The Last Wave

by Gillian Best

  My father was not in the lounge and the sun was still out so I checked in the garden where I found him, leaning with his back against the tree. Its shadows had crept onto his legs and looked as if they were closing in on him. I made sure to shut the door loudly so he would not think I was sneaking up on him.

  I sat next to him and stared at my legs stretched out next to his. I glanced up at his face and looked away quickly – he had been crying again, which was upsetting enough, but what was worse was that my mother was not here with him, comforting him. Why was she inside stirring a pot none of us wanted to eat from?

  I picked nervously at the grass as I hoped he would ask me how it had gone so I wouldn’t have to be the one to break the silence.

  After what felt like ages but was probably only a few minutes I said, ‘It was cold.’

  I turned slightly to see what his reaction would be, but his face didn’t change.

  ‘I wasn’t scared,’ I added, hoping that might rouse him.

  He took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his eyes.

  ‘Jim said he would be there again tomorrow and I could go along if I liked.’

  Finally I got a reaction. He put his hand on my knee and squeezed it.

  ‘Mum says I shouldn’t go, that it’s not right. To go with Jim.’

  My father took my chin gently in his hand and turned my face toward his own.

  ‘Swimming will keep you safe,’ he said.

  I nodded gravely and waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He turned back to whatever it was that he had been looking at with his hand resting firmly on my knee and we sat like that until my mother dragged us in for dinner.

  We ate promptly at five o’clock so my mother could listen to her favourite radio programmes or go round to the neighbour’s house and play cards. Dinner was where we received our instructions for the following day.

  She dished the mush onto our plates and said grace. She was the first to pick up her fork and I actually think she was rather fond of her own cooking.

  ‘Richard,’ she said. ‘The tap in the kitchen is dripping again.’

  ‘I’ll have a look,’ my father said.

  ‘Martha, Sally has agreed to run you up a dress so we’ll need to be at hers for eleven tomorrow morning.’

  Which was about the same time as I had planned to go swimming with Jim.

  ‘You know her daughter Ellie, don’t you?’

  I did, and I disliked her intensely. The idea of sitting in her house, which was dark and filled with cigarette smoke, was just about the worst thing I could think of, but it was useless to protest.

  I glanced at my father, hoping to catch his eye, but he was staring at the grey mound he had to get through before dinner could come to a close.

  My mother finished her food quickly as though it were a race, which is perhaps why none of the dishes she made required much in the way of chewing. When she set her fork down she made it known that she was waiting for the rest of us to hurry up: she drummed her nails on the table, talked about how much she was looking forward to her programme that came on in precisely fifteen minutes, or how there would be little point in eating the meal she had slaved over if we let it get cold.

  The moment the last fork was set on a plate, she swept the plates into the sink, tuning in to the Light Programme of music on the radio as she washed them. It was when she had her hands in the soapy water, with the music washing over her, that she hummed a little bit and moved her feet along to the rhythm. It was not something we commented on, but my father and I shared a look. And I knew that we were happy for her to have a private place she could go.

  Before I went to sleep that night I looked out my window and the last bits of sunlight were clawing at the horizon – they weren’t ready to sleep yet either. They hit the water though, in a way that made it shimmer like the mackerel scales my father and his friends caught.

  As I lay in my bed that night the water came back to me, but the sea I had fallen into did not rush around me, did not swarm or threaten to overwhelm me, instead it was calm and inviting, coaxing me toward it.

  The next morning, I listened carefully for my mother’s heels against the wood floors. As I tracked her progress I put my costume and towel in my bag, and the moment I heard the front door shut I knew she had popped out to the shops, the opposite direction from the water. So I put my shoes on and ran to the sea.

  The Spring Tide

  The glaring kitchen light illuminated everything that I had tried to keep hidden: the unwashed dishes in the sink, the pile of laundry that needed ironing, the socks and pants that dangled over the radiators, and the seashells on the windowsill collecting dust that I had neither time nor energy to clean.

  I put a load of laundry in the machine, put a saucepan on to boil the eggs and popped two slices of bread in the toaster, ready for when the children came downstairs. Then I put the clean dishes away and washed the ones left in the sink. The water gushed from the tap and I stared straight ahead, mechanically scrubbing and rinsing.

  There was a rhythm to it and I noticed that I was counting: one, two, three, rinse. One, two, three, over and over again, and I heard Jim’s voice all those years ago in the sea, as he taught me to breathe. One, two, three, breathe. The soapy water was a frothing sea: peaks of Fairy liquid were white horses as the cutlery swam for shore.

  In the dark half-light with freezing fog hanging thick outside the window, I put the kettle on. Those few morning minutes before my family awoke were the only ones I had to myself, and I thought of them as morning minutes because the morning started exactly as it had done for the previous ten years: I had eased myself out of bed at half past six, put on my worn dressing gown and begun making breakfast.

