The Great Work: July 2012

I saw a caravan on the beach, a young woman was hanging up washing and a child played in the sand. Neither seemed to notice me and then I spoke.

“Hello” I called, “Kylie isn’t it?” The young woman looked startled. Didn’t she hear my car pull up?

“I’m Judith O’Brien from Aboriginal Services”

Kylie looked in her early twenties, blonde hair and slim, no not slim, skinny. She seemed not in the least bit aboriginal in appearance. She could have just stepped off the boat from England. She is what we call a white person. Somewhere in her ancestry was an aboriginal, probably a woman, probably a victim.

I looked for signs of her heritage and could not see it and then she frowned, ‘Ah, there you are’. Our people frowned a lot these days.

Finally she spoke, “yeah?” defensive, uncertain “you’re here about the court case?”

“Sort of, I’m here to try and work out why you keep going to court. This is your fifth case involving the growing and selling of cannabis and I want to help you avoid becoming a recidivist”

“A what?” We talked for a while and I explained about programmes, support groups, funding but I could see we were not really getting anywhere.

“The problem is that I am a single parent on welfare”, she said, looking over at Amber as if to qualify her status as a victim, “I have no employment opportunities and I live in a caravan. If I throw a few seeds on the ground then in six months I have a few grand worth of plants and it doesn’t hurt anyone. People aren’t dying from smoking grass. People tell me it is wrong but I can see that it isn’t, and I get a load of cash. How else could I afford a car, a washer, a telly”.

I had to admit that she had a point, I even smoked the odd joint myself sometimes, but the dope wasn’t the issue, it’s the lifestyle.

I know that councillors are supposed to be impartial but a vague feeling of contempt tweaked at the corner of my thoughts. ‘she is weak, she should take control, she has a child to support, I wouldn’t let myself become so powerless’.

“But it is illegal. I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t be, I’m just saying that it is. You are spending your life sneaking around or stoned and that’s no way to live. You have been caught five times now and your daughter is the only reason you haven’t gone to jail, so far”

“Yeah, but how can I pay the fines on welfare. Now two or pounds of sinsemilla…”

Finally I ran out of steam “let’s go for a walk on the sand.”

Kylie called for her daughter and we walked over the low dunes to the beach, a spinifex fringe along the ridge gave way to the yellow sand typical of the West coast. The current was rushing southward to a rocky point and a bay about 500 metres across had been gouged from the sand beyond. We turned left towards it and walked on the beach for a while. The current was really moving and the inlet a boiling cauldron of confused waves and chop.

“This is a beautiful spot” she said at last, “I love the sea, but it terrifies me. The current is so strong here”.

“It’s only a rip-tide, once you understand the forces at work you can see how to avoid the dangers”. I tried to sound wise while drawing an allegory but I think I just sounded patronising. Kylie looked at me quizzically, like she was trying to decide whether I really was a wise elder or just another condescending bureaucrat.

In fact it was neither. As a child, my foster family lived in Brisbane and we went to Surfers Paradise on the weekends. People would comment on what a lovely suntan their daughter had and the pale skinned O’Briens were too embarrassed to tell them that I was a stolen ‘boong’. I still don’t know if they were being kind or cruel to me, but these were my issues and right then I had Kylie and Amber to worry about.

We were less than thirty metres from the sandy point when all at once I saw the danger. It unfolded like a slow drama.

There was a shell, a beautiful conch lying at the water’s edge and we all saw it at the same time. Amber broke into a sprint just as a huge wave engulfed the rocky outcrop. It was not a breaker, more like a surge of tidal mass and instantly Amber was being swept into the cauldron. I lunged and at full stretch managed to grab her arm but was in up to my waist. I don’t even remember running but I was in the water with her and the soft sand beneath my feet slipping away. We were both in the wash and Kylie was on the shore screaming.

Choppy waves pummelled us from every angle and all I had ever learned about rips counted for nothing. How could we swim diagonally across the current when it was running in every direction? I tried to keep Amber’s head above the slop, but I needed air too. I caught glimpses of the receding shore and Kylie hopping from side to side, looking for all the world like a goal keeper in a soccer game.

I tried to comfort Amber, but I know there was fear in my voice. “Imokay” is all she said between slaps of water, but right then I was anything but OK. I am a poor swimmer and had been terrified of the water since I saw ‘Jaws’ at the drive-in.

