Closed for Winter by Georgia Blain

Author:Georgia Blain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2012-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

21

There was no moment when it happened. That is what is difficult.

Sometimes when I find myself going over that day, I realise I could never stop. I could keep going, the next day and the one following and the days that stretched before that day.

I am searching for a defined event, and that is not how it was.

I imagine other losses. A lover dies in your arms and you brush his hair back from his face, feeling the last breath, all the life, there and then gone. Your child is killed in an accident and you see the body, tiny body, laid out in front of you and you know that it has come to this. A friend leaves the country, there with you and then gone, last grasp of the hand, last kiss on the cheek, last moments before you are physically pulled apart by the reality of the departure.

I imagine these losses, and it seems that in each of them there is a dividing line between what was and what is. But that is not how it was for us.

I see Frances walking down the path to the beach. Tall and thin under a harsh blue sky. I see the bleached wooden slats of the path she walks. I see me watching her, hoping she will look back, but she doesn’t. She walks towards the white sand and beyond that the glittering sea.

This is the last time I saw my sister.

It is a moment. But it is not the moment. It is not the dividing line I am looking for. Because there was more. If she died, I want to know how she died. If she left us, I want to know when and why.

Twenty years later, I stand at the top of the path and, still, I see her.

I take my shoes off and the sand is cold beneath my feet.

Following the path she took, I walk towards the beach. The jetty and the kiosk, closed for winter, are to my left. That is the way she went, but I do not walk towards them. I turn, as always, to the right.

It is still early and there is a Sunday-morning calm. The houses on the beachfront look deserted. The curtains are drawn and the doors are closed. Most people would still be asleep. The sky is blank and empty, pearly grey over a dark grey sea. Grey on grey, broken only by a single ship that moves from left to right. The seaweed has washed up onto the beach. It stretches, forward and behind, as far as I can see in both directions. Black and knotted on the white sand, a great uneven stripe.

I am relieved to be out of the house. I have not left it since I arrived on Friday and being there, alone with Dorothy, weighs heavy on me.

I will be back soon, I promised, wondering why I worried about leaving her alone. She is used to it, after all.

I walk to where the sand and the grass are no longer divided by road.

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