Sea Change

by

Francis
Rowan

Copyright ©
2011 Francis Rowan

Smashwords
Edition

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Cover design by Francis Rowan

Chapter
One

Shadows moved,
and a cat flowed from darkness into the narrow alleyway. It stepped
in silence between the two rows of cottages, stopping only to sniff
at a lobster basket propped up to dry.

A dark shape
something like a man, but not quite, came into the alleyway, and
the shadows pressed in closer. The cat froze, one paw in the air,
fur standing on end. Then it was gone, a blur of movement that did
not stop as it reached a wall, just changed direction from along to
up.

The figure
stood still for a long time, as if waiting for something to happen.
Dawn began to paint the tiled roofs of the cottages red, but the
light did not reach down into the alley. A mist grew around the
figure, and dark shapes moved within the mist. It raised its head,
and sniffed at the air, like a dog that has caught the scent of a
rabbit. Then it spoke, the voice dry and papery and sounding as if
it came from a long way away.

“One is
coming,” it said, and sniffed at the air again. “A boy.” The shapes
in the mist moved restlessly.

Then the
shadows pressed in even closer around it, and when the dawn chased
the last of the night from the alley there was nothing there other
than an empty lobster basket set out to dry.

Chapter
Two

The bus reached
the top of the hill, the land to the left dropped away, and John
pressed his face against the dirt-streaked window to look out. The
bay curved round, and on the far side rose again into a towering
cliff. Between the land and the sea a chaotic scattering of houses
looked as if a giant's hand had picked them up and simply dropped
them down the cliff side, letting them rest where they fell.

This is the
most beautiful place that I have seen, John thought. I didn't know
that places like this really existed, not like my world of suburbs
and parks, all neat and tidy. This place is different: this is
smugglers and stormy nights when the sea crashes and roars outside
your window like a wild animal, pacing around, waiting to get in.
This is secret caves and hidden passages, gnarled fishermen and
eccentric artists, this is where I am going to be spending the next
three weeks, and already I love it. No-one knows me here other than
my sister. Maybe I can lose myself here, forget about what happened
at home, forget that I have to go back there when the summer term
starts. Maybe, he thought. But John knew that what had happened at
home, he had brought with him.

The bus stopped
at the top of the village and John scrambled his rucksack out of
the door and onto the side of the road. A boy who looked a couple
of years older than John sprawled across the bench next to the bus
stop, chewing gum and staring at John with blank eyes.

"Hi," John
said.

The boy said
nothing, just stared for a moment or two longer. Then he looked
away and spat his chewing gum into the grass at the side of the
bench.

Just like them,
John thought. I can see it in his eyes. In the way he's sitting,
the deliberately casual pose that sneers I own this place, I own
you, and I can do whatever I want. He's just like them. John
shrugged his rucksack onto his shoulders and set off to follow the
directions that his sister had given him to her shop, not looking
back.

As the road
dipped towards the sea the houses stopped being identikit modern
boxes, and became a higgledy-piggledy squash of older houses and
fishermen's cottages. Every building was different, and they all
looked to John as if at any moment they would slide off down the
hill and collect in a heap at the bottom. Many of the doors were
painted in bright colours, sky blues and sea greens, a contrast to
the flaking whitewashed walls.

John passed a
pub called The Porpoise, and heard voices and laughter from inside,
caught the warm and beery mysterious pub smell. Every few metres,
small alleyways or flights of steps squeezed their way in-between
the houses and shops, but where they led to was hidden by the
twists and turns of the stone, and by the shadows. You could get
lost here, John thought. He felt as if he was being watched, and he
turned around a couple of times but could not see anything other
than the buildings and the dark gaps between them.

The sun had
slid down behind the cliffs, and dusk stole into the village. The
temperature had dropped as well, and John shivered into his coat,
still used to the fug of a day on over-heated trains and buses. He
walked a little further and found the opening of the narrow alley
that Laura had described. It was right next to a faded shop with
bandy-legged tables outside, stacked with books in various stages
of decay.

John could not
see the other end of the alley, and after a few steps he reached a
point where he could not see the road that he had just left either.
Another alley branched off to the side. John hesitated, trying to
remember directions. The air felt cold, and he couldn't hear any
other sound in the village. A thin mist crept up from the
flagstones and wrapped itself around John’s legs.

Which way, John
thought, straight on or up here to the left? Come on, just make
your mind up. Then his mind was made up for him, and he hurried
straight on, walking so fast that he was almost running. For a
moment he had thought that a voice had come from the side alley, a
voice as dry as paper that whispered this way, this way. But as he
came out onto a street of shops closed for the night, metal
shutters down over their windows, he shook his head, embarrassed.
You’d better get used to the sound of the sea, he thought, to the
whisper of the waves, or you’ll be jumping at shadows all the time
you’re here.

One shop’s
windows were still glowing warm with light, and as he approached he
saw the hand painted sign, Crystals and Candles. Before he reached
it, the door opened, and a woman with long dark hair looked
anxiously out into the street.

"Laura!"

"John!"

His sister ran
out of the shop, caught him in the middle of the street, and gave
him a hug that took all the breath away from him. She smelt of
spices and candle wax.