  Though I washed enough dishes to be a scullery maid I had never before made the connection to the sea. It had been so long since I had last crawled through the breakers that I didn’t know if I would remember how. It must have been ingrained in my muscles, the memory held in my limbs, but that wasn’t the only part of it. To swim in the sea required the mental focus that I could no longer summon.

  The house was a shambolic, chaotic mess, which would take me the better part of the morning if not longer to sort out in time to host John’s manager that evening for dinner. The idea of it was daunting and demoralising. And I would’ve sat down and felt sorry for myself for a few minutes, but I did not hear the sounds of my children getting dressed and ready for school, so pity would have to wait.

  ‘Harriet,’ I said. ‘Time to get up, love.’ I waited for a response and when none was forthcoming I switched on the lights and heard her groan. ‘Dressed, hair brushed and downstairs for breakfast in ten minutes.’

  I knocked on Iain’s door while I opened it, and there he was, playing with his Scalextric set. ‘Put that away now and get dressed, please. Breakfast in ten minutes.’

  He ignored my request. ‘Iain, if you don’t put that away now, I’m going to confiscate it.’

  ‘Mum,’ he whined.

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I don’t want breakfast.’

  ‘Yes you do. You’ll be hungry.’

  ‘I want to play with this.’

  ‘Iain, I don’t want to have to ask you again.’

  He scowled at me and stomped over to his wardrobe. ‘I hate you, why do you have to be so mean?’

  I shut the door oblivious to his words because I had no time to be hurt by them, and knew that he would have changed his mind by the time he got to the table. In our bedroom I moved quietly, but not too quietly, so that John would be woken gently. Opening the curtains provided enough light for me to grab the same clothes I had worn the day before and dress. Before I went back downstairs I gave him a nudge. His reply was a snort as he rolled over.

  In a few minutes, the eggs were boiling and I was slicing bread into soldiers and shouting for the children to hurry up.

  ‘I can’t find my tie,’ Iain said as he sat down at the table.

  I put
his plate in front of him. ‘Is it on your dresser? Don’t you have another in the wardrobe?’

  ‘I hate eggs,’ he replied.

  ‘They hate you too, darling.’

  ‘I want toast and Marmite.’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Harriet said as she scraped her chair across the tiles.

  ‘Harry, please. The floor. Lift the chair. How many times have we talked about this?’

  ‘Can I go to Canterbury at the weekend with Katie? Her mum invited me. They’re going shopping.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it later.’ I put her breakfast on the table.

  She pushed the plate away. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Would you both please just eat your breakfasts?’

  ‘Do as your mother says,’ John said. He took his spot at the head of the table and opened the paper. ‘Charlie and I will be home at six. I’ve asked around and he enjoys a drop of Scotch after dinner.’ Without looking up from the paper he reached his hand out, searching for the cup of tea I had forgotten to make.

  I put the kettle on and knocked over my unfinished and now cold tea, the cold brown liquid covered the counter and dripped onto the floor. No one made an offer to help clean it up.

  John peered over his newspaper. ‘This is a very important dinner,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I replied, as I mopped up the spilt tea.

  ‘He’ll be expecting a first rate meal,’ he said on his way out the door. I watched him walk through the garden and then he turned around. He popped his head through the doorway and said, ‘If you get a chance, see if you can’t do something about the garden?’

  It was an ordinary day: routine after routine, the way the days and months and years passed, the way my twenties had escaped me in a blur, and the ways in which we are lulled into forgetting the details of the promises we make.

  While Iain and Harriet were at school, I found time in between rounds of laundry and cleaning to take a look at the garden. It wasn’t a good day for it with the mist threatening to turn into sleet or worse. It could have gone either way which, I suppose, could have also been said about everything that followed.

  I put my Wellies on and wrapped up against the weather: my old fisherman’s jumper missing the top button, a wool scarf of indeterminate origin, and a plastic outer layer in a particularly vulgar shade of green. When I stepped outside the bleak weather beat the stupefaction of housework out of me. There was something inspiring about the scene: the decaying mess of leaves that covered the frosty mud and the smell of the earth. I felt as though I could change things here if I made an effort. With two young children and a husband to take care of there were days when I existed only within the confines of our four walls and to be outside renewed my vigour. The moisture, visible in the air, provoked something deep within me that had been in hibernation.

  My luck with gardening was not good, but at least I was out there which would please John, especially if any of our neighbours passed by. Results were superseded by a show of effort in our house.

  I started with the myrtle bush, cutting back the branches at what was probably the wrong time of year, but it was an obvious place to start and my accomplishments would be immediately visible. It was too early in the spring for any buds let alone blossoms, but the leaves were pretty and I took a small clipping inside with me.

  It’s hard to say exactly what jostled me then, it could have been the warmth of the house which was suffocating in contrast to the chill outside and it could have been the difference between the smell of hundreds of dinners that hung in the air and the freshness of sea and salt.

  When I stepped outside I felt that I was escaping something, the feeling of everything being close, closer, closing in. My mind wandered back to the comfort of stroke counting.

