The Drowning Pool

Chapter Three

Looking back, all the signs were there. Human beings have a tendency to forget what they can’t explain: the misplaced key, left on the sideboard but found in the lock; the lost treasured trinket, carefully tracked and then suddenly gone; the darkening shadow in the hot glare of day. But they’re alarm bells.

Would it have all turned out differently if I had paid heed? I think not. The chain of events that would carry me across seas, to foreign shores and through time, had already been set in motion.

But I didn’t know that then.

In fact, as I contemplated the past week from the end of my summer garden, things seemed so obvious and straightforward. To my mind they were almost bordering on the mundane. But then I had cosseted myself in the flower-boat, one of my favourite places to be: a hammock strung between an apple tree and the fence post, beside an ancient pink rose bush. Alfie christened it the flower-boat as I’d fashioned it from a faded tarpaulin with a swirl of daffodils and gerbera printed upon it. In its saggy hug, when the sun sank and the jasmine that wound itself around the fence scented the air, it was impossible to feel anxious. I had even fixed a shelf into the lower branches of the apple tree so that we could reach toys, drinks and magazines as we gently rocked. The scent of floribunda and ripening apple fruit, the faint gurgle of traffic and life that wafted along on the breeze, couldn’t help but soothe the nerves.

It must have been Alfie who had left the shell and the cone about the house; there were only two people who lived here, after all – me and him. And I hadn’t done it. It is the kind of thing that kids do. My attention had been drawn to them as the house creaked that darkened Friday night. The seasonal heat had surely disorientated a winged insect, which had flown into the window, hence the cracking sound. The groan of a floorboard, contracting as it cooled in the night air, had alerted me to the cone.

The burn was more of a puzzle. But I’m scatty at the best of times and in the rush to get dressed, pop Alfie to nursery and scoop up my lesson plans, it was quite possible that I’d simply imagined the scar, a residual phantasm created by the dramatic dream.

I’d tell the neurologist.

I took my anti-depressant, minus 10mg.

All too soon the week’s mundanities had me.

I don’t like using the term ‘roller coaster of a ride’. Whenever I see it on the back of books it makes my bottom tighten. So without using crappy marketing-speak, let me tell you the week that followed was so frenzied it was easy to forget about the cockleshell and pine cone incident.

St John’s was busy. It was the last week of lessons and the students weren’t interested in their work. Not that they had much at that point in the academic year. I was half inclined to let them do as they pleased, but the college executive herded us in to the Grand Hall at 8.30 a.m. Monday morning and instructed us that this was no time to let standards slip. According to the management, this week was the perfect time to introduce students to next year’s curriculum.

McBastard suggested that if we wanted to relax a bit we could carry out summative assessments in the form of quizzes. ‘Party on, dude,’ said John, in a rare moment of rebellion. The management made him stay behind.

They were like that at St John’s.

I’d come out of the music business, which doesn’t have the reputation of a caring profession, and thought that perhaps teaching might be a less stressful, more wholesome career. Ha ha ha.

On the Tuesday I sneaked Twister in to my Textual Analysis lesson. The kids were enjoying it until McBastard caught us and hauled me into his office. If that sort of thing continued, he growled at the floor, I could end up on the Sex Offenders Register.

I laughed.

He fixed his strange brown eyes on me. Ambers and reds swirled within them like fiery lava.

‘This is serious,’ he said. ‘You should be careful.’

I frowned and shifted on the stool where I was sitting in front of his desk. ‘What do you mean?’

McBastard leant back and clasped his bony hands in a prayer-like fashion.

Malevolence glittered beyond his volcanic eyes, anger preparing to erupt.

‘You need to keep your job.’ He stayed motionless, hard, like a statue.

I wasn’t absolutely sure what he was trying to say and told him so.

Finally he spat out, ‘A woman in your position.’

It took me off guard.

‘Yes? What exactly is that?’ My eyebrows had raised and I’d assumed an expression of confusion.

Thin white lips pushed themselves into an arrangement that almost resembled a smile. ‘A single mother, after all.’

Reading my puzzlement he seemed about to say more but stopped. ‘You’d better toddle along to your class.’ Then he dismissed me by spinning his chair round and staring out of the window.

Gawping at the back of his head, I was shocked into silence, as his meaning dawned.

