Beatrix
Back then, Beatrix liked to sit next to Mr. G when he rowed them all to the mainland. She would watch the town come into focus, the buildings growing larger, the white steeple in relief against the bluest sky. This was in Maine, where the family went each summer, and it was during the war, although that was hard to remember when they were there. Mrs. G often wore a pink or yellow sundress, her pearls tight round her neck, and she squawked about getting wet as William and Gerald splashed each other with water. Mr. G would roll his eyes and half-heartedly tell the boys to stop, his glasses spotted with sea salt, his tanned arms moving the oars forward and back in a smooth rhythm. When they got close, he would hand Beatrix an oar, and they would row, together, to shore.
Once a year, they ate at the small restaurant in town that was located at the end of the dock. They sat at the same table every year, a corner table with five seats facing the water. This way, Mrs. G said, they could all watch the sunset sky change over the island, their island, the sharp spikes of the evergreens set off by the pink and orange streaks, before the trees lost their edges as the sky grew dark. Not once, in the years that Beatrix was there, did the weather on this night disappoint. She was struck, whenever she saw the island from the mainland, by how different it was when seen from afar. It was beautiful, a blurry patch of green, caught up between the ocean and the sky. It was also so small that she could hold it in the palm of her hand. When they were on the island, though, she was the one who was small; it was her whole world. It was as though nowhere else existed.
They ordered clam chowder and corn on the cob and lobster. Baked potatoes still in their tinfoil wrappers, the heat escaping from a vertical slice across the top. The first summer Beatrix was there, the boys started to crack open the hard, red shells as soon as the plates were in front of them. Gerald was so excited that he was standing rather than sitting, and William was the first to find some meat, tipping his head back to catch the drips of butter. Beatrix slowly tied her bib, watching, and then took a swallow of water. Mr. G nodded at Mrs. G, who was seated next to her, and she patted her on the leg before she set to work on her lobster, pausing to let her see exactly what she was doing, so that she could do the same.
But that was all in the past. Tonight, alone in this seaside restaurant, Beatrix orders the lobster as the waitress lights the votive candle on the table. When the lobster arrives, she ties the bib around her neck, watching her reflection in the dark window. In August, she turned thirty-four. Twenty years have gone by. She often finds it hard to reconcile the girl she was then with the adult she is now. They seem like two separate people. For so many years she has tried to forget. She smells the cuff of her jacket; the ocean has nestled into her clothes. She can hear the waves crashing onto the shore. This place—a town on the Firth of Forth, just outside Edinburgh—is flat, the wind rough. Islands and rocky outcroppings are scattered offshore. There’s a wildness to it that reminds her of Maine. If she closes her eyes, it’s almost as though she’s there.
She’d come back from her trip to America in early September and thrown herself into work. The new school year started in a blur, someone always needing something from her, days when she might as well have slept in her office she spent so little time in her flat. In October, when she could finally slow down, she realized she felt adrift. Unmoored. Seeing the Gregorys in America, standing with them in the graveyard, had brought everything back—the five years that she spent there, the family she called her own for that briefest of moments. The grief at losing them. The grief she had worked so hard to bury. There she was, back in that familiar house, in that kitchen that smelled of lemon and cinnamon and butter, feeling Mrs. G’s arms wrapped around her neck, her whispers in her ear. Once again she hadn’t wanted to leave, and once again she had. She had lost them all over again.
Mum was the one who suggested that she might take a little holiday, to break up her routine, to try something new. Maybe that would help. She recommended this town because she had come here often as a small girl, and she’d loved it. She said something about the beaches and the birds, the relaxing train ride from London. It was fine, Beatrix supposed, although probably not the quaint Victorian town that her mother had known. She wondered whether her mother would have even seen the connection to Maine. She’d never been, after all. Beatrix wouldn’t have thought of it herself.
She eats some lobster but it turns out that most of the fun was in doing it together. She feels a fool, wrestling with it alone, in this tired and empty dining room. It makes her feel worse. She pushes the plate away and orders a coffee. The beam from the lighthouse is now visible, sweeping regularly across the black sea. There were nights when she and Gerald and William would sleep in tents in the woods, never far from the house, but they felt completely on their own, as though they were stranded on an island, the only ones to survive. The darkness was almost solid. They’d use their flashlights to walk down to the water and sit on one of the big rocks, shining the beams this way and that, then turn off the lights to absorb the black night, the whole world of stars shining down on the sea. She was happiest when she sat in the middle, when she could feel them on either side.
Dinner in town was always capped off by a chocolate layer cake, made by Mrs. G and brought over earlier in the day, with cold scoops of peppermint ice cream. Three fat candles to be blown out: one for William, one for Gerald, and one for Beatrix. Their names in fanciful blue script on the vanilla icing. My August birthday children, Mrs. G said. Another year gone by. The whole restaurant would sing “Happy Birthday” when the lit cake was carried out of the kitchen. The three of them stood and bent toward the cake in the center of the table, Mrs. G holding Beatrix’s hair back from the flames. The restaurant was dark by then, the sun having set, and their faces were lit by the candlelight. Gerald, with his red hair and freckles, his infectious smile. William, his curly hair bleached blond by the sun, his smile hidden from his face. What did they see when they looked at her? She doesn’t know, except that she imagines her face must have reflected the joy she felt. When she thinks of the three of them, together, she remembers this, the moment before the candles were blown out, as they all drew in their breaths, deciding what to wish for, and caught one another’s eyes.
