A Song for the Sea

A Song for the Sea

Written Wednesday, June 17, 2015

by Selina De Luca

Photo by James Hoey on Unsplash

You know you love someone when you cannot think about anything else but them.

For little Angela, it was James Harding. For Louisa, it was Henry. For me, not a who, a what: the sea.

“Take me back to the sea,” I moaned with every turn over, with every change, every opening and closing of the curtain.

“Yes, I know,” they would say – with compassion, but not with empathy.  You know what? I would scoff inwardly. What did they know? They knew nothing, understood nothing about the sea, about my heart, about my past, about how the distance from me to the sea was literally draining the life out of me.

The sun was bright and the smell of sea salt strong the day little Angela came in to show me her new bauble.

“A ring, my dear? Are you getting married?”

She was not so little anymore.

“Yes, I am getting married!”

“Little one, when I come to your wedding, will you take me to the sea?”

“It would take a miracle of God to allow you to come to my wedding.”

“Little one, listen,” I insisted, my voice scraping against my throat as it tried to get out. “When you are Mrs. Harding, you must come back for me, and bring me to the sea.”

“I would love to, but I do not think –”

No, she did not think. The darling did not understand.

I turned to my dreams instead, and anyone else who came in was eclipsed by the brightness shining through the window, and any time I was swimming through pain I was also flying over vast grey waves.

Louisa came to see me soon after.

“Were you by the sea?” I asked eagerly, though I already knew she had been.

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

“Grey, and blue, and wide, and flat, and white at every crashing peak, and black below the surface, and cold.”

I shivered.

“Did you see the white house?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“Did you see the juniper tree?”

“Yes.”

“The row of seashells Darcy laid out, and the garden?”

“Yes.”

“…and Darcy? Did you see Darcy?”

A pause.

“Yes. Of course.”

“And… Henry?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how he looked.”

I close my eyes as she spoke. In a moment I was there. The white siding, the metal gate, the purple flowers, the black door with the wreath Darcy and I had made, and Darcy, and Henry.

“Louisa? Is that you?”

There was Henry. He came out onto the porch from a dark house I couldn’t see into. The breeze pouring off the sea teased his curls straight up. His white sleeves were rolled up unevenly and his suspenders wrapped too tightly around the broad shoulders popping out from either side. If he had been wearing his hat it would have been gracefully popped off before he reached down to give his Louisa a kiss.

Louisa dug her feet deeper into the sand and laughed her seaside laugh when he let her go.

“It is me,” she said, her dancing eyes drinking in the salty air. “Where is Darcy?”

Sometimes it was a question she was too afraid to ask.

“Here I am, Mama!”

“Darcy!”

Louisa, pretty in her green dress and old-fashioned apron tied sloppily in the back, scooped up her little Darcy and planted little kisses all over the sweet skin that smelled like the sea.

A gull overhead called out a warning and Louisa looked at Henry. Henry looked at Louisa. Then Louisa was alone again, in this room, and she was smiling, and a tear was on her cheek. I reached for it and wiped it gently.

It was enough storytelling for today; I didn’t need her to tell me any more about the sea, because I was going to dream about it all night, and possibly all day too.

—      

With the passing of every empty day, some days heavy with the smell of the sea but a void of its taste, others void of anything at all, I waited anxiously for more of Louisa’s visits.

Sometimes Louisa came with lights in her eyes, like sunlight glinting off a ripple in the sea, and other days they were as empty and black as the bottom of the sea.

“How is Henry?” I asked every time. Sometimes, “Where is Henry?” But I didn’t dare to ask about Darcy.

“I have something for you,” she said one day, and took my gnarled fingers into her soft ones to press a small seashell into my palm.

“One of Darcy’s seashells!” I gasped. “Thank you! Oh, thank you.”

She smiled and started telling me the story of when her father bought her and Henry a piano. I knew this story well, and listened to it again with the feeling of a shadow hanging above the stream of joy running underneath.

“A piano! Father, really? For us, a real piano?”

“For you indeed, my little Louisa!” said her father. “No one on earth plays more beautifully than you do, so no one on earth deserves one more than you do!”

The specimen was sitting in the front walkway, looking quite content amidst the garden and sand, breathing in that good sea air and not really looking forward to being crammed into the house.

“Henry plays beautifully too, don’t you, Henry?”

“Not nearly half as well as you, my love,” he responded. His hat was on this time, and it was crooked, perfectly crooked like his smile and everything else about him.

“Father,” Louisa said, “I am not sure how we are going to be able to fit it into the house!”

“Don’t be silly, we shall fit it with no problem at all, shan’t we, Henry?”

They endeavoured to move it, but the piano simply did not want to go inside.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. I even measured this thing! Turn it, Henry. Turn! Careful!”

Up to this point little Darcy had been making sand piles and then gaping soundless at the strange brown box with its row of smiling rectangular teeth. Watching the grown-ups getting stuck in the doorway, the little one approached to offer some help too.

“Do you like the piano, Darcy?” Louisa asked. “Yes, piano! Just like Grandma and Grampy have! You love pianos, don’t you, Darcy?”

And she scooped up her little one into her arms and watched with increasing laughter as the men continued to struggle to get the piano through the door.

“My oh my, did your doorway shrink recently, Henry?” Louisa’s father asked, wiping his brow.

“I don’t believe so, sir,” Henry laughed.

In the end, they had to give up.

“It will not fit,” Henry told his wife apologetically. “I’m sorry, my love.”

