Stormy Waters
We were feral. Our days were filled with adventures. While our mom worked, we’d slip out of the window, away from under the watchful eye of our houseboy, and head for the bush. There wasn’t a dingo we hadn’t hidden from; a storm we hadn’t been caught in; a dangerous building site we hadn’t explored; a dam we hadn’t built. We had it all. When the rainy season came, after the storm, we’d entertain ourselves picking the snails from our garden and hurling them over the fence and smashing their shells as they landed with a satisfying crunch in our neighbour’s garden. We knew the danger of finding the ghostly skin a snake had shed, and why it was bad to swim in stagnant water. We cut down sugar cane from the fields, sucking to release the sweet gooey sugar from the cane, chewing on the ends until they were a grassy pulp. We had never eaten sweets.
From the bush we moved to the city. We spent our days without shoes. The ground was so hot that it burned the soles of our feet. From our apartment to the beach was a ten minute run in bare feet. We’d stop half way, when the fierce heat made us cry with pain, jump onto a low wall and dangle our legs until our feet had cooled down enough that we could run the rest of the way. The beach was the worst — worse than the pavements or the melting tarmac. We would break into a full on sprint across the burning sand till we hit the ocean. Sea. Waves. Relief. We’d giggle outrageously and point at tourists as they picked their way gingerly across the hot sand — the soft tender skin on their feet unable to cope. We had a fat square polystyrene board that we used to bodysurf the white capped waves, sometimes going too far out for safety. More than once we had to be rescued.
We were explorers: white blonde girls, with golden tans, and bare limbs, not a care in the world.
Just before we left, I remember standing on the balcony of our apartment looking out to sea. Rod Stewart was on the transistor radio, singing.
“I am sailing
I am sailing
Home again
‘Cross the sea
I am sailing
Stormy waters
To be near you
To be free”
We had never seen snow then, nor knew of the miner’s strike, or the winter of discontent, or the three day week, nor lived in a council flat, nor been beaten, or bullied, or borrowed bread from the neighbours so we could eat.
But I could hear, with dread, it all coming, in Rod Stewart’s raspy voice. I was only ten.
