To the Sea Page 27

  Branna was wading in the shallows. It’s a wild coast in that part of Mayo and there were big rollers further out, but it was low tide and the water Branna was playing in was no more than ankle deep. The water rippling onto the sand was slow and gentle as the tide was almost at the turn. Even so, I was on edge that we were a long way back from the waterline. But Getha was relaxed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom,’ she said. ‘She cannot come to harm.’

  Getha sat between my legs, and with the sun shining on my back and my wife in her damp loosened clothing in my arms, I began kissing her pale long neck and feeling for the rest of her. I looked up to scan the beach. Ida and the boys were a long way off and still engrossed in their game. Branna was right in front of us happy in the shallows. I lost myself momentarily with Getha. After what could only have been a minute, I looked down to the beach to check on Branna.

  She was no longer on the shore. I could see her little blonde head bobbing out in the slow blue swell beyond the whitewater. I leapt to my feet, screaming at the boys to run to her, but they were too far away and couldn’t hear me over the waves and screeching gulls. I raced down towards the water, tearing at my shirt and my belt. I could hear Getha shouting behind me but I couldn’t make out her words. I was screaming Branna’s name and focusing closely on her so I would not lose her in the surf. Getha and I reached the water at the same time. Getha had removed her skirt and blouse and was in her undergarments. As she came beside me, she pushed me hard and I fell down in the shallow water.

  ‘Quiet, Tom,’ she said. ‘Don’t frighten her.’

  I could make no sense of what she was saying. Branna was drowning. She may already be dead. Getha ran into the water and dived into a wave.

  I lost sight of them both. I stood on the shore not knowing what to do. A moment later, I saw Branna surface even further from the shore. My heart was racing and my whole body was in a panic. She was so far out, I doubted I could swim to her. And yet her head was again bobbing on the surface, as if she was being held there from beneath. In no time at all, Getha was beside her. Time was lost to me. Getha had been by my side just a moment earlier and now she was out in the big swell with Branna. I couldn’t understand what was happening. But in a flash of white, Branna was off. She turned away from Getha and was speeding through the water like I have seen seals and otters do just below the surface. I watched as Getha followed in her wake. Their white trails shattered the deep blue of the heaving waves and criss-crossed each other as Getha chased Branna. Their speed was breathtaking.

  I kept my eyes on Branna, still more fearful for my tiny daughter than Getha who I knew was a strong swimmer, and then I saw the most incredible sight of that already incredible afternoon. Branna came speeding down the face of a wave, she turned sharply up and, as she neared the crest of the wave in her upward sweep, she leapt high into the air and I could hear her squeal of delight. I knew that squeal from games I played with her that ended in tumbles and tickles and choking laughter. She was airborne above the wave, her little body arched and her blonde hair sparkling and trailing behind her. In that moment a stream of light, which I somehow knew was Getha, flashed into the air after Branna. They held suspended for a moment – mother and daughter wrapped in an embrace high above the water – and then dropped. They dissolved into the water’s blue surface.

  Their two heads surfaced seconds later close to the shore. Getha was standing in the waist-deep water with Branna in her arms. Branna was crying loudly. She was not hurt. She was angry. I recognised her tantrum wailings.

  Getha walked up to me with a screaming Branna in her arms. She had to calm her but I could see that they were both unharmed.

  As I stood looking down on them, my body filled with rage. I grabbed Branna by her narrow shoulders and held her to my face. She did not stop screaming.

  ‘Let me go,’ she screamed into my face. ‘I want to be in the water. Let me go.’

  She was writhing in my hands which I could see were holding her too tightly. I knew I was hurting her but I was too angry to care. I put her down hard on the sand and dragged her behind me.

  ‘You will not go back in the water. We’re going home,’ I bellowed.

  Getha was beside me, begging me to calm down and to let Branna go. I would not be told what to do. I was awash with fury. I continued to drag Branna across the dunes. I didn’t bother about my shoes or shirt. I didn’t bother about anything other than getting Branna home.

