Tidewrack
Editor’s Note: This memoir is best viewed on a computer screen rather than a handheld device.
It was two months after Mum died. I would not meet anyone. I would not answer messages. I would not talk about my feelings. I didn’t want to chat. I didn’t want people. I didn’t want feelings. I wanted nothing, except a place where I could spend my days walking through bare, remote, even boring places, and my nights drinking hard liquor until I passed out. I found the perfect spot. A cottage near the coast of east England that belonged to my aunt. The landscape was flat, open and wild. In a local guidebook, I read about a spit of sand that stretched out to sea, named The Point. This was unique and weird and its shape on a map resembled a claw, a net, or a young tree struggling in a gale. On its outcrop was a nature reserve, where hundreds of seals lounged in the sun and played in the surf. Birds nested on the dunes, with lyrical names like redshank, shelduck, and ringed plover, and the banks sprouted with marram grass, bindweed, and a bushy yellow flower called lady’s bedstraw.
So I thought it would be cool to walk to the end of The Point, return in the late afternoon, and find a village pub to celebrate my adventure.
The forecast predicted high temperatures and no clouds or rain, so I dressed in a baseball cap, shorts, and a T-shirt, and smothered my arms, face, and legs with sunscreen. In a small rucksack, I packed cheese rolls, biscuits, and a flask of orange squash.
It was just past dawn when I left. The day was bright and the village was empty. Down a narrow lane, I passed by a smokehouse, a bookshop, and a windmill converted into holiday flats. A wooden sign stood by a dirt track, carved with the words “TO THE SEA” and the symbol of a pointing finger. This path led through an expanse of salt marshes to a tall ridge of pebbles. On the other side was a deserted beach and a concrete building with a glass parapet. The dunes unfurled in a straight line, which I followed for an hour or so. I wasn’t sure of the time, as I carried no phone or watch. The horizon was still. I couldn’t make out boats or anything else floating in the water. Thick and sharp grass shivered on the banks. Birds hovered in the air and paddled in the shallows, scanning for worms. Behind me, the glass tower fell out of sight.
The currents came in strong and pulled out slow. Along the shingle lagged driftwood, plastic netting, bottles, cans, and ribbons of algae. Ahead lay a gray blot, which I guessed was a rock or a buoy. As I walked closer, the shape was jerking. Perhaps it was a loose bin liner, caught on a stone and buffeted by the wind. Soon I made out the body of a seal, half-buried in the sand. Its flesh was soft and its whiskers dry. I reckoned it was young and possibly a pup.
Ughuuu…Ughuuu…, it barked weakly.
The only help was several miles away. I had to try something. But I knew zero about seals, except that they were related to dogs and were feral. I didn’t move close to its head, nor did I attempt to touch it anywhere, in case it lunged forward and snapped my hand.
Ughuuu…Ughuuu…
I scouted the beach for tools. Among the pebbles were rusted aerosol cans, broken timber, and plastic flotsam. I picked up a folded stretch of tarp the size of a bed blanket and a shred of wood. I laid out the sheet next to the seal. Beneath its belly, I dug the stick and prodded it over. Onto the flat surface, the creature flopped, bleating louder, with a brittle undertone. As I pulled one end of the tarp towards the sea, it sat up on its front. A pair of wet holes stared at me, confused.
I took off my shoes and socks and left them far from the breakers. My feet sank into the sand as the pitch and roll curled around my ankles. Slowly I dragged the tarp until I was wading up to my thighs.
The sheet slipped below, and the seal thrashed its flippers, floated, and dove under. Reemerging, it shook droplets from its whiskers and threaded through the ripples, letting the currents carry it further out to sea. After a few seconds, its head was barely visible above the surf.
In the evening, I came back to the village. At a pub, I bought a pint of local ale and sat in the garden. The air was cool, but not too cold, and there were a few more hours until dusk. I was joined by a middle-aged couple from Wales who lived a few doors from my aunt’s place. They were birdwatchers and knew the area well. I told them how I’d reached the end of The Point. They said it had been such a lovely day for a ramble.
This was a chance to brag about what I’d just done. So I described my encounter on the beach and how I’d used the debris to help a vulnerable creature return to its natural habitat. After I recounted the details of my story, including a brilliant impersonation of the seal’s yelp, the couple did not seem impressed.
“Unfortunately,” the woman sighed, “some get stranded. There is nothing we can do about it. We have to let them be.”
“Why did you put it back in the sea?” added her husband.
“I thought it was in pain,” I replied.
“Did it appear to be in pain?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know what a seal in pain looks like.”
