A Movie Then The Beach

Contributed by Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 26/09/08

I don’t have a good memory, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember things. I tend to remember the core of things, the bit that felt like something, rather than the details.

That’s life I’m talking about there. Not comics, or films. Those I seem to remember down to the finest detail. Not necessarily where or when I saw them, as is about to become clear.

I remember cinemas, but not what I saw in them, mostly.

In Scarborough, and I’ve only been to the place I think twice, there used to be an old cinema. I can’t remember how long ago it was that I was there – it’s a long way from here, and I’d only have gone for one reason. That reason, both times, was my friend Amy.

We were both at University. At least, I think we both were. She might have done a longer course than me, so I may have been between jobs at the time, not Uni. She was training to be a teacher – most of her course took place in Leeds, but for at least a year in the middle she was in Scarborough.

I remember Scarborough being a weird and quaint old seaside town, with windy roads and not much to do – probably because I always seemed to go in the off season – but that didn’t matter so much. Amy and I were the best of friends, and just spending time with each other was fun enough.

In fact, this one particular time, it was only a couple of weeks after the summer season proper had finished – I’m sure of it. It was already getting darker earlier, I remember that.

It was the time I went that she wasn’t on crutches, I remember that, too.

One evening, we went to the cinema. It was a nice old place facing the seafront – she and I were from a small town that had a horrid, pokey old one-screener, and everywhere else was going to the multiplexes, but this place was a solid old theater – in fact, another memory just seeped in – it might have been one of those places that is clearly used for plays when it isn’t being used for movies, with a very narrow entranceway that was difficult to imagine busy, crammed with refreshments and the ticket office . Whatever, it was one of those places that you remember more as a feeling of establishment and comfort.

I think we were the only people there. If not, we were certainly two of very few. And I honestly can’t recall what film we watched – just that it was one of those films that you expect to be okay, and that turns out to be actually quite special. Something like “Twelve Monkeys” or “The Shawshank Redemption”.

Actually, it bothers me that I don’t remember. I think Amy would.

Afterwards, we left the theater to an already dark evening. It was a mild night, and the moon shone bright on the sea, and we decided to walk back the long way, along the beach.

And that was that, really. We walked, and I couldn’t tell you whether it was to the crunch of pebbles or the whisper of sand, though I remember the sea coming on, rushing back. And we talked, mostly about how the film was good – in fact, better than we thought it might be, and about other things – this and that – with an ease that best friends and few others ever have.

It is my first and maybe only – certainly my clearest – memory of ever walking along a beach, at night, with someone that I love. And that’s what I wanted to tell you about today.

It isn’t a fiction. It isn’t even really a story, as such. There isn’t really more to it – no shadowy assailant, or moment of epiphany – and no unexpected kiss. Although that did happen later in our lives, and just once – and it both changed everything and nothing at all.

There isn’t even a proper beginning – I haven’t even begun to tell you about how Amy and I knew each other, or how close we were – or a proper ending.

Amy got married – I read “If” by Rudyard Kipling at the service, at the bride and her mother’s request – a nerve-wracking in-joke that I suspect the groom didn’t even get. She has had, last I knew, two beautiful children that I’ve heard a little about but haven’t ever seen in the flesh. We try to keep in touch, but it has become harder – I had a bad relationship, and she had a very good one, which kept each of us busy. And we’ve found e-mails harder to reply to than we ever did pen-and-ink letters.

There’s a funny thing I’ve noticed about Facebook, and that’s that the people from your past that you most want to get in touch with are the only ones you never find.

Amy was my best friend, and I don’t know what the half-life is on that career. It makes me sad to think about it, to be honest. I miss her a lot.

Like I said, it’s not really a story. But you showed me a photo of an old fashioned movie palace, and sorry, but this is all I’ve got.