Memory Calls

Memory Calls

The storm had not abated when Gaston set out. The rain was heavy enough to bounce on the slick tarmac and the gutters were turbulent streams that occasionally overflowed to make pools of the low points of the road. The car splashed through these without problem, however, and progress was steady. He headed southwest in the hope of better weather.

Beyond Exeter there was a break in the rain and traffic thinned out so that his speed picked up. The sky remained dark and filled with massing cloud, so Gaston was not surprised when the rain began again as he crossed the bridge into Cornwall.

He left the Penzance road at Marazion and continued through Helston to the familiar roads of the Lizard. Here, in the southernmost part of England, the worst of the storm had passed and the rain stopped. This, after all, was the purpose of his long drive along the coast, his search for better times and memories of the past. Southward, always southward he drove, almost to Lizard town itself, until the narrow track toward the west appeared. A weather beaten sign declared the track’s destination: Kynance Cove.

Gaston had slowed the car as he watched for the track and now he turned into it carefully. Along over its humps and bumps he dawdled, in no hurry now he was so close to his goal. He passed the old house, well remembered and unchanged, to enter the field of the car park. It was empty of cars and he was able to park at the far end where the pathway down to the cove began.

He waited a few moments before getting out of the car. The sky was still overcast and the wind strong, echoing his dark mood of the last few days. If anything could lift his spirits, surely it would be this place, the site of the happiest moments of his youth. He left the car and started down the pathway.

The ground was hard-packed, greasy earth covered with small stones that shifted beneath his feet. Always dangerous in its unsteady footing and steep incline down into a gorge between two headlands, the rain-washed path seemed more treacherous than he recalled. As he descended and drew near to the place where it turned sharply to the right at the edge of a cliff that dropped into the ocean, Gaston realised why the place was deserted in such weather. Arms extended for balance, he reached the corner and turned toward the last stretch before the cove.

Then he was standing at the top of the great boulder that one had to slide down to reach the sand below. The cove spread out before him, crashing surf pounding up the beach between the giant rocks scattered like sentinels along its length. Piles of driftwood lay at the base of the slope up to the headland behind the cove and the café huddled at the summit against the wind. Dark shapes of crows and rooks were flying around the building and Gaston was reminded momentarily of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” movie.

This was not how he remembered Kynance. His memory was of bright summer days, clear, aquamarine waters rippling on white sands, and ice creams from the building on the headland. Yet nothing was changed apart from the weather. And the dramatic scene of the ocean enraged by the storm and dark clouds overhead added another side to the cove that was not discouraging.

It was the sight of the circling black birds that was somehow ominous. He needed to see what had caused that.

Gaston crouched down and slid the length of rock to the sand. This, at least, had not changed. The sand was damp but still white and the rocks scattered through the surf homely in their familiar shapes. He trudged through the sand to the slope leading up to the building.

The grass covering the incline was slippery but Gaston was soon at the summit. Now he could see that the birds were attracted to a large, dark shape near the building. As he came closer, Gaston could see that it was some kind of dead animal that the crows were feasting on. They flew up in a cloud as he approached, hovering in the wind that was much stronger up there on the bluff.

Unable to identify the dead creature, Gaston walked on past it, heading for the edge where the land fell away abruptly to a smaller beach at the tip of the headland. Only accessible at low tide, this beach was a strip of sand that connected the cliff to a small island several yards offshore. Usually this strip lay above the high tide mark but now, as Gaston looked down at it from the edge, the boiling seas sent wave after wave surging through the gap, creating a maelstrom of boiling waters as the waves from one side met those from the other. The sandy beach below could not even be seen.

Here the wind was fiercer than ever, nearly blowing Gaston from his feet and making him sway as he gazed at the dramatic sight below. How often he had arrived at Kynance in the early morning when he knew the tide would be low, hurrying through to this hidden little beach before the incoming tide cut it from access by others, and so had it to himself throughout the lazy, sun-kissed day.

It was somehow exciting to see it like this, a deadly, crushing cauldron of rushing waters. Suddenly he knew why he had driven all the way to see this place again. With a smile on his face, he looked bravely into the wind one last time, then threw himself off the cliff and down to the raging water below.


Word count: 965
For The Writer’s Cramp, March 12 2023
Prompt: Include the following in your story or poem: break in the rain, drive along the coast, "The Birds" movie, crashing surf, piles of driftwood.