Several years have passed. The story resumes in April, 2022 when Jane visits a favourite beach. To access previous chapters, visit Jane Read’s Author Page.

PART TWO:

Chapter 34.

APRIL 26th 2022                                                                           

JANE

             

 ‘It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality, to go insane.’

Philip K. Dick

We scramble down the coarse grassy bank towards a hidden cove feeling like children again, my brothers and I, our backpacks stuffed with towels and picnics, dazzled by the morning’s sunshine creating flashes of a million tiny moving stars on the surface of the sea. Pale green fronds of Spring ferns appear between the rocks and yellow buds of gorse bushes are just beginning to open. The salt air and scent of fresh vegetation mingle with the tang of seaweed, and my heart and mind are filled with memories of past holiday smells in this place, the kerosene of Dad’s primus stove, the tempting aroma of frying sausages, the sweet scent of sunscreen on my skin.

It has become a much steeper descent than it was when we were children. The shiny, grey rocks are worn as smooth as ice, much more slippery than we remember them. But we are older now. It would be so easy to miss our footing and end up sliding all the way down on our backsides. Our beloved bay is not as accessible, nor as popular as other beaches across the Gower but was strongly favoured by our parents who always avoided crowded places if they possibly could. We always rushed to spread out our towels and stake claim to ‘Our Place.’ Not that there was ever any competition for it. ‘Our Place,’ effectively an open-topped cave, surrounded on three sides by rock walls. Always the ideal choice for a large family.

They are very much with us today, our parents, in our hearts and minds, but also in our backpacks, carried reverently alongside our picnics. We have returned to this place of holiday memories to scatter their ashes and to spend one last day on the beach together. This location seems to be the perfect place for the ritual. Mum and Dad would have agreed, I think.

Dad’s urn had been standing patiently in the wardrobe of mum’s back bedroom for twenty-six years since his passing. Our mother’s death was more recent, so after the simplest of lockdown funerals, followed by an unfussy, outdoor, socially distanced family picnic of individually wrapped, Morrisons meal deals (which we know would have had Mum’s approval) her box of ashes was added to our collection.

The suggestion had been made by my youngest brother to build a wall of sand across the entrance to the cave (just as we used to when we were children) incorporating the ashes into the mound, then waiting for the tide to come in to breach our barricade. Kenny, my stepbrother, with his working lifetime of building experience steps in to manage this ‘complex’ construction project for us. After a quick and very icy dip in the sea we tuck into our picnic provisions, closely resembling those provided by Mum in the past (a flask of hot coffee, ham sandwiches, penguin biscuits and buttered malt loaf) Then we sit and wait for the tide to come in.

Ken’s tattoos glisten on his muscular frame. I remember Mum was never particularly fond of Kenny’s tattoos, which covered most of the skin of his arms and torso, but they fascinate me. He sits down near me to ask how Dan is doing. Ken has been living in France for many years, so we only have the chance to speak occasionally about our families. There is so much to catch up on since we last met. I try to stick to the briefest version of the past few years, describing how we painstakingly set about rebuilding our son, relaunching his life one step at a time after his first illness, but that things seemed to change and extend the second time around and proved much more difficult to shift.

‘He didn’t have any insight into his condition for a very long time, which made him more vulnerable and more in need of care and support. If he was to have any chance of finishing his acting degree, he really needed someone to be with him full time. I was there mostly, but Graham stepped in to provide respite whenever he could’.

‘It was a big sacrifice for you both to make’ Ken said. ‘Not sure I’d have been willing to do it!’

‘It was difficult, lonely and expensive too but after the massive effort to get him back to drama school in the first place, we were reluctant to sit back and let it all go. I still hoped back then that he might have a future as an actor’.

‘How did Dan feel about carrying on?’

‘At first, he seemed keen to continue, to hold onto the various roles he had been offered. He was aiming to sign with an agent by the end, but as time went by and the meds took their numbing effect on him, his mood dropped and the challenges of trying to perform just got too much. He was gradually pulled out of project after project. It was demoralising for him and for us too. When the day of the final tech rehearsal for the end of term musical arrived, he was beginning to flag. Tech runs can often be twelve-hour long days. Dan was found hunched and weeping on the stairs before the start of the longest and most demanding rehearsal.

