Another copee below zee jump.
Swimming Away (beginning)
She is sitting on the beach, alone. Her legs are curled under her, and her hands are feeling the pebbles at her side. They are smooth, like ducks' eggs. They fit snugly into her palm. She looks out over the sea. The waves are bloated and sullen. They clutch at the shore and rasp as they retreat. The cliffs are the grey of gravestones and loneliness. The wind has turned her long hair into whips which lash her cheeks. She thinks back, to the time before. Then, the sun was shining and the beach was innocent.
"Mum!" The child's voice is high and excited. "Look!" Rosie is holding up a strand of seaweed as long as her whole body. It is wrapping itself around her legs and slapping against her plump little tummy clad in white.
"Great!" says Rosie's Mum. "The mermaid's tail." She is busy fashioning the stones into a face and body: dried seaweed for hair, shells for earrings. Together they place the seaweed and curve the tip towards the sea.
"She's taller than me," says Rosie, and she lies flat on her back, arms outstretched, to demonstrate the exceptional height of the mermaid with her weedy tail. "When the waves come in, will she swim away?"
"Maybe," says her Mum. "Maybe she will."
She starts to dig. She lifts the pebbles out, one by one, and piles them to one side. As she gets down below the first layer, the stones are smaller, rougher, wetter, with more sand in the mixture. The fingernail on the middle finger of her left hand jangles with pain as a flint drives under the nail. A drop of blood falls into the mix. She begins to widen, lengthen and shape the trench.
Hand in hand they skip down the beach. The waves are big today but they are clear and clean as they slap against the shore. The sea has left a sandy strip which snakes the length of the pebbly beach. Rosie and her Mum want to see their footprints: two big, two small.
She has finished. There is a shape gouged out of the pebbles. A human figure. A head, two arms, a torso, legs, no tail. Carefully she selects a pebble, white, round, a duck's egg, and places it on the edge of the shoulder. She finds a second, pure white, and lays it next to the first, not quite touching. She is drawing an outline. Like a murder victim at an American crime scene, she thinks, but the bubble of laughter does not rise in her throat. She does not know why she glances up, at that moment. A man is standing on the edge of the cliff. To her, he is the size of the middle finger of her left hand. Panic sweeps over her like sweat. He is too far away to hear her when she screams.
"When's Daddy coming back?" says Rosie.
"In a while," says her Mum, but she's been wondering too. He's gone for a stroll. He doesn't like the beach. He says the cliffs make him claustrophobic.
"I want to swim," says Rosie and she grabs at her beach shoes. They are at the bottom of the basket. As she pulls the shoes out, the box with the sandwiches in it breaks open and the bread falls into the sand, butter side down.
"Rosie! Watch what you're doing!" Her Mum is sharp, harsh. Rosie shrinks. Her Mum sighs. "Never mind. We'll be mermaids when we eat it. I bet they're used to sand in their sandwiches." Rosie grins.
The man has gone. She is alone again. Alone with her shape, white-rimmed, bleached. She smoothes the body, strokes the face. The arms and legs are splayed like a sand angel. She wonders whether it is a comfortable shape. Should she have formed a curled figure, foetal, protected, warm? Is the sand angel too exposed? Or does it feel wild and free?
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