“Of course it will not fit,” Louisa said. “It belongs outside! See how it looks with the sea in the background. It would eat up half our living room, a monster like that in our little home, but out here it is just so… picturesque, don’t you think?”

“Not when it rains, it won’t be,” said her father.

“Louisa,” Henry said with sudden intensity, striding towards her and taking her little hand in his strong one, “I am going to build you a piano shed.”

“A what?”

“A piano shed. A little house in the garden for your piano to live in. Safe from the elements but out in the world where you will be able to see the sea from where you play.”

Henry knew how his Louisa loved the sea.

“Marvellous idea!” exclaimed Louisa’s father.

“Yes, a wonderful idea, Henry!” Louisa cried, balancing Darcy on her hip so she could fling her arm around her husband and squash Darcy up between them. “You are too good to me. Both of you are.”

And so it was that the piano shed was erected in the garden, and any one of the neighbours who came down to their end of the seaside would stop by to listen to Louisa playing the songs of her childhood, and singing with her pure sweet voice songs of love to the cherubic Darcy in her lap, or to the God in the heavens, or to the mighty sea.

She had one song she played more often than any, her song for the sea. I knew her song for the sea. I remembered it better than any other song in the world.

“Sing the song of the sea for me,” I asked Louisa. She complied, and once again tears came, and this time I did not wipe them away. Sometimes you have to let the drops fall to wash the sadness away.

I thanked Louisa, and she was gone, and it was only after she left that I realized she had taken the gift of Darcy’s seashell away with her.

—

The next day after the piano story brought back little Angela and her fiancé Harding, who thankfully did not look like the child she looked, but like the good strong man I would want to see my great-niece affianced to.

“Mr. Harding, thank you for coming to see me. I have to ask you something. Can you bring me to the sea?”

“Mrs. Parker, I’m sure you would be much more comfortable staying here where you are well looked after!”

“No, no, my boy, you don’t understand. After that. After I am done in this godawful place, will you help Angela bring me back to the sea?”

“Mrs. Parker,” he responded. “I would love to but I fear I do not want to make you any empty promises.”

Later I overheard him whisper to Angela, “Does she know?”

What, did I know I was dying soon? Yes, yes I did.

—

It was another stretch of days and nights again before I could wake up enough to acknowledge any other visitors. But it was in the hours of the night when Louisa would creep in, more often than not with deep shadows in her eyes, deep like the sea, dark like the sea, wet and salty like the sea.

“Where is Henry?” I asked. I couldn’t ask yet about Darcy.

“I stole a boat,” she responded wildly.

“What?”

“I stole a boat.”

“It is not like you to do that.”

“I had to go out there. I had to go out onto the sea. It was pouring rain and the wind was wild, but I had to go. There were screaming gulls everywhere, screaming at me, ‘NO! NO! LOUISA! DON’T GO! DON’T GO!’”

I shivered and tried to take her hand, but she pulled away from me.

“I couldn’t listen to them. It was a little flimsy boat. I took it out onto the sea in the dark of the night. I took it out a little ways, but then I got tired.”

“And you made it back alive?” I asked incredulously. “Are you crazy, child?”

“The wind was screaming, ‘GO BACK, GO BACK!’ The waves were shouting, ‘STOP, LOUISA, STOP!’ And I screamed back at them, ‘Why did you take them away from me? I who loved and trusted you all my life, how could you have taken them? How dare you take them!’”

“Louisa,” I gasped.

“And the sea yelled back,” she continued: “‘You must return to your home before we take you too!’ And I screamed back, ‘Take me then! Take me! Take me, take me, take me now!’”

“Were you yelling at the sea, or at God?” I whispered, afraid of the answer.

“At the sea,” she said. “I would never yell at God.”

“Oh, I wish that were true,” I responded wearily, and clutched my blanket closer.

“But the sea did not take me, as you can see. And I had to come back to tell you so.”

“Thank you,” I said after a moment's pause. “Thank you for reminding me.”

And then she was gone again, but the sound of her screams mingled with those of gulls and stormy seas rose up in my mind until it was screaming, screaming, screaming…

After what seemed like hours of turbulent waters thrashing their way out of my own chest, the storm subsided and the tide went out. 

It went out of my eyes, out of my nose, out from my lungs to a part of me that was apart from me, and out and away, far away, and I felt it flow out, gently and soothing, and I felt His presence suddenly all around me – not the sea, but the Creator of the sea. 

I breathed out, and let go.

  

—

My name is Angela Harding.

I live in a cottage by the sea. The most beautiful piano sits in our garden, in a pretty little shed built by my great-uncle Henry Parker, a man whom I never met. In our garden there is also a long train of seashells, collected by a small child who never had the chance to see a fifth birthday or beyond.

The body of my beloved great-aunt Louisa is interred in the town cemetery, but there is a memorial stone in the centre of the garden that has been here for years, reading: “In memory of Darcy Elisha Parker, beloved little angel, and Henry Thomas Parker, beloved husband. On April 14, 1938, the sea claimed Darcy and Henry’s lives while they were out in the Little Oracle, our fishing boat. Forever in my heart, and if you belong to the sea then so forever do I.”

And added portion at the bottom then reads: “In loving memory of Louisa Caroline Parker, the Musician of the Sea, known and loved for her kindness, her music, and her love of the sea.”

My husband James and I are not afraid of the shadows of the past that linger in this place. The neighbours have already begun to call me the New Louisa, and the new life within me the new Darcy Elisha.

And I belong here, I know, because I too love the sea. It flows in me like blood, and calls to me with the voices of memories that are not even mine.

It is my turn now to sit in the garden shed and sing the song for the sea.