The inevitable waters

The tide is rolling in now. I can hear it coming. I can feel it. And with each roll, my stomach turns and my knuckles go white.
I’ve never been scared of the sea before; I’ve never really thought about drowning or the creatures that lurk in its murkier depths, but it’s all I can think of now. When I come to the beach it fills me with dread.
A few days ago I had to tell Sylvie I was ill. There was no hiding it any longer; she’d done well to pretend she hadn’t noticed it in me. She looked at me for a while, right in my eyes, then welled up and asked if I was going to die. I told her that I didn’t know, that they didn’t know.
I stroked her arm, like it was her who was sick, and told her to sit down. It dawned on her this information wasn’t new, that I had likely been keeping it from her for a good while.
She asked me why I’d not mentioned this sooner, but I didn’t know what to tell her. She asked me how I’d managed to get myself to and from appointments, perhaps tests and procedures, without her help. She asked me earnestly and I just sadly shook my head.
She looked up slowly from the bed and queried with her eyes. Even more slowly, she shook her own beautiful head. Eventually, she stood up and pushed past me. I listened for her and heard the front door open and close, then the ignition of a car’s engine.
She hasn’t been home since. She must have picked Greta up and taken her too, because she never came home from school that day. I’d made ratatouille, just in case they came home. I ate what I could manage and threw the rest away.
I shan’t come to the beach much more, I think. I can’t get what I need from the water, it seems. Not anymore.
Ha! And now it seems it’s going to piss down upon me from above too. Well, if I’m not going to jump in, it’ll still drown me in the end, I suppose.

Gloomy Sunday

They’ve all gone home; finished early and left me here.
It’s a Sunday and I’ve been working overtime. “We have to get this all done and finished today,” I told Sylvie. “It can’t wait.”
Turns out I was panicking over nothing. We got the work done before 1pm, so the afternoon is mine to do with as I wish.
It’s been a few months now since I saw Anne. We both just let the contact slide, it was easy to do really. We were both pointing in opposite directions, but walking into the other, again and again; stuck fast and going nowhere. Once we worked out that all we had to do was turn around and walk the other way it seemed so easy to put distance between each other.
If I’m honest, now that the work’s done, I’d quite like to go home and spend some time with Sylvie. It’s more than that I feel I owe her some of my time: I want to give it. In the past I’ve felt shackled to her, dragged around, but now I want and desire her so often. I thought she was the lesser of two evils, but it seems she is shining in my eyes, now.
However, I just called her, there was no reply and she must have gone out. With no word from my Sylvie I’ll set out in the car to blow away the Sunday cobwebs with a promenade along the sands.
As I arrive at the beach, the weather closes in and I wait in the shelter of my vehicle. I eat the sandwiches Sylvie made me for lunch. I fantasise about one day buying a boat and living on it with Sylvie. I see Anne, dashing past with Millie, her dog, soaked through and loving it.
She gets into a black car just two spaces away from mine. I’m sure she won’t notice me, but even so I slip down in my seat as low as I can go. She’s already spoilt my lunch but she won’t spoil my day any more.
It must have been quite warm, slouched down there, because I doze off and when I awake – with a sore hip and a crick in my neck – the rain has stopped and I drag my sorry limbs out into the remainder of the autumn daylight. Anne’s gone.
I shake my head hard and take in a deep breath of the sea breeze. “The sun’s trying to poke its head through the clouds,” calls a man I may have seen walking here before. I wave politely and smile. It still might be a pleasant Sunday, I think to myself.

Back to the sea

What is it that drives us back to the sea? We escaped from the tides and the surf and the foam all those millennia ago, so why does the crashing pound of those rhythmical waves claw at us still, mirroring the Sirens' call?
I wonder this as I lounge here on a Cornish beach. It is the height of summer now, and this is the second sunny day we've had. We go home tomorrow. Still, the weather brings us out in our droves; the weather and the whisper of the water.
I'm on holiday with Sylvie and her family. It is as fun as it can be. I'm enjoying peering through dark sunglasses at the perfect and the almost perfect bodies of the women who waltz by, and wondering which of them I could realistically have.
Anne has texted me twice this week. I can't decide if she's making a real effort by texting me, or if this meagre couple of texts shows I'm worth anything much to her at all.
This whole weekend, it's made me question why I bother holding on to this relationship with Anne. Of all the people to choose to have an affair with, why the woman I previously loved and lived with? I may as well have chosen some beautiful young thing. An oozing, raw, sexual presence whom I could just meet for a meal and some red wine in a shaded corner of a bistro, before whisking off to a hotel room for a few hours of sweating, heaving passion.
That way sounds good. I get everything I want - all the sex, the excitement - and I don't have all these unresolved issues cropping up, all the raised eyebrows and impatient huffs as I manage to annoy Anne, yet again. At least now I can leave before the row starts. That's probably why it's just about working. It's funny that I never row with Sylvie. She is an implacable pond before me and I can just skim right over her without a care.
Everything inside tells me I should concentrate all my attentions and affections and time on just one person, Sylvie. But then, I'm thinking, is she worth it?
So, as the waves crash in my ears like tribal drums, I close my eyes on the bikini beach and drift off to sleep while the sun's still high and my body's still warm and Sylvie's still by my side.

Summer, on the way to Sylvie's beach

Sylvie’s beach has sand dunes, did I tell you that?
There’s Sylvie, struggling up the dune, trying to balance as the plush sand subsides beneath her comfortable shoes.
Greta is lagging behind and Sylvie’s mum, Patricia, is saying something to her. Patricia is probably telling Greta that she’s done something wrong.
I’m lagging behind too.
I pretended I was just interested in the flora. How does something so green grow straight through sand? I suppose I am a little interested, but I’ve never so much as Googled it, so what the hey!
It’s true that I don’t want to talk to Patricia. She has a penchant for ‘tuts’ and ‘tsks’. At first I thought she couldn’t abide me, but she treats me as fairly as she does her own, so I suppose I can’t complain.
Apart from Sylvie, the other of ‘her own’ is Louis. He’s visiting too and struts about with such purpose and vigour, you’d think he was younger than Sylvie. But he’s not; he’s fully forty years old and still living with mother. A total berk, anyway. You can just make him out, disappearing over the hill.
Father, by the way, is not dead – heaven forbid! No, he’s too ill or lazy to come to the beach. Too much sand, too much sun, that’s not what England is about for him. Patricia would have had to go home soon after and fix him a roast dinner – it’s Sunday, after all!
What do you reckon? You’re not really interested in these photos, are you Anne? Anne? Anne!

Millie and me

I never told her what I was thinking about. When we got back from our walk, I didn’t tell her it was over.
Instead, I said that I felt refreshed and I was going to have a glass of wine and did she want one too. She did, and we drank and watched TV and forgot that it was difficult to talk without our little crutches.
Still, things must be disintegrating instead. Perhaps a slow decline is better than full blown war.
She hasn’t accompanied us on our walk today. She didn’t really feel like it, she said. And she had some other things to be getting on with, she said.
So we’re walking together, Millie and me.
I’ve decided not to go across the sand today. It’s muddy and wet, of course, so I’m sticking to the path. A good sturdy path goes right along the distance of the beach, with an old Victorian railing running its length.
Millie’s free to run and play in the puddles though. That’s fine, she doesn’t need anyone else. Just some open space and her tongue’s lolling and her tail’s wagging.
A shallow slope runs down from the path to the beach. It helps to break the waves at high tide, keeping things pretty smooth.