Ghost Wall(10)

The others had been going to the beach on their day trips last term and walked briskly at first. There was no path. The sun was too bright in my eyes and already I could feel the skin on my forearms beginning to burn. How far is it, I asked. Half an hour, said Pete, why, you tired? What’s it like sleeping in the hut? Dark, I said. Very dark, even in the mornings. And we can hear each other breathe, all night, there’s no privacy. What about the beds, said Dan, are they really lumpy? Don’t think so, I said, not that I’ve noticed. Mum says they’re doing her back in. Dad had been scornful about Mum’s back. Try getting a bit more exercise, he said, we weren’t never meant to spend our lives sat on our backsides, and no wonder folk have trouble the amount of time they spend sat on them sofas. We did not have a sofa, and Mum’s armchair was one her mother’s friend Eileen had discarded as worn out. What’s it like in the tents, I asked, although I knew perfectly well what it is like in a tent. Cramped and stuffy, said Molly, and light all the time, I keep waking up about when I’d normally be going to sleep at the weekend, I see why they built huts. Swap, I said, you listen to my dad snoring all night and I’ll get up early. Yeah, she said, thanks, no deal.

The next field had cows in it. No way, said Molly, they weren’t here last time, I’m not going through there. Mostly when cows kill folk, I said, it’s because someone’s dogs have bothered the cows, they don’t just attack innocent bystanders, you know they’re herbivores. I don’t care, she said, I’m not going into that field. You can walk in the middle, said Dan, we’ll protect you, they’ll have to trample our bodies into the mud to get you. Nope, she said, not happening. So there were some barbed-wire fences to negotiate, which is harder to do in a linen tunic than in jeans, and then a river, which meant a diversion through the sand dunes where it is remarkably easy to get lost even when you know the sun is in the south-east and you are on the east coast and that means as long as the sun is in both your eyes but bothering the right one more you will soon come to the water. You’re so good at this stuff, Silvie, said Molly, I suppose your dad taught you. No, I thought, I just know the approximate shape of this island and that the sun rises in the east and I didn’t need to be taught either of those things, but I said mm, it’s his kind of thing. Jesus it’s hot, said Dan, does anyone have any water? Can we stop in the shade for a bit? Molly, of course, had a plastic bottle of cola, warm and unpleasantly sticky, though by then even the west side of the dunes had no shade. We’ve actually managed to lose the sea, said Pete, can you imagine what Silvie’s dad’s going to say when we explain that there aren’t any mussels because we couldn’t find the coast? Molly giggled. I stood up and slithered through the sand and sharp marram grass to the top of the dune. I can see it, I said, funnily enough we just keep heading east, it hasn’t moved. I’m so hot, said Dan, the first thing I’m going to do when we get there is swim. The tide’s out, I said, the first thing you’ll have to do is walk about half a mile to the water, and even before he replied I wished I hadn’t said it. Know-it-all. OK, he said, rub it in why don’t you.

When we came to the beach it looked more like a desert, the sea itself a fiction on the horizon. We all took off our moccasins as soon as we were past the last of the sharp grass. Mine were wearing through. Molly’s toenails were painted sparkly blue. I was intrigued to see that Dan’s feet were even hairier than his legs; Dad’s were the only male feet I knew and they were as smooth as mine. Without talking about it we headed straight out towards the sea, towards the place where the hot sand began to cool and to ripple under our feet. At the edges of the bay I could see rocks where there would be mussels. Later, I thought, mussels and seaweed, I don’t think you get samphire on a beach like this. Not now. Our shadows on the sand were those of the Iron Age, and I remembered Doggerland, the name archaeologists gave the human settlements now under the North Sea. Once people had chased deer across this land, had camped, had carved figurines in bone and wood, in taking off their clothes dropped brooches and buttons which had not moved when the sea came creeping, when the tide rose and did not turn. You used to be able to walk from the marshy lowlands of Denmark to the Northumbrian forest. You used to have stones and grass under your soles all the way.

Around us the earth flattened out, the green detail of the land receding although we were still on it, out on England’s blurred margins. You’d think a coastline more definite than a land border but it’s not so, not when you walk the watery edge at the turn of the tide and cannot say if you are on dry land, exactly. Do you know, said Dan, the British coast gets longer the more you measure it? We tried one day in the first year, they brought us to the beach and gave us tasks and questions and that was one of them, measure the shoreline, and of course the harder you try the more of it there is, round the rock pools and up and down every slope and after a while we realised it’s infinite, the edge of an island is infinite. I suppose that was the point. It wasn’t much of a point, said Molly, and as I recall it was bloody cold and there was nowhere for the girls to pee. No poetry in your soul, said Dan, that’s the problem with girls, they’re always thinking about where to pee. Molly kicked water out of a rock-pool at him and I said, my voice coming out surprisingly high, so would you be thinking about where to pee if you had to squat with your trousers round your ankles every time. It was one of my father’s themes, the way women allow their inferior plumbing to shape their relationship with the Great Outdoors. Actually, said Molly, it’s no harder for girls to pee than boys, the problem isn’t biology, it’s men’s fear of women’s bodies. If we were allowed to pull our knickers down and squat by a wall the way you’re allowed to get your dick out and piss up the wall there wouldn’t be a problem, it’s just the way you all act as if a vagina will come and eat you if it’s out without a muzzle. Hey, joke, Dan said, I was joking, don’t get upset. That’s the problem with boys, said Molly, they’re always telling people not to get upset. Vagina, I thought, she just said the word out loud. In front of boys. Children, children, said Pete, do you think the sea’s actually out there or are we just walking to Norway? Denmark, I said, actually, and it’s too hot, this isn’t a beach it’s a desert, the mussels are going to be cooked before we ever get to them.