Willerby-by-the-Sea

A Willerby Story

This year. there was to be no family summer holiday because her dad lost his job because of a mistake he made at work.

Money would be too tight.

“I know it’s very disappointing,” her mum said, sitting on the side of her bed, stroking Maisie’s hair. “But please don’t make daddy feel worse.”

“Is daddy sad?”

“Very.”

“Did he cry?”

Maise’s mum looked at her for a long moment, thinking, trying to work out the best thing to say. “Yes,” she said at last, her voice catching as if she might herself. “A lot.”

“Well, I hate them then,” said Maisie.

“Yeah, me too –they haven’t been very kind - but let’s try not to think about it,” said Maise’s mum. “Let’s make this summer special anyway. Tomorrow we can make a list of all the fun things we can do without going anywhere.”

…

And they did, they did them all and Maisie had a great summer.

Paddling in the river; bike rides and picnics in the park; popcorn movie nights; midnight feasts under the stars; barbecues and bonfires in the clearing in the wood.

Maisie’s dad had a lot of time and joined in with it all, but he was very quiet to begin with. And he got up very early, hours before anyone else, and went on runs so long it was often mid morning when he returned.

“Give him a bit of time,” her mum told her, “When things really hurt, healing can take a long time.”

Slowly, he did get better.

First, he began to smile, even to laugh and then one day he bounced down the stairs from the office and announced he’d just got some good news, and things were going to get better.

Later that night after he’d read Maisie a story, she told him she didn’t care what mistakes he made at his job because he never made mistakes as her dad.

He gave a great, heaving sigh and then left hurriedly without so much as a good night kiss, even leaving her reading light on.

Five minutes later her mum came and hugged her so tightly it took her breath away.

“You are a brilliant, brilliant girl,” she said into her neck.

…

The next day at breakfast – a glorious Saturday - Masie’s dad passed her a leaflet with a picture of a beach on it.

“We can go to the beach after all! Beckworth has got one – look it’s got deckchairs and everything. We can go this afternoon – make sandcastles with your bucket and spade – maybe have fish and chips and an ice-cream afterwards.”

“Mummy too?” Masie asked.

“Of course! One last family holiday day.”

After washing up the dishes and putting them neatly away, the three of them got in their car and made the five-minute drive to Beckworth.

They walked past the cheap cafes and charity shops to the Memorial Gardens where the council had tipped tons of yellow-grey sand into a wood-lined pit in a gesture at the seaside

But it was dispiriting.

Aside from the sand and a few stained and faded chairs there was nothing – more building site than resort paradise.

Scruffy pigeons picking through the grains for scrap.

Hot and bothered men and women rushed past without so much as a curious look amd there were cigarette ends and empty beer cans in the sand.

There were no other families, and the sand was so dry it was impossible to make bucket towers from.

“Fish-and-chips?” Maise’s mum asked pointedly after a group of teenagers arrived, smoking and swearing.

Her dad got to his feet dusting his hands against his jean-shorts.

“Here?”

“No, let’s go to the café and sit in for them,” she turned to Maisie, “is that OK with you, love?”

Maise looked around and nodded.

But the café had closed down and was boarded up, and so instead they had to make do with a Boots meal deal.

“It wasn’t a proper beach,” Maise said later as they ate ice-lollies in a supermarket carpark, then wished she hadn’t when she saw the look that passed between her parents.

“No, Maisie,” her dad said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t. Sorry. I suppose daddies do make mistakes sometimes after all.”

…

Masie felt bad for making her dad feel bad, but she had a gift she could use to make amends.

Such gifts were not unusual among born and raised Willerby children.

That night after she was sure her mum and dad were asleep, she went to the big upstairs window overlooking the rolling fields embracing the ancient village on three sides.

It was clear and the stars flared in the sky, the almost full moon bright enough to cast sharp-edged shadows from the summer-clad trees, picking out the ancient ridge and furrow in precise layers of grey-blue shade.

Maise looked out on the old landscape made new by the night and prepared herself to summon a different sort of beauty.

She closed her eyes, then fetched her memories of the Cornish coast where they’d holidayed with her uncle, aunt and cousins the year before.

The great roll of ocean that spread from the green estuary and then out into the deep blue and far beyond to the heat-hazed horizon. Rolling sun, a god of heat and light until the late evening when it plunged into sea and set the sky to orange-crimson fire.

A long arc of sand, shining like a fairytale palace’s golden paving. Woven in all of it the smell of the brine in the breeze, in the sea, in the sun, in the beach.

Unaware she was doing it Maise moved her arms and fingers like an orchestra’s conductor, beckoning to the Willerby portals the children call shortcuts, inviting, calling, shaping and smoothing.

Softly at first, then louder and then louder again, the room was filled with the low rumble of waves and the high cry of seagull.

Satisfied with her work, she went to bed.

…

“Did you do it?” Her mother asked her, perched on the end of Maise’s bed the next morning.

Maise smiled up at her.

“Is it safe?”

Maise nodded. “I’ll put it all back before tomorrow. I promise.”

“Well,” her mum said, “let’s not waste a minute of it.”

…

In shorts and vests, they opened the front door and stepped into a perfect seaside morning.

The houses of Willerby were now an island surrounded by an infinite water of a blue waves that whispered great depth.

A sandy beach swept around the houses in a perfect circle and, barefoot, the three of them picked their way along it, grinning and waving at the early-risers, emerging wide-eyed from their homes to the world Maise had transformed for all of them.

“Who did this?” Called Dan, a neigbour and friend, holding his son Sammy’s hand, who was grinning, waving and bouncing on the spot with delight. “Was it one of you?”

“Maybe!” Maise’s dad called back. “Enjoy the day!”

“We will,” shouted Sammy. “We will!”

…

They built sandcastles and hunted crabs and guppies in a maze of miniature canyon rock-pools.

They held hands and jumped through the bracing surf, running back to their sun-umbrella and towels shrieking at the thrill of the cold until the baking heat drove them back to it all over again.

They played slot machines in an arcade, flew a kite on a shore wind so steady they could tie the string to a spade and just lie back on the sand to watch it hover above them almost motionless all on its own.

For lunch Maise had a prawn cocktail and her parents swallowed down fresh oysters from a salt-rusted van parked on Main Street that also served pear-shaped and ice frosted bottles of glowing Orangina.

And then as the afternoon washed into the evening, they got their fish and chips, doused in sharp vineger, crisp and finger-scalding hot, ate them sitting on their back garden wall, their bare arms touching, ate them straight from the paper as they gazed out across the ocean into a gathering darkness and the end of a day they knew could not be put off much longer.

“We could leave it like it is for just one more day,” said Maise, “couldn’t we?”

Her dad put his arm around her and pulled her in close to him. “Holidays are only as good as they are because they don’t last forever,” he said.

Maise sighed.

Later, after one last walk down the foamy surf-line where the ocean met the sand, the incoming tide swallowing their footsteps behind them, they went back to the house.

There, once the sun was all gone, in front of the big window Maise carefully folded Willerby-by-the-Sea away and put her village safely back in the midland heartlands where it belonged.

That night when Maise was fast asleep her mum looked in on her, sat beside her, stroked her hair.

“Brilliant girl”, she whispered.