Chapter 1
The beach stretches towards Dungeness in the distance, and on a day like this in early spring the shingle is damp, the sea is cold and milky grey. The tide is out and exposed are a strange series of wooden pillars buried upright in the shingle, some joined to form walls or buttresses, marked on the Ordnance Survey maps as ‘groynes’. They were built all along this section of coastline 300 years ago to protect the beach from being dragged away by the tide. They run in a series of lines at 90 degrees to the sea, from above the high water mark into the surf. Solid, but decaying, smelling of salt and rotting seaweed. Each one rises in a line, some are collapsing, some have been reinforced. Dark, wet as the tide goes out; dry and safe once the sun has had a chance to warm them.
The old town is a mile inland on a hill prominently overlooking the coast. It was once a port, but over the centuries the sea has retreated leaving a marshy nature reserve, drained by canals, home now to horses and wild birds. The village of Shingle Beach has grown up along the coastline. There are bungalows, caravans and holiday homes, a couple of shops and pubs and a cafe.
Inland, man has stabilised the coast, but on the beach is a continuing battle between the sea and the wind and the stones. If you stand on the beach at low tide and look east away from the prevailing wind and current the shingle has piled up against the wooden groynes, leaving just the tops of the wooden pillars. On the lee side the shingle drops a metre or more leaving a quiet, damp, sheltered space, hidden from the view of the walkers and their dogs. If you walk along the beach, after a few hundred yards the holiday cottages stop and the view is clear across the nature reserve to the hills behind. The beach levels out, and there are patches of sand, driftwood, seaweed, pools left by the outgoing sea, tufts of strange plants. But the sand here is not for playing in, families with children go further down the coast. Here it is quieter, the preserve of dog walkers and hikers.
Along the top of the beach an old man, Charlie, and his dog are walking back towards the village. Charlie was tall but is now slightly stooped, braced against the wind. He looks out over the beach towards the sea. It surprises him still, this power of the sea to pile up such mounds of large pebbles, creating strange contours of shifting stones. As he walks over them the landscape rises and lowers, hollows appear and then aren’t there. You could hide here, a dog, lovers, a child. Nothing grows on the moving stones. Charlie comes here rarely now, he doesn’t want to remember any more, there’s too much sadness. Yet he is drawn back like a tongue to a sore tooth. He stops at the top of the sea wall and looks down to the small green the other side. Boys play football here in the summer, and families picnic. At one side of the green he can see Maple Cottage the family’s old holiday home, now sold. The agent’s sign is still there, and it looks empty. Like the whole village it has that rather sad out of season feel to it.
Someone blows a whistle, and a dog runs past him heading for a small family group playing on the beach; a mother with two children. He smiles at them, remembering another such family on this beach, and then he turns and walks back to his car.