07/08/2020, 17:56
Fandom: -
Summary: For the prompt 'Beach' -- warning for language & subject matter -- title taken from Walt Whitman's "On the Beach"
Words: 1369
“Don’t.”
“I told you it was going to rain. Why did we have to go to the fucking beach on the only rainy day we’ve had for weeks?”
“Language, Jacob,” our father warned.
I didn’t tell my brother that it had, in fact, rained only three days ago, when we had been visiting our aunt Sheela two miles down from the city. Or last week, when I waited for Louisa to come home from her date, drenched to the bone. Jacob never listened, he only talked. He was somewhat similar to our father in that respect, except that our father didn’t talk much either.
“What kind of bird is that, dad?” Louisa asked, skilfully directing our father’s attention to herself. Part of me suspected she relished in it, being both father’s and mother’s favourite. It was for her that we made the trip to the beach in the first place. Today was the last day of her old life, she called it. She’d be off to study in Brighton, catching a train first thing tomorrow morning, and she wanted to spend her last day on Yorkshire soil on the beach, with all of her family members.
It didn’t seem important at any rate, that day on the beach. In all fairness, I resented our last day together just as much as Jacob did. It was barely fifteen degrees, and the wind and rain bit away at my skin. And yet I remember it with a certain fondness, Louisa chasing a bird in her red dress, her hair dripping from the rain, not from the sea. Our father walking behind her, sometimes almost a smile upon his face as he looked upon his only daughter, pointing out mussels every now and then. Jacob trudging through the wet sand and crushing shells beneath his large boots as if he held a personal grudge against them, and me, following along with mother. It didn’t matter that I had hardly spoken to my sister at all, having been in a fight only the previous day. I regret that fight – a plate smashing as I refused to help her with the dishes, an angry scowl on her face and my father’s hand slapping mine with a spite only my brother had tasted before – and more so how I remember it even more vividly than our day at Bridlington, and yet I won’t let this taint my memory of that gloomy Bridlington day. My sister had been right, as she always was. It was to be the last day of her old life. It was to be the last day of all of our old lives.
On the sixth of September 1975, all the front pages were filled with the devastating news of the London Hilton. The Bridlington Free Press was no exception to the rule, and yet we never mourned those dead. That day we got a phone call from down south, distorted and hardly comprehensible. A friend of Louisa’s, who had to give the phone to a police officer after a few minutes.
I remember this very vividly as well. It was my father who answered the phone. It was only us two awake, as it was only seven in the morning. Mother always slept in due to her bad constitution, and she had caught a cold on the beach. Jacob followed her suit and pretended to be sick, roping me into lying about hearing him throw up during the night so our father would believe it. All I worried about that morning was if he would find out, and what he’d do to Jacob if he did. It wasn’t as if Jacob still went to school or had any job to speak of, but the grass had to be mowed and the roof still had some repairing to undergo, none of which Jacob was eager to lend his energy for.
“It’s okay, Niamh. It’s okay. Just speak slowly for me, okay?”
I immediately knew something was wrong. My father’s voice was soft, and his hand was clenched around the telephone was if it was his lifeline, his only hope. My father’s voice was never soft.
He never gave us the details of the phone call. Never told us what the officer told him that made all the colour drain from his face. He went to identify the body on his own – I was too young, mother had her constitution, and Jacob didn’t want to go in the first place – and came back two days later, not saying a word before retiring to his private office.
Only four days after the call, when I read the newspaper, I learned that they found her lifeless body on the beach. There were traces of violence, though I could only guess how she was killed, what he – for I always imagined the murderer to be a man – had done to her after the party she attended. Whether he had stabbed her, strangled her as she was drunk on the alcohol my father thought he had always taught her to keep away from, whether he had cut off her limbs, whether he had raped her and drowned her. The police didn’t have any suspects and were calling for eye witnesses and information. They would never find any, but back then I still had hope. I called Niamh once, to see if she would speak to me, if there was anything she could tell me that she maybe hadn’t told the police. She told me to fuck off.
