The Day Death was Young

Christine Stone

Reader - let me take you to the day that death - that sinister, black, ugly thing became real to the child that was me.

My mother, as mothers can do, had waved me off for another happy, carefree day with my cousins. Packing our lunch and giving the usual caution - 'keep away from the river now... mind my words... keep away from that river,' she so ushered us on our way.

Well she knew that our beloved haunts lay beyond the river. But fear - a fear unknown and not understood by our young minds - forced her to repeat the mantra. Did we respond? I can't remember.

Jars in hands - that was all we needed apart from our lunch, we made for the machair - that glorious place. Oh yes, there were cattle to be avoided and - on wet days - muddy places to negotiate, but oh - that sweet scent of white and purple clover and the feel of soft grasses tickling our legs as we made our way to our corner of heaven remains with me now as it was then.

Just beyond the bridge was out special place. Adorned with pools of warm water amidst rough grass and warm sand, we lost ourselves in summer joy. We had little problem in filling our jars with sticklebacks and other curious sea creatures, some so tiny you had to look closely to be sure they really were living. The glory of those moments I relive as clearly as I relive the fearful dread of what I now share with you.

Being so absorbed and it being such a wonderful summer day, we thought little of the comings and going. Didn't everyone come to the beach on a day such as this?

What prompted me to the point of distraction I just can't tell - but something within me said that all was not well. Standing up and laying my jar aside carefully, I ventured to the bridge. To my utter astonishment I saw - and can still see - both sides of that river-bank lined with people. Some were crying, some were silent. In that terrible moment, I knew something dreadful had happened. I knew it was the river - that fearful place my mother warned us of. My cousins and I soon joined the throng. Who was there to hold us back? No-one did, although now as I reflect, someone should have. We stood, white-knuckled and ignorant, hating the moment and yet unwilling to leave. We stood amidst that crowd, watching and waiting.

At nine years of age, I had a certain knowledge that this day was the day I was going to come face to face with a thing so dark and awful that it would leave an imprint on my mind and in my whole being forever more. I stared at the water - calm, unsullied, glinting in the sunshine, beckoning, yet filled with that danger we knew about. Someone had gone in there!

The thought came to me and I whispered it to my cousin. His eyes were like saucers anyway at the best of times and so at this, the worst of times, he looked terrified. I wanted to run back to our pools and jars, but my legs dictated otherwise. And in a way, so did my mind. That curious, fearful, awful fear of knowing and not knowing battled for supremacy.

And then he came.

I see him now as I saw him then. He slipped into the river with a thick, strong rope in his hand. Why did he need that? I couldn't understand it then as I do now.

Then, this huge and sudden silence descended on all of us - as if something outside of ourselves has taken the moment captive.

Nothing.

Just a dreadful, anxious staring at that river. And no-one thought to spare us young ones. No-one thought to usher us out of the sight of what came next.

For it did come.

First the frogman. I found out many years later that this was name. The frogman.

Then - a hand. A white, dead hand and a white, dead wrist. That thick cord of rope was tied to the dead, white hand that suddenly became an arm, then a whole dead body. I stared across the river as they pulled him out. Oh, he was dead alright. No-one had to tell me that. His body was lifeless. His eyes didn't see the glare of the sun, the blue of the sky, the concern of the silent faces, the tears that began to fall or the arms of those who lifted him onto a stretcher and bore him away. But I saw it. I see it now.

Death.

It had never come to me in that young way before. It usually came for the grannies and granddads of our village and the other villages around. But on that day death was a young boy. A young boy who decided the river was his swimming pool and had dived in, never to climb out. He came to live, to love, to play. But instead, it was his last day.

We picked up our jars, emptied them into our warm pools and ran home - up that machair - away, away from the river and home to safety.

And there was my mother - so beside herself with worry that she had gazed upon the people from her home, her heart filled with fear, unable to move one foot in front of the other. The dread that it was one of us had overwhelmed her utterly. There are no words for our home-coming.

I think upon that day. The day death was young. It was for me a day where everything changed. It was a day never forgotten. I do not fear death now, as I did then. For then, I was but a child