by Judith Kelly
Later, I awoke, queasily despondent from a burning, sheet-grinding dream. Wild with wine, I staggered to the bathroom, Rick’s face flickering inside my eyelids. I swung back into sleep and dreamed of sharks and guppies in the sea.
Summertime was the best time. Not knowing what to do with us during the long holiday, the nuns regularly took us to the beach, and let us splash and play in the waves. They sat on the beach, shapeless black-and-white forms.
The yellow cliffs had warning notices with pictures of falling rocks. I didn’t care. They held an odd fascination for me, and I had wanted to explore them from the first time I saw them. When I saw my chance I slipped away from the others, not looking back at the group of children and nuns on the beach. None of them paid any attention to me. The girls were too busy splashing and having fun, and the nuns always talked among themselves, not watching us.
I looked up, squinting into the sun, which was fierce, and saw how, at the top of the cliffs, seagulls soared far above with sunlight on their wings. I started to climb, clinging to the bleached grass, stepping from ledge to ledge. A gull watched me. I {lapped my hand at it, and it took off, sweeping down towards the beach.
I braced myself against the rocks and looked around. The sense of the sheer drop below suddenly pierced my body. I began to hear the distant beating of the sea. Stick-like figures of children scampered along the beach beside the dark lumps that were the nuns. The seagulls mewed and yelped. It was safe enough to stand there as long as I kept still. But I’d amazed myself, climbing as high as this. Climbing so far seemed to open a fresh door in my mind. I felt I was able to see past the jumble of daily tensions and realise that, if I could do this, I could do anything.
Cautiously I looked up at the top of the cliff, wondering if I could climb all the way. But craning up at the blue-white sky made me feel dizzy. I clutched the rocks on either side of me, but they crumbled in my hands, and I wavered, more frightened than if I had not tried to hang on at all. I quickly pressed my back against the cliff face, feeling sick and unsteady. I closed my eyes as the wind tore at my hair.
‘Hey you!’
A man was approaching. I stood still until he was near to me.The noise of the sea was so loud that it was difficult to hear what he was saying.
‘You mustn’t climb those cliffs. Can’t you see the notice?’
Almost in tears now, and determined not to understand him, I said, ‘Why not?’
‘You mustn’t climb up there,’ said the man, as if he had not heard me. ‘You’ll fall.’
‘I won’t,’ I said, but I knew I was defeated.
‘Someone fell from there only last week,’ said the man.
‘All right,’ I said shortly. I turned my shoulder to send him away and he moved off.
Frances had wandered away from the group, and was running towards the cliff, beckoning to me.
Relieved, I started to climb down, step by step, holding on to clumps of grass. When I reached the beach, Frances grabbed my arm.
The nuns sent me to fetch you. They said it’s dangerous to talk to strange men.’
I sat on the baking front steps of the children’s house waiting for my co-worker to arrive. Today it was an Israeli girl called Avatel. She was twenty years old and had recently completed a two-year army stint. We were planning to take our five charges swimming in the kibbutz pool.
I breathed in the citrus-tinged air. Everything looked bright and fresh today. I liked my new job taking care of the kibbutz children. I sat enjoying the sunshine, letting happiness touch me.
Because I had realised something after my trip to Jerusalem no, before the trip, as if I knew it all along - there are no secret passages to strength, no magic words. I was strong, I was able, because I was. The freak in the sideshow no longer fitted.
I smiled ruefully at myself. So, what was the catch? Some danger of which I was not yet aware? What would I have to pay for this, for thinking well of myself? Whatever the price, it was worth it. Even for ten minutes, it was worth it.
I glanced at my watch. Avatel had forgotten. I hoped for a moment that she had, then prayed that she hadn’t. I would have to take the children swimming on my own. Abruptly I jumped up, walked up and down.
A thought nagged at me, threatening to surface. I shrugged it off.
When Avatel finally arrived, grinning apologies, we changed the children into their bathing costumes and set off for the pool. When we got there, Avatel’s boyfriend Ben arrived, which gave me the opportunity to return to the children’s house to get some soft drinks from the fridge. I was wearing shorts, and as I set off, the backs of my legs were slick with sweat.