The chop gave way to swirling eddies as we were swept further out to sea. I could feel it twisting around my legs as I tried to tread water and hold up this child. Until five minutes ago the only thing I knew of her existence was one line in my case brief. ‘Children:- (1) female, 5yrs, AMBER.’, now I thought, she may very well die in my arms, we may die together. For a while I lost sight of the shore and had to fight the panic, I turned around and it was behind me. There seemed to be no pattern in the water, we were totally helpless.

I guess sometimes knowing how the forces work isn’t enough. Sometimes everything is so confused that you just can’t see what’s coming. My smart ass allegory came back to bite me.

We had been in the water for about five minutes now, but it seemed like an hour. I was so tired, my kicking had grown weaker and we were much lower in the water. I am an overweight and unfit fifty year old and don’t think I could have lasted much longer. I didn’t need to think though, my options were just one. Struggle for as long as I could and hope that the current would show me some mercy.

A splash near me snapped me into alertness. A big grey shape sliced white across the surface. SHARK. ‘I am going to die’ I thought, ‘Something big and powerful and totally pitiless has me in it’s power and it is going to rip me into pieces and eat me alive’.

My greatest fear was cruising lazily, easily in this water which was itself nearly killing me. I was powerless, a victim. I was at the bottom of the food chain.

Another splash, and then … and then I heard Kylie calling Amber’s name. I looked up and the grey shape was not a shark, it was a rock. The waves were about to throw me onto the shore and Kylie was standing there up to her waist with her arms outstreched calling to her daughter, her face red and wet with tears.

It was all I could do to turn around so my feet were angled to take the impact and then the waters simply lifted me up and deposited my gently between the rocks on some soft sand.

The sky boiled black and angry. Low cloud wept thick rain as wind screamed fury at the stone cottage.

Salty gales had buffeted these cliff tops for ever and those who presume to live here do so by the grace of nature.

So it had always been and so it was tonight, as Cassandra fed dregs of coal to the low fire that writhed in the crumbling hearth, tormented by the draughts that plagued her lonely home.

The storm led her thoughts to that other night a year ago, when she became a widow and an orphan and a hermit. That night when the seas ambushed a herring trawler, to exact its toll for the lives her father and her husband had spent as fishermen off the wild Cornish coast.

She had not been married for long – less than six months. Her husband was too often at sea and too briefly at home for their plans of children to bear fruit and so, at the age of twenty, she was a childless widow and a recluse.

She used to love looking out at the sea when the big storms drove in from the Atlantic, to feel the wild salty power of air and ocean that made her emerald eyes water, sending cold tears strait into her ears and to hear the huge waves boom against the cliff and caves far below.

Now she huddled in the draughty darkness, gazing into waning embers and the tears didn’t flow towards her ears any more.

But fires need coal and so she gathered her courage and her bucket, drew her damp shawl around her damp body and dashed from the cottage to where the shed door shook against the tempest.

The icy wind whipped her wild red hair and gave her an ear-ache. God roared in her face and for a moment she woke from her grief to look out on the glory of the storm.

Through the rain and mist something caught Cassandra’s attention. She saw something but was not sure what it was, if anything … there it was again, she was sure. A light flashed and disappeared on huge swells.

A ship so close to the cliffs, to the rocks just out along the channel like a wolf’s teeth, tearing at the tender skin of a ship’s body and then men in the water, salty waves relentlessly filling mouths and lungs, struggling, coughing, screaming, fear – then silence beneath the water. Last prayers and thoughts of loved ones, regrets and unfinished lives, acts of cowardice and acts of bravery, lost forever to the fish.

Her family.

The coal bucket was forgotten now as Cassandra hurtled along the dark and wet trail down the cliffs towards ... what? To stand helpless down on the rocks or pebble beach, to see the ship founder and the men’s bodies thrown up blue and limp?

She didn’t know what she was going to do but she ran with all the frustrated energy, pent up emotion and creeping fear of a year spent feeling helpless while her loved ones lay hidden amongst the kelp.

The path was slippery and Cassandra fell more than once but when she clambered the last dirty edge onto the pebbles she froze in shock as the huge ship, sails torn ragged thundered directly towards her no more than fifty foot from the beach.

It bounced between rocks and seemed to collapse even as it was thrown up over the shore as a pile of wood. A great beast bought down by relentless, screaming wolves.

It seemed incomprehensible to her that this ruined woodpile had ever been a ship, but just as violently as the waves had thrown this limp corpse onto the shore, they were now dragging it back to its final grave.

She was too distraught to move but stood in numb shock as she watched the massive wooden hulk splinter into flotsam in front of her, so close she could hear the crack of wood breaking over the screaming wind.

