grace jealous, but surely by now he would have been off in the world, making something of himself?
She walked back out of the picnic area to the road. Peering down the steep slope of Melrose Hill, Grace grimaced. While she could handle the down, she didn’t fancy the walk back up to Joan’s place so early in the morning. She needed a few days to adjust. Bristol, while hilly in places, had nothing on this monster.
When she returned to Joan’s parents’ place, she found the family up and about. Ron was sitting in the car, just about to leave for work, and he wound down the window to wish her good morning, before heading off to Penzance and the office job he had been doing for as long as Grace could remember. In the kitchen, Grace and her mother were arguing flippantly over politics and newspapers, with Joan’s mother suggesting that they ban a certain tabloid from the shop because of its treatment of the Royal Family.
‘But all the builders buy that one,’ Joan said. ‘And the builders buy most of the pasties. We’d cut our morning income by half.’
‘Well, I want it put at the back,’ Belinda said, putting the coffee cup on on its saucer with a soft clink.
‘Morning, Grace,’ Joan said, looking up with a grin. ‘Are you ready for your first day? We’ll ease you back in with washing the salt crust off the windows, then we need you to unblock the toilet. We leave in fifteen minutes. Okay?’ As Grace stared, openmouthed, Joan cackled with laughter. ‘Only having a laugh. We’ll give you a few days to get settled. Saturday okay? You can help with the early season rush. It’s supposed to be sunny this weekend. Fancy that?’
Grace smiled. ‘Sounds good.’
‘But the toilet is blocked. Some kid stuffed an entire bog roll down it. We’re going to draw straws on who has to do the plunging.’
‘I’ve done worse,’ Grace said. ‘You should have seen the toilets at Jones’s on a Sunday morning. Someone stuffed an umbrella down one once. Bent it right around the U-Bend. Had to call out a specialist plumber because the building is listed and you have to be really careful about not damaging anything. We had to call out this girl who’d been on the TV. My manager was moaning about the cost for days.’
Joan shook her head. ‘Mental. Those bankers let their hair down on a weekend, I take it?’
‘Oh, yeah.’
Belinda offered Grace a seat and she got stuck into some breakfast. Losing her mobility hadn’t affected Joan’s appetite, and Grace realised she was starving too. Belinda had made American-style pancakes just for the occasion, and Grace found herself three-deep before she realised. She turned down the offer of a fourth, but Joan suddenly lifted a hand, waving it about as though to attract attention.
‘God, I almost forgot. Seeing you stuffing your face reminded me. I have something for you out in the shed.’
‘Really? What?’
‘Your bike.’
‘My … bike?’
‘Yeah. When your parents sold up, your dad did a garage sale. Mum and me went over to pick through your old stuff.’
Grace nodded. ‘I remember you telling me. You said you bought my old Take That CDs and threw them in the trash.’
‘I lied. I gave them to the Oxfam shop in Truro. Last time I looked they were still there.’
Grace sighed. ‘Dad was so gutted about flogging off my stuff. I told him it was fine, but he felt so guilty about it. Not like I had anywhere to put it, and I was never one to look back. I’d already taken everything I needed.’
‘Well, I got your bike.’
‘My old racer.’ Grace could barely bring herself to believe it. She had a newer one in Bristol, but the racing bike her parents had bought her for her fourteenth birthday had been the reason she had got into road biking. She had once cycled all the way to Plymouth during the summer holiday, the bike gliding easily along the open roads, as fast as some of the cars.
Joan lifted an eyebrow. ‘No, not that one. Johnny Bellow’s son Sam got that one, then promptly crashed it halfway down Melrose Hill the following week.’
‘So … you don’t mean—’
Joan gave a slow nod. ‘Yeah, I do. The bike you’re going to climb the Hill of Suffering on, and which you have to do because I’m in a wheelchair and I’ve requested it. The challenge is laid down, Graceful. Do you accept?’
Grace stared at the fork in her han
d, a lump of pancake hanging off the end. With a soft plop, it fell off and landed in a puddle of honey.
‘My pink BMX,’ she said.
9
J’s Surf Shack
Joan and Belinda dropped Grace and her old bike off at her chalet on their way to the café. With a warm morning sun just beating off the chill from a breeze coming in off the sea, she left her suitcase out of sight behind a large flower pot beside the door, then rode up the street to the local letting agency office and collected the keys.
The chalet was part of a terrace of five properties set into the hill on the southern edge of the cove, and from the window of the little kitchen there was a narrow view of the beach between the houses lining the seafront. On a budget, Grace had got the best she could afford, but the little square of garden at the back was so close to the hill as to be almost permanently in shadow. However, with a small living room and kitchen downstairs and a bedroom and bathroom upstairs, it was perfectly adequate for her needs.
Wanting as clean a slate as she could get, she had packed only the one suitcase, stuffing it full of summer clothes and what remained of her beachwear. Otherwise she had some makeup and toiletries, her phone (no reception), her little laptop (no internet), and a handful of books she had bought in the shop at Temple Meads. The Blue Sands Café, owned by Belinda and mostly run by Joan, could only give her a few hours of work five days a week, but it gave Grace just enough to get by while leaving her time to relax and maybe think about the direction of her life. Hell, after years of treading water in Bristol, she owed herself a break.
She leaned the pink BMX against the chalet’s white-washed outer wall, smiling at the memories it brought back. Then, thinking better of it, she used a padlock Joan had given her to lock it to the front gate, in case some opportunistic twelve-year-old came past and fancied a freebie. Clean and in good condition, it might still appeal to a certain demographic, even if the half-removed BMX label that Grace had never been able to fully get rid of made it a throwback to a past age.