The seagull breasts the evening air with the grace of a glider. The setting sun has given a golden blush to its plumage, and made an eagle of the scavenger. Its eyes swivel tirelessly over sea and land. It spies many things winking in the blue goblet of the bay. There is a secluded cottage built of Cornish stone. A path leading from it meanders across a shoulder of meadowland speckled with wild flowers. It winds down a cliff-face fretted with bracken, chequered with boulders and slabs of rock. The gull anchors on pockets of sea kale, dainty white scurvy grass, and cushions of fluffy pink thrift. Finally, the neck of the path splays out onto a harp of golden-brown sand. Here the armadillo rocks that burrow below the tide line are blanketed with banks of blue-grey mussels, and sequinned with crushed shells.
A balding man sits on a towel in the shade reading a newspaper. A young couple stroll together on the sand, arms linked. He is fair haired, blue eyed, while she is a redhead with pale-green eyes the colour of grapes. A short way from them a tall, willowy, middle-aged woman walks a little girl through the sparkling aqua-marine shallows. All five wear bright bathing costumes, scarlet, rich blues and primrose yellow. The girl has a mop of gingery curls tucked beneath an orange sunhat. And when she looks up the gull spies her vivid blue-green eyes. She squeals in delight as the running wavelets break about her feet and ankles. The willowy woman glances at her watch, and then she bends and whispers something to the child. For a few minutes while she collects up their belongings, she leaves her under the watchful eyes of the young couple.
The sun’s rays fire the shoulder-length red hair. The gull screeches at the flash of lucent copper, and all of them raise their heads at the cry. The girl sits in the skittish water. She cocks her head and listens to the waves burbling their secrets into the sand. Digging, she finds a pearly shell. She shakes it in the surf, washing the sand grains off it. She likes the taste of sea salt, likes it when it dries to a fine white dust on her skin. She clambers up and toddles a few steps forward. She has no fear of the sea, for she is a water baby. She has been swimming with her mother since the age of two. She likes to draw the mermaids she has seen in her storybook, mermaids with fishtails instead of legs. She uses all the blues and greens and greys to colour them in. In her last picture she drew a small flesh-pink baby in the arms of a mermaid. And when her mother asked who it was, she answered, ‘It’s me, Mummy, can’t you see?’
The tall woman is back. There is a serene expression on her face as she holds out her hand to the child. The girl goes willingly enough, because she knows that the sea will be here tomorrow, waiting for her. She stands patiently while she is towel dried, and they both tug on sandals. They collect the balding man with his newspaper and all three trudge over the sand. They pause once to look back and smile at the couple, and at the waves. Then they climb the cliff path hand in hand. After they have gone the young couple wade into the sea until they are waist deep. Then they climb onto a large rock, its plateau top well clear of the lapping water. They sit and stare out at the felt-tipped line of the horizon. They can see a sailboat and a distant ship, a tanker, he thinks. Gazing upwards at the giddy azure sky, they tail the seagull still eyeing them curiously.
That amber eye has grown wise on wonders, on the moon and the sun at either ends of the corridor of the sky, on storms that make flotsam of mighty ships, on the rigours of an un forgiving sun, on doomed sailors, and pods of whales singing their eerie songs. And now he spies one more. Beside the couple sunning themselves on the rock, sits a child, a Water Child, an enchanted silver jitterbug of pure light. He is no stranger to the seagull. It has seen him before and it will see him again. Together, the man, and the woman, and the Water Child slip into the sea. They swim in triplicate. The couple take huge breaths and dive, opening their eyes on a marvel, a salt-stung vista. A world of flaxen sand. The sponged shapes of rocks in aubergine and maroon, bisque and oatmeal. Forests of glassy brown weed. Pastures of apple-green moss, peopled with prickly sea urchins. Rose-pink and violet anemones. Varnished apricot crabs. Shoals of tiny fish that sparkle like puffs of glitter. The blue fists of the sea pummel them, sparring with them, goading the swimmers on that little bit further. So that it is the Water Child who has to halt them with a starry burst of brilliance, making them know that this is his element, not theirs, that they must turn back now. They see him wriggle away, joyous to be free, like a silver eel slicing into the deep blue. Then they surface, suck in air gratefully, and strike out confidently for the shore. But the seagull, beguiled by the astonishing silvery foxtrot, bolstered by the thermals, tracks the Water Child out into the sorcery of the Atlantic Ocean.