Writers' Forum Magazine runs a monthly short story competion.
   There is no set theme and for a few pounds added to the entry fee
   you can receive a critique. I picked up third prize for this story in
   their September 2009 competition, but at the time did not ask for
   any feedback.

   Since then I have tweaked the story a little to reflect some 
   very helpful comments about adding a bit more emotion to it.
   These came from Elizabeth Bailey - you'll find her at
   www.helpingwriters.co.uk - and I feel the story is all
   the better for it. Sandcastle Man is included in an anthology
   of stories called 'The Ways of Love' brought together by Liz Bailey
   and available through Amazon late spring/early summer.
          

 

   The Sandcastle Man 

   A wide brimmed hat was essential on a sunny day, particularly if you
   wanted to look at the Sandcastle Man without him knowing. The more
   blatant kind of woman just sat and stared, head uncovered, mouth
   slightly open.
         
   Who could blame them? The Sandcastle Man stood out amongst
   the lobster-pink Dads and the pumped-up Romeos.  Black curls, dark eyes,
   a lithe, brown body that surely owed more to exotic beaches than tanning
   booths. He had a little leather plait fastened around one ankle too; the
   final confirmation that he was something 'other'.
           
   Of course he built sandcastles like a dream, keeping even the
   most fidgety child entranced. His look of concentration as he dug and
   patted and smoothed the sand, his white teeth biting into his bottom lip,
   was mesmerising.
         
   Did I mention that he was French, with a clothes-stripping accent?
   Or that he only wore a pair of shorts? They were blue and cut beautifully.
   None of those bulging or drooping designs for him. They looked like they were
   moulded to his body; part of him as much as the muscles of his stomach
   or his long, long legs.
   
   Any one of his attributes taken alone would have been reason enough
   for my mouth to dry and my breath to labour. Taken together they
   added up to the kind of man I felt could scorch me simply by looking my
   way. 

   I could not stop myself from scanning the beach every morning until I
   located that brown, lithe body and while I did not have the benefit of
   a wide brimmed hat, I did have the advantage of height. The height of
   the promenade plus an ice cream van to be precise. A holiday job from
   university; 'Hell on wheels' as Annie, my fellow inmate in that boiling box
   called it.

   For three months we had swapped Applied Physics for soft whip cornets,
   ice lollies, monkey blood, chopped nuts, cans of drink and ice pops.  

   As the sun beat down on the van we sweltered and served and smiled.
   The pay was a joke, but there were other perks. Including the thrill of
   watching the Sandcastle Man.
         
   That he was on this beach at all was an uncharacteristic act of frivolity
   by the Town Council who had hired him to entertain the holidaymakers
   for two weeks. It would all culminate in a Grand Sandcastle Competition and
   then he would be gone, moving on to another place; drifting through
   our fingers like, well, like sand.
         
   Even the weather had decided to co-operate with a sultry,
   energy-sapping heat wave that lay over the country and did not budge.
   People slowed their pace, relaxed into it. The concrete on the promenade
   shimmered by noon.
         
   Time seemed to falter and slide; the hot days melting into warm nights.
         
   Not long after the Sandcastle Man arrived, Annie started to wear
   her bikini in the van. I told her it was probably against health and safety
   regulations, but I did it with a smile and hoped she would not notice the
   jealousy in my eyes.
         
   During a lull in trade, I watched her as she watched the Sandcastle Man.
   He was making her overheat too, I could tell, and when she filled a cone
   and slipped out of the van, I knew where she was heading. Soon she was
   talking to him, handing him the rapidly melting ice cream and placing one
   of her feet, delicately, right next to one of his.
         
   I thought of myself in her shoes, and saw myself stepping on his toes in
   awkwardness. I could never get close to all that perfection.
         
   I lost sight of them finally when a family came to order a handful of lollies,
   but by the time they were walking away licking them, Annie was back
   in the van.

   'Name's Philippe. Polite, friendly, beautiful accent,' she reported, her
   mouth a little pouty. 'I asked him if he wanted to go for a drink later. Just
   said, "Thank you. No." '
         
   She set about cleaning the counter with surprising vigour considering
   the heat. 

   Men didn't normally refuse Annie and that evening she went home
   to our rented flat an hour early, saying she had a headache. I suspected
   it was really a punctured ego, but I was too busy dealing with the queue
   to really think about it. When I saw my reflection in the fridge I was
   red, almost glowing; little tendrils of hair stuck to my damp face and neck.
         
   Then suddenly there was the Sandcastle Man, framed in the window.
   A heart-thumping picture. I would not have been surprised to see the entire
   stock of ice cream and lollies melt.
         
   I did; silently.
         
   'I have come to pay for the ice cream. The one your friend brought
   earlier.'
         
   That accent rippled into the van first, but then something else reached in
   through that little window and wrapped itself around my chest and
   pulled tight. He was one of my kind; I was one of his, as simple as that.
   We saw it in each other.
         
   I can't remember what I replied, something about not needing to pay,
   and then I saw his gaze flutter over me. I forgot that I looked like
   a steamed dumpling, forgot everything except the way my body was
   responding to his.
         
   'You are a student also?' he said, making it sound like poetry.
         
   I nodded slowly, words not coming.
         
   He grinned and looked down as if he was aware of the effect he was
   having. It didn't seem like smugness, just something that made him happy.
   I gripped the counter and swore I felt it soft and pliable beneath
   my hands.
         
   'Perhaps when you are finished we could walk along the beach a little?
   You would like that?'
         
   I breathed in slowly, a hot, airless mouthful.
         
   'Ok,' I said.
         
   'I will wait for you by the water's edge.'
         