The principal phoned me and again I was called in to the theatre.’

‘I am very unsure about allowing Dan to continue with this’, She said, ‘But what do you think? Do you think he is coping?’

I couldn’t judge how much of his behaviour was the medication sedating him and bringing him down, and how much was brought on by the stress of the shows, but I said I would ask how he felt about carrying on. Over lunch he told me that although he was less confident, he did still want to give it a go. I was then invited to stay for the remainder of that rehearsal, to find out what was involved in a tech run and to see for myself how Dan was coping.

All seemed to go well at first, then in the late afternoon, he missed a call and didn’t reappear on stage. I knew he was meant to be there because I’d watched those scenes repeated over and over again. So I went backstage and found him slumped in an exhausted heap. He said he couldn’t go on. He was hot and breathing heavily, overwhelmed by the noise of excited students in the dressing room and feeling claustrophobic. He’d had enough. It was painfully clear that he was not going to be able to go through with this show. I told him get dressed. The afternoon rehearsal break had just begun.

I asked two of the students to let the tech crew know that Dan was going to leave.

I remember him struggling to put his trainers back on his hot feet, he was so tense and stressed, but my hands were full, holding his costume, coat and bag. Two female students noticed, so they crouched down to loosen and untie the laces of his Converse shoes, gently helping him to slip them back onto his feet then lacing them for him neatly. As we stepped outside into the dark street, I could see that the whole stressful experience had triggered a more acute reaction in Dan. He held out his arms, looking up into the evening sky, pausing and smiling as he caught sight of a single bright evening star directly above him. It was as though anything related to his delusion was still being received as a Heavenly sign.

We found a quiet café and ordered a cup of tea. I phoned and told Graham what had happened. He agreed that Dan sounded too unwell to continue.

‘This will definitely be it now’ I’d decided. ‘Dan is bound to be asked to leave drama school this time.’

I told Kenny that by then I felt completely drained anyway.  Watching Dan struggle and fail was like watching a car crash in slow motion. I wanted the whole nightmare to be over, just to be told to go home.’

‘Our brains are very complicated things’ Ken said. ‘Not enough is known about how they work. But I believe they are also able to heal and mend, like other parts of us. It just takes time.’

‘Thanks for listening,’ I smile at Kenny as I reach out my hand to touch his tattooed arm.

‘Hey, you two, I don’t like to interrupt, but just to let you know that the sea has reached the edge of our wall.’ We hoist ourselves onto our feet and make our way over the sand to join them.

As a child, I had looked forward to this ritual ending to our day on the beach and I was never willing to leave until the walls, or castle battlements were completely washed away.

We stand in line, watching in silence as the tentative waves creep nearer, their wet tendrils stretching upwards and sliding over the top of our broad barrier of sand, hissing their retreat, before advancing more decisively, pushing forwards, pulling away, a mesmerising, rhythmic dance. We watch until the wall is breached, then reduced to a dark, flattened mound. Minutes later there is no trace at all, no sand or ash left to be seen. It is finished. We silently gather our things and make our way back across the beach, stepping over the barnacled rocks then climbing up the grassy bank, with lighter, empty urns inside our backpacks.

Graham joins us on the headland after his walk along the coastal path. At sunset we sit near the window of an empty beach café, overlooking Worm’s head and Rhossili Bay, sharing more holiday memories as we thumb through an old album of tattered and browning photographs. We set off on our homeward journeys the following morning and Graham diverts our route to allow me to call at the farm where our family’s caravan used to stand and where we had stayed every summer throughout my childhood.

There are the inevitable summer hold-ups on the motorway, and we still have miles to go when we get the phone call. A note of great urgency in the voice alerts me as we struggle to take on board the unwelcome news.

One thing I know for sure is that I am about to be swept away by a much more devastating wave than those I have just witnessed on the beach.