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

Gwiddon

The men drift about the streets and pubs of Greyling Bay, their ropes slashed, their rudders broken. It’s a women’s world now. They own the cafes, the boarding houses and the knick-knackery shops. They clean the holiday cottages, mow the tidy handkerchief lawns, paint the fences bright blue and pink and plant the window-boxes with pansies and geraniums. The men no longer hunt after the shoals of silver but collect coins in buckets from tourists who peer suspiciously at the rust on Gwiddon’s breast and ask, “is it safe?” before stepping aboard with nervous, sandaled steps.

Yes. Greyling Bay had changed but not so much that Owen can’t still see the granite and feel the pain beneath the hanging baskets, and feel the worn treads in the steps up to The Jolly Fisherman, once the harbour-master’s office but now a shop selling baskets from China at silly prices, crab shells turned into ashtrays and plaster seagulls on metal spikes. Does it matter? The sea is still there, sighing, whispering and wailing. The bitch. The whore. His lover. She will bring the men to her again. She’s only biding her time.

Owen wipes his eyes, surprised to find them wet. The warming sun has lifted the wind. Gwiddon bobs like a bath toy on waves flecked with white-tipped waves.

He jumps down. Her engine starts first time. Sweet as a nut. Ann will be wondering where he is, complaining about wasted fuel. She has a meeting this afternoon with the local tourist board and he has to pick Beth and Gwyneth from nursery and then he and Gwiddon will chug around the bay, wearing a silly pirate’s hat with a harvest of eager tourists on board and dream that once their quota is exceeded he can toss them overboard.

Once he wished for sons. Now he is glad he has none.


Sally Zigmond