Beside the Seaside

Green Shutters, shut your shutters! Windyridge,

Let winds unnoticed whistle round your hill!

High Dormers, draw your curtains! Slam the door,

And pack the family in the Morris eight.

Lock up the garage. Put her in reverse,

Back out with care, now, forward, off—away!

The richer people living farther out

O’ertake us in their Rovers. We, in turn,

Pass poorer families hurrying on foot

Towards the station. Very soon the town

Will echo to the groan of empty trams

And sweetshops advertise Ice Cream in vain.

Solihull, Headingley and Golders Green.

Preston and Swindon, Manchester and Leeds,

Braintree and Bocking, hear the sea! the sea!

The smack of breakers upon windy rocks,

Spray blowing backwards from their curling walls

Of green translucent water. England leaves

Her centre for her tide-line. Father’s toes,

Though now encased in coloured socks and shoes

And pressing the accelerator hard,

Ache for the feel of sand and little shrimps

To tickle in between them. Mother vows

To be more patient with the family:

Just for its sake she will be young again.

And, at that moment, Jennifer is sick

(Over-excitement must have brought it on,

The hurried breakfast and the early start)

And Michael’s rather pale, and as for Anne …

“Please stop a moment, Hubert, anywhere.”

    So evening sunlight shows us Sandy Cove

The same as last year and the year before.

Still on the brick front of the Baptist Church

SIX-THIRTY. PREACHER:—Mr. Pentecost

All visitors are welcomed. Still the quartz

Glitters along the tops of garden walls.

Those macrocarpa still survive the gales

They must have had last winter. Still the shops

Remain unaltered on the Esplanade—

The Circulating Library, the Stores,

Jill’s Pantry, Cynthia’s Ditty Box (Antiques),

Trecarrow (Maps and Souvenirs and Guides).

Still on the terrace of the big hotel

Pale pink hydrangeas turn a rusty brown

Where sea winds catch them, and yet do not die.

The bumpy lane between the tamarisks,

The escallonia hedge, and still it’s there—

Our lodging-house, ten minutes from the shore.

Still unprepared to make a picnic lunch

Except by notice on the previous day.

Still nowhere for the children when it’s wet

Except that smelly, overcrowded lounge.

And still no garage for the motor-car.

Still on the bedroom wall, the list of rules:

Don’t waste the water. It is pumped by hand.

Don’t throw old blades into the W.C.

Don’t keep the bathroom long and don’t be late

For meals and don’t hang swim-suits out on sills

(A line has been provided at the back).

Don’t empty children’s sand-shoes in the hall.

Don’t this, Don’t that. Ah, still the same, the same

As it was last year and the year before—

But rather more expensive, now, of course.

“Anne, Jennifer and Michael—run along

Down to the sands and find yourselves some friends

While Dad and I unpack.” The sea! the sea!

    On a secluded corner of the beach

A game of rounders has been organized

By Mr. Pedder, schoolmaster and friend

Of boys and girls—particularly girls.

And here it was the tragedy began,

That life-long tragedy to Jennifer

Which ate into her soul and made her take

To secretarial work in later life

In a department of the Board of Trade.

See boys and girls assembled for the game.

Reflected in the rock pools, freckled legs

Hop, skip and jump in coltish ecstasy.

Ah! parted lips and little pearly teeth,

Wide eyes, snub noses, shorts, divided skirts!

And last year’s queen of them was Jennifer.

The snubbiest, cheekiest, lissomest of all.

One smile from her sent Mr. Pedder back

Contented to his lodgings. She could wave

Her little finger and the elder boys

Came at her bidding. Even tiny Ruth,

Old Lady D’Erncourt’s grandchild, pet of all,

Would bring her shells as timid offerings.

So now with Anne and Michael see her stand,

Our Jennifer, our own, our last year’s queen,

For this year’s début fully confident.

“Get in your places.” Heard above the waves

Are Mr. Pedder’s organizing shouts.

“Come on. Look sharp. The tide is coming in!”

“He hasn’t seen me yet,” thinks Jennifer.

“Line up your team behind you, Christabel!”