It was true, I needed to earn money and I couldn’t afford to lose my job. But I didn’t need reminding that whether I stayed in it or not was largely up to him. The shit had used this opportunity to warn me: fall in line or fuck off.

I quivered at my impotence in the face of such barefaced blackmail but with great self-control I thanked him and ‘toddled’ back to my students.

The following day McBastard stalked me like a wolf. Thankfully there wasn’t much I could screw up: end of year shows, graduation ceremonies, leaving lunches and then on Thursday, a trip to Wimbledon.

On Friday the school was shut to students and staff were subjected to what the management term a Development Day, but what we call Degenerate Day on account of the stupefaction factor – the programme comprised policy talks and lectures.

I took my place at the back of the staff room between John and Sue, who was pregnant and perpetually pissed off that she couldn’t smoke or drink.

‘Do we know how long this will be?’ I squeezed into the cramped makeshift seating.

John grimaced. ‘They confiscated my shoelaces on the way in.’

‘I can’t fucking believe it,’ said Sue, sucking on a biro. ‘There’s so much else I could be doing. Don’t they realize we have all this end of year admin to tie up?’

‘Oh, they realize all right,’ said John.

One of the management posse had positioned himself right in front of the coffee machine, cutting off our lifeline to the one thing that might keep us conscious. He clapped his hands to get our attention.

Not a good start.

His name was Harvey. Apparently he’d been doing this for three years now and had got a lot of positive feedback.

‘Inadequate,’ John whispered. ‘Needs to self-reinforce.’

Harvey launched into a ‘discussion’ of why students should be called customers. He got some audience interaction going with a show of hands – who was for it? McBastard. Who was against it? The plebs voted unanimously. Then he did this sickly smile and said: ‘Well, I’m afraid these days anyone with that way of thinking is completely out of sync with new models of educational theory. It may have been OK thirty years ago but now the terminology is inconsistent with new approaches to learning and changes in funding.’

Harvey continued to bellow: in order to survive in the new market place, every single one of us had to commit ourselves to ‘rethink, reset and reframe’. Just then a ball of paper arced over from the back and got Harvey right on the chin.

McBastard leapt to his feet. ‘Who did that? Come on now!’

Everyone looked at the floor.

Harvey ploughed on.

The room calmed down and we started settling in for a nap, when he repeated his point that we ‘needed to change or become history’.

This was the last straw for the History ‘facilitator’, a quiet guy called Edwin with hair like a toilet brush. He leapt to his feet and shrieked something sarcastic about that not being so terrible as we could learn from history, if ‘learn’ was still a permissible verb, given current educational thinking.

If he’d been more popular there might have been a revolt at this point, but Edwin was a bit of a dick so no one joined in.

Harvey looked embarrassed and back-pedalled to qualify ‘history’.

John bobbed his head in Edwin’s direction, mouthed ‘wanker’ and supplied a pertinent hand gesture.

‘Good point,’ I sighed. ‘I bet he’s added at least another five minutes on.’

He had.

Time slowed.

John fell asleep. Sue’s biro leaked over her chin and onto her polo neck.

I watched McBastard out of the corner of my eye.

For two hours and seven minutes he didn’t once take those fireball eyes off me.

After lunch things worsened. But at 4.30 there was a serious breach of health and safety when the entire staff (plebs) of the Humanities and Arts Department stampeded to the Red Lion.

There was no way I was missing out on a much needed dose of medicine. Luckily I’d got the bus into work this morning so didn’t have to worry about the car.

A quick call to Corinne resulted in Giselle agreeing to pick up Alfie and babysit. Thank God for the empathy of fellow mum friends. Adversity unites.

My pass for the night acquired, I joined the last of the stragglers beating a path to the local.

John was in fine form. The day had supplied him with plenty of ammunition. Especially Harvey’s utterly absurd suggestion that, to help us memorize what we learnt from the session, we could make up our own raps. A natural mime with a wicked sense of humour, his impression of Harvey’s twitches, stammers and idiosyncrasies was cruel, excruciating and magnificently funny.

A charismatic teacher with a background in media law, the students, I mean, customers, loved John. You could understand why when you saw him in this context, holding court; engrossed and animated. His curly brown hair tumbled down past his ears, lending him a naturally cheeky quality that was muted somewhat by serious blue eyes, a clean-shaven face and an insistence on wearing a suit. God knows why he accepted a fifth of what he could be earning, working harder than he would in a small law firm. I liked his intelligence and respected his mind. He’d almost become a good friend.

Later, as the conversation waterfalled into pockets of twos and threes, we found ourselves together.

‘You all right then, Ms Grey?’

I paused and took a slug from my glass. ‘D’you know what? It’s not been the greatest of weeks.’

‘It’s always like this,’ he said. ‘End of term. Shit to do. Shit to teach.’

It wasn’t work, I told him, and was about to relay my medical experience when I remembered that he was a colleague and much as I liked him, there was the possibility that, well-oiled and talkative, he might mention it to one of HR. That might kick-start a sequence of events that I couldn’t afford right now. Not with McBastard on the prowl.

‘What is it then?’ He looked concerned and I felt a bit daft looking at him with my mouth open, so I told him about the cockleshell instead.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You sound like my sister. Marie’s nuts, obsessed with crystals and weirdies and things that go bump in the night. She’s on her own too. Out in California now. Do you know what I reckon?’ He slurred the last part of the question so I had to ask him to repeat it.

‘That,’ he wagged an unsteady finger at me, ‘women on their own tend to imagine stuff. I’m not being sexist here but when you’re living with someone, you talk to them, you know, you share stuff. You talk things through. You don’t let things run away with you. Do you know what I mean?’

As unwilling as I was to let the poke go unchallenged I did know exactly what he was getting at. Especially after that night. But I didn’t think it was a gender thing so instead I said, ‘Are you inferring that us independent ladies become hysterical without a rational male mind, Doctor Freud?’

‘Yes of course, dear,’ he said, and made a big thing of patting my hand. Then Nancy, one of the administrators, swung our way. ‘What are you two talking about?’ Her beady eyes strayed over John.

‘Nothing,’ we chimed together.

She looked at us sceptically but didn’t move. ‘Whatever.’ Her voice always sounded thin and discordant.

John started doing his impressions thing again and having heard it all once, I got up and staggered over to Sue. The subject there was giving up fags so when, inevitably, everyone got up to go for a smoke, I went too.

Outside Edwin was hailing a cab for Leigh, and realizing I was more wrecked than anticipated and that it was only half ten, I joined him. Twenty minutes later I’d paid Giselle and had seen her off in a cab of her own.

Alfie was snoring lightly so I jumped into the shower, ran the water lukewarm and lathered one of my favourite exotic gels over my sticky body. It felt good. In fact, I felt good. Considering the day I’d had, this was something of a miracle.

I closed my eyes and let my mind drift. My hands took the lather and soaped my breasts. I turned the hot tap up and killed the cold, soaked my hair in the shower spray and let the shampoo’s foam glide over my midriff and drip down my thighs.

The hot water ran out. I squealed as a prickly blast of cold hit my belly and reached out to turn it off, cursing the immersion heater. I stepped out of the cubicle and grabbed the nearest towel.

Wrapping it around my body, I felt the weight of the last week enveloping me. I dried myself then cleared the steam from the mirror to apply some face serum.

That’s when I saw it.

As I looked in the mirror I saw my face, but hovering over it there was another – the same shape, but with a firmer chin. Locks of hair blocked out my own wet brown wisps – hers was a darker shade and thicker. But it was the eyes that held me – vivid green, bright, almond shaped – that fixed onto mine. Compelling me to hold her gaze.

My mouth, reflected in the mirror, froze open in shock, and morphed into two thin pink closed lips.

The vision held, then blurred.

I blinked and it had gone.

The air was steaming up the mirror once more. I steadied my breath and rubbed the condensation away. My reflection stared back: pale, crumpled and very, very tired.

I was still tipsy. I had to get a grip; my imagination was running away with itself, playing tricks on me.

‘Pull yourself together,’ I instructed my reflection. ‘You just need a good night’s sleep.’ I took my own advice and pushed the fear to the very back of my mind.

Flinging on my pyjamas I shuffled out of the bathroom as quickly as my tired legs could manage, dragged my body to my fluffy bed and pulled my duvet tight around me.

It wouldn’t register consciously then, but just before I sank into oblivion, I saw a small cloud of my breath.

Despite the warmth outside, my bedroom was as cold as a crypt.

Chapter Four

When I woke I was moody and morose. Though I tried to perk myself up when I roused Alfie, I never really got rid of that shirty, melancholy the whole weekend. In fact it got worse.

I had a slight reprieve late Saturday morning (less of the melancholy, more of the shirtiness) when my sister, Lottie, and nephew, Thomas, turned up for a picnic at Leigh beach. Thomas was eight months older than Alfie and the boys got on very well together.

The sun was nearing its noon zenith when they arrived. My hangover had slowed me so I was still half dressed. Lottie made it clear that she wanted to spend no time inside. A true sun-worshipper, she insisted we packed a picnic lunch and got down to the beach as soon as possible. I tried not to sulk but my older sister’s assumed authority and unassailable competence always brought out the child in me. Lottie had always been more organized, more academic and wittier than anyone else. Leaving college with a first-class degree in English, and with an outstanding final term as an award-winning editor of the college mag, she dashed everyone’s expectations by turning her back on a promising career in journalism and established her own theatre company, which she ran for several years before a BBC head-hunter netted her. She gave up working for the BBC when she was pregnant with Thomas and now worked as a freelance consultant. In her spare time she was writing a trilogy of children’s books for a US publisher.

I examined her from beneath my mat of stringy uncombed fringe. In immaculate Capri pants and oversized black sunglasses, she resembled a sexy sixties siren.

‘Come on, Sarah. I want to get down to the beach before one. Let’s make the most of the sunshine.’ She swished her curtain of shiny black hair and winked. ‘Chop chop.’

I fingered my pyjama bottoms gingerly and told her to keep her hair on, then stomped upstairs while she made sandwiches for the four of us.

Outdoors the full impact of last night’s two (or was it three?) bottles of wine kicked in. My tongue was so absurdly dry I downed a litre bottle of water in ten minutes.

We wandered down the Broadway keeping one eye on the boys and another on the windows of the boutique shops and bursting cafés, stopping at the greengrocer’s that sold Alfie’s favourite ice creams, a soft, local recipe introduced to the area by a family of Italian ice-cream makers. We fetched the two 99’s and two colas and then went across the road into The Library Gardens.

Situated by St Clements church, off the main street, and right at the top of the hill the library gardens weren’t the geographical centre of town yet the small park felt like the heart of Leigh. A place where the different communities that existed in the town converged and relaxed: the lower gardens provided a meeting place for teenage gangs and novice smokers. The upper ground, with its compact playground area, had fostered many a friendship amongst young families. The actual gardens were the perfect place for old timers to take in the views across the estuary and down into the Old Town. There were lots of benches dotted around to do just that.

I told Lottie I could do with a rest so we took a seat between the herb garden and the red-brick walls of the Victorian rectory, now the library.

The sun was so strong now it scorched the skin on the crown of my head. The others had sun hats but I, of course, had forgotten mine so wrapped my scarf around my head.

‘You look like a bag lady,’ said Lottie. I made a face and stretched across her to adjust Alfie’s ice-cream-stained shirt.

This corner of the park had an aromatic garden for the blind. The air was thick with the citrus tang of catnip and meaty wafts of purple sage and rosemary. On other days I’d sit here with pleasure, but now the pungent earthy reek made me feel like I was roasting.

I suggested we move on so Lottie led the way through the park down into the Old Town.

It was almost high tide and the modest scrap of Leigh beach was crammed. Day-trippers and locals filled every square metre of sand with towels, blankets, buckets, spades, sandcastles, lilos and rapidly reddening flesh.

We made the decision to walk east along the towpath to the larger and less crowded beach at Chalkwell and saw off a mutiny from Thomas and Alfie with the shameless promise of more ice cream. I know you’re not meant to bribe kids but honestly, sometimes, it’s the only way. Plus Lottie was making sounds that she wanted to talk. Proper grown-up talk.

Her husband, David, had piled up some ludicrous debt and, although it was a dead cert their marriage would survive, Lottie was livid and bandying around words like ‘divorce’ and ‘separation’.

They say usually the thing that attracts you to your lover is what irritates the hell out of you in the end. I remembered how Lottie loved David’s easy generosity when she met him. Now look at the pair of them.