Then her world suddenly became something even more unreal and it took a few seconds before the reality struck her. Cassandra was in the water.

She didn’t see the wave that swept her up, but suddenly there was no ground beneath her feet.

It was cold and wet and she was thrown wildly under churning foam to a calm bosom of blessed forgetfulness.
There was no fear beneath the water. It was quiet, the sea seemed calm and at peace.
The salt tasted like the tears she had shed and she felt her grief being washed away, her sadness leaving her with the last of her breath.

. . .

When she woke in her bed, with a naked man lying next to her, she actually wondered if she was going mad. Her throat felt sore.

Images of aching cold, salty vomit and being lifted from a pebbly beach spun in her mind like unrecognisable leaves in the wind. She didn’t know who the sailor next to her was, what had happened or what was going to happen. All Cassandra knew was that her throat felt sore and that she was scared.

Dizziness flooded her head when she tried to move. She could not sit up no matter how hard she tried, but she could not just lie next to this stranger and so, using all her strength she rolled off the bed and collapsed to the floor.

When next she woke the dizziness had abated enough to sit up and assess the situation. For an hour she sat with her back to the wall staring at the feet that hung over the end of her bed.

Obviously she had nearly drowned and somehow this man had pulled her from the water and carried her up the path. This seemed impossible to her. She knew the path from the pebble beach and even in daylight, when one is not burdened it is hard going – yet here they both were.

So in the dark this man from the sea had carried her home, found her cottage and put her in bed before collapsing next to her.

The stranger slept for a whole day and Cassandra began to worry that he was in a coma. More than once she felt for a pulse. There was always a strong throb of life in his muscular neck.

She had plenty of time to study the fine features, flawless bronze flesh and athletic physique of this remarkably handsome man who certainly possessed enormous strength and stamina.

She tried to keep him warm but he always seemed cold, though he didn’t shiver.

When he did seem to rouse a little, Cassandra offered him some hot broth and the smell brought him to wakefulness.

He was dazed at first, as though he didn’t know where he was or what he had done.

He looked Cassandra in the eyes for the first time and she found herself melting in his deep, dark, brown eyes. The steady gaze lingered longer than she was comfortable with and it was a relief when he turned to the bowl of soup and ate with increasing vigour.

It was only after the food was finished that Cassandra began to try to speak to the man, only to find that he did not understand a word she said.

She tried a few words of Spanish, then French and finally, through the process of elimination she determined that he was probably Irish or Italian, possibly Greek.

He didn’t utter a sound at all, so his language and his origin remained a mystery.

An even greater mystery presented itself when he tried to arise and Cassandra, glancing around the cottage, found that he had no clothes. There was a sealskin cape of the sort that many sailors had, hanging over the back of a chair, but there were no pants, no shoes, no shirt.

As night fell the first day she began to fret as to where she was to sleep, but it was a small cottage and so Cassandra just climbed back into her bed with her visitor from the sea.

The storm had been raging for days now and the road to Zennor would be flooded.

Until the weather cleared and she could summon help, they were isolated in that little cottage.

The next day the man tried to stand. Cassandra gave him the only thing she had that would fit him, her husband’s great-coat, but he seemed weak and so stayed in bed for the next three days.

The morning of the fourth day was windy but the ocean had settled and the rain was now just drizzle.

Cassandra woke face to face with her silent visitor and for a while just studied the handsome features of this mysterious man as he slept. She missed her husband and could not deny the attraction she felt for the muscular stranger who had saved her life.

She found her look lingering on the steady rise and fall of his chest and when she again looked at his face, his unfathomable dark eyes were regarding her intently, seemingly into her naked soul.

The weeks that followed were amongst the happiest in her young life. Cassandra gave up trying to talk to the foreigner. She had spent thirteen months, since she was widowed, alone in her cottage and had hardly spoken to anyone in all that time, save to the villagers who brought her food and coal.
It seemed comforting to not have to speak now.

They walked together along the cliffs and he would look out at the sea with such an odd air that she feared he would one day simply vanish the way he had appeared.

She wondered when it would happen, but the day her stranger disappeared was the same day she discovered that a child was growing within her.

. . .

Tess was the most beautiful baby anyone from Zennor had ever seen and the years only bestowed upon her more grace.

As her mother’s grief faded, she eased her self-imposed exile and the people of the village would gaze at the two beauties as they went about their business.

