Barney Walsh
Abigail died when she was a little girl, just six years old – died and came back, clever trick if you can do it. Like something out of the Bible, not exactly. She drowned. Her lungs filled with water and she sank under the waves, into the depths, as if for ever. Now, loads of years later, she can still feel it happening (she tells Bex) – as if it were yesterday, as if it were now. She can see it: a young father and his little daughter walking by the sea one dull summer’s afternoon. The sandy beach stretching endlessly empty before and behind them, low weedy cliffs walling off the world. A few gulls wheel overhead, darker smudges on the sky’s grey. The man’s dead skinny, wears a baseball cap; his face is wisped with a patchy attempt at beard. The girl’s bright-yellow coat is all zipped up, the hood’s drawstring yanked tight around her face. A harsh northern wind slices at her pink cheeks. They ignore each other, this man and this girl, as if they are strangers, together only by chance. Alone in their own heads. Tiny seashells crunch under his unlaced boots, under her little white trainers. The waters twist darkly into the distance.
The man lights a cigarette, but it’s soon finished. He flicks it towards the sea; the wind snaps it inland. The girl, Abbie, skips along the water’s edge, dancing in and out of the waves’ grasp. Tiny lights blink in her heels at every step, red for port and green for starboard. The sea scares her, a bit, the choppy grey masses of it heaving over one another. She’s being brave, by getting so close – but God, just the sheer weight of all that water, can you imagine? (‘I’ve seen the sea before,’ sniffs Bex.)
Abbie kicks at the pebbles scattered about the beach, looking for one she likes. Of all the many, many stones stuck in the sand here, washed by the sea, one of them will have magic powers. She’s making it up but she knows. If she can only be the girl who finds it. Like in a story. It’s here somewhere – telling fibs, pretending to be just normal stone, smooth-worn rock – but Abbie’s not fooled. Somewhere there’ll be one you can rub to make a genie appear; or one you can squeeze in your hand while making a wish to pop you into some next-door universe, more dangerous than this one but less scary and loads more fun. Or there’ll at least be one you can put in your mouth to turn yourself invisible, something like that. Something to make the bullies go away, maybe. She just has to find it. There’s lots of different colours and patterns, but nothing that really looks magical. The pebbles are brighter when they’re wet; they go faded and disappointing as they dry. They click together under your feet. Abbie keeps looking, ignored by the man, till at last she spies one that’s interesting, and picks it up: a translucent jade disc, an almost perfect circle. It’s a lens, an eye, of clouded green crystal. Uncut emerald. A crystal ball, a scrying stone. She holds it up to her own eye, but can’t see much through it yet: a few dim misty shapes, maybe, a vague swirling. Blurry images of the future, or the past. But she’ll have time to practise later, to see better. She zips it for now into her coat pocket.
And just then from nowhere a huge dream of a wave rolls in, catching Abbie unawares, reaching far across the sand. Grey as ash, it lifts her from her feet. She gives a cry and topples into the surf; her tiny fingers claw at the sand, at the shingle, but as it withdraws the wave pulls her with it, its strength astonishing, stealing her little body away – and she’s gone. Only empty beach remains, as if she never existed; even her footprints washed to nothing. The man, the girl’s father, safely above the tideline, takes one hesitant pace towards the sea, and stops. He stands there blinking, clenching and unclenching his fists. He doesn’t know what to do. No one else is in sight. After that one freak wave, the water has gone back to its normal, choppy sanity. He twists around to scan the grassy line of little cliffs behind him: there’s nobody. No one’s seen a thing. He looks again at the sea: the slate waves swell and fall, break at the edges, slide up the sand, cloudy liquid glass, and out again – but there’s no sign of his kid. As if he’d only ever imagined that he had a daughter. He has no idea what to do. He thinks of the pub, of the way the evening’s or afternoon’s first pint begins to drown all a day’s bad thoughts. Maybe he’d dive in, if he could see anything to swim for, any hint of Abbie’s shiny yellow coat splashing amid the waves – but she’s gone. And maybe he wouldn’t have bothered, anyway. (‘You know he wouldn’t,’ says Bex. ‘He didn’t, the selfish cowardly bastard.’ ‘Don’t,’ says Abigail.)
She’s gone. Her father tries to light another cigarette, but his hands shake; he tries again, and manages it. He empties his head (‘Can’t have been much to be rid of,’ says Bex), turns and walks back the way they came. Along the crumbling sea, over the whispering sand. The wind beating at his ears, gusts of it shoving him onwards, away from Abbie, little pushes to stop him changing his mind. A path of splintering wooden planks breaks off from the beach, cuts steeply up through the rocks and back towards the caravan site. At the top he pauses, turns back to look one final time at the sea – feels like he’ll never see it, or something, ever again. Is it just the sea or is it ocean? He can’t think any more. His thoughts hollowed out. His little girl lost somewhere under those waves? – it’s just not a thing he can believe in. She must’ve run off back to the caravan, to the playground or wherever. Can’t just be gone. He’d been her dad but he’d never actually done much for her. Never even, like, tied her shoelaces. Left all that to her mother. ’Cause the foot’s backwards when it’s someone else’s, must make it tricky, what if he got it wrong and she laughed at him? Couldn’t stand that. (‘Seriously?’ says Bex.)
