Cold Day

A young man sat by a window in a harbour bar and watched the waves roll in.

His chin nestled into the pale palm of his right hand. His left hand lay still, cast across the table, encircling an empty pint glass and plate like the harbour arm outside sheltering the fishing boats. The thrum of an outboard motor cut the sound of the breeze, coughed to itself as the throttle caught, then quietened into a low murmur which disappeared into the noise of wind and water. A yellow nylon washing line snapped and spat, tethered at one end to a bowed apple tree and the other to a stainless steel pole wedged into the ground. The sky was a uniform grey, but it was darkening in the west.

He remembered the first time he had been out at sea in a storm, with his grandfather off Dymchurch. He would have been six years old then, and his grandfather would have been in his late-sixties, upright and able. They had gone crab fishing, and had put out creels earlier in the day. The storm had come out of nowhere, and the raging gale had blown away all memory of the summer breezes that came before. The world and its usual compliant angles had been reduced to a pitching trough of arcing water, and funnels of stormlight shone down tubes of black water. His grandfather had been at the tiller, smiling and gritting his teeth as he fought to rein in the small boat, roaring out instructions to his grandson happily.

The young man raised his drink to his lips absently, and drained the last of the bitter down the foam channels of the pint glass into his mouth. He swallowed the last dregs, and straightened the knife and fork on the plate. He swivelled around to say good-bye, but muted thumps from the kitchen signalled the landlord was out the back changing a barrel. Deciding not to bother him, he stood up, pulled his collar up to protect him against the salt wind, and opened the door and left. The bell above the door rang as he walked out.

The wind was building. Angled quills of marram-grass rustled in the dunes. The young man put his hand in his coat pocket, probing the lining vaguely with cooling fingers, and drew a thin roll-up and a plastic disposable lighter from the depths. He pushed the roll-up between his lips, and cupped his hand like a bird’s wing round the cigarette. He craned his neck, and tried to light it. Whichever way he turned, rivers of air gusted through his fingers, and the little pilot light shivered and went out. He ducked under the pink and pale yellow awning of a caravan’s canopy. The ball of his thumb was calloused into a hard welt from striking the rough ignition wheel. There was the brief smell of butane.

He held his elbow with his free hand, pulling the rough cotton of his coat against his body for warmth. The waves on the quay were falling over themselves now. A cat’s paw of wind flicked each swell into a serrated crest, and the sea beyond the harbour arm spat like a boiling pan. The wind was not yet strong enough for heavy waves, and so there were still boats out to sea, little shapes under a dim sky.

He watched a small yacht disappear as a swell blotted it from view, then saw it rise as the wave dipped, There was a hole in the sky above the yacht, and a halo of blue showed through it. Streams of sunlight fell from the opening and lit up the ocean. Like bright shoals. A tern crossed the open sky, then banked into the sea.

He watched the shadow-play of clouds on the sea and the flight of birds across the water for a moment, then turned inland. He ran his hand through his frond of black hair, now flattened with salt particles from the gusting wind, and walked down an empty street and past the newsagents. He then turned left down a rutted track. A heavy industrial cable, wound steel gone to rust, hung limply from a girder at the industrial works. It swung like a pendulum, and made a noise like a dampened finger on the rim of a wine-glass. He walked past the gutted remains of a security hut. The flanks of a white-painted generator to its left were barked with rust, streaks of torn open metal. They reminded him of the decking of a P&O ferry as a child, standing on the peeling deck as they came into Calais.

The last time he had walked through the industrial estate had been a few years ago, at the start of a long summer. He had avoided the place since then, even though the cooling towers and empty warehouses loomed over the village like a mountain range. Back then, the sun of an early summer had lit up the derelict site, and the smashed windows and steel gauges of fuel pumps that jutted out of the shingle like bones over the winter were then wreathed in honeysuckle and dogrose. The buildings, split open like stricken stumps, were vague shapes under clambering briars and the white vase-flowers of bindweed. Back then, the whine of steel cables and the drone of the cold wind had been replaced by the drowsy murmur of bumblebees and the hiss of the warm breeze in the grass.

He had wheeled his grandfather out into the morning, and even then, with the sun beating down with a strength more suited to early July than late April, his grandfather was still swaddled under two tartan blankets.

He remembered the skin of his grandfather’s hand, etched with blue tributary veins, as he stopped the wheelchair in the leeward side of an abandoned warehouse to pass his grandfather a whelk shell. His grandfather had turned it over and over in his hands, smiling gently, then assimilated it into the sun-warm blankets before they moved on.

They continued along a freshly-laid tarmac track placed down by the council to allow visitors to walk through the nature reserve. They arrived at the remains of a burnt-down church. Eleven years ago, there had been an explosion at the industrial estate – there were the usual clutch of conspiracy theories, but it was later revealed to have been caused by naphtha tanks rupturing – which had swiftly grown and engulfed the local church, a knot of houses on the fringes of the estate, and an old boy’s cottage that stood on the outskirts. The church had been the hardest blow to bear. Back then, there was still a steady congregation of perhaps forty or so pensioners and fishermen and even the local publican, and the church was as much informal social club as a house of worship. With the destruction of the church, the community dispersed. A chapel was built on the rim of the housing estate, but it was perhaps half a mile away from the centre the village, and as the remaining pensioners succumbed to age, infirmity, and the care home near Rye, the church was forgotten.

