In the height of summer I returned to the beach. The change taking hold on the long, slow drive through the city. With each mile, a growing unease I couldn’t fully explain. A hollowing, as I travelled up across the wheat plains to the crest of the hill beyond which I would catch a glimpse of blue.
I had a job to do, some small upkeep to a hut we have on the sea front. The spring tides had conspired to rise up across the promenade, transforming some of the fragile structures into the matchsticks that now lay scattered along the coast or swept out to sea. Ours, one of the lucky few, stood intact, slightly shifted and somewhat askew, but in one piece at least.
The chain that lashed it to the concrete wall behind had pulled free and needed replacing. The seafront had been shut on the night of the storm, but I wondered how it might have felt to be inside as the waves crashed above. The splintering of wood and the clatter of metal as cutlery, tin cups and kettles disappeared into the darkness. Poseidon claiming offerings.
If the storm raged today, I imagined I would have waited in silence. For the waves to swallow me whole. Perhaps on another I would have clung to the rocks and chains in fury and desperation, begging for a last minute reprieve. On another stood on firm ground, high on the cliffs, watching the spectacle unfold below.
I attend to my tasks as the sun rises and the tide creeps upon me. Covering the sands and the shingle, angry breakers collapsing violently as the water reaches the steep slope of flints below me, temporarily repelled. I work until I can’t bear it anymore. I feel as though I’m drowning.
I sit inside and pull the doors closed behind me. The smell of wet sand and damp wood surrounds me. Like being in a nest, a hidden place, on an ocean floor. Salt water begins to run down my face. Slowly at first, building to a howling storm that I fear may never pass. Through a thin gap in the doorframe I can still see the waves, forcing their way past the flints. Lashing at the concrete slabs that stand guard over the soft sandstone behind. On a red post at the end of a long groyne, the sentinel shadow of a cormorant.
Eventually the storm ebbs and I venture back into the light, the sun beginning to fall towards the sea. I feel an urge to submerge myself in the water.
I walk into the cold surf and my legs are puIled towards the deep. The waves are welcoming me in. They’re stronger than I expected. Bigger too. They rise up suddenly in front of me, that flint slope again, fold over and crash down. I lose my footing on the sharp stones below and am crushed into a swirl of sand and rocks. It’s violent and I fight back. Struggling back to my feet. Standing up. Knocked down again. And again. My hands and knees scratched and bleeding. Rolling over, I crawl free, and slither up onto the land, broken and breathless.
The white noise of the waves fades away. I hear the sound of the world above and my own laughter. Something has changed. A ring on my right hand, bought at the turn of the millennium and never removed, now gone. Plucked from my fingers by the power of the waves. An offering received.