  She was crying hard now and she wouldn’t walk. I was dragging her like a doll behind me. Getha was yelling at me, loud and frantic, but I could not understand her words and I did not choose to. If she had come near enough to me, I knew I would have struck her. I felt murderous towards Branna. Her screaming was fuelling my anger. Everything was engorging my rage. The sunshine. The sound of the waves. The soft grass beneath my feet.

  But the sight and sound of Branna was more than I could bear. I picked her up roughly and threw her over my shoulder. She was kicking me and pulling at my hair and I slapped her hard on her buttocks. She stopped momentarily, from surprise I suspect as I was not usually a harsh father, but when she started screaming again, I hit her repeatedly. Now her screams became cries of pain and fear. This was no longer a tantrum. I could feel her desperation to get away from me, to save herself. I held her tighter and hit her hard across her bare legs as she lunged towards Getha.

  Getha was pulling at my arm and I could hear her crying and begging me to stop but I had no softness in my heart for her. I didn’t know where this fury had come from but now it was everywhere. I strode towards home oblivious to everything outside my rage.

  After a while I noticed all the yelling and crying had ceased. Branna was lying silent across my shoulder, apart from some strangled sobs escaping from her heaving little chest every minute or two. I couldn’t see or hear Getha but I knew she was behind me. She was wise to stay there.

  The gravel of the carriageway was painful under my bare feet but it did not slow me down. I heard the front door slam against the wall as I threw it open and stormed into the house. Now that she was home, Branna started to yell and cry again. She was screaming for her mother.

  I stopped at the foot of the stairs uncertain where to take my fury now that I was home.

  ‘Give her to me.’ It was Getha’s quiet voice behind me. She was flushed from the long trek home. She must have had to run to keep up with me. She’d stayed close to her baby. Her face was distorted with grief.

  ‘I will not. I no longer trust you with my children.’

  Getha collapsed against the balustrade. If I had struck her I could not have done more damage.

  ‘What’s happened?’ My mother came quickly down from the upstairs drawing room and tried to take Branna from me. I would have been glad to get away from her screams and writhing but, in my anger, I held her fast and would not let her go to my mother’s outstretched arms. My mother went to Getha who was now sitting on the stairs crying wildly.

  ‘Where are the boys? Where is Ida? What has happened?’ begged my frantic mother. ‘Tell me. Tell me.’

  I couldn’t cope with the questioning. I vaulted up the stairs two at a time and took Branna to her nursery room. I put her down hard on the wooden floor. She tried to run to the door to escape me but I grabbed her and threw her roughly onto her bed. Her head banged hard against the wall.

  ‘Do not move,’ I said. I recognised that hard quiet voice. I had only ever heard it whispered into a target’s ear. Branna heard it too and gulped in air to steady her breathing and stifle her sobs. She found her cloth doll on her pillow and hugged it to her. She lay on her bed looking up at me, quietly sobbing. She put her trembling thumb in her mouth and grabbed a small twirl of her hair. Her wide blue eyes remained on me. I could not meet her gaze. I turned my back on her and walked over to the big window.

  Branna’s nursery window looks out over the hills. I could see Ida and the boys coming home. Ida was walking slowly well behind them carrying our forgotten clothes and
picnic basket. The boys were still running and throwing the ball and tackling each other in a new and wilder game. A sea mist was moving in, hovering above the horizon. The day had turned and was cooling quickly. I was still only in my trousers, in my half naked state ready to swim out to save Branna. The cold sea air was tumbling across the Atlantic and would in the next hour or two be up against the house, whiting out the last of the summer day. I was still burning hot. I opened the window and let the cool wind blow against my sweating body. I breathed deeply of the fresh sea air. Slowly my breathing settled and my anger ebbed.

  When I turned back to Branna she was asleep. She was still in her wet petticoats but I wouldn’t wake her. Her brow was creased and she had tears sitting on her long blonde eyelashes. Her cheeks were mottled red from her ordeal and her forehead and upper lip were beaded with sweat. Her long damp hair was spread matted over the pillow and two of her chubby pink fingers were entwined in some long strands. She sucked her thumb slowly and rhythmically. Her sobs were less frequent now but even in her sleep they swelled in gulps from deep within her chest and escaped into the room.