She haunted my dreams. She still does. I see her in her red dress, her hair dripping, but soon enough she turns into a dead girl, a sister I don’t recognise, with blue lips and lifeless eyes.
“I told you it was going to rain.” Jacob looked smug, as if he possessed a great wisdom that I didn’t.
“It’s England, it’s always going to fucking rain.”
“Don’t let your wife hear your foul mouth, Michael, or you’ll go to bed without supper tonight.”
I rolled my eyes at my brother. “She’s not my mother.”
“Who’s not your mother?” Brianna’s smile would even have melted my father’s heart, had he still been alive. I picked my daughter up, and she nestled her wet crows’ nest against my neck. When I first picked her up, I had immediately understood why my father had always chosen Louisa, even beyond her death. You can’t say no to such bright blue eyes.
She fell asleep in my arms on the way back to the car. I strapped her into the front seat, and rolled a cigarette outside of the car, pulling my hood down and allowing the raindrops to fall on my face.
“She’s not her, you know.” Jacob looked at me, uncharacteristically seriously, and offered me a light.
I sighed. “I know that, Jake. I know.” They looked alike, though. They both had the Hawthorne nose from my mother’s side, and sometimes when she called out for me in the night, I imagined my sister with strange hands upon her body, crying out for her brothers.
“She’s irreplaceable.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. Today would have been Louisa’s sixtieth birthday. I pretended I didn’t see his tears. “Let’s go home.”
“Yeah,” Jacob agreed. “Home.”
The rain came down on the window with a vigour as we turned out of the car park, and I looked at my daughter, miraculously still asleep through it all with her yellow coat still on, and I smiled. I knew I could never leave the beach behind, not really. It was as if a part of my sister had remained there in Bridlington’s sand, no matter how many miles away she had lost her life, crawling underneath our skins. For not being there when she needed us, for not doing enough. But when I looked at my daughter, her wet curls drying slowly as slept, I knew Louisa would always be here with me too, in her red dress, dancing in the rain like the little girl she was. And for now, that was enough.
Summary: For the prompt 'Beach' -- warning for language & subject matter -- title taken from Walt Whitman's "On the Beach"
Words: 1369
Something There Is More immortal Even Than the Stars
I heard Jacob groan when the first drops of rain started to fall.“Don’t.”
“I told you it was going to rain. Why did we have to go to the fucking beach on the only rainy day we’ve had for weeks?”
“Language, Jacob,” our father warned.
I didn’t tell my brother that it had, in fact, rained only three days ago, when we had been visiting our aunt Sheela two miles down from the city. Or last week, when I waited for Louisa to come home from her date, drenched to the bone. Jacob never listened, he only talked. He was somewhat similar to our father in that respect, except that our father didn’t talk much either.
“What kind of bird is that, dad?” Louisa asked, skilfully directing our father’s attention to herself. Part of me suspected she relished in it, being both father’s and mother’s favourite. It was for her that we made the trip to the beach in the first place. Today was the last day of her old life, she called it. She’d be off to study in Brighton, catching a train first thing tomorrow morning, and she wanted to spend her last day on Yorkshire soil on the beach, with all of her family members.
It didn’t seem important at any rate, that day on the beach. In all fairness, I resented our last day together just as much as Jacob did. It was barely fifteen degrees, and the wind and rain bit away at my skin. And yet I remember it with a certain fondness, Louisa chasing a bird in her red dress, her hair dripping from the rain, not from the sea. Our father walking behind her, sometimes almost a smile upon his face as he looked upon his only daughter, pointing out mussels every now and then. Jacob trudging through the wet sand and crushing shells beneath his large boots as if he held a personal grudge against them, and me, following along with mother. It didn’t matter that I had hardly spoken to my sister at all, having been in a fight only the previous day. I regret that fight – a plate smashing as I refused to help her with the dishes, an angry scowl on her face and my father’s hand slapping mine with a spite only my brother had tasted before – and more so how I remember it even more vividly than our day at Bridlington, and yet I won’t let this taint my memory of that gloomy Bridlington day. My sister had been right, as she always was. It was to be the last day of her old life. It was to be the last day of all of our old lives.
