Chapter 22 #2
‘You take your shoes off,’ she says to us. ‘You should all feel it, like me.’
‘But it’s cold,’ Violet says, shivering.
‘It’s wonderful,’ Barbara says.
So we do. I slip off my ballet flats and my fluffy socks, Amina kicks her stilettos off. I wonder fleetingly what on earth moved her to wear them when she knew where we were going. Kat unlaces her Docs and throws them aside.
‘Go on, Vi,’ Jodie says.
For once, Violet doesn’t correct her. She shrugs, then meticulously removes her own slippers and socks, placing them carefully in the basket underneath her seat, away from the harmful reach of the damp sand.
She draws her frame closer still to the rug, and places her bare feet on it, toes just poking out of the Dressing Gown of Doom and edging off the rug, distaste twisting her mouth as fine grains of sand skitter up towards her.
I curl my own toes into the cold sand and breathe out slowly, remembering the sandy ground in the village I was born in, how I would run barefoot and free, catching my feet on scrubby bushes and falling flat on my face and getting up again grinning as Haki stood laughing his head off at me.
We sit together on this rugged November beach, gazing out at the grey Bristol Channel, the horizon heavy with hazy grey mist under a watery sun. I turn my face up, closing my eyes and feeling the weak rays stroking my eyelids.
‘My mouse is here, I think,’ Barbara says.
No one replies.
‘But I want to feel the sea, as well. I want to feel the water.’
Kat shakes her head. ‘It’s too cold, sweetheart. It wouldn’t do you any good.’
Barbara’s face falls. ‘But I want to feel the sea. Bill and me, we liked to take off our shoes and socks and paddle together, only sometimes he’d jump right in, clothes and all, and pull me in with him.’
‘Maybe just a little bit?’ Jodie says.
Kat frowns at her.
‘How about if we bring the sea to you, Barbara?’ Amina says. ‘Here, give me one of those cups you have, Jodie. I will put the sea into here for you.’
Barbara’s brow crinkles, but then smooths. ‘Yes. Yes. You bring me the sea.’
Amina glides down to the water’s edge, her salwar kameez glittering in the pale sunlight.
She scoops seawater into the polystyrene cup and brings it back to us.
‘Here is the sea.’ She takes one of Barbara’s feet in her hands, brushing away the sand, and dips her finger into the cup and then caresses it over Barbara’s foot, tracing the line of a vein so tenderly Barbara must barely feel it.
Then she dips again and strokes more water over Barbara’s foot.
Barbara sits transfixed, clasping her hands together.
‘Do the other one.’
Amina’s eyes crinkle up in a smile as she gently lays Barbara’s foot back down and takes the other one in her hand, repeating the process.
The sea seems to lap in time with her strokes, the creeping tide weaving in and out, in and out, the sound of it like the sounds I listened to in shells I picked off beaches like this when I was small, when we had come to the UK and I was lost and alone and longed for the great open skies and all the colours again.
Listen to the shells, my father said to me, hear the sound of the skies and the water and the great trees waving in the wind. And the sounds were always there.
‘What about some hot chocolate, then?’ Jodie says, unscrewing the lid from the first flask.
‘Good idea,’ I say. ‘How about we just have a little cup, then we go back?’
‘I don’t want to go back yet,’ Barbara says.
‘Nor do I,’ says Jodie. ‘Let’s have this, at least. Let’s sit a while longer.’
‘Okay,’ I say.
Jodie has the flask open. She wrinkles her nose and sniffs at its contents. ‘What the hell, Kane? What’s he gone and put in here?’
But Kane is back in the minibus, warm and oblivious.
‘What is it?’ I say.
‘It’s bloody brandy,’ Jodie says, then splutters out in laughter.
Kat rubs her nose. ‘We can’t give Barbara that. We can’t have that, really. Not sure IVs and alcohol mix so well.’
Jodie shrugs. ‘I reckon it’d be okay.’
Barbara says, ‘Brandy? Give me a little nip of that stuff!’
‘Is it the same in the other one?’ Kat says.
I open the flask next to me and give it a sniff. ‘Phew. Hot chocolate.’
Jodie relaxes. ‘He must’ve had a moment. Like, I mean, he must’ve meant to put it in both, then got distracted or something.’