That final summer, her wish was to stay. To be with them all, forever. She leans forward now, blows out the flame in the votive, and closes her eyes.
Reginald
That night, Reginald tells the fellows in the local pub how proud he is. He recounts the story of Beatrix leaving to everyone who comes in, telling the story again and again. They ask questions, they want to know the details. The ones whose children left before know this story, or a version of this story, already. How the morning was hot and sticky. How they stood in the ballroom at the Grosvenor Hotel and how he’d knelt on one knee when it had been time to go. How Beatrix had nodded at his last words, her face tilted to his, her chest held high. How she had been resolute and hadn’t cried, even though he could see the tears forming.
But a day later, he cannot quite remember what he said to her while he was kneeling on the floor. He worries, privately, that he forgot to say what was most important. But he tells everyone in the pub that night what a trooper she’d been. My brave eleven-year-old girl. He makes up the words that they said to each other. And he doesn’t explain that while he and Millie held it together for as long as possible, they turned away from Beatrix and moved through the crowds before he was truly ready to do so. He doesn’t imagine that he would ever be ready to leave.
In the dream he has again and again, he walks into the ocean, fully dressed, the wet fabric a weight. He pushes the waves aside as he goes deeper and finds himself back in that ballroom, leaving as others are arriving, his shoulders brushing against them, trying not to stare at the faces of the incoming parents, knowing that his eyes must mirror theirs, shocked to find themselves in this place, having made this decision, to send their children far away. Alone, across the sea. Only outside, on the street by the Grosvenor, the air thick, the gray clouds pushing down, did Millie begin to cry, pleading with him to go back and get their girl. He’d held her hand and pulled her away. In the dream he holds out his hands, reaching, wishing he could pick up the ship she’s now on and turn it around. Wishing he could reverse its course. He extends his arms again, trying to touch the land where she will now live.
But the story that he tells the boys is only half the truth. Beatrix was crying, holding on to him, her arms wrapped around his waist. She blamed Millie for sending her away, and she refused to say goodbye to her, was angry with her for the twenty-four hours between the time they told her and the moment she left. Reginald, in fact, was the one to insist she leave, knowing that the bombs were coming closer and closer, that there was no possible way to keep her, or any of them, safe. His older brother fought in the last war, and so he knew what was coming. That war cast a long shadow over his childhood. It was how he had learned the edges of fear. He and Millie were faced with an impossible choice. Better that she go to America, he thought, where the fingers of war were less likely to touch her. But he never told her that he’d forced Millie’s hand. He let her believe it was Millie’s choice.
Millie
Millie can’t rid herself of the fury. There was Beatrix’s anger at her, for forcing her to go, and Millie’s own at Reg, for not wavering when she pleaded. Let me go with her, she said. And then, later, in the middle of the night, neither of them sleeping, nor touching, staring up at the dark ceiling: Let’s just keep her here. We’ve got the shelter and the Underground. We can go to my parents in the country. I can keep her safe, she whispered again and again. I will keep her safe. But Reg’s mind was made up.
She has never thought of herself as an angry person. Emotional, yes. Stubborn, absolutely. But now she is overflowing with sorrow and rage. She can’t imagine a time when she will forgive Reg. She knows she will never forgive herself. Over and over she revisits the ballroom, the final moments, the warmth of her daughter’s cheek.
She pinned the label the man handed her onto Beatrix’s chest. It was a hot day but Millie’s hands were icy cold and so she rubbed them together, again and again, before tucking one inside the top of Beatrix’s dress to guide the pin in and out. The label had a long number on it, in addition to the name, and Millie memorized the number, thinking she would need to know it forever. She thought that it might be the only way she could locate her girl. On the way home from the ballroom, she became frantic when she could no longer be sure whether the final number was a three or a six.
The night before, Millie had washed and cut Beatrix’s hair in the small kitchen, a towel underfoot. Beatrix was in her underwear. Millie brushed the wet hair out before cutting, marveling that the thick strands almost reached Beatrix’s waist. It was then, when Millie turned Beatrix around to comb out the front, that she realized that her breasts were beginning to bud and that when she saw her again, she would have changed. She would no longer be a girl. And there was that fury again, but it was in her hands now, so without thinking, she chopped off her daughter’s hair, cutting it just below the chin, locks of hair falling to the floor, the scissors slicing, the white towel turning brown, Beatrix crying. She cut the thick, dark bangs in a severe line across the middle of her forehead. It was the haircut she had given her, every three weeks, when she was a little girl.
Now she can no longer sleep. She lies in Beatrix’s bed, curling her body into a ball. She tries to imagine where her girl is, in the middle of the Atlantic. Is she hungry? Is she alone? How frightened she must be by the deep water that wraps itself around the ship. The rocking waves. That vast sea. Millie smells a curl of the hair, tucked into a small glassine envelope, hidden in the middle of her book.
BEYOND THAT, THE SEA. Copyright © 2023 by Laura Spence-Ash. All rights reserved. For information, address Celadon Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