On the wet sea-sand waiting to be seen

She stands with Anne and Michael. Let him turn

And then he’ll see me. Let him only turn.

Smack went the tennis ball. The bare feet ran.

And smack again. “He’s out! Well caught, Delphine!”

Shrieks, cartwheels, tumbling joyance of the waves.

Oh Mr. Pedder, look! Oh here I am!

And there the three of them forlornly stood.

“You ask him, Jennifer.” “No—Michael?—Anne?”

“I’d rather not.” “Fains I.” “It’s up to you.”

“Oh, very well, then.” Timidly she goes,

Timid and proud, for the last time a child.

“Can we play, Mr. Pedder?” But his eyes

Are out to where, among the tousled heads,

He sees the golden curls of Christabel.

“Can we play, Mr. Pedder?” So he turns.

Who have we here?” The jolly, jolly voice,

The same but not the same. “Who have we here?

The Rawlings children! Yes, of course, you may,

Join that side, children, under Christabel.”

No friendly wallop on the B.T.M.

No loving arm-squeeze and no special look.

Oh darting heart-burn, under Christabel!

So all those holidays the bitter truth

Sank into Jennifer. No longer queen,

She had outgrown her strength, as Mummy said,

And Mummy made her wear these spectacles.

Because of Mummy she had lost her looks.

Had lost her looks? Still she was Jennifer.

The sands were still the same, the rocks the same,

The seaweed-waving pools, the bathing-cove,

The outline of the cliffs, the times of tide.

And I’m the same, of course I’m always ME.

But all that August those terrific waves

Thundered defeat along the rocky coast,

And ginger-beery surf hissed ‘Christabel!’

    Enough of tragedy! Let wail of gulls,

The sunbows in the breakers and the breeze

Which blows the sand into the sandwiches,

Let castles crumbling in the rise of tide,

Let cool dank caves and dark interstices

Where, underneath the squelching bladderwrack,

Lurk stinging fin and sharp, marauding claw

Ready to pierce the rope-soled bathing-shoe,

Let darting prawn and helpless jelly-fish

Spell joy or misery to youth. For we,

We older ones, have thoughts of higher things.

Whether we like to sit with Penguin books

In sheltered alcoves farther up the cliff,

Or to eat winkles on the Esplanade,

Or to play golf along the crowded course,

Or on a twopenny borough council chair

To doze away the strains of Humoresque,

Adapted for the cornet and the drums

By the conductor of the Silver Band,

Whether we own a tandem or a Rolls,

Whether we Rudge it or we trudge it, still

A single topic occupies our minds.

’Tis hinted at or boldly blazoned in

Our accents, clothes and ways of eating fish,

And being introduced and taking leave,

‘Farewell,’ ‘So long,’ ‘Bunghosky,’ ‘Cheeribye’—

That topic all-absorbing, as it was,

Is now and ever shall be, to us—CLASS.

    Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Grosvenor-Smith

(He manages a Bank in Nottingham)

Have come to Sandy Cove for thirty years

And now they think the place is going down.

    “Not what it was, I’m very much afraid.

Look at that little mite with Attaboy

Printed across her paper sailor hat.

Disgusting, isn’t it? Who can they be,

Her parents, to allow such forwardness?”

    The Browns, who thus are commented upon,

Have certainly done very well indeed.

The elder children bringing money in,

Father still working; with allowances

For this and that and little income-tax,

They probably earn seven times as much

As poor old Grosvenor-Smith. But who will grudge

Them this, their wild, spontaneous holiday?

The morning paddle, then the mystery tour

By motor-coach inland this afternoon.

For that old mother what a happy time!

At last past bearing children, she can sit

Reposeful on a crowded bit of beach.

A week of idleness, the salty winds

Play in her greying hair; the summer sun

Puts back her freckles so that Alfred Brown

Remembers courting days in Gospel Oak

And takes her to the Flannel Dance to-night.

But all the same they think the place ‘Stuck up’

And Blackpool, next year—if there is a next.

    And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves

Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand

As they have done for centuries, as they will

For centuries to come, when not a soul

Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks,

When England is not England, when mankind

Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea,

Consolingly disastrous, will return

While the strange starfish, hugely magnified,

Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool.