Beachcomber

Beachcomber
By
Duncan J Fatz

(This is dedicated to my mother because it is the last of my stories
that she ever heard)

I can't remember the first time I saw Old Ted. As far as I knew he had
always been there, just like the beach upon which I played. I would
often see him wandering across the sand - searching the shoreline for
the flotsam and jetsam which washed into the Loch from the North
Sea.

I had been told to steer clear of him by my parents because, according
to them, he was a bit odd. But he didn't worry me, as far as I was
concerned he was just another beachcomber as keen on collecting his
hotchpotch of debris as I was in scouring the rock-pools for the sea
anemones and shrimps with which I would furnish my own home-based
seascape.

No, I don't remember seeing Old Ted for the first time, but I do
remember the first time he spoke to me. I had found a seagull, a great
black-backed gull, which had been trapped in a net and drowned with the
rising tide. It lay stretched out before me, tears of seawater beading
its long black wings and sparkling in the morning sun. I was six years
old and in full possession of that callous disregard for life or death
which only the very young know. It is a callousness born of a lack of
understanding - being but new to life it is difficult to comprehend the
concept of death - but, in that moment, staring down at that glistening
rag, that had once been master of the skies, I knew and I cried. Sure I
had seen dead animals before crabs and starfish and the like, but they
had almost been inanimate anyway, this was different.

It was whilst I was on my knees, sobbing out my heart and pitting the
sand with my tears that Old Ted came up behind me and patted me on the
shoulder. I can't remember his attitude being particularly sympathetic,
he just told me not to cry and not to be sad because although the bird
was dead it would come back.

I watched him as he untangled the bird and threw it back into the sea.
There, he told me, the fish would eat the bird and the birds would eat
the fish and each time a little bit of the spirit of that dead bird
would pass into its brothers and sisters, so it had left one body to
become part of many. That was what the sea was for it took away the
dead and gave life to the living, and that was why he was a beachcomber
- helping to recycle the things that the sea threw back.

It was then that he took me back to his boathouse, to show me some of
the things he had collected, and what an Aladdin's cave it was. A
dry-docked, blown up, back to front version of my rock pool palace but,
whereas I had brightly coloured shells decorating the walls of my
creation, the boathouse had myriads of bottle tops each nailed onto the
invisible wooden planking beneath, and whereas my pool was festooned
with lengths of bladder wrack and weed, the boathouse held cascades of
brightly coloured nets and stacks of leaning lobster pots, but, pride
of place and dominating the shack was the boat. It could only have been
about twelve feet long but to me it looked enormous. The old man smiled
at me as I ran my hand along the bright blue and white planking of the
boat in fascination.

"I use that to set my pots," he had told me.

I must have looked at him blankly because I remember he went on to tell
me, "For catching lobsters, crabs too sometimes."

"I catch crabs sometimes," I told him, "I got one once that was this
big." I showed him a size that was about one and a half inches
across.

"Mine are usually a little bigger," Old Ted replied, and he indicated
with stretched fingers what must have been about eight inches
across.

Never mind the fish - I was hooked. I wanted to go out fishing with the
old man straight away, but there was a problem - my father.

The Japanese say that there are only three things a man should fear,
and one of them is his father. Had I known that proverb at that tender
age I would have wholeheartedly agreed with it because, for my father,
discipline was both the stick and the carrot. Self discipline was to be
sought to the exclusion of all else, save respect for ones elders and
betters, who had the right to administer harsh extraneous discipline
should they consider that one was losing track of one's goal. I knew,
therefore, that it was useless to ask my father if I could go fishing,
as it was my father objected to me spending as much time on the beach
as I did, he would have preferred it if I stayed at home and
read.

So when I crept out of the house that evening and ran to the beach I
had to tell a lie to Old Ted when he asked if I had got permission from
my parents, but then I felt that the lie was worth it, for that evening
the old man and I danced over the waves in his boat, the Goosander. The
wind filled its sail and we ran before that breath from heaven along
the golden path cast out from the setting sun and, to this day, I have
never felt such exhilaration as I did on that first trip onto the loch
with Old Ted and the Goosander. But there were more trips, that summer
seemed filled with them - evening trips to set the pots, morning ones
to fetch them up and some in the middle of the day just for the sheer
hell of it, when we would sail to some rocky little island and picnic
on its cratered surface as we watched the grey-flecked seals diving and
sporting around us. And about each trip my father knew nothing, until
one fateful evening.

