By Tom Edgar
Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
He stands on the Thames foreshore, down beneath the Tate Modern, looking out across the river blankly. He wears a black overcoat, cut rigidly around his shoulders, and the coattails flutter up in the wind, the black satin capturing the light, alchemising his back into a temporary silver. Slowly, he bends over, scanning the beach floor, furrowing between the dusted jade of beer bottles and river-stained needles, until he finally picks up a stone. He holds it in his right hand, moving his thumb along its edge, studying it like a blind man’s vocabulary. It is soft; he is losing himself on this shore. In the stone’s cold press, some more complete past flows into his empty present. He leans, awkwardly, as if about to squat: his overcoat stretches tight against his shoulders. He draws his right arm back, the gesture pregnant with defeatism. He is going to skim a stone on the Thames. He pauses and looks out across the river — the brown swell, unmoved and unlit by a grey sky — before making a sudden jolt. He releases his arm, making the gesture of skimming, but he does not let go of the stone. Instead, he keeps it clenched in his hand, so that by the time he has followed through, it is not dashing across towards the North Bank, but is pressed up against his chest. He steps back and drops the stone. He turns to see if anyone has been watching him, before scuttling off, the briskness of his walk straightening his legs.
It was an early afternoon in mid-August and the sky was acid-washed with an unrefined brightness that wavered between blue and grey. Today, for Adam, it looked blue — an impossible, wonderful blue. He was eight years-old and he was in his favourite place in the world: the beach, a five minute walk along the sandy footpath from Sea Cottage, where he had stayed every Summer since time immemorial. And at breakfast that morning, Toby had promised to show him how to skim a stone.
It was a small, pebbled beach: a cove nestled between two craggy headlands. Looking out, there was a pale view of Scotland — its sullen verdure assuming an airy lightness across the thin strait of Atlantic water, its deep blue wind-tossed with the white, spitting arabesques of the waves. Looking out, Adam could see the hourly steamer headed, face-on, towards the island: a bizarre, upturned triangle, ever-expanding, with people leaning on the guard-rails and watching the island expand before them just as it had done the day before. He had stood by the rails on his tiptoes, watching the island dilate, pointing his finger and squinting his eyes, saying “Look, Mum, there’s the house,” or else, “The Beach! It’s the Beach.” It didn’t matter that his estimations were incorrect — that the pointed-to house was the wrong shape or the wrong colour, or that the indicated beach was of the whitest sand — because to Adam, Sea Cottage and the Beach were the whole island, and so, in his heart, he was right.
A small campfire had been set up where the beach ended and met the wild grass. It was surrounded by camp chairs. Mackerel cooked on the fire in silver parcels of foil, its edges folding upwards in the heat, while fresh-picked mussels bubbled away in white wine and garlic. The adults were mostly sitting around the fire: the Bateses, the Sutherlands, and Adam’s parents, the Cromptons. Only Toby Symes was absent, despite being the nominal chef.
David Crompton was, by now, half-asleep, a metal cup of white wine rested supine against his chest, whilst a facedown paperback straddled his thigh. His wife, Christie, was sitting next to him. Through dark sunglasses, she looked out towards the sea and Scotland, down the barrel of her aquiline nose, until she spotted her son, Adam, with Toby. They were standing by the water’s edge. Toby was leaning over, skimming a stone. She sipped on her beaker of wine, holding the rim against her face to hide a smile. She stood up and walked over to the pink, quilted beach-bag, from which she extracted a packet of cigarettes. She returned to her seat, lit a cigarette, and continued watching.
“Bend over,” Toby said, instructing Adam. “Find the smoothest pebble you can possibly find. It must be perfect, like this.” Having chosen one, Toby exhibited it in Adam’s eye-line, holding it between thumb and middle-finger. “Not too big, you see. Otherwise it’ll go plop and sink right down to where the fishes swim and the crabs scuttle and the dainty oysters recline with their innards of pearl. And then,” he leaned over to his right, planting his left foot forwards, and drew back the pebble-bearing arm, “you throw it like this. Watch.” The stone dashed loose of Toby’s grip and skated across the sea, all the way, Adam thought, to the mainland. “Now, Adam, you try.”
Adam smiled. Easy, he thought. He looked down at the beach: half-scanning for a stone, half-imagining that same stone hurtling over the waves, all the way to Scotland and beyond. Dreaming, he became that stone, kissing the water’s surface with all his body, flying safely over the deep, the cold salt wind turning his face numb and red and warm. He crouched, allowing his brittle white hands to brush over the pebbles. He found one. It was smooth and dark grey with white and amber rings. He stroked it, imagining its soft and weightless flight. Adam’s father had only ever shown him dead rocks — fossils, the embalmed mummies of unknowable prehistory — but here, now, were the living rocks, which soar weightlessly at the imperative of a human hand. “Now, remember,” Toby said. “Left foot forwards, lean to your right. And then, let it fly away.”
