Nick Holdstock

This is the start of The Sea, The Shore, a boy-meets-girl story of mine that appears in New Leaf 25. It’s too long to post all of it, but I may do so anyway, as currently New Leaf is only available in Bremen (though the good people who produce the magazine have assured me that at some point, possibly soon, you’ll be able to buy it from their website).

The Sea, The Shore

Audrey has had eight boyfriends in twelve months, and obviously, she’s done things; on sofas, on floors, on beds, on the back seats of borrowed cars, and once, when it was warm, on a blanket by the river. She has done a lot of things. But she has never done it. The boys have all been clever, nice, not inclined to rush things, quite the opposite: there has even been occasions when they were the ones who talked her out of what she thought she wanted. But in each case— an hour later, the next morning, or when she was on the flight from Lawrence, Kansas —she has been grateful that these decent, well-brought up boys were able to show the kind of sensitivity, the kind of empathy, that is generally thought to be beyond any male confronted with a golden goose. Because Audrey is pretty; she is attractive; her acne has cleared. The eight of the last year were thus, in addition to their patience and sensitivity, all cute, handsome, hot, or sexy, certainly much better looking than the usual kind of guy people give their virginity to. The boys, the quality of them, has not been the issue. Something else has made her shy. And no, not rape. Not abuse. The reason she is still, at twenty-three, my god, a virgin, is much less dramatic. It has been a simple failure of conjunction. The right place, the correct mood, the appropriate weather, the proper music, who knows, maybe the right number of fruits and vegetables consumed in the last sleep/waking cycle: one of any or all of these, must have been, on each occasion, somehow not ideal. And maybe, she thinks, as the English wave breaks, the boys weren’t that sensitive. They weren’t saints. Each of them, after the refusal (hers, theirs), found some reason to end things. Joel said he loved her too much; Ben that he was too fucked up. You’re going away, Steve said. I think a year’s too long.

Owen comes to the shore six mornings out of seven. Monday is the day he misses, when his lecture starts at 9. Otherwise he’s there, sometimes with coffee, sometimes a joint, always by the slipping line between the land and sea. He looks down the beach to the old wave-bitten pier. It is not a pier. It has not been joined to land for more than fifteen years. Better call it a birdhouse. Always, gulls are circling, their many thousands blurring. He likes the way they dive and wheel, the speed and its slowness. The flock gathers, rises, turns, as if gravity, like direction, is something they choose.

She likes the place, the sound of it. Brighten. Bright-town. She likes that it slopes. In the days before induction she walks down small leafy streets that point to the sea. The houses are brick, two-storey, their gardens full or missing. Begonias in dark chocolate soil. Hedges and lawns, large spreading shrubs. Or gravel, a path. The owners are all at work, the pavements taken back by cats that unwind, slow, from trees. She doesn’t stroke the fluffy ones— something gross about that hair and how the hand sinks in —but if they are smooth, black, orange, tabby, she drops to one knee. She runs her hands up and down, giving, taking comfort. She is not homesick. The language and the shops are really not much different. She hasn’t made any friends, but that will change when her course begins. In the meantime she drinks coffee and phones her Dad most nights. She is reassured to find that, despite the land and sea between them, despite the things her mother said— about her aunt, and her old teacher —his voice is the same. It is quiet, measured, sure; as slow and patient as water on stone. For the most part he listens. She tells him what she’s seen and done, and when, inevitably, she pauses, he, like all the best listeners, does not rush his voice in. Only when she’s finished, does he start to speak. His sentences are so concise that, if he were not her father, who loves her, they might seem reluctant. He talks, in his clipped way, of rain and rising water. Those people, he says. They’ve lost everything. He talks of the dog’s progress. Much better. On his feet. She brushes her hair, listens.

He likes taking the train to class. It is an old train. It has first-class compartments whose long seats face each other. The doors open manually, and from outside, which means passengers must slide down the windows and reach for the handles. This is not entirely safe. There’s nothing to stop a passenger from opening the door whilst the train is in full motion (over the viaduct, he thinks). And when the train enters the station (Moulsecoomb, then Falmer), if the passenger is having a bad morning, or is just vicious, the door can be released so that it will hit anyone not standing back behind the faded yellow line. He has never wanted to do this, but, because it is possible, he accepts that it may happen. What he prefers is to swing out, not completely, one foot stays in the doorway until the train has slowed enough for him to step to the platform. It is a small, graceful action, which, if accurately timed, lasts three or four seconds. In the context of the day, its different tasks, its many needs, the act is unimportant. He is first off the train whenever possible.

She likes her classmates, she likes her professors. By the end she’ll have a grasp of Policy Formation. But however much she reads, no matter how hard she studies, she is certain that she won’t be like the others. They talk (and no doubt think) as if they’d done the course already. They make long, fluid pronouncements on the state of things. They do so with confidence. Their speeches make sense. And this is not a gender thing. Thin-faced Roo is no different. It does not make Audrey feel stupid; just nowhere near as clever. In the first few weeks she tries to somehow catch up. She makes notes when the others speak, she reads the books they cite. She works hard, and there are prizes. When, during her presentation (“The Two Communities Metaphor and Loosely Coupled Systems”), she uses some of the names, she earns two nods, a smile, a softening of green eyes. She is heartened. But not sure she can keep it up. It won’t be the hare and tortoise: they will stay ahead. And it isn’t how she wants her English year to be. She wants time on the cliffs, the shore, in the many little shops that constitute The Lanes. She has spent the last three years in the library; she was summa cum laude. And so, when the sun shines, she resumes her walks with very little guilt. Sometimes she takes a camera. Sometimes she writes verse. She still does most of the reading, but not in that hungry way. Her classmates do not seem to mind; in fact, they seem more friendly. They have coffee in twos or threes; occasionally most of them go out for drinks. And of course, there are parties.

He opened the wrong door, saw the guitar; thought that he could play. He had hoped to strum a while without an audience. Instead he’s drinking rum and playing to almost a room full. But that’s okay. They seem alright. They are sprawling, perching, lying on a vulgar bed. It is like a large pink cake that has been fucked by a poodle.