Foam

I’d never seen the beach sunlit. Even at the height of noon, the whole expanse was a kaleidoscope of grey. The shingle was pallid and seemingly skyless, overlooked as it was by cliffs. The water was lightless, always roiling. There was character to it all, though. A sense of changelessness - as though the beach has been this way for millions of years. It made me dream.

It was why I’d made such a generous offer on the house, despite everything. The garden, though small, was wildly overgrown, billowing with creeping thistle ground-ivy. The window panes were rotting, black cracks sagging beneath like sick veins. And inside the house, the carpets were threadbare and stained, the chimney wheezing with incessant seablown gusts. 

But it was a small wonder, too. It was built close to the edge of the cliff face, overlooking the shore—a relic from a less eroded age. Its orange brickwork was speckled by years of sea foam. Inside, the walls were pasted with quaint floral wallpaper and dark wood panelling. The rooms were cosy and stacked with books, the kitchen ramshackle—all of it brimming with an indulgent remoteness. 

Its current owner, Simon, was like the house in human form, wizened and eccentric. He was lean, softly spoken and smelled faintly of salt water. He had grown up on the same coastline, worked as a teacher and academic most of his life, and was soon planning to retire in Istanbul. He was present at both viewings I had already undertaken of his house. Precious, I supposed, about the fate of the only home he'd ever known.

On the day of the final viewing, I arrived before our estate agent. Rain fell as faint static across the shore. I stood at the garden gate and peered out from beneath my hood, watching the sallow white faces of dog walkers on the beach below. 

I was startled by the click of a door handle behind me and turned to see Simon in the doorway. He was wearing a green fair isle jumper and corduroy trousers and brandished a kettle in his left hand.

“Come in!” He said. “I'll make you a brew.” 

I smiled and shuffled inside. The house was toasty, its windows fogged. We stood together in the kitchen as Simon poured coffee and assembled biscuits on chipped china.

“He's going to be late,” he explained, “the estate agent. He just called. He's caught in traffic - there's a police cordon, apparently, around the Holiday Inn.”

“A police cordon?” I echoed, grabbing my mug and heading for the living room.

“Yep. Rioters I think.” 

Neither of us spoke as we sank onto opposite couches. Rain tapped at the window. I sipped the drink and raised my brows in disapproval.

“Thugs,” Simon remarked, shrugging his shoulders. 

“Unbelievable,” I replied. 

Realising he had forgotten the biscuits, Simon shot up and hurried back to the kitchen. Alone for a moment, I admired his bookshelves. Each spine offered a glimpse of something deep-coloured and wondrous: film stars, tree species, languages, pharaohs, music notation, martyrs, artistic masterpieces. As though, I daydreamed, the flotsam of all the earth washed up on the shoreline outside. 

When Simon returned, we chewed on custard creams and chatted politely about the house. I reassured him I had submitted an offer, and he told me he would accept it as soon as bureaucratically possible. He trusted me entirely, he said, to take care of his odd little outpost. 

“It seems right, seeing you sitting here now. You fit right in.”

We were inspecting damp in the cellar when the estate agent knocked on the door. From there, we launched into my final viewing - a blurry hour of measurements, photographs, turning dials and dusting. When the hour was up, the estate agent recited our next steps, briskly shook our hands and hurried to his next appointment. 

The rain had let up and the view from Simon's living room window was breathtaking. We both lingered for a moment, gazing out at the brackish horizon. 

“It’s so beautiful,” I said. “You can see for miles.” 

Simon hummed in agreement. Then, hesitant, he spoke. “There’s something I should probably tell you.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about this view. About this location.”

“Okay,” I said. 

Simon kept his grey eyes on the sea. “If I tell you, you don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’m not saying this will happen to you… I’m just telling you in case it might. Because it could.” 

I awaited his next word in silence, a sudden tension seizing my hands and forehead. 

“It only happened to me once,” he continued, meeting my eye briefly, then returning to the window. “About a year ago. One night, I was sitting in here doing some work. It was a little stormy outside, nothing too serious. But there was a boat, just out there,” he pointed, “approaching shore.”

He paused again and exhaled. “It was only a small boat. It was hard to see properly, but I think there were two men in it. And they were struggling to sail it - to manoeuvre it.”

A coarse sense of dread stopped me from speaking. Fragmented visions flashed on the horizon now: jagged, mounting waves. Two men clinging to a hull, wet hair whipping their faces. Tumult - black water indistinguishable from the sky. 

“I saw them sink,” Simon said, his tone steeled. “The boat capsized and they disappeared in the water.” 