“Yes,” Adam replied. “I will, I will.” But his excitement muddled his concentration, and as he leaned into his position and began to throw, he wobbled, his foot faltering forwards, and he overthrew it. It was as if the pebble was so dear to him that his hand had refused to release it. It careered off to the left and, at first contact with the cruel and dark sea, it sank — down, down, to where the fishes swim and … The Mainland seemed so far away, an evasive, unreachable world.
“Don’t worry, Adam.” Toby placed his large, veiny hand on Adam’s back. It felt warm. “You know, I couldn’t do it until I was about thirteen.”
Adam laughed. “Huh! Really? That’s so funny.”
“Yes. Well, keep trying. It’ll work eventually.” Toby turned to look at the campfire. “Right, I best be off. Your father’s fallen asleep on duty.” He walked a few strides before breaking into an easy jog: a sudden gust of wind blew and changed the direction of the campfire smoke, enveloping Toby for a moment. Adam was smiling: the sort of smile which knows the world is simple and that there is nothing more to it than whether or not a stone sinks or swims, or whether you sit on your mother’s left or right knee. And although his stone had sunk, Toby’s had sunk once too, so it was really only a matter of time. He saw his mother looking over towards him and smiled even more. But as she lifted her sunglasses, resting them on her hairline, Adam noticed Toby, now halfway across the beach, moving with slow, athletic grace, his bare torso warmed by the sun.
Adam turned back to the sea. He picked up another pebble, Toby’s earlier words echoing in his head, and he tried to throw it. Again, it careered off to the left and sank on its first contact with the sea. The other children, nine of them altogether, had been playing aimlessly about the beach and, seeing Adam’s latest failure, began to laugh. “Look at Adam! It’s not that hard.” But Adam was smiling, that big and certain smile, because Toby had said he’d be able to do it eventually and Toby knew so much more than all the children.
Mussels gaped in the pot. The air was drunk from the hot wine simmering. Toby rattled the large pot a few times before removing it from the fire, placing it on a small trestle table, next to the mackerel on its foil platter, the edges of which lifted at the wind’s slightest intimations. They had caught the fish that morning. There hadn’t been space for Adam, the youngest of all the children, to go fishing. Instead, he had been assigned the task of harvesting mussels, severing them from their bed of rock and rubbing away the moss and grit and hair with his fingernails and tepid water. But it had been lovely, since he had been with his mother. Hector, the Sutherlands’ youngest, had joined them. He was one year older than Adam and he was cruel — the crude relish on his face as he tore mussel from rock, the way his tongue pressed his upper lip when he smiled. But Adam had his mother, and that was enough. He would skip and sprint about, an inefficient harvester, before circling back to his mother to hold her hand. “Mummy, Mummy — you have to see this. There’s a crab.” To each of his enthusiastic discoveries, she responded with a stiff, aristocratic smile, the knowing parsedness of which suggested a quiet condescension. “Oh, how wonderful,” she would say, with a detached but loving irony, before giving him a gentle pat on the back. “You are clever, Adam. Go on. Let’s see.” Then she would draw a cigarette from her pocket and follow him, smoking, with one hand in her coat pocket.
“Are you all ready for some food?” Toby announced, in part to the adults, but with the gentle inflection of his tone directed towards the adoring troop of children.
“Yes.”
“I’m starving.”
“Mmm. Smells so good.”
David awoke to the gleeful chorus. Startled into life, his sudden jolt unsettled the beaker of wine which had been resting on his tummy, and the liquid splashed onto his blue linen shirt. “Bugger,” he said, before fumbling into a stentorian laugh. He peeled the paperback off his lap, turned the corner of the page, and stood up. Christie looked at him, half in disgust, and rolled her eyes. She stood up and moved towards the spread of food. “Toby, it looks wonderful. You do spoil us. Thank you.”
Behind the beach, there was a patch of shorter grass on which the children had set up a cricket pitch. The two oldest children — Adam’s brothers, Henry and John — were, respectively, batsman and bowler. Everyone else hung about the makeshift wicket like satellites, doting on the every move of the older two, eager to impress them whilst masking their frustration at their own lack of inclusion. John would bowl, not very effectively, and Henry would hit the ball down to the beach, and then the fielder closest would bruise their bare feet by running over the pebbles and the dry, tumorous kelp, whose bubbles snapped on their feet. Or else, if the ball was hit in the other direction, into the bracken, they would get on their knees and crawl through the damp, tick-laden crop in vain pursuit of a surely lost wind ball. All the while, Henry and John screamed: “Hurry up.”
Adam had been placed at Fine Leg. He was the youngest, and so, inevitably, had the least right to be included in the match. Rarely would a ball be hit towards him. But he was happy with this — dawdling away, his eyes wandered about as his mind flew off about the landscape, up the heather-blushed slopes and the wind-curled sea. Even still, he could only think of one thing: skimming stones. He was sure he’d be able to do it now, if only he could practise. But he couldn’t: on a group holiday, he must play with the group, even if the group didn’t much care about playing with him. He felt like an outsider here. His brothers, so kind and considerate at home, adopted a cruel, teasing attitude towards him in front of their extrafamilial disciples. And so all the other children behaved like that to him. Especially Hector — Hector, who just last summer, had been his best friend.
