Undertow

Afterthought

He sat at the end of the sea wall; which after years of lashings from the sea held many unseen features. Shells lay embedded in its rough broken surface and erosion had cut many an alcove into the sides as well as shortened how far the wall reached into the icy, chaotic water today.
A cigarette lay idle in his mouth as he stared out to sea and penned his thoughts. The roar of the waves crashing on either side of him welcomed a quaint serenity. Here it was just him, despite the three others that accompanied him to the beach that day. While two sat tossing pebbles into near-by rock pools the other had gone to investigate a cove while the tide would allow him.
The wall divided this end of the beach, up at the north-east corner, next to Constitutional Hill. To the left, if one were facing the Irish Sea, was a pebble strewn beach with sandy breaks. And the right bore home to a rock bed. The only ways of passing the wall were either climbing a rusted and conspicuous looking ladder up and over, or by hopping between stones around the wall; a task which anyone with the slightest taste of common sense would agree as a most treacherous idea.
These thoughts swam his mind and more waves crashed as he sat in limbo between the two beaches. He watched them wash up, as they saturated the sand and left a foamy residue before running back and bringing down the next cresting wave as the undertow.
He looked up suddenly, eyes on the misty horizon; in the foreground a fishing boat was slowly headed inland, black against its backdrop – the seemingly endless landscape of the Irish Sea. He took a drag on his cigarette and contemplated the weekend which was nearing its end. Here, at the end of a sea wall, surrounded by crashing waves, he felt peaceful. No one was with him, but he knew he wasn’t alone. For the first time in a long while he felt somewhat content.
He flicked the cigarette butt into the ocean and watched it become nothing up against the power of the restless water. Brushing the long black hair out of his face he made his way back to the shore. His friends had had the same idea. Reaching them he felt a warmth which had been absent for quite some time. Climbing from the wall, the wind throwing loose hair about, he took one last look out at the calming blue before dropping down to the ground and making for the stony, sand covered steps that led back up to the pavement above. To the chaos of crowds and away from the peace he’d found being secluded, seemingly miles away, on the end of that wall.
Another cigarette was lit before he smiled to himself and caught up with the others…