By the time Tess was fourteen it was obvious to everyone that a truly rare creature was budding amongst them.
Tess had the wild red tresses and lithe form of her mother, but there was something enchanting, almost unnatural about her beauty. The symmetry of her face seemed perfect.
Her cheekbones framed perfect brown eyes, her skin was as soft and clear as the summer sky. Her nose and teeth were utterly flawless. Her grace of movement gave her the bearing of a dancer and she was often seen running up or down the cliffs with the fluid movements of a Spring hare.

The perfection in her appearance was reflected also in her voice. She would sing like an angel, everywhere she went there were the soft lilting songs she wove, seemingly for her own pleasure.

When she sang in church, she filled it with music from a place beyond this world. From the front row to the furthest pew, each person felt the touch of every clear note and gentle melody, softer than fresh Summer wind over new grass.
It seemed to every listener as though she sang to them alone and new their secret pangs and hidden joys. But there was power in her voice too, the unfathomable passion of the mighty swells and storms that drove in from the deep and mysterious ocean.

The joy she bought to the village was as nothing compared to the happiness she bought back into her mother’s life. The pain of her lonely seclusion up on the cliff had fallen from her like the water from seal’s fur. Her heart soared at the love she held for her precious child, whose greatest beauty she knew was her tender nature.

Never a selfish act, nor lie, nor hurtful thought or deed was ever seen in the girl, yet she sometimes seemed so sad that Cassandra feared some private sorrow beset her.

Often when they sat upon the headland overlooking the cliffs there was something in her daughter’s silence that made her think of the stranger, Tess’ father and how he had looked out over the water, as though watching something that no-one else could see.

The years passed and the church was always full when Tess was with the choir. By the time she was sixteen the pews were full of local lads and it was standing room only as far as the doors.

One young man in particular had caught her fancy, a strong young fisherman names Angus Trenear. He was shy at first but the ease of her company soon saw him talking with an articulacy he never knew he possessed.

They met on Sunday afternoons after she had been singing in church and they would talk of the sea, they would talk of their feelings and they would talk about nothing.

Sometimes they just sat together in silence and eventually they spoke of love.

Angus was over six foot and broad in the shoulders, but he was gentle and thoughtful. The locals saw how the two young lovers would look at each other and most felt that it was a good match.

One evening in early spring Tess and Angus were walking the moors near to the cottage. Their conversations were at first easy and light, then Tess grew quiet and Angus feared there was something amiss.
He gently probed until Tess at last told him of the secret which she and her mother alone knew.
She sat on a tussock and removed her left shoe. Her delicate foot seemed as perfect as the rest of her, even and well formed. Slowly, fearfully, she spread her toes and there they were – thin webs of skin stretching between each of her dainty toes. Her one imperfection had never been of concern to her or her mother but now she feared for their growing love and how Angus would view this abnormality.
Slowly Angus took her foot in his big hands and drawing it to his lips, kissed it as though it were a babe. Tess cried then and vowed to love him until the waves ceased to roam the seas.

. . .

The fish were fighting to get into their nets the day Angus told his best friend Fergal Donnelly of his plans to marry the lovely maid everyone adored. But though Fergal loved Angus as his own brother, he also loved Tess. He had loved her for as long as he could remember and the pain he felt then was like a cut from a rusty knife.

It began to fester almost as soon as the news grew cold. Though his mind told him that Tess and Angus should live a long and happy life, day by day his heart grew more bitter and hard and secret.

Fergal’s father owned the fishing boat that Angus worked on and he had been friends with Cassandra’s father since boyhood. He was the stern patriarch of a family of sons and was uncompromising in most things.

Yet it was he who sent fish and coal to the lonely cottage to keep the widow fed and warm.

He became aware of the surliness of Fergal and so made a visit to Cliff Cottage to speak with Cassandra when Tess was not home.
He pleaded his son’s case, of what good character he was and of how he would inherit the trawler and a large house when he was gone. He made oblique references to Cassandra of the indebtedness of her situation, but it was all to no avail.
She simply stated that her daughter’s happiness was all she cared about and Tess had chosen the man she wished to marry.

Finally, he stated his terms. Tess was to marry Fergal or Cliff Cottage, since he owned it, would no longer be available to the widow and her daughter. He left her with a final warning to tell her child that she must cease her liaison with Angus and marry Fergal or else vacate the cottage forthwith.

Cassandra was beside herself with grief, but was unrelenting. She would not sell her only child, the very joy in her life for a damp cottage in a boggy moor.

The following day Mr Donnelly relented for the first time in his life.

. . .

