The fisherman has lived and fished too many years. Death teases him now with failing sight, arthritic pain and hints of senility, but never seems to do the decent thing. He no longer has a boat, he no longer catches fish, but he simply cannot leave the sea. He bows his head and examines his torn boots. The tide is coming in, and his woollen socks are swelling up, “Damn it!” His feet, squelching. He hasn’t noticed Esther. She’s skimming slates on the water. The cold evening air pinches and reddens her cheeks, her fair hair dances in salt wind. She stands amid the beach of blue-purple slates, firmly, a safe distance from the edge. The fisherman stands defiant, bewildered, on the brink. The water, a dark mirrored surface, its edges unfurling. Unfurling, and coming to rest, dispersing. That’s where the sea dies, at the edges, where the waves touch the land – the sea, it tries to hold on, but fails, always, fails. He looks into the distance. Out there, out there, that’s where it lives.
“Hell, I’ve got to skim them further than that,” she calls out, wanting the old man to look up. He doesn’t. The slate sinks. “I said, I want to skim them further.” She hurls another, it fails. “Did you see that! They keep bloody-well sinking,” she looks over at him. He pulls a reel of tape from his pocket and tries to find where it starts. His fingers and thumbs are gnarled from years of twining and untwining fishing yarn and nets. He wants to seal up the holes in his boots.
The tape won’t give. The fisherman’s boots are fast filling up. The tide is coming in.
“Got it!” He tears off strips of tape between his teeth, all the while fixed on saving his sinking boots.
“No.” The tape sticks to itself and to his fingers.
“Don’t say anything, and don’t tell. It’s my special secret you see. I don’t know how or when I’ll do it, but then that’s always how it is in books and in stories isn’t it? You don’t know how they’re going to do it, but then they just do! And I’ll have waited my whole life for it. It’s going to be the best adventure.
She launches a final slate and watches as it lightly splices the surface of the water again and again, ripples catching the light and multiplying into the distance, “See that! Look!” But he isn’t looking. “Four… five… six!” He still isn’t looking. Exasperated, exaggerating, “Did you see that? Nine! Nine times before it sank!” But his concentration is back with the tape.
Esther stands dejected, the fisherman, all but beat. A wave laps over the front of his boots, but he remains rooted to the spot, determined to make use of the stubborn tape, and growing cold.
Her thirst for knowledge, unquenchable. Japanese art books, history and poetry were soon being pilfered from the local library. She could, have borrowed the books, but it was so much more exciting to draw up fresh rules – tactical avoidance, outwitting grown-ups, the adrenaline, the fear! Never get caught! – and she didn’t – not once. Childhood you see, too damn long, and what to do with it? Want to travel! Want to learn! Want to learn, new things! Want to see, new things! Want to touch, to taste! To get away! Get away! Get away, from here!
“You see, being a child, it simply doesn’t suit everyone, and I’m telling you, I just can’t do it!” Waiting and waiting, that adult years come swiftly and release a stifled spirit from childhood shackles. The years of ‘child’ stretched out so long, she felt they might never, ever end.
Esther, and her twin brother, Jacob, were born to elderly parents whose lifelong wish had been for a son, and granted one, they had given over all their love, affection and ambition, to him. This elevated position naturally entitled him to being categorised as ‘fiend’. And Esther, realising her parents’ complete indifference to her, to her ‘exploratory plans, aesthetic needs, creative desires, and untold dreams’, and sure in the knowledge that these particular Victorians had not been consigned to history, constantly prayed they soon would be. She could not have prayed enough, for they resisted and lived on.
She thought on, despite everything, yes despite it all, ‘they’re still your parents’, and it had been some years, she was an adult now, and she was going to live abroad—she really ought to visit—but what to say? How to say? Japan was about as foreign as it gets, they wouldn’t understand. Should she visit, call them, or write to explain? A visit, it should be a proper visit, but later. Later perhaps, and whilst there, a walk, on Purple Beach, a last walk.
Jayne Joso is the author of two novels: Soothing Music for Stray Cats and Perfect Architect.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Thursday, April 26th, 2012.