It was a perfect day. My head sang with an intricate, melodic line - Beethoven? Mozart? I couldn’t remember, but I loved those fresh unfamiliar instruments - the recorder, the harpsichord - those simple statements of truth. And tonight I would be going to the barbecue disco with Rick. Thinking about it made my skin ripple pleasantly. A feeling you get going up in a fast lift. I shouldn’t plan ahead like this, I thought, I shouldn’t expect good things to last long. The lift could hurtle down again and you could thump to the ground. I wandered to the house by a roundabout route, keeping to the shade of the trees. Dazed with the heat, with the sun on the blistered roofs, the paths, the burned grass, I walked slowly.
Squinting, I could just make out a corona in the whitest part of the sky. It reminded me of something, but I tried to deflect the memory. Suddenly fear surged through me. I stopped walking and stood glued to the spot. The children in the pool! Avatel and Ben weren’t watching them properly; they were too wrapped up in each other! Images scintillated, shone, disappeared. I had no idea where my panicked certainty came from, but the world seemed gently to crack about me, its appearance unchanged, yet on the brink of falling to pieces. Disaster is not quickly understood. I spun around and ran to the wire-mesh fence surrounding the pool. I saw four of the children standing waist deep in the water. There was a slight lull in their chatter as they looked warily at something at the end of the pool which I could not see. I thought from the way they were huddled together and the looks on their faces that they must have been watching Avatel and her boyfriend kissing. Slight relief slumped through me - and then I realised that I couldn’t see the fifth child, a girl called Danah. I gripped the wire fence.
‘Avatel!’ I had to call twice before she knew where my voice was coming from. ‘Avatel! Where’s Danah?’
She jumped up from beneath the tree where she and Ben had been sitting. She looked around the pool and then slowly spread her arms wide and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Don’t know!’
Her unconcerned gesture and lack of urgency were probably my invention. The crippling fear I felt when I noticed a child was missing from the group - even while I was telling myself she must be in the shallower water - must have made Avatel’s movements seem unbearably slow and inappropriate to me; the tone in which she said ‘don’t know’ was heard by me as monstrously casual.
Then she stiffened, pointing to the deep end of the pool. ‘What’s that?’
There, just within my view, a small pink bundle, floating and agitating below the surface of the water. Why did she ask what that was? Why didn’t she just dive into the water and swim to it? I couldn’t swim. I ran along the edge of the pool, my sandals slapping against the concrete.
Avatel’s boyfriend got there ahead of me. The water surged as he jumped in and pulled Danah out. He just had to reach and grab her because she was floating somehow, with her head underwater, moving towards the edge of the pool. He hauled the dripping child from the water.
The only person aloof from the situation was Avatel, who still hadn’t moved from the shallow end, where she stood transfixed, clutching a Coca-Cola. Danah had not swallowed any water. She wasn’t even frightened. Her hair was plastered to her head and her eyes were wide open, golden with amazement. She rubbed the water out of her eyes and said, ‘I swimmed to the deep end.’
‘She could have drowned!’ I clutched Ben�
��s arm. ‘Couldn’t she? She could have drowned!’
Avatel walked slowly around the pool, her eyes wide and frightened. ‘I don’t know how it could have happened. One moment she was in the shallow end, and the next she wasn’t.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said to Avatel, who was nearly crying. ‘It’s OK, she’s OK.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Well done, you swam,’ I said to Danah.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I never drownded.’
The real shock didn’t hit me until later that evening. Then, as I was eating dinner in the canteen, my body went numb. My head filled with strange sounds. A roaring noise. Shouts.
‘Judith? What’s the matter?’
Cydney was standing over me, ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m all right.’ I could hardly hear myself; the sounds inside my head were so loud. Someone began to talk with Cydney broken bits of conversation that I could not follow. I made my excuses and headed for my room, holding myself stiffly upright. I saw myself putting my feet one in front of the other. My body felt nothing. Just a scare, that’s all. Delayed reaction.
