“It’s the weed giving you the heebie-jeebies. Here.” The man held out his hand to the other, the lit tip of a cigarette glowing.
I jumped into the ring of firelight like a wild woman or a tiger. I made a grab at the coat; even if my purse was no longer in the pocket, I was bloody going to get it back. But the man was on top of me before I could stop him, still wearing the coat, his weight pinning me, a hand across my jaw, pushing the side of my face into the sand away from the fire, and giving me a mouthful of grit. I don’t know what happened to Green Shield Stamp-man; I didn’t see him. I think the one with the coat had expected me to be male; his arm was tensed, flexed, and his hand a fist. But he must have realised what, or who, was beneath him, and his grip changed—as if it wasn’t a fight he was after. With one hand constricting my throat he pushed his thighs between mine. I don’t think I shouted. I tried to shake my head, tried to say no, please no, tried to get out from under him, but his hand pressed harder. And I stopped struggling. Struggling, I decided (have decided), would (will) make it worse. As the man was unzipping his trousers, my left arm became free and I moved it out across the sand, my hand scuttling sideways until it came across a cylindrical object, smooth and light. An empty beer can. My hand dropped it and moved on towards the flames. While the man on top of me grunted with the effort of keeping me down and releasing himself, my hand closed around a thick stick lying at the edge of the fire. I lifted it up, the end glowing white with heat and ash, and I lowered it over the man’s back, pressing it against the olive wool of your coat. There was the smell of burning fabric, and I forced the stick down harder. He didn’t notice until his T-shirt began to burn, and for some moments more, while he was screaming, I clamped that man to my body with my arm and the stick until he managed to roll off me, swearing and yelling. He flung the greatcoat away and I grabbed it, dropped the stick, and ran.
I didn’t slow until I reached our beach at the bottom of the chine, and it was only there that I felt my own pain. The sun had fully risen, a yellow light streaming through tattered clouds, and I saw the white scalded skin across my palm and fingers. I stared along the beach while I squatted in the waves with my hand under the surface, and I began to laugh. The bottom of your coat was sodden with seawater.
When I got home, goose-pimpled and muddy, I went into the girls’ room. I’d been gone less than an hour. I bent over them, the ends of my hair dripping onto the cheeks of our sleeping children. They hadn’t woken; nothing bad had happened to them while I’d been gone.
I bandaged my hand, and when Nan asked about it I said I’d burned it while boiling eggs for breakfast. She wanted to see, wanted me to go to the doctor, but I told her not to fuss. And an hour ago, when the girls left to catch the school bus, I stuffed the coat into a bin liner and, with the pole that props up the washing line, pushed it as far under the house as it would go.
Ingrid
[Placed in Warne’s Adventure Book for Girls, 1931.]
Chapter 31
On her way out of the house in the afternoon, Flora pressed her ear up against Gil’s door to listen to the conversation he was having with Richard, but their voices were too low for the words to make sense. She considered knocking, but Nan shooed her away. On the beach, Flora kicked through the foam that fanned like a bridal train across the sand. She walked from Dead End Point to the cliff, staring at the ground, trying not to think about her father, and not looking at the people on the beach, controlling her habit of searching for women with fair skin and straight hair. She thought about going for a swim, but even that seemed pointless. She flapped out her towel, lay down, and closed her eyes.
She tried to imagine what Louise would look like now. Just before Ingrid had disappeared, Louise had been elected to the House of Commons, and Flora had seen her picture in the paper. She was wearing a fitted jacket, a pearl necklace, and matching earrings—not someone she could imagine her mother being friends with. The newspaper had been spread out on the kitchen table and Flora had seen that Ingrid had doodled in red pen on the photograph: devil’s horns rising out of the coiffed hair.
Flora might have dropped off to sleep, she wasn’t sure, but she was aware of a shadow across her face. She opened her eyes, shielding the glare with her hand. Richard was looking down at her.
“What?” she said.
“I wasn’t sure if you were sleeping. It’s not good to lie too long in the sun.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Someone with your colouring—it’s very easy to burn.” Richard had a long-sleeved T-shirt on, shorts, and walking boots.
“I’ve lived by the sea for my whole life, Richard,” she said.
“Anyway, Nan wants to go shopping and I said I’d go with her. Your father shouldn’t be left on his own.”
“Oh God, is he worse?” Flora jumped up.
“He’s sleeping. He’s the same.”