He looked towards the beach. Toby and his mother were standing near the water’s edge, close together. They were talking, her face turned up towards his greater height. The tide was coming in quickly. If only he could be over there, with Toby and with his mother, skimming stones, and they’d both be so proud of him. But he was standing here, the short wild grass itching his feet, awaiting the ball which would never come, only so that he could fumble it and misthrow it and get shouted at by his brothers. His mother was smoking: wisps of cigarette smoke, blue against the sea and view of Scotland. She tossed it to the floor and then they both started to walk back.
“ADAM!” Shouts. He paused, confused. What? He thought. He looked about, briefly, puzzled, until he saw a dot of orange expanding faster and faster and coming straight towards him. He couldn’t quite register what was happening. By the time he was raising his hands to his face, it was too late. The ball hit his nose; its worn-out seam imprinting itself on his skin and he fell to the floor.
“Adam,” John shouted, irritated at the dropped catch. “You spaz”. He could hear Hector and a few others laughing.
He stood up and limply threw the ball towards the wicket-keeper. It bounced a few times, landing a few metres wide of its destination. His nose felt even more painful when he thought about his brothers’ mistreatment of him. He ran off.
“Mummy, mummy.” He shouted as he ran towards her.
“Oh, Adam. What is it?” Her and Toby had almost returned to the campfire.
“My face. Henry hit it.”
“Henry hit you?”
“Yes. He hit me with a cricket ball.”
“Oh darling. That must be so painful. Come here.” She pulled him tightly against her, tucking his head into her arms. But the sympathy increased his pain and so he cried more.
“Now, let me look at your face.” Adam turned his face upwards so that she could see it. Placing her hands on his small face, with her thumbs she wiped away each tear as it sprouted. “Well, I think we should take you back up to the cottage.”
“Okay Mummy, okay.”
After she had pressed an ice-pack to his face and nourished him with Hot Chocolate, Adam had moved through to the TV room, where eventually he was joined by the other children. John and Henry decided to put on an episode of South Park, with the volume turned down so the adults wouldn’t hear. Adam kept looking out the window towards the sea: a sort of liquid silver, now, in the cloud-broken light, its faint, metallic ripples calling him down. He thought about tomorrow: that was when he’d finally do it. But why couldn’t he do it now? He could slip away, unnoticed, and practice. The adults were resting, and the children were watching TV. He could say he’d been reading in some quiet, undisturbed corner of the house. His mother, perhaps, would come looking for him. If she discovered he’d gone to the beach on his own, she’d be furious. But she’d come around: besides, what was her anger compared to the proud exhilaration of a skimming stone? He would go to the beach.
It was quiet down there, other than the rumble of the wind buffeting against the headland, and the waves lapping: small, sympathetic ones, noisy only due to the impatient speed with which the sea dispatched them. Since most of the beach was visible from Sea Cottage, he walked to the far end where he’d be invisible. He had an hour, he reckoned, until supper.
He turned over Toby’s words. The smoothest pebble; Perfect, like this; You throw it like this! He shut his eyes, remembering Toby’s graceful movements: the subtle rightwards lean, the left foot striding forwards, the arm stretched backwards, pregnant with energy. Eyes closed, he mimicked these actions, over-and-over, without holding or throwing one. He opened his eyes and picked up a stone. He threw it, and did so again-and-again, for about twenty minutes or so until the smooth mosaic of the beach conjured a smooth, lopsided, if ovular pebble: a concrete grey, with one vague amber ring and two white spots on the upside of its thinner end. It felt strange in his hand, inosculating with his palm: like two continents pieced together after millennia of drift, two lovers whose curves and inclines met each other’s with a casted precision. He leaned into the throw, releasing it, and then, it skimmed. The pebble leaped up in a spray of white, then curved to the left and bounced a few more times before plunging into the sea on its fourth bounce. He had done it. How was he going to not tell anyone about it? He’d have to wait until tomorrow and then he could show them all. He tried once again for good measure: again, it skimmed.
He set off back to the house along the path. He imagined the pebble now: yes, it hadn’t quite gone all the way to the mainland, but had gone quite far. Five bounces: and where would it be now? Fish gliding over it, enthroned amongst the scallops and the oysters: a diamond encrusted on the ocean floor.
He heard a twig snap. Quick breaths; low murmurs. It grew louder, now, as he acclimatised to reality. His heartbeat dropped a little. It was coming from about ten metres away, just off the path. He followed it, creeping slowly through a small pathway of trampled bracken, almost ferric and rusted on its ends, feeling wet and itchy on his uncovered calves. There was a clearing. He looked up at the tree: its late August canopy of etiolating leaves jostled in the wind. There was a stream next to it; the stream moaned and murmured as it rushed quickly over the rocks in white bursts. It grew louder. There were two figures, trembling on the floor, flickering in the dusk: one white and the other darker. Adam’s mother tilted her head to her side, noticing him, and raised one finger to her lips to quieten him. Toby, eyes closed, maintained his course, skating away across the high seas to Scotland.
The next day Adam went to the beach, but his throw was limp, and the stone sunk, and the other children laughed at him.