He and his grandfather had gone inside it that morning in April, and the sun shone down through the burnt spars of the roof. The apse window, a leadlight fresco of John The Baptist, had been beheaded by a nave beam giving way from the roof and shattering half the window, taking with it St. John’s head. The remaining stained glass glowed, and motes of dust twirled in the warm air. Little dunes of ash and dirt drifted along the pews. They sat quietly, the young man still in a pew, his grandfather at his side in the nave aisle. They said nothing, and listened to the wind ruffle the grass outside. His grandfather coughed.

This is nice.

The young man was surprised. His grandfather said little nowadays; mostly timid replies to gently posed questions.

What is?

Being here. I’m a broken old man now, they don’t let me out much. They think I get tired. Your mum and dad.

The young man smiled softly, and laughed.

And don’t you? You’re more than welcome to walk. That wheelchair isn’t exactly easy to steer.

His grandfather laughed.

Well, you’re young, you need the exercise. I am an old man, after all.

Make up your mind!

They both sat contentedly in the still light. Little shadows washed over them as a formation of gulls swooped overhead. An Oystercatcher piped quietly in the drainage canals.

I get tired of sitting inside. That bloody television. They think I like antiques programs.

His grandfather chuckled and looked ruefully at his blankets.

Or documentaries. On the war. Saw enough of that fiasco in Monte Cassino, rather not revisit it.

He continued to stare listlessly at his blankets.

The young man leaned back, and arched his arms over the sculpted back of the pews. His elbows dipped over the oak backrest.

I’m sorry. They just want to make sure you’re alright. You gave us all quite a scare after Christmas.

Eh. I’m fine. Except for this wheelchair.

His grandfather rubbed the wheels with his palms, rocking the wheelchair backward and forward.

Silly contraption.

The young man smiled again.

Perhaps, but it got you out of the house and away from Bargain Hunt, didn’t it?

Bloody right.

The door at the back of the church creaked open, and the young man glanced back. A chubby middle-aged man in an Arran jumper peered in, a heavy-looking Nikon camera slung around his neck, with a telephoto lens hanging on his utility belt. There was the shadow and suggestion of another person behind his back, and a mild female voice behind him confirmed it. The man looked around for a moment, his eyes lingering over the burnt rafters, and then he pulled back and shut the door with a conciliatory smile. His grandfather cleared his voice, and said gruffly:

Tourists?

Probably. Had a good-sized camera. Could be a nature photographer.

There’s a lot of them around here, these days.

It’s an SSSI. Apparently.

A what?

A Site Of Special Scientific Interest.

Ah.

His grandfather looked thoughtful.

Why?

The young man looked slightly abashed, then said:

Because we’ve got some rare moss. They say. I did my geography project on it a few years back.

They both went quiet for a moment, and there was nothing but the sound of the wind thrumming the telephone wires. His grandfather looked thoughtful for a moment.

Do you need a telephoto lens to photograph moss then? Doesn’t move about much, does moss. Thing about moss is, if it’s far away, you can walk over to it.

They both laughed, and his grandfather coughed and wheezed until the young man patted him briskly on the back. They sat in the sunlight for some minutes, until the breeze shifted direction and a crosswind began to blow through the broken windows. The young man rose to take his grandfather home.

Come on, it’s getting on for lunch. Pint in The Arms? We could get a ploughman’s, they’ve got a deal on.

There was no reply. He stiffened instantly, and bent down.

His grandfather’s small chest rose and fell, and shallow breaths whistled through his parted lips. His head was bowed into his breastbone, and in this place, in the cool of the noon wind and the spangled light of the stained glass, he looked like he was praying.

There was a sharp retort of broken glass, and the cold day came back to him. The blasting wind had knocked a few beer bottles from a window ledge – the industrial estate had become a popular place for the local kids to drink, and the area was littered with green beer bottles with damp pulped labels and fat plastic cider bottles.

The sky was black now, slicked with oily clouds.

The church stood on the edge of the estate, away from the ruined fuel tanks and storage silos. It had degraded further since his last visit. The apse window had blown out in a winter gale, and the buildings’ wooden skeleton had begun to succumb to damp and the endless blasting of the wind. The young man sat on a clump of rye-grass, his knees drawn in tight, and sat with his head bowed as the wind and rain caught him. He stared at the ruin of the church and the ruin of the sky.

He stood up after twenty minutes, and began to walk along the cracked tarmac track. He paused at the edge of the estate. A wash of blue was beginning to brighten the sky in the west, and new light lit up the track and gate ahead of him. He bent down to the shingle, and brushing aside dirt and grass stems, he picked up a coiled whelk shell. He picked it up and turned it over and over slowly, then let it roll to a stop in his open hand. He looked at it in his palm for a moment, then placed it in his pocket, and turned for home.