The Salt Path

by Raynor Winn

‘You thought blackberries had passed, didn’t you? Or you’ve eaten them and thought you didn’t like them. No, you need to wait until the last moment, that moment between perfect and spoilt. The blackbirds know that moment. And if the mist comes right then, laying the salt air gently on the fruit, you have something that money can’t buy and chefs can’t create. A perfect, lightly salted blackberry. You can’t make them; it has to come with time and nature. They’re a gift, when you think summer’s over, and the good stuff has all gone. They’re a gift.’

‘It’s touched you, it’s written all over you: you’ve felt the hand of nature. It won’t ever leave you now; you’re salted. I came here thirty years ago and never left. I

Then they came. Streaming from the hillsides, down every path, every gully. Old people, young people, pre-school children, children that should have been at school, buckets, deckchairs, trollies full of paraphernalia, they all claimed their space by the rocks, then every space up to the tideline, people as confused by the weather as the kittiwakes. A biblical invasion, but what were they searching for? I suspect it was just the last few rays of the summer; if it was anything spiritual they were too late, that wasn’t available after ten thirty.

Where Daphne du Maurier was a tenant and dreamt of Manderley, we lay homeless and penniless under the stars.

the softening, cooling suggestion of late August when the heat changes and there’s a smell of dewy nights and cobwebbed mornings to come.