Footprints in the Sand

MRS. MAC WAS SITTING IN A CHAIR now, but she still looked funny, not like Mrs. Mac at all. Ted said she had had “a bit of a turn,” but not to worry.

“It takes some people like that,” he told me in a quiet voice.

I could see he didn’t want her to hear so I whispered, too.

“Will she be better soon?”

Mr. Mac heard me. He looked up from his chair and his eyes were all misty and sad.

“We’ll never be better, lass,” he said, “for your father has lost our Daffyd.”

“Steady on now, Billy,” urged Ted. “She’s lost her father, too.”

Guilt hit hard, making everything inside me shrivel into a tight ball and I ran to the only comfort I knew. Mrs. Mac patted my head absentmindedly when I sank onto the floor, cradling her knees, but she didn’t pick me up.

“Go and get warmed up, lass.” Ted nodded at the dying embers of the fire. “Perhaps Mary will go find you some more shoes while I fill the coal bucket. The fire will be gone altogether if we don’t stoke it up a bit.”

Mrs. Mac just continued staring into space. “Elsa knows where they are,” she murmured. “She can get them herself.”

Her face was closed and gray, as if it belonged to someone else, and as I looked at her a big knot of sadness swelled and swelled inside me. Oh, why did my dad have to go away? If he hadn’t lost Daffyd, then Mrs. Mac would still be Mrs. Mac and I could sit on her knee and be cuddled. My knot of sadness hardened. I felt it grow tight inside me as I went next door to get my shoes, and by the time I came back it had turned into a solid lump. I felt cross with my dad and cross with the storm; in fact, I suppose I felt cross with the whole wide world. That night I put myself to bed, since no one else was going to. It felt lonely and cold in my bedroom at the top of our house and hunger pains gnawed at my stomach. I stared out into the darkness, trying not to cry as I watched the twinkling stars. Perhaps that was where my dad was, on a star. Or would he be an angel now?

Reality hit, melting the crossness that had helped to dull the pain, and I started to cry. I think I cried all night, until the dawn light filtered through my window, but there was no one to listen. I fell asleep eventually, and when I woke there was still no one there.

* * *

IT WAS TWO DAYS LATER before I dared to walk along the sand again. I had decided I would never go back there unless my dad came home, but the seagulls called out to me with such a haunting melody that I just had to go.

Mrs. Mac had managed to make some toast that morning. I put on my own butter and it dripped down onto my chin so that it felt all greasy. I rubbed it with my sleeve but that spread the grease all over my face. Mrs. Mac didn’t seem to notice. I went right up to her but she just stared at me as if I wasn’t there, and that was when I heard the seagulls calling and decided to go outside.

The tide was in today, covering the sand and almost lapping right up to our row of cottages. In some places, triangular chunks of the grass-covered shore had dropped into the water in huge lumps, so I shied away from the edge. My dad once told me that the sea was trying to eat up the land and if I wasn’t careful it would gobble me up, too. I stopped in my tracks. Now it seemed to me that he was the one who had been gobbled up. The sadness inside me swelled and I couldn’t find the lump of crossness that held it at bay. It was harder to find it when I was on my own, so I started walking again, very quickly, with the wind in my face. I thought that perhaps the wind would blow my sadness away.

It was where the grass gave way to a small sandy beach that I saw it, lying motionless on a bed of seashells, half in and half out of the sea. I stopped for a moment, shading my eyes with my hand to cut the glare of the sun on the water. It must be a seal, I thought, washed up by the tide. We’d had one of those in Jenny Brown’s Bay before. My heart began to race as I drew closer. It was too big to be a seal. A person, it had to be a person. Could it be...? Could it really be my dad, lying there on the shore? My heart beat very hard and the breath refused to leave my body, for my dad was lying there on the sand and I had to help him.

It wasn’t my dad, though, it was Daffyd; he had come home at last but it was too late. His face was so swollen and gray that he didn’t look like Daffyd at all. He looked like the seal we saw last year, cold and solid and empty. I hoped my dad wasn’t with him. I didn’t want my dad to look like that—ugly and dead.

Tears welled in my eyes but I found my crossness as I stared at poor Daffyd’s swollen face, turning my tears into anger again. And then I just ran and ran toward home, looking neither left nor right in case I saw my dad there, too. I didn’t want him to be like Daffyd. If my dad had to be dead, then I wanted him to be an angel because angels can look after you.

My dad never did come back to look after me.

CHAPTER FOUR

I DIDN’T GO TO DAFFYD’S funeral....

