Chapter 21 #2
Barbara sits stock still, staring out at the ocean, her eyes reflecting the blue-grey in their faded glow.
She lays her hands on the window, her blankets slipping down, revealing the whiteness of her stringy arms. Her veins are like bulging estuaries in full flood, pushing starkly through her skin like the map of her life cannot be contained any more. ‘I think… I think my mouse is here.’
‘Then let’s get you outside, shall we?’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes, please.’
‘What is this beach, anyway?’ I say as Kane lopes round to the sliding door, dragging it open through a lingering rusty growl as it resists his pull. ‘I’ve never been here. Didn’t even know it was here.’
Jodie points to another tiny, battered sign on the edge of the beach near the track. Sea Bay.
‘Imaginative name,’ Violet says.
I’m all of a sudden infused with energy.
I snap my belt open, grabbing my bag, and pile out of the van after Amina and Violet, helping Violet out with the walker.
The cold air hits me in the face and steals my breath.
Kat and Jodie help Barbara into her chair and they can hardly contain her, bubbling away and bouncing like a toddler being restrained in her buggy.
They take hold of one arm of the chair each.
‘Help us out, Kane,’ Kat says, and Jodie looks at him with scared eyes.
He is leaning on the side of the van, lighting a cigarette.
He sighs, then grunts, then grabs hold of the bar across the front of the chair, dragging it forward and pulling it down with little care for its angle, Barbara tipping dangerously towards the sand. She grips the arms and giggles. ‘You are a one, young man.’
Kat sighs.
‘Thought you weren’t coming out of the van,’ I say to Violet, who is leaning on her walker, gazing out at the sea. ‘Thought you hated sand.’
Violet screws up her nose. ‘Might as well, now I’m here, I suppose.’
‘Did you bring that hot chocolate?’ Jodie says to Kane, when Barbara is safely down on the sand, the wheels of her hospital chair sinking just slightly into its marshy surface.
Kane nods. ‘Anything for my princess, right?’ He chucks her under the chin and then kisses her full on the mouth, holding his cigarette too close to her blonde hair.
‘I said I would, so I did.’ He climbs back into the bus and scrabbles around under the passenger seat.
‘Here.’ He brings out two large tartan flasks and a nest of disposable cups.
‘Even remembered the cups. What d’you think of that, then? ’ He winks at her.
Jodie wraps her arms around herself. ‘I think you’re brilliant.’
He hands the flasks to me and Kat. ‘I’m gonna stop in here, let you ladies go and look at the sea or whatever.
’ He climbs back into the minibus, flops down on one of the double seats and splays his long legs out over the aisle to another seat.
He digs out his phone. ‘Rubbish reception here. Don’t be long, will you? ’
‘We won’t,’ Jodie says.
Barbara is animated, as if the wind has caught hold of her and swept through her fading body. ‘I want to feel the sand.’
Kat starts to shake her head, but Jodie smiles and looks back at Kane. ‘Kane’s got a beach chair or two in here, haven’t you babe? An’ a picnic rug too. Keeps it just in case.’
Kane shrugs. ‘Mmm. Under those seats at the back, I think.’ He makes no move to go towards the seats at the back, so Jodie clambers up, panting, scrambles over Kane’s legs and crouches down herself.
‘One’s broken.’ She pulls out the remains of a rusty old camping chair, the poles of one leg snapped in two, and shoves it away.
‘This one’s okay though.’ She tugs out another chair, opening it out; a smaller one, lime green, the back shaped like the face of a frog, cartoon eyes bulging from the top corners.
‘That’s a kid’s chair,’ Kat says, taking it from her.
‘And this.’ Jodie drags out a faded old blanket, the plastic shredding away on its back, pink and white candy-striped fleece covered in what looks like a hundred crusted picnic remains and drink spills. ‘Here!’ she says triumphantly, holding it aloft. ‘We can all sit on it.’
Barbara claps her hands together. ‘I want to sit on the frog chair.’
Jodie shoves the blanket at me. It smells like mildew.
I shove my handbag back in the bus, my arms too full of flask and rug, weighed down with the Aldi bag full of hats and gloves still hooked over my arm, and start slowly down the beach with Kat, who is pushing Barbara, the chair responding sluggishly, the wheels catching on the grit and groaning in protest. Kat has the wolf fleece draped over her arm.
It’s not far to the water’s edge. We inch down towards it and I stare up at the open, clouded sky, breathing in the salty crisp freshness of the air and listening to the plaintive cry of gulls.
I dump the flask and bag on the sand and lay out the blanket, and for the first time in weeks I feel like I can breathe again and it’s wonderful and wild and invigorating.
Jodie tugs off her Ugg boots and long stripy socks, curling and uncurling her bare toes in the damp sand. ‘Hey,’ she shouts, flinging her arms to the sky, ‘I just thought. We’ve come from C Bay to Sea Bay! How about that!’
Kat says, ‘I know which one I prefer.’