Ghost Wall(11)

We came at last to the water, to waves smoothing themselves over paper-flat sand. Further out, much further out, there was rising and falling like breathing and white sunlight flashing out but no breaking, no crash. Looks as if you’d have to go miles for a swim, said Dan. I kept going into the water, which at first was warm as blood. Feet, ankles, calves. I hiked up my tunic. Take it off, said Molly. Here, I’m going to. There was nowhere to leave a garment, nowhere dry for a long way. Don’t suppose it matters if it gets wet, I said, but Molly had handed her bag to Pete and pulled her tunic over her head. Her bra and matching pants were the purple of chocolate wrappers, and there was pale hair poking through the lace of the pants, uncontainable. Her belly was rounder than mine, a pale curve dented by her belly button. I suddenly wanted to touch. I looked away. She splashed past me. Dan and Pete looked unconcerned, as if they saw women half-naked in public every day, but I saw Pete glancing away and then back and then away again. Molly, up to her waist, reached round to unhook her bra from behind in a way I’d seen on TV though not, for example, in the girls’ changing room. She threw it to Dan, who fumbled, caught a strap, stood there with it dangling from his finger. Careful with that, I thought, can’t have been cheap, matching and all. She pushed her shoulders back, closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky, as if offering her breasts to the sun. Bigger than mine, smaller nipples, already an outdoor colour; she had done this before. She opened her eyes and looked back at us, watching her. Come on, she said, you all said you were too hot. Come on in, the water’s lovely. We get the message, Moll, Dan said, you’re gorgeous, nice tits. As if it was mildly tiresome of her to undress for us, as if it was boring to look. He yawned. Yeah, all right, why not, he said.

Male bodies, Dan’s furred with dark hair, a thicker seam straight down from his navel, Pete bare as a piglet. Boxer shorts. A pink mushroom peeping at Pete’s thigh. I remembered whispers from girls at school, it were that big, though my own fumblings in the park with Simon from the year above had been strictly above the waist and not, really, apart from the novelty of the thing, very exciting. It was Molly I watched, Molly’s breasts lifting and falling as she jumped what waves there were, water beading on the curve of Molly’s shoulders, trickling down the narrow pathway of her spine between the plaits dark with the North Sea. Dan and Pete splashed her, leapt away, egged each other out into deeper water.

I stood there, thigh deep, feeling the small wash of waves against my knees and the heat of the sun hammering my back and head, an armful of coarse brown cloth clasped to my chest while the three older and braver than me disported themselves.

It got hotter. The tide must have turned but it seemed that nothing was moving, that our walking back towards the land made no difference to where we were. Sand ground between my toes, clung to the down on my legs. I could feel it beneath my fingernails, in the damp under my arms. I licked sweat off my upper lip and had sand on my tongue and between my teeth. The beach underfoot had hardened in ridges, like walking over bones. My head ached. We went in single file, Dan then Pete then Molly then me, feet following step after step, step after step. Water, I kept thinking, water, but I knew we didn’t have any. I chewed on my tongue to make my mouth water but it didn’t work. I could feel my heartbeat in my head, thick blood thudding against my skull, behind my eyes. There was a stream at the end of the dunes, unbelievable as a happy ending. We kept going.



We returned to the camp mid-afternoon, our two bags of mussels already giving off a worse than fishy smell. These bags are going to stink, said Molly, hefting them over a stile, we’ll all get ill, though I suppose then we can go back to the world of indoor plumbing and ice-cream. Dan caught my eye. Girls and toilets, he murmured, what did I tell you?

Mum came out of the hut as we arrived. I thought she had been sleeping, or maybe crying; she had a private look on her face and could barely open her eyes in the sunlight. There you are, she said pointlessly. I’m going to the stream, I said, I’m all hot and sandy and I need water. Molly had folded in the shade of the big oak, lain back and closed her eyes. Don’t drink the stream water, Mum said, here, there’s spring water in the jug.

I couldn’t bear to put my feet back into the wet sandy moccasins and picked my way barefoot down to the stream. I had imagined I might bathe in it, had perhaps seen myself reclining like Ophelia, hair flowing, but of course it was far too shallow. I glanced around, took off the sweaty, sand-crusted tunic and left it in a heap on the grass. I remembered Molly’s purple lace and looked down at my washed-out, once-white cotton pants and a bra whose ‘flesh tone’ might have been convincing on a trout. It won’t show through your school shirts, Mum had said. When I grow up, I thought, when I get away, I will go out and buy myself pants in emerald and turquoise and scarlet and I will wear them with bras that are orange and lime and what Mum calls shocking pink. I will have lipstick and thin tights and high heels, I will have cowboy boots like Claire’s Aunty Sue. I stepped into the stream, balancing on the stones. The moorland water was colder than the sea had been, its pull faster. I turned and waded upstream, remembering a peaty amber pool up past the rowans. A breeze came down from the moor and breathed on my belly and chest. I kept slipping on slimy rocks, knew the water wasn’t deep enough to cushion a fall. If I knocked my head, I thought, I would lie here and drown, they would find me in my wet undies, blood wavering like weed, but I kept going, my mind now full of the image of myself sitting in the pool which had become rounded and deep, dappled with leaf-shade, where my arms could lift and float tanned by the rusty water.