The Rescue
It is summer 1962. The school holidays stretch out before us, disappearing into a heat-haze blur on the horizon. I am with Del and Harvey, and we’re on our way to the beach—Southend-on-Sea, Essex. It will take us, three 12-year-old boys, about 45 minutes to walk down from the council estates of the seaside town. There are no clouds in the blue sky, and it is getting hotter by the minute. Harvey is babbling on about his packed lunch.
‘Chicken sandwiches, a bag of crisps, a Kit Kat, and a bottle of Coke.’
He says it because he knows Del and I can’t match the quality. Del has a sandwich his mother made with garden tomatoes, and I have a jam one. We both have old lemonade bottles filled with tap water.
‘What have you two got then?’ he asks in his la-di-da voice, imitating his mother.
I think of his mother’s posh voice.
‘Pronunciation, Raymond! You might not have a large vocabulary, but you should at least pronounce your words clearly.’
His parents think they have class. His father has a car. His mother can drive, and they are the first in our street, maybe on the whole estate, to have a colour television. She insists on calling him ‘Raymond’ in a particularly snooty way, which is why we never use his first name—only his surname. At school, everyone thinks Harvey is his real name. His mother hates it.
Del has an accent—I think it’s Northern. His mother is a Southerner, but his father comes from Grimsby. I don’t know where Grimsby is, but it sounds horrible to me. Del once told me his dad used to work in the fishing industry there. His parents argue a lot, and there’s talk of divorce. Del gets anxious about it, and it makes him more fretful the longer it goes on.
My family is a mess. There are ten of us, and Mother makes eleven. Father left around the time I was born. I think I’ve seen him only once when he came to visit. I had to ask Mother who he was.
‘That’s your father,’ she said.
I can’t remember much about the visit, but I remember thinking about her answer for a long while before saying, ‘Oh.’ Just ‘Oh.’ It made me sound stupid, but I wasn’t. I was just confused and didn’t know how to respond.
I am the youngest. Most of my older brothers and sisters have left home, living in bedsits around town or serving in the Army or Air Force or on something called National Service.
Harvey is still jabbering about his lunch, so Del and I change the subject to the tide times. The local paper lists them, but none of us checked before we left home. If the tide is in, we’ll be jumping off the stone jetty into the waves for hours. High tide is best. We wait for a big wave, jump in, then two strokes towards the shore, and our feet find the pebbly seabed.
Then we’re out, climbing back onto the jetty to do it all over again. It never occurs to us that this is a pointless way to spend hours. We enjoy it, and that’s all that matters.
We reach the beach and see the tide has been going out for two hours. Our interest shifts to following the receding water across the mudflats into the Thames Estuary. I say it first:
‘Let’s go out to the Ray.’
Harvey chimes in. ‘Yes, come on.’
Del hesitates. ‘It’ll be too late for lunch when we get back. I’m already hungry.’
‘We’ll only stay for half an hour,’ I say, though I know we’ll be out longer. Harvey coaxes him.
‘Yeah, come on, Del. We always get bored after a while, anyway, don’t we?’
Del sighs, knowing he’s outnumbered. We find a spot to undress, packing our things under an upturned rowing boat lying above the beach on a concrete slope that rises to the footpath and the road. Then we set off.
I pass the warning sign about the tides. I don’t need to read it—I’ve been out here many times and know what to do.
What we called ‘The Ray’ is a huge sandbank raised several metres above the surrounding mud flats and the streams that are left at low tide. In the future, as an adult, I will discover that The Ray is not actually the sandbank, but the deep stream cut into the seabed in front of it.
We’re barefoot – shoes would only get stuck in the squelchy mud.
Del is grumbling. ‘We could have looked for crabs in the paddling pool. And I wanted to go to the amusement arcade.’
The walk should take half an hour, but it takes longer. The mud is full of sharp shells that slow us down. We reach the creek encircling the sandbank. I wade in, washing the mud off my feet. The cool water is soothing. Harvey follows, but Del hesitates at the edge, still complaining.
The slowing current is running from West to East, that is, from London out to sea. The water barely reaches my knees as I cross, but I realise now that we’ve been walking downhill all along—the estuary bed slopes gradually lower. The sandbank looks high now, but not so high that it won’t be covered with several metres of water when the tide turns.
We were climbing up onto The Ray now and instantly noticing the familiar firmness underfoot. The feel of fairly hard, smooth sand under your feet gives me some sense of achievement. We got here! No sharp stones or shells to worry about here just an expanse of sand. Not bright golden sand but a paler brownish colour. I don’t mind that it’s not golden. It’s our desert island in the sea. Now we’re celebrating. Jumping, dancing and skipping along the water’s edge. Then we are running across the bank, the top of which is a plateau, to the other side further out into the estuary. Sailing boats and small speedboats are moving up and down on the far side where the water is deeper. Right out in the middle of the river a huge cargo ship is slowly passing by with grey smoke billowing out of its funnel.
Del pulls a tennis ball out of his shorts pocket and shouts,
‘Catch.’