The sky had turned sour by the time the nets were set and Angus told Fergal that a storm was coming.
For weeks now he had noticed the change in his friend, they seemed to be ever at odds. Fergal did not answer but kept paying out the lines, tugging angrily on ropes with his back ever towards the giant lad.

By the time the storm was a certainty, nearly all the boats nets were out and Fergal knew he had let his anger lead them astray. The boys furiously hauled in the catch but the seas were beginning to heave and it was inevitable that they would have to cut the fish loose.

Fergal was overstretched, his hand was getting caught in a twisting net and the waves were pounding against the portside. Before he could untangle his hand the slippery deck vanished from beneath his boots and he was struggling to keep his head above the whipping waves.

The side of the boat rocked wildly just beyond his grip and his waders began to fill with water. As his head slipped beneath the waters, a hand as big as a shovel plunged in and gripped the hood of Fergal’s waterproofs.
He broke surface looking into the straining face of his best friend, leaning far out, one hand clinging to the twisted mass of netting hanging from the scaffold, the other desperately trying to grip the wet sealskin.
Fergal was able to reach out and grab the railing and began the slow clamber back into his father’s boat.

The storm was becoming intense and Angus found himself unable to keep his grip on the thick net. He realised that now was the time for him to save his won life and call out for Fergal. Their eyes met for the last time as Angus slipped beneath the stormy seas.

The weeks following the tragedy were filled with a sorrow greater than Tess had ever known before, but Cassandra remembered the loss of her own beloved and the little fishing village had seen this story played out for as long as there have been fish and men.

Tess had sang at the service a melody more beautiful and sad than even she thought possible and none could resist their emotions that day.

. . .

It was over a month before Mr Donnelly visited Cassandra in her little cottage so full of grief. He was not unkind, but where his family was concerned he was as relentless as the sea itself. Cassandra sobbed, she reasoned, she raged and she vowed to sleep in the town coal depot before her beloved daughter would be bartered for.
He felt for her pain, but this time he would not relent. There was no other suitor and his son needed a wife.
The wedding would be in two weeks or Cliff Cottage was for sale.

The town was shocked by the heartlessness of Mr Donnelly, but he was an influential man. He owned more than his own trawler, he owned shares in most boats in the harbour and he made no bones about how much grief would befall those who took in the widow and her daughter.

Tess had begun to hate Fergal – though of course she knew nothing of the actual events that had transpired aboard the fishing boat, she knew he was not the man that Angus was.

Her refusals only made Fergal more determined to possess the spirited girl, if not in soul then in body, obedience and marriage.

As much as Tess hated Fergal, she loved her mother and the thought of her being evicted grieved her more than that sweet girl’s heart could bear and so finally, she relented.

She would marry the man who had let her beloved die – the man whose father would see the only family she had known cast from the only home she had known.

But she would never love him and she would never forgive him.

. . .

On the day she was to wed Fergal, the very hour the wedding party was to come to Cliff Cottage, Cassandra and Tess and went down the coastal path to the beach where her father had saved her mother.
Tess had heard the tale of how the hero from the sea had pulled her mother from beneath the waves, like the hand of destiny and she lamented that no such saviour was within reach of her Angus.

Cassandra sobbed and again implored her child not to go through with the marriage, to flee the village altogether. How could they live one day knowing what love is and being forever denied hope of it ever returning.

Tess looked out over the sea, she whispered to it that she forgave it taking her love and then she turned to her mother to speak words of comfort, but found that there was another person beside her.

Cassandra too stood in shock. It had been seventeen years but the man next to her, no more than three feet away, was as unchanged as the day he had come to her upon this very beach.

He was still a magnificent figure, tall and muscular, dark eyes and the same perfection of face and form that her daughter, their daughter, had inherited. He still wore the sealskin cape and in fact was otherwise naked.

Cassandra understood at once why he had come back. She had known what he was the day they first made love. The sealskin he wore, the webbing between his toes that hung over her bed that first day. He was no sailor. He had never been on the ship that had foundered.

He had come to give Cassandra a child. The sea had taken her family and left her alone and he had come to take her sadness away.

He held a black bundle and as he unwrapped it the skin of a seal unfolded on the pebbly beach.

Tess seemed to know what it was and in that instant she understood what she was.

Up on the cliff the wedding party called to them. Fergal waved at his prize and her mother and wondered who the other person down below might be. He clambered down the rocky trail and landed on the beach to the 'clack' of pebbles.

Looking around he found that there was no-one else there, just a pile of clothing and in the surf, the shape of three black seals frolicking in the waves.