  The myrtle was a souvenir of days long passed when I was first married and had yet to lose myself inside this house. I had first planted it to remind us both of a moment of love but more and more it reminded me of what I had given up.

  In the kitchen, I filled a glass with water and put the clipping in it and saw there was one delicate pink blossom, which clung to the branch. I went to the sink to fill the glass and the breakfast dishes were stacked on the side. There was a pile of ironing and the washing machine needed emptying. John’s manager was coming to dinner that evening, which meant the whole house needed to be scrubbed, polished and shined to within an inch of its life and the beef joint needed to be put in the oven sooner rather than later, the potatoes peeled, and the children fed, washed and sent upstairs.

  I set the myrtle on the table and turned it around so the blossom faced me. Memories are sparked in different ways: a smell, a sound, a phrase. Maybe it was the shape of the clouds, which looked that day like billowing waves, or it could have been the wind sweeping inland carrying with it salt and kelp. I returned to the door, flung it open and inhaled deeply. It was faint but I remembered it, I would have known it anywhere, that distinct smell of the sea.

  We lived only a few miles from the shore, and we took the children down during summer holidays so they could splash and paddle, but that was not the sea that had got into my bones. That was a picture postcard. What I knew was big and in constant motion, changing as and when its moods dictated. It was cold and wet and strong, a part of the world in a way that I was not, tucked up inside my one up one down house, living the life of a dutiful wife and good mother.

  That winter had been the coldest in decades and white snow flew off the chalk cliffs, covering the pebbles and the castle, muffling the sounds around us. It had been a pretty novelty at first but the bitter chill did not pass for weeks. That day the temperature had risen slightly. The need to embrace the promise of spring tugged at me.

  When I was younger, when I was young. The sea, the sea, it called to me. I had learned to swim side by side with the Channel swimmers. Summer holidays saw the rest of my friends primping on the pebble beach, modelling the latest styles in swimming costumes, but I couldn’t sit there sunning myself when the water was so tantalisingly close.

  My mother chided me, saying I ought to spend less time in the water and reminding me that muscular shoulders and arms – not to mention a robustness of spirit – on a young woman were unattractive at best, repellent at worst. It was a constant battle, my strength against dress seams.

  The moisture in the air invigorated me and I recalled something I had heard at the church service we attended for no other reason than to be seen to be decent members of the community. We were not religious, but our attendance was.

  For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant.

  I did not expect to sprout boughs but I found myself walking with increasing speed toward the sea. When I got to the water’s edge near Shakespeare’s Bay it was all froth, foaming up onto the beach with each set of waves. The surf inched higher and higher up the beach covering my boots and I knew the tide was coming in to greet me, as though I were a long-lost friend.

  In the months before we were married I swam nearly every day and so did everyone else, or at least it seemed to me at the time. People came from all over the world, from America, Europe and even Egypt to have a go at the Channel but thankfully for the most part they trained in the open-air pool in Folkstone and not the sea.

  The season officially started in July and went on through to the end of September and there was such a frenzy about it that I remember my father complaining that all the most reliable fisherman didn’t fish anymore, instead they were piloting boats that stood watch over swimmers.

  It was impossible to avoid: the shore was cluttered with gawkers and press and well-wishers. But I wasn’t involved in it, I was just a girl who swam. To have thought seriously about the undertaking was ludicrous. The way I overheard other people talking about it – swimmers incl
uded – confirmed this. Their talk was of conquering the Channel, beating the sea, of doing something extraordinary. I contented myself with entertaining the idea in the privacy of my own imagination, and bristled when I heard talk of asserting dominance. That was not what the water was for.

  I emerged one morning and headed right to my towel, which I kept under a myrtle bush a ways back from the shoreline. As I was drying off I noticed a man in a crumpled jacket staring at me so I covered myself and turned away, hoping he would leave quickly so I could get changed and make it back home in time to go to a fitting for my wedding dress which had to be let out in the back again.

  ‘If you would just stop this incessant swimming, Martha,’ my mother said. ‘You ought to be focussing on planning for your future as Mrs Roberts. Being a good wife isn’t as easy as it looks.’

  I glanced over my shoulder and the man was still there and had there been bushes I would have accused him of lurking in them, but as the only bush was the one I was standing in front of, that much was impossible. He looked utterly out of place standing there, pretending he didn’t want something, and I lost patience.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I said.

  He looked around as though he wasn’t certain if I was addressing him or someone else.

  ‘Yes, you. Is there something I can do for you?’

  He edged closer and took off his hat. ‘Are you a swimmer?’

  I was standing in my swimming costume having just returned from a swim in the sea and so I didn’t answer his question, rather I looked myself up and down.

  ‘Oh, of course. Excuse me, of course you are.’

  ‘So what if I am?’

  ‘I’m with the Post, Miss, and I just wondered if you’re one of the women who will be swimming the Channel this year.’