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Jude Ladyman - stories |
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Shells |
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He picked it up off the sand, tiny pink fingers curling around the pearly shell. His mother thought he looked like a Buddha as he sat contemplating the ocean, the shell disappearing into his mouth, sand dribbling at the corners. She cupped it to his ear so he could hear the sounds of the ocean. They walked back together, slowly, as his chubby legs dug into the sand. The sound of fur elese echoed in the distance, the clockwork notes tumbling erratically as they reached the road. Ahead the Mr Whippy van shone with white paint and the neat stacks of ice cream cones beckoned like the music. Mother and son both licked at their cones and hummed the tune. She lifted him onto her back now as the track got steeper just before it leveled out in front of the house. The front door was open and she emptied his pockets on the front porch, sand and shells came tumbling out and she put them in a basket by the door. It wasn't until much later when the child was asleep, all pink and glowing and tucked into his shell of a bed, that she had time to reflect. They'd made the bed before he was born, Joe cutting the wood and getting it just right so it rocked back and forth gently at the touch of a fingertip. She'd painted it pinky-blues and gold and he was growing so fast now they'd have to put him into a proper one, something more boyish like a fire engine or a train. It wasn't unusual for Joe to be late. He drove a freight truck from one country town to the other, zigzagging his way through life and into her heart. She'd been raised in one of those towns. A red dirt town with the local store post office and bank on one side and the supermarket and petrol station on the other. She'd worked in the supermarket and had yearned to leave that dusty place and live somewhere by the sea. When she met Joe she knew he was the one because they had the same dream. There was always that feeling when he was late that something had happened and sometimes it got her down but the sound of the car in the driveway snapped her out of it. She pushed the hair off her face and there he was, big as day holding out a package for her. She opened it slowly, unfolding the tissue paper in extravagant fragile layers and amongst it all a strand of tiny matching pearls. They turned off the lights and looked in on the child asleep in his shell like cradle.
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