A Bleedin Shame.
Ned McCann.
The gale had died during the night. But the angry sea still pounded the cliffs as the moon dragged it by the heels from the shore.
The old woman slid the key on its string down the neck of her sweater and pushed on her door to make sure it was locked. She sniffed the spume and remembered a time long gone when the headland was dotted with shacks like her own. A village of driftwood and tarred paper, snuggled together and taking bounty from the sea.
She was careful on the path carved by her feet over the years and knew she could not climb down it much longer. One of these mornings, unable- unwilling to rise from her bed, she would lie there until she died. Or until a do gooder, just popping in to do good, would do good by whipping her off to some pastel painted place filled with bewildered old women; fretting, peeing their knickers, hiding biscuits under blankets and weeping throughout the night.
If she were lucky, she would stumble and fall through the mist of a morning, stick thin limbs flailing like the ragged sails of an old windmill. Down to the serendipiti sea, where her bag of bones would be washed, scoured clean by the sand and dressed in a shroud of copper green kelp.
Now who among all the people she had known was it who had saved all her cut hair and woven her shroud from it? Titian red had it been when she was young, and silver grey for the hood and trimmings as she grew old. Ah yes, Maree. Maree the voice. She who sang from the time she awoke, till the time she went to bed. And sometimes even in her bed, when she had a visitor who pleasured her more than most of them what slunk from town to sample her favours for a bottle of rum they helped her to drink. Leaving the poor soul with nothing of a morning, but a pot of black tea stewed bitter from the night before.
Of all the songs she had sung- mournful ballads of young diggers slain in mining disasters; shamed servant girls, rogered and abandoned by wicked Squires, throwing themselves from high bridges- bleedin shame was Maree’s favourite.
It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure.
It’s the pore wot gets the blame.
It’s the same the whole world over.
Isn’t that a bleedin shame?
Drawing out the sentimental verses in a nasal whine as she hung out bed sheets, washed white as baptised souls, free of sin and flapping in the wind like the wings of guardian angels.
With the sand firm between her toes, the old woman could walk easy now; poking and prodding with her Otter stick the curving shore for flotsam treasures. Once, so many storms ago, she had found a brass bound box. And when she had forced it open, found it filled with sand and sodden, ink run papers shredding to nothing as she dried them before the fire. And in a little box, within the box, a golden ring set with a blood red stone. The stone, she decided, was for passion and the papers were letters of love. Words written in sand, to a lover who would never again read them.
There were no brass bound boxes anymore. The twisting threads of kelp contained little but plastic. Bright blue bottle tops, orange cordage, plastic bags and condoms enough to choke a whale. And there a wig stand; featureless face staring at the sky, calling with the voice of gulls to the mothership from where it had fallen.
The sun was beginning to warm the pink of her scalp when she saw the hand waving to her from the rock pool, where she knew she would find her breakfast of mussels and pippies. The old woman had not spoken to anyone for weeks and was quite prepared to forgo her breakfast rather than do so. But the hand was insistent, beckoning with such seeming urgency, she went over to it.
The girl lay on her back. Her arm, bent stiff from the elbow, bobbed and pointed blue, white fingers to her body. She was naked, except for the frayed rope chewing her ankle to the pink bone. Her eyes were slightly open, her lips parted in the grimmest of smiles. But the old woman knew that life and soul had long gone from her; even before drawing closer and seeing the sea lice scuttling across the soft, secret parts of her body.
"Now where have you been?" The old woman knelt down beside her. "And what have they done to you?" She fingered the long, blond hair from the girl’s face. "Not a shroud for your nakedness, nor a penny for your eyes have they given you."
The old woman looked around. The beach was empty except for a swoop of gulls, squabbling and dancing on their match stick legs, pecking at a gobbet of something or other the sea had brought them.
The thing to do would be to call the Police. A three-mile walk to the phone, if it were working, and what then? Tapes and cameras, body bags, stretchers and all those official questions.
And the girl? They would take her to some cold, metal clanging room. Check her lungs for water, weigh her brain and things on their shiny, Krupps scales and then pronounce her dead. After all that would come the curious; churning her beach, snicking beer cans and laughing while their Debbies and Carols demolished her Pippie pool for mementos. And after all that the do gooders with their packets of tea, tins of biscuits and warm blankets. And when they had worn her down with their kindness and concern, that little grey home in the west.
The old woman hooked her hands under the girl’s arms. For one so small the girl was heavy. But then, thought the old woman, I’m not as strong as I once was.
She dragged the girl from the pool until she was lying on the rock shelf. Lifting her legs she swung her around. The girl fell from the shelf face down on the sand and the old woman tried not to look at what the rocks had done to her back.
The sea was still pounding its’ fury as the old woman gave the girl back to it. Knee deep, she had to push the girl further with her stick, before the sea would accept her. The girl spun around as if uncertain. She bobbed back then away again, until with one last wave of her hand, she was gone.
The old woman waved back, and returned to her Pippie pool for breakfast.


Ends.
© 2004. Ned McCann. 15 Curch St. BALMAIN.N.S.W. 2041