On the sixth of September 1975, all the front pages were filled with the devastating news of the London Hilton. The Bridlington Free Press was no exception to the rule, and yet we never mourned those dead. That day we got a phone call from down south, distorted and hardly comprehensible. A friend of Louisa’s, who had to give the phone to a police officer after a few minutes.
I remember this very vividly as well. It was my father who answered the phone. It was only us two awake, as it was only seven in the morning. Mother always slept in due to her bad constitution, and she had caught a cold on the beach. Jacob followed her suit and pretended to be sick, roping me into lying about hearing him throw up during the night so our father would believe it. All I worried about that morning was if he would find out, and what he’d do to Jacob if he did. It wasn’t as if Jacob still went to school or had any job to speak of, but the grass had to be mowed and the roof still had some repairing to undergo, none of which Jacob was eager to lend his energy for.
“It’s okay, Niamh. It’s okay. Just speak slowly for me, okay?”
I immediately knew something was wrong. My father’s voice was soft, and his hand was clenched around the telephone was if it was his lifeline, his only hope. My father’s voice was never soft.
He never gave us the details of the phone call. Never told us what the officer told him that made all the colour drain from his face. He went to identify the body on his own – I was too young, mother had her constitution, and Jacob didn’t want to go in the first place – and came back two days later, not saying a word before retiring to his private office.
Only four days after the call, when I read the newspaper, I learned that they found her lifeless body on the beach. There were traces of violence, though I could only guess how she was killed, what he – for I always imagined the murderer to be a man – had done to her after the party she attended. Whether he had stabbed her, strangled her as she was drunk on the alcohol my father thought he had always taught her to keep away from, whether he had cut off her limbs, whether he had raped her and drowned her. The police didn’t have any suspects and were calling for eye witnesses and information. They would never find any, but back then I still had hope. I called Niamh once, to see if she would speak to me, if there was anything she could tell me that she maybe hadn’t told the police. She told me to fuck off.
She haunted my dreams. She still does. I see her in her red dress, her hair dripping, but soon enough she turns into a dead girl, a sister I don’t recognise, with blue lips and lifeless eyes.
“I told you it was going to rain.” Jacob looked smug, as if he possessed a great wisdom that I didn’t.
“It’s England, it’s always going to fucking rain.”
“Don’t let your wife hear your foul mouth, Michael, or you’ll go to bed without supper tonight.”
I rolled my eyes at my brother. “She’s not my mother.”
“Who’s not your mother?” Brianna’s smile would even have melted my father’s heart, had he still been alive. I picked my daughter up, and she nestled her wet crows’ nest against my neck. When I first picked her up, I had immediately understood why my father had always chosen Louisa, even beyond her death. You can’t say no to such bright blue eyes.
She fell asleep in my arms on the way back to the car. I strapped her into the front seat, and rolled a cigarette outside of the car, pulling my hood down and allowing the raindrops to fall on my face.
“She’s not her, you know.” Jacob looked at me, uncharacteristically seriously, and offered me a light.
I sighed. “I know that, Jake. I know.” They looked alike, though. They both had the Hawthorne nose from my mother’s side, and sometimes when she called out for me in the night, I imagined my sister with strange hands upon her body, crying out for her brothers.
“She’s irreplaceable.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. Today would have been Louisa’s sixtieth birthday. I pretended I didn’t see his tears. “Let’s go home.”
“Yeah,” Jacob agreed. “Home.”
The rain came down on the window with a vigour as we turned out of the car park, and I looked at my daughter, miraculously still asleep through it all with her yellow coat still on, and I smiled. I knew I could never leave the beach behind, not really. It was as if a part of my sister had remained there in Bridlington’s sand, no matter how many miles away she had lost her life, crawling underneath our skins. For not being there when she needed us, for not doing enough. But when I looked at my daughter, her wet curls drying slowly as slept, I knew Louisa would always be here with me too, in her red dress, dancing in the rain like the little girl she was. And for now, that was enough.
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