First Episode

Harold had not blinked in fifteen seconds. An old, long-suppressed memory had arisen to form a dark blot on his otherwise carefree morning mood. They were not unknown to him, these intrusive recollections, and as he would grudgingly acknowledge himself, that sometimes when you have reached his advanced age memories could become a bit muddled now and again. But even allowing for that, this was different: darker, irregular, more unexpected. He raised his compact binoculars … He was beginning to wonder if he was not inflating it in his own mind, especially when he recollected that only the other day, without prior warning or signal, he was a stripling of seven once more, sitting underneath a large sycamore tree with his father and watching spellbound as the green locomotive of the Somerset and Dorset Railway Company scythed through the valley floor. The thrill of the power and sound had come back to him as if it had occurred that very morning. And that was all very well, he considered, but then there were also the other kind of memories, like the one that had come this morning and these were not nearly so welcome. After all this time, after all these years, he thought he had learnt the knack of knowing when they were imminent: almost always coming after a period of introspection followed by a slow darkening of his mood. So he knew he really should not be expecting one now. Not when the encroaching day was finally starting to win its battle with a stubborn mist that was clinging to the hollows of the dunes and when a rising, gold-tinged light was just starting to reveal a virginal beach, virtually unspoiled by any falling foot. It shouldn’t have come now, but it had and he rather suspected something must have sparked the intrusion. He just did not know what it was. One moment he had been on his hands and knees working away in assiduous labour, when this memory of an old friend had seared into his consciousness with a clarity he would never be able to replicate by conscious choice. He was a rarely remembered friend now, although one who, conversely in many other respects, seemed to have been omnipresent his whole life. As the rising half sun threw its pale rays across the infinite sea, he saw his expression, heard his contagious rising laughter, and as the recollection transcended the ever-growing distance between them, heard the distinctive nasal twang of his voice. Harold finally pulled himself up from his crouched position. As he stood, an uplift in the breeze caught on his thick mane of white hair, pushing his hairline back and exposing craggy, weather-tinted features that still carried remnants of perplexity and surprise at the memory’s sudden emergence. If anyone happened to be passing by at that moment – as no one actually was – and seen his profile from behind, they would have been forgiven for mistaking him for a younger man, with his thick hair and broad back. But the face told an altogether different story. Heavy bags under his eyes gave him a perpetually tired expression and the deep crevices in his brow spoke truthfully enough about the life he’d led, even if his face did still retain the aura of affability he had carried all his life. His eyes remained inquisitive, bright and alert. He rummaged in his clothing and removed an antique chronometer watch from his hip pocket. Not yet six-thirty. Not yet six-thirty and he’d already been out on the dunes for forty-five minutes, having arisen before dawn to walk down the narrow coastal path to an area of undersized dune where grass growth was weak and adolescent in comparison with larger, better established neighbours. He snapped the clock shut and glanced disapprovingly at a small pyramid of Budweiser bottles that stood next to the embers of a died fire, showing that he hadn’t been the only recent visitor. He appraised the rest of the dune. He was already intimately familiar with it, having nursed it since its prototype stage, as indeed he had for many of the dune hillocks that bordered the beach. Ostensibly, he’d done this because the local authority paid him a small retainer for doing so, but his real motive was rather more altruistic: he owned one of the cottages lying in the hollow behind the dunes and had a vested interest in protecting it from the higher of the spring tides and worst of the winter storms. Just three months earlier, he’d laid the foundations for this particular dune around two wooden pallets, propped together and tied with rope before being covered in vinyl carpet, so that as wind had driven sand against the newly laid obstacle it had mounded and grown, until eventually burying the pallets completely. He was now returning this morning to lay the pioneering salt-resistant lyme grass and sea sandwort, knowing it would help bind the dune together. And he’d been making good progress. Until the intrusive memory came to halt his morning’s work. He surveyed the bay. He saw a beach and sea deserted save for two kite surfers, who bobbed up and down on a very moderate swell, and about two-thirds of the way down the