escape to the sea

7/28/2019 Escape to the Sea

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Escape to the Sea by Kimber ley Andrews

The best thing about the sea is that when the tide draws in and takes

some of the sand away it never brings the same things back. Something

about the earth has changed and can never be the same again. The tide

cleans away everything from the past and though it inevitably draws in

again, it cannot spit anything back at you: this is because the ocean is

vast and once something is lost in there it can never be found, nor can it

find you.

That’s why I came here. Slow, peaceful, rhythmic waves, hinting at

magical memories and washing away the things I wanted to forget. Not

this time.

The sea is different now. The malevolent mass of indigo is dangerousand threatens to pull you out with it's magnetic current. The cold would

feel like a violent slap to your face and you wouldn’t quite know when it

happened but somehow, that cold would penetrate your body, deeper

and deeper until eventually, somehow, you would become the cold.

Once you become the cold you cannot change it. Even if you felt warm

again, somewhere deep inside you that coldness would remain. Then

others would fear that you would make them cold and they would slowly

drift away leaving you in solitude, lost, lonely and eventually forgotten.

There used to be a row of neat little houses near the coast. Neat little

families used to live there and they used to hang neat little clothes on



washing lines where the soft breeze of the sea would dry them. Then one

day the sea washed over the houses and ripped them all down and the

neat little families disappeared.

There used to be a fairground here with a carousel and a fortune teller

and now that's in the sea too.

My father and the other men used to work in the factory. They would

leave for work when it was pitch black and when the factory gates

creaked open to release them it would be dark again. Their fathers had

done the same thing in the mines and sometimes they would be buried

alive under a spontaneous caving in. Now that the mines were closed,

people had it good. My father would return home, his face shadowed

with thick black dust and his finger nails etched with dirt. He would

smell like metal and his face would look tired, not just tired for sleep,

but tired of the relentless cycle of labor that remained permanent as long

as we needed to eat.

My mother and the other women would spend all day trying to make

ends meet. They would clean the hard floors with hands that no longer

felt sore and bake food that to them only tasted of irretrievable hours

spent over a hot stove. My mother would put my father’s dinne r on the

table almost not recognizing him as her husband and he would eat the

dinner almost not recognizing her as his wife. Then, if times were really

hard, my mother and some of the other women would undertake the

futile task of cleaning the factory. They would clean up the dust and get

dust on themselves which they would then take to their homes and

double their own cleaning tasks in the morning.



Every Friday was pay day. Every house in every row would breathe a

sigh of relief when the men returned from work with just about enough

money to survive until the following week. The women would wait on

the front step for their men to return and some of them would stand therewell in to the night, forgotten by their husbands who had made a

diversion to the pub with the week’s wages. Sometimes my mother was

one of those women and sometimes my father was one of those men

who had to sleep in the outside lavatory because the doors had been

locked. There was rarely conversation in our house anyway, but if it had

been one of those Friday’s then there would be a frosty silence until the

following Friday when my father would be amongst the first of the men

to return.

Each Friday my mother would put money we didn’t really have to spare

to one side and buy savings stamps. In the second week in August, the

factory would close and the saving stamps, along with every other

family’s stamps would be exchanged back to money and we would go

on holiday.

Every year we came here.

We would stay in a shabby caravan that was too small for my three

brothers and me. My mother would make us boiled eggs for breakfast

and she would make a picnic of ham sandwiches for lunch. Then she

would cook tea just like she did at home. We never ate out and my

mother spent just as much time cooking and cleaning as at home, yet she

was on holiday and so she enjoyed it. It would be hit and miss whether

we would get a week of sunshine or rain so we would always pack rain

Macs and extra blankets. If it was hot we would sit on deckchairs and



bake our skin under the hot sun, claiming the inevitable red skin that

followed, was a tan. When you got to the age of fourteen it was

customary to rub lard in to your legs in order to increase your tanning

potential. Only the most dedicated sun-worshippers attempted this morethan once as the blisters were usually a life-long lesson.

When we were small my parents would take my brothers and me to the

funfair. The funfair was rundown with peeling off paint but it was full of

promise. When I was older I would be able to go on the Waltzers and

smile at the gypsy boy who would then spin my car faster and faster and

faster. When I was older I’d have more money and would buy myself candy floss and toffee apples and win myself prizes on the ‘Hook - a-

Duck.’ When I was older I would run away with the gypsies and work as

a fortune teller and never ever, ever have to be like my parents.

When I got older the seaside became a different place. I would

sometimes look at the sea and wonder where I’d end up if I crossed the

ocean. I abandoned my idea of running away with the gypsies along withmy virginity during the summer when I was fourteen, after a holiday

romance with Billy from the Waltzers, to whom my father kindly gave a

black eye.

Nothing mattered at the seaside, as though the sea had washed it away,

when you went home everything was forgotten; Except for the incident

with Billy, after which my father never looked at me in the same way

again.

So I came back here, thinking that this was the only place I could forget

everything. Forget that I had never run away with a gypsy boy and

become a fortune teller. Forget that, despite all that young and arrogant



determination, I hadn't bettered myself in any way. For all that desire for

excitement, for that permanent seeking of a wonderful life, I had

foregone that chance of stable, enduring mediocre happiness that I had

come to long for. I had come to learn that the life of my parents mightnot have been full of thrills and excitement but it was happy and it was

respectable. After a life of excess, dissatisfaction, discontentment and

never ever belonging, I had come here to wash everything away and go

wherever I wanted to go, new and cleansed.

Things have changed. The fairground has disappeared apart from one

faded grey sign which used to have a brightly coloured clown's face on itwhich lit up at night. The caravans which used to be packed with my

neighbours and friends are gone, no trace of them. And the neat little

houses have been washed away by that particularly strong tide that spelt

the end of the seaside town which had been declining for years. I

remember reading about that in the newspaper but somehow I thought it

couldn’t be the truth.

Somehow, without the people, the fairground and the neat little cottages,

this place is no longer safe. The dark winter nights show the menace in

the sea, show it as the never ending abyss of blackness, and as I watch

the violent waves draw in I anticipate that blackness wrapping around

my body, engulfing my insides, my brain, my life. I know that when the

tide draws in and takes some of the sand away it never brings the same

things back and I find comfort in the idea that my life, my mistakes willeventually amount to no more than a shell washed away by the tide,

never to be seen again.

ENDS

escape to the sea

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