Little yellow boat (redemption)

Ocean. All is found in you. The soul of the world.

Sarah was in a small boat with her mother - they had been drifting out for quite some time. Figures on the Bournemouth beach were now just smears on a plate of muggy sea.

Sarah's mother was kitted out in a cerise straw hat and yellow polka-dotted leggings. She imagined the two of them must look quite a picture. It was strange: in all of her life, all of her seventeen years, Sarah had never felt like this - her body so relaxed. The eerie calm seemed to haze up like a halo around them. Even England's sun glowed white today.

Her mother lifted her knees over the edge of the boat to touch the water with her toes. Sarah's eyes widened for a moment as the vessel swayed fiercely from side to side. Then they became still again.

Sarah looked at the little lines on her mother's ankles and thought of all the places she must have walked in her fifty years.

Born in Slovenia, a young chiselled-faced Marika had come to England. Her own father had been a Marine and you could see the ruggedness of his bones in her ankles. Each line told a story:

About the time Marika stepped daintily when she first saw Jim, her husband-to-be, in the kitchen where they worked as teenagers. About the time Marika was head-girl at a school in Piran, when they had played games in the sea and the boys would hold the girls' heads under the water and see who could last the longest.

The lines told of her affinity with the water, how she had spent much of her childhood playing in the town bay. Swimming and splashing.

Told of how she missed Slovenia - the times she had literally walked out of the door in England and not returned for hours, driving in her car, somewhere, anywhere.

Told of how she missed Jim, Sarah's father.

Told of how she bent down at night in front of the fireplace, prayed, and tore at the carpet with her teeth.

Told of the night in hospital when she was seventeen and gave her first-born away with her eyes closed.

Told of when she carried Sarah to school by Underground with bags and pushchairs and pencils.

Told of how Marika curled up like a baby at night.

Each line carved a trail into the parts a mother never tells her daughter - the cerebral convolutions that wanted more than this. The shreds of the past that lay sleeping but not dead. Still, there were many stories Marika told; she loved to talk and often magnetised her audience, her wild laugh and tumbling brown mane made everyone around fall in love with her.

Lately Marika had talked a lot about Piran, about how things were better there, but she would never go back.

Her family were dead and gone; she did not want to visit the place where she would find only the memories - not the faces - of her mother and father.

Marika allied so much innocence to the rocky sea of her homeland and sitting in the middle of the ocean made her rush with freedom.

In Piran Marika was complete. In Piran she had lost nothing. The richest girl in all the apartments, the other kids would run alongside her at the beach vying for her sweets. Marika would laugh and hand them out to the whole group. They would all play in the sea until the moon came out, or the water got too cold.

Marika was eighteen years old when she came to the UK to learn English; she had planned to return home after a short while, but Jim was a man who had excited her heart; it was an addictive love that bound her.

Thirty years later she was still in England, now only with Sarah.

Brilliant white rays cut the water as the boat crept further and further out. Marika closed her eyes and extended her calves into the sea. Sarah's eyes widened as she realised that she could no longer make out the figures on the beach.

Her mother smiled and dipped her arms into the water. Marika had been silent as they rowed out, unusual for a woman of so many words.

"Mum, are you all right? Sarah asked.

"This is wonderful," her mother said, unperturbed by their slow course into the night of the sea.

"But, Mum, we're far out."

"It's OK, Sarah. It's OK," she whispered, almost as if she were sleeping.

The boat began to rock furiously as Sarah's mother rose onto unsteady feet. Strips of balmy sea jumped onto the boat's deck.

"Mum, sit down! Please, what are you doing?"

Water soaked Sarah's face and arms - she spluttered out the salt from her nose as her mother fell into the sea.

"Mum! Mum!"Sarah screamed.

In the silence, the waves stopped. The cerise hat bobbed alone on the water, pinned flower intact.

Sarah felt as if she had swallowed the whole ocean; she imagined the little creatures that no-one had ever known about - ugly as sin - coughing and squirming on the dry ocean bed.

Had her mother really jumped?

Leaning over the edge of the boat, she thrust in her arms, grasping frantically at the water. As the sun grew hotter, Sarah felt its smile singe the back of her neck.

She ducked her head under the water's surface and scanned the ocean until her face filled up with blue. She thought she might die.

Sarah's life instinct fired herself out of the sea and back into the little yellow boat.

'Mum! Mum!' she screamed into the sky.

The sea upstairs was just as calm as before and the scorching sun ate at her cheeks. Fingering the salt from her eyes, Sarah realised she could no longer see the shore.

Her mother was her best friend and they would die together.

The sea was silent. But Sarah felt bubbles pummelling at the underside of the boat. A rippling came from deep, deep below - and then her mother's face. Marika rose out of the water with her eyes closed, her skin taut, and in no rush to take her first breath.

Sarah was awestruck by her mother's face. It was younger. Two minutes under water had given her back her youth. There were no lines under her eyes. Her sunken cheeks now looked chiselled; she looked beautiful, as if she had forgotten how her heart fell out every night when she reached for Jim and her lost son and they were gone.

Sarah cried. Why is it that we only realise how much a woman has been hurting when her pain is taken away?

The life of the ocean shone in her mother's eyes. If Sarah could have captured that feeling as they rowed the boat into the ocean earlier, and made it human, it would have been her mother now. Marika (widow, mother, waitress, housewife, lover, friend and daughter) had taken her life's tears and bathed them in the ocean.

Marika spluttered. She flung her heavy arms onto the boat's edge.

"Sarah? she said, in her deep Slovenian drawl, "can you lift me up? Oh God, I'm such a whale!"

Sarah reached for her mother's hand, half-expecting it to be a hologram. She dragged her up from the sea that had almost stolen her.

"Mum, I thought you were dead."

Marika shot her daughter a look as if to say she were mad.

Sarah continued. "Did you jump?"

Marika took a small breath and spluttered a little, "Yes. I wanted to feel the water."

Sarah screwed up her face in disbelief.

"You wanted to feel the water? Mum, we can't even see the beach!"

Marika sighed and straightened her leggings. She noticed her hat floating a couple of metres away.

"Sarah! Quick, get the hat!" Marika exclaimed.

"Mum, you've got arms haven't you!" she said and began to steer with the oars.

They drifted back in the direction that they thought the beach might be. Sarah could see another yellow boat coming towards them. She rested her head on her mother's shoulder and closed her eyes.

"Hello? Excuse me! Can you come this way?" the tanned young lifeguard bellowed at them.
"Do you know how far out you are?"

The sun oozed white light. Sarah stole another glance at Marika - her skin was dewy and bronzed. Or was it the sun? The reflection of the little yellow boat?

Marika died of an overdose two months later.