‘Yeah right,’ Kat says.
‘Why do you hate him?’ Jodie screws the lid too tightly back on her flask and slams it on the ground, turning to Kat with pleading eyes. ‘What’s he done to you?’
Kat shakes her head. ‘Let’s just have the hot chocolate.’
I pour it into six cups, just half a cup each until the flask is empty of every last drop.
I hand them out and we sip at it. Amina helps Barbara, whose hands are too shaky to hold the cup.
It’s lukewarm and a bit watery but it tastes like all the goodness of the world rolled up into each tiny, sweet drop.
‘Put us a nip of that there brandy in here, will you?’ Barbara says to Jodie.
Jodie looks at Kat, who shakes her head.
Barbara narrows her eyes at Kat like a schoolgirl caught in a misdemeanour. ‘Spoilsport.’
‘The tide’s creeping in,’ Violet says, shifting backwards as if the frigid water is going to crawl over her bare feet and consume her at any moment. ‘Look. It’s closer to us than it was.’
It is closer, but not that much closer. There are a good few feet between us and the lapping waves, which gurgle and drag at the surf.
‘Tell you what,’ Kat says. ‘Let’s wait till it’s nearly up at where we are, and then we’ll know it’s time to go. Okay with everyone?’
Jodie nods with enthusiasm and Amina and I say yes, good plan. Violet and Barbara both sulk, for different reasons.
We sit in silence, finishing our drinks and gazing out to the misty sea.
I shiver as another cloud bank blots out the sun, smothering its paltry warmth.
I keep my gloved hands round my cup, drawing out the little heat left in it.
The water is increasingly choppy, the waves further out more turbulent, white froth dancing on their tips as the ocean bows and leaps to the sky.
‘My little mouse was born near the sea,’ Barbara says suddenly. I’d thought Barbara was extra lucid today, with little mention of the mouse or the rat. We should be getting back. She’s getting tired and confused.
But Kat moves closer to her. ‘Tell us.’
Barbara’s mouth is downturned in a thin, mottled-blue line.
She picks at the edges of the polystyrene on her empty cup and gazes up at the darkening sky.
‘I called her my little mouse because she was so tiny. She was born too soon, you see. She looked like a baby mouse, all shrivelled and tiny with little bright eyes that went dull too quickly. She had downy dark hair all over her body.’
We sit frozen.
‘We were going to call her Margaret, you see. Maggie, she’d have been. Our little Maggie Mouse. She was only tiny, smaller than my hand. There was lots of blood. But I knew she was a she, deep in my heart.’
I can’t find any words.
‘We were on the beach when it happened. Felt the pains, like I’d never felt before, they were sharp and wrong, I just knew they were wrong. I says to Bill, this isn’t right, this isn’t. I says, this one’s on her way, she’s coming too soon.’
Silence sags between us.
‘Never had no more after Maggie Mouse. They never came, see. And then Bill went, and I was alone.’
Kat takes her hand, and I crawl around to the other side of Barbara and wrap both of mine around her other hand. It feels like a handful of broken flower stems, encased in that crepe paper you get wrapped round delicate items from Etsy. My heart aches.
Jodie shifts until she is kneeling in front of her. ‘I’m so sorry, Barbara.’
The dog barks again, only this time it’s even further away, a ghost of a bark, a thin cry through the windswept silence.
Barbara stares out to the sea. ‘We went to the hospital, but it was too late. She’d come, see, my little Maggie Mouse, she’d not waited long enough.’
No one says anything.
‘We never even got to bury her. Wasn’t much of her, they said.
But I saw enough of her. I saw her little mouth and her eyes.
She was still my baby girl. I wanted a service, like, in the church and everything, but it was only a miscarriage, they said.
Doctor told me I shouldn’t think of her as a baby, I should just move on.
But I knew she was. I imagined her every day, how she’d grow, what she’d look like, what she’d wear, who she’d be now.
My baby died and I wanted to say goodbye proper and I never did. ’
Kat pats her hand so softly, gazing directly into her eyes with such love I can almost taste it.
‘And now I’ve got no one left, have I? Not even Bill. No family left in this world.’
Jodie leans in closer and strokes Barbara’s thin white hair, pulling the hat further down over her ears. ‘We are your family now. We are the Bay C Family.’