But he’s back at the caravan site now, hundreds of identical boxes arranged over a few sloping fields. Each like a child’s tiny white coffin (‘Yeah, like he’d have thought of that,’ says Bex), till he gets in among them and they’re just plastic rooms on bricks again. He counts the rows to find his: up two steps and the door squeaks as it opens.
The girl’s mother is sitting sideways on the couch in the caravan’s end window, hugging her legs to herself and staring out at the little patch of sea that’s visible from here. Last night at the caravan site’s bar has given her a bit of a fragile head. She lifts her cheek from her bare knees as the man flicks the door locked. He tosses his baseball cap into the corner.
‘I saw a seal, I think,’ the woman says. ‘Even from way up here. A little sleek dark head, I think it was a seal. Or maybe it was just a buoy. A buoy, or a boy. Or a sea lion, what’s the difference? Oh my head. Where’s our Abbie?’
‘What?’ says the man.
‘Where’s Abbie?’
‘Oh, right. Out playing, we’ve got ages.’
‘Ages for what?’
‘What do you reckon?’
He comes over and kisses her. The back of her head bumps against the glass behind her, not helping her hangover. He puts his hands on her breasts and kisses her. It’s kind of unexpected. When’s the last time he touched her properly, like this, like he actually means it? Ages since. The only spark of life he’s shown in God knows how long; it can’t last but what’s even brought it on? Whatever, her vodka-stained brain’s in no fit state.
‘Hey, not right now, no,’ she says, pulling back her head from his. ‘Get off me.’
‘Just shut up, okay?’ he says.
The couch is too narrow, he drags her to the floor, uses his knee to part her legs. Cheap scratchy carpet. Anyone passing could just look in, couldn’t he at least shut the curtains? He yanks her top up, squeezes her breast, it hurts, the other hand’s pushing itself down the front of her denim shorts. She almost tells him okay fine whatever just get it over with, as the simplest way to make this not be happening, but then instead she goes no – for once properly no – says, ‘I’m telling you don’t’, and when he takes no notice she shoves hard at his chest, trying to push him off, scratches at his face with her nails. It doesn’t do much, she’s not really got any nails to speak of, chews them too much, but she does sort of catch with a fingertip at the soft skin under his eye – it makes him go ‘Ow!’ He backs off. Muttering to himself, he slides back across the carpet and up onto the couch again. He gets a squashed cigarette from his pocket, lights it, and sits there, forearms on knees, looking down at her. His mouth opens to speak; he changes his mind.
‘You got something to say?’ she asks him.
He stares at the carpet instead.
‘Or are you just going to sulk?’
She stays lying on the floor. She’d ask him for a cigarette, but it’d mean talking to him again, plus she’s meant to be quitting. Smoking, not talking. Her shorts unbuttoned, her top hiked up – God, what if Abbie were to walk in right now, what would she think? But he’d locked the door, hadn’t he? From down here she can see sky instead of sea: the grey’s a bit lighter, that’s all. The clouds have waves too. Drizzle set in for ever, it seems; on and off for the rest of the week, at least. Rain ruining poor little Abbie’s holiday. No, Abbie doesn’t let stuff like that put her off – she’ll be out there anyway, running about playing, bossing the other kids, that’s if she’s not off wandering in her own imagination. Not bothered by a bit of water.
The woman straightens her top and fastens her shorts. She dressed this morning as if it were sunny, not miserable; as if the weather might change just to suit her. But stuff like that never happens. She stands, glares at the man; his head still hangs forwards but he’s watching her now from under one cocked eyebrow.
‘What?’ she says, a hand on the caravan door.
One last chance for him to say something, but he’s still not got a word.
‘Fine,’ she says, opens the door and steps out into the wintry wet summer. She tries to slam the door but it doesn’t catch, bounces and slowly swings out again. She has to go back and shut it properly, listening for him laughing at her but hearing nothing.