After I told everyone I’d found him, Mr. and Mrs. Mac, Ted and Sam the postman—he was the first person to know because I saw him as I ran toward our row of cottages—things went mad. I don’t think anyone really remembered about me after that.

They brought the coffin to the Macs’ cottage and it sat right there on the table. Shiny gleaming wood with curvy golden handles; it seemed a shame to me to put it in the ground. I saw it arrive from my hiding place behind Mrs. Mac’s blue sofa but I didn’t stay there for long. All I could think about was Daffyd, lying inside it, a solid gray swollen lump with a face that was Daffyd’s and yet nothing like Daffy at all. We used to laugh a lot, me and Daffyd. He called me his little sister. Now he would never laugh again.

I couldn’t find my crossness that day so I went to our cottage and curled up in a ball in my bedroom until I got too hungry to stay there. The bread in our kitchen was hard and moldy so I sneaked next door again. That was when I heard them.

The kitchen door was slightly ajar, so I peered through the crack to see Ted and Mrs. Mac. He had one hand on her shoulder and she was shaking all over.

“I can’t go on, Ted,” she said with tears in her voice.

He patted her awkwardly, as one would a dog.

“Now, come on, Mary, time heals all and there’s the child to think of.”

She looked up at him, her face all puffy and pale. Did everyone keep changing? I wondered. Did no one ever stay the same?

“But I can’t stand to see her, Ted,” she cried. “All I can see is Mad Mick’s eyes in her face, and I can’t forget what he’s done.”

“But she’s just a child, Mary.” Ted’s voice was very, very sad. “Then you take her, Ted,” she said in a low, angry tone. “I’ve got too much pain in me to care where she goes.”

I knew then that eventually they would send me away. It seemed that my world would keep on changing. But I liked having my dad’s eyes.

* * *

THE CHURCH MUSIC WAS heavy and slow. I thought Daffyd would have liked something much more jolly, for everyone to sing to. I sat behind a tall gravestone and waited for all the people to file into the church. I waited for my dad. If he was an angel now, then surely he would come to his friend Daffyd’s funeral.

He didn’t come that day, though, so when everyone came outside again, I headed home to sneak some cakes and sandwiches from the plates that were laid out in Mrs. Mac’s front room. It was the first time in days that I was able to eat my fill, and my stomach felt so sore that I climbed up the stairs to my own cold bedroom and finally slept.

I felt a bit better when I woke—the hunger pains no longer gnawed at my stomach—so I went next door to see if Mrs. Mac had changed back into herself yet.

I hadn’t really minded not having a mother up until then, for Mrs. Mac had always been like a mother to me. Now, when she looked at me with sad, vacant eyes, vague memories kept coming back, of glossy brown hair, a merry smile and the sweet scent of summer flowers—memories of the mother I hardly knew. She’d gone away, too. Perhaps it was my fault that everyone left.

My dad had been upset—I remember that. He yelled at her when she ran from the house in her high-heeled shoes. They went tippety-tap on the concrete path, then her laughter was lost in the roar of an engine. He cried when she’d gone, and I cried, too, because he was sad. I had Mrs. Mac, though, and my dad, so I soon forgot my mother. Suddenly it seemed as if she’d left just yesterday. Maybe she’d come back to look after me now. I asked Ted about it when he came to find me, but he shook his head slowly.

“Oh, Elsa,” he groaned. “You poor little mite.”

Was that what I was now, a poor little mite?

“What’s a mite, Ted?” I asked.

He lifted me up very high, swinging me around and around and laughing too loudly, but he didn’t answer my question.

“Let’s go see if Mrs. Mac will clean you,” he said. “You look as if you haven’t had a bath in days.”

I felt a bit better. Perhaps Ted would take care of me now.

* * *

I HAD ONLY JUST STARTED school that autumn. I liked my class and my teacher, Mrs. Meeks, and I liked learning things. But no one had told me to go to school since my dad went away. I wondered if I should go by myself, but I wasn’t sure of the way, so I took long walks on the shore instead.

Mrs. Mac ignored me most of the time, so I stopped trying to sit on her knee. She thought I had my father’s eyes and she didn’t like him anymore, so she must not like me, either. Sometimes she tried to be nice, but even when she spoke to me she never looked into my eyes. I searched for my lump of crossness when she did that, to hide the ache inside me that wouldn’t go away.

One day I heard her talking to Mr. Mac.

“The authorities will have to take her,” she said. “I can’t go on like this.”