Chapter Eight
There’s a little break in the clouds so I haul Daniel’s suitcase out of Diane and reach for my bag, (which is actually just a bookshop tote full of treasured books that I couldn’t bear to leave at home) and my wallet and phone.
I spot a faded sign on the back wall of a building towering over the car park. Shaped like a pointing hand, it reads ‘Up-along’ so I guess that’s where I’m going.
Dragging the suitcase up the grey stone steps towards an archway under the building isn’t especially easy but I’m trying to be ‘present’ and take it all in.
There’s ozone, wet sand and salt and delicious cooking smells in the air and I hear shushing waves and the cries of gulls. I can’t see the birds anywhere but somehow I feel as though they’re watching me struggling with my case and laughing. A few spots of rain hit me and I don’t like the lowering look of those clouds. There’ll be another downpour soon, I reckon.
Once I’m under the archway I’m presented with another signpost. This time it’s got arms pointing in every direction.
Harbour and The Siren’s Tail Pub
Up-along, shops and visitors’ centre
Donkeys
‘Right! Obviously,’ I say aloud. ‘Glad I know where the donkeys are kept.’ I’m shaking my head, chuckling in bewilderment when I step out from the archway and— justwow! I thought I’d seen seaside views before, but this?
To my left a great arm of sea wall reaches out into choppy, summer-storm water. The wall is giving a protective hug to the boats bobbing on their chains in the tide, and out at the end of its stone arm stands an imposing inn, rising out of the sea, all whitewashed walls and red geraniums in boxes beneath every one of the many little windows that must be guest bedrooms. Even though there’s nobody to be seen standing by the windows I have the uncanny feeling of being observed.
In front of me the waves slosh up a sloping shore of grey pebbles where gulls jump and flap, picking over stones at the water’s edge. There are lobster pots, nets and buoys, and men washing down boats.
The grey beach seems to stretch on and on away from me for miles in a long, pebbly curve watched over by the towering rocks all topped with what looks like a treacherous, windy, green coastal path.
To my right – that’s where my feet are already wanting to lead me – is the steepest street I’ve ever seen, only a couple of metres wide in parts and on each side stand white-walled cottages with little front gardens snaking all the way up the hill.
‘Up-along,’ I mutter to myself.
As I climb on the hunt for my bookshop, passing a few tourist families in kagoules on their way down to the beach with crabbing nets and buckets, I peer into the tiny gardens all packed with bright, clashing flowers that I don’t know the names of. There are quaint little timeless touches everywhere I look: pale pink and lemon roses on trellises around the cottage doors; a milk churn on a doorstep full of flowers; an old bicycle tied to fence railings and wrapped in flapping floral bunting with a hand-painted sign over the crossbars that says, ‘Harbour Mouth Cottage B&B’ and ‘No Vacancies’. There’s a red post box that must be Victorian by the looks of it and ornate gas lamps all the way up the street, andooft, this incline’s making my knees ache!
How can anyone actually live here, making this climb day after day? The cobbles stretch on up ahead of me; they’re slippery after the rain so I find myself holding onto the garden railings and hauling myself up. Two blokes in yellow overalls and wellies trek effortlessly past me and I wonder how they’re managing it. They must be locals. Look at them bounding up the hill like it’s nothing!
By the time my wheelie case has tipped over on at least five occasions I’m ready for a sit down. There’s a narrow cottage that is, I’m delighted to discover, a little ice-cream shop in front of me, but the door’s closed and there’s a sign saying, ‘Back in Ten Minutes’. I can make out the little rack of tourist postcards behind the lace curtain on its door. I take a moment to lean on the shop’s gate post, dreaming of a Mr Whippy with raspberry sauce and a flake like the ones I’d have on summer trips to Eyemouth with Gran when I was little. Maybe I’m hallucinating, what with the climb, and maybe the air’s thinner at this altitude, because I’m sure I can hear the chimes of an ice-cream van now.
Glancing back down the street I realise I almost missed this wonderful view of the entire bay and the brooding grey horizon. I want to wait right here and take it all in but there’s a storm cloud shaped like a big black boxing glove billowing in so I’d better stop stalling and find my shop.
‘Jude?’
My head snaps around at the sound of my name and I wipe at my mouth in case I was drooling at the thought of the phantom ice-cream van. ‘Oh, hello!’
The owner of the voice is looking expectantly at me as though I should know him. He’s probably in his late sixties and has long sandy hair tied up in a messy kind of man bun which is all windblown – in comparison to his immaculate beard which looks like it’s no stranger to product and is used to getting a thorough brushing every morning.
‘I’m Jowan de Marisco, the bookshop owner?’
‘Ah!’ We shake hands. ‘How did you know it was me?’
He’s smiling now, looking every inch like some kind of Breton pirate with his well-salted, weather-beaten complexion and crinkling bright blue eyes. He’s in baggy olive corduroys and multiple layers of plaid cotton and fleece and has an ancient-looking scarf the colour of faded coral round his throat and, I swear I’m not making this up, a single pearl drop earring in one lobe. All he needs is a parrot on his shoulder to complete the look. He nods to my tote bag.
‘Who else would be arrivin’ in town with a bulging bag of books?’
I laugh. ‘You got me! I had to bring some old favourites, just in case. Is that weird, bringing books to a bookshop holiday?’
‘I understand,’ he says, and I start to pick up his lovely, grumbling West Country accent, thick like clotted cream. ‘I’m the same with John Donne. Read any?’
I scan my brain and all I can turn up is a poem about a flea that I read in my first year at uni and I can’t say I was very impressed by it. ‘Umm, not a lot,’ I confess. ‘Sorry I’m late, by the way.’ I’m mumbling about Diane’s problems with scaling even the lowest hills and needing to refill her twice on the way down but he’s just squinting at me.
‘Late?’ He shrugs, like he’s never heard the word before. ‘You’re ’ere, aren’t you?’