Arms folded, she walks off down the hill, needing to get away. Barefoot through soggy grass. The wind cold on her skin, a few fine pinpricks of rain touching her bare limbs. This holiday was a bad idea, but she’s known that all along. There’s nowhere else to go: she follows the path down to the bay, a dent in the rocky coastline, where a few sad families have gathered, doing their best in awful weather. If this summer had any sun, if it weren’t for the water lacing the air, it’d probably actually be nice here. Maybe. She could go in the little cafe, one of the camp’s plasticky log-cabin-type buildings, have a cup of tea. Get out of this drizzle that’s threatening to get worse. If she sits there long enough Abbie will materialise, wanting ice cream or something. They can share a dish. But as she gets closer she sees the place is full – miserable people escaping miserable weather – and she can’t stand to be in a crowd right now, not if she looks half as bad as she feels. Plus she might have disgraced herself a bit the night before. Women would frown, men would smirk, and she can’t be dealing with it right now.
She veers off instead in the other direction, heading uphill to the top of the lumpy cliffs that line the coast. There’s a bench up there, usually it’s empty, facing the sea, where she’s come to sit a couple of times before, just to gaze out at the waves, not thinking anything at all, letting her mind be empty, her hangover drain away. If you can call them cliffs, which you can’t really. Low, sandy hills, heaps of brown boulders with little tufts of grass on top. She holds on to the rock with her toes, high enough to see pretty far in all directions: the thin beach curving out from the bay, north and south; the caravan-studded fields behind her, woods rising beyond them; and the sea stretching away for ever before her. She thinks vaguely of her own childhood holidays. Her parents always took her to some godforsaken seaside town, all bleating amusement arcades and elderly candyfloss, tacky gift shops and the smell of fish; whether it was somewhere new or the same dump every year, they all blurred into one. If there were ever days it didn’t rain, they’ve not stayed in her head. She’d promised herself, then and lots of times since, that if she ever had kids she’d take them abroad every year – off into the sun – but that isn’t what’s happened.
She gets to the bench; it’s all hers but kind of damp. She sits anyway, hugging herself, leaning towards the sea, her bare knees pressed together and feet apart, toes pointed in like a child’s. She lets her thoughts, memories, all the other bits of her head, all pour into the water, disappear under the waves to be washed away, as if for ever. But once when she was a girl, on holiday, there’d been a ship wrecked on the beach. She sees it again. Where? She can’t remember, it could even have been here. The wreck looked like it’d been there always. It stood tilted, hull stuck deep in the sand, tall and black and monstrous, dead, a great jagged wound in its flank to let the water in and its guts out. Maybe her memory’s exaggerating, maybe it was only a little trawler or something, but she’d crept past the warning notices – being brave – to have a better look. It was like a huge dead animal; she’d wanted to stroke its ancient skin, as if she could comfort it. But then when she’d got near it’d been all barnacled and spiky with rust, too ugly to touch. It’d towered over her, its echoey metal creaking high in the wind. Her feet sinking ankle-deep in watery sand, she’d got a bit scared and backed off – what if it was haunted? Maybe it set sail in the night, a ghost ship, doing whatever weird and wicked stuff. She walked away, and as soon as the sand got firm enough she started to run.
Now there’s no wreck, no ships at all, only a lifeboat, skipping across the water – bringing someone safely home, she guesses, or probably just practising. Though now she’s finally wondering, rising to her feet, where’s our Abbie got to? It’s not that she’s looking, particularly, but only that she just sort of notices – as if by accident, as if it weren’t anything to do with her, even as she starts again to run – that there’s no one in sight, among all the children she can see on the beach, or messing about in the little playground there, who could be her daughter.
It’s fifteen-plus years later and there’s no way of knowing it – the bench has long rotted away, and not been replaced – but Abigail has found the spot, the exact spot, where her mother was when she realised she’d lost her daughter. When she’d slowly turned to gaze at the sea and knew what had happened to her little girl, her Abbie. That she’d drowned. Known she’d drowned and couldn’t imagine she’d ever come back, the stuff in the Bible or other fairy tales never happening in real life. This is the place. Abigail – grown up now, soon to be a mother herself – has brought her girlfriend to see. Her leather jacket draped over Abigail’s shoulders, Bex’s hand rests protectively – it seems always to be there, lately – on Abigail’s huge, baby-rounded tummy, slowing swelling like the rise of a morning’s tide.
The caravan site closed down years ago, leaving no trace; a new development, posh flats it looks like, is under construction in the little bay. Abigail remembers these – what are they, hillocks? – these rocky heaps that run along the coast here, grassy piles of sandy rock, though predictably they’re smaller than she recalls: in her head she sees looming cliffs – beetling cliffs, maybe, if she could remember what the word meant. It’s silly, but she doesn’t want to go down to the beach itself, where the waves might try to get her again. As if she were still only little, as if she didn’t have Bex to anchor her. This rainy autumn feels strangely like it could be the rainy summer she drowned in, those fifteen-and-more years ago.
Bex is only half-listening to Abigail talk now, she’s fiddling with her mobile instead – and if they’d had them back then, would little Abbie’s father have called someone for help?
‘Come on,’ says Abigail. ‘Put that away, can’t you? This is where I died when I was a kid.’
