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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2001953-Minor-Key
Rated: 13+ · Short Story · Experience · #2001953
A wasted life, a fantasy encounter, a missed opportunity
(1,987 words)

MINOR KEY

Laughter rose to the skies as the boy raced along the cliff top in the warm summer weather. The wind blew in gusts off the sea as he rejoiced in his freedom. At twelve years old, this was the first time he had been allowed the freedom to be by himself and explore this rugged coastline. His parents had given him so many instructions they made his head spin, but he was free, free at last, a wildly exhilarating experience.

The cliff top was carpeted with wildflowers; the few gnarled, stunted trees told of the power and persistence of the wind. He reached a spot where he discovered he could clamber down the cliff to a secluded cove on the beach, a place of wonder and intrigue. Rock pools of clear tidal leftovers contained scuttling crabs and pulsating jellyfish, and the shoreline littered with ocean flotsam released from the high seas beyond the protective point. The sea here formed a sort of lagoon, where the water was calm and clear and little fishes could be seen darting back and forth.

Behind him a cave, carved into the rock face by the pounding of the waves, a place of mystery and imagination. ‘Here there be buried treasure,’ he thought, ‘or booty left over by smugglers.’ In reality, the contents were almost entirely rotting seaweed, but this did not deter his imagination in the least.

He revisited this magic place several times during the brief family holiday, and this became a pattern over the next four years. The wonder of what he saw as his special place remained strong, and led to minor conflict with his parents during the final year’s holiday. He had refused to take his siblings with him, preferring the solitude and the enchantment of his own exclusive locale. This did nothing to endear him to his siblings, four and six years younger than he, and tended to emphasize an already growing disparity between them. He felt increasingly isolated as his younger siblings demanded, and received, more attention from their parents.

He was disappointed when his parents elected to no longer spend holidays in the same place, in spite of his pleas to do so. Now aged seventeen, he was maturing rapidly. Tall and slim, but a dreamer, someone who seemed not to fit in with others, solitary and immune to the fascination with sports enjoyed by so many of his contemporaries. An inbuilt shyness made relationships with girls difficult, and apart from a few chaste kisses, he made very little progress.

At the same time, his academic results were just average, and he had little idea of any direction he might take after school. He tried to learn to play the piano, but never seemed to develop the dexterity needed to cope with the notes, although he liked to believe he could hear the music in his soul. He wrote a few poems, one of which was published in the school magazine, but received no critical acceptance. So he dreamed along in almost “Groundhog Day” repetitions until he graduated from school with just average marks.

At his father’s insistence, he enrolled for an accountancy course at the local technical college; not because he was actively enthusiastic about it, but to satisfy his parents, and because there was nothing else to seize his imagination. As time went by, he met a young woman at the college, and, rather to his surprise, they formed a relationship. Even more surprising, in retrospect, he asked her to marry him, and she agreed.

He graduated from his accountancy course, once again with only average marks, and freedom from the bonds of study was matched by a personal freedom when his fiancée needed to travel interstate for a family crisis. Now aged twenty two, he was seized with a desire to visit his cove one last time, to see if the magic was still there. This time he drove to a nearby village and again walked the cliff tops to the rugged scramble down to the cove.

His heart jumped with pleasure at being in this special place again, the more so when all its elements combined to reveal little change. The rock pools still contained little darting fish, the cave hid its mysteries under piles of seaweed and the sand spread, unblemished, to a smooth shining sea.

But this time, with one huge, unbelievable difference. Relaxing in the lapping wavelets of the low tide sat a creature of myth and legend. Half woman, half fish, the mermaid looked at him and smiled, a warm, alluring temptation. Long, blonde hair hung down over her breasts and slim, pale hands wove an invitation he found impossible to resist. He felt stunned, felt this could not possibly be happening, wondering if he had lost his mind or had somehow been rendered insane. But her sea-green eyes smiled at him, and he gazed with a wonder touched by fear at this seeming apparition.

He approached the shore-line diffidently, and as he opened his mouth to speak, words seemed to form in his mind. “Welcome, stranger—you have again visited this enchanted place after too many of your years. I have been waiting for you to return for you have taken this cove into your soul and you should now assume a role in its protection.”

He moved closer to her, and her soft voice seemed woven about with a siren song of the wind, the waves and the cries of the seabirds. “Come with me and live beneath the waves,” her voice alluring and seductive. “You will live forever—why, I am five thousand years old and I am still young. We can protect this sacred place and be together as lovers for all time.”

