What she remembered was the sound of seagulls,

Not the burning eyes of the eager boy

She had come away with for a dare.

Harold. Yes, that was his name.

She could see he had it all planned out.

‘I’ve brought some,’ were his first words.

 

Frinton. She had gone there because that was where

Mum and Dad had spent their honeymoon.

Where she was conceived, almost certainly.

And it made a change from Canvey Island.

 

What she remembered was the sound of seagulls,

Not the let-down of the hotel’s musty sheets,

The drabness of the mist as they walked on the beach;

Not the stirrings of something which was –

Well, perhaps it was love but probably not,

And which she knew perfectly well would fade

Before the year was out.

 

What she remembered was the sound of seagulls,

Not the disapproving looks of the evening diners,

With pursed lips at the sight of her ‘hardly decent’ dress;

All nursing hangovers of lost world wars,

Inwardly waving little flags and flogging souvenirs

Of brave St George and dead Germans.

 

What she remembered was the sound of seagulls,

Not, even then, the prospect of a dwindling future,

Of marriage, to someone like this poor sap,

Of days full of ironing and screaming kids,

Husband home drunk and washing down his dinner

With the promise of her before she went cold.

 

There would always be the sound of seagulls.