A View Of The Sea

The couple at the next table were arguing - anyone could see that. Not

that they raised their voices, but the woman had the bleached look and

tense mouth of one under chronic strain, and her eyes, although

carefully made up, looked slightly puffy and reddened, as if she had

recently cried. The man had his back to Rachel, so she could only see

longish, slightly graying light-brown hair over the collar of a red, tartan

jacket, but the shoulders were hunched with belligerence and he

seemed to loom over his companion. The woman flinched at something

he said, then lifted her coffee-cup, but her hand trembled and she

replaced it in the saucer. Attempting to seem normal, she glanced round

the café, briefly caught Rachel’s eye, then looked away. Not that there

was anything much to look at. Someone, a long time ago, had tried to

give the premises a jaunty, nautical atmosphere. The rough plaster walls

were hung with bad paintings of galleons and scooners in full sail, glass

floats festooned the wooden panelling, and plastic lobsters trailed

dejectedly from decorative nylon nets. Rain streamed down the two

small windows, and as the tables emptied, nobody came to clear the

dirty cups, although a woman buttoned tightly into an overall was leaning

on the counter looking out at the wet cobbles.

Sarah would be here in  half an hour. They should have arrived at the same time,

so that they  could go to the cottage together, but as usual Sarah was running

late. Rachel wanted to go, but having been drenched once, didn’t want

to be drenched again; when Sarah arrived they could go

there together in her car. The last of her fellow customers left,

putting umbrellas up against the downpour, leaving Rachel alone with

the unhappy couple. She ordered tea and cake, killing time, and wishing

she had brought a book. The angry hunched shoulders and the woman’s

distressed face were between her and what view there was of the street

outside; to avoid appearing to watch them she must crane her neck and

feign interest in the terrible selection of ship-paintings.

After a few moments she turned back to her tea and cake but found

the woman now staring at her with unsettling intensity, her face ashen.

Rachel couldn't help but look back; the woman seemed to want to tell

her something. The man in the red jacket turned in his chair suddenly,

meeting Rachel's gaze, and clearly furious. He shoved his chair back,

slammed some money on the counter, and took the woman by one arm,

almost pulling her out of her chair. The door slammed behind them, and

they left Rachel feeling shaken by the enounter: the fear on the woman's

face, the rage on the man's. She closed her eyes and took a few deep

breaths, then heard the little bell tinkle over the cafe door again as Sarah

came in.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, hugging Rachel. "I let Chips out for a run in the

park and he wandered off. Shall we go?"

Then the sisters stood back from each other, and looked each other up

and down.

"Did you copy me, or did I copy you?" asked Sarah, and Rachel grinned back.

Both women were wearing longish dark-blue coats with fur collars, tan

leather boots, and a white scarf.

"We've done it again!" Rachel laughed.

Chips, Sarah's ancient dog of uncertain breed, was asleep on the back

seat of Sarah's car, and the sisters drove a mile out of the village to

where their cottage clung to the rocks above the pebbly beach. As

children, their parents had rented this cottage for two weeks each

summer, and now, every year at the beginning of October, the sisters

returned for what Rachel's husband, Nick, called their 'annual chat-fest.'

It had become a tradition ever since both sisters married, and moved to

opposite ends of the country. For all their startling similarities and

closeness, they now led very different lives: Rachel with her part-time

jobs, three demanding teenagers, and her husband struggling to keep

his engineering business afloat; Sarah, describing herself as "childfree",

with her charity work and her adoring husband who did something

involving IT which Rachel didn't understand but which seemed to bring in

more money in a month than she and Nick made in a year. The men

didn't get on. And Sarah had Chips, who was jealous and snappy around

Rachel's boisterous children. So now, the sisters packed all their talking

and laughing at private jokes into one off-season week each year, not

caring that the weather was unpredictable, each returning to her own life

recharged, having made contact with her roots once more.

Unpacking was the first thing which made them laugh - every year they

would find that they had each brought a case full of clothes which were

the same designs and colours, the main difference being that Rachel's

were the budget version of her sister's expensive holiday wardrobe.

Rachel had always loved the view from her bedroom here.

She had the room she had used when she was a child, facing directly

over the rock-strewn beach and the old broken stone jetty. While she put

her clothes away, she looked out, saw a flash of red, and was depressed

to see that the couple from the café were walking on the beach, the man

still in his red tartan jacket. Rachel could see that the door to the old

motor-home parked  beyond the jetty was open, spilling a little light into

the gloomy afternoon. So that was where they were staying.

