Mrs Irwin Says

“Let’s draw a line in the sand,” the child said.

She crouched down next to this mystery that had been born to her at the onset of middle age. Her knees clicked as she lowered her frame to the level of her daughter’s world view. She had no idea why they were drawing a line in the sand, but she didn’t need to wonder for too long. Ella told her soon enough.

“Mrs Irwin says that we should always draw a line under things, and then we can start again.”

Ella paused to check her mother was listening. Satisfied that the correct amount of attention was being paid to her discourse, she continued.

“So we are drawing a line here in the sand so that we can start again.”

Another pause, during which it became clear that a response was required. Sarah nodded at the child, who nodded back once, with approval.

“Mrs Irwin says that when you draw a line in the sand, you’ve not got to cross it.”

A tiny frown creased the skin between Ella’s eyebrows. She had realised that she didn’t fully understand Mrs Irwin’s point about not crossing the line.

“I think it’s a symbol,” she said, staring hard at the line she had drawn with the stick, willing it to give up the secret of why it mustn’t be crossed if they were starting again.

“I think it’s a symbol, too,” Sarah said, reaching out a hand towards her daughter, and almost stroking the back of the child’s head. She pulled her hand back just before it made contact and let it fall back to her side. Ella was leaning forward, down on her haunches now, too; like a smaller version of her mother. She was examining the line intently.

“Mummy, what is sand?” she asked eventually, looking up at Sarah with the frown that said that she meant business. She wanted a proper answer and wouldn’t be put off with half truths.

Sarah stood up; her knees and spine were killing her. She arched her back, supporting the lumbar region with her hands.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Quartz, I think. And ground up shells. The remains of pebbles, worn down by the sea. Crab skeletons too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Ella was pursing her lips. She wasn’t satisfied.

“We can look it up when we get home. There’s bound to be something in the big encyclopaedia.”

Ella loved looking through the encyclopaedia. She whispered words under her breath, stringing the sounds of the letters together, testing them out before committing herself to saying them louder.

“But where does it come from?” she said. “How did it get there in there first place? Do you think that it wasn’t there before, and then after millions of years it was there?”

They had started walking along the beach, away from the drawn line that they mustn’t cross. Their postures were identical; heads down, watching where to place their feet, hands in jacket pockets. Sarah wondered what would happen to them if they did cross the line. Maybe Mrs Irwin would enlighten them soon.

“Do you think it was stone and rocks and then the sea rubbed the pebbles and the crabs and the quartz until the sand was there?”

“Probably. I don’t know. We’ll look it up, though, eh?”

“Can you make sand into glass? Kai’s brother told him you made sand into glass.”

“Yes, you do. Or you use sand to make glass. You heat it up somehow until it melts and then when it’s cool, it’s glass.”

Sarah’s head was beginning to buzz with all the questions.

“Kai’s brother says that Kai’s dad did a bunk when Kai’s mum got pregnant. Kai’s brother said that you must be the bloody Virgin Mary because I haven’t got a dad.”

“Blessed Virgin Mary. That’s her name. Not bloody. Bloody’s swearing.”

“I know. Kai’s brother said bloody Virgin Mary.”

“Oh. Well, I’m not the Virgin Mary.”

“I know you’re not, because she’s in the Bible and that was 2000 years ago. Mrs Irwin told us.” Ella paused to look at a shell in the sand. It was a limpet shell, grey and domed and lacking its occupant. Sarah waited while Ella decided whether the shell was treasure enough to take home with her.

With the shell safely stowed in her pocket, where her fingers could feel repeatedly the ridges on the exterior and the smoothness on the inside, Ella carried on her report on what Kai’s brother and Mrs Irwin had told her recently.

Sarah began to think she might need to find another child minder.

“I don’t have any grandparents, do I? Kai’s brother says that makes you an orphaned.”

“Orphan. No ‘d’ at the end. But I’m not an orphan. We just don’t see your grandparents. You know that.”

Ella was silent for a moment. Sarah wondered what kinds of tales her daughter told to Mrs Irwin and her two boys. She wondered whether these tales were linked to the smile of pity Mrs Irwin gave her when she went to collect Ella at the end of her working day. Sarah had always assumed the pity was there because she was a single mum with no support.

