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

Greyling Bay

A seaside town with a harbour full of fishing boats and tourists, where you can pay to sail across the bay and imagine yourself pulling your living from the lapping waves as the sky soars blue above you. But think about fishing in winter, when you set off hours before dawn; when the lines freeze to your hands as you heave them in, and the waves lurch above you with every turn of the wind.

Where the mountains rise high behind the town and the only road out is sometimes blocked by a sudden fall of snow, a slow slide of mud-choked rocks; a tree, falling away from the sweeps of pine which cloak the mountains' lower reaches, beaten by the relentless slicing of the wind.

There used to be a hospital in the town which people came to from all over: it overlooked the promenade and all day long the patients turned their faces westwards, to the sea, watched the silt-green waves rolling across the cobbled beach, and slowly they improved. Now the hospital buildings are raggedy flats and residents come and go as regularly as the waves on the beach.

There's a university a little inland, quietly failing; to the north, around the peak of the bay, a caravan park. The students, the holidaymakers, the tourists—these transitory people wash through the town, the numbers swelling and retreating like a tide. The real inhabitants—the fishermen and shopkeepers and cleaners, the waitresses and teachers: the permanent inhabitants, the people who live here, with nowhere else to go—what do they do with their days? What do they think? And why do they stay?


Jane Smith