Beacon

‘Dark is the night;

I need a guiding light

to keep me from foundering on the rocks’

- Mark Knopfler, Trawlerman’s Song

It’s perfect. Yet again I have the beach to myself, the sea a massive sheet of smoked glass in front of me. Nothing is moving; the whole world seems to hesitate around me. Yes, everything’s perfect, for tonight I am dinosaur hunting.

Every spring, the thornback ray moves in to inhabit my stretch of the coastline – great slabs of fish spread out over the sand, gnarled and ridged as tectonic plates gliding on wings and steering with a tail armed with rows of bony thorns. Unchanged for millennia, a triumph of function over aesthetic beauty, they have cruised the oceans, silent, semi-mythical creatures, to where I am quietly setting up in wait. Here be dragons.

The rods are rigged up; six foot snoods will waft enticingly in what little tidal movement there is and the baits, sandeels wrapped in a blanket of squid and bound into a tight sausage, are intricately prepared. It’s the perfect time for that quiet moment, a cup of coffee, sitting back in the mellow pool of light thrown out by my Coleman petrol lamp as it hisses in the dark.

What’s that noise? It sounds like “Wek…ha ha…Wek!”

Judging by the movement out there, it would seem that there is a giant, inebriated penguin with learning difficulties lurching toward me.

It never ceases to amaze me. Any other time a light is seen near the sea the news is generally not good – the frantic searchlights of the Coastguard helicopter, the STAY AWAY! of the lighthouse screaming spasmodically across the waves. But not my lamp. My lamp brings them flocking like moths. What’s more, it must be a magic lamp, for it seems to defy the laws of physics in the fact that it has its own gravitational field. Not only does it draw in anyone who happens to be on the beach, no matter how ridiculous the hour, it also seems to pull them into a slow orbit from a radius of half a mile or more.

Do these people never watch movies? Do they not know what happens to the character who goes back to investigate the noise at the end of the dank corridor rather than simply stepping through the door that happens to be right next to them? On what planet is a shadowy loner stood on an empty beach at two in the morning an inviting prospect?

Nevertheless, over the years the lost, the lonely, the desperate and downright weird have all stumbled into my circle of light at one time or another.

2007 – ah, l’amour!

I have had many encounters with lovers over the years, tripping over trysts and witnessing, unwittingly, some truly eye opening acrobatics.

Most recently I returned to my car and began wiping sand and water from the gear before packing it away when I was startled by a sudden slap, and glanced toward the car next to me to see what at first appeared to be the face of an agitated manatee gesticulating at me through the side window. Realisation dawned as I watched two pale buttocks squeak down through the trail of condensation to disappear again. I could imagine the conversation:

“Nothing to do with me, officer, I was just er…polishing my rod?!”

It didn’t take me long to pack away.

But nothing since has matched one year, the year, for such chance meetings.

God only knows what the local steelworks was pumping into the air that year. Perhaps it was the semi-romantic, though albeit slightly Close Encounters, reddy-orange glow in the air above the blast furnaces. Whatever it was, it was effective, for 2007 was the year of the lovers.

The first instalment of our tale happened at three a.m. on my local breakwater. A balmy April night saw me heading down to fish the rocks, known locally as the jackstones, or dragon’s teeth, for early bass. Conditions were perfect – a windless warm night, a spring tide with no swell rising into darkness.

Carrying only the lightest of gear, my bait and a headlamp, I had the whole pier to myself. Strolling leisurely along its length I had the pick of the fishing spots, so carefully deliberated over the merits of each, shining my headlamp into each dark niche and cranny in turn, freely and openly debating with myself the merits and pitfalls of each, when I came face-to-face with them, a young couple who had clearly been looking for the same solitude as myself.

For a second all three of us were frozen to the spot by the unexpected sudden presence of the other, but after the initial surprise it was clear that they had passed shock and were actually on the verge of cardiac arrest. Why? Put yourselves in their position – suddenly finding yourself confronted by some bleary eyed, unshaven, shambling stranger conducting a very serious and animated conversation with himself. Not the most reassuring of events for any young paramour to endure.

Secondly and, perhaps more significantly, they had literally frozen, astonished, in what they had been doing. It was only then that I noticed the boy, whilst gawking at me like a small rodent that knows it’s about to become roadkill, still cupped one stupendous, pendulous milky-white breast in each hand, and was seized in the stark probe of my headlamp like a man caught stealing ostrich eggs from the zoo.

What else could I do? Even in the most awkward of circumstances, the British are renowned for finding the coolly polite way out of the situation. I did what anybody would have done.

“Very good. Don’t mind me; carry on” I muttered, and resumed my journey to the pier’s end.

 *

The second encounter happened about half a mile further along the beach in early summer. A warm, clear night had settled down uneventfully into a soporific stupor. Through the fug and torpor there came the sound of laughter and shouting as another young couple half jogged, half stumbled their way onto the sand some fifty yards or so from where I was fishing.

