Pulse

East Wind
    THE PREVIOUS NOVEMBER , a row of wooden beach huts, their paintwork lifted and flaked by the hard east wind, had burnt to the ground. The fire brigade came from twelve miles away, and had nothing to do by the time it arrived. Yobs on Rampage, the local paper decided; though no culprit was ever found. An architect from a more fashionable part of the coastline told the regional TV news that the huts were part of the town’s social heritage, and must be rebuilt. The council announced that it would consider all options, but since then had done nothing.
    Vernon had moved to the town only a few months before, and had no feelings about the beach huts. If anything, their disappearance improved the view from The Right Plaice, where he sometimes had lunch. From a window table he now looked out across a strip of concrete to damp shingle, a bored sky and a lifeless sea. That was the east coast: for months on end you got bits of bad weather and lots of no weather. This was fine by him: he’d moved here to have no weather in his life.
    ‘You are done?’
    He didn’t look up at the waitress. ‘All the way from the Urals,’ he said, still gazing at the long, flat sea.
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘Nothing between here and the Urals. That’s where the wind comes from. Nothing to stop it. Straight across all those countries.’ Cold enough to freeze your knob off, he might have added in other circumstances.
    ‘ Oorals ,’ she repeated. As he caught the accent, he looked up at her. A broad face, streaked hair, chunky body, and not doing any waitressy number in hope of a bigger tip. Must be one of those Eastern Europeans who were all over the country nowadays. Building trade, pubs and restaurants, fruit picking. Came over here in vans and coaches, lived in rabbit warrens, made themselves a bit of money. Some stayed, some went home. Vernon didn’t mind one way or the other. That’s what he found more often than not these days: he didn’t mind one way or the other.
    ‘Are you from one of them?’
    ‘One of what?’
    ‘One of those countries. Between here and the Urals.’
    ‘ Oorals . Yes, perhaps.’
    That was an odd answer, he thought. Or maybe her sense of geography wasn’t so strong.
    ‘Fancy a swim?’
    ‘A swim?’
    ‘Yes, you know. Swim. Splash splash, front crawl, breast stroke.’
    ‘No swim.’
    ‘Fine,’ he said. He hadn’t meant it anyway. ‘Bill, please.’
    As he waited, he looked back across the concrete to the damp shingle. A beach hut had recently sold for twenty grand. Or was it thirty? Somewhere down on the south coast. Spiralling house prices, the market going mad: that’s what the papers said. Not that it touched this part of the country, or the property he dealt in. The market had bottomed out here long ago, the graph as horizontal as the sea. Old people died, you sold their flats and houses to people who in their turn would get old in them and then die. That was a lot of his trade. The town wasn’t fashionable, never had been: Londoners carried on up the A12 to somewhere pricier. Fine by him. He’d lived in London all his life until the divorce. Now he had a quiet job, a rented flat, and saw the kids every otherweekend. When they got older, they’d probably be bored with this place and start acting the little snobs. But for the moment they liked the sea, throwing pebbles into it, eating chips.
    When she brought the bill, he said, ‘We could run away together and live in a beach hut.’
    ‘I do not think,’ she replied, shaking her head, as if she assumed he meant it. Oh well, the old English sense of humour, takes a while for people to get used to it.
    He had a few rentals to attend to – changes of tenancy, redecoration, damp problems – and then a sale up the coast, so he didn’t return to The Right Plaice for a few weeks. He ate his haddock and mushies, and read the paper. There was some town in Lincolnshire which was suddenly half Polish there’d been so many immigrants. Nowadays, more Catholics went to church on Sundays than Anglicans, they were saying, what with all these Eastern Europeans. He didn’t mind one way or the other. Actually, he liked the Poles he’d met – brickies, plasterers, electricians. Good workers, well trained, did what they said, trustworthy. It was time the good old British building trade had a kick up the arse, Vernon thought.
    The sun was out that day, slanting low across the sea, annoying his eyes. Late March, and bits of spring were getting even