‘I know. I’m tweeting that you’re visiting your own grave.’
‘I drowned.’
‘Your watery grave.’
‘You can laugh, but I was clinically dead for like twenty minutes. My mum told me.’
‘Yeah but clinically dead doesn’t mean very dead, like people pretend it does. It means kind-of-but-not-necessarily dead, otherwise you’d be in the ground. Obviously. Or fed on by fishes.’
‘God, you just have to argue with everything I say, don’t you?’
‘Fine, fine – you were dead. So tell me, what’d you see? On the other side, like? Beyond the light at the end of the tunnel.’
Abigail smiles at last. ‘Don’t take the piss.’
Nothing magical under these waves. The water is grey, opaque, stone turned liquid but colder than any stone. The weight of it unimaginable, pressing on her from all directions. Her mind nothing but blank terror as implacable currents tugged her into still deeper darkness, as she knew for the first time in her life – just six years old – that she was going to die. That it was happening right now, in fact—
‘You’re, like, romanticising it or whatever,’ says Bex. She runs a hand over her head’s gelled spikes; they spring back perfectly into place. ‘I mean, blank terror – cliché much? Plus, implacable currents? Come off it. It was just a stupid accident. You’re all right now.’
All right? She was dead. Though it’s true her head did break water at last – must’ve done, or else she couldn’t be standing here now, growing a new life inside her – her little arm had flailed into the air and been distantly spotted by kindly strangers. An elderly couple walking their dog on the sand had seen her hand’s drowning wave, amid the sea’s greater waves, and her coat’s small splash of colour. But out there in the water she’d been so tiny, so helpless. The vastness of the sky deranging. Her head barely above the surface, she’d kept dipping under again, swallowing more water. Even now she can’t have salt on her food (Bex snorts a laugh at that). The land had disappeared, as if it’d never existed. The whole world was sky and water, each as grey as the other, the emptiness infinite, and she felt – she swears she felt – her soul being pulled out into it, out of her body and into the air.
‘What, so is all this childhood trauma why you’re a wee bit mad?’ says Bex.
‘No,’ says Abigail, snuggling her face into her girlfriend’s neck, the leather jacket around her creaking like a ship’s rigging. ‘It’s you drives me mental.’
How long she’d been in the water was difficult to guess. It might’ve been an eternity, or two.
‘Feels like I’m still in there, sometimes,’ she tells Bex, her unborn baby’s other mother. ‘Under the waves.’
‘Don’t be daft. It must’ve been – what, a few minutes, tops.’
‘It’s like I’m looking at all the world through thick grey walls of water.’
‘Don’t know who you’re talking about but it’s not you.’
Because of course she was saved eventually. The lifeboat came, strong hands pulled her from the sea and brought her briskly, professionally back to life. She puked out seawater, gulped in air; her heart thudded again, louder than ever. An ambulance was waiting for her at the dock – no rescue helicopter winching her from the waves, to Bex’s disappointment – to hurry her to hospital. She was treated for hypothermia and shock, stuff like that, though she’s no memory of this part; there’s only a vague vision of waking up in a perfectly white, rainbow-laced dream of a room (‘What?’ says Bex. ‘The kids’ ward in the hospital,’ says Abigail, ‘had loads of cartoon characters and clowns and colourful stuff painted on the walls. It was kind of freaky, actually’), with her mother by her bedside and her father nowhere to be seen, not ever again.
‘All this just before my dad ran off.’
‘That bastard.’
‘No, don’t say that. You didn’t know him.’
‘Neither did you,’ says Bex, ‘ ’cause he fucked off – that’s the point.’
‘Oh, whatever. But listen, they told me I’d been dead, clinically dead, and I remember wondering if that made me a ghost. I should’ve just asked my mum, so she could tell me no, but I was too scared of what the answer might be. I bottled it up, I guess. I was only a little girl, remember. And so I can’t help but keep thinking, am I still one? A ghost, I mean. Because you can figure out the medical view of it, it’s in the textbooks, but how does a soul reattach itself once you’ve died and it’s been torn from its flesh? So am I a ghost, or what? Or am I, like, just an empty shell – my soul already off God knows where?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ says Bex. ‘You’re just being weird for the sake of being weird, and you’re no good at it. Come on, it’s getting cold. Let’s get back to the hotel, so I can screw your pregnant brains out all over again.’
‘Yeah, okay.’
But first from her pocket Abigail draws a dark disc of translucent green. A crystal ball, only not exactly crystal. A circle of misted emerald. An eye. A magician’s scrying stone, like from olden days. She holds it up to her face, looks deeply into it, but can’t see a thing – no images of the future, or of the past. It’s just a bit of glass, really – the base of a bottle, worn smooth by the sea. She draws back her arm, Bex watching her, and throws it back into the water.