Seaside

Trust of people began, of course, as a trust of adults, and ended, of course, as the same. Parents, unconditional, friends and teachers, warier but natural nonetheless, strangers, programmed out of us – they were different, we were told, not to be believed, but the instilling of that suspicion just cemented our confidence that the first groups could always be relied on. My trust of adults crumbled on the same day I also lost reliance on my imagination’s accuracy. Perhaps that was the harder loss, as words could now float into my head and mean something, form something, but that something could be completely wrong. What can we trust if not the words themselves? A short car trip was the beginning of the end.

‘Do you want to go to the seaside?’ The seaside. The three of them had been talking in the kitchen, and now I was there, and I was being asked if I wanted to go to the seaside. (I can only describe what I remember, and what I can remember is fragmented and childish, short clips of memory like a faded picture or a crumbling book with pages missing.)

     Should I let the word float into your head now, and mean something, and form something, and be totally wrong? Perhaps that’s what I should do. The answer to the question couldn’t be anything other than yes; I’d been to the seaside before, I’d sung songs about how I liked to be beside the seaside, and the word itself curled so deliciously through the room and promised blue skies, a golden hot sun, ice cream and a soft, bright towel that I’d lie down on and watch everyone around feeling the same things as me. There was no question of me not wanting to go to the seaside, and so we were going. To be beside the sea, in Scarborough Town, in November.

     Simon had asked it. He was a friend. Not a parent, of course he was below that, but above a teacher and certainly not a stranger. We could believe him that we were going to the seaside when he said it, and really he wasn’t lying to me about that, it was all my imagination’s doing. But still he couldn’t be trusted afterwards. Simon, and my dad, and my mum, had been talking in the kitchen, now standing, having been sat around the table for half an hour, because as soon as I walked through they got up and Simon asked me.

I don’t remember him too well now, just that he had thin, woolly hair and that at the time, when he asked if I wanted to go to the seaside he had a kind face, whatever that means. Being so young, a kind face just meant that he’d been kind to me and I associated his face with kindness. Maybe if I saw someone with those features now I’d think he had a tricksy face, but I don’t remember them to say for sure.

     Mum and Simon were taking me to the seaside, where I’d lose faith in the feelings that words gave me. The kitchen smelled like cigarettes, like it always did when Simon visited, because he and Mum smoked at the kitchen table, but it was unusual for Dad to be in there when they did because he hated smoke, and its smell. I liked it, of course, because I liked Simon and I liked Mum, and when Dad was angry, which he was when he complained about smoking, his faced screwed up and he tutted, and I didn’t like him at all. The kitchen smelled like mould anyway, so smoke wasn’t any worse, and somehow it made it feel cozier, too, because it meant there were adults there, chatting. I didn’t notice to think it was strange that Dad was talking with them around the table while they smoked, but like everything that day, it was.

     The back seat of the car on the way to the seaside was even colder than it was outside. Simon said the engine would heat us up after a while, and he smiled, and maybe it did, but I don’t remember that. I do remember now that he had thick, black eyebrows with a bit of grey, because I saw them in the rear-view mirror when he said it, and I do remember being excited to get there. Weather, and where it changes, wasn’t something I understood. The grown-ups must have known, and thought I knew without being told, that the seaside would be the same as outside the car. I know it was cold outside the car just because I remember Simon telling me it would get warmer, and smiling, but I hadn’t taken much notice of the sky, or the air, because I didn’t need to, because of where we were going.

Mum was quiet, but she sat in the front seat, where Dad had always gone when the four of us drove somewhere. She didn’t talk at all except to give me a travel sickness pill which I had to swallow without water. We were in the car for a long time, but it was OK because I really liked driving, it wasn’t just like sitting around, and we listened to one of Simon’s cassettes, like every time, old folk groups that I never learned the names of. Having them play in the background made me feel like we were starting out on a long adventure so really, it wasn’t bad and it didn’t feel like a long time, not like waiting for a bus or for a maths class to end.

     Then we arrived at the beach, which was the first betrayal. I can’t call it the seaside, even now, out of loyalty to the word I knew. We walked, three shadows, into the swirling wind that blew painful sand into our faces, across the shore for I don’t know how long. Much longer than I’ve ever waited for a bus or for a maths class to end, but still I somehow couldn’t bring myself to give up on the seaside. We kept walking, braced against the cold, towards a café that Simon and Mum knew, not talking because the wind was so loud and also if we tried we’d get sand in our mouths, which I did anyway, and it tasted like nothing before or since, because it hurt when it hit my mouth and then it was bitter and coarse when it crept in and I had to spit it out and rub my lips.

  The sky was a blank, overcast white without even shades of grey to give it life, and the sun never once came through to give it the brightness that can be that weather’s only virtue. Still, at the age I was, I never wondered why we’d come. The red-brick houses that looked down over the beach seemed empty, with all the lights off even though nobody was outside, so surely all the people were indoors where sensible folk would be. Eventually, we reached the café, which was boarded up and showed no signs that it would ever open again, so we walked back, and Mum and Simon said it was a shame because it was a really nice place with great cakes and tea, but then they stopped talking again, maybe because they got sand in their mouths as well. They said I was being good, and sorry if I was disappointed, but I didn’t care about the tea and cakes and simply couldn’t express what I was feeling, so I said nothing.

     We gave up and went home instead of looking for somewhere else, and left the seaside, or the idea of it, where it was. The journey home was even colder, and Simon gave me a paper bag with some boiled sweets inside, but I just kept it in my pocket and later when I opened it they were all stuck together. The songs felt different on the way home too, the same words and melodies suddenly contained a sadness that something special had ended, so even though it had all been a waste of time it was somehow hard to pull up outside the house and leave the car behind.

     Simon didn’t come in with us, and I soon knew why. He always came in with us, so finally I noticed something was strange and wondered the reason when he stayed in the car and drove away before Mum had even got the key inside the door. I soon knew why we’d gone to the seaside even though it wasn’t really the seaside, too, and I knew why my Dad had sat at the table talking whilst they were smoking, and not even complained. The conversation was too important not to be there, and too important to get angry during because Simon was doing him a favour, like grown-ups do.

He didn’t tell me that himself, because I haven’t seen him since, but when I walked through the hall on the way into the house his brown leather suitcase was gone from beneath the stairs, where it always was because he hadn’t been travelling since before I was born. He had loved travelling, but he loved me more. He told me so.

  There are so many words since then that have lost their meanings – heavy ones used lightly, life-changing ones taken casually – and once the trust was gone from those to whom it had been unconditional, there was nowhere else for it to remain. How can you believe what another person says when the moment the words leave their lips the meaning changes from what they say to what you hear?

So it is that about that day, what I remember most is how the meaning of the word seaside changed. If somebody asked me ‘do you want to go to the seaside?’ even now, I’d see bleakness, rain and windblown sand. The café would be boarded over and the journey home one of a deep disappointment that I somehow couldn’t pinpoint. No matter how many times I’ve been, and the word has meant what it was supposed to mean, the trust has never come back.