The Beach

The sun beat down upon the broad stretch of sand as we pulled up to the park behind it that morning. The sun was only just over the rim of the world, but it still lashed the sand with heat that rippled off it. She looked over at me and grinned. She was a surfer, and the white tipped waves were in full swing out on the water. I smiled back, looking forward to seeing what she could do with the board. Covertly I was also looking forward to seeing some spectacular wipeouts as well. She hadn’t been into the water for a while. She had broken her leg once a few years ago and had almost rebroken it once or twice when she’d gotten back into a car. She forgot things.

‘Let’s see how I go…’

I took a moment to look out over the breakers before I replied.

‘Should be fun.’ Ten seconds later, we were both out of the clapped out old station wagon and she was tearing at the straps holding her board to the roof rack whilst I opened the boot and fumbled for some sunblock and towels. I freed a pair of faded ones from the sea of clothes and crap that we’d been living out of for the last however long, then began to paw through, looking for the bottle. It was a mark on how messy the back of the car was when she managed to get the board off before I found what I was after. I heard her footsteps beating the carparks’ dirt, and looked around the boot. She was already halfway across the park, huge yellow board ready.

‘Aren’t you gonna help me?’

‘See you down there, honey,’ the words floated back to me in the mid morning stillness. I shook my head and went back to my task.

I was left alone at the back of the car, hunting the sunscreen through a total mess of life. Eventually I found it, then straightened and moved towards the beach. I was struck, just then, by how empty the scene was and how we seemed to be the only things consciously alive for the moment. I stopped at the edge of the carpark and turned slowly, looking through the whole panorama of where I was. Night still faded towards the West, over the land. I could faintly see a star still shining there. The shore breeze swept in and shook the eucalypts and pandanus that clustered in around the clearing for the cars, seeming to move as one entity all around me. Sunlight shone in, and I noted that the sky was still pink with morning. I was totally alone, and as I turned, a horrible anxiety hit me. It is hard to describe even now, but for some reason I turned back to where I was meaning to go, and leapt onto the grass of the park. The sheer scale of the world around me crashed in at that moment, and I wanted to be gone from the place. Behind me, the star faded.

The edge of the beach was distorted with heat when I came to it, and the breeze that rippled it blew over me and cooled me as I took in the vista. The sky was immense above us, and the few clouds that were there moved in on the breeze. I savored the color changes the sun wrought on them for a moment, that odd fear subsiding and already half forgotten. The sea stretched away before me, out into eternity it seemed just then, and to either side of me were the rocky walls of the bay we’d decided to come to. Even these seemed huge and beautiful in the morning light, and I took in first one, then the other, and wondered in a vague way how long they’d stood here and seen this spectacle of morning. Beyond the dark line of the tide, the girl that I’d come with seemed a tiny speck against the volume of nature that we were presented with here. I was pleased to see her, and the last part of my fear dissolved as I saw her paddling out, oblivious to me. Her yellow board was like a beacon in amongst the shifting mass of water, and after a minute of taking in the scene, I jogged across the burning sand to the cooler stuff the tide had wet down, and sat for a while to keep watching.

I sat down on the beach, and watched her for a while.

She surfed without any pattern or need for one, and I clapped when she rode well and laughed when she fell off. Behind her, the great ball of the sun rose slowly and steadily, and gradually the crisp feeling of the new day fell away and the heat increased. I sat and considered how simple our enjoyment was here, and was thankful that we’d come down at the time we had. This thought led me to fulfill my own desire for enjoyment, and I got up and began to walk down the beach alone. The sun and sea were on my right, the dark rustling green of the park and open forest beyond to my left. Noise moved through the air from both sides, and before me stretched the dark yellow of the wet sand. Immediately I saw a darker patch in the shadowy headland that lay at that end of the bay, and I decided that it would be my destination. I strode for a while, curving down to the waterline to wet my feet in the cold brine, and left a single set of prints behind me in the sand. All the time, the noise filled the air and the behemoth of rock before me loomed larger in my vision. I never looked back, secure in the idea that she’d be amused for a while longer, and fell to listening, smelling and feeling my surroundings as I moved, soaking up everything. The sun was warm, the water and breeze were cold. The waves crashed near the shore, but always there was the more terrestrial rustle of the forest, huge in the air. I smelled the salt, felt the sand grind underfoot, and soaked it all in consciously, willing it to be remembered. After what seemed like not long enough, I stood at the edge of the shadow, and the hole in the rock was a deeper pool of darkness therein.

The climb up to the cave was short but hard, and I was sweating by the time I hauled myself over its’ sharp lip. I was high above the beach, and though I was panting and warm, I still shivered. There, in the shade and away from the sun, the rock seemed to suck the heat away from me and down into itself, to what purpose I couldn’t know. I took a moment there and cast my eye out over the beach, and was pleased with what I saw. The beach, the forest, and the headland at the other end of the bay all lay before me, and along with the clouds everything moved with the invisible breeze. In the midst of it all, the yellow slash of her board swung and slashed through waves. I turned away after that, and made my way carefully into the mouth of the cave I’d found. I wondered what I would find there. I had only made it a little way in, perhaps ten paces, when the keening of the wind over the lip I’d hauled myself over began to wail at my back, and the odd fear that I’d felt so recently began to return. I did not turn, nor did I move at all. Before me lay shadowclad rock, and I suddenly got the feeling that I was heading far away from all that was alive, and gravitating towards something that was at best dead and at worst something between the two. My mind went into freefall. The sound of the wind welled up in that space, and suddenly I shivered more. The rock was cold beneath my sandy feet, and I could see something the color of bone lying deeper inside the dark confines of the place I’d come to, on the ground. My mind began to spin, frightened. Even now I cannot explain the exact trigger or even parameters of the feeling. I felt very alone, very cold, and very, very far from anything meaningful. Anxiety held me to the spot for a few moments more, and I thought I saw movement there in that dark place. At that I turned and fled out of the cave, away down the rocks, and ran for a small while back up the beach, in the sun. I still cannot say what gripped me in that cave that morning, but I hope that whatever it was leaves me to my little life, and doesn’t pay me any more mind.

I sat on the beach for two hours, lathered in sunscreen and under the towels I’d bought down, and watched her. I laughed when she fell off and clapped when she rode well, and enjoyed the simplicity of the moment. She paddled into the shore eventually, and ran up to me with the board under one arm, smiling broadly.

‘Havin’ fun, honey?’

‘Lovin’ it, mate,’ I replied, smiling back.

The sun sparkled off the sea, her hair, and still beat down upon us.