Dreaming of You

“I read your letter, made me feel better
How did you know that I was singing the blues?”

She looked across at him through Oakley shades as he drove. He sang along as Paul Davis crooned from the radio. She recalled the road trips they had made in the VW camper, seeking the high rollers on the Atlantic Coast. The cliché surfboards on the roof rack, a battered guitar in the kitchenette and a tape deck that ruined every cassette they bought but was a soundtrack to their lives along with the shipping forecast; revered for giving them the next day’s destination.

Their faces browned like leather and bleached hair from salt and sun, their smiles bright as they hand-signalled to one another; “this one”; the reward for patience, but not caring if the wave never came. If the surf was right at dawn, they were on it and might stay until the red tipped cloud curtain of sunset.

They would lie fatigued and happy together on the dunes warmed by the embers of a driftwood fire, looking up at the starlit sky, so vast, she felt small but in his arms she was significant.

“Promises are made and promises are broken
Dreams are falling through, I love you, I still love you”

Paul sang solo now; other things on Colins mind.

His hair was receding and he had a paunch. The child on the back seat grizzled and he flinched, the car in front dithered and he tutted. The car park reminded her of gulls following a trawler; a portent to the mayhem inside the IKEA store. She sighed.

“Do you remember Crantock Beach?” she asked.

He turned and smiled at her. “How did you know that” he sang and they duetted; ”I was dreaming of you.”

(c) Steve Goodlad