Walking the Broomway
A Short Story by Richard Garcka
The lurid evening lights of Southend lend the September sky a tawdry glow. Unnatural
greens and reds graffiti the blue-black background like ghetto tags. Jay Abara navigates the traffic, braking and throttling until his ankle aches. Engines snarl, music blares and car horns blast, but Jay is oblivious. Only one sound matters. He jabs the redial on his phone and again hears the engaged signal. Anika is not answering.
Anika. She reminds him of wild raves and drum ’n’ bass. But she is also a cool
evening breeze and the gentle lapping of the ocean. She moves like a fast car, weaving
through traffic or drifting through corners on mountain chicanes until your blood races. And she is a Sunday drive through jigsaw villages to picnics in wheat fields. Serious and funny, outrageous and contemplative, loud and soft. Everything you dream in a girl. Just one problem; she is dating his best mate.
Until Jay picked up a phone message earlier. Dion is cheating on her. Dion no longer
loves her. They argued and fought and Dion pushed her and... She needs a friend, but she does not know what she needs. She is done with all this. She needs to get away. She is going for a walk. Somewhere near the sea. Don’t try calling.
Jay fears what that means. She confided in him once. Those wide brown eyes
lowered. Brow wrinkled, a corrugated obsidian. She spoke about a bad time, when job and family and friends were knocked sideways all at once like skittles in a bowling alley. It was not a serious attempt, too little vodka, too few pills, a flatmate sure to discover her. Maybe this is the same. Perhaps the voicemail is code. Come for me, I need you. Or is he panicking for no reason, putting two and two together to make some imaginary number? Just an innocent stroll along the beach to clear her head. But what if it is not? What if it is a walk into the sea? The end of a pier? A cliff-top?
He recalls again the conversation weeks ago about a strange coastal path Anika read
about. An odd subject to raise when everyone else was obsessing with wars or Trump or cost of living. She learnt about a walkway and the image struck her in a way she would not explain. Jay sensed her filing it away in her mind, a snippet of information that might come in useful one day. Only now does it become clear. The path had a name. Jay is convinced that Anika is making for the Broomway.
A centuries-old route running for six miles along the Essex coast, a public right-of-
way connecting the mainland to Foulness Island, now redundant with the arrival of a bridge. So far, so whatever. But some call this path the most dangerous in Britain. Over one hundred deaths in its time, probably more. Not because of steep cliffs or sudden landslides. Not because of dangerous traffic or nervous kids waving zombie knives in your face. This path boasts a simpler threat. This path is four hundred metres out to sea.
Jay googled before he rushed out. The Broomway sits on top of a sandbank parallel to
the coast and emerges only at low tide. Markers show the way and to stray off course is to risk being trapped in quicksand or mudflats. But that is not the half of it. Walk the path at the wrong time of day and the tide catches you. It moves faster than you can run and it never stops. No second chances. No get-out-of-jail-free card. No letting you off with a caution.
He leaves the town centre and makes for Wakering Stairs, the place where the path
begins. The lights of Southend dance in the rear-view mirror; ahead lays the twilight gloom of the Thames estuary coastline. Which would be worse? Anika had in fact taken a stroll along a quiet promenade for an hour then driven back to friends somewhere? Or she spoke with Dion and he is prepared to take her back. They lounge now on a couch sipping cool wine and laughing at Jay’s message about coming to find her. Then Dion leads her into the bedroom. Jay starts wishing he will discover her there, on the sands. Then he thumps the steering-wheel with both hands, hating himself.
A poorly lit lane down to the coastline. Farmland surrenders to common land as he
nears the sea front. Hedges and trees line the route, swaying as though responding to his headlights. No buildings other than a derelict house to the right. No people. No vehicles. No Anika. Jay stops the car at the end of the lane facing the sea and slumps his head onto the wheel. Relief grapples with shame. He cannot believe this mercy dash. What does it say about him? He sits up straight and determines to change his life, as of today. Move on. He pulls the car into the driveway of the empty house to turn round and then he sees it. Anika’s car, abandoned. The driver’s door left open like a cry for help.
For a few seconds, he just stares. That moment when a vase is about to fall off the
shelf and time stops. Then, out of the car and racing toward the path shouting her name over and over. Arriving at a man-made slipway that leads down to the shore, Jay freezes at the scene. His cries will never be heard in this vast arena. The sky now a darker ultramarine with just a suggestion of the setting sun, a pinkish blush of a departing kiss. Beneath lies an undulating sea as far as the horizon, placid but menacing, daring you to enter. Between him and that expanse, a netherworld. Sand flats poke their heads above shimmering pools, evidence of the retreated tide. A purgatory where life is permitted only with a guest pass. Where you might wade from one sandbank to the next in ignorant bliss until the tide races back to claim you.
