Wet and dry

In the summer of fifty-six

after my tenth birthday and three years

after the great flood, my grandmother Margie

moves from the house at Iken

where I was born, the eight miles

to the coast and the small seaside town

of Aldeburgh, to a house

originally built by my great-great-grandfather.

Our school holidays move with her.

The Landrover that Margie drives

like a canal barge, in the middle of the road

is already well-known

in the countryside around.

But it’s by bicycle that we explore:

the town itself and the beach,

north to Thorpeness (for the Mere

boating lake) or south to what was once

the village of Slaughden

to the marsh, the river,

the quay, the sailing club slipway

from which our explorations take us

sailing down river towards Orford

or inland towards Iken and Snape.

Beyond the sailing club

the derelict Martello Tower

stands stranded on the shingle bank

that separates river and sea.

There is a large cake-slice

cut out of its surrounding wall

for the new sea defence they built

after the flood of nineteen fifty three.

Slaughden was once a ship-building port

on the marsh south of Aldeburgh, but

(like Dunwich to the north) had been

falling into the North Sea for centuries.

The last house in Slaughden was drowned

in shingle in the nineteen-twenties,

and the last boat-building shed

was washed away in fifty-three.

The town too had suffered from the sea

with every storm, every winter season

re-arranging the shingle beach,

moving it bodily south

towards Orfordness and beyond

to Shingle Street.  But it had been caught

(for a while at least) by a phalanx of groynes

marching down the beach.  Later,

after storms have undermined the new

sea defence, and fifty yards

collapse into a hole, they groyne a further stretch

for a mile south, past the Martello Tower.

Half way along the town beach, between

the drawn-up fishing boats, stand

two lifeboats

on tarred wooden platforms, with ramps

running into the sea.  If we are very lucky

we hear the maroons that summon

the crew, grab our cycles and rush

down to the beach, just in time to see

a lifeboat released, to gather speed

down the ramp and plough out

through the waves.

The smaller lifeboat, the Lucy Lavers,

commissioned in 1940, had

a baptism of fire at Dunkirk.

But a few years after our move

to Aldeburgh, and after

twenty years’ service, she is sent

elsewhere—the station no longer needs

two boats.

I go to university, get married.

We spend our honeymoon a long way

from the sea, in Yorkshire, J’s home county

exploring the Dales—we have borrowed

Margie’s Landrover for the trip.  No boats

but plenty of water in the rivers

and becks and tarns.

Margie has left Aldeburgh by now

but my mother has found at Slaughden

another base for holidays: a boat

with a small cabin and a leaky roof

about the size of a caravan, washed up

onto the marsh in fifty three,

never to move again.  The Deerfoot

serves us well for several years.  Later

until my mother dies in eighty-four

there is a flat overlooking

the beach and the remaining lifeboat.

Much later still, in a new century

and after J’s death,

I find a new home with G, eighty miles

northwest of Aldeburgh, on the coast of

north Norfolk.  From our window, we can see

a section of the quay, the creek

the marsh, the tide rising and falling

the moored boats, and when the tide is up

boats passing.  We sail and kayak

the creeks around.

In the next village east, a small company

is rescuing wooden boats.

Their first project: a seventy-year old

former lifeboat, long since

decommissioned, renamed

and used for other tasks.  She now lives

up our creek, a hundred yards

from our front door—

restored, repainted

in full livery, and proudly displaying

her proper name and rank:

Lucy Lavers, Aldeburgh No2 Lifeboat.