Deadman’s Beach
The ground is white where the sun has yet to reach it. The best-looking horse of the neighbourhood bunch pulls rain-slick ivy from a fallen tree with marble teeth. Passing through Renmore, I come across a dead blackbird, suspended upside down at eye level in a metal construction fence. Its orange beak is open. Its street-side wing is splayed outward; its tail points the direction I am going.
I always swim at Deadman’s beach. It’s empty, except for the two men who used to live there, till they gave us a place to live. Both still return. I spoke with one a couple of weeks ago. He asked me was the water cold. You’ve bigger balls than me anyway. As I left I turned to him. Our silhouettes saluted each other. Last week I graduated from the university. Late afternoon with the sun setting, the mounds of beached seaweed made gold, we meet the second man, a camera over his shoulder. He doesn’t condemn those coming here to drink, just what they leave behind for him to clean up. The ‘fire water’ has given him nothing in twelve years. ‘Now I just love _taking photos_and meeting people.’ He waves. He found the body here last year, awful good-lookin’ fella. We talk swimming, and running up and down the length of shore afterwards to get the heat back into your blood. He says he knew that we’d come here for a dip by the pace of us rounding the head of the docks. He reassures me that the seals would do me no harm.
Today my head feels like wood. Walking alongside Lough Atalia is like being under a blanket; the swan plumes above gunmetal grey.
When I reach the beach I sit on a rock with my face in my knees and listen to the _sssshhh_of the water. It’s crystal clear, the sky above high and white. I untie my shoelaces. I will not resist. Less cold than some days and seal-less as far as my eye can see. I crash through to warm myself. There’s exertion in moving. I lie so the freezing holds the back
of my neck like a hand and I watch a train pull across the bridge towards the station. I wave; stretch my feet out before me. I swim across, turn, sprint back. The world is mine.
I relish the rapid activity post-dunk of scratching my bare skin all over with the thin towel then pulling on layers. Boots cling to my feet. Once they are tightly re-laced I feel the cold for the first time in my toes. Thawing is a reminder of feelings.
I explore the men’s former dwellings; sink through seaweed and climb stone steps of beach rocks to a sheltered vegetable garden.
Massive healthy leaves, fishing cage of a makeshift grill. Behind me is a sculpture, bits drifted ashore; shoes, wood, sunglasses, colander, gloves, lobster cage, thin coloured rope stretched between the pieces, a man-made web. The sign highlighting the Wild Atlantic Way wears a little black rimmed cap, skinny scarecrow.
Coming through the docks, I pass a woman feeding a baby from a bottle in the driver seat of a car, an old man in the passenger seat, the car is at an odd angle on the bridge. A man is fishing from the pier. I stand and watch the enormous Corrib Fisher nose out of the harbour, scattering birds. Brave ones return on the swirls of air and settle in its wake. A smaller boat carves out to meet it. I imagine one of the fishermen leaving his jacket ashore, his mother hot- footing it in a speedboat after the vessel to bring it to him, saying, it’s awful nippy, the other men laughing.
Ella Gaynor