Old Ted and I had almost finished laying the pots and setting the
floats when I saw a crowd of people tramping towards us over the marram
grass spiked dunes. They spread out upon reaching the beach and fanned
out along its length, and I noticed that one of them was a policeman. A
fisherman, who was anchoring his boat closer in, pointed in our
direction and then all hell broke loose. The crowd ran back together to
form an angry knot in front of us, the policeman blew his whistle and
then, as if this was the signal the crowd had been waiting for, they
all started shouting at us and waving for us to come in. God I felt
nervous, Old Ted just looked puzzled. He dropped the last pot overboard
and headed in for shore. My father was on the beach and, as soon as we
landed, he ran up and grabbed Old Ted by the collar. He was accusing
the old man of trying to kidnap me or abscond with me, I can't quite
remember, I was so much in shock. There were dogs barking, the
policeman blowing his whistle, and the whole crowd shouting at Old Ted
and threatening him with violence. All I can really remember is the
look of utter bewilderment and horror on Old Ted's face. It was the
sight of this and the thought of what I had done to the innocent old
man that brought me out of my stupor.

"Stop!" I shouted, "It wasn't his fault, he didn't do anything wrong,
it was my fault. I asked to go on the boat, all he did was to let
me."

The crowd was silent now and I remember glaring up at my father and I
remember saying the words that cut into the silence so harshly and so
deeply that they could have etched themselves in stone, "All you do is
stop me from doing things."

I was confined to my room for three days after that incident, but
afterwards, on my mother's bidding, my father did, reluctantly, allow
me to go down to the beach and meet up with Old Ted once more on the
proviso that I didn't go out in a boat. This was only fair, Old Ted had
told me, as after all I couldn't swim yet. In order to make it up to me
he told me that instead of going out in the Goosander we would make a
model of it out of the bits washed up on the shore. This would be like
recycling, he said, making the new out of the old.

We worked at it for weeks gathering the wood and bringing it back to
the boat house where, in the midst of that companionable clutter, Old
Ted would either sit at his table surrounded by the nets or perch on
the Goosander and carve the wood into shape and I, ever at his
shoulder, would offer assistance whenever I could and hold the pieces
as he glued them. But I could tell that the old man wasn't well. Ever
since the incident on the beach he had seemed to go down hill and now
his breathing was becoming more and more laboured and he appeared
increasingly tired. It all came to a head one morning when my father
came into the bedroom and told me that Old Ted had been taken into
hospital. I stared in disbelief.

"You did it," I shouted at my father, "It's your fault, you made him
poorly."

My father looked shocked, but I didn't care. The one person who seemed
to have time for me had gone away and I was worried that he wouldn't
come back.

I didn't see much of my father for a long time after that. He was
briefly there in the morning, back again in the afternoon and gone in
the evening. It wasn't until years later that I discovered that each
evening my father had gone to visit Old Ted in hospital. The one
evening that I eventually did see my father was to become a turning
point in my life. He stood before me and told me, as gently as he
could, that Old Ted had died. I couldn't believe it. My world, which
over the previous weeks had slowly been eroding through the clutching
fingers of my hope, finally shattered into a thousand pieces.

I ran from the house and raced across the beach, pounding my way
towards the boat house and crashed into the treacle thick silence of my
former refuge. The bottle tops glimmered in the light from the full
moon shining through the window, but there was no light shining down
upon my world.

The Goosander stood before me and beside her was her lilliputian
sister, complete in all but the paintwork, but what was it worth now?
It was a dead thing just as Old Ted was. It had been alive while we had
been working on it but who could complete it now? I picked it up and,
with all the fear, anger and pain in my body, smashed it against the
wall - ending, or so I thought, my last physical connection with Old
Ted.

The days hung heavily after that as I could no longer bring myself to
venture onto the beach and step on the shadow of my memories. And so
the weeks slowly wound around until it was my seventh birthday and yet
another landmark formed along the course of my life's chequered
career.

My father presented me with a box.

"It's from Old Ted," he told me. "I know that he wanted you to have
it." And, yes, inside was a perfect replica of the Goosander. My father
had taken up the broken pieces of the model I had smashed and put them
back together. My father who had never lifted a tool in his life or
made any attempt to create anything with his hands had reconstructed
and painted part of my shattered life.

I don't know if it applies to humans, nor do I suppose I ever will, but
somehow I think a little bit of the spirit of Old Ted went into my
father and I cherish and love it in its new home.