2 July 2012
Caroline held fast to the railings and looked out to sea. The ocean was a roar of emotion today, anger and jealously; it pounded at the headland and smashed itself to white foaming vapour. The sky was iron grey and heavy with a storm. The wind whipped her hair furiously but it wasn't raining just yet. Caroline tightened her grip against the cold metal and looked down at her hands. When had they gotten so old? Her liver spots looked dark and highly visible under the daylight, and the purple ropes of her veins stood out against her parchment thin skin. She sighed and let go of the fence. How she longed to go swimming again. Her ninety two year old knee had other ideas, however, and reminded her with a sharp shooting pain that she had not taken her painkillers that morning. Caroline stepped away from the fence, tightened up her buttons and ambled slowly home, which, ironically was as fast as she could go, using her walker as a support. As she walked home down the narrow sea front road back to her little house her mind wandered down the rather leafy Memory Lane of her mind. She'd lived in this salty grey town all her life, had married a locksmith and had buried him and her two children, and had lingered on sadly after they had gone, alone in her house but for her little canary she had named Parrot. Caroline smiled, and her lined face lifted upwards as she thought of the many years of happiness she had shared with her family. Her only surviving relative, was a grandson, who she had not seen in many many years. Caroline reached home. Her house was made of white wood, with little blue window frames, and a blue door with a big window in it shaped like a sickle moon. She passed through the gate and battled with her rheumatic hands to unlock the door. A nurse of some kind popped round every so often to say hello and Caroline thought the appointment might be today. The days of the week, like so many other little things, had become an indistinct fuzzy blur hiding in the back of her mind, just past Memory Lane. She sighed and managed to force open the door. Sooner, rather than later, the nurse was going to take Caroline from her house and her memories and put her with the other old folks in the home far away from the ocean she loved. She sat heavily in her chair, and sighed again as ninety two years squashed themselves in the room with her. Her sons had both lived here, and had died not far away. One in a motor biking accident and the other when a tumour of the lungs had eaten his life away. Her eyes clouded over as her mind stretched away through the decades of her life, bringing up memories both wonderful and sad. Her husband had broken an arm while painting the house, they'd laughed about it later but at the time she remembered being terrified that he would die and she would be left alone with her boys. Caroline looked out of the window at the sea. It wasn't far away these days. It had begun to eat the cliffs away, until now only her house remained where once there had been a happy neighbourhood full of families just like hers. This was no way to live. Caroline hummed a song under her breath and took out her hair brush. She combed her thin white hair and applied a fresh coat of lipstick, and felt tears of sadness well up when she remembered how she'd kissed her husband with these lips. Next she went and found her dress. It was navy blue with white polka-dots, much too summery for the time of year, but she didn't care. She wanted to feel pretty, so she put it on, ignoring her creaking limbs and complaining knee. Next she looked in the mirror by the sickle moon door. She smiled. For her, for her husband and her children, and she looked at her little canary and smiled widely at it too. "Oh I love you my darling Parrot." Caroline opened the cage door and went outside into the wind and the cold, without the aid of her walker. She clutched her dress as it whipped around her ankles and the roaring ocean collided again and again with the cliffs directly at the end of her garden. Caroline winced in pain as her knee began to give way. It wasn't far now. She awkwardly moved around the tangle of wild garden she had been to feeble to maintain and began the descent to the sea. The garden sloped steeply where decades ago it hadn't, and Caroline picked her way slowly down to the cliff tops with the menace of the ocean in her age-muffled ears. She came to the edge of the garden at last, resting her hand on a tree she and her husband had planted more than half a century ago. It would not be long before the poor thing lost its grip on the cliff tops and plummeted down to the waiting sea. It was ever hungry. Caroline sat down with great difficulty so that her legs dangled down over the cliff top, peering out to sea. She began to shiver in the freezing winter air and smiled to herself as she began to wander once again down Memory Lane. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw a little yellow canary flying up into the great wide open sky, and Caroline, the small, and white haired ninety two year old woman who missed her world felt her heart fill with joy.
Salt Spray • Opuss № I