The sea licks its way along cuts and grooves in the sand, trickling into oozing cricks that curl behind Claire and slink towards the shore. She mustn’t look back in case like Lot’s wife she betrays her hesitation.
Earlier, it seemed possible that life might continue where her dream left off, that He may appear and make a concession, offer an accord; a kind word, a glimpse of Issy – Claire isn’t fussy, she’ll accept crumbs. But now she is beginning to doubt whether He will come, and if He doesn’t and there is only sand and sea and the bare curve of the horizon, if that is all there is, perhaps she’ll find a path to Issy anyway.
As she walks her breath beats with the pulse of the waves. A flock of starlings swoop overhead as she refastens her coat and inhales the sea smells; oil, rot, seaweed. And she waits.
It’s cold and she’s terribly tired but she fixes her eyes on the horizon, countering the chatter of her teeth with the murmured words of a hymn. Jesus lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly, While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high. Her tongue is thick, her mouth drained and sticky.
She waits; plastering the cracks in her conviction with hope; she hopes He will come – it’s nearly the same as believing, isn’t it?
Standing here, she could almost believe the world is flat and it doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to think if she just stepped into the water and swam far enough, she might fall off its edge and into heaven.
The sea seeps over furrows and swells into puddles; rolling, rushing – He isn’t coming. The realisation has crept up on her like the tide. Of course He isn’t coming. No one is coming.
She readies herself. Turning will betray a longing for something other than Issy; sleep, bed, home, the children, Ian – she can’t say, and the possibility of other wants surfacing feels like a betrayal. The wind sifts salt over her; she tastes it on her lips and feels it crusting her cheeks.
She turns.
While she was waiting the water has swept along rifts in the sand and arced around her. She is stranded on a claggy island, surrounded by dark, charging sea; not deep yet, only knee height, certainly no more than thigh height. As the tide unfolds, her island will shrink and sink and she will have to make a choice. There is only one set of footprints and they are her own. No one has walked beside her. No one has carried her.
She can’t see the coastal road or the car park but she is aware of the sweep of the beach and the distance she must cover before she reaches safety. And when she turns to check the incoming tide she sees how she still might drift out of this world and into the next.
A large bird, a heron perhaps, swoops overhead, its wings spread like a cloak. She follows its movements as it tracks back, plunges and lands beside her on backward-facing legs. She keeps as still as she can, lets her hair whip across her face and clenches her pocketed hands in an effort to control her shivers. The bird looks old and wise, like something out of one of the fairy tales she used to read to the children. The wind ruffles its spiky blue-grey feathers and its long neck unfurls like a question mark. It has no brows to vary its expression or soften the scrutiny of its searching stare; it’s only a bird, but it’s looking at her intently, as if it has caught the wave of her thoughts.
The bird lowers its head and its long beak points at the sand while its yellow eyes continue to hold hers. It seems like the dip of its neck is an expression of sympathy. Maybe it is also a mother, and, for the first time in weeks, she experiences the feeling of being observed, attended and appreciated.
The bird’s presence is the sort of faith-bolstering detail Ian would gratefully note, a Tender Mercy, and she wonders whether the Lord, too busy to offer reassurance in person, has sent this messenger in his stead. She tries to ask, but her voice scrapes her parched throat, and when the dry crackle sounds, the bird takes a couple of running steps on its impossible legs, spreads its wings and soars away, skimming the water as it ascends. If she wasn’t so exhausted, perhaps she could also fly.
Tiredness presses on her shoulders and knees. It’s becoming hard to hold her body upright. Her hands are numb, and when she looks at them, the skin is almost transparent, which isn’t surprising because she has been disappearing for some time. Her thoughts are lagging and it feels as if she may be dissolving, breaking into a scatter of notions and impressions. Her eyelids shutter and she knocks back yawns, thirsty for sleep … so many stories about sleep: once upon a time there was a princess who slept for a hundred years; once, five foolish virgins napped while the bridegroom tarried; once there was a little girl who was not dead, but sleeping.
The island is shrinking and it’s as if her body, expecting to be vacated, is switching out the lights before she leaves. She isn’t cold any more and the sea sounds far away. She closes her eyes and experiences the airy weightlessness she associates with fasting, the heady retreat to the summit of her body, and for a moment her arms span, her fingers quill and she can see herself as if from above, stranded on an island in the mudflats, surrounded by grey water; head bowed, nightie flapping like a flag. She scans the horizon, dredging the line where the sky skims the water, and there is nothing but the spare spread of the sea and bare heaven.
Soaring on an updraught, she spirals and looks back at the shore. On the other side of the swirling water, a man in a white shirt and dark trousers runs at the tide, three smaller figures arrow after him: a hurtling boy is followed by a young woman towing a scampering child.
She wheels back to consciousness, assailed by the stinging wind and whirling sea. She has been so very lost; she has watched and prayed and waited. And while she has waited, her family has come.
Indistinct cries sail on the wind – they could be avian or human; she defers judgement, twists away from the sounds to review the horizon. And as she acknowledges the permanence of the uninhabited skyline, she detects the germ of a feeling that isn’t sadness, but something else; a coalescence of the fear of being caught and the comfort of being found. The wind carries more cries; words now. She will not answer yet. Instead, she imagines they are echoes of the many memories that ghost the beach; iterations of kite flying, shell collecting, crab catching – slivers of an irretrievable past that will always exist here.
‘Claire!’
‘Mum!’
The sea is reeling and she wonders whether she has left it too late. She digs the toe of one wellie into the heel of the other and extends her arms, balancing with none of the elegance of the heron as her foot emerges. The empty wellie drops and is joined seconds later by the other.
Damp seeps between her toes, crawls up her socks, and as this secondary cold banishes tiredness, it occurs to her that the contrast between the bare horizon and the promise of the shore marks the difference between heaven and earth.
The waves rock inexorably closer. Lacy spume swamps her toes; the tide licks and retreats, licks and retreats. She waits for the inevitable surge, watches as its expanding arc is held high; until it heaves like a long exhalation, pitching past her knees. The nightie tangles her legs. She staggers then straightens, standing fast as the island is buried. And as the last of her lonely, waterlogged footprints melt under the rush of the tide, she turns to face home.