The man in the hut

Throughout the seaside resorts of the United Kingdom they can be found, small purpose-built huts usually of wood, but some of brick or even concrete. All located on a beach or very close to it, these beach huts offer a refuge from the sun (or more likely the rain), and the crowded beaches beyond. They are little oases of privacy; here one can change into your swimwear, make tea, for there’s often a gas ring, and eat your sandwiches in peace… while you watch the world goes by! How do I know this, well for ten years we regularly went to Bournemouth, which is quite famous for its long rows of such huts, and during the summer holiday months these are crowded out, with busy families. Harassed mums and eager children, fathers blowing up small dinghies or life rings, and urgent searches for the sun cream… all while that important kettle waits to boil. But there was one hut with no such group or even a couple… this hut near ours had one old man sitting happily on its little veranda surround by a few other deckchairs in which no one ever sat. As I remember he was a friendly chap, who always said good morning and gave a wave, and on packing up as evening came, would again wave and call goodnight. But always he remained alone… very often when one happened to glance back alone the line of uniform huts, he was to be seen immersed in a large black book, and always the same book, which when one a chance to see lying open, proved to be a photo album filled with black and white photos.

One afternoon when everyone else were either in the sea or asleep under sun hats, I passed his hut returning from the toilets. He looked up cheerily from his album and we exchanged a word or two concerning the weather. I made to continue on but something suddenly made me change my mind, and instead I turned back and rather cheekily asked who was in the photos. He beckoned to me to take a deckchair beside him, and once again opened the album. At once I recognised the same hut in the small monochrome photos, perhaps in better condition then, with a beach less crowded… but nevertheless the same hut, sixty, seventy or more years before, and filled with a large happy family. Bert, for we were now on first name terms… named each one of them, and for even me his descriptions made them alive again. There was his mum and dad who had, had a corner shop in town, uncle Tom who had a limp from the first world war, and aunty Flo whose shout could reach France when she was calling her children back for the sea. But most poignant of all was the images of Bert himself as a small skinny boy, with his elder brother Mark who had died in his Lancaster bomber in the second world war, and his little sister who had died in the 1960s in childbirth. For half an hour I sat there… his need to say much more than my need to know, of course. But I felt strangely privileged to share in his personal history, for who else knew it now. That evening as usual Bert waved and called goodnight, and I shouted back goodbye as this was a Friday… and we would be returning home Saturday. In fact, I never ever saw Bert again. The following year, I noticed straight away that the hut had been newly painted, it now flaunted a bright red door, gone was the old batted blue paint of Bert’s door, and soon after a noisy little family of four drove up, quickly unloading all the usual paraphernalia of a beach existence, and so it was… that beach hut became just like all the others. Bert, had gone to join the rest of his family I mused, as I noticed the newcomers still had Bert’s old broom… and as I stood there, I considered just for a moment, how nice it would be if God or the universe, should contrive just sometimes; on an early morning or some lonely evening, that the family could be together again, just as in their photos… in their little hut by the sea!