Ahead, a fence festooned with warning signs, then a causeway down to the track
where poles at intermittent stages mark out the route across the wet sand and shallow waters. No sign of Anika, so Jay scans the route of the path as it bears left into the distance to start its journey parallel to the coastline. Once or twice Jay mistakes the posts and markers for her slender figure. In the descending gloom, he despairs of spotting her until, there, way out to the left, a solitary figure, motionless, staring out to sea.
His shouts are lost in that amphitheatre, dismissed by the mocking evening breeze, so
he runs. Down the rough-hewn slope and across cracked concrete. Where the pathway begins, her Dr Martens lie discarded off to one side. Jay removes his own shoes in a clumsy hopping motion, then bare feet on mud, feeling the oozing and squelching. Now onto the wet sandbank itself, following the route between the markers, picking up speed. A surface of hardened crenulations, the sand packed into tight wavy lines moulded by the waves. The slapping of his feet soon became splashing, the route submerged under inches of water.
He yells her name over and over but the exertion of the run and the focus on staying
within the markers consume him, so the words are mumbled, a Buddhist mantra. Spray flicks up until he becomes drenched and cold, sweat chilling on his skin. The posts, now irregular and haphazard, bear him to the left. He sees Anika ahead in the distance, sees her begin to step out toward the sea, away from the markers. He screams her name, elongating syllables between rasping breaths. Heedless, she continues walking.
Jay’s mind races through options. Leave the pathway on a diagonal course to
intercept but risk encountering deeper water? Continue the path, then what? Can he rescue her if she submerges? Can he resuscitate someone drowned? Can he carry her back to land, but to where? He looks to the left and the shoreline seems far away, distances tricked by the featureless surface and the impending twilight. He gives up thinking, lowers his head and concentrates on the rhythmic splashing of his feet, a stark tattoo in the stillness.
Time stretches. Distances have no meaning in this otherworldly landscape. Anika is
much further away than Jay first thought, but her movements seem slow and neither the treacherous sands nor the voracious tide have yet claimed her. He arrives at the point where she left the pathway then turns to pursue her. Within a few steps, he needs to stop, his lungs screaming, his chest beating. Hands on damp knees, gulping air. Precious seconds, then he raises his head and speaks her name, calmer now, sure she will hear.
Fifty metres ahead – or is it a hundred? She pauses and half-turns. Her face, those
delicate features, now drawn. Mouth turned down; posture slumped. Then she recognises him and her lips part. Her eyes widened and for a moment he sees the look he remembered.
“Jay?”
He spends agonising seconds analysing her voice. Is that disappointment? Does she
hope for Dion, ready to fall into his arms? Shall he run to her? Will that scare her? These and a thousand other thoughts scroll through his mind too fast to process. Stay cool, he decided.
“Hey Ani. Sup?”
She turns to face him full on and they remain in that position for several seconds. Jay
regains his composure enough to sense the absurdity. Then he remembers photos of those Gormley sculptures on a beach that Anika showed him once. Maybe that will be how they will look in the morning, stuck upright in the sand after the tide has receded again.
“How did you....? Oh, you remembered.” She nods to herself then looks at him, head
tilted, questioning. “You came after me?” Her eyes narrow and she runs both hands through her hair, as though trying to process it all.
Jay has not prepared a speech. They always know what to say in films, but they have
a team of scriptwriters and a full orchestra playing a John Williams score. Keep it simple, he decides. The fact is, he does not know whether Anika has any feelings for him. Prostrating himself at her feet with a gushing outpouring of emotion, may just cause her to turn and run.
“Yeah, well. Heard your message. Worried you were planning to do something silly.”
Anika drops her hands to her side and looks around.
“This place. It’s how my life feels, Jay. I can’t take it anymore.”
She looks back at him, body inclined toward him, trying to make him understand.
“I get it. I do. But the thing is,” Jay points out the pathway stretching off into the
distance, “even here, there’s markers to keep you on the path. They’ll always be there to look after you. They care about you.”
He holds his hand out toward her. Anika looks across at the pathway, then out to the
open sea, then back to him. Jay remains motionless, for the first time feeling the seawater freezing his ankles, the wind gusting. Above, two gulls pursue each other across the vast sky. He wonders whether they watch the drama beneath just as he watches their synchronised wheeling, neither sure how it will end.
Tracking their flight, he fails to notice that Anika is moving toward him. Her face
looks down, arms tight to her side. Then, as she comes close, she lifts her head and mouths a silent thank-you as she takes his hand. He looks up and sees the gulls make one more circuit before disappearing into the distance together. He turns and leads her back to the safety of the path.
Author: Several of his short stories have been published in anthologies and on-line since Richard Garcka attended Creative Writing classes in Guildford a few years' ago. He works across a variety of genres with a common ambition of offering uplifting tales in these difficult times.