After half an hour or so of laughing and innocent canoodling they had obviously decided that, despite the rapidly cooling air, it would be a good idea to go for a swim.

The girl was first in, simply kicking off her shoes and rucking her dress up around her thighs to paddle in the shallows. The young man though had clearly partaken a little too enthusiastically from the merry cup, as an amazing transformation occurred. By day he was simply a mild mannered citizen going about his daily business, but with a whiff of salt in the sinuses he miraculously morphed into Aqua Boy, master of his element. Faster than you could say “No, darling, it’s that shape because the weather’s turned a little chilly”, he had stripped naked, stacked his clothes in a crumpled pile and hurtled headlong into the breakers, presumably in search of marine based villains harbouring a burning desire to turn the whole world into a giant aquarium, with whom to do battle.

Now all this was well and good for twenty minutes or so until our hero turned around and realised that he had completely misjudged the incoming tide. Holy flippers, Mer-girl, where are my clothes?! Of course, in their confusion-cum-desperation, they turned around to see my light and tottered over to see if I could help. After ten minutes of scanning the surf with my headlight, we gave up after finding a T-shirt and one shoe.

Everyone knows that any solid relationship is based upon caring and sharing and in this spirit the young lady, with an admirable amount of dexterity and no little amount of skill, took off her underwear (whilst still brilliantly preserving her modesty, not that I was looking that closely) and proceeded, perhaps misguidedly, to hand it to her boyfriend in an effort to preserve some of his rapidly disappearing modesty.

As I watched them finally amble homeward along the promenade, the one shoe hooked on his finger like a prize salmon, his rump two hyperactive satsumas in the streetlight’s orange glow, I couldn’t help but think that due to the circulatory issues posed by what was now his thong, coupled with the rapidly dropping temperature, he would make somebody a lovely wife someday.

Who said love is dead?

2008 – inside the confessional

As a nation, the United Kingdom is obsessed with lists. I assume that this must be some throwback to our Victorian obsession with order, locked away in a dark genetic corner like an eccentric family member or a scandalous ancestral wrong-doing. Really? With the maid? And I thought that dear great Grandpapa was confined to a bath chair!

We keep lists of everything from monthly outgoings, shopping necessities, things to do on days off and even a list of those people we don’t really like, but to whom we mustn’t forget to send a Christmas card.

As we move toward the end of the year, this ‘listophilia’ really goes into overdrive. It’s as though we feel a compulsion to list as many things as we can before the year ends and we have to start all over again with the inevitable resolutions.

Even I must admit to flicking through the tabloids at the end of the year to find out who became famous, who cheated on whom and who died. But in 2008, whoever it was who saddened, delighted or repulsed me for whatever reason, they were completely obliterated from my memory a clear month before I had even read about them. In 2008 one name was indelibly burned into my memory: Mark.

That was it. Mark. I never even got to know his second name even though I could tell you when he met his wife, when he got divorced and most other things in between.

Of all the people I’ve met over the years, Mark is the worst (though most entertaining) type – one of those who comes prepared for the long haul.

As I was eventually to discover, Mark lived in a throwback of his own. Around seventy yards from the shoreline, developers have thrown up the inevitable quarter-of-a-million-pound plus, mock-Georgian houses and snazzy glass and concrete apartment blocks. Although christened with aptly salty seadog names like Mariner’s Point and Mariner’s Quay, there is, strangely, never a clay pipe or rope-soled shoe in sight.

Squatting, entrenched like a carbuncle amongst its ambitious neighbours, is a dumpy four-storey 1960s tenement. Every morning, many of the residents of Mariner’s Quay get to saunter across their cool, minimalist living rooms and throw open their Ralph Lauren drapes whilst waiting for their cappuccino to froth, only to gaze out at the peeling paint and mossy green stalactite-like stains running down the walls of Queen’s Court.

Due to the layout of the windows across the façade of the building it is known locally as ‘Celebrity Squares’, even though it’s more a faded straight-to-TV movie has-been rather than a Hollywood A-lister, and it must have been from one of these windows that Mark popped his head at four o’ clock in the morning, saw my light and decided to come for a chat.

He had, as my father would say, ‘a head like a busted sponge’, but to me it looked like a great knobbled cheese complete with the mould – a summer thunderstorm of broken capillaries flashing across his cheeks and nose. With every step he took it wobbled as though it were sellotaped on top of his neck, and threatened to fall off at any moment.

If my heart had already begun to sink at the prospect of his imminent arrival, it plummeted through the bottom of my wellies when I saw, clutched in his hand, his packed lunch – eight cans of industrial strength drain cleaner cunningly stored in dayglo tins to promote the masquerade of this substance being cider.

“How’s it going mate?” he asks, a wide smile splitting his face.

