Beachcombing: Part Two

The following is the second installment of Lucy Wood’s story ‘Beachcombing’, the first part of which is available here.

Photo by Isaac Bowen.

A Door

The important thing to remember when Mr. Rogers came over to argue with Grandma was to stay out the way of his stick because he whirled it around a lot when he thought the conversation was flagging. Grandma said that when he tapped Oscar with it, it was out of respect but Oscar knew better. He and Mr. Rogers had a silent, secret battle going on. Neither of them knew why it had started, but they knew it wasn’t going to end.

This was what happened whenever he came to see Grandma: the first anyone knew of it was when he limped up the beach like a bedraggled seagull, wheezing loudly and thumping hard on his chest. As soon as that happened, Grandma hurried to fold out the extra chair and get out the box of marshmallows to put on the table. Mr. Rogers ate a lot of marshmallows because he said they kept him glued together on the inside. Oscar told Grandma that it was stupid of Mr. Rogers to think that and Grandma said, ‘Everyone has their excuses.’

It was vital to have everything out and ready and then to sit around and pretend that you always knew Mr. Rogers was coming and were waiting for him to arrive all this time. If things were brought out especially for him while he was there he got nervous and thumped his chest and didn’t talk much, and if you hadn’t prepared anything at all he might just carry on straight past and not talk to you for a long time after. Then, while he sat down, you had to carry on talking and not really notice him until he was comfortable and ready to start talking himself. It all had to be done exactly right, which is just what you have to do with some people.

It was the worst of all possible times for him to have come. Oscar had found an entire door on the other side of the beach and was going to surprise Grandma with it after lunch. It was He and Mr. Rogers had a silent, secret battle going on. Neither of them knew why it had started, but they knew it wasn’t going to end. probably the best thing he’d ever found. It was a whole door just lying there on a carpet of grey stones. It was painted white and there was a letterbox and it hardly had any dents or chips in it. He hadn’t even opened the door because he thought Grandma might want to do it, and also because of the angle he probably wouldn’t be able to on his own anyway. But now Mr. Rogers had come and he didn’t deserve to see the door – it was too good a thing. So the tide would take it and they wouldn’t get to see it again.

Mr. Rogers dragged himself up the beach towards them. Apparently he might have seen the cow fall onto the beach but Oscar had never asked him about it. Oscar bent down, picked up handfuls of sand and rubbed them into his shoes. He lifted himself up off the chair with both hands on the plastic arms and swung his legs forward. He kicked Grandma’s knees by accident and she said ‘Jesus Christ,’ and scowled at him, so he slunk right down and picked at his lips. The tide was going to turn soon and take away the door.

Anyway, maybe Grandma didn’t deserve the door today? She seemed angry and annoyed and she wasn’t talking very much. She had forgotten to go and get the box of marshmallows, so he’d had to do it himself, and he’d had to fold out the extra chair. He usually left as soon as Mr. Rogers had sat down and started talking, but perhaps he ought to stay for a while and make sure Grandma was alright.

Grandma wanted Oscar to go away. She felt tired today – too tired to faff about entertaining, but there was nothing to be done about it. Her problem was that she would have to sit and argue with Mr. Rogers. He always wanted to have a heated debate which ended up with them saying things like ‘you jackass,’ to each other, whether she wanted to or not.

Mr. Rogers sat down and he smelt of petrol and vosene. His throat sounded like it was as narrow as a piece of thread and he cracked his knuckles and scratched deep inside his ears so that it looked like his finger should get stuck in there. He had two toes missing and had never even shown Oscar. Grandma called him an old acquaintance, whatever that was. While Mr. Rogers was getting settled, Grandma stared at him instead of ignoring him. She was doing it all wrong, so Oscar had to show her a scab on his leg to distract her until Mr. Rogers was ready to talk. It wasn’t even a very good scab and Grandma probably thought he was showing off about it, which he wasn’t.

‘The boy hasn’t grown,’ Mr. Rogers eventually said to Grandma.

‘He’s sitting down,’ Grandma said. ‘It’s hard for you to tell.’

‘Where’s his purse?’ Oscar had a purse for a while and Mr. Rogers hadn’t seemed to like it.

‘He’s moved on,’ Grandma said.

Oscar swung his legs and thought about the door. He imagined the tide creeping in like fingers and his chest was tight and fluttery.

Something wasn’t right with the argument that Mr. Rogers and Grandma were having. They always argued about the same kinds of things, and they said the same things each time and then they said, ‘it was good to have got that off my chest.’ They argued about boring things like the weather changing, or old films, or about people they used to know. But today Grandma wasn’t sticking to her side of the argument; it was almost as if she was about to agree with Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers was looking nervous and clearing his throat and thumping his chest.

‘They’re just fiddling the stats, fiddling the stats is all they’re doing,’ Mr. Rogers said.

‘Perhaps they are yes,’ Grandma said. She looked tired and distracted and couldn’t seem to remember what part of the argument to take. She should be saying It was a whole door just lying there on a carpet of grey stones. something else now; she should be saying something about how paranoid Mr. Rogers was. Oscar stared at her. Mr. Rogers had angled his chair away from him on purpose, which he always did. Oscar wanted to go away and see the door by himself and leave them to it, but there was a horrible silence that went on and on and on and so, before he really knew what he was doing, he said, ‘I have to show you both something before the tide gets it. It’s very important.’

He took them to the door. It was just as beautiful as it had been earlier. He looked at Grandma anxiously to make sure she liked it. He didn’t want it to be a waste. She was examining it carefully. ‘If we opened it,’ Oscar said, ‘where would it go?’