I’d never know if it would have gone that way with Josh for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve realized I’m not like other people so I’m not sure any of those generalizations really apply to me. Granted, physically, I look fairly human: two arms, two legs, average build, height, weight. Mousy hair, which I dye, sometimes auburn, occasionally red, currently brown. But psychologically and sociologically I really have no idea what makes other people tick. I don’t follow The X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing. In fact, I don’t watch TV. I didn’t get excited about my son’s first tooth, first word, first wet bed or bad dream. I don’t drink modestly and I don’t wear widow’s weeds. I achieved ten GCSE’s, five ‘A’ Levels, and have a good degree in music and education yet the majority of people think I’m thick on account of my estuarine accent. My IQ plunges with each dropped consonant.

Secondly, when the number 73 lost control at Newington Green and mangled Josh and his bike into its back left wheel, it robbed me of the chance to find all that stuff out.

I was so warped with shock at the time I never really got that it was game over. I kept wanting to turn around and ask him, ‘Can you believe this is happening? I mean, can you?’

So when they told us later that he didn’t feel anything, I just stared at them with my mouth open. They wanted a reaction but I couldn’t get it going so the policeman added, ‘It would have been too quick. He wouldn’t have had time to realize what was happening. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.’

And I did this weird thing, apparently, so his mum, Margaret, said. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for it. I said, ‘Easy come, easy go.’

That’s when Margaret started hitting me and, by all accounts, the police had to intervene.

I don’t remember it, and I know it must have seemed heartless, but I can understand what I meant. Josh was easy: persistently mild and laid back. I have this enduring image of him, hunched over his laptop with headphones on. His straw-like gingery hair jutting out at odd angles, Paul Newman blue eyes closed, head nodding, mouth creeping into a dopey grin. Not stoned. Just happy. He loved his tunes, the pitches, chords, non-sequential effects, banging rhythms. Most of it bored me, but I used to make the right noises as if I totally loved his creations. He didn’t care anyway. If we’d been on the Titanic he would have packed me and Alfie off in a lifeboat and happily joined the orchestra. Nothing fazed Josh. And that’s what I liked about him when I first met him. Everyone at Stealth Records, where I used to work, used to flap like seals on speed if a taxi didn’t arrive on time or if a press release missed its deadline. But it was impossible to get a rise out of Josh. He’d just shrug and come out with some kind of non sequitur, giving the impression of confusion and/or low IQ, so the executives mostly left him alone.

He never said much. Even when we were married he wasn’t verbally expressive. But he’d write messages on Post-it notes and leave them around the flat and sometimes in my desk at work for me to find.

I loved it that he hadn’t got sucked into the utterly manic culture of Stealth, especially as, when I started, I got landed with a massive campaign and spent my first year spinning in a PR tiz. But on Friday afternoons, after the marketing meeting, I’d sneak off down to the studio and watch Josh work, not listening or paying much attention to the music but basking in the calm he radiated.

He was in constant demand for engineering even though, truth be told, he wasn’t the best. Josh was simply cool. He was cool in life and he was cool at the end. I was glad he felt nothing.

I didn’t either for the first week.

Then the rage and frustration came.

The pain was my connection for a long time. He had given it to me. It was all that was left attaching me to him, along with his name, the care of our son and an insurance policy that eventually paid off the mortgage on our flat.

I tried to keep things normal for Alfie but it was hard to live there with the constant expectation Josh would wheel his bike through the front door.

One day I found a Post-it in my jumper drawer. He must have hidden it months before. It read ‘I don’t tell you enough that I love you’.

It killed me.

I mean, it really, truly finished me off. The old Sarah died that day.

After the sobbing and puking and screaming I knew I couldn’t remain in the husk of my old life.

Josh had moved on and so must I.

So that was that.

I left the flat that night and returned to Essex to stay with my mum. The next day I put the flat on the market. Three months later Alfie and I moved into the house in Leigh-on-Sea.

For the most part it pleased me to live in Leigh. There was a sense of community, tradition. People knew each other and soon started to recognize me and Alfie. It was nice, different to London, although sometimes, I’ve got to say, I missed the cynicism, the illegal twenty-four-hour off-licences and the anonymity. Down here you couldn’t mention someone’s name without being overheard by their wife/husband/cousin/sister/brother-in-law/mum/best friend (delete as appropriate).