The isolation of the cottage was what had attracted the sister's parents to this

place so long ago; most people chose to go to the caravan park on the

cliff above the long stretch of sandy beach, and left this little rocky corner

undisturbed. Rachel hoped the couple would move on soon. Even

through the closed window, above the sound of the waves, she could

hear the man shouting, and although she couldn't make out the words,

she could see the woman cringing beneath the verbal assault, like a

whipped dog. She thought of Nick, so tolerant and gentle with his family

no matter how stressed and tired he was, and of Sarah's Liam, who

adored his wife, and thought how lucky they had been. Then Sarah

came in to ask if Rachel remembered how to turn the heating on, and

Rachel put the unhappy couple out of her mind.

As they always did, the sisters slipped comfortably into a routine; each

morning, before breakfast, Rachel would drive into the village to buy

their food for the day, while Sarah took Chips for a short walk along the

beach. For the first two mornings, Rachel found herself reluctantly face

to face with the couple, who were never apart despite their obvious

unhappiness. Trapped in the queue at the corner-shop, she was unable

to move away, despite feeling the woman's eyes on her face, the

pleading and tension palpable, seemingly at breaking-point, so that

Rachel felt guilty for not helping her. But how could she say or do

anything? The woman never spoke, just stared in recognition, as if being

ignored by an old friend, and at some point, the man, a look of

suppressed fury on his face, would turn his glare on Rachel, as if

accusing her of interfering. She couldn't even tell Sarah about the

couple; Sarah had never seen them, and, unlike Rachel, whose impulse

was always to avoid confrontation, Sarah would undoubtedly have felt it

was her duty to do all she could to defend a woman who was clearly

being abused. But Rachel was acutely aware of how isolated the cottage

was; if they provoked the man in any way, he may come there, and he

was obviously unhinged. If he attacked them, they couldn't call the

police, because, so close to the sea, their mobile phones had no signal.

So Rachel simply started going to the shop half an hour earlier, leaving

Sarah pottering around in the kitchen making coffee, and kept a wary

eye open for the flash of the red jacket.

For two days, to her relief, she didn't see the couple, although the

motorhome remained on the strip of land close by the jetty. The sisters

spent their days slowly, visiting remembered childhood haunts, and

talking. The stony beach was uninviting because the weather remained

grey and cold, so only Sarah walked by the sea, when the elderly Chips

needed his few minutes of exercise before slumping exhausted onto his

bed by the radiator. But before going to bed, Rachel would turn out her

bedroom light and look out at the motor-home, it's windows lit, and

shiver, wondering what private hell the woman was enduring in that

confined space.

On the fifth morning, she was returning from buying the day's groceries,

and heard a brief shout, quickly muffled. She had almost reached the top

of the dune of bleached seashells which were washed up by each high

tide, and she saw the couple standing on the old jetty. The woman was

holding something up high, and as if in slow motion, Rachel saw her

bring her arm down, and the man fall onto the half-covered stones in the

water below. Paralysed, Rachel saw him, face down, unmoving rather

than struggling to stand up again. The woman hurried down to his side

as if to help, but instead, she glanced furtively all around the empty bay,

and even at a distance Rachel could see that the expression on her face

was one of pure triumph. In her hand, she still clutched the rock she had

struck him with. And then, as so often before, her eyes met Rachel's,

and Rachel knew she had been seen and recognised. The woman, no

longer cringing, but standing tall with determination, stepped toward

Rachel while the body of her tormentor moved gently among the green

rocks and the seaweed.

Rachel knew she had to reach the cottage, to stop Sarah from going out,

to keep her sister safe. She dropped down below the level of the bank of shells so

she couldn't be seen, left the bags of shopping and ran,

sliding and losing her footing in the shells, her ankles twisting on the

pebbles, heading for the path to the cottage, and safety.

She ran upstairs heart bursting, hoping to find Sarah still waiting for her to return, but

found the note by her bedroom door, saying Sarah had taken Chips for

his walk.

And through the bedroom window Rachel could see her sister

who was more than a sister, more than a friend: the other half of herself,

her identical twin, making for the jetty with the old dog trotting behind

her, and turning, smiling, to greet the woman intent on keeping the

secret of a man's death, who was walking toward her, still clutching the

rock in her hand.