To the south of Greyling Bay the mountains smooth and flatten and the beaches are bright with sand. The road cuts away from the water and for a couple of miles the salt marshes stretch, shallow and grassy, and narrow ridge of dunes holding them back from the beach.
Phyllis drives her van out every day and waits in the car park for customers who rarely come.
While she waits, she watches over the marshes and the distant line of dunes, the curve and flow of them so familiar to her now that even when she leaves she can see their low profile, their salted, faded greens: the water beyond them a narrow silver flash and then the sky arching above them felted with bruise-coloured clouds, constantly changing.
She used to be able to spot who was out on the water from the shape of the boats’ cabins, silhouetted against the glittering grey seas. Now she can barely see the boats at all and she stares at each distant blurred dot as it passes and wonders if it’s the Gwiddon. Thinking of Owen’s hands on the wheel, their familiar callouses softened and gone. The hot rasp of his fingers against her skin.
Jane Smith
Showing posts with label Gwiddon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gwiddon. Show all posts
Monday, March 9, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Ann
Ann stands on the hollow rolling cobbles of the beach and watches the Gwiddon as she sails into the soft curve of the harbour. From this distance there is nothing but the angle of the cabin roof, the push of her through the waves to distinguish her from the other vessels on the sea but, after decades of watching, Ann knows her husband’s boat. She would know her even without looking: the ratchety sound of the engine, the stuttering exhaust; the Gwiddon needs money they don’t have.
They’d be better off if they scrapped the thing: the price of fuel, the endless repairs; it brings in no money. But Owen shouts whenever she suggests it; whenever there’s a bill to pay.
She can hear him shouting now. His voice rolls out across the heaving waves, the wind whipping the words away, leaving just the sound. And the Gwiddon: silent suddenly, no longer pushing on across the grey water but drifting, the tide dragging her swiftly back out into the bay as a burst of black smoke surges from her exhaust and Owen’s voice rises, dark across the swilling seas.
Ann imagines the tourists on the slatted bench seats which line the sides of the boat. Huddling against the wind, gripping their children’s arms as the engine fails. The splutter and fall of the engine and then nothing but the slap of the waves; the call of the gulls above as Owen, his temper freed, whacks his wrench against the engine.
Ten seconds, twenty: then the engine catches with a bang and the Gwiddon lurches forward again, cutting hard against the waves. Ann hears, from all this distance away, a ripple of voices, cheering; the belch and pull of the engine.
If she leaves now she’ll be at the harbourside to meet them when they get in, as she always is. To take the passengers’ money before they leave, to show them how to climb the algaed ladders which line the vertical harbour walls. To drag Owen out from the cabin where he waits for the last of them to leave. He’ll still be swearing.
Ann turns. Stares out across the ocean, and up into the sky. Watches a vapour-trail from a plane thin and disperse and imagines herself leaving here as easily, melting away into nothing against the dove-grey sky.
Jane Smith
They’d be better off if they scrapped the thing: the price of fuel, the endless repairs; it brings in no money. But Owen shouts whenever she suggests it; whenever there’s a bill to pay.
She can hear him shouting now. His voice rolls out across the heaving waves, the wind whipping the words away, leaving just the sound. And the Gwiddon: silent suddenly, no longer pushing on across the grey water but drifting, the tide dragging her swiftly back out into the bay as a burst of black smoke surges from her exhaust and Owen’s voice rises, dark across the swilling seas.
Ann imagines the tourists on the slatted bench seats which line the sides of the boat. Huddling against the wind, gripping their children’s arms as the engine fails. The splutter and fall of the engine and then nothing but the slap of the waves; the call of the gulls above as Owen, his temper freed, whacks his wrench against the engine.
Ten seconds, twenty: then the engine catches with a bang and the Gwiddon lurches forward again, cutting hard against the waves. Ann hears, from all this distance away, a ripple of voices, cheering; the belch and pull of the engine.
If she leaves now she’ll be at the harbourside to meet them when they get in, as she always is. To take the passengers’ money before they leave, to show them how to climb the algaed ladders which line the vertical harbour walls. To drag Owen out from the cabin where he waits for the last of them to leave. He’ll still be swearing.
Ann turns. Stares out across the ocean, and up into the sky. Watches a vapour-trail from a plane thin and disperse and imagines herself leaving here as easily, melting away into nothing against the dove-grey sky.
