The Walk

Mandy Lee

We went for a walk along the shores of the Firth of Forth, my Dad and I. Just like we had done since I was a toddler, when I was struggling to match his stride. Except by 1988 I was grown, and could keep up with him just fine as he strode along, stumbling over lava remains from the volcanic past, fossils and strings of mossy green seaweed. Autumn had windblown all the trees in the estate, which scattered yellow leaves into the sea. They dipped and swam in the grey like golden fish. My Dad smoked his pipe. I loved that smell. It reminded me of holidays when he'd blow mouthfuls of smoke through my hair to free it of midges as we marched up some godforsaken hill, 'just for the exercise'.

On that day he was helping me collect bags of interesting flotsam and jetsam for an art project, everything from sea-urchins, to knots of driftwood, animal bones and sea-rusted nets encrusted with barnacles. We even found a seagull lying on a bed of coal with its wings smashed out looking like a fallen angel. I didn't take that home. It looked like it was meant to stay there.

On the way back to the house, we passed cherry trees snapped in two by vandals. Each one neatly cleaved and pathetic. Same place they found a rabbit hanging from a goal post a year before.

Finally at home, I lit a camping stove to boil everything clean of the sea-smell and sand. It was the same stove that had bubbled sausages and spitting eggs below various godforsaken hills for years. I stuffed everything from the tideline into an old enamel pot, and poked them as they boiled, with a spoon, to stop them sticking. The water in the bucket beside me froze into solid ice. I smashed it with a horseshoe (it keeps the devil out).

Inside, the thin metal roof of the garage was hung with drawings, half-made constructions, bones, dried flowers, bits of wood and piping. The floor was made of thick concrete slabs pitted and bruised from the old wooden garage that had stood there before, spattered with paint from my Dad's canvases. My Grandfather's drills and hammers hung at the back along with labels from his old motorbike shop. I always wanted a Norton. It was raining just a little. The stove kept its flame.

Once cleaned and cooled, one piece stood out, a smooth, rounded fist-sized piece of bone. I remember thinking it was probably from a sheep, a lost lamb tottered over the cliff or an elderly specimen given up the ghost as it trailed its way home across the sea-grass. My Dad thought differently. He took it to school later that day, to show to his fellow teachers. They identified it as part of a human skull.

I had to hand it into the Police, and fill out a form. They looked at me like I was a bit odd as I gave them my little plastic bag with part of a stranger's head in it, and explained how come it had been boiled.

That day sticks to me like honey but not because of the gruesome find. It sticks because it was an adventure with the man that helped make and grow me.

I wish I'd known at the time how finite those days were. They run out eventually. Mine ran out far too soon. I miss him.