Seawords

By Hastings Writers' Group

Hastings Writers' Group anthology 2016.

William 1st conquered England with the bow and the sword and put Hastings on the map. In this little book you'll find the thoughts, stories and poems of the present-day inhabitants of Hastings, which show the affection we hold for our town.

Let us inform, entertain and amuse you as we explore the characters, places and history of Hastings – stroppy seagulls, mettlesome mermaids, deadly ‘do-it-yourself’ enthusiasts and art historians with a past of their own – there's a lot more to Hastings than you might imagine!

All profits from the sale of this book go to Hastings Pier Charity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326615123

Hastings Writers' Group

Hastings Writers' Group was established in 1947 so is one of the longest-running writers' groups in the UK. The well-loved Catherine Cookson was a founder member.

Book preview

Seawords

SEAWORDS

Hastings Writers' Group

© 2016 Hastings Writers' Group

All copyright of both text and cover images remain with the individual authors, photographers and cover designers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

ISBN 978-1-326-61512-3

Published in 2016 by Hastings Writers' Group

Enquiries to [e-mail]

Also available as a paperback ISBN 978-1-326-61511-6

Foreword

Hello, and welcome to Seawords. It is my pleasure to introduce the 2016 anthology on behalf of Hastings Writers’ Group, which has kindly chosen to donate all profits from the sale of this book to Hastings Pier Charity.

One thing that shines through the prose and poetry in the following pages is the love that the local community has for its town. Residents hold a huge affection and depth of feeling for Hastings and St Leonard's. This book is testimony to that fact.

It has become clear that Hastings Pier has been an important focus for local involvement ever since its opening in 1872. However, following a decline in the 1980s, decades of neglect and a devastating fire in 2010, local people campaigned for its rebuild, and – following an extensive fundraising effort – construction began.

We have endeavoured to keep the community’s memories at the heart of the project while bringing the pier firmly into the 21st century. The pier’s heritage will be explored with digital interpretation, delicious food and drink will be served in the restored pavilion, and a host of exciting events will take place.

The battle for Hastings Pier is far from over. The project will require considerable maintenance work to save it from falling into disrepair, and we need your support to enable the pier to survive and thrive for many years to come.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and Hastings Writers’ Group for all your support. We hope to welcome you on the pier after we re-open to the public in the spring.

Simon Opie

CEO, Hastings Pier Charity

Introduction

Welcome to Seawords, Hastings Writers' Group 2016 anthology on the theme of our hometown, Hastings. On the 950th anniversary of an event as transformational as the Battle of Hastings, how could the theme be anything else?

The variety of content and styles in this book reflects the diversity of our members, who range from published authors to those who write purely for pleasure, from those who have written since childhood to those who took up writing as a retirement activity.

We imagine you sitting on the newly-restored Hastings Pier to read this book with the waves rolling beneath your feet, seagulls shrieking overhead, the wind on your face and all the fun of the pier around you.

Enjoy!

Profits from the sale of this book will go to Hastings Pier Charity for the further restoration of amenities.

Eileen Masters

Chair, Hastings Writers' Group

Anthology production and editorial team:

Jane Hempson-Jones, Caroline Wardle, Amanda Giles, Vicky Armstrong, Marcia Woolf, Rosalind Balp, Kerry Mintern, Stephanie Gaunt, Godfrey Forder, Diana Lock, Jill Fricker, Rosemary Bartholomew, Eileen Masters.

Cover artwork:

Front cover image: Diana Lock

Back cover image: Michael Smith

Cover design: Eileen Masters and Diana Lock

All Saints

This town is full of rumours. Some of them are true.

It's not a theme park. People live in the crooked houses of the Old Town. They live under the black beams that were grown trees when Henry the Eighth was a boy. But some are strips of wood acquired from B&Q and stained to match. Not all the leaning walls are what they seem, not all the windows genuine. Who can say what is truly ancient and what tricked up to look the part? In the feeble light of Old Town pubs and bars, who can tell the ruin and the relic from the uncanny replica? And those who live here will oblige the tourists with some dressing up; it's one big backstage. They gladly stitch together odds and ends to make a thing magnificent; a giant, or a mermaid, or a buccaneer; suspending disbelief in the magic half-light of a fire, a place where cats stalk the twittens in the velvet night, where the salt air eats into the wood and stone, and mist is blown in waves along The Bourne.

It was a rumour, then. The builder said the undercroft was recently bricked up. By recently he means within two hundred years. A house this old has no foundations: it is built onto the earth. We are not, at first, inclined to do anything. Black spiders, round, bullet hard and shiny, have formed a colony under the woodpile, and if disturbed they bite. I have a scar to prove it.

But, after a time, we start to wonder. We could, he says, being a man and technically-minded, obtain a fibre-optic camera and – by removing just one brick – run a cable in to see what's there. I laugh. I doubt there's anything to find, other than another wall behind, running with damp and creaking old. Besides, the ‘recent’ wall is holding up the house. I exaggerate, of course, but there is damage enough to be repaired without investigating more.

Then one day, sometime during Carnival Week, I come home to find the doors to the undercroft wide open; a cable running in, and the sound of hammer and chisel on brick.

‘What are you doing?’ I say, concerned for his sanity.

‘I'm just looking.’

‘You don't need a chisel to look.’

He appears from the opening, dusty, perspiring.

‘I think the builder's right. There is a tunnel.’

I lean in, cautiously, thinking about the false widows and their pernicious fangs. He's made a hole, a few bricks high, and set a lantern in so I can see the space inside. Then he tells me he's probed it with a length of wood: it goes on further, into the darkness, deeper into the earth under the house.

