The Beach
“My father drowned when I was just a kid. Went off one morning for a swim, never came back. I want to know what happened – was it an accident? Did he do it himself? Or did someone make him drown?”
I look evenly into the eyes it took me so long to find. My Uncle Geoffrey – gambler, alcoholic, black sheep and general scoundrel. The last person my father contacted before going off to Austinmer beach and filling his lungs with salty water.
“How old are you?” He looks at me with doubt and condescension, but behind all that, concern.
“Seventeen. You sent me a birthday card.”
It was the first contact I’d had with him since I was a toddler. I only remembered bits of him – bushy beard, worn work boots, stale cigarettes. Not long after that Mum had stopped us seeing him altogether.
Until I started asking questions about what happened to Dad that misty 2002 morning, I hadn’t though about Geoffrey for years. Until I started trying to decode the tiny letters in my father’s journal, and he’d cottoned on to the fact that I was looking for him, Geoffrey probably hadn’t though about me either.
It’s cold on the beach – tiny particles of half-dry sand wedge themselves between my toes, and a shivering sea-breeze washes through my hair. It’s the only place he would meet me. The only place I never wanted to go.
He lights up a cigarette and takes a long drag, then points out at the waves.
“There’s a sandbank there. It pushes the current in, makes the rip real strong.”
He traces the thin curve of the waves to the heavy rock outcrop with the glowing butt of his cigarette.
“Leads straight into those. No wonder Austinmer’s one of the most dangerous beaches in the country."
“If only he’d hit the rocks. Then I’d know what killed him”
Geoffrey exhales a grey mist which rises to blend with the overcast sky.
“How much do you remember of your old dad?”
I straighten, almost in pride. “He was a doctor. He saved lives. He never drank, never—“
“Not what you’ve been told – what do you remember.”
This is harder. I run through my memory.
“I was only eight when he died... not much, really. He used to pick me up from school. He’d buy me ice-cream on Fridays. He was always so active, running, swimming, piggybacking me—“
Geoffrey snorts. I stop. H gestures apologetically.
“Go on.”
“He’d read to me. And if I ever wanted something, no matter what Mum said, he’d get it. He got me a GameBoy Advance two weeks before he died. And.... that’s it.”
Geoffrey nods, tosses the fag into the sand and buries it with the toe of his old work boot.
“So this is the bit where I ruin all your memories.”
I almost ask him to stop. Almost. I’ve suspected for nearly a year that there was something wrong about the circumstances of my father’s death – maybe there was something I didn’t know about him.
But did I really want to know?
“How bad is it?”
Geoffrey shrugs. “As bad as you want it to be. Crime is usually a relative thing. Personal perspective and all that.”
“So it was crime? My Dad was a criminal?”
He lights up again. “All relative, sweetheart.” He takes a deep breath through the filter and looks me in the eye.
“Fact is, your dad was up to his eyeballs in coke.”
Of all the things I’d imagined, suspected or even guessed, this was the last. Gambling debts, another woman, tax fraud, theft – but never drugs.
“But... he was a doctor. He wouldn’t—“
“White collar professions have the highest usage rate of stimulants. Helps them thing. Ever wonder how your dad was always so active?”
No, I didn’t. I was eight.
“In a way, I blame myself. He started with someone else but came to me for more. Black sheep and all that. I didn’t sell to him, but I pointed him to people who would.”
I take a deep breath, salty air tinged with cigarette smoke. So my Dad used drugs. I accepted it, sort of. But still...
“How could that get him killed?”
Geoffrey gives me a concerned look. I recognise, for the first time, that under the red spider webs, he has the same green eyes as my father. Same green eyes as me.
“Are you sure you want to know? The rabbit hole ain’t pretty this far down.”
I could leave now; take my bare feet through the sand and far away, with an almost untainted view of my father. But that’s not why I started looking.
“I need to know.”
Geoffrey shrugs, recognising my mother’s stubborn determination.
“Most people are only occasional users, but your dad, he got hooked real bad. And when you’re racking up a bill like that, you start considering new ways to make cash. Fair bit of money to be made selling in hospital. Feed his habit, and everyone else’s, with a bit of cash on the side. That’s probably when your GameBoy came from. Anyway, after a while, the police started asking questions around the hospital. Some rehab kid had told them about a doctor offering to sell to him. Your dad panics – hasn’t got long before someone turns him in. Your mum has no idea, and the blokes he’s selling for aren’t exactly cupcakes. So who can he call?”
“You.”
Suddenly, the marks in my father’s diary make sense. Left hand column, local landmarks – supply. Letters on the right – users, or buyers. Then G. Geoffrey.
“He called me a week before he went, asking for help. I told him if he didn’t mind being an untrustworthy bastard he could sell his suppliers to the cops in exchange for his acquittal. He organised that quick smart – 6 days later, there’s a raid. Unfortunately, the thugs put two and two together and work out who sold them. Your dad gets a warning – meet them at Austinmer the next day, or they’ll go to him.”
“And he calls you again. And you tell him...”
Geoffrey looks away, almost ashamed. This is it.
“I tell him to go. Because these guys are dangerous – if they could track him after he sold them out, they could find him anywhere. And they could find—“
“His family.”
Dad’s final goodnight – closer than usual. Looking back, more desperate.
The last time I saw him alive.
Was I the reason he was dead?
Geoffrey seems to see what I’m thinking.
“Don’t blame yourself sweetheart. No one knows what happened. Maybe he was early and swam himself out to the rip. Maybe they knocked him out and put him in it. No one knows.”
He stubs out the cigarette and looks at me, imploring.
“I don’t know what happens next.”
Of course – he wasn’t at the funeral.
“The police came, asking questions. I thought it was just about the drowning. Then, last year, there’s a story in the paper about a drug ring from Coledale being busted. Implicated in four deaths – one of which was a drowning off Austimer in 2002. Mum stopped answering my questions, so I went through the stuff she kept of his; find his diary. And when that stopped making sense—“
“You called me.”
I nod.
“Do you feel... different?”
I think hard on the question.
“A little. But not much. It’s all in the past, I guess. But it’s better knowing.”
Geoffrey holds out a hand. I take it. I know that now, with this weight both off and on his mind, he’s unlikely to contact me again.
When he’s gone, I pad down the beach to the water’s edge, wondering if any of the moisture at me feet contains the same molecules that pulled my father into the tide’s embrace.
Then, pausing only to toss an old Nintendo GameBoy Advance into the surf, I turn and go, leaving the ghost behind.
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