Stonewalled

Now that there was another girl in the house I had someone to donate my clothes to, and try - in vain - to keep my dressing up dolls out of her drooling mouth. Siobhan was busy with this new baby, and Little Thomasina was busy with Barty, and I felt not sidelined  - oddly - but free. It was as if I could slip through the cracks and inhabit a strange nether world where I was at ease. I retreated further into a dreamscape where I was famous and beautiful, riding in an open topped car in a ticker tape parade in New York, with my soul mate, who was simply known as Joe. I even dreamed about him once, and felt this over-riding sense of completeness and connection, putting the lie to the old adage that you cannot miss what you never had. 

One day when Nicola was only a few months old we went on a glorious summer’s day trip to Slade, a fishing village down the coast. Between all the kit we brought, the Hillman Hunter was packed to the gills. There was the 5 of us, a Tansad  for the child, rods, reels, bait, blankets, sunhats, cream, a picnic, drinks and pretty much the entire ground floor of the house  rolled up and placed in the boot or under our feet. We established camp and like every other children the world over, ate the picnic as soon as we got out of the car. Then Little Thomasina and his son, and Siobhan and her baby got down to their business, my Father leading Barty to beach cast and fish for hours, while  my Mother began the complicated procedure of winding the infant.

“You can’t go in that water for an hour, Shell” said Siobhan as she watched me from behind her shades.

“I’ll just go and play over there” I announced and indicated a huge flat rock up behind her on a slope.

“Be careful, and don’t go out of my sight”.

On the rock, I watched her as she watched me and as soon as she was undressing and rubbing lotion into the baby’s extremities, I seized my chance, and went a little further, and then a little further still. 

Suddenly I was very high up and in a field, and although I could still see her, and even wave, I could pretend I did not hear her, should she call me.

 I enjoyed the feeling of the grass under my bare feet after the hot rocks and the shingle, and then went to sit on a low wall which moved as I sat.

I was intrigued.

 There was nothing holding that wall together, only the laying of stone on stone, lengthways, like a huge pile of overlapping dominos. I tried the first one and it fell easy enough and then I set to with a  vigour, placing stone after stone in a neat pile on either side as if I was making a gate. Basically, I was dismantling a dry stone wall, and actually making a gate. It was all going swimmingly at the start. Despite the sun beating down on me I commenced to working like a pack mule and I was hurling stones to the left and the right  of me with gay abandon when I heard the shouting.

“Hi, You, Hi, HI, HI!!!!!!!!!” said the farmer as he bounced across the field in a Massey Ferguson.

The jig was up. I went cold despite the heat and knew that yet again I had been caught being bold. I took a last wistful look at the daisy chain I had placed over my doorway  and deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, took to my tiny heels and ran. I knew he could only follow me to the edge of the cliff and so I ran and skipped and dropped till I arrived breathless back to Siobhan, who was scanning the beach for me, having placed the sleeping baby in the shade with the hood up. 

All that could be seen was a bundle of white lace and a pair of chubby knees.

“You look very guilty” she said. “What have you been up to?”

Nothin’ says I, with my heart bursting and flopped down beside her.

It took the farmer 30 minutes to drive down by the roadway and with his tractor idling on the hard damp sand he proceeded to  actually leap across the rocks to us, where he began without preamble or ceremony, to mime my actions to an incredulous Siobhan while he beat his own thighs with his flat cap.

“Your language is choice in front of a child” said Siobhan as she got to her feet.

“SIT down, DON’T move, watch the baby “she said to me and followed him up the cliff. I watched her blonde hair blowing in the wind till she was as high as I had been,  then I removed Nicola’s straps and lifting her, still asleep, climbed behind them.

 At the corner of the field I watched as she bent and stood  and bent again , re-building my destruction, quietly and without fuss, or a word, till even the farmer fell silent.   I stood edging closer and closer,  one  hand shading my eyes and the other holding the baby on my hip, and felt sad and ashamed and very proud all at the same time. I could not help her and I sensed that even then. When she had finished she walked across to me and lifted the baby from my arms  and took my hand.  We 3 Mahon women walked away from the angry farmer and back down the cliff to the beach.

She never spoke of  this again.

M.D.M.