One day, I was walking along the seafront in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, when I came across this wonderfully ambiguous epitaph on a plaque attached to a bench near the water's edge. The plaque read: "To X and Y. Two Lovers of Budleigh Salterton." I made a note of it in my notebook and it remained there for some years before the idea of a short story came to me. I think its whimsical style is appropriate to the story and, perhaps, reflects the fact that I had spent a holiday in Budleigh in 1960. Apart from Bert and Dot Cutter, the other characters in the story include: Mr Shaw, Dr Fletcher, Old Tom and his dog. All of these names came from other memorial benches and their epitaphs. Mr Shaw - who liked to walk by the sea, Dr Fletcher - who spent so many happy hours sailing his little boat in the pleasant bay and Old Tom and his dog Spot - who could not live without his master. This story was read on BBC Radio in the 1990s.
Bert Cutter retreated into the cool shade of the antique shop's entrance. He squinted down the street and towards the beach. Budleigh Salterton was melting under the sun. The Victorian-green lamps that flanked the promenade appeared to buckle, and the distant pines, usually so proud and straight, now wobbled over the river bank. He squinted again at the chalky walls around him. The whiteness was broken only by the tiles beneath his feet. The tiles were dark and worn, and faintly suggested the musty odour of things old. But apart from forlorn envelopes lying across the floor, the antique shop was bare.
A shop that had once dealt in memories was now itself a memory and Bert smiled at the irony. For 30 summers he had left Bert Cutter at home in Goyt Bridge and, as Mr Smith, he had come to Budleigh Salterton to rekindle the lustful passion of his youth. But tomorrow those years would be confined to the scrapbook. Years of rekindled passion would be but souvenirs; smoke from a doused fire gradually melting into his twilight years. The affair was over, and on the morrow the fabulous Mr and Mrs Smith would pass away. It was his wife that Bert needed now, and Dot needed her husband to share the remaining years. Mr and Mrs Smith, a mythical couple born in another age, would pass peacefully away in 1995.
She who came as Mrs Smith was waiting now, for the last time, on the other side of the shimmering heat.
“On the bench, Bert,” she had said.
There had been no argument. Their love games were done, and there was no other place for their journey's end but the spot from where it had started 30 years earlier.
“Our bench then,” Bert had said.
The last bench on the promenade they had meant, the one that overlooks the river Otter where it gently flows over the rocks and into the sea. Bert looked at the house with the blue shutters, their slats cast sorrowfully downwards like her eyes. Yes, Dot was the soul of Budleigh Salterton, she was everywhere. Without her, those sorrowful slats were dead things; they were shadows and he knew he would never come back to the shadows.
Bert fidgeted. The eye-like slats had stirred a half-buried memory of times past, times at Goyt Bridge; a boy whose feet barely touched the ground, sitting and waiting for Children's Hour while his mother sat opposite, her eyelids flickering as she dozed. On impulse he had decided to play in the garden, and he had switched off the radio, intending to come back later and listen with mother. That was over 50 years ago, but he suddenly remembered it now, that moment when he had wanted the world to stop until he was ready for it.
The chiming of the church clock reminded him that time and tide wait for no man, and taking a deep breath, he stepped out into the sunlight, and plunged towards the curtain of heat. At first he was dazzled by the light. Then gradually he discerned the outline of a van on the beach. In ice-cream yellow and blue, it was set at a crazy angle, and seemed about to topple. Then, like genies, he saw children paddle and children kneel. He heard their laughter drifting across the water; he saw their sandcastles defiantly challenging. Mothers watched on towels that claimed while the gulls squawked, and the sea relentlessly lapped, swelled and waited. Then, as if from a dream, a voice said, “Mr Smith! Good morning.”
Bert frowned. At the sound of the voice, he realised that Mr Smith irritated him. He wanted to be himself now, plain Bert Cutter from Goyt Bridge. Bert spun round, but the person who had uttered the greeting was already swallowed in the curtain of heat. Perhaps it had been Mr Shaw who loved to walk by the sea. Perhaps it had been Dr Fletcher who spent so many happy hours sailing his little boat in the pleasant bay, or perhaps it had been Old Tom and his dog Spot who could not live without his master. Bert wiped his brow. To his right he saw the extravagant gestures and he heard the excitement of children who defended their sandcastles from the remorseless sea. Ahead, he thought he recognised the figure on the bench. Or was it a mirage? At the end of the promenade, with her skirt billowing outwards as it caught the breeze which blew down the river from Otterton, his lover was waiting. She turned her head towards him and raising an arm, she beckoned. As if the wind had abruptly changed direction, the clamour from the water's edge faded, and Bert felt cut off from a place far away. Taking her hand they turned from the advancing sea and made towards the river. They watched the grey mullet nudging through the reeds, and they saw the swans gliding, and the silver leaves of the willow twinkled in the sunlight. They sat for the final time on their bench, and they felt the breeze caress their backs, and blow onward over the water.
The tide was up. The children were resting, thinking of the morrow, of bigger and stronger castles that would resist the waves. Children, breeze, river, and sea; unchanging and eternal. Thirty years had passed or were they a dream?
Bert tugged at Dot's elbow and pointed to the reluctant restless water where it joined the sea. As they sat, gazing at the swirling current, they pulled closer and yet closer together; a dissolving vision in the sunlight. Silently they rose and moved off along the beach towards the curtain of heat. Slowly they became but spirits in the haze, and without a word, Mr and Mrs Smith faded away into a wonderland of memories
Two days later, Dot Cutter is sitting at her till in Costsave, Goyt Bridge. The church clock strikes five and Dot feels warm inside. Soon she will be home to make the tea for her Bert. To those who queue, hand in purse, Dot is the mechanical arm at the checkout.
But Dot knows.
She knows that for most of them, it is not given that they will ever walk out of the supermarket and into the sunlight. It is not given that they will ever see children playing and mothers watching. Nor will they ever see the doctor sailing his little boat in the bay and never will they arrive at the end of the promenade to rest awhile and sit like children on the bench there. So, Dot knows that never, never will they see a brass plaque and realise what happiness is recorded there.
In memory of Bert and Dot Smith. Two lovers of Budleigh Salterton.
BBC Radio Devon 1996?
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