Fully awake, I lay on my bed with the curtains drawn, a nothingness washing over me. Whatever was happening to me was my own fault. I had done something wrong. Something so huge I couldn’t even see it. I was inadequate and stupid, without worth. Through my neglect, Danah had almost drowned. I was a fool. I might as well be dead. My eyelids felt dry and scratchy as I fell asleep.
I was dreaming.
For miles and miles the sand stretched in front of me in the moonlight, a cool smooth beach. I fruitlessly tried to identify the place. It was nowhere that I’d ever been in real life, but whenever I dreamt of this beach I sensed it was familiar.
A night breeze bent the spiky beach grass flat. I felt so tired. I lay down, put my head against the sand and felt its grainy coolness under my cheek.
When I raised my head I saw Frances sitting on a rock in her red swimming-costume. She looked happy to see me. I held out my hand to her.
’You need to come with me, Frances.’
A smile broke out over her, like the sun had pierced the clouds. ‘Can’t Judith. Can’t swim.’
Now she was in the water, her chin craning up as she struggled to keep it raised over the waves.
‘It’s bad out there! You have to come back!’ I stood on the slippery rocks, reaching for her. Suddenly other children were behind me, pulling me in a long hand-to-hand chain. Darkness.
Only darkness. The full moon failed to cast a reflection on the diesel-black water, yet somehow I could see every detail.
I could do nothing to bring her back, and watched helplessly as she struggled. Shouts, children tugging at me as I felt the sea lap against my ankles. Suddenly the tide engulfed me, sweeping me away. I convulsed with panic.
‘Not’ I screamed, ‘I can’t swim!’ I tried to keep afloat. Something or someone was struggling to pull me to the surface. I couldn’t breathe and twisted violently on to my back. Then water filled my eyes and my screams came back to me as echoes from the bottom of the sea.
I tried to scream and woke myself with the utterance of a tiny sound. I felt first relief, then the security of my room, then remembrance. I sat up in bed, tousled with the nightmare, hugging myself. I could hear the echoes inside my head as the smell of the sea haunted me again. I looked at Cydney’s side of the room. She hadn’t stirred.
The blood tingled in my veins, hot and cold. I felt as if I could shatter into a million pieces. No good to think about it. Don’t think about it, don’t.
It was nearly morning. It would soon be five o’clock. People on the kibbutz would be waking up. Still too early to call on Miriam, though. I scrambled out of bed, quietly tugging on my clothes. Outside I walked swiftly in the cool morning air, without direction. To calm myself. To get away from dreams, because there were worse ones and I didn’t want to remember them, didn’t want to think at all. There were lights on in some of the houses, but no one in sight.
I leaned against a tree, pressing my forehead against the gnarled and fissured bark. I must get less intense, but how to do it? To concentrate on it was to accomplish the opposite. A phrase attached itself to my mind: Nuns Pray at Sea Rescue.
A swift, sinking feeling clutched the pit of my stomach as I remembered the newspaper articles. The newspapers had pounced on the nuns’ praying, pointing out that they had done nothing to help us. But none of the papers had explained why, or followed up the story.
Oh God, why then? What purpose had been served?
I lunged off the tree and started walking again. The sun was coming up, the air around me already hot, but I was shivering, my skin clammy. I made my way down to the citrus groves where the soil was loose and soft among the trees, the leaves glossy, the ground itself fragrant. To sprout such leaves and be hung with oranges would be a blessing. I wished a fibrous woodiness would enter my limbs: I wanted to take root and stay here for ever in this most temperate of places.
The sea was warm as a puddle that day. Frances and I shaded our eyes against the sun, ankle-deep in the water. I could hear laughter and shouts on the breeze. There was Ruth, her sleek, brown head like a seal’s, far out in the water.
‘She’s swimming!’ shouted Frances.
‘No she’s not, she’s just floating!’ I shouted back.
‘Come on in, it’s smooth as a moth’s nose!’ yelled Ruth, as if she owned the sea.
