Beach chase

A seven-year-old is chuckling to himself as he etches three letters in the hot Moroccan sand. The knock-kneed, freckle-faced boy is my uncle Martyn. His elder brother, my father Henry, tries to conceal his confusion. ‘R–B–H?’ he asks. ‘Rat Bag Henry!’ shrieks Martyn as he darts away across the dunes, howling with laughter. My father chases after him in mock outrage until the pair collapse in a heap of helpless joy and a family tradition has begun.

The sky is a stodgy porridge grey. My mother pours stewed tea from a Thermos, the rising steam mingling with the squeals of delight that carry on the biting wind. Her five children are scattered across Walton-On-The-Naze shore, scrawling frantically. One of them is me. Judging by my green seersucker trousers and grey sweatshirt with magenta poppers (a favourite), I must be about 10. I’m having so much fun I haven’t even noticed my lips are blue or that I’ve lost all feeling in the finger I’m tracing across the damp sand. All I know is that as soon as the H has been formed I’ll have to run like hell and I’m so excited my hand is trembling and, oh, it’s done, he’s coming! The H in question, my father, the larger than life brightspark, Henry, is chasing after me; we’re both laughing so hard I can barely run. I stumble and fall and he pounces on top of me, pretending to bash me up. The laughter judders through every muscle in my body, until I’m almost in physical pain. I don’t want it to end. But I know my siblings are scribbling their own sandy taunts and Dad, exploding with new reserves of energy, will soon charge off after one of them as we take it in turns to capture his love. Long after we have loaded up our buckets and spades into the battered green Volvo, a single abbreviation litters the deserted beach. RBH.

I’m in the Sahara desert. A long way from Brighton. I feel like an ill-fated cartoon character who has stepped off a cliff face and is desperately still running mid air. All I know is if I stop, I’ll plunge into the deadly depths of despair that await me. Which is why I’ve taken a flight as far from campus life as I can possibly get. It’s futile trying to concentrate in lab practicals when all I can think is don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. And the Hardy-Weinberg equation doesn’t seem so relevant now that my father who once explained it to me at lengths – patiently scribbling across reams and reams of computer paper – isn't here to praise me for finally grasping it. That beam, that laugh, those ape-like arms that used to lock around me until I couldn’t breathe, are all rotting in the ground 1200 miles away. I get vertigo just thinking about it. So I don’t. A leathery-faced bedouin signals for me to get back on a camel that has just bitten me. I tell him in French that I’d rather walk. Then I sink to the ground and it’s as if my finger is possessed. RBH. RBH. RBH. Nothing.

The heat beats down upon the metal trailer as we swing behind the speeding tractor, the wind soothing our sun-scorched skin. Daniel clutches a bottle of vodka; I hold onto the industrial pack of cling film we’ve just nicked from the kibbutz kitchen. If we’re lucky this guy’ll drop us at Zuqim beach where the rest of our friends are waiting. We return like heroes to cheers and shrieks, and dig out a pit between four wooden posts, before wrapping the giant roll of cling film around and around. The resulting shelter, complete with panoramic views, is even better than our drunken minds dreamed up. We sit and watch the shrink-wrapped sunset, taking turns to swig the fiery vodka. Later, Daniel and I stroll along the shore exchanging big ideas, and our minds meet somewhere between laughter and escape. A shifty little Israeli beckons to us from a wooden hut on the horizon. He’s desperate to practise his incoherent English, which becomes harder and harder to decipher with every puff of the fat spliff he proffers. As he and Daniel speak in huge, surreal gestures, I trace three letters over and over in the sand. Later, lying in our make-shift shelter it’s cold, but in this microclimate of us, this perfect embrace, I feel warmer; heated from the inside by what feels like joy but, I later realise, is love. I drift off to sleep as the tide washes away the last traces of a prayer to my father. RBH.

The Thai moon is so impossibly bright, the pretty coloured lights that twinkle the length of Koh Lanta beach are almost redundant. We eat squid kissed by coconut milk and coriander, and sip sticky-sweet cocktails. Daniel, seems uneasy. His drink is untouched. I knock back another and another and whoop at the perfection of the scene. Our plates are balanced on an upturned crate on the sand. The sea is within a toe’s twitch. There’s not a single thing in the world that could improve this moment. ‘I want to ask you something.’ He kneels in the cool grey powdery sand and the significance of the following four words shifts everything into slow motion. It feels as if the stars are reconfiguring above us as our own personal history is written in time. ‘Will you marry me?’ I am crying so hard, all I can do is nod. He pushes a smiley-face ring onto my finger – I recognise it from a dime store two continent’s back – and, desperate to tell the whole world, I bound down the beach towards the silhouette of two fishermen. I show them the ring and they seem as overjoyed as I am; their toothless grins gleaming in the moonlight as they shake Daniel’s hands over and over, before dragging their nets up the beach and disappearing into the night. Behind us the shack-cum-restaurants are shutting up one by one. The beach is empty. We rip off our clothes and wade into the black ocean; a moment of such purity we simply bob in awe, speechless, beneath the heavens. Later, when My Fiancé runs to retrieve our clothes, I emerge from the quicksilver and fall to my knees, my finger instinctively scrawling three letters in the sand. RBH.

The orange summer sun is extinguishing itself in the sea for the last time at Weston Super Mare. There’s a rare moment of absolute silence as all three of us watch in wonder. It has been the perfect day for our little family: Jonah, Honey and I. A rarity since ‘Mummy and Daddy aren’t married any more. Daddy lives in his house in Warwick and Mummy lives in our house in Stratford. So you’re very lucky because it means you have two bedrooms, and double the amount of toys and…’ There are days when the grief hits like a flash flood. One minute I’ll be brushing their hair, or reading their favourite book… and a sob swells in my throat so suddenly, I physically gag on the anguish. Today is a good day. Unlike the ones when I can barely push back the bedcovers – what’s the point? what’s the point? what’s the point? – I have gathered us all up, bundled us into the car and driven to the seaside. I might be broken on the inside, but on the outside I am Fun Mummy; the kind of mother who chases her children across the golden sand as they howl with laughter. I tell them Granddad Henry used to do the same. They ask where he is now. I drop to my knees and trace out three letters. ‘Right here,’ I say, gesturing to the sand, the sky, their smiles, this moment. We fall into a muddle of limbs and laughter. And a family tradition lives on.   

By Beth