Ordinary Depths
by Deborah Leese (from This Is|Lost Love)
A BEGINNING is waiting to happen here, she thinks, as she walks by the side of the sea. Around her is salt air and silt, and the echoes of ice cream, but she sees only the light. She keeps her eyes fastened onto the brightness, afraid to let go she walks away from what could be behind her. The smell of gravy and the residue of blood still cling as she moves, but she breathes deeply, focusing on the airwaves beyond. She remembers a time of touching skin and sighs, of breathless silences where the world stood still. Then the taste of white goods and nappy rash invaded. The note on the table read only, 'Gone out! Love Mum', in handbag biro on envelope brown scrap. She imagines a rush of bread and splatter of jam as they enter, and smiles in spite of herself.
Leaving home at eighteen had been what everybody did, and the wedding and the house and the kids had all followed in the proper order. I'm not much good at anything, she says, just because she has no certificates, but she has kept house, kept the books and kept everyone happy for years.
She wonders vaguely what she looks like as she walks, but cellulite thighs have pushed her past caring, and who can afford the creams on what he'll give her if he goes? He fell asleep after he'd told her, exhausted. Half formed thoughts of inexplicable unrest had spilled from his mouth, and then merely snores, his hand on her pillow from habit. Creeping about in the dark, hoping to be noticed, she'd smoked her daughter's confiscated cigarettes, the only light the pool of orange on the living room floor.
Strangely odd to be here without a handbag. She doesn't know what to do with her hands, and her arms hang too long, swinging loosely by her sides. Passing the seaside hotel, all crunched eggshell whitewash, she looks hard at the women placed on green plastic chairs, at the artificial turf with its border of shells. The women hold aloft their glasses of lager with lime, displaying their wrinkled brown paper legs. They have managed to outlive their husbands whilst they were still husbands, and now they come together over glacé cherries and nicotined breath, softened with lavender sachet. She's almost glad she doesn't recognise herself there, though she still sees something that makes her bite her lip. Teasing the tip of her ulcerated tongue, the words circle and close at the top of her throat. Dumbly, she can push out envy, or grudging respect, but neither are quite right. To know what they want and seem so sure! Yet others have said the same of her, so perhaps not.
Their third child was a latecomer, the others nearly in their teens. Not an accident as such, she had said at the time. A late gift. Instead of finding herself that job, she had found that even the first time Mums were quite nice. With a self-employed decorator as a husband, the spare room turned easily into a nursery: quality's affordable when the labour comes free. And keeping the house, keeping the books and keeping just one more fed, washed and watered, she'd carried on.
They want for nothing. What they don't know about they can't miss, or at least that's what she's always thought. Easy is as easy does. Here today and gone tomorrow although she's never applied that to a person before. A lick and a split then I'll blow your house down. A life built on paint has been comforting the smell always fresh, though the books seldom balance. That'd be one less thing to do, she supposes.
In some ways, his indecision excites her. Like a sore tooth, she worries at it, almost pleasurably. If he does go, they'll all stay with her, and now the little one's at school at last, she'll have time to find that job. Healthy teeth and still talkative teenagers bring satisfaction she knows she has done well. She worries, but they can expect greatness in their own ways. Her eyeballs prickle, her throat tightens with the knowledge.
The cloying smell of sugar assails her nostrils and the colourless sand grits at her feet. The sea sounds like static this close rough and metallic. It is not the blue lapping she has come to feel. She imagines being pulled forwards, breaking effortlessly through surfaces, to the brightness- filled ecstasy on the horizon, the unobtainable pulse of gold, refracted a thousand times.
She sees a couple holding hands, and thinks of her own, fingers entwined with only two, one of those the man's she'd thought forever hers. Love comes with the rip of muscle and the urge to push, yes. But thinking of skin melting in the moonlight, and the rhythm of his back rippling over, she pains for the greyer hair that might not be hers to see. She isn't lost exactly. Just sometimes now, there comes a sense of falling. In waves of amber, a sense of something missed. And then a flood of urgency breaks in, whispering to her. Misplaced, maybe, but never lost. Grab.
A little girl cries at the raspberry sauce dripping down the side of her cone, and she craves the tug of a shoulder strap once more. Someone turns up the sound and adjusts the colour: the shriek of a seagull and the red of a bucket scream back in. Sausages, she thinks and reverses her step.
The woman keeps on walking, back up the beach, but the pull of the deep stays within.