The waves roll in, as they have for millennia, with an insatiable hunger, pawing like an angry cat at the strip of sand embroidering the coastline. They’ve been doing this since before Jesus walked the Middle East, since before Michelangelo drew breath. Their timelessness is both reassuring and calming, a constant force in a crazy, frenetic world. Occasionally a fine spray of salty spume drifts skyward; and I inhale deeply, reflexively, somehow relaxed by its tangy scent. Now, as I expel the salty taste through my mouth I imagine that this mist is a prayer offered up to the Almighty.
From where I sit, in my elevated chair which is painted red and yellow to let everyone on the beach know that I'm a life saver, I watch the capable and the inept all washed up on the shore, thrust by the unrelenting force of the waves. just like the sinners and the saints all finishing life in death’s estuary.
I’ve been here as a lifesaver for about two years and never have I had to save anyone. Each session I look anxiously north along the shoreline and at tiny eddies of water twisting beyond the flags, tell-tale signs of a rip but, so far, no one has ventured there because, like good citizens, they remain where they should, within the boundaries, within the flags. Maybe one day someone will get into trouble and I’ll have to save them.
Atop the cliff on the south side of the beach, high above the rock platform where brave fishermen cast their lines, and risk their lives, above the craggy honeycombed caves, sits St Pats, its massive neogothic architecture dominating the skyline. I look up from my elevated chair, squinting into the morning sun, and I see the spire pointing like an accusing finger into the blueness of the sky, blaming God, maybe, for the ills of the world. The sandstone blocks of this building are testament to the power and prowess of the convicts from earlier times, some 150 years prior. How did they do it? This building is the seminary where I am training to be a priest. It is much cosier inside than the external walls would suggest.
I am the youngest there, in the seminary. My baby face, pink and shiny, is at odds with the serious message I need to give. I try to think which of Jesus’ apostles I resemble, but they were mostly old and bearded, except John. He was the youngest of the 12 and the only one not to die as a martyr. Yep, he’s the one I wanna be.
I am allowed to come down here to the beach every Saturday to do my duty. I was a nipper, maybe ten years ago. Saturdays, there is a Mass at 8:30 but I am allowed to do His work down here on the sand. I miss the morning mass, with the translucent stained glass filtering out the harsh rays, a backdrop behind the altar, letting in the morning light. The sun is risen.
It was a sweltering December evening and Mum and dad were watching the evening news on tv when I told them of my decision to enter the seminary. Our house, I just can’t use the word ‘home,’ was an oven in summer and a freezer in winter. There was a cracked window taped up to the best of dad’s ability and it let in heat and cold. How it got cracked, I don’t remember, maybe I threw a ball at it, maybe dad slammed it in one of his many tantrums. Other houses had scars, too, so ours did not stand out.
The painted roof guttering was peeling, its flaky scraps of paint like the skin of a sunburnt child. ‘One day,’ was dad’s response when mum used to ask him to do it. Now, with the passing of years, she has become used to the shabby look and ignores it, like an ongoing itch.
And yet, it was no worse than most of the other houses here. It was a street occupied by the lazy and the indifferent whose idea of being house proud was to wash their cars on the straggly front lawn on Sundays, a vague and accidental homage to church going.
Our street, Jonquil Street, ran parallel to Victoria Road and the sounds of hoodlums at play hooting their horns, squealing their brakes, and screaming at each other filled the night. From time tom time a siren would cut through the night and remind us of the results of such stupidity.
Anyway, this night, the night of my announcement, the clickety click of cicadas buzzed in the air. The house was an incubator. Outside the random waft of a lazy breeze cooled you a bit but here, in number 29, dad kept the windows closed. As soon as I walked in, I started to sweat. as Dad was noisily slurping on a beer;
Mum’s forehead was crumpled in concentration as they watched the news. Another story about skinny wounded children scrambling from a warzone somewhere in the middle east. If only Jesus could see his birthplace now.
That December evening when I told my parents about my decision, Mum was ecstatic, ‘A priest in the family. Pet, that’s fantastic. Wait till your Aunt Noni hears this.!’
I was surprised, I had always thought that she wanted me to marry and give her grandchildren. An only child, I carried her hopes of becoming a nanna. How often I heard her say to her sister, ‘Well, maybe one day I’ll have grandkids’ and ‘He’s just got to find someone good enough for him.’
Dad was less enthusiastic. ‘What? Why the fuck for?’
He lifted his head slowly and turned towards me. Gosh he looked stupid when he didn’t understand something. Washed out blue eyes, road mapped with red veins, struggled to focus.
‘Dunno, maybe I want to save souls,’ I answer. I didn’t know. Honestly. I didn’t have a clue. I was mystified by the word ‘vocation’ that was tossed around in school.
“Naw, mate,’ he said, A tiny fleck of beer was dribbling down his chin.
‘Stick to being a lifesaver, son. Save lives. Not souls.”
So far, I have saved neither.
