This Saturday would be spent searching for the perfect pebble, the smoothest stone, the shiniest shell. A cheshire grin forms on his face at the thought.
Peter had many qualities his mother lauded; his cleverness, his tidiness and tucked in shirt- his ability to look like a blue-peter presenter from the seventies, his quiet loyalty to her. But the one thing she could not abide, could not understand about him- was his excessive interest in rocks, and how days upon days could be spent on the Sussex coast trawling for ones to add to his collection.
Systematically, upon returning home from a trawl day, Peter would photograph, label and store the stone, and this provided nearly equal pleasure to being on the beach. Marginally.
He had risen early this morning, keen to get started and revel in the morning silence- where only waves and gulls could be heard, and his steady breaths. The shore seemed uncomplicated, the stones and shells predictable enough so that surprises were a treat not a headache. Peter did not have friends now he was an adult. The rhythm of school and university had kept him around a few others like himself, but now that had all fallen away. Now there was just his mother and the stony beaches.
He was itching for a limestone, a perfect one that he could roll about in his hands on the way home- imagining the journey it had taken from the seabed; fragmented and cracked and then smoothed by the great hands of the sea. How could such brutality form smoothness?
He imagined himself being eroded by life, chucked about in waves and thrown up against great rocks again and again. He commiserated with the pebbles underneath his feet and began today’s search in earnest.
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