Way Back When

In this photo I pose with two young women on the beach at Budleigh Salterton, Devon.  Friends since schooldays: always together.  I love this era of photo because it has that orangey-brown tint to it.

That week we had come down by train from London for our annual holiday. As soon as we had unpacked we strolled into the village, where we dropped in at the pub, the “Sir Walter Raleigh”, and played darts with a couple of local lads. Even if we were without an audience, we could always find someone to take a photograph of three beautiful girls. Maybe one of the boys took the photo?

I don’t yet know that when I returned my boyfriend of six months was going to meet me at the station. We walked along Charing Cross Road and paused to look in a jeweler’s shop window. Later that evening, while we’re having dinner at a curry restaurant, he proposed.

Crossing

Nineteen-sixty. We felt we’d discovered it ourselves – the small island hidden by overhanging trees in the middle of the Thames at Hampton Court. My fiancé rowed us across the river for a picnic on the grassy bank. He was young then, and strong.

Last night someone phoned from London. They said the location had been transformed.  Couldn’t see the river for tourists. Boat loads everywhere. But it’s still the same in my photo: the skiffs, the Palace, the path along the embankment, strolling lovers and families. Not a coach load of visitors in sight.

He is still there in the photo too, holding an oar, one foot planted in the boat, one on land. His face lost in the shade. I’m nowhere to be seen. I’m beside the boathouse, adjusting the lens, taking a photo of him and the river almost fifty years ago. It seems like yesterday, a place, a person, I loved.

fine day
the sun reflected on water
folding and expanding

Patricia Prime is co-editor of Kokako, reviews editor of Takahe and Stylus, one of the editors of theTake Five Anthologies 2009 & 2010 and is assistant editor of Haibun Today. She has interviewed various poets and editors and currently has poems appearing in the World Poetry Anthology 2010 (Mongolia).