Jane Smith
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Gwiddon
The men drift about the streets and pubs of Greyling Bay, their ropes slashed, their rudders broken. It’s a women’s world now. They own the cafes, the boarding houses and the knick-knackery shops. They clean the holiday cottages, mow the tidy handkerchief lawns, paint the fences bright blue and pink and plant the window-boxes with pansies and geraniums. The men no longer hunt after the shoals of silver but collect coins in buckets from tourists who peer suspiciously at the rust on Gwiddon’s breast and ask, “is it safe?” before stepping aboard with nervous, sandaled steps.
Yes. Greyling Bay had changed but not so much that Owen can’t still see the granite and feel the pain beneath the hanging baskets, and feel the worn treads in the steps up to The Jolly Fisherman, once the harbour-master’s office but now a shop selling baskets from China at silly prices, crab shells turned into ashtrays and plaster seagulls on metal spikes. Does it matter? The sea is still there, sighing, whispering and wailing. The bitch. The whore. His lover. She will bring the men to her again. She’s only biding her time.
Owen wipes his eyes, surprised to find them wet. The warming sun has lifted the wind. Gwiddon bobs like a bath toy on waves flecked with white-tipped waves.
He jumps down. Her engine starts first time. Sweet as a nut. Ann will be wondering where he is, complaining about wasted fuel. She has a meeting this afternoon with the local tourist board and he has to pick Beth and Gwyneth from nursery and then he and Gwiddon will chug around the bay, wearing a silly pirate’s hat with a harvest of eager tourists on board and dream that once their quota is exceeded he can toss them overboard.
Once he wished for sons. Now he is glad he has none.
Sally Zigmond
Yes. Greyling Bay had changed but not so much that Owen can’t still see the granite and feel the pain beneath the hanging baskets, and feel the worn treads in the steps up to The Jolly Fisherman, once the harbour-master’s office but now a shop selling baskets from China at silly prices, crab shells turned into ashtrays and plaster seagulls on metal spikes. Does it matter? The sea is still there, sighing, whispering and wailing. The bitch. The whore. His lover. She will bring the men to her again. She’s only biding her time.
Owen wipes his eyes, surprised to find them wet. The warming sun has lifted the wind. Gwiddon bobs like a bath toy on waves flecked with white-tipped waves.
He jumps down. Her engine starts first time. Sweet as a nut. Ann will be wondering where he is, complaining about wasted fuel. She has a meeting this afternoon with the local tourist board and he has to pick Beth and Gwyneth from nursery and then he and Gwiddon will chug around the bay, wearing a silly pirate’s hat with a harvest of eager tourists on board and dream that once their quota is exceeded he can toss them overboard.
Once he wished for sons. Now he is glad he has none.
Sally Zigmond
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Owen and Glyn
When his mother died, he was all for selling Prospect Cottage. Ann stopped him. She said they should tart it up and rent it out in the summer season. He told her she was mad. Gwiddon needed new lifting gear and her engine was a bugger to start. And without his boat how would he earn a living? But she’s right. Visitors pay silly money. It’s fully booked from Easter to October. They love the beams that were hidden under wallpaper until Ann got at them with a steam machine; they marvel at the stone bench carved into the side of the hearth. But they can’t see his mother there like he can, sitting stiff-backed, a pile of darning untouched at her feet, night after night, her ears stretched towards the booming sea and the wind howling in the rafters, praying, like every other wife and mother, sister and aunt and afraid to sleep in case they let go of the invisible rope that tethers the men to their hearts.
They weren’t there fifteen years ago when he and Glyn had to tell her that her husband of forty years had been dragged off the deck of the Merlin when he caught his foot in a tangle of rope. How they had watched helplessly as his skull smashed repeatedly against the hull like an egg, until the sea took pity and dragged him down. Owen can see him still, that look of disbelief and resignation as he went under, once in fact, again and again and again in his dreams. These strangers can’t know that his mother didn’t cry. She opened her arms as wide as the bay and folded her sons to her like a hen does her chicks although they were both grizzled men twice her height and girth. They had wept like babbies until she looked at them and said, “He wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last.”
Sally Zigmond
They weren’t there fifteen years ago when he and Glyn had to tell her that her husband of forty years had been dragged off the deck of the Merlin when he caught his foot in a tangle of rope. How they had watched helplessly as his skull smashed repeatedly against the hull like an egg, until the sea took pity and dragged him down. Owen can see him still, that look of disbelief and resignation as he went under, once in fact, again and again and again in his dreams. These strangers can’t know that his mother didn’t cry. She opened her arms as wide as the bay and folded her sons to her like a hen does her chicks although they were both grizzled men twice her height and girth. They had wept like babbies until she looked at them and said, “He wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last.”
