Twenty five feet from the sea squats a small, thatched hut with a veranda from which we step straight onto the sand. A traveller’s dream destination, fittingly labelled ‘Play House,’ we happily make a temporary home in this cosy little Wendy-house beside the ocean. Further up the beach, the sea-bound cottages perch precariously over the reef on stilts, like leggy flamingos. On the no-so-distant horizon, the cruise ships pass, brightly lit: fat, luxurious barges of self-indulgence, top-heavy on the water, like pelicans. Here all is perfectly simple. A large piece of driftwood is a bench beneath a tree weighed down with large glossy leaves. A banca lurches drunkenly to one side on the sandbank. We can hear the sound of waves lazily lapping, melodic, hypnotic as we drift off to sleep. Last night they were almost washing the doorstep, competing boisterously with the persistent swish of the fan above our heads. But as the sun rises sedately, they have retreated shyly to the edge of the reef to be near her glowing warmth, and sound far off and muted.
For the past hour, even in the pre-dawn darkness, a young man has been house-keeping: raking the sand; tidying it of stray leaves that have fallen during the night; wiping out the erratic paths of nocturnal sea creatures to create a uniformity that is kempt and cared for in the bright sunlight. As the sky lightens under a blanket of grey cloud, more men appear on the beach in green t-shirts, wielding a battalion of rakes, until a sudden burst of heavy rain sends them scuttling for cover. As the rain recedes, the men and their rakes promptly reappear. They beam cheery ‘good mornings,’ sweet and deferential, as they potter on with their work, but I smother the urge to send them away, to obliterate the scratch and swish of their rakes, to enjoy the peaceful absence of human noise a little longer, wanting only the persistent, distant crow of a rooster heralding in the day with his trumpeting reveille, and the light patter of rain on thatch.
The reef stretches, patchy and puddled, exposed by a fickle tide, along the length of the beach. The scratching continues like fingers on a blackboard. Ceaseless, but beginning to blend into the background as the beach-keepers move further off.
The sky is gloomy, blotting out the deep blue skies of yesterday, blotting out the lumpen islands on the horizon, unwelcoming and drear, yet adding a damp freshness to the air, a world washed clean of pollution and humidity. Each time I look up, the world is a little brighter, the sky an expanding palette of blues and greys. Now the electric lights have been extinguished. The sea lies lusterless, flecked by a light breeze, like Selangor pewter. Tiny birds duck and dance across my line of vision, as I peer beneath the thatched eyebrows of our cottage. Geckoes cluck under the eaves and there is an eager chirruping, and a warbling response from a small chorus of song birds hidden in the undergrowth. Cookie-mix mounds of leaves dot the sand. A light breeze flutters across the veranda. My tea gets cold.
Shall I rise and explore the reef? Introduce myself to the nematodes and starfish huddling in their suddenly reduced
world? Or sit here with my cooling tea and enjoy the panorama? I am in no hurry to emerge into daylight. I love this half-way world, this time for reflection and no expectations. Later I will consult my pile of books, my emails, my breakfast menu. Now I am happy to contemplate creation till, in the light of day, “all which it inherit, shall dissolve,” and I will tap at the keys of my imagination, as the swallows swoop and dive in staccato, playing an early morning game of kiss-chase, while I sit alone on the beach like Shirley Valentine…