  Our combined grief filled the room. I had ruthlessly beaten my child. I hadn’t known I was capable of such a thing. I had thought that love was all I could feel for my children. But love had not restrained my arm or my heart as I hit her. I am a big man and she such a tiny girl and I had beaten her savagely. Her little girl thighs were red and already I could see the beginnings of two wide ugly welts on her thin white legs. Her arms would be bruised tomorrow where my fingers had gripped her too tight. I remembered the loud crack of her head slamming into the wall when I’d thrown her onto her bed. I wanted to feel her little skull for damage but I was too scared to touch her.

  My rage was spent and now it was my turn to weep. I couldn’t face Getha. I sat on the windowsill as the light faded into late afternoon, watching my precious daughter sleep a restless sleep filled with a new terror in her life: her father.

  In the deep purple light of evening, my mother came into the room. Branna was still sleeping and I was sitting on the floor near her bed. The room was cold now.

  ‘Go to Getha,’ said my mother softly. ‘I’ll stay with Branna.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Getha needs you, Tom. Go to her.’

  Branna slept on. As I stood and looked down on her, she whimpered. My heart broke for her suffering. Suffering I had caused her. But my mother was right. It was time for me to face all the damage I had wrought.

  In the dim light of our bedroom, I could make out Getha lying across our bed. She was wearing the red silk gown my father had brought her back from a trip to the orient. Her long hair was startling white against it. I couldn’t see her eyes. I prayed she was asleep. As I walked closer to the bed, I could see that she was not. Her eyes were red and her pale skin ghostly in the deepening shadows. Her hollow eyes held my gaze. I lay on the bed beside her with my face close to hers. She smelled cold and salty. I stroked her cheek and a tear slid down her face. I had no words of regret or sorrow that could mend this damage. She remained still.

  My body made all my decisions for me. I removed my trousers and untied her silk gown. She was naked underneath it as I knew she would be. I lay my naked body on hers as tenderly as I could. Her body was cold. Bloodless. I kissed her icy wet face. My lips froze on her skin. My tongue blistered to the cold of her flesh. The ice of the North Atlantic passed in a slow flow beneath my hands and parched lips, separated only by Getha’s thin salty skin. Her eyes were empty black depths. She was lifeless under me. I had killed something that day and I feared I could not resurrect it.

  I wrapped my warmth around her white limbs. My body begged her back. I kissed every inch of her salty being. Through the pores of her cold skin, she heard of my love for her. My unflinching trust in her. My deep repentance for all the damage I’d wrought that day. For all that I’d taken from her in our marriage and continued to destroy with my selfishness. I entered her and felt my own life’s hardness gripped in an icy grasp. I was not welcome there. I was out of my depth. Getha’s deep ice floes surrounded me, creaking as they moved away, and then just as I thought I must flee that hostile place: silence, stillness. Slack water. I was turning her. Tidal slow, she came back. Her cold sea blood warmed. Her flesh regained its pinkness and she flowed back to life in mournful surrender. We joined our bodies and our lives back together.

  Afterwards, I lay with Getha warm and soft in my arms, her gown draped across our spent bodies as we fell asleep in the quiet night.

  Sometime late in that long night I awoke. Hail was clattering hard against the windows. Getha stirred beside me. I was starving. I tried to disentangle myself from Getha without disturbing her but she woke.

  Outside the door, someone had put a small table with a tray of food. There were slices of cold meat, some pickled onions, potatoes, cheese and chutneys and half a loaf of bread. There was also a small bowl of apricots the children had picked earlier in the day and a jug of barley water. Leaning up against the jug was a piece of notepaper. I lit the candle beside the bed so I could read it. I recognised Ida’s neat script. ‘B is with me tonight. All is well.’ I read the note to Getha and she smiled at me.

  ‘Food.’

