Somewhere on the Devon coast line, near two villages divided by a river, above a bay containing many coves and one crumbling church, there is a cluster of three pine trees. These trees are gnarled by wind and sea spray, baked and bitter from the seasons and within their roots lie the ashes of two generations of my family. And it's not the windy dark days that make me think of those trees and the remains which brush against their feathered roots. It's the days like today when the sky is clear and bleached by the sun, when every other breath almost tastes of the sea from desire and imagination, regardless of where you are. In the middle of London I could turn a corner and step into an unexpected but adored breeze which suddenly seems salty and thick with the scent of seaweed.
The summer makes me think of the bay, the trees and the sea because that was where so many of my childhood summers were spent, with my family, staying at my grandfather's caravan in the private farm/campsite called Stoke Beach. We would head down to Devon within a week of the end of the summer term and stay with my grandmother in Plymouth for a few weeks and then at Stoke Beach for anything between a week and four. I and my brother would spend weeks clambering around cliffs, swimming, turning over rocks, climbing trees and grumbling any time our parents wanted to take us away to towns or National Trust properties. We spent our summers getting roasted brown and developing the ability to walk across the gravel car park without flinching. These are some of my strongest memories of my childhood and almost my only memories of my grandfather.
He was weathered and strong, a pipe always in his mouth and we rarely saw him when he wasn't at Stoke. Between March and November he lived at the caravan, only heading back to the house he shared with my grandma once a fortnight when they met to go to the library. And before you start thinking he was an odd sort and that this was a strange way to live; my grandma had a caravan of her own, further inland, set in wooded shade beside a river on the edge of Dartmoor. And so they would spend their years, apart for most of the warm seasons and cramped together near the gas fire during the cold.
Stoke Beach had begun as an evacuation camp for children from the cities during the second world war. Both my grandparents had volunteered there, bringing along their three sons to play with the evacuees, enjoying the weather and the sea, attempting to ignore reality and the looming fear. After the war many of the children and parents had become attached to Stoke Beach and the farmer established firstly a campsite and then a caravan site in this sheltered wood enclosed cove. My father, his twin brother and his elder brother spent their summers doing exactly what I and my brother had done, making memories and friends, slowly making the sand and soil of that place as much of their genetic make up as their eye colour. It was only when the three brothers left home and found their own adventures that my grandparents sought separate caravans, my gran opting for the dappled serenity of a riverside rather than the sun bleached power of the sea.
When my grandfather died, suddenly, within a week of the doctors discovering his lungs and liver were riddled with a cancer that he had never complained about or sought attention for, my grandma took over his caravan, knowing how much her many grandchildren adored Stoke Beach. It was only as her own health failed her and she had to give up driving that she gave up the caravan, a decision that we all understood, but that caused an unexpected ache in many of us. It was the end of an era. The end of a stream of generations who found solace and peace on that ragged coast.
My grandfather was the first to have his ashes scattered beneath the three pine trees overlooking the bay above Stoke Beach. I can remember that no matter where you were in that bay, unless you were squeezing through the few strange pock marked natural tunnels cut into the cliffs by the sea, where ever you were you could see those trees. Like calm sentinels on the horizon, or three weather beaten old men, sticks in hands and pipes in mouths, standing in silence and enjoying the view.
My father's twin brother died suddenly at 55 and he joined his father on that horizon, followed by my grandmother and then my father, who died five years and two days ago. I and my husband took my father's ashes to the trees on a bright November morning, scattering them beside his parents and his brother, the breeze snatching at his remains almost as if it were trying to shake his hand and welcome him home.
Stoke Beach was in our family's blood and it always seemed fitting that they should sink into that soil at the end of their adventures.
On summer days like this I think of that cliff top and I can see them standing there together in the shade of the trees, looking out over the bay at the grey blue sea, foam kissed waves drifting lazily towards the sand. I know they mostly stand in silence, admiring the view, my father and grandfather occasionally pointing out a bird or a boat and passing the binoculars to each other, pushing their glasses up on their foreheads, their faces wrinkling with squinting concentration.
The third brother passed at the start of this year and at some point I'll be taking his ashes to that cliff top and returning him to his brothers. Three trees, three brothers. It was almost as if nature always know that this was going to be home for them and left a mark so that they could find it.
As the sun sets tonight, I'll be thinking of how the stars always looked so bright at Stoke Beach. How without street lights and civilisation the sky was so clear you could see the milky way and watch the satellites skipping across the curve of the heavens. I'll be thinking of three brothers reunited and enjoying the view.
