By the Sea

   Hercule Poirot leaned back in his chair with a little sigh. His long time companion and close friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, who sat beside him, turned to him with a smile.
   “It’s lovely, isn’t it, Poirot?” he said with a motion of his gaunt hand, indicating the beautiful seaside skyline that spread out for miles in front of them.
   “Oui, mon ami,” Poirot replied with some emotion.
   “What’s the matter, Poirot?” asked his friend, sensing the change in his voice.
   “Ah, it is nothing,” replied the great detective.
   Hastings sighed and turned his face back to the beautiful view. Hastings’ mind moved back to the case which had just ended in spectacular fashion, as did most of his companion’s cases, but Poirot’s traveled somewhere very different indeed. He began to reminisce, a thing he hardly ever did, about his childhood, and the many weeks he’d spent in Oostende for summer holiday as a child with his mother and brother and nurse, and eventually just his mother and nurse. Poirot rarely ever thought about his mother or his brother, although he had loved them dearly, for practically every thought of them made his heart ache bitterly. But now, with the skyline so similar, and the salty sea smell in his nose, he could do nothing but think about her.
----
   Little Hercule Poirot ran down the beach toward his nurse.
   “Nurse, where is Mama?” he asked, his high-pitched, squeaky voice barely audible over the sound of the breaking waves.
   “Your mama has gone back to the hotel with Achille, mon petit garcon,” replied his nurse. “She said the sun was giving her a headache.”
   “Why doesn’t she use the shaded lenses that the doctor gave her, then?” wondered Hercule, wiping his hot brow.
   “She lost her shaded lenses in the sea when she went bathing yesterday.”
   Hercule frowned. “The doctor will not be happy,” he said gravely, thinking back on the stern old man with the long white beard. “He told mama not to lose them.”
   “I know, mon petit garcon,” smiled Nurse. “But your mama, she is not like you, nor like your papa. She always loses things, but you two, never did I ever see your papa misplace a thing, and you take after him, mon chéri.”
   Hercule smiled now. He did not remember his father well, for he had died when Hercule was only 3 years old, and he always liked it when Nurse told him that they were similar.
   Nurse smiled and patted her young charge on the head. “Now you go and swim while I sit here. When you get tired we’ll go together to the shops and by ice cream. What do you say, mon petit chéri?”
   “Yes please, Nurse!” exclaimed Hercule, and then he ran off towards the water.
----
   “It is so much more often that one see’s the shaded lenses now than before,” said Poirot suddenly, breaking the deep silence that had encompassed him and his companion during the last half hour.
   Hastings jumped slightly, and turned toward Poirot with questioning eyes. “What was that, Poirot?” he asked with a raise of his eyebrows.
   “I said, it is so much more often that one sees the shaded lenses now than before.”
   “Oh, I see, yes, I suppose so,” replied Hastings in a little confusion.
   “They used to have to be prescribed by the doctors.”
   “Yes, I suppose they did.”
   Poirot fell silent again.
   “Poirot,” asked Hastings at last. “What have you been thinking about?”
   Poirot hesitated, and smiled slightly. “I think of my youth, mon ami.”
   “They were good times, yes?”
   “Yes, good times, but, I think, not as good as these.”
   Poirot smiled at his companion, and his companion smiled back.