Shapes

I wondered at the little girl, painting her in fast thin lines. I didn’t want to capture her details, not the folds of her coat, or the wild streamer of her blond hair. There was no time. I wanted to capture her spirit. The energy that made her run as fast as she could down the sands, her footfalls as brief in life as she will be. As brief as we all are. I wondered if I could capture her giggles. Is laughter a spiral or a circle? Should it roll or wriggle across my canvas?

“What you doing?” she drew to a halt right by my side.

“I’m painting. Painting you. Do you want to see?”

She giggled, looking at the sand, awkward and embarrassed. I turned my easel to show her her figure. The joy, could she see it? Was she too young to know how lucky she was to be so uncomplicated? She pointed at the squiggles I’d made. “What’s that?”

“That’s laughter. That’s what it looks like to me.”

She shook her head. “That’s not laugher.”

I offered out my palate, a brush. “Then paint it for me.”

She picked the sunshine colour: yellow. She painted with studious concentration in one low corner. A swirl? A lump? Two eyes?

“That’s a snail,” I said when she’d finished.

“I like snails. They’re funny looking. They make me laugh.”

“Gwyneth”? A voice called to her. “Come along now.”

She ran to her mother, two arms becoming a protective ring about her shoulders before she was gathered up. Precious little bundle.

I hoped she’d always run free. I hoped she wasn’t always told endlessly to be careful of this, careful of that. Don’t touch. Don’t look. Hardly be. No, you couldn’t trap a spirit like hers, why would you even dare to try?

I breathed the sea air deeply; smiled then out a laugh of my own. Snail shaped, of course. A swirl. A lump. Two eyes.


Rona J Frith

Chips

“Inside me lives a skinny girl crying to get out, but I can always shut the bitch up with chips,” Clare muttered, examining a lean crisp chip. She sat on a bench outside the fish and chip shop, her cod and chips hot in her lap on their polystyrene tray. Her thoughts brimmed with vinegar and cooking fat, her lips rimed with salt, her insides warmer now but never content. After this she had a doughnut planned in the cafe, after that perhaps a big Mac, fries and a nice thick milkshake at the new McDonalds. Oh yes, she had Saturday all planned out, all right. People said she had a pretty face, as if her face was all she was worth now she’d surrounded it with soft white padding. She hated them for that. Hate made her eat; she wrapped her hand about her hate right now and crammed more of it into her mouth. Hate tasted good, but it had a high fat content, it might one day clog her arteries and kill her. But right now, at fifteen, she didn't really care. She wasn't supposed to be here in this boring town but at fifteen your parents just bundled you up like luggage and carted you about. This town, that town. Never keeping still. Why were her parents still together at all? They ought to be divorced by now. They should be arguing and throwing things but no, they were like a couple of teenagers slobbering over each other every night. That was their version of normal.

A man waved at her as he weaved down the path, as he tilted up his head and yelled at a seagull. He came and sat next to her. Shouldn't tramps smell like pee and sweat? Shouldn't he be drunk? Shouldn't they be the last person you’d ever want to talk to? Clare chewed, swallowed. “Hello Doug.”

“Hello.” His voice was always diamond sharp. “A man painted me the other day.”

“Really? What colour?” She smiled. He didn't.

“Sandy. He painted me sandy. Like the beach, so no one can see me.”

“I can see you.”

“That’s because I'm not on the beach.”

He really was insane. She always wondered what he'd look like without his beard. Ugly? Handsome? Young? Old? “Who are you Doug?” she always asked him that. He always shrugged.

“Who do you want me to be?” He always said that too and she always came up with a silly answer. The Prime Minister. My Aunt Lilly. Roland Rat.

She just wasn't feeling so silly today. “Somebody normal.”

His blue, blue eyes stared at her, through her. “Might manage normal for a chip.”

She offered him the tray and he plucked one from it. He held it aloft, fingers reaching into the sky. She squinted and watched Whitey swoop. “He'll get fat,” she muttered.

“He'll be all right, Clare,” Doug returned, his voice suddenly as silky smooth as warm butter. “God gave him a pretty face.”

Clare huffed in disgust. “I hate normal.”

“Me too,” Doug said in his usual brittle tones. “That’s why I gave it up.”


Rona J Frith

Whitey

I watch a tramp sitting on a rock on the seashore. He chews on pebbles and starts swearing at the seagulls. 'Where's Whitey?' he yells. One of them is his friend, the locals say; only he's not sure which one it is. His name is Doug, I think, but I’m just a tourist, I came to observe, nothing more. My easel sways with the wind. It’s an isolated spot here between the rocks but he’s staring at me now in that vacant way of his. They say he was in a war but nobody’s said which one. He’s too young for it to be long ago. I try to capture the folds of his coats as he holds his hand above his head. The morning sun is low in the sky but it still blinds him. My brush sweeps across the canvas. I’m stealing life, I always think. Holding it prisoner. Playing God with a man who talks to birds. A man at my hotel told me he’s been yelling at the gulls for years. That he used to live in a home until it closed down. He pushes himself from his perch.

“What you doing, mister?” His words are brittle, unpleasant. He isn’t drunk. I always expect him to be but I’ve never seen a bottle of anything in his soiled fingers. His face is unshaven. His eyes two bright blue beacons shining out from a face darkened by madness.

“Painting.” I always keep my voice low and even. I imagine him carrying a gun, slung low. A soldier stalking me.

“Painting what?” he demands.

“Painting you.”

He moves around my easel and looks at the hunched figure on the rock. He laughs then leans around me to trace the faint lines of the seagulls above the figure’s head. “Is that Whitey?”

“Who’s Whitey?”

“Whitey’s flying. Whitey’s free.”

“Did Whitely die in the war?”

“No, Whitey didn’t die.” He shakes his head. “He flew. Up he went into a sky full of smoke and he never came back down. He turned into a bird, you see. That’s what Whitey did. He turned into a bird.”

“And you’re looking for him?”

“No, he’s there.” He points to the gulls dancing and whirling over the foam of the outgoing tide. He raises his hand and waves to them. “There’s Whitey.”

I stare at the gulls, waiting. Waiting. One splits from the flock, crying out, swooping earthward towards us. It follows Doug as he turns away. A white and black shadow, it follows him down the beach. “Whitey,” he calls to it. “Whitey.”

As I watch it stays with him. It rises and falls but it never turns away. “It’s just a gull,” I tell myself. “It’s just another gull. Anything else is madness.


Rona J Frith