Mr. Rogers snorted. ‘To the stones underneath I reckon,’ he said. He didn’t deserve the door and he was ruining it, just like Oscar knew he would. He was tapping at it with his stick and some of the paint was chipping off.

‘Under the sea?’ Grandma asked. Oscar shrugged.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But maybe it would go back into the room it came off, and you could walk in and be inside the room.’ He only looked at Grandma when he said that. Grandma nodded and said that was a better idea than hers because hers was obvious.

‘Let’s open it and see shall we?’ Mr. Rogers asked. He poked at the letterbox with the stick. Oscar’s heart dropped. He didn’t want to. It was his door. He shouldn’t have let anyone else see it. He would have to open it now and Mr. Rogers would be right because it wouldn’t really go anywhere. He walked around the door, figuring out where he should stand to open it.

‘We can’t open it,’ Grandma said.

‘Why?’ Mr. Rogers asked.

‘It wouldn’t be the done thing,’ Grandma said. ‘Would it Oscar?’

Oscar stopped walking, shook his head and glared at Mr. Rogers. ‘It wouldn’t be the done thing,’ he said.

The water was just starting to reach the door. Grandma watched Oscar as he walked ahead with his hands in his pockets. It had been a very generous gesture, him taking them to the door, she knew. She caught up with him. “It was one of the best doors I’ve seen,” she whispered as they walked back.

‘I know,’ Oscar said.

The Whale

It was going to be a summer of storms and no doubt about it. Grandma could feel it in the air as soon as she woke up. There had been a spate of storms for the last few days and they were going to carry on. They were the sort of storms that came all at once, loudly and hurriedly and brashly, and then burnt themselves out quickly. She went to the mouth of the cave and looked out. The sea looked swollen and dark grey. It was ugly a lot of the time, the sea, if you really looked at it. Ugly and beautiful too, with its muscles and its shadows and its deep mutterings, as if it was constantly arguing with itself. Sometimes she hated it and sometimes she loved it, which was the same with anything she supposed. Once, a storm had blown in hundreds, thousands, of pieces of foam. The white foam had raced in like a flock of birds and each piece glided down and landed on the beach or on the cliff grass like sandpipers landing. Sometimes she wondered whether all she was doing here was waiting for that to happen again. Storms were because of the buccas. They did beautiful as well as terrible things; she could see that. She had to keep an eye on them. That was all she could do.

She needed things for the cave. She needed batteries and milk and camping gas. Oscar was meant to be bringing them this morning; he better not have forgotten. Still, it was early yet. She was always up early. If you weren’t up before seven you might as well not get up at all. The whale had made the depths and the shifts and the floors of the sea suddenly clear to him. The first thing to do when she got up was heat some water in a saucepan for a wash. She had saved just enough gas for that. Then she washed behind her woven screen, one half at a time so she didn’t get too cold. Then layers: tights, trousers, socks, vest, several tops and a jumper. Then she put the water on for coffee and spooned in the coffee and the secret teaspoon of sugar she had now when no one else was around. And in her head she could see the window in her old kitchen slamming shut, and the washing stretching and billowing out and snapping back on the line. She sipped her coffee. And eventually, as it always did now, the movement of the washing turned into a song, or a tune she thought she’d forgotten, and she swept the sand away from the bed humming it.

Everything seemed to need fixing suddenly. The mattress was splitting again and the wind-up light kept blinking. She would need a better sleeping bag for next winter. Maybe she could send Oscar in to the shop to look at them for her. But his mother was bound to find out and she didn’t want her to know about the sleeping bag. Anyway, it was summer first. Summer first so that didn’t matter.

Where was Oscar? He ought to be here by now with her things so that he wouldn’t be late for school. She sat on the bed and waited, then went out onto the beach. There was someone walking but it wasn’t Oscar. She really did need those batteries. And she was going to tell him about what the buccas had sounded like in the storm last night, how they sounded like migrating ghosts.

She started to walk up the beach, following the figure she had seen hurrying past. The figure joined a group of people up ahead and suddenly there was a huge whale lying on the beach like a shipwreck and the people were gathered around it as if it was a campfire.

Grandma went a bit closer but she kept close to the rocks that jutted out from the cliff. It was a fin whale, at least fifty feet long, which must have been washed ashore during the night. It was pale, almost sand coloured but there were also darker marks that crisscrossed one another close to the tail. The tail itself was so big, so powerful looking, that it was hard to imagine there wasn’t any life left in it.

Oscar was there, standing next to his mother, wide-eyed and rigid, staring up at the whale with amazement and horror and wonder. The sides of the whale were taller than his head. He looked at it, then at the sea, then back at the whale as if he had never quite believed that such things existed in there, as if the whale had made the depths and the shifts and the floors of the sea suddenly clear to him.

Grandma kept close to the rocks. Oscar had forgotten her for now – he wouldn’t be coming over today. She didn’t blame him.

Oscar’s mother looked at her watch and then leaned down and said something to him. They took one last look at the whale and then started to walk quickly along the beach, ready to cut up one of the dunes to the road to get to school. They would have to pass the spot where Grandma was. She hid. She wasn’t exactly sure why. She just saw them coming towards her and she hid. She’d always had a knack for hiding. She crawled under an overarching bit of rock and tucked her knees up as far as they would go and then stayed very still. She couldn’t see whether they had gone past or not so she waited there, crouched down, feeling ridiculous, until she was sure they wouldn’t see her when she crawled out. ■

The story is extracted from ‘Beachcombing’ in the collection Diving Belles which will be published by Bloomsbury on January 19 2012.\