I turned to examine his face. He seemed paler than before, his eyes fraught. 

“That’s terrible,” I replied. “I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t… It hasn’t been easy to forget. This place lost its charm a little after it happened. I just thought I should warn you about it, that’s all.”

Uneasy, I held my sympathetic tone. “Thank you, Simon, but I don’t think you need to worry. What you saw was horrendous, but probably really, really rare. Which isn’t reassuring, I know-”

“No, no,” he implored, his voice louder now. “Please, just hear me out. I want you to be prepared, mentally, for when it happens again - if it happens again.” As he spoke, his words grew more frantic, his hands frenetic. We were facing each other by then. His agitation chilled me. I realised, for the first time, how little I knew him. If he was a little mad, I thought, it had no bearing on the sale of his property. But I cared for him. Like the house, I wanted to protect him - conserve whatever was good and serene.

“Simon,” I continued, grabbing his arm gently, “I promise I hear you. And thank you for your concern. But I really don’t think you need to worry. It hit you hard, as I’m sure it would anyone. But what happened was a tragedy - something really rare.”

He sighed now, brows raised in exasperation. “But it’s happening more and more, you know? You see it on the news.”

“What do you mean?”

“People coming here in boats. Hundreds of them every week.”

I paused, stunned by a familiar jolt of confusion. Disappointment. I fumbled for my next words tactfully. “You mean the refugees?” I asked. 

“Yes.”

“But Simon, I don't think they come here. They sail to Dover, and Kent. We’re nowhere near. I don't even know how possible that would be-”

“It's not impossible,” he argued. “They were out there in the middle of the night! They appeared out of nowhere in this tiny boat - like a kids’ boat - heading straight for shore.”

“It's odd, yes, but you don't know for sure. Did you see either of them? Their faces? Were they identified?”

“No,” Simon replied, a creak of doubt in his voice. “As far as I know nobody ever found them.”

We stumbled into silence again, the gloom a little too thick. The images were more vivid then - the thrashing collision of seabed and distant stars. The unworldly cold. There was nothing more to say, I realised. Simon was haunted and wanted to protect me somehow. I reassured him that I'd listened and made to leave. 

He opened the door to the early evening. It smelled of wet sand and dewy hedgerows. I lingered in the doorway, anxious we’d left the visit on a bitter note. I turned to face Simon again, who was smiling forlornly in his fair isle jumper.

“Thanks again for letting me come back. I really love the house. No rush, of course, but my offer’s there.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “I’ll get everything sorted tomorrow.”

“That’s great. And really, you don’t need to worry about what happened. You can move past it now. I’m sure you did everything you could.”

The same, baffled fog filled Simon’s eyes again. “What do you mean?” he asked, his mouth hard. 

“When the ship sank. You called the coast guard, right? Or an ambulance?” 

Simon stared at me, his brow furrowed. He didn’t speak for a long time. 

“I…” his voice croaked. “No. I didn’t tell anybody.”

“Nobody?” I asked, taking a step backwards. He shook his head. 

“I didn’t think… What they were doing, it was illegal. It was a crime. They knew the risks.”

“But you didn’t know that!” I gasped.

“And nobody ever asked about them,” he continued, frantic again. “They were never reported missing. They never found the bodies.” 

In the distance, I could hear the tug and hurl of waves against rock. A gentle, fumbling wind. I grasped for words and found none. Only a sense of vertigo - an unsteadiness on my feet. A strange fear of meeting Simon eye-to-eye. His face, too, was cast downward. 

I exhaled and spoke. “I’ll go. Sorry. Thank you again.” I headed off through his garden, out the gate and towards my car before he had a chance to reply. From the driver’s seat, I sat for a long while and watched the house. Amber lights humming through windows, extinguished then relit. Its outline against the darkling sky had gained a looming quality - its steady gaze across the water sinister and unsparing. 

My phone call with the estate agent went on for a long while. I was still sitting in my car when it ended, the sky above dark and crescent mooned. I told them that I’d found issues with the house during the visit. Windows, location - I kept it vague. Eventually, they abandoned their efforts and let me withdraw. I asked them to apologise to Simon on my behalf - his move to Istanbul would be delayed, I knew.

“Well, there was always a risk,” they said. 

As I drove away from the house, I watched the sea in the rearview mirror. A hulking black band that slowly thinned to a line, to a pulse of darkness. It seemed to breathe. I could feel its liveness - its prehistoric brutality. I drove faster, boring inland, eager to outrun it. Faster and further, ever deeper into sleeping England. But the feeling remained. No matter how far I went, it never quite fell away.