"I was getting
worried about you. It's coming in dark now and I was thinking oh,
he's missed the bus or something, why didn't I go and meet him,
poor thing is probably lost and mum and dad will go spare—"

"No worries,"
John said. "I'm fine. And I’ve got my mobile, you know. I would
have called if there’d been any problems. If you were worried, you
should have given me a ring." He didn't want Laura fussing, because
fussing destroyed the fantasy that he was a grown-up, able to cope
with anything, and that no-one would think of him as a child who
had to be looked after. That was one thing that he had come here to
get away from.

"Mobiles?”
Laura made a face. “Bad for your brain, John. All that radiation, I
don’t want to be the one responsible for boiling your brains. After
all, it’s not like you’ve got much to spare. But look at you.
You've—"

"Grown. I
know," John said, laughing.

"Sorry," Laura
grinned and ruffled his hair. "Now I'm acting like Auntie Val,
aren't I? I'll be knitting you balaclavas next. My little brother,
all grown up. I remember changing your nappy and—"

"Don't start
that again. You look well Laura, you really do." Except she didn't.
There were dark smudges under her eyes, and a dullness in her eyes
instead of the sparkle that John remembered. She'd lost weight too,
and she hadn't needed to. When Steve had left her, he had taken
part of her away with him.

"Let me just
switch the lights off and lock up, we'll get down to the cottage
and I'll make you a nice cup of tea and something to eat," she
said. “You must be tired? Hungry?"

"I'm all
right," said John. "Not that hungry right now, to be honest. Had a
sandwich on the train, some crisps. And a Mars Bar."

"Fine, we can
eat later. I'll get some fish and chips or something. Fish and
chips sound good?"

"More than
good. Perfect."

Laura darted
back inside the shop, and the windows went black. She came back
out, jangling keys, and locked the door.

"Not far, we’re
just around the corner. To be honest, I could have had the flat
above the shop but it was just too small."

When John saw
the house, he realised that the flat above the shop must have been
very, very small. Laura stopped and pulled a long key from her bag.
She rattled it into the lock, twisted and turned a couple of times,
and then the door creaked open. "This is it," she said. "Home for
the next few weeks."

John followed
Laura in, and thought he'd just stepped into a crooked house in a
fun fair. Mum and Dad's tidy semi was hardly big, but compared to
Laura's cottage it was a mansion. A narrow hall opened out on one
side into a tiny living room, and on the other to a kitchen with a
small table in the middle, and just about enough room for a chair
at either end.

"Kitchen
there," Laura said. "Front room, telly's in here." John saw the
television. It looked as if it had not been switched on since it
was used to watch the moon landings. There was no Sky or cable box
in sight, but that was no real surprise. Laura had never really
approved of watching TV. Or mobile phones. Or computers. I'm just
glad she'll put up with electric light, John thought. She took him
through the front room and out of a door in the far side.

"Bathroom,
toilet, in there," she said, waving at a small door to the left
that John had thought was a cupboard. "And our rooms are up
here."

In front of
them a set of wooden stairs spiralled upwards. "Mind your head."
John ducked as he walked up the stairs, sticking to the widest part
of the treads. "This is yours," Laura said, opening a wooden door
at the top of the stairs, "'fraid I have to come to and fro through
it to get to mine."

John looked
around. There was a bed on one side, next to the window, and an
elderly wardrobe. John couldn't tell if it was the wardrobe which
tilted to one side, or the floor. A window was set in the far wall,
over the bed. John climbed on to his bed and leaned on the
windowsill to look out.

"Wow."

"View all right
for you?" Laura asked.

"You never
mentioned this."

She smiled.
"Thought that it would be a nice surprise."

John watched
the white lines of waves racing towards the breakwater, the calmer
water inside the harbour. A man in orange oilskins stood up in his
little fishing boat as the engine belched black smoke and the boat
rocked its way out of the harbour.

"It is," John
said. "It is."

Laura ran out
for fish and chips while John unpacked and they sat at the kitchen
table and ate it straight from the paper. Laura talked about their
mum and dad, about the house, about people she hadn't seen for some
time, about her shop, about everything except Steve, or about what
had happened to John. School was never mentioned, school was left
untouched.

John thought,
once or twice, that he might mention it, but every time that he did
his stomach turned to ice, and he felt as if he were back there in
that narrow corridor with the slam, slam, slam of locker doors and
the copper taste of fear and humiliation. Laura would be sweet
about it, he knew, kind and sympathetic and protective. But that
didn't make it any better, not one bit. So he didn't bring up what
had happened to her, and she didn't bring up what had happened to
him, as if by a mutual agreement that they didn't want to spoil the
pleasures of the present with the sadness of the past.

He watched
television for an hour or so after tea, but the journey had tired
him out and he had to concentrate to stop his eyelids drooping
shut. John stumbled up the stairs and into his room. When he was
ready for bed he peered out of his window one last time. The
moonlight made the tops of the waves sparkle. He was about to let
the curtain drop when he saw movement down in the street, a sliding
shadow. After a moment he realised that it was just a black dog
padding along, sticking close to the wall on the far side of the
street, on its way out to some nocturnal canine adventure. He let
the curtain fall, and snuggled down into the soft warmth of his
duvet, and tried to think of everything apart from the past, but
just like every night he failed, and lay there instead probing away
at his memories like at a sore tooth.