PATRICIA LYON
I live in East London, with four teenage daughters and a nine month old baby. As a result I find it quite difficult to get down to writing. In addition I find it hard to live in urban location. Years ago I was settled in the Welsh countryside and never thought I would never really see the hills and the trees again.
THE BEACH
The young girl stood on the promontory of rocks, looking out to sea. Her dark hair was tied back from her pale face, and matched the darkness of her jacket and long skirt. She looked so lost and lonely in the midst of the grey background and sky and sea.
Her mother sat on the beach watching her, suddenly aware of the fact that her daughter was growing up. For the first time for a long time too she was without her three sisters - hence perhaps her air of introspection.
The waves leapt closer and closer to the woman, reminding her with their rythmic roar of the harmonious steady breath of nature. The pebbles around her were mostly an earthy grey and worn into smooth circular markings by the action of the water. She put them into her jacket pocket, anxious to take back with her some tangible memory of this place.
If only she could keep alive this feeling of wholeness that was gradually filling her, and too the wonderful sense of health and wellbeing that the clean salt air was breathing into her lungs. She knew that within hours of getting back home she would not only lose this peacefulness, but also the memory of it as well. No wonder she was finding it so difficult to manage to be happy in her London home, and no wonder too that her children seemed perpetually obsessed by American TV and a generally aggressive outlook on life. She herself had even lost her sense of maternal closeness to her girls. Yet just now watching one of them still standing deep in thought on the rocks she felt suddenly guilty of extreme ingratitude.
So, if it wasn't possible to live constantly close to the sea or nature, did it mean that she had to be condemned to the state of limbo she had felt herself to be in for the last ten years?
A week later she was seated at a computer, typing some of her thoughts down, desperately trying to remember the sea scene again. Every now and then the front door slammed and the whole house shook. She was seriously considering propping it open so that the girls would leave it be for at least five minutes. Then there was the thundering beat of feet on the stairs, and the sound of her daughters having a quarrel. She wondered why she was bothering to type anything at all.
Oh to be able to walk out right now and sit on that grey pebble strewn beach with just the sound of the waves in her ears!
The phone rang. It was her boyfriend parked up in his juggernaut lorry in the middle of the Scottish hills. "Why don't we go and take a look at Southend this weekend?" he suggested. Her spirits suddenly leapt. She explained that she had just been typing up about their last visit to the seaside and it was beginning to sound rather gloomy - perhaps they could try to make the visit interesting enough to provide the ending to her account.
"As long as you don't act up like you did that weekend," he warned, "or I shall have to tie you to one of the groins and wait for the tide to come in, and that will make a good finish to your story, except you won't be able to write it!"
"Well, I'll give you the name of my story and you can finish it for me on the computer," she laughed.
She put down the phone and was smiling again, until once again the front door slammed shut and the three storey house shuddered. "That's it!" she said to herself grimly, as she went to remonstrate.
"Happy Birthday, Mum," her youngest daughter shouted out, just as she was about to scream her annoyance. Beside her stood two beaming friends. Upstairs again, she reminded herself that it was silly to keep losing her temper with these teenagers, and for that matter to predict that life for her in this inner city area would remain forever dull and draining. She had made that mistake the evening before she had sat on the pebble beach feeling so much at peace. That time the teenagers, her boyfriend had brought along, had thrown her into a state of deep depression and she had ended up practically calling hellfire itself down upon his head. This was the mood he was referring to in his phone call. The next morning she had expected him to drive them straight back to London, but instead they had visited the beach. There was always the unexpected that could enter her life. Perhaps she just didn't give it the chance to show itself more.
A week later she was again sitting in front of the computer. Her heart was heavy - it seemed almost unbelievable to think of the nightmare scenerio recurring yet again, only this time it seemed as though it would be here to stay. Again she had ended up having a terrible row with her boyfriend, and he had left on the Monday morning taking most of his possessions. She could be sitting on that beach right now, and still she would feel hollowed out and silently screaming inside her head. There didn't seem any pain worse than this. Throughout the day she had kept on trying to remind herself that it was still possible for things to turn out alright, maybe even better because of this upset. She had been tending more and more to not show a more determined stance regarding their domestic problems. But she couldn't believe that he was gone or was just on the point of doing so. Despite everything she knew that there was something really good and sound between them. At the same time she had got to learn to stand more on her own two feet and resolutely make changes in her and her childrens lives.
She was living in a desert. Nothing could lift her spirits for long. She cursed the love or the infatuation, or whatever it was that was now causing her so much inner agony. Would it ever end? "Oh Michael, please hear me now. Reach out to me despite all the obstacles. Please still feel something for me. And then, even though it seems an impossible dream, we will be able to resolve our differences." But still the telephone remained silent, and still her heart ached with no hope of release. "It is going to be alright, I know it is."
A few days later he phoned up to say that he still wanted to come back to her, that in fact the row had been his fault this time, but nevertheless he had expected her to phone up and make a reconciliation. Her heart suddenly released the feeling of pent up pain, but at the same time she felt guilty - only minutes before she had received another phonecall. The day after she had rowed so finally with Michael, she had gone out to a local pub and met up with a man, whom she knew was already interested in her. He seemed to have plenty of money, very few attachments and she felt tempted to once for all leave behind the nagging worries, complicated by not only having five children of her own, but three of Michael's - consisting of a fifteen old girl, a seventeen and nineteen year old son. For some reason he treated the two boys as if they were still ten year olds.
She tried to listen out for the sound of the waves. She knew that they were coming towards her.
She had a feeling that her daughters were going to bring the thunderous roar of life into her ears. The dark-haired daughter reproached her with the fact that she had so little clothes to wear, "...stuck in this stinking shit hole for the rest of our lives! Why do we have to be so poor, why do we have to have nothing, Mum?"
Despite everything she knew that she had to hang on. The ocean was getting nearer.
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