He throws it toward Harvey. He catches it and throws it to me.
I miss it and it rolls back in the direction we have just come. I run after it, pick it up and throw it to Del as a thought comes to me. I’m shouting out to them,
‘I’m jus’ gonna make a marker.’
I’m running back to where we crossed the stream. There, where the side of the bank slopes down to the water, I scoop up some of the silt that the bank is made of and create three pyramids as markers. I take wide strides from the markers to the waters edged. I count six.
Now I’m running back to the others.
Playing catch in the warm sunshine is the order of the day. Other groups of children or families of varying sizes are having fun on the bank too. They are shouting, calling out to each other, throwing beach balls and squealing with delight. The openness of the landscape and the sky together with the warm sunlight makes us glad.
Bored of playing catch I move to the far edge of the bank. Looking across the estuary I can see the Isle of Grain in the far distance marked by a row of tall chimneys.
We start to play ‘bombs’. This involves scooping up large handfuls of silt and, once all the water has drained out, shaping it into a ball. The ball is then thrown as high as one is able out over the water. As the ‘bomb’ falls and hits the water the impact creates an impressive waterspout.
We are lost in our games for an hour, maybe more. Then I have a sudden awareness that things have changed on the sandbank. I look up and around. The place has become strangely quiet. The sun has gone behind a grey cloud and a stiff breeze is beginning to blow across the estuary. There are two small groups of people just reaching the other side of the creek near where we crossed. The only other person around is a man moving quickly after them. Everyone else is gone.
We realise that the tide has turned, and we need to get off the bank at once. We run back across the plateau and started down the slope looking for our markers. There was no sign of them! Where were our markers?
We rush down the slope into the water of the creek. The current is now running the opposite way much faster and more powerful. The water is much deeper now and the other side of the creek much further away. Del and I can swim although we’re not strong swimmers, but Harvey can hardly swim at, all. Del is bigger than Harvey and me. He thinks this means he must take responsibility and go in first. He walks into the water up to his waist. He struggles to stay upright. He turns round and comes back to us.
‘It’s too strong,’ he says looking very alarmed.
I am small and skinny, but think I should try. I don’t go in as far as Del, but I can feel the power of the current and give up.
The water in the middle of the creek would have been well over our heads and the fast-moving current would easily have dragged any of us away.
We watch, as further up the creek, the man we’d seen earlier, gets swept along by the strong current as he tries to cross. He is making it to the other side but by the time he finds his feet on the bottom and starts to walk up out of the water he is a about a quarter of a mile away.
‘Maybe we should go further along. It might be shallower there,’ I’m saying it trying to sound hopeful as I point up along the creek but I’m not convincing anyone.
‘Well, he only just made it didn’t he?’ cries Harvey. Then, sounding desperate with his voice starting to crack,
‘And he’s much bigger than any of us.’
The tide is coming in quickly and the sea level is rising relentlessly up the side of the bank. Surges of panic and fear began to overcome us. I am shivering as I realise that we are stranded, completely cut off.
We start shouting and waving at the man. He is striding back towards the beach. He can’t hear us. He keeps walking. We shout louder. He turns briefly, waves at us, and then continues walking. We can’t believe it. He thinks we’re playing but we’re all about to drown.
Harvey’s face is becoming distorted, twisted out of shape. I can hardly recognise him. I’ve never seen him like this. His forehead is furrowed, and his eyes are filling up with tears. They start to roll down his face. I can see the fear in him, and it increases my fear. We all see the fear in each other.
I am searching for the man across the mudflats. If we wave again maybe he’ll see us and come back or get help from somewhere.
All our attention is focussed on this. We don’t see what’s happening behind us. Suddenly as if from nowhere. a small boat has appeared, piloted by an elderly couple. The man is operating an outboard motor. They look ancient to me but are probably middle-aged. They have grounded their craft near where we are and signal us to get in. They don’t say anything. They just smile at us and nod. They seem to understand how we are feeling although our fear is fading quickly, the terror giving way to relief. It feels unreal. I don’t know what to say. I think the looks on our faces are saying more than we can.
They take us to the other side of the creek and across the mud flats that the tide has now covered. They go as far as they can until the boat runs aground. We are scrambling out of the boat with many words of thanks to our rescuers.
We are still waving and thanking them as they pull their little boat back into the incoming tide. They jump in, start the motor. In a few minutes they are gliding up the creek towards Leigh.
We are making our way back to the beach talking about how scared we had been and about how grateful we are to have been rescued.
‘Where did they come from?’ asks Del, ‘I never saw them arrive.’
Back on the beach the wind has dropped, and the sun is hot again. It is helping to calm our nerves and make us feel safe again. Harvey is eating his chicken sandwiches.
‘Do you want to swap one of yours,’ he says.
Del and I gladly swap. Now he’s sharing his crisps. We both take advantage of his abnormal kindness.
‘Do they just spend all summer rescuing people?’ Harvey wonders aloud.
I have no answer, but I am grateful they were there today. We spread out our towels and lie back in the warm sunshine.