Frances laughed and waded towards her, stumbling a little on the shifting sand, her dark hair ruffled by the wind. The water was warm, soft, but as I watched, thoughts not quite grasped made my stomach tighten with unease.
‘Hey Frances, wait for me.’
I squinted my eyes and scanned the beach, looking for a strange seashell, seaweed, anything I could seize to make sense of this vague shudder of anxiety.
Nothing.
Noisy seagulls dipped and flapped inland on the high wind, and an angry light was forming out at sea beyond the black rocks where Ruth was floating.
The weather’s changing,’ Ruth yelled, looking up towards the veiled sun she hurled a curse at the sky. ‘Damn! It’s as uncertain as Janet’s bladder.’
Rain clouds began to roll in the sky. Frances was dancing in the waves, leaping over them as they crashed into the beach. Judith! Come on!’
As I followed Frances into what now seemed an enormous sea, I hesitated a moment, my feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking sand. Turn back. I ignored the warning in my head and pulled my feet from the suck as I walked in further. By the time I reached Frances the sea was up to my thighs. We squatted down in the water letting the waves wash back and forth over our shoulders.
‘Shall I teach you both to swim?’ Ruth called over.
‘No thanks,’ I shouted across the water.
‘You’re not scared, are you?’
Yes, I was afraid but did not say so; I was spellbound by the solitude between the sky and the sea, one as vast as the other. When I glanced back, the beach seemed like an invisible line, and the two nuns in charge of us were like distant dots. With the beginnings of panic, I pictured the immense dark depths below, where I could sink like a stone.
‘I can do the crawl stroke, watch.’ Frances splashed up and down in front of me, screwing up her eyes and kicking her legs.
That’s cheating! You’ve got one foot on the ground!’
‘You’re not supposed to have noticed that. It’s easy, you try it. Just hold your breath and close your eyes. Ready, steady, go and away!’
I closed my eyes but kept one foot firmly on the ground thrashing violently with my arms. Gasping then yelping, ‘Oh, cripes, I’m almost swimming’ I opened my eyes, blinked away the spray and saw the blue-green, white-flecked crests of the advancing waves. It seemed we had moved further into the sea. The water swirled around my chest, thick and dark. You could hear the sea thumping the rocks, like a boxer’s fist against a punchball in training for someone’s jaw. Frances yelped with laughter. We held our arms above our hea
ds and jumped up as each wave approached. Now the water seemed warmer than the air, yet the sea seemed to have become fiercer in the short time since Frances and I had entered it. The noise of the waves was overwhelming. The sun had clouded; the high backs of the incoming rollers were now almost black. I turned around towards the shore again and over the flecked jumping wave-crests I could see a distant figure running across the sweep of sand towards us.
Finally it was seven o’clock, late enough to call on Miriam. I stood motionless on her veranda. I could hear her moving around inside. A cracking headache exploded behind my eyes. My throat ached. I pushed open her door. Miriam had her back to me, reading something. She looked over her shoulder, her face creasing in concern as she took in my expression. I stood in the doorway, silent and staring.
‘What’s the problem, Judith?’
Her gentle use of my name freed me, shattered me. The relief of being here, of seeing her, washed over me.
‘Can I come in?’ I said, my voice a whisper.
Before she could reply, I stumbled forward, slumping into a kitchen chair, and without warning began to cry. I hunched forward as sobs wrenched out of the deepest part of me. The tears were fossilised, older than time. I held my hands over my face, crying like a small child.
‘Something happened yesterday ‘
‘All right,’ Miriam said. She touched my arm. ‘You can tell me.’
But voices from the past still controlled me. I shook my head fiercely, wretchedly, and covered my face.
Irresponsible, the Mother Superior had said. And inexcusable.
As Ruth, Frances and I turned and headed towards land, we heard Janet’s distant voice calling to us. Then I recognised her green-spotted cozzie. For a girl with legs as thin as willow sticks she had reached us at a remarkable speed. She plunged towards us, beckoning, shouting something I couldn’t hear above the roar of the sea.
‘Janet, you’d best go back. It’s getting too rough out here,’ I yelled above the crash of the waves.