THAT SUMMER BY THE SEA.
That sudden rush of water; the green brown, sandy water covering my head. Kicking my legs out and finding no bottom, just water; the salt sting of it: bubbles and panic. Surfacing gasping, swallowing more of the water, going down and surfacing again, my arms splashing the water frantically, trying to keep afloat; my head held back to keep my mouth above the surface, breathing so fast and ragged; choking and spluttering.
Besides me, my brother struggling even more; gasping, splashing; panicking like me.
In the summer holidays many, many, years ago, we spent day after day on the beach, below the sand cliffs in Norfolk. Eating picnics, paddling, shrimping, lying on the hot sand with the blue, blue, sky making us dizzy as we looked up at it from our towels to the bright dazzle of the sun.
They really do seem like they were idyllic summers when I look back on them. We lived in the Thatched Cottage, which was really a house, not far from the beach that stretched for miles and miles north and south of our village. It was before we went away from home to school.
There was a tire swing in the garden, an old cartwheel by the huge weeping tree that lived by the rose garden. There were trees to climb and wheat fields at the end of the garden. We walked with the dogs, found fossils up at the holiday park; searched for amber and cornelians on the beach and never found any. In the summer, when I really do remember day after day of sunshine, we really did spend most of our time on the beach with towels and juice and sandwiches, while my Dad flew his jet fighters from the nearby Airfield.
My sister would have been just a baby. We would have been clambering on the sandy cliffs, playing with the dog, getting bored and sweaty, getting far, far too hot.
My sister was exactly eight years younger than me. I always said she was my birthday present. My brother; I could not remember a day apart from him. We shared our room; played make up games with stuffed toys, bicycled together, fought and giggled and were always around each other. He was the one constant person near my age in our continual postings around the country.
As we were far too hot, we asked if we could go into the sea on our own. Our mum made us promise to look out for the sandbars under the water with their deadly deeps on either side of them, from which people regularly needed rescued and which sometimes drowned them.
We had no idea we were on one of those sandbars; we were just walking through the sea, chattering to each other; feeling the cold water around our bellies and then our chests, the bright sun on our heads.
Which of us said it? I don’t know. We decided to change direction; both walked sideways and both dropped like stones into the deep, cold water that was on either side of the bar we had been walking on; all unaware.
I had just learnt to swim a few strokes and was very proud of it, especially as my brother could do little more than float a bit.
As I came to the surface again; spitting water and swallowing more water; feeling no bottom to the sea, I had a moment of clarity.
I could just swim but only just; my brother couldn’t.
If I were to try to save my brother we would both drown. It was a huge decision to make at such a young age. I decided that I would leave my brother to drown and save myself if I could.
After an age of a terror of floundering and splashing and gasping, I touched the soft mud under the surface; stood up and lurched forward towards the incurious onlookers, shouting;
“Help! My brother’s drowning!”
They looked back puzzled, doing nothing. I turned back to the water to see my brother staggering out of the sea; gasping, snot and water streaming down his face.
It didn’t change our relationship. We didn’t talk about it, it was just something that happened the year before I went away from home to a new bewildering education miles and miles from home. To a new life with no shared bedroom or brother or cuddly toys. Just the rows of beds in the dormitory and matrons who stood in for the goodnight kisses and cuddles of my mother. My brother joined me a year later also falling into the sudden growing up that our new weird and alien world provoked.
However I held the memory of that guilt for years: that harsh and utterly clear decision. The cost benefit analysis of a nine year old to save himself at the expense of his brother. It made me think I must be utterly callous and ruthless; someone who would let his very brother die if necessary.
It was only decades later; when I was telling my brother’s family how I had nearly let him die all those years ago that he spoke up and said that if I hadn’t been constantly encouraging him as we swam; shouting at him, keeping him going with the sound and support of my voice that he would indeed have drowned and that, far from leaving him to die, I had been the means by which he survived.
It is so strange how we remember and live out our murky pasts; how such perceptions shape our future identity.
(Photo: Carmen Reservoir, summer 2020)
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