NO MORE SEA

Evening Star, Issue 22578, 20 February 1937, Page 2

NO MORE SEA

[Written by Mary Scott, for the ‘ Evening Star.’] My smallest daughter has decided Unit she does not want to go to heaven. This decs not shock mo, for tho mother of four is accustomed to periodical excursions from the austere track of orthodoxy. In fact, I have known my household to contain at one and tbo same time an ardent Moslem, a Freethinker, a tentative Buddhist, and a Mormon; the phenomenon in no way disturbed mo, for they had all recovered by the end of tho month and were ardently seeking new creeds. Such outbreaks are as natural to adolescence as tho measles, and in both complaints it is the suppressed variety that is the more dangerous. But so far Elizabeth has been immune from such heart-searchings, partly because of her youth, but even more through her natural and inborn philosophy of acceptance rather than revolt. Now I realised drearily that she, too, is growing up, approaching that tiresome period of adolescence which the parent manages to endure only by retiring to her room at frequent intervals, counting up to a bundled till her temper subsides, remembering her own hatefulness at this age, and finally murmuring that most comforting of all the slogans of parenthood: “This, too, will pass.” So far these tactics had been unnecessary with Elizabeth; at all times she had remained comforting and comfortable; if she was even now in thq throes or her first religions crisis, this adorable stage was already ended. It was a gloomy prospect in keeping with the grey sullenness of the oily sea, the steady downpour of rain that kept us irritably in tho cookhouse, all stoically determined to keep up appearances, to maintain the good qlu camping morale, be hardy and superior to such accidents as the weather. Everybody was trying to occupy themselves in some thoroughly uncongenial way, playing bridge oi draughts, knitting, or cooking that dinner which alone would relieve the monotony of tho eighth wet clay in camp. Elizabeth was not there; I remembered her hopefully searching for one old “comic” which perchance she had not read—for I regret that such is at tho moment her literary taste —and found her presently in her tent, immersed, of all unlikely things, in the study of a Bible that she had borrowed from the padre. With brief legs tucked beneath her and face intent she looked so like the picture of grandmother’s good little girl that it came as a shock when she raised clear eyes to mine and announced that she had decided not to go to heaven. Biting back the obvious retort—for Elizabeth, though comfortable, is not conspicuously virtuous —I inquired the reason for this heresy. At first she was reticent, but presently, being inspired to glance at the passage she was studying so intently, I there read: “ And there shall be no more sea. Looking through the tent opening at the sullen swell falling and rising with quiet menace near the opening of the bay, I was inclined to endorse such a vision, but not so Elizabeth. “ What would be the good of going to heaven if you couldn’t swim in the sea? I thought it would be golden, like in the evenings here.” Alas for the lost illusions of babyhood ! I could see that she felt herself cheated, that the memory of many evil deeds left with difficulty undone now returned to mock her; why strive onward and upward to a soaloss heaven? It was a 'heavy blow. I could feel for her, but. not with her,for with my own passion for the sea is mingled always a certain fear; that, indeed, is a part of its fascination But for Elizabeth it is an entirely friendly ocean; she knows no particle of fear and _ nervousness has unfortunately been omitted from her composition. During how many uneasy summers have I pulled her out of deep holes and unsuspected channels, only to have her swim joyously away and leave mo floundering ! Knowing this, I could somewhat realise tho dreariness of an eternity—dreadful, heart-shaking word to youth!—spent in a world that held no tumbling waves, no clear blue waters.

I tried to show her the sinister side of the sea “ Think how dangerous it is. “ If it weren’t for the sea we could go the whole way to England; yes. to the Coronation, in our own car ” (shades of that most disreputable vehicle!) “ Wrecks are horrible things, and sailors take dreadful risks every day.” It was all no use. Elizabeth wanted to be sure of a life hereafter in which she would continue to splash joyously in waves, blue or golden, what matter—so long as they were waves? A world without a sea. It is a strange thought. What should we lose? What would our national character have become if we had not been an island nation doomed to feed our seas for a thousand years? What would have taken the place of that bulldog gallantry upon which we have long prided ourselves? Deprived of the one element, would man not have conquered the other much earlier in our history, nor have waited till the twentieth century to use the highway of the skies? What life would have gained in security in one direction it would certainly have lost in the other, and adventure would have been merely translated to another and more hazardous sphere. In a country as'small as ours, with the sea for the most part within com paratively easy distance, it is hard to imagine the outlook of those who have never seen the ocean, never known its restless, fearful, irresistible fascination. To have known it, to have lived beside it, to have watched every mood all your life and then suddenly to be deprived of it, to be doomed to live 11 months of your life amongst the mountains or upon an inland plain—many of us know all about that. But always there remains that twelfth month, dedicated to summer holidays, to camps—and the sea. There is always that first smell of it to look forward to, that indescribable tang that reaches one upon a westerly wind as we surmount that hist ridge and look down upon it sparkling in the distance; there is always the hope of chance glimpses at other seasons, of unexpected, joyous holidays, all the sweeter because stolen from the year’s routine, when wo may find the sea in other moods, in its winter greyness, swept by beautiful, terrifying storms, in tho soft lilac tints of spring, and the mellow gold of autumn evenings. Yes, while wo know that the sea is only a hundred miles away taorc are always opportunities, pretexts, golden hours to be spent beneath its spell. But to be without it, to be immured jn the centre if a continent, to be in a land where there shall be no more sea. . . . Elizabeth is comforted. The padre has taken her in hand, talked wisely and professionally of metaphors and images, of material and spiritual, of eternal hope and unfailing promise. She has decided not to plunge yet into a career of crime, to continue to attempt a somewhat difficult virtue, and to believe that the host is yet to be. For her that best will doubtless be a world of endless summer days, fringed by blue, tumbling seas with curly, exciting waves, girdled by sands, so hot that you must spring from the shade of one lupin

bush to the next, of days of glorious golden freedom without even a mother to stand on the shore and call warningly: “ Not so deep, Elizabeth; not so far out.” But, no; she assures me that mother, too, will have suffered a veritable sea change; she, also, will have cast out fear and will wait always ready and eager for that summons that even now is ringing clearly across the bea ;h: “ Come and swim, mother; come and swim.”