Short story: The Rock Pools by Tony Burgess

Tony Burgess

We were a large family of seven children but sadly a brother died just after being introduced to us and out limited world. My parents seemed to hide their grief well. Our lives shoehorned into a tiny fisherman’s terraced cottage overlooking the harbour. I grew up amid the miasma of wet rope, baited lobster pots and hot pitch. Our clothes were hand me downs or replacements from the jumble sales in our local church.

Every Saturday without fail my father would make go to this same church to clean it and light the ancient coke guzzling heating boiler. We were all enrolled into the Church choir and Sunday school at the earliest opportunity-our mother ensured this.

Holidays were unheard of; these were the domain of others from more affluent areas who regularly visited our seaside town. Our equivalent occurred on a handful of Sunday afternoons in summer when there was no Sunday School to take us to the beach. Always to the South beach where there were the most productive and exciting rock pools.  I was the youngest so my father would hold my hand as we navigated the rocks, trying not to slip on the barnacle encrusted surface which reliably stripped the skin on your legs, knees and hands if you fell but I felt safe in my father’s strong, calloused hands.

Those rare days were magical, for the whole family.

It was on such a day like this when my father and I, he holding tightly to my hand, walked down the beach towards the rock pools. We took the tentative steps on the rocks towards our favourite spots. My father always knew where to find the numerous inhabitants of these pools. The crabs, the goby fish that darted through your legs, the anemones that shrunk back when you touched them, the shrimps that tickled your feet, and if we were really lucky, we might see a dolphin or two surfacing just off the rocks, chasing Bass my father would tell me.

Today though there was something wrong. I felt really cold, I looked up to tell my father, but couldn’t see him. I called out. I was frightened and started to cry. Tears ran down my cheeks into the rock pool below. As I looked down, I saw a reflection of an old man’s face staring back at me. An old man wearing a pyjama top. That wasn’t my father. I looked to the beach for my mother and family. They weren’t there either. All I could see were two men in uniform running towards me, they looked like policemen. There was a woman trying to keep up with them. Had something happened to my father and family? They came to me, one reached for me with his smooth hands not like my fathers’ and led me to the woman who placed a blanket over my shoulders.

“Dad we’ve been so worried, come on let’s get you home,” she said.