It was a hot day, if a little overcast. Lying on a towel on the sand, she could feel herself growing sleepy as the sun crept across the sky.
The beach was almost entirely theirs. Three teenaged boys threw a frisbee at the other end toward the point and up on the cliffs behind her, a couple of surfers were assessing the swell, leaning against the bonnet of their station wagon. Parked beside it was a tiny blue hatchback. She looked back to the sea, there was a calm patch close in. It’s a steep beach that drops away sharply when you get near the water where the waves break hard against the sand.
That calm dark patch looked so cool and inviting. She could just slip in for a moment, rinse the sun’s heat from her skin then come back to her boys on the beach. She was so tired those days – no-one told her how long the sleepless period would last – a dip would freshen her up.
‘I might cool off in the water,’ she said.
He looked over at her, took a long sip of his beer. She saw the ocean reflected in the aviator sunglasses he’d picked out at the service station. Her two-week-old son was in the Moses basket between them. She never thought it would be possible to have a baby. She had given up on the idea altogether, until it happened – suddenly, miraculously she was pregnant. Then late in the night, through the heat inside and the exhaustion, the endless, back-arching, excruciating pain, her son arrived.
‘Bit rough out there,’ he said, nodding at the sea. He finished his can and tossed it by the others on the sand.
‘I’ll go where it’s still, in the shallows over there.’
She pulled herself up, lifted her son from the basket and held him to her, kissing his forehead, before laying him back down.
Lastly she adjusted the muslin cloth covering the basket to keep the sun off him. ‘Won’t be long.’ She glanced back once at the cliffs. It didn’t bother her that he’d been drinking, but she knew she couldn’t indulge too much, she couldn’t do anything at the moment. It was hot and he had grabbed a couple of beers on the way here. She had a few sips of his can, letting the beer sit in her mouth. It all felt so normal, so peaceful…
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