   I was still hanging on to the counter as I watched him go. There must
   be some mistake; he must be joking. I would just close the sliding window,
   put up the 'gone home' sign and lie down on the floor forever.

 

   But once the van was locked, the takings banked, I found myself drifting
   towards that enticing, frightening place: the water's edge. There he was
   and I would not have been surprised to see the sea boiling around him.
   As he walked in the water, I walked on the sand and he pointed out the
   different sandcastles. We watched the tide come in and slowly wipe
   them away.
         
   'Doesn't it make you sad when all your hard work disappears?' I asked,
   trying to ignore the way he looked at my mouth when I talked.
         
   He shrugged, suddenly very French, 'No. It is life.'
         
   We walked on, the sun warm down our backs and I felt his hand
   take mine, smooth from all that sand. And every step we took I felt
   myself drawn closer to him. His thumb was rubbing back and forth across
   my skin leaving little trails of fire and I wondered if people could see how
   all my nerve endings were pulsing with that touch?
         
   We got as far as the pier before he turned to face me.
         
   'What would you like me to do now?' he said softly, as if asking my
   permission to seduce me. It felt natural to lift my chin and close
   my eyes and invite his kiss. It was hot, deep, full of limitless possibilities.
   The best kind of French kissing.
         
   We stood there until the sea was over our ankles and then our calves.
         
   Some time before it reached our knees we turned and walked like
   drunks up the beach and to his hotel. And there, in his room, with
   the windows open to the sound of the sea and the gulls, he dropped more
   molten kisses on me, re-igniting the warmth of the sun still in my skin.

   My buttoned-up ways came off with my sundress and as his hands
   smoothed and caressed me, I was shaped into something beautiful and
   new. The once cool sheets became a hot and twisted mess upon
   the floor. Later we drank dark red wine from each other's mouths. 

 

   And so it went; a pattern was established. We parted in the morning
   and I watched him through the day persuading the sand into beautiful
   shapes, remembering how his hands had skimmed across my body in
   those very same movements.
         
   Every now and again he would turn and smile and wave at me.
         
   'You're a lucky devil,' Annie said with some force when she was speaking
   to me again. 'A lucky, lucky devil.'
         
   I knew that, but I also knew that he would go. Move further along
   the coast; back to France, on to Spain. He would not stay. Perhaps that's
   what made it so intense, the knowledge that like the heat wave it
   could not last.
         
   But for now the heat was still building and as it did, Philippe offered
   little snippets of himself. He had not knuckled down to college straight after
   school, preferring to see the world.  I sensed a set of disappointed
   parents back in Paris. His plans included beaches I could only dream of, but
   what he hoped to find on them he seemed unable to say.
        
    'You should go to college at the end of this summer,' I heard myself
   declare into the dark one night. 'Build something more permanent.'
         
   I was not sure why I said it and I felt him move as though I had touched
   a sore spot. And then he laughed and kissed the moment away.
         
   But I was in trouble, I knew that. I was in love too deep to skip back out
   untouched. I could not believe that he did not feel the same way.That
   connection between our hearts was there, surely he could not bear to
   break it when Saturday came?
         
   On our last night, too full of love and red wine, I flouted every rule in
   the cool girl's guide to holiday flings and told him how I felt. He shook his
   head sadly; kissed me with regret.
         
   'I must move on. Do not be sad. What beautiful memories we have made.'
   
   Only a man could imagine that would cheer me up.  

 

   I disentangled my body from his.

   'It doesn't matter what we've made. Let it wash away like your
   sandcastles. That's what you know best.'
         
   I got into my clothes somehow and he rubbed his hand through
   his hair as though his head suddenly hurt. I could see he looked sad,
   confused even, but then I was out of the door, distraught that he could
   not see how perfectly we fitted one another.
         
   Back in the flat I cried all over Annie. She didn't mind; she understood
   about building castles in the air.
         
   'There, there,' she said, 'Just one more day to get through.'
         
   It was my longest day. I'm surprised I did not curdle the ice cream in
   the cones with my misery. I took an age to serve each person, my arms
   like lead, the heat and tension tightening a band inside my skull. Poor
   Annie gave up trying to even make me speak.
         
   By late afternoon I kept my head down, afraid that I would catch a
   glimpse of blue shorts or brown body. From the beach came cheers
   and clapping. Prizes were awarded, speeches were made. I blocked them
   all out, tears running down my face and plopping on to the counter.
         
   That evening, when I was sure he had gone, Annie and I walked along
   the beach together. Now it was just a strip of sand; no life and excitement
   left in it. My dark-eyed, other half was gone. Next week, on another beach,
   another woman would be serving him ice cream.
         
   We watched the tide come in and make the sandcastles crumble.
   Grand or tiny, they all tumbled down in front of the waves and I felt myself
   dissolving with them.
   
   Then, further along the beach, we saw a little crowd. They were pointing
   and laughing at a beautiful heart-shaped castle, flags flying from its many
   delicate towers.
   
   But it was not the beauty of the sandcastle that had drawn the people.
   It was the way that, although encircled by water, it was standing firm.
   Lord knows what he had mixed in with the sand.
         
   I have a photograph Annie took of me standing beside that castle with
   the water around my ankles and a lopsided smile on my face. She caught
   the precise moment when I thought the castle was a parting gift, a little
   bit of permanence from a man who was just passing through.
         
   The moment before Philippe stepped back into the picture.

   Nowadays the Sandcastle Man builds things to last. Schools and
   galleries; hotels, homes; an enviable reputation. But from time to time
   he peels off his suit, puts on his shorts and lets the sun burn him brown
   again. And then I watch him from under my wide brimmed hat as he and
   the children scoop and pat and smooth.
         
   Our children this time.
         
   From love built on something more solid than sand.