‘It's dangerous,’ I say, sternly.

‘I've not been in there. Yet.’

‘Please don't.’

We go indoors and discuss it over dinner. It is interesting, I agree, and yes, it could be of historical significance; and yes, he says, we probably should tell the Planning Office. But he's not a fan of the Planning Office. They will quote some obscure law and interfere. Besides, he's not intending to open up the tunnel, only to see if it's really there, if the rumour is true, that it runs all the way under and along the road and comes out in the cellar of The Stag. He promises me he's not going to crawl in there: just to send a camera down, to see where it goes. But I know where all this is leading.

‘And what if it does go all the way? What are you going to do? Break in and drink the beer?’

‘I'd like to see the landlord's face. I could go in at night: make them think they had a ghost.’

‘They have a ghost already.’

‘Not in the cellar.’

I am worried now, because he's got the bit between his teeth.

‘The tunnel could cave in.’

He quotes the rumour back to me that the tunnel was lined with brick and built by smugglers moving barrel loads of French brandy under the noses of the King's troops. 

‘Think of all the cellars in Winchelsea,’ he says, as if that proves anything.

‘The house could collapse.’

He rolls his eyes. Clearly I must have an inferior understanding of the construction methods employed in the Middle Ages.

At night I dream that I am crawling down a long passage, lit by a single guttering candle. The walls are wet with slime, and a voice behind me is whispering softly, go on, go on, keep going. I wake early and roll over. He's not there. I put on my dressing gown and go downstairs. Sunlight is streaming in through the open kitchen door. It's only six o'clock but I can hear a tap of hammer on chisel emanating from somewhere far under the floor. I go down into the garden, and I can see he is now removing earth and piling it in any old containers he can find. There's no sign of him, but I can hear the tapping and the scraping now, coming from inside the tunnel.

I rub my eyes, but I'm not still dreaming.

‘What do you think you're doing?’ I call into the undercroft. No reply. He must be a long way in. I'm not going in there after him, that's for sure. Then the tapping stops abruptly, and there's a strange sound, like a heavy mattress being dropped, and a cloud of dust and dirt blows out of the hole in the brick with a great whoosh. I brush myself down and shake the grit out of my hair.

You know, don't you, when it's one of those moments in your life where everything changes? I stood completely still. I could hear the sparrows squabbling in the garden next door, a rumble of early traffic a street away. It was going to be a hot day, sunny blue. In many respects, everything in the garden was beautiful. It would take me a long time, but I could put the earth back and brick up the wall. I could refill the wood store with logs. I'd have some explaining to do, some excuses to make. But who would go looking for a tunnel under a house?  Not even a tunnel, but a rumour of a tunnel, where desperate men have died trying to outwit the law. A tunnel that almost certainly doesn't exist, its supposed entrance sealed with brick and guarded by the false widow.

But nothing is ever that simple. I shower and dress and then eat my breakfast sitting on the bench under the plum tree, one eye on the open doors leading to the tunnel, but there's still no sign of life. At nine o'clock I drive to the nearest DIY store and buy a smallish bag of cement, paid for in cash, and try to look like it's the sort of thing I buy on a regular basis, as you do. Fortunately the gormless youth on the checkout has only been out of bed five minutes and won't remember me.

I return home, keeping to the speed limit and stopping to let old ladies cross the road. The cement gets taken into the house in the plain clothes guise of a supermarket carrier. It takes me a good hour and a half to shovel all the earth and loose stones back into the tunnel, and then I start brushing off the bricks and stacking them up ready to remake the wall. I go upstairs to his office and Google ‘bricklaying’. I go downstairs, then back up again to Google ‘how to make cement’.

Three parts sand, apparently.

I set to, and discover that bricklaying isn't all that difficult for anyone with experience of icing Christmas cakes in the traditional method. I wonder that no-one has yet invented ready-to-roll mortar. A couple of hours later I pack up, leaving the logs ready to return to their home in the undercroft next morning, and go inside for a well-earned gin and tonic.

Against all the odds, I sleep the sleep of the righteous, until about two forty-five a.m. when I'm woken by the doorbell. This is not unheard of in All Saints, especially not in Carnival Week, but my heart is pounding nonetheless. I wait. It rings again, followed by some half-hearted tapping on the downstairs window. Tempted to open the curtains and let fly with a few words of advice about where the ringer and tapper can stick his index finger I have a sudden premonition that this is something to do with the tunnel. Before I can decide what to do next, there is another ring followed by a plaintive cry from below.

‘Helloo! Excuse me! Is anyone at home?’

I look out and recognise our next-door neighbour. He's wearing pyjamas. He peers up at me.

‘I'm sorry to bother you...’

‘Wait! I'll come down,’ I say, thinking he must have locked himself out. No such luck. He's come about the noise.

‘What noise?’

‘A sort of scuffling and scraping.’

I have a horrible sinking feeling.

‘Really? I was asleep. I haven't heard.’

He cocks his head and ssshses me.

‘That noise. It seems to be coming from under your floor.’

Oh Lordy. So it is.

‘It's been going on for ages,’ he adds. ‘A kind of dragging backwards and forwards.’

‘Are you sure?’ I say, hoping he'll be embarrassed and decide to leave. ‘I'm still not sure I can hear anything.’

There is another dull thump and I feign a coughing fit to cover it. The neighbour gives me a funny look.

‘I doubt it's anything to worry about,’ I insist, trying to close the door on him. But he's not having it.

‘I think someone's moving around down there,’ he says. Then he leans towards me and adds, in a low whisper, ‘Possibly more than one.’

I smile at him benignly, so that he thinks I think he's clearly a lunatic and I should call the men in white coats before he turns out to