Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Beach

128 Beach I t is night. I watch Dad’s elbow come up through the air and then his hand, shining blue-white as it shoots forward and down again into the darkness. His hair sheds feathers of light each time he turns his head to the right and I know how his mouth twists up to make an o for breathing, every other stroke. Then I lose sight of him between the waves. They rise up like the backs of whales. He is swimming down a silver path the moon makes and his feet leave a trail of phosphorescence. Underneath him the night fish eat each other. The waves crash. They are grinding the rocks to sand. Somewhere in the sea, giant jellyfish swim, their crimson stomachs throbbing inside their see-through bodies. Alex has stopped. I can see his head floating up and down on the waves like a beach ball but Dad keeps swimming down the silver path. My heart is beating the same steady rhythm as his arms and his arms and my heart are in time with the sea. “I wish,” says my mother, “he would turn around. He’s going too far.” I know she has been thinking those words for a while. A cloud covers the moon. The sky comes lower. Everything is louder. The breakers look like teeth. I lose sight of him again. The clouds rumble. A jagged finger of light reaches down and touches the sea. It touches right where my father is but when my eyes shake away the stars I see he is closer than I thought. Lightening plays along the waves and dances in the sky. My father is swimming the fastest I have ever seen him swim and Alex too. They swim until a wave comes and takes them in its teeth and throws them out on the sand. They drink whisky and shiver in the sticky air. “My God, darling,” my mother says, “I thought you were a goner.” “You did!” says my father. Alex says, “Jesus H. Christ. I’ll never do that again.” I make a fire in the sand in front of the beach hut though my mother says it will pour with rain any minute. My father and Alex sit with towels around their waists and shoulders and I watch my father’s hair curl as it dries. When it is dry I see there is a streak of silver over his right ear. “Look at that,” says my mother, “you went grey.” He puts his fingers to the side of his head as if he can feel where the lightening touched. My mother says, “Granny’s hair went white overnight the night she heard my father had been killed. Promise me you’ll never swim at night again. I like my hair the way it is.” My father is shaking so hard he can’t talk. Alex stands up. He goes into the hut and puts on navy blue trousers and a white shirt. I keep looking at my father. His face looks like the bones are showing through. I want to remember everything: the way his forehead makes a bump above his eyebrows, the crow’s feet in the corner of his eyes, the way by his nose his eyelids are crinkled as if there isn’t enough room for them, his big long nose which curves 129 C y c l e 2 130 out in the middle, and the mole on his upper lip which has two hairs growing out of it. In the firelight his eyes are pale grey. All the blue has gone out of them. His teeth are big and square and yellow but his lips don’t have an edge really, they fade into his skin. When I look at his lips he looks young. They are like small furry animals and the rest of his face is a cliff, is something the wind carved out of rock. I want to reach out my hand and stroke his lips. He smells of whisky now and salt and something sour. The smell of whisky makes me scared. “Can I have some?” “No, you’re too young,” my father says. When I go to sleep I hear the rain rushing through the palm fronds. In the morning I find a jellyfish with blue tentacles, an orange shell with pale gold freckles...