Beside the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

again, but even when I reached him he acted deaf, carrying on with his turns and half-turns, it drove me mad, I grabbed him by the hood of his jacket and then something terrible happened, Stanley raised his hand and thumped my arm, and I let go of his hood. He’d never ever done anything like that to me, There’sthe future, I thought, misery goes on for ever. I didn’t recognize my little boy, we looked at each other in silence, he was red in the face, exhausted, wide-eyed, breathing heavily, like he was crying without any tears. Go home now! I shouted. And he looked me right in the eye. Go home, go home, obviously that was stupid, there was nowhere to go home to, I knew that and I was the one who ended up looking away. We stayed there like that without a word, catching our breath, trying to recognize each other while behind us the sea battered the sand. We weren’t out for a stroll on this beach, we were hunting each other down, that was all.
    I went back over to Kevin, Stan followed. We both felt ashamed. We didn’t speak. Kevin was making sandcastles, I sat back down on the rock, Stan just stood there with his hands in his pockets, staring at the waves, exhausted, he’d been fighting with the sea too.
    It’s an enchanted castle, Stan! said Kevin, tugging the bottom of his brother’s trousers, it’s an enchanted castle! The older boy didn’t look at the littl’un, still staring at the ocean, like they had unfinished business. Find him a seashell, Stan, I told him, just to say something, to show him I was there, even if I was worried he would walk away. He heard me. He didn’t answer, but as he walked off along the sand he looked so alone, I felt like calling him back, how could he cope so well without me?
    It’s an enchanted castle, Kevin told me, slightly annoyed. Yeah, it’s good, it’s good to make castles by the seaside, I thought, that’s what’s supposed to happen, we’re by the seaside and we make sandcastles, that’s what’s always supposed to happen: the way it is… but why’s Stan going so far away? Should I have smacked him when he thumped my arm? Should I have run after him and punished him? Maybe we should have had a fight, there, on the wet sand, rolling on the ground and biting each other, scratching and roaring, drowning out the waves, more like monsters than the ocean itself, forgetting about being a mother and son, just thumping each other, and then feeling better afterwards.
    Stan was walking along the beach but he wasn’t looking for shells, that’s for sure. He was looking ahead, at that little rain-swept beach, with its stones and bits of black seaweed, its abandoned bottles and plastic bags snagged on the rocks, he was walking slowly, like someone thinking about something and lugging their tiredness with them. I’d like to have been inside his head, right in the depths of him, so that no one else could take that space, my space, me, the first… the first what, I don’t know, but the first, yes, that was it… I’m in him, on the inside, even if he doesn’t know it.
    I’m cold, Kevin said, I’m cold and I’m hungry, can we go? Good idea, actually, let’s go, got to go,have to go and have something to drink, got to. Come back, Stan! I cried – nothing in the world would have made me go over to him. Come back! I yelled, it felt good, Come back! Come back! I was an order, I was a shout, but the waves swallowed my words, you’d have thought the sea was a machine, it made more din than a factory.
    Stan didn’t hear me. I no longer existed. I had no voice left, no more words, nothing could reach him. I stopped shouting. Stan’s outsize clothes were moving all on their own in the wind, he reminded me of a boat. I didn’t know how to bring boats back in.
    Kevin had had enough. He shouted now, and then ran over to his brother, he took his hand and they walked towards me, they were soaked, the pair of them. There are my boys, I thought, two ice cubes melting away, you’d