#3 (July 15th 1938)

July 15th 1938

As evening ground its way through the town like a slow crawl of a southern glacier, the light seemed as intense as earlier, but lower and more silent. Silent like a dream, no sounds seemed to emanate from the streets, a tea-time lull that only appears after an extremely hot day.

Far out to sea the little trawlers glinted in the low evening light, like roofs catching the sun across a Venetian scene. Red – brown sails and the lazy smoke that seemed only to escape a little from the boilers down below.

The rows of tiny houses that lined this port, hummed in the heat of the day, old but well scrubbed like the varnish worn tables that lay hidden behind the uniform net curtains. Humanity was obvious and plentiful.

The steam rose from a hundred thousand teacups, reflecting the low light and catching the dust, only in summer these moments of peace descend, waiting to be shattered by the noises of the night. A pause, as if the world has let out a sigh, a flux of an eddy that has momentarily become steady before a change of direction.

These moments can be counted over a lifetime. They will be remembered only when another arises, a constant recall of nostalgia brought about by nostalgia, a spiralling, if not quite cyclic rhythm.


******


My first journey was upon my fathers bicycle. A small wooden seat with metal foot pegs that stuck out from the side. I was positioned between the handle bars and my father; the other children had those tartan seats that went at the back of the bike.

I can’t remember much about the journey, probably to Nanny Webster’s house but the bike was a large, black roadster, my recent knowledge of this bike would suggest a 40’s rod brake machine, probably a Raleigh or a Hercules.

The worn, grey grips smoothed by my father’s rough hands.

Those summer winds that cut across the sands, exhuming the marram grasses to their tired roots, it wasn’t always like this.

In youth the sun is kinder, slow to burn and age your spirit. You soar like the sea birds, higher on their twisting thermals.

The wind can pick its pace, from furled up doldrums to the centre of the gale, eyes looking coastward, panic on the sweet breath of broken youth, forgotten pleasures now mixed with the angst of reason.

If only you can reach the shore, you will be a better man; you will work harder, pray more often, drink less and love sincerely.

Amidst the groynes the crabs forage, deep in holes to retain their moist lungs, they feast on the washed up bodies of sailors and soldiers, lovers and fathers all but washed away by a rain of metal.

A tangle of geometric objects, carefully conceived into existence by men and with rivets. We are not silent creatures like those armoured crabs, apple snap snaps, to wait under foot with brass and the bayonets.

Rusty hulks now, left in the foam, buried to waist in sand. Along the roads that take us inland, away from the sea and the soothing motion of the tide. Spent men and vehicles and a will to survive.

Star shells over a forlorn beachhead. Some localised showers, slowing progress and delaying spirit. You have only seen the sea in its more intimate moments, pretending to be fragile like a lost calf on a winter’s day.

Now it shows you itself, raging like a madman as the sun slopes away, embarrassed. Scenes from a day in hell happening in slow motion, deaf to the cries of the men and gulls.

You can see the logic in most of the machinations but this time you are lost. No careful explanation written in your textbook, no phone call to let you in to the on the secret. All you gain is an arrival, a door flung open and a kick in the face.

At home the ledgers and the planners re-schedule times and locations, across a rolling sea, behind the safety of chalk.

It is amazing that in the middle of a tumult those soft thoughts break through the glaze of horror. The colour of your mother’s lips, the freckles on her careworn hands, the sound of the hinges to the outside lavatory, birds singing, competing with the rooks, over the unkempt grass, in the alders of the graveyard. The cough of your father and smell of damp coal before the fire is lit; these things have little meaning now, as then but are the compounded signature of peace and pretty ambivalence.

Heading homeward, North, like a fleet of swans ahead of a swirling tide. A spiteful sunset behind our backs.


******


The trees look different now along the avenues and beneath the glass facades of the new town. The tram lines remain, slowly wearing under heavy traffic that stops and starts in a pretence of progress.

8 pm. A chink of light outs through the corner of the oblong window, intense and sharply defined against the patterned glass cupboard fronts. Reflections of a summer evening giving an illusionary cold heat that defies logic. Above is the soft murmur of our sleeping child, then silence. The electric hum of kitchen appliance.


******


A room laid out as if for a symposium, questions fired and answered slowly, stuttering eyes searching upward, mouth open, an intake of air. Questions that become leading are no longer valid.

The old building has been empty for only one week, it already has the familiar smell of vacated school or institution – summers reel back, painting for the council, covered with dust, eating stale bread, scorn, hatred and punishment for something not yet specified. In the back of your mind a future waiting to engage, like the gears of a giant machine, oily like the sea – smelling of brine.


******


Mid July, the dusty windows along the rows of old Great Yarmouth, filled with bottles and brown, dried flowers, boot black, cobwebs, bottles, books and ships biscuits. The dirty pigeons combine with the tangle of wires that are punctuated with ceramic spacers and electrical gadgetry. Under feet cobbles, flagstones and broken slate.


******