beach, a lone jogger who was working his way along the water’s edge. He watched the runner as he approached, watched until he was little more than a hundred yards away, close enough for him to see the boy’s footprints outlined with a perfect clarity in that brief transitory moment before the moulding, cloying sand eradicated their trace forever. He continued to watch the boy, watched on as he came on up and then past his position before he gradually started to disappear into what was left of the morning haze. As he watched the boy, he felt the memory return to the cusp of his mind, but still its genesis, its source, wouldn’t come back to him. No more enlightened, but feeling in a better frame of mind, he resolved to treat it as one of life’s little unexplained idiosyncrasies. He pondered on it. Hasn’t a lifetime’s experience warned against trying to drag a logical explanation out of every unexplained puzzle? He resolved not to start torturing himself over it now and, with these positive thoughts in mind, he picked up his large hessian sack, scooped out a large handful of the lyme grass seed and bent back down to the dune. The fine beige sand parted easily under his probing fingers and in no time at all, the intrusive memory regressed far from his mind. He became engrossed in his work, and it was not until beads of sweat began to form on his brow and until a good ten minutes had passed that he stopped again to look back down the expanse of beach. He could see that the runner, having apparently reached the headland, was now retracing his steps back along the beach and as he re-emerged from the morning haze, his profile became ever starker against the ethereal light of his backdrop. And then the memory came back. Even clearer this time and causing him to inhale with the shock, for this time he knew exactly what had sparked the memory. He stood entranced, distracted to the extent that he failed to hear his wife Mary’s footsteps approaching from behind. He started physically as she slipped her arm into his and in his disorientation, acknowledged her with only the briefest of smiles before turning back to the runner. She followed his gaze. “What is it, love?” she said, staring. “Is that basking shark back again? A pod of seals?” “Sorry?” he asked, distracted. “Is that basking shark back?” “A shark? Oh sorry. No, Mary, nothing like that.” He pointed to the shore. “Mary, look at that child down there.” Beside him, Mary turned her head to look at the runner. “Look how he runs.” “I don’t understand,” Mary said. She turned to Harold and then looked back to the runner. Harold was so engrossed he barely took in the words. Mary was looking back down the beach and seemed utterly confused now, probably because she could see nothing unusual in the boy’s run, or in his gait, or in his features and appeared to be on the verge of telling Harold this, when she appeared to check herself. She would have seen something in Harold’s expression, a very unusual intensity of expression, that would have cautioned against it. Down on the beach, she would have seen a youth in his late teens, willowy of build and rhythmic of movement, but hardly of any strikingly unusual aspect as to have attracted Harold’s wonder. The boy was coming closer now, his features becoming more visible and they both stared at him. Mary scrunched her face as if she was half expecting to be struck with the dawn of recognition, but she still looked confused, as if wondering if she was looking at the right thing. It was the boy, though. Harold had indeed seen something in the boy, in his gait, in his carriage, but most markedly of all, in that gliding effortless run that brought memories flooding back to him. Memories of a run belonging to another young man in a very different era. Amongst all others in his mind, one image dominated. An image of this young man chasing a sky-blue liveried MG Mark T motor vehicle down a country lane, while a lady’s shawl streamed wildly from his hand. He recalled the boy gaining on the car, the driver slowing to tease him until he was almost within touching distance, before the engine would rise an octave and the car would pull tantalisingly clear again. Harold smiled as he recalled the shrill feminine laughter emanating from the back of the car that prompted the boy on to even greater effort. Just moments earlier, the boy had chivalrously hopped from the car to recover the shawl after it was dropped by its owner, only to find himself the subject of their fun. He envisaged the boy’s run in his mind. A rhythmical run, with the chest held slightly proud and the wrists, loose, floppy and elastic by his side, providing an impression of energy conserved. Yet it was a flick of the right heel towards the buttock that really gave the run its unique signature. It was a kink in an otherwise smooth running style, a kink that a zealous running coach would probably urge eliminating, but which in all reality barely registered on the efficiency of the movement. It was a distinctive run, providing an insight into the uniqueness and independence