“Not bad. Doing quite well this morning” I reply, little knowing that this will be the longest string of words I’ll put together for the next few hours.

“How are things with you?” Despite never having laid eyes on the man before, I feel that this is a necessary courtesy. Had I actually known at that moment what I would so painfully learn later, I would probably have hurled myself from the rocks with a wide and genuinely happy grin.

He promptly settled in, cracking open the first of his cans as I watched eagerly to see whether the air above it would actually tremble or burst into flame, singeing his facial hair. Next came a spliff the size of a baby’s arm which, when lit, enveloped him in a cloud of pungent smoke which mingled with the acidic tang of the cider so that he took on the reek of a sun-scorched herb garden.

Three hours, eight cans and four joints later I was a beaten man. Over those one hundred and eighty long minutes, over the homely crackle of his eyebrows, every little detail of Mark’s life had spewed forth in an unstoppable torrent – every facet of his ex-wife (or ‘the bitch’ if I’m to be more accurate) and her apparently scheming, manipulative ways, right down to his obsession, and I mean obsession, with kites. I always thought that two crossed sticks and a diamond of material constituted a kite but no, oh no, the world of kites is one of strange diversity, a world about which Mark enlightened me with a sweaty-browed, distant eyed enthusiasm, as though he were furtively whispering about his favourite pornography. I could now easily take a PhD in kites or kiteism or however the hell they refer to it. It turns out that this obsession with kites had donated to the downfall of his marriage and now he hadn’t a clue where his ex-wife was. I wish I knew because I would have been hiding there with her.

Having unburdened all of his troubles, Mark drained the last of his cider, stood up and simply strolled off in the direction of his flat with what seemed a much lighter step than before, whilst I slumped against the nearest rock, shaking, to give a silent prayer of thanks.

This was my chance! Having used up all the bait, I packed up as quickly as I could and was finally ready to make my escape when I saw him returning. To my absolute buttock-clenching horror, I realised that I was trapped – there was no way off the pier other than past Mark. My life began to flash before my eyes followed by a vision of Mark standing over me clutching a bottle of Domestos, the only thing left to drink in his flat, exclaiming “Oh, one thing I forgot to mention…” as I slowly died, bleeding from the ears. Chin held high, I walked stolidly to meet my fate. Do you have a cigarette for a condemned man, Comrade?

Steeling myself for the verbal diarrhoea that must surely come, Mark surprised me yet again by holding out in front of me what can only be described as a pile of mangled roadkill, still bleeding profusely. Now, three straight hours of confession and absolution I could just about manage, but resurrection still being slightly beyond me, I wondered what he actually expected me to do.

“Thought you might be hungry” he mumbled. I looked a bit closer and the red ooze began to take on an almost recognisable appearance. At one point I actually thought I could identify a sausage, or perhaps that was just his finger. “Thanks” I muttered, suddenly realising that I was utterly ravenous, probably due to mental exhaustion, and though it contained enough grease to give a rhino a heart attack at forty paces, it turned out to be the best thing I’d tasted in ages.

Ah well, sometimes even Freud had to tone down his refined tastes.

2010 – sucker

It’s been an hour now. He hasn’t moved, spoken or even, as far as I’m aware, breathed. Forget the other nutters, this is something completely new.

To most, I’m something to be avoided, a lonely Hitchcock extra lurking in the shadows, but I’m small fry compared to this guy. He has a serious amount of creep factor. If Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi had contrived and somehow, against all natural odds, managed to have a love child, this guy would be the result.

Two hours. He’s either sleeping or, perhaps, clinically insane. Perhaps he’s a fishing groupie. Actually, that would make him clinically insane. And he’s sitting twenty yards behind me.

Three hours and by now I’m convinced he’s a vampire. I mean, what dull sod would choose to sit a beach for three hours in the middle of the night? He’s probably waiting for the opportune moment to swoop down, rip out my neck and suck the contents.

Keep calm old son, keep calm. My tackle box is full of wonderful gadgets that could be used as makeshift weapons with which to defend myself – a priest (I could really do with an actual priest now, but only have the type used to knock fish over the head), scissors, a filleting knife. Trouble is I left my box up on the steps behind me and it’s probably closer to him than to me. Still, if you count the contents of the fish bucket next to me – a smelly tea towel, a Tesco carrier bag and half a squid, I’m armed to the teeth.

He must be soiling himself.

*

Which brings me back to my current visitor, his stocky shadow still lurching in and out of sight around the fringes of my light.

“Wek! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

It seems he’s using some kind of primitive language I can’t decipher so that I can’t really work out whether he intends to

a) communicate with me

b) beat me up

c) make love to me

d) eat me

or, more likely, as my mind is screaming at me:

e) all of the above.

Either way, it’s not going to be pleasant.

I wonder if he’s scared of dinosaurs.

 

© copyright Simon Smith 2011