I've been away for so long. Some things have changed, some have stayed the same; the ice cream parlour where we used to hang out and try to meet girls is now a Starbucks. The park where I kissed my first girlfriend has been built over with holiday apartments. But it's still recognisably the town where I grew up. The air somehow smells different here; maybe it's just the breeze blowing in from the Channel, or the diffused smell of sausage rolls from the bakery on the High Street where my sister used to work. I don't know, it's just different.
On the promenade above the beach, a seagull mercilessly launches itself again and again at the discarded remains of a bag of chips, while an elderly couple look on and laugh to themselves. It's late springtime; kids aren't quite out of school for the summer yet but already you can sense the beginning of something. A tourist town gradually rousing itself from a winter slumber. Slowly, the shops extend their opening hours into the evening, drinks and ice cream kiosks take down the wooden boards covering their serving hatches. The air is becoming warmer, more welcoming.
Most of all, it's that warm breeze that takes me back. I can't explain it, I'm just suddenly in that summer, almost forty years ago.
----
I've never been known for my patience, but my parents had convinced me to stick with school for longer than I had really wanted to. Back then, this town hadn't been big enough for me; I wanted to see the world. No, maybe "wanted" isn't the right word. It was something more than that, stronger than that. It was a need. Then the Royal Navy sent someone to our school with tales of travel and adventure, and that was it for me; my mind was made up. So, in 1985, at 18 years of age, I left school with more qualifications that I really needed, and promptly enlisted. No-one was surprised, least of all my parents.
But these things take time, and I found myself with a few months to kill before I went off to basic training. I knew that those few months would last an eternity if I just waited, so I set about trying to find a temporary job. If nothing else, I figured I would need some cash to keep fuelling my battered Mark 3 Ford Capri anyway.
The Capri, the first car I ever owned, was yellow with a black roof and a matching stripe running down the sides; my friends had all manner of nicknames for it, but that had never stopped any of them hitching a lift to school with me. Whether that was out of laziness or because Bodie and Doyle had one in The Professionals, I'll never know; it was probably a combination of both factors. In the winter the car's heating system always broke down so that on particularly cold days you could see your breath in the air, and in the summer, it smelled of hot leather and if you wore shorts you would burn the backs of your legs when you sat down. Nevertheless, I loved that car.
A friend's dad ran a landscaping service, so I asked if he had any work going. As it happened, he had a job that his regular guys wouldn't be able to get to quite yet, and the client was getting antsy. I got the feeling it was some high-powered businessman up in London, who had bought a weekend place down here on the coast and wanted the garden cleared. Apparently, it was in a right mess; overgrown to the point of being almost impenetrable. My new boss just wanted me to make a start on it so that he could tell the client that work was underway. The rest of the crew would turn up as soon as they could. I didn't mind the work, or the fact that I would be working alone for the time being, so I told him to count me in. I loaded up the Capri with an armful of gardening tools and said I would start first thing on the Monday.
----
When the day came, the sky was a brilliant blue from first thing in the morning. It was perhaps warmer than ideal for a day's hard labour, but that was fine. I drove out of town and along the coast a couple of miles with the windows down and the car stereo turned up to almost full volume. The Boys of Summer kept me company on the drive; it was the first track on the tape, so it was easy to rewind it and listen to it again and again if I wanted to.
The road up the coast towards the house took me well out of town, to the point where houses were really few and far between. In fact, I was starting to think that I must have driven right past it already. Then, as I looked for a place to turn around, I saw it.
Seeing the house for the first time, the immediate thought that came to mind was to wonder how much money the client must be pulling in to be able to afford this place as a second (Or third? Or fourth?!) home. The idea of being able to buy a house just to spend the occasional weekend in was utterly alien to me at the time. It was a grand old place, fairly neglected, but with sizeable rooms, high ceilings and windows that looked out over a cliff to the quiet pebble beach far below. On one corner of the coast-side of the house was a large room built in the shape of a circle with a squat, conical roof on top of it, itself topped with a metal weathervane in the shape of a sailing ship with three tall masts. The windows of the room had been thrown fully open, and from the street below I thought I could see movement in there.
I parked up and unloaded my tools, taking them through an open side gate and into the back garden. I immediately questioned what I had gotten myself into. Not far from the back wall of the house was a thick, waist-high barricade of nettles, and beyond that was what looked like a jungle of brambles and thorn bushes, hiding a greenhouse with probably not a single pane of glass still intact and a tree growing up through the centre of it. I wondered if I was genuinely expected to even make a dent in clearing this on my own.
I set to work. By this time, I was well into my pre-basic training fitness regime, which mostly consisted of running and swimming. I was in decent shape, but after a couple of hours working on the garden I was in need of a break, and at that point it occurred to me that I hadn't brought anything to drink. There was an outside tap in the garden, but I really didn't think that the water from it would be fit for human consumption.
I downed tools and approached the back door of the house; through the window I could make out a utility room and, beyond that, a fairly sparse-looking kitchen. I tapped on the window a couple of times, then tapped a bit harder when no-one answered. After still not hearing a response, I opened the door and stepped inside.
'Hello?' I called. I could hear a radio playing somewhere in the house, possibly upstairs. My boots were covered in dirt, so I kicked them off just inside the doorway and slowly walked through to the kitchen.
'Hello? Is anybody home?' I called out again. I could see an upturned glass on the draining board next to the sink, but it seemed impolite to help myself, so I walked through the kitchen into the hallway. The sound of the radio now didn't appear to be coming from upstairs, but from the living room at the front of the house. I could see that the door was ajar, so I poked my head around it.
The room was dominated by a large fireplace, tall bay windows and a pile of what I presumed to be furniture, hidden beneath a paint-flecked dustsheet. The radio was perched on the mantlepiece, and Billy Ocean's "Suddenly" was now fading out to be replaced by an instrumental song from Beverley Hills Cop.
In the alcove between the fireplace and the windows, a figure was standing with their back to me, painting the wall with long, vertical strokes in pale yellow. I guessed it was a woman from the scarf tied over their hair, but other than that it would have been difficult to tell, given the shapeless blue boiler suit they were wearing. They were shorter than me, but still perhaps taller than average for a woman, and as they painted, they jiggled enthusiastically in time with the synthesizer sounds coming from the radio.
I tapped twice on the frame of the door and the figure jumped in shock before turning to face me with the paintbrush held out in front of them as if to ward me off. Their face was liberally sprinkled with droplets of paint, as was the pair of goggles they were wearing, and between that and the headscarf it was difficult to make out any of the woman's features from across the room.
'I'm sorry if I surprised you,' I said. 'I'm working on the garden out the back. I was wondering if anyone would mind if I helped myself to a drink of water.'
The figure lowered her arm, suddenly realising that the brush was dripping yellow paint onto the floor. She carefully placed it into a paintpot on the floor beside her.