Sally Zigmond
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Owen
The sea is smiling today, soft and beguiling. Damn her. Damn her. Owen scowls at her from the prow of the Gwiddon, hands gripping the rusty rail, feet apart, knees locked as of habit although the swell is as gentle as a lullaby. He prefers the whore, the witch, the harpy. He knows his place then. He knows every inch of her, every gentle curve, every bone and sinew of her but can never sense that moment when she’ll snap, snarl, catch you in her jaws and spit you out on the shore for the women to gather up like flotsam. But then, no man can.
He shuts off the engine. Gwiddon rests on the water, a baby at the breast, sated and sleepy. The only sound is his breathing, rapid and hoarse. He looks back into the smudge on the horizon that is Greyling Bay. The air is still; the sky a pane of frosted glass; the smoke from the chimneys as straight and true as a plumb line. A few desultory gulls drift across the quay waiting for the boats to return bursting with their slippery, silver cargo. They don’t know about quotas, about net gauges. They’ll have to make do with rubbish bins and scattered chips.
He slipped out that morning to scuttle his beloved Gwiddon and sink with her into the seductive mattress of water. Why fight? Why rise before a winter’s dawn and set out against the tide, sleet blinding him, the wild wind tearing his hands, scraping the skin from his cheek; the triumphant struggle to haul in the swollen nets only to weep tears of rage back on shore where, calculations made and heads shaken, most is poured back into the water, dead and rotting?
On such days he feels the madness rise in him. He lurches blindly into The Ship and then, too ashamed to face the look in Ann’s eyes, sleeps off the madness on Gwinnod’s deck.
Greyling Bay once was home to a hundred fishing boats. Now the three that are left are the tattered remnants of sanity in a world where a London newspaper pays him to talk about the ‘good old days’. The girl smiles as he swallows glass after glass of whisky which he isn’t used to and only drinks because she’s paying. He isn’t a man of words like this chattering exotic bird with her jangling bangles who sits across the table from him, affecting wonder and astonishment at his nonsense. He’s stiff and awkward at first—he hates to see a woman at the bar—but soon enough he stops caring and demands more and the more he drinks, the more lies and fairytales pour from his loosened mouth because that’s what she wants hear. When his own idiocy stares back at him a week later he wants to vomit but Ann, who knows it is nonsense, kisses him and says never mind, bach, the money will pay for shoes for the girls.
Judas, the sea whispers in his ears. Judas Iscariot.
Sally Zigmond
He shuts off the engine. Gwiddon rests on the water, a baby at the breast, sated and sleepy. The only sound is his breathing, rapid and hoarse. He looks back into the smudge on the horizon that is Greyling Bay. The air is still; the sky a pane of frosted glass; the smoke from the chimneys as straight and true as a plumb line. A few desultory gulls drift across the quay waiting for the boats to return bursting with their slippery, silver cargo. They don’t know about quotas, about net gauges. They’ll have to make do with rubbish bins and scattered chips.
He slipped out that morning to scuttle his beloved Gwiddon and sink with her into the seductive mattress of water. Why fight? Why rise before a winter’s dawn and set out against the tide, sleet blinding him, the wild wind tearing his hands, scraping the skin from his cheek; the triumphant struggle to haul in the swollen nets only to weep tears of rage back on shore where, calculations made and heads shaken, most is poured back into the water, dead and rotting?
On such days he feels the madness rise in him. He lurches blindly into The Ship and then, too ashamed to face the look in Ann’s eyes, sleeps off the madness on Gwinnod’s deck.
Greyling Bay once was home to a hundred fishing boats. Now the three that are left are the tattered remnants of sanity in a world where a London newspaper pays him to talk about the ‘good old days’. The girl smiles as he swallows glass after glass of whisky which he isn’t used to and only drinks because she’s paying. He isn’t a man of words like this chattering exotic bird with her jangling bangles who sits across the table from him, affecting wonder and astonishment at his nonsense. He’s stiff and awkward at first—he hates to see a woman at the bar—but soon enough he stops caring and demands more and the more he drinks, the more lies and fairytales pour from his loosened mouth because that’s what she wants hear. When his own idiocy stares back at him a week later he wants to vomit but Ann, who knows it is nonsense, kisses him and says never mind, bach, the money will pay for shoes for the girls.
Judas, the sea whispers in his ears. Judas Iscariot.
Sally Zigmond
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