But the up side was that the grocer called you by your first name when he handed over your change, on Thursdays the Rag and Bone man drove down the street, the butcher saved you lardons on a Saturday, and the library would phone you to let you know that book you were discussing had arrived.

No, at that point in time, I didn’t mind Leigh at all.

We reached the beach and as I came out of my thoughts I heard Lottie saying ‘And then the credit card! Honestly, Sarah, I could have killed him.’

Remembering herself she apologized. ‘I’m sorry. Metaphorical and all that.’

I was used to it. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. But I was pleased when, once we’d set out the blanket and the picnic, Lottie took the boys off to get their sugary rewards.

Determined to enjoy a moment to myself I removed my sandals, rolled up my trousers and sauntered down to the sea.

The noise levels were more subdued here than at Leigh. The lazy rhythmic lap of the waves frothed about my ankles, warm and inviting. Out on the grey horizon a large transport tanker crept towards the North Sea.

I closed my eyes, lifted my head to the sun and breathed the salty air in deeply. The tension in my body started to dissipate.

‘Sarah.’

It was a low whisper, close to my ear. I opened my eyes and turned around. A quick scan of the beach revealed no one that I knew. I stood alone in the surf. On the beach I saw our blanket was empty. Lottie and the boys were still on their ice-cream expedition.

‘Sarah.’

A woman’s voice.

This time it seemed to come from my left but there were only two children determinedly building a wall against the encroaching tide. The voice was much older.

‘Sarah.’

Something drew my eyes down to look at the sand.

I froze.

Caught in the high beam of the one o’clock sun, my shadow barely stretched before me – a fat compact dwarf-like outline.

But beside it there was another shadow – the long blackened haze of a woman’s shape.

As I stared transfixed, small strands of shadow hair wisped out of what looked like a bonnet and fluttered in the breeze.

And then it came to me, like a forgotten memory or a dream, swamping me, taking me down.

Running aimlessly through a garden: hurtling, staggering, losing my footing in the loose earth, sprawling, staggering, rushing towards … no, no, not going towards, but running from something or someone. My sobs choke me and I feel the desperate strangling claustrophobia of misery, of utter desolation, entrapment. There is no hope. Then out of the garden up to the road. Slowing to an unsteady walk. Vision blurred. Panting. Wet face.

Clouds roll in over the heavens. Grey sky. Buildings the colour of slate give way to reveal the water surrounded by rushes. It is waiting for me, the Drowning Pool, my saviour, my haven. Take me.

Through the reeds, I descend deeper into the water’s embrace. Then from behind, a shout. ‘Sarah!’ A middle-aged man in an ochre jacket. Father. Panic, thrashing into the pool. No! I step backwards. Away. Wading further into the centre.

Take me.

The heavy drag of wet fabric makes me stumble. Water-drenched, my skirt billows out beneath me in the shallows.

My doom.

A foot catches the floating cloth and I am under, gulping the pond into my lungs, filling them, losing myself in the pool’s murky depths.

Take me to him.

Down, deeper into the blackness of death, swirling, searching for welcoming numbness.

Then suddenly fingers around the back of my neck, gripping my dress. Hands about my waist, heaving, lifting, bearing me through the water. Staggering, falling, up again. On the grass. The hardness of the road, mud under my head. Coughing water, air. Two faces above, father and another, a woman full of tears: Mother. Oh, Mother. Look what has become of me.

Beyond them, a crowd.

A woman in a black bonnet has stopped to stare. She nudges her gentleman companion. ‘Who is it there?’

A voice loud and booming. ‘’Tis the Sutton girl in the Drowning Pool.’

The woman clucks. ‘It wouldn’t take her, see. She floats.’

‘No, the water will not take her sort.’ A large man now, white beard, shabby frock coat. Fierce. ‘She cannot drown herself.’ He makes the sign of the cross.

Spittle on my feet.

‘Witch.’

‘Sarah!’ The voice cut through the scene like a blast of cold air. Familiar, shrill – Lottie.

‘Deaf as a bloody post. What are you doing? Standing there like a zombie? Your jeans are soaked.’ She was holding an ice cream to me. ‘I thought I may as well get one for us too.’

The sun was burning my back. The cheerful sound of beach pandemonium hit me again.

I was back.

The sea lapped at my knees.

The children to my left had retreated, their sea wall long defeated by the tide.