Chapter 3
May is the best month to come down. In the summer holidays it is always crowded; the caravan park has grown over the years and the beach houses are full. In May it is warm and quiet. Charlie bought Maple Cottage a couple of years after that first visit, after the agent had sent a circular to recent tenants to let them know if was being put up for auction. His plan was to try it out in the holidays and let it out when they were not using it; but Peter already loved the place and they quickly take to coming down for weekends and half term.
As they start to spend more time there they get to know some of the locals well. There is one family in particular who live a few doors down. Steven runs a local business in Rye, a bit older than Charlie and a keen golfer. His wife Carol volunteers at a local hospice. She is large and friendly and knows everyone in the village. They have two children, Emma and Liam. Emma is the same age as Peter, now 13, and Liam a couple of years younger. The three of them spend the holidays together, developing elaborate games on the beach and around the groynes, building dens and exploring.
This year the weather forecast is good and Charlie and Peter have come down as soon as the May half term starts. They have not used the cottage much in the spring and Charlie has some jobs to do about the place, so Peter spends the first afternoon sorting out the beach toys that are kept in a large box in his bedroom. He discards a lot of old shells that he collected the previous year, but keeps some pieces of driftwood that had fascinated him, with their strange shapes and colours. At the bottom of the box he finds the boat that he found that first year. He had repainted it after he found it, but although he had carefully picked appropriate colours his painting wasn’t that steady and it had always looked a bit odd. In some places salt in the wood has leached through discolouring the paint, and in others the paint hasn’t taken and has started to flake off. He had packed the boat away and after a while forgot about it, but now he picks it up and turns it over in his hands, looking at it carefully for the first time since the year he found it. It still feels warm, and he has a sensation as he picks it up as if it was charged with electricity, making his hands tingle.
For a couple of days Emma and Liam are busy with trips to Rye and walks on the downs. The next day starts clear and still and they are knocking at Maple Cottage soon after breakfast. They set off for the beach with Peter, Carol following them, shouting for them to slow down and to watch out for traffic and dogs. There are other children about, but none that they know well. A few people are on the beach, and they head for Peter’s favourite place a bit further down among the groynes.
The hollow that first attracted him is still there, but every year it is different. The shingle is always moving, and some of the groynes are smaller as bits fall off, some have been reinforced, changing the way the tide moves along the beach, creating different patterns of stones. The children drop their things in the shelter of the wood and run down to the sea. The tide is full, and although the water is cold they jump in and out and warm up on the beach, splashing around in the shallows, playing tag, falling over, laughing. Carol has brought a deck chair and sits with towels and drinks and Kit-Kats for when they get cold and tired and come running up the beach to her.
Peter has the boat with him. He doesn’t really want to play with it, but Liam has picked it up and taken it it back down to the hollow by the wooden buttress, and is floating the boat in a small pool of sea water that has gathered there. Emma and Peter climb to the top and are sitting on the warm wood, dangling their legs over the edge.
“Peter”, Emma says suddenly. “Do you know who that boy is?”
Peter looks to where she is pointing. Walking along the edge of the sea over the shingle is a boy in jeans and a blue shirt.
“No” says Peter. He hesitates. “I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know who he is”.
“He’s not from here” says Emma, “but I’ve seen him on the beach before. He hangs around the groynes.”
The boy stops, turns towards the wooden buttress, and appears to be looking for something. He is small, about 8 years old, and is searching in the foundations of the structure about 10 metres further down the beach.
“I don’t like him,” Emma says . “What’s he doing”? She looks up; it is suddenly very hot, although the sky is overcast. It feels as if someone has opened an oven door next to them. “He’s scaring me.”
Peter looks more closely, and as he does the boy looks up, straight at him. “Daddy,” the boy says. “Daddy”. Peter remembers being here before, he remembers the scene clearly, the hot day in the sun, the lost boy looking for his father. But the boy hasn’t changed in the years since. Peter has grown, but this boy is just the same. Even his clothes are the same. Peter feels the back of his neck prickling with sweat in the heat, and he shivers. He can smell something strange coming from the wood he is sitting on, strong in the sudden heat. Peter looks round. He can see Charlie approaching, talking to Carol, but no other grown-ups are nearby.
“Lets get down” he says. They clamber down to where Liam is playing with the boat. But Liam has felt something too, and is standing up and now looking at the strange boy and holding out the boat in front of him with both hands. They boy is standing very still quite close now, sad, lonely, looking up at them, looking hard at the boat. Peter can feel a powerful sense of something being wrong, as if he has forgotten something important that he needs to do and can’t remember what. They don’t move, it is as if they are all set into this place, this moment. The heat, the smell, and now no sound, just a low pitched hum that shuts out all other sound. The hum gets louder, and then suddenly it is as if someone has opened a window letting in a draught of cold air. The mood alters, a breeze comes from the land behind them cleaning away the sound, the smell, the heat. Liam drops the boat in front of Emma and she looks down and picks it up. It feels strange, and she turns it over in her hands before giving it to Peter. Emma hears a noise and turns to find Carol is there behind them.
“I thought I’d stretch my legs. What are you all up to? Found anything?” she says.
“Not really. Just some stones. We were playing in the sea but it is too cold to swim.”
“We were just playing” says Peter. He turns back to where the boy is, but the boy has gone. “There was a boy here, said he was looking for his daddy. But he has gone.”
“There are some families on the beach, further along, he has probably gone back to them.”
“He was scary,” says Liam, “he wanted Peter’s boat. Peter let me play with it.”
“Anyway you look as if you need a towel.” says Carol. “Lets see what we can find for you to eat.”
Emma and Liam follow her back up the beach, but Peter turns back towards the sea. Where has the boy gone? There isn’t anywhere he could go to. Peter walks carefully along the top of the thin wooden planks. He can see both sides from here, up and down the beach, but there is no one there. He jumps back down, and looks at the boat that he is still holding. What is it about this that caught the boy’s eye? Peter picks off a bit of the flaking paint. Are there old markings under the paint? He doesn’t remember any markings. The boat is warm to the touch, and has an energy that makes him shiver. And then the feeling is gone, it is just a piece of wood. He scrambles back up the beach after the others, where Charlie is pouring out drinks, and the boat is forgotten.