180 Degrees
The brief for this piece was to imagine a woman, walking along the edge of the sea, on tears and smiling at the same time. As she turns and spins, she gathers herself and walks on, then something changes. What?
Olivia spun 180° around, describing circles in the sand, and ended where she had begun. So she began again, one foot in front of the other. As she walked, she spoke "What did they put in them? Billy Boy, I can't". If the wind heard, it did not answer her.
"Oh what did they put in those pills, Billy Boy, I can't".
Her blue nightgown was plastered to her legs. She laughed. A tiny, apologetic chuckle errupted from her lips. She captured it in her hands and hid it in the pocket of her cardigan, for later. Another spin. A herring gull landed on a rock, watching her. But he decided that there was nothing edible to be had, and he flew away.
"Billy Boy, what did they put in those pills? What did they put in those pills? What? Billy Boy, I can't".
Waves broke onto the sand, echoing every fifth word.
"What did they put in those pills?"
Uncultered pearls of tears were also imprisoned in her trembling hands and joined the laughter in her pocket.
Olivia stopped spinning and wailing, coming to rest, as a tiny boy stumbled out of the dunes. He ran down the beach and into the waves, leaping and splashing for joy.
"Billy Boy, I can't", Olivia whispered, with one hand across her mouth and the other, holding on to the treasures in her pocket.
The child's mother appeared. The woman strode past Olivia and grabbed at the child's hand. Olivia took her hand from her pocket and stretched out her arm, offering her tears and laughter, whatever the boy's mother wanted. But by the glare in the eyes of the tiger woman and the snarl of her mouth, Olivia decided it was time to leave and go to the cafe, up on the seafront.
The big windows of Sands Cafe insulated her from the outside world.
"Insulated, isolated?" Olivia muttered into her coffee cup.
The woman in the cafe had looked at Olivia's sand-encrusted feet and drenched nightgown, and handed over the coffee without charge.
Olivia sat at a table in the glass front. No children here. It was not the season for them. The garish buckets and spades outside the shop nextdoor went unclaimed and unused. A pair of cars were parked on the tarmac, side by side, though they were the only ones in the whole car park.
"If all the world were paper, and all the seas were ink", Olivia said, as the cafe woman wiped over the tables with a damp cloth.
"Billy Boy, Billy Boy, where have you been my Billy Boy?" Olivia whispered.
A bell tinkled as the cafe door opened. The cafe woman looked up, hoping to see a paying customer. When she saw the tall, black-clad, beak-faced woman, she went on wiping tables.
"Morning Sister Hilda", she said with her head down. The tall woman nodded. She approached Olivia, who had shrunk into her chair.
"Ready to go?"
Olivia pulled her cardigan around her and closed a hand around the captive laugh.
"What did they put in the pills?"
Hilda smiled at her own reflection in the glass.
"Snaps and snails, and puppy dog's tails," she said.
Olivia laughed and clapped her hands.