Clare In The Dunes

Clare sat in the cleft between the rocks, stretching out her feet, thinking of the treats snug and secure in her bag. A cheese and onion batch, a large slice of chocolate cake, a huge family sized bag of crisps. This secret place was her favourite for eating. No one would see a crumb. She liked to sit in this little dim nook and imagine tasting everything before her fingers ever touched it.
She saw a flash of red between the dune grass at the front of her hidey-hole and frowned, shifting forwards for a closer look. It was him. He walked arm in arm with a young girl across the deserted beach. Oh no, she thought, ice in her stomach. He’s doing it again. She clamped a hand to her mouth. The couple stopped, they laughed, they threw their arms about each other in a move that looked half protective, half not. Clare cringed and gathered up her bag, almost crushing its precious cargo.

Leave them alone, a voice inside her yelled. He wouldn’t dare be with her if he were guilty. Someone might see him, even here out in the dunes where only the dog walkers ventured. What the gossips were saying were lies. Either that or they were out of their tiny minds. Just like Doug. Just like half the bay. Don’t go near the man. Don’t get his attention. She watched him take a grip on the girl’s frail arm, locking her in place as he studied her for a long drawn out second. What was he thinking? What was he imagining?

Clare wriggled free of her hiding place, snagging her T shirt as she hurried to watch. They were heading away from town. Out where the dunes crowded. She stooped low and ran after them, wishing she were thinner, faster, less of a lump of lard. She dated behind the grasses as she followed them. Straining to hear their words the breeze carried to her. Was he quoting poetry? If he was the girl was doomed.

Then she saw another figure on the beach striding towards them with more purpose than she had ever seen. Doug. Marching like a solider. Carrying something dark and shiny in his hand.

Clare held her breath.


Big Fat Lion (a real life lion.)

A Hot Potato

Carmelle.

She was everybody’s dream girl. Greyling never had anything like her before. She embodied the charm of the foreigner, the exoticness of well rounded language, the fullness of youth. The assurance of her painted toenails gleamed red and inviting against the grey, squally skies and weather beaten rock surfaces of Greyling Bay.

Slim.

Despite her penchant for potatoes. Oh, they had noticed all that was about her. How she gorged on creamed potatoes. And potato fritters deep fried in oil. And hot potato buttons split open, covered with butter. She would flick a page of her book with the end of a filed nail, then pitch a mean fork into the soft potato, open her plump lips wide so that her lipstick remained intact, and roll the taste in her mouth. She often let out a deep sigh when she did this.

Lonely.

Despite her books and her smiles, her reading and writing, her hair and her body, despite all that she had, the loneliness leaked from the sides of her eyes. It just added to her flavour. The loneliness that drew you towards her like a magnet, hoping that you were the topping to her succulence, the silencer of her sighs.

Clare, sitting on another table, watched her with eyes filled with scorn, loathing and wanting. Carmelle just did not know the smart, thin and pretty girl that Clare held captive within her own fat exterior. Clare could, if she unleashed the woman within, give her a good run for her money. She concentrated on her plate, but her eyes kept flicking to Carmelle.

Darius also watched Carmelle as he walked in. “Hello,” he said, and Carmelle looked up, her cheeks warming to the feel of his voice.

Clare looked up too. Her lips twitched. Carmelle would soon wish she had never left the city sidewalks. A village was not all about romance.

Darius slid into a seat next to Carmelle. He speared a potato on her plate with the fork and held it up in the sunlight. “Ready?” he grinned.

She was.


Abha Iyengar

Chips

“Inside me lives a skinny girl crying to get out, but I can always shut the bitch up with chips,” Clare muttered, examining a lean crisp chip. She sat on a bench outside the fish and chip shop, her cod and chips hot in her lap on their polystyrene tray. Her thoughts brimmed with vinegar and cooking fat, her lips rimed with salt, her insides warmer now but never content. After this she had a doughnut planned in the cafe, after that perhaps a big Mac, fries and a nice thick milkshake at the new McDonalds. Oh yes, she had Saturday all planned out, all right. People said she had a pretty face, as if her face was all she was worth now she’d surrounded it with soft white padding. She hated them for that. Hate made her eat; she wrapped her hand about her hate right now and crammed more of it into her mouth. Hate tasted good, but it had a high fat content, it might one day clog her arteries and kill her. But right now, at fifteen, she didn't really care. She wasn't supposed to be here in this boring town but at fifteen your parents just bundled you up like luggage and carted you about. This town, that town. Never keeping still. Why were her parents still together at all? They ought to be divorced by now. They should be arguing and throwing things but no, they were like a couple of teenagers slobbering over each other every night. That was their version of normal.

A man waved at her as he weaved down the path, as he tilted up his head and yelled at a seagull. He came and sat next to her. Shouldn't tramps smell like pee and sweat? Shouldn't he be drunk? Shouldn't they be the last person you’d ever want to talk to? Clare chewed, swallowed. “Hello Doug.”

“Hello.” His voice was always diamond sharp. “A man painted me the other day.”

“Really? What colour?” She smiled. He didn't.

“Sandy. He painted me sandy. Like the beach, so no one can see me.”

“I can see you.”

“That’s because I'm not on the beach.”

He really was insane. She always wondered what he'd look like without his beard. Ugly? Handsome? Young? Old? “Who are you Doug?” she always asked him that. He always shrugged.

“Who do you want me to be?” He always said that too and she always came up with a silly answer. The Prime Minister. My Aunt Lilly. Roland Rat.

She just wasn't feeling so silly today. “Somebody normal.”

His blue, blue eyes stared at her, through her. “Might manage normal for a chip.”

She offered him the tray and he plucked one from it. He held it aloft, fingers reaching into the sky. She squinted and watched Whitey swoop. “He'll get fat,” she muttered.

“He'll be all right, Clare,” Doug returned, his voice suddenly as silky smooth as warm butter. “God gave him a pretty face.”

Clare huffed in disgust. “I hate normal.”

“Me too,” Doug said in his usual brittle tones. “That’s why I gave it up.”


Rona J Frith