Writers Retreat

I am on my own in a villa by the sea on my first writers retreat. How to capture the essence of what makes up the moments of my days here? Plod around in vignette, recount snatches, sketch impressions…

It starts when I pen a ‘poor me’ entry into my journal. I need a holiday. Two days later I win one.

We all enjoy the winnings for the first weekend. We drive to the surf beach, play rummikub, sleep in bedrooms with our own ensuites. Then it’s time for them to leave. All too soon. But their weekday lives beckon, as does the manuscript I’ve come here to revise.

As their car rounds the corner and disappears from view, my stomach lurches. I feel the two emotions in equal measure: elation at being on my own, to write – and a panic that claps hold of my body, sending me running for the toilet, as my aloneness threatens to fold in on itself and become the most desolate feeling of loneliness.

I plug the portable speaker into the notebook computer and play The Prayer at full volume. I join forces with Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli. I’m no longer at the beach villa – I’m on a stage somewhere on the outer reaches of earth’s consciousness, singing to my mother and God and whoever else will listen, with tears streaming down my face as every word reverberates from the walls of my being.

Then I clean the bathroom basin and I feel better.

I go to the shops and come home with fresh salmon and an exorbitantly expensive punnet of blueberries.

*

I’ve come to watch night fall over the bay.

It’s so still, hardly a breeze or wave. No sound except the gentle swish and slap of water over the shoreline. The crescent moon, hidden by wispy cloud, is a watercolour painting in blue-grey swirls. The lights from the nearby hills are columns of shimmering evening-shine on the mill-pond water.

A lone fisherman stands in his boat and casts portside. The movement sends mini waves radiating out towards the pier. The scene looks biblical.

Two lovers walk along the water's edge, hand in hand, then stop and embrace. He slides his hands over her buttocks and draws her closer. The evening curls around them as the beach becomes their private haven. They kiss, then keep walking, until their silhouettes merge into black.

The last seagull wings into the night.

*

The wind off the water is cool and fresh; I breathe in measured amounts of cleansing and vitality, exhale doubts and deliberations that cloud my focus on the now.

The sun glints off the tops of choppy waves that race to the shore in an endless, mesmerizing cycle. An Australasian gannet glides past, soars high. I shield my eyes from the sun and try to follow its flight path. I know it is preparing to dive, and I don’t want to miss this aeronautical display. Then it appears from nowhere – drops out of the sky like a retrograde rocket – but pulls up at the last minute. It flies off, and I see it is too small to be a gannet, and realise it is a tern. I reprimand myself for lapsed bird watching skills.

I gaze out at the cloudless sky and am taken back to another bayside beach, on another morning —

I have made a bad choice in a relationship. It’s not working out as I had imagined. It begins to falter one Sunday afternoon, during a stroll through Sherbrooke forest. He tells me that holidays are a waste of money. People could pay their mortgages off a lot quicker if they stayed at home.

This day, he has bad breath, and any attraction I’d felt prior to his announcement, evaporates. My stratagem for surviving successive terms of primary school teaching was to hold out for the holidays between them, when I’d travel as far away from my weekday world as I could.

I meet his mother a couple of weeks later. We sit across from each other in his lounge. When he leaves the room, she tells me that apart from a coffee table, the only thing he needs to make his home complete is a wife.

The following week, we take our mothers on a picnic to Hanging Rock. They get on like best friends. I try really hard to reignite the flame, and convince myself I could get by with fewer holidays. His mum’s lovely.

Then I find out he only listens to classical music. He thinks my Rolling Stones LP will damage his very expensive hifi speakers. In my imagination, I see him holding a bucket of water. The flame falters, spits and dies before he’s even lifted the bucket above my head.

He wants to take me shopping. I know what for. I say I need more time and he tells me it’s now or never.

So I find myself walking along Frankston beach after having an explosive argument with my mother, who thinks I am a fool to let him go. I can hardly see where I am going and am trying not to sob audibly. The handful of people on the beach are a nuisance and I wish they would go away.

I am about to pass a middle-aged couple. I shield my tear-smeared face with my hand, but they come right up to me. I am acutely embarrassed and cannot meet their eyes. They point out to sea and tell me to look. I mutter something and keep walking.

When I am a safe distance away, I glance up.

Myriad seagulls are diving into the water, surfacing, diving again.

I instantly regret my unfriendliness and missed opportunity to share such a rare experience.