Jetsam

The mouth of the estuary, looking inland from the island, seemed ready to swallow and digest anyone or anything unfortunate enough to go upstream.

It was wide, calm, a snake waiting for the right moment to make a meal of its prey. She stood motionless, just above the shingle, watching an enormous container ship making its carefully choreographed turn, looking slow and cumbersome yet already midway through its manoeuvre, one of delicate precision. Looming threateningly over the tiny sailing boats, their sails fluorescent against the battleship grey of the water and brooding clouds pushing down on the horizon, the larger vessel bossed its path until it was nudging its way eastwards. She loved the grandeur of these huge carriers, her mind creating imaginary cargoes bound for romantic, far-off destinations. This freedom made a hopeless contrast to the oppressive constraints of island life, where everybody knew everybody else, and secrets were almost impossible to keep.

As the container ship began to disappear, merging with the waves as it grew smaller and smaller, she turned her gaze to the more immediate view. It was on this spot of shoreline that Ben’s body had washed up, almost a month ago now. The flowers that the children had left against the sea wall had perished now, shrivelled, brown and wrinkled like an old man’s hand, as lifeless as her husband when the anglers discovered him here. She picked them up and studied them carefully; they could go in the bin when she left. The children would be upset if they knew the flowers had gone, but their decay served as a reminder of what must be happening to their father in the little cemetery a few miles away.

Quite how Ben had ended up in the water remained unexplained. When he was found washed up, bloated and wrinkled, sprawled out as if he had been dropped from the sky, he was fully clothed; he had clearly not gotten into trouble swimming. Anyway, he was a strong swimmer, had competed as a boy, and was proud of his skill in the water. A strong, physical man, Ben would have beaten off the swell which had been relatively calm on the night of his accident. He had only been wearing shorts and a t-shirt, his flipflops possibly kicked off in the struggle to stay afloat, so it was unlikely that his clothes had weighed him down.

The coroner had recorded an open verdict. A wound on Ben’s head suggested that maybe he slipped and fell, according to the report, which meant that he might have been unconscious when he entered the water. This would explain why he had not bullied back the surf as she would have expected him to. Suicide had been explored as a possibility, but ruled unlikely. Why would a man walk into the sea in relatively shallow water and calmly surrender themselves to the waves; surely the subconscious survival instinct would kick in? Ben was not the type of man to talk about mental health, and she did not think depression was a plausible explanation. The inquest had explored whether a pang of guilt about his infidelities had weighed him down until he had seen ending his life as the only resolution, but, thankfully, this had been adjudged unlikely. She was able to keep this from the children then, meaning their memory of their father the hero would not be tainted.

She looked back out across the water, where the ferry was coming in. The container ship had disappeared completely now, as she had longed to do. In front of her on the mainland were the remains of the old power station, a carcass once bursting with energy, waiting to be demolished. The featureless wasteland where once the other cooling towers had stood, asserting their authority over the river mouth, would soon be redeveloped, luxury apartments housing new life where, currently, occasional lovers or groups of bored teenagers, looking for a discreet spot for their misdemeanours, would hang out. Her gaze tracked along the shoreline, past the spot where she had pushed him in, to where the land began to rise. Trees clung to the edge, desperately fighting for their existence as rapidly encroaching erosion tried to claim them for the sea.

It had started to lightly drizzle, more a damp mist than actual rain. She turned back towards the car, his unnecessarily large model, which she had not used since that night. Pushing the flowers into the nearby bin, she slowly released her grip on them, watching as they lay beneath her gaze, amongst the other debris, crumpled and lifeless.

Andy Weekes, spends probably too much time pottering around in, and writing about, the outdoors. A regular contributor of routes to Country Walking magazine and erratic Substack poster, his default setting involves rucksack, notepad and pen and a wandering imagination, drifting into the realms of English eerie.
Social media: substack.com/@andyweekes