Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

George heaves himself back up and rips off his shirt. He twists it into a rope and whips it into the sea. He turns sideways and submerges his upper body as much as he can. The cold sea bites at his chest. The jagged rocks cut his skin.

“Hold on to the shirt! Grab the shirt!” George calls to Katherine. The sea spray slaps his face. Katherine’s head slips under the water again and disappears completely this time. When her head reemerges, her eyes are rolling.

The floating shirt and Katherine are only inches apart.

“Grab the shirt!” shouts George, furious at himself for not being able to swim. This time, she seems to understand and her eyes fix on George. Her hand feebly reaches for the shirt. She finds it. Then the dark, wide head rises up out of the water beside her, disappears again. The shock awakens fresh panic in her and she pulls on the shirt. George is jerked forward but manages to cling to the edge of the rocks. He thrusts his free arm out and grabs hold of Katherine, pulling her toward him.

Katherine thrashes an arm, then a leg onto the rocks as though she were blind, but clumsily falls back into the water, scraping her legs. They begin to bleed beneath the sea. She grabs hold of George again as, this time, he flings his arm robustly around her waist. Finally he heaves her out of the water and throws his arms around her.

“I thought I’d lost you.” George hugs her. “I couldn’t see where you had gone.” He kisses the top of her head.

Katherine tries to catch her breath.

“You okay?” He keeps his arms around her.

Katherine gasps for air.

“What happened? Did something happen?” he asks her, loosening his hold on her.

Katherine breathes deeply for a moment, then coughs violently. “I should have stayed nearer the shore,” she splutters.

“You sure you’re okay?” George looks at Katherine.

Katherine nods her head a little. “I went out too deep — that’s all.” She bends her torso over to catch her breath again. “I started to panic — I’m not as good a swimmer as I thought I was.”

“What possessed you to swim so far away from us?”

“I don’t know — I’m sorry — I wasn’t thinking.” Katherine clears the last of the seawater from her throat. Her body is shaking. She feels something prickling her legs. “Oh,” she says almost casually as she looks down, “I’m bleeding.”

“We’ll get you sorted out, love.” George lifts his sopping shirt from the rocks and, wringing the seawater from it, he gently dabs Katherine’s legs where they have been cut. Then he stands and brushes back her wet hair from her face. “That could have been nasty, Katherine.”

“Oh, George! You’re bleeding, too.” She touches his shoulder, where clear ribbons of seawater are infused with blood.

“It’s nothing. Only a few scrapes. You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, I think so. It was the seal that panicked me.”

“The seal?”

“The seal — I was terrified he would hurt me—” Then she stops and looks into George’s eyes. “Didn’t you see him?”

“No, love, I didn’t.”

“Right beside me.”

“No, love — no, I didn’t.”

“But he was just there—” Katherine looks out at the wide sea, then back to George. She cannot believe that he did not see the seal. She feels confused, stressed. But she is out of the water now. She’s safe, thank God. Urgently, she wraps her arms around George’s torso, her face turned to one side, her cheek flush with the curve of his chest. His skin icy against hers.

“He was right there,” she says quietly.

Something is happening to her. Something has happened to her in the water. She thinks of the seal’s eyes.

“You’re shivering,” says George. “C’mon, let’s get you warm.”

Katherine lifts her head. “Where’s Stephen?” she asks, with an urgency in her voice.

“The girls have him,” replies George reassuringly. “He’s fine.”

George reaches out and gently takes Katherine by the hand. She moves with him. They walk at a measured pace together back across the sand toward the children. A salty sea breeze begins to rise, whipping occasional strands of Katherine’s hair up and across her cheek as though they are urging her on.

Out in the broad silver sea, a last flickering movement; then all is still.

“Okay, Mummy, you’re out.”

Wrapped in towels in the back of the car, Katherine struggles a moment to regain her concentration on the game in hand.

“Oh, right, Elsa. . but I haven’t guessed who you are yet.”

“You were miles away, Mummy.” Elizabeth’s voice is very matter-of-fact.

“I thought I had one go left.”

“No, Mummy, you don’t.”

“You’ve used up your ten gos already,” Maureen informs her sympathetically.

“No, Mummy has one more go,” says Elizabeth.

“No, she doesn’t.” Elsa makes a sharp face.

“Mama-go-dere!”

“Are you Ringo Starr?” Katherine asks.

“Mummy, you can’t guess!” Elsa’s temper is rising.

“Gregory Peck?”

“Let her have one more go,” chips in Maureen.

“That’s not fair. And I told you, I’m not a singer,” Elsa says firmly.

“But you said you were singing.”

“No, I didn’t mean singing.”

“What did you mean?” Elizabeth asks.

“Alan Ladd.”

“No, Mummy.”

“He never sang,” Elizabeth adds.

“I didn’t mean singing, stupid.”

“Have manners, Elsa.” Katherine’s voice sounds vacant as she straightens her back against the car seat.

“Dada dere!”

“Are you dead or alive?”

“Mummy, you asked that already.” Maureen looks out of the window.

“Did I?” Katherine shakes her head, unable to remember.

Elizabeth gives her mother a gentle reminder. “He’s alive.”

“Now that’s three more gos you’ve had!” Elsa’s cheeks flush a stubborn red.

“We saw this person on television last week in a film. He was wearing a funny hat and whistling in a train station.” Maureen is losing patience with both Elsa and her mother.

“Oh, yes — Ray Milland,” says Katherine with relief.

“Maureen, that was too much of a clue to give to Mummy!”

“It was taking her ages to guess.”

“But when you said wearing a funny hat and a train station and whistling, that just gave it away.”

“Dada dere!”

“Well — so!” Maureen turns away from Elsa.

“Oh, look,” says Katherine flatly, “your father’s back with the ice cream.”

The ice cream is recompense to the children for cutting the day short, as George is eager to get Katherine warm again and back home.

Sitting with the car window open, Katherine can hear voices traveling from the far end of the street, the way summer air seems to hold sound on a long leash. Under the canopy of the ice-cream shop, a man buys a candy floss for his daughter. Plastic buckets hanging from the shop door tap together in the breeze like dull wind chimes. The shop window still displays the front page of the Belfast Telegraph from almost a month ago, a large blurry black-and-white photograph of two astronauts with the words “Footprints on the Moon” underneath it.

Katherine, not wanting any ice cream, eats one of the leftover jam pieces from the picnic bag instead. Stephen stands on his mother’s lap. He holds a small dripping ice-cream cone in his hand, but his eyes are intensely fixated on the motion of his mother’s tongue. He grips her arm, his mouth imitating hers, biting on nothing. Katherine scoops a small dollop of butter and jam from the bread onto her finger and pops it into his mouth.

“Mummy, my arms and legs are itchy,” says Elsa.