Some jarring adventures by the sea

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Nov 03, 2007 

The cottage was in a little fishing bay in Yorkshire, high up on a cobbled street that was so steep it made your legs hurt. If you stopped for a second (and we always did, moaning that we had a stitch) and turned your head, you saw a quick slice of blue sea. The air shrieked with seagulls and it smelled of salt and seaweed and, sometimes, other people's dinners. This made us hungry. Just like the seagulls, we were always hungry. We were nine years old and we liked toast and peanut butter with baked beans on top.

Inside, the cottage was just as steep. The stairs, for instance, were off the little kitchen behind a door that looked like it was going to be a normal cupboard or something but then opened on to the steepest staircase you'd ever seen. So, up and down, you had to use your hands to climb, almost as if it was a ladder.

It was my first time ever in a house by the sea. I'd been to the seaside before but only stayed in hotels. When Diana's parents invited me for a week, at first I didn't want to go. But Mum promised I would like it.

"And if you don't," she said, "what's the problem? You can always come home."

"OK," I said, knowing this wasn't true. It was miles and miles away.

Diana's parents were Uncle Ray and Auntie Jane although they weren't my real uncle and aunt or any relation to me. The evening we arrived, Uncle Ray put his arm around me. "It's a funny old place," he told me, "but we like it." After that he went inside and smoked his pipe until the air turned purple.

"Why don't you two pop down to the beach while I make supper?" said Auntie Jane.

Diana and I then went down to the beach on our own. We were only very young but we were allowed as long as we stuck together. So, while Auntie Jane began supper, we skipped off down the twisty cobbled street. Diana was showing off slightly. She told me there was an old man who had dead things in jars.

"OK," I said.

"They're disgusting," she told me. "You won't like them. Do you want to see?"

"OK," I said. I wasn't scared of dead things. At home I had kept a dead bird so long its tail fell off and little red worms wriggled out of its belly.

Soon we reached a tiny passageway. "Down here," said Diana and I followed her, both of our flip-flops flapping.

The passageway was dark. In a moment we reached a very small house that almost wasn't a house at all but one single window stuck in the wall. It was quite a big window, quite dirty all over, and next to it was a dark blue door, very scuffed.

"This is someone's house?" I said. Diana nodded. In the window were some big glass jars and in them were creatures - fish with teeth and an octopus thing and several strange animals I'd never seen before with eyes and tentacles and no bodies. They were in water and the glass jars weren't all that clean because there was green jelly stuff around the edges.

"Aren't they awful?" Diana said, even though she was hardly looking at them because she seemed so anxious and jumpy. I was about to answer when suddenly there was a sound at the door - a kind of scraping.

"Quick!" Diana grabbed my hand and we ran. We ran so hard and didn't stop till we got to the bottom of the street where the boats were and the sand began. We both flopped down on the harbour wall. "That was him," Diana told me. "He was about to come out."

"Who was?"

"The man, stupid. The one that killed the creatures. That's why we had to get away. He would've caught us and I don't know what would've happened then."

"You mean ... ?" I wondered if you could get jars big enough to put little girls in.

"What do you think I mean?" said Diana and then she was quiet for a moment before she added: "Don't worry, we don't have to go past there again. There's another way home."

"OK," I said.

And we sat there for a little while longer, me wondering why I wasn't feeling more scared and Diana picking at her toes. And then as the sky got dark and a million tiny stars began to come out, we set off back up the twisty streets. Diana was holding my wrist and the air smelled of chips and I thought I could hear the most beautiful singing.

"What star sign are you?" Diana asked me.

"I don't know," I said, wondering if the singing was real or if I was in a dream. But as we went round the corner, we saw loads of long-haired people sitting playing guitars. Some had on coats with fur on the edges and none of them had shoes and all of them had their eyes half-shut and some were singing.

"Hippies," said Diana. "Have you ever seen a hippy?"

"No," I said.

"Wave to them," she said. "It's good luck to wave to a hippy." And so I waved and some of them waved back but Diana was staring at me.

"You're so wet," she said. "I can't believe you just did that." And she tried to run off home without me but I was much faster than her and I caught up very quickly.