of the boy that once owned it. In Harold’s mind, the run would forever belong in that leafy country lane, locked in its own moment in time and belonging to no one but the past. His face relaxed as he recalled the good-natured teasing. Mary seized her moment. “What is it you see, Harold?” “That boy,” he said eventually. “What about him? What is it you see about him?” “He runs just like Peter.” * Nick Austin felt his thighs burn with an intensity that surprised him. Each successive impact of his falling heel was driving his foot deep into a cloying sand, a sand that would form around his heel, gloop through his toes and finally engulf the whole brow of his foot, so that as he wrenched his feet free his progress up the beach was accompanied by a puckering soundtrack that carried far across the empty beach. When he first set off, he had been confident that the energy-sapping routine would be well within his capabilities, but it was beginning to seem that a recent bout of flu had stripped him of more strength than he’d allowed for and he was just starting to feel a first bilious build-up in the pit of his stomach. With its sudden rise, he made a spontaneous decision to cut his run short, so, turning away from the sea, he jogged up the beach to the spot where he’d left his clothes balled up in a towel well out of reach of the clawing tide. He came to a halt beside his belongings and, fighting a desire to double over, placed his hands on his hips and took several long, deep breaths. He felt light-headed. Just prior to the recent illness, he had been deep in training for a regional, multi- discipline surf life-saving competition, an event consisting of swimming, paddle-boarding, paddle-skiing and running, but now as he stood on the beach trying to re-oxygenate his system, he began to wonder if he wasn’t perhaps terminally behind schedule with his training. Probably, he concluded. Or at least, he definitely would have been if he hadn’t taken his coach’s sage counsel and only entered the junior under twenty-one competition as opposed to the full men’s open competition he originally had his designs upon. At six feet two inches tall, seventeen soon to be eighteen, his shoulders were certainly broad enough and his running fitness may or may not be retrievable in time, but the true adult strength, the powerful back muscles that would haul him through the ocean were still a few years away from developing, illness or no illness. In many respects, he still retained the coltish appearance of someone who had not quite grown into their frame. He stood there motionless, filling his diaphragm with ten slow, deliberate breaths, before bending and slipping his watch out of the toe of his shoe. “Damn it!” he cursed aloud. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!” he cursed in increasing volume. He had been on the beach longer than even his most conservative estimates allowed for and he was going to be pushed if he was to make it to work on time. Ironically, only a month ago he’d have gladly not turned up at all, but having been co-opted as an especially reluctant Saturday helper with the Dorset and District Autism Society, he found to his not inconsiderable surprise that he enjoyed his time spent with the children. He had come by the job by a convergence of circumstance. One of the full-time staff members at the society had gone down with a dubious health ailment: a migraine, just happening to coincide with her birthday, which had led his mother to team up with the manageress of the group – also her best friend – to chide, chivvy and, ultimately, virtually press-gang Nick into helping out as a last-minute replacement. It was an unlikely slice of good fortune, for he had enjoyed working with the children to the extent that he now looked forward to the weekend sessions with some expectation. And this past week, he had aligned himself with the society full-time as part of his school work experience week. It was an unusual job, and certainly a departure from the supermarkets, coffee shops and DIY outlets where his peer group found work, but it was one he wouldn’t change. With a burst of renewed energy, he bent and scooped his clothing from the sand, knowing all too well he was going to be hard-pushed if he was going to get to St Clair’s Community Centre, home of the society, in time. Yet as he set off up the beach, he found his limbs were refusing to carry him quite as quickly as his mind was instructing and he was not even halfway off the beach before he needed to stop and shake out both of his aching limbs in turn. He was just using his thumb to knead his right thigh when he noticed, just out of the very periphery of his vision, an elderly couple standing arm in arm on the crest of the dunes. Even as he swivelled in their direction they were starting to turn away, but not quite quickly enough to disguise where they had been staring. It was with curiosity that he watched their retreating profiles as they slipped out of view on the downside of the dune.

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