I want to squeeze her hand but don’t dare. I might crush her frail bones.
Kat says, ‘Would you like me to say a little prayer for Maggie Mouse?’
Barbara stares out at the rolling grey ocean for a while. Then, in the tiniest gasp, she says, ‘Yes.’
Kat whispers words into her ear and I watch tears track her sunken cheeks like the blue veins that lace her skin. The wind blows Kat’s words away and we sit in the silence of their breath.
‘My feet are cold,’ Barbara says. I look down at them. They are blue and white all at once, and the red of her nails is like blood on snow.
‘Get her socks and slippers,’ Kat says, and Jodie heaves herself up. She coughs, a little too pale herself, but she shrugs me off when I offer to get them.
‘They’re only just here,’ she says. She gives the stockings and slippers to Kat, and I help Kat clean and dry Barbara’s feet with the corner of the picnic rug, and slip them back onto Barbara’s feet.
‘They’re like ice,’ Kat says, shooting me a concerned look.
‘We should think about going.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ Barbara says.
Kane shouts down from the minibus, but his shout is snatched away by the gathering wind, which is churning up the sand.
‘What?’ Jodie shouts back. He shouts again, but we can’t hear him.
‘I’ll just go and see what he wants,’ she says.
‘Listen, get your stuff together, we should probably go. Anyone know what the time is?’
Kat digs out her phone from her little bag, and glances at me, wide-eyed. ‘It’s already after half three.’
Jodie scowls. ‘It’s ’cause he went and took his own stupid route here. Look, give us a sec and start sorting your shoes out.’
She digs her own dampened, sandy feet into her socks and Ugg boots and stomps back off up the beach towards the minibus and Kane, who stands there with arms crossed and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
He says something to Jodie and she glowers and says something back to him.
He starts shouting, waving his hands around, then he grabs hold of her arms. Even from here I can see he’s squeezing too hard. He is hurting her.
Kat pulls her Docs on, grimacing as they resist her, sticking on the dampness of her skin. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘I said, didn’t I,’ Violet says, ‘I said he’s a bully. Just look at him now!’
Kane has his arms clamped tightly around Jodie, squeezing her firmly against him. I can hear her coughing, but he does not ease off. He draws her in harder, whispering into her ear.
She shoves back at him and shouts something at him, then stops and pats his arm, trying to inch back closer to him. But he pushes her away, his massive hands pressed into her chest as he jabs at her. She stumbles.
‘We need to get back up there and help her,’ Kat says, struggling with one of her boots.
Amina is up off the rug, shoving her feet into her stilettos, floundering up the sand towards Jodie but making little progress.
Violet struggles to get herself up from her walker seat, moaning about her stiff old bones.
I pull on my socks and shoes and drag myself to my feet, then tuck my arm into Violet’s, helping her up.
The afternoon chill catches at my chest and I gasp. It must be below freezing out here.
‘Leave me alone!’ I hear Jodie yell in a high, strangled voice, as she shrugs Kane’s hands away from her and turns away, looking back at us, her face ravaged with something like pain.
‘Fine,’ he shouts.
Jodie lurches back towards us, her hair flowing loose and wild and whipping her face as the wind rips the Santa hat from her head.
‘Are you okay?’ Amina says, reaching her and laying her hand on her arm.
Jodie shrugs her arm off.
‘Sorry,’ Amina says. ‘I was just a bit worried for you.’
‘Oh, take no notice of him. He’s just messing around. He’s just being a bit of an idiot.’
‘He doesn’t deserve you,’ Kat says, picking up the hat and giving it back.
Jodie looks at her feet.
Kat helps me lift Barbara back into her wheelchair and we wrap her up again, tucking the blankets in around her slight body and her hat over her head, covering her ears from the bitterness of the mounting wind. I don’t mention the racking pain that roars through my body as I straighten up.
It’s then we hear an engine, cutting through the wind and shattering the quiet of the bay. Jodie whirls round quickly, her face an oh of horror. ‘He’s going. He’s going without us.’
We watch in disbelief as he reverses the minibus, knocking over the tattered Sea Bay sign and skidding into an untidy turn, then swerving up the entry track towards the main road and out of sight.
He’s gone, and left us all alone.