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I forgot about these events
Until years later, when I was lying in bed one Saturday, and had nothing to do, and no one to talk to, and for some reason
I was recalling that shitty year
and wondering if the couple from Wales were right
If I had made a mistake
I needed confirmation, so I searched Google for “abandoned seal: what to do” and clicked on a link to the website of the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). I was sure they would validate my actions. Hadn’t I saved a life? How could a charity that protects animals argue with this?
A page of advice was dedicated to seal pups. This outlined how finding them alone was not unusual, as mothers leave their young early, when they are three or four weeks old.
The website told me that if I ever find a lost seal pup, I should keep an eye on it for twenty-four hours.
The pup may not have been abandoned.
Because the mother may have been separated from her young by a storm.
The mother could have been looking for her child.
The mother could have returned.
“Never,” said the RSPCA, “put a seal pup back in the sea, as it may get into difficulty.”
But I had to help.
I had to.
I had no choice.
I thought I had no choice.
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In his story The Wild Palms, William Faulkner wrote, “Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”
I first heard this when I was a teenager watching the 1960 French movie, À bout de souffle, known as Breathless in English, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
The heroine, an American in Paris played by Jean Seberg, cites this reference in a conversation with her boyfriend, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, who is on the run after killing a cop.
I understood that this meant to feel is better than not to feel, even if that feeling is the worst feeling one can feel.
I told this to Mum.
It was one of our last phone calls together.
I was living in Bucharest, Romania, with my girlfriend. We rented a studio apartment that was so small that we had to turn the sofa into a bed every night. There was no space for a table, so our landline rested on a bookshelf between novels and criticism by Angela Carter. I don’t know why it was specifically Angela Carter books that we used to bracket the phone. There was no reason for this.
Earlier that spring, Mum had been diagnosed with leukemia and had stayed in a hospital in England, where she had undergone several courses of chemotherapy. Her hair had fallen out, and her weight had dropped, but she was in remission. I spoke to her often and flew over to stay with her when I could.
It was October, and she called to tell me something important. An update on her progress.
The cancer had come back.
She’d been talking to a specialist in London. More courses of chemotherapy were possible but might not be enough. The alternative was a bone marrow transplant. The doctor had found a donor in the U.S., but he needed Mum’s permission to source the stem cells.
She told me that when she was in hospital, she’d spoken to another patient, who was a similar age to her. Their beds were next to each other. I remember her name was Carol, but it might not have been.
Carol had suffered from a similar cancer and had chosen to have the transplant. She told Mum it would take one year, or maybe two.
“It was hell,” said Carol, “a hell I would not go through again.”
“Will you accept the treatment?” I asked Mum.
“I don’t know.”
She never said “no,” even when she wanted to say “no.” Instead, she said, “I don’t know,” so that whomever she was speaking to wouldn’t think she was being rude or abrupt, even if they understood “I don’t know” actually meant “no.”
“It’s good to fight,” I suggested.
“It may not work,” she said.
“But what if it does?”
“There would be too much pain.”
So I hit her with that Faulkner quote, from The Wild Palms and À bout de souffle:
Between grief and nothing
I will take grief
Now
I can’t remember what she said in response.
I can guess.
This is what it might have been:
“This is my grief. I don’t want it.”
or
“What does this William Faulkner know about my problems?”
or
“You can stand there and quote fancy words to me, but I am that choice.”
But I couldn’t let her. I had to.
Even if this meant only pain. I had to let her.
I had to keep pain alive. I had to let her be.
How could she choose nothing over grief?
The sand over the tide?
Dust over movement?
I had to let her not be.
- Unfortunately, some get stranded.
There is nothing we can do about it.
Why did you put it back in the sea?
- To make it happy.
- How can you tell if a seal is happy? The way its whiskers bristle? The eagerness with which it claps its flippers? You think you can tell from its eyes?
- Yes, yes, from the eyes.
- There is nothing there. They are darkness.
- I was certain
Certain
I made darkness happy.
Michael Bird is a writer and journalist based between London and Bucharest, with fiction recently published in Final Girl Bulletin Board, Route 57, Porter House Review, and Panel Magazine. His body horror story about a 1980s McDonald’s mascot, “Fry Girl 4Eva,” for Daily Drunk Mag was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022. As a journalist, he’s investigated organized crime, vampire-hunters, killer home-made drugs, fur farms, and the Ukraine war. Currently, he’s finishing a pan-European documentary about how humans can resolve conflicts with bears. Find him at www.michaelbirdjournalist.