  ‘I’m famished,’ Getha said, sitting up and draping her gown around her.

  ‘Me too.’

  I placed the tray on the bed between us. Our picnic at last. The hail continued its battering against the windows, the candle flickered and I knew it was time.

  I cut some slices of cheese and bread and said, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s a long story and I cannot say that you’ll like it.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  And for the rest of that night, she told me Ornice’s story. We fell back asleep just as the sky was lightening. I believed the story. I’d seen the evidence of it. And, much more easily than I would have expected, I embraced it. It tied us all to our land. To Mayo. To Ireland.

  The story should have made me pack my family up the next day and move us all to safety at Rosetta. But I did not.

  ‘I don’t know how to face Branna.’

  We were still in bed, still warm from each other’s bodies and sleep but it was time to rise. I couldn’t hear the children but they would all be up.

  ‘She’s a small child, Tom. You are her father,’ said Getha. ‘She’ll get over it. And so will you.’

  I doubted she believed her own rousing words. I did not.

  ‘I’m to blame. I should not have left her near the shore unattended,’ Getha said. ‘But Branna has learned a lesson I have not yet been able to teach her. Yesterday, she did what she knows she should not. I doubt she will do so again. Your beating may have saved her life.’

  ‘Did you have to be taught your lessons so harshly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Getha was right. Branna was timid with me that day and she clung to Getha but laughed as children do when we played our familiar games. I was too afraid to look at her bare legs and arms as I knew they were badly bruised and welted. I spent most of that day laying myself bare to her; as bare as a father can to a five-year-old. And the day ended with tentative hugs and kisses and she sat in my lap as I read her favourite story, the Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. I didn’t go to the nursery at her bath time for I could not bear to see the damage I’d caused. Even as I kissed her goodnight, I didn’t pick her up out of her bed and walk with her to the window to say goodnight to the moon and the stars as was our usual practice.

  Small children are endlessly forgiving of their parents. Branna and I became closer than most fathers and daughters over the remaining years of her life. She was such a lovely little girl, so quick to laugh but thoughtful and caring. I knew she had another life that I couldn’t share with her, but the life she shared with me was enough. I knew I could not ask more of her. I never again laid a hand on her in anger or discipline. Getha despaired that I was too extreme in my refusal to not even scold Branna. The boys I would discipline when i
t was required, but Branna and I had an understanding. She had received her lifetime’s worth of paternal punishment.

  Getha knew how to teach Branna the lessons she needed to learn. No matter how much I begged to be included, I was not. I sometimes followed Getha and Branna when they disappeared down to the seaside for an afternoon but I never saw them doing anything other than what any mother and young daughter would do.

  They swam more than others and they were regularly teased by my mother and neighbours that Australians must be a hardy lot to swim all year round but that was all. I was never again to see them as I had the afternoon of the picnic. Getha was insistent that this was not a game and not something I could be fully trusted with. A loose word, a manly brag or, God forbid, our marriage should falter and she would be beholden to me in ways unthinkable for her future life. It was hard enough, Getha said, living in Mayo with me and everyone else speaking Irish. Mother and daughter had no secret language now and Getha lived in fear of exposure. Silence was the only way of life they could know there. They could never relax. And Getha trained Branna well for I was not to see my daughter in her water element again or ever overhear a loose word.

  But our lives were not to return to the happiness of the days prior to the summer picnic. We repaired ourselves and there was much joy still to be shared but we were on a downward spiral into blackness.

  Getha became more determined to return to Tasmania and Rosetta. Her mother had been urging her home since Branna’s birth and I knew that Getha was missing Meara and the assistance she could provide in rearing Branna. And she was struggling under the weight of her life in Mayo. The Atlantic would not let her be. And now I could see it. Some days, Getha barely woke. She would wander around Kindea in a bleary-eyed trance, oblivious to me and the children. Sometimes I would wake at night and she was not in our bed. She always returned by dawn, cold and damp and exhausted. She was no longer the bright girl I had married in Hobart. She begged me for the safety and relaxation that could only be found at Rosetta.