Temptation rose like a storm throughout his whole being, but a maggot of reality bored into his mind. “No, I can’t do this. This cannot be real, and besides, I am pledged to someone else.”

“Reality is what you believe it to be. Believe in me, in us, and I will show you the many wonders of the oceans, from the frozen extremes to tropical paradises. From the most minute sea creatures to the giant ocean whales.”

But his imagination had been stunted by hours and days in front of dry accountancy texts, and panic took hold. “No, I can’t do this,” he cried and turning, ran for the cliff path to escape. As he did so, he felt a compelling sense of sadness and rejection sweep over him, but he stumbled to his car and drove off regardless of the powerful pull of the mermaid and her promises.

Forty three years passed. Years of disappointment, pain, misery and loss. Two broken marriages, the first to the young woman to whom he was engaged at the time of his last visit to the cove. They broke apart in anger and recrimination, largely because she claimed he had no ambition, no drive and was a pitiful failure as a partner. Their daughter stayed with her mother and he quickly lost contact. The last time he had seen his daughter was over twenty five years ago, and she had made it clear she had no interest in seeing him again. He came to understand his daughter identified her mother’s second husband as her “real” father.

The second marriage came to an end when he discovered she was having an affair with their best man. Their son had attacked his father, claiming he did nothing to try to rescue the relationship, and made it clear he felt his father was a failure. He had not seen his son for over five years, and attempts to mend the relationship met with recurrent failure.

He found himself bewildered by these and other failures in his life. He found it difficult to understand how he had become exposed to all the negative consequences of his actions, and sometimes, inactions, asking, as he was not a bad person, why did bad things have to happen to him? Had he explored this in any depth, it is possible he may have recognised how his choices led to his consequences, and thus he was responsible for his own behaviour. But he lacked real insight and so could never fathom the reasons for his own personal misery.

Now, at the age of sixty five, he had retired from a mechanical, uninteresting job as a financial officer in the public service with sufficient superannuation and accumulated funds to live a careful, no-frills existence in the small unit he now owned. Even this had been robbed of any pleasure when he had to have his little dog, his only companion and friend for over ten years, put to sleep to relieve its obvious suffering.

This, perhaps more than anything else, had tormented him; the little dog had always demonstrated its unqualified affection when he returned home. It liked nothing more than to curl up on the couch with him, with its head on his lap as he watched TV, listened to music or read his books. Now, even this consolation was denied him.

Pain, isolation and rejection grew in him, and he felt flooded by failure. In spite of a firm belief in the maxim, “you can never go back”, he determined to make one last visit to the cove with the idea it might soothe his troubled soul. He had reached a penultimate freedom, and although it gave him little satisfaction, he was determined to exercise this freedom. He threw a few essentials into a bag and set off to drive to the well remembered place of his childhood dreams.

But going back, particularly after forty three years, is a precarious undertaking, demonstrated forcibly when he arrived. A caravan park now sprawled over the cliff top area and the numerous caravans demonstrated it to be a thriving business. An associated kiosk, painted in garish colours, sold ice creams, soft drinks and tawdry souvenirs. The scrambling cliff path had been replaced by steps cut into the rock, and as he descended, his heart in his mouth, he saw the entrance to the cave now blocked off with a brick wall. The shore line had been cleared of many of its rock pools, and replaced by a lacklustre patch of sand. The magic had been developed out of this stretch of the coast, and he saw several families picnicking on the beach, shouting and playing mindless ball games.

‘My cove,’ he thought, ‘the philistines have desecrated my cove.’ And it brought home to him one inescapable fact; it was too late. Forty three years ago, he had fled the opportunity to have some hidden and mysterious role in its protection. He had fled towards the supposed security of what he now knew to be a wasted, boring life wholly lacking in any satisfaction. Even so, he stood at the shoreline, opening his soul, hoping against a stupid hope for the mermaid to once again come to him. Stupid it was, for all he could hear was the old song of the wind, the waves and the seabirds’ cries, now woven through with the intrusive shouts of the barbarian beachgoers.

He turned away, heading for the steps, to be almost destroyed by an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss flowing over him from the sea. “Too late,” it said, “too late.”

He stumbled up the steps, barely holding himself together and sought the sanctuary of his car. Turning on the radio, he was assailed by Frank Sinatra’s self-indulgent “My Way”, “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention,” and he stabbed viciously at the power button, sobbing, “My life has been nothing but one long series of regrets.”

Tears flooding down his face, he turned the car towards the place he thought of as not really home, and consigned himself with a faltering heart to a sterile, monotonous future.
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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2001953-Minor-Key