Sarah knew that she had to tell Ella soon the story of how she came to be. She didn’t want to lie to the child, but how did you tell such a story? How did you find the words that would be understandable to a child. Ella was bright, the product of too much time in one adult’s company, but she wasn’t old enough to understand words like rape and abortion and abandonment.

The boy who had raped Sarah wasn’t known to her. He was a seventeen year old opportunist who wanted to mug her for what little she had in her bag. When he realised that there wasn’t anything worth having in her bag, he decided to rape her instead, two hundred yards away from her front door.

Her husband had been in the house, but he hadn’t heard anything. Two hundred yards was too far for her voice to be heard. The nothing distance from the alleyway where he had dragged her was too far for her to be heard. Nobody from the surrounding houses came out to help.

She had returned home clutching her clothes around her. He had taken her bag, so she didn’t have keys to get into the house. She had had to ring the bell to be let in.

The practicalities of the following days gave her something to hold onto. The police interviews. Cancelling her credit and debit cards. Changing the locks on the house. Reporting her driver’s licence missing. Her mobile phone stolen.

He was caught quickly and she faced him in court. Her bag was recovered, but not her phone. He had sold that on as soon as he could. He was jailed, and they used the couple of months he would be locked away to find new jobs and move towns, to be certain he wouldn’t come and find her when he got out.

It was a possibility, the police had told her, although they didn’t think that he would.

She didn’t want to stay in that town, anyway.

They moved to a suburb south of the next city, and tried to start again. Sarah’s husband and family were supportive. They did their best to help her through the healing process.

And then she had discovered that she was pregnant.

Words like monster and abortion were used. The stricture “You can’t!”, complete with exclamation mark that hung in the air like a sword waiting to be taken up, was shouted at her from all sides when she said that she was going to keep the child.

Her husband left soon after she made the decision. Her parents refused to have anything to do with her. She was on her own with a monster’s baby growing in her belly. In her head, though, no monster was involved. Just her and her unborn child.

She had moved to the coast, where there was no chance of anybody knowing her. She had money from the sale of the house. Money saved up. She managed for the nine months of the pregnancy, living simply, keeping herself to herself.

When Ella was born it was autumn. She had six months at home with her child, getting to know her, learning to love her, and then she started to look for work. The nearest secondary schools were across the estuary or down the coast. She applied for supply at both, and somehow gained enough work to make a living at the end of the final term before the summer vacation started.

She would deposit Ella at the nearest crèche each morning, trying not to cry at the wrench she felt by leaving her flesh and blood in the care of strangers.

The summer days were spent on the beach at the bottom of the garden of the tiny cottage she had managed to buy. The evenings were spent reading together; the nights, curled up in the only bed that would fit into the house, sharing each other’s heat.

This continued until Ella was old enough to start at school. The only variation in the theme was that Sarah became a full time member of staff at the school down the coast, and the money enabled her to make the cottage more inhabitable.

Six years, and now she was discussing the crossing of lines, the make-up of sand and the manufacture of glass on a bleak August afternoon, one week before the start of the new term.

They had walked almost as far as they could. The beach ended in a scree of shale, and the crumbling slate rocks dipped their toes into the sea. Ella always wanted to round the rocks, when the tide was low enough, but Sarah knew that, beyond the shelter of their cove, the sands were dangerous and there was too much chance of being cut off to risk it.

Ella scampered ahead to greet the black spaniel that lived a few houses down from them. Its owner was standing gazing out to sea. He was a man of few words. They were mostly, “Hello” and “Come on then, Blackie.”

Ella and the spaniel played together for a while, chasing each other round in circles and skewed figures of eight, kicking up sand and pretending to face each other off. Sarah smiled to hear Ella laughing. The party was broken up by the dog’s owner saying, “Come on then, Blackie,” and walking back up the beach to the path that led up to the main road.

Ella came running over to her mother and demanded a piggy back. Sarah carried her mysterious child on her back all the way to the cottage.

“What do you want for tea?” she asked.

“Fish fingers, beans and potatoes,” came the reply.

“Sounds good.”

“It’s my favourite.”

“I know.”

“And then we’ll look up sand and glass?”

“Then we’ll look up sand and glass.”

Ella snuggled into Sarah’s shoulder, her head on one side, looking out at the sea.

“Mrs Irwin says the sea used to be lower than this and that one day we’re all going to drown.”

© J R Hargreaves September 2006