The Beach in January

January has changed the beach: fewer people, lower sun, secrets that require the long shadows. Prince Freddie and his human walk the shore together, collecting shells.

January on the Spanish coast was a different beach.

Not a lesser one. Different. The tourists had gone. The volleyball nets were down. The café had reduced its hours. It kept to those times with more integrity than in summer. The beach had exhaled. In the absence of summer business, it had gone back to what it actually was. A long arc of sand between the sea and the hills. Old and unhurried. Getting on with things.

Prince Freddie liked it considerably.

He liked it in the particular way that he liked the harbour at three fifteen, or the fountain square just before dawn.

This morning his human had come with him.

This did not always happen. In summer, the beach was a shared thing, full of people and noise and the requirement to navigate. In January it was theirs, the two of them, walking at whatever pace felt right, with nobody to account to.

The sun was low, as it always was in January. It came in at a long angle that made everything cast a shadow three times its size. Freddie’s shadow looked like a dog of conventional leg length. He found that mildly interesting. The light at this angle changed the colour of the sand. It saturated it, made the gold more gold, the damp areas near the tide line a deep rich brown.

And then there were the sun-puddles.

He had known about these for years. They were a January secret. Like all the best January secrets, they required the lower sun. They required the particular angle of the shore. The specific way the cold kept the air still. Where the sun hit the dry sand directly, it went warm. Not beach-towel warm. Genuinely warm. Freddie had learned that if you pressed your belly to these patches the heat came up through your fur. It was like the warmest possible thing. You could lie there and feel the sun below you and the cool air above you simultaneously. That was an arrangement he would very much recommend.

He found the first one near the eastern end and pressed himself flat.

His human came past, glanced at him, and continued along the tide line. They walked barefoot, which Freddie had always found the correct way to walk on this beach in January. The sand near the water was cool and still damp from the last tide, and their footprints left clean, unhurried marks beside the foam.

His human had their own January business, which was shells.

The winter storms brought in different things. Summer had small smooth shells, worked over for the longest time. January had shells from further out and deeper down. They were less worn, their original shapes still visible. Ridged ones, and pointed ones, and ones with a pattern. The sea had not yet smoothed these away. His human knew which ones were good. The criteria were their own. Freddie did not fully understand them. He could tell that they existed. Some shells were picked up and held to the light and pocketed. Others were set back down with care. They were returned with the same attention used to pick them up.

Freddie nosed the ones that went back into the sand.

He found a second sun-puddle near the flat rock where the crab sometimes worked and pressed himself flat again. The cold of the air was clean and the warmth below him was generous and the whole arrangement was very satisfying.

His human moved slowly along the water’s edge. The light was best in these long angles. The long angles required patience. You had to stand still. You let the low sun find the shell’s surface at the right moment. This happened or it didn’t. If it didn’t, you waited or you moved on.

A pair of birds Freddie didn’t know the name of worked the waterline. They were unhurried and efficient. Up at the botanical garden above the beach the turtle family was making winter arrangements. They arranged around the pond. The passionfruit vine was bare and spare above the pergola in the January cold. The yoga man had been through earlier. His swim was longer in January because the beach was empty. There was no reason to hurry back.

Freddie pressed his belly into a third sun-puddle. It was the best of the three. He lay with his eyes half-open. He watched his human move along the shore.

The pocket was full now, or close to it. His human crouched at something near the water. They held it up. The light came through it or didn’t. Then it went into the pocket. That was the last one. They turned and came back up the beach toward where Freddie was lying.

They stopped beside him and crouched down. They put out a hand. He sniffed the shell they were holding. It was cold, and salt, and deep-water smell from further out. It had a quality of time he had no word for. It was different from the summer shells. Old in a different way. Further.

It went into the pocket.

They walked home together at a pace of two people not late. The path came up from the shore through the village. The fountain square was quiet. The shutters on most shops were still closed. Past Señora Benilde’s garden, the lavender was cut back but still there. It still exhaled its particular certainty into the cold air. The path held a particular warmth underneath the cold. The afternoon had kept this back until the last of the light.

The cottage was at the end of the path. Inside, the old beams had kept the warmth since morning. They had that deep reliable quality of thick walls and good wood. His human put the shells from their pocket on the windowsill in the kitchen. They arranged them in a line without particular order. Then they went to make something warm.

Freddie ate his supper. Then he went to the bedroom. The light was the particular quality of a January afternoon. It was pale and blue through the window. The bed was exactly right.

He circled once, twice, three times. Then he climbed onto the bed. It took a moment with his short legs. He settled in against the warmth already there from the morning. The sheets still held it. His chin found a fold in the cover. The rest of him arranged itself around the chin. His tail curled simply where it ended up.

Outside, the January beach continued. The light at its long angle across the sand. Where the sun hit it directly, the surface was warm.

The End

Sleep well, Prince Freddie. On the sand, where the sun hit it directly, the surface is still warm.

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