The house by the beach

From the house, stood in the doorway, she couldn’t see down to the shore. The slanted old roof and leaning porch framed her with a wild rambling rose bush that owned a sizable portion of the front of the house. Lazy heavy sunshine slumbered through the afternoon as her call rolled down the sand, gently bouncing to his ears. Raising his eyes from the water he smiled and reassured, he would be in soon. Turning back again to the sparkling dance of the water he peers through the tin-foiled surface to the depths. He casts again, waiting for the ping of the line and the sight of millions of molecules running scared in circles.

She turns back into the little house, the door opening and letting a slothful limb of heat in and through the kitchen. She was relaxed, away from the city and the bright lights, orange streetlamps invading your privacy and very little sleep, relaxed. The water bubbles on the solid old wood burner, a late lunch to be had in the old burst armchairs, pulled up facing each other carelessly eating and talking full mouthed with the back door gently breezing open. The sea certainly gives you an appetite but the heat and easy living kept a lid on it until this late Saturday lunch.

Her gentle humming resonated in the air while she barefoot ballerina’d around the kitchen to the sound of her own music, checking the pot’s playful spurts and taking down two chipped mugs and two old plates for them. Nothing slams, nothing worries as she brushes the finishing touches into place, like the local flower placed in the centre of the low slung table between the two chairs.

There are photographs too, stuck in the frame of the kitchen cupboard smiling back at her the same way they did years ago. Old friends from university years, married now and living down the country. The two of them had came to the city with the fresh skinned optimism of thousands, grown together during late wine evenings and candles. They had shared secrets, plenty, but now they talked not nearly so much or so often yet still they remained close. She had lived in the city too long as well, met a marriable man I only remember as a shy bearded chap who sat in the corner at gatherings and rolled his own cigarettes, and retreated into fields and forests.

Not very arborially impressive around here really, plenty of fields that stretched over gently bulging hills and a beach that ran for uninhabited miles, that they did have. Often walked for miles until the light ran out and conversation dwindled to a soft silence as delicate as the balance holding the stars in the blanket of the sky. The moon turned the scene into classic black and white while they walked along the cooling sand, her looking heartbreakingly the movie starlet.

The thought of this would bring a smile to his face for years, but at the moment his mind is occupied otherwise. He watches the line of the horizon from behind his shading hand, giving one last wait for a fish to offer itself and at last decides to finish. She wouldn’t mind anyway, he had two small mackarel in his leather satchel and she wasn’t the shouting type. He slowly begins to make his way back in towards the shore, his feet numbed from the long stay in the icy Atlantic. Coiling his line and turning to slosh his way on to the sand of the beach heavy legged, he collapses as soon as he reaches the welcoming line of the land. The heat of the earth filters through his skin, slowly warming him for the few moments he lies there breathing deeply the sea air. The sun presses it’s heat onto his eyeballs insistently and I think its time he was getting back. Rising and gathering and beginning to make his way while the day dozes on unlistening, he pads towards the sand-land border near the house. These two were a lone speck of activity in the miles of silence reaching out in every direction around them, and she could hear his footsteps softly coming up the grass towards her.