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Kathleen Rose

“Well? Put me out of my misery. Why do you not like the sea? We’ve been together three years and this is the first I’ve heard of that one. Remember, if I’m to take you off Mrs. Doyle’s hands soon there’s to be no secrets. Shannon blushed. She looked across the table at her Yankee sweetheart and her heart did a somersault.
“I nearly drowned once. It was a long time ago on a beach to the north of the county. I was 7 and my sister was 8 and we were playing with a red and white swimming ring that we had just got that day. I was wearing it and Maeve was hanging on to me and I remember we were having great fun. All of a sudden neither of us could feel the sand beneath us and we realised that we had drifted out to sea. I began to feel really scared. Our little sister was standing at the edge of the water crying. It seemed like ages before anyone realised we were in trouble.

Then a man started to swim out to us and we were delighted. But all of a sudden he stopped and to my horror he turned back. He couldn’t go any further. The currents were so strong.
I can remember to this day shouting at him, over and over again, not to leave us. I can remember being angry at him and surprised at myself for being so cheeky to an adult (We were brought up to be very respectful to grown ups and I guess old habits were hard to kick off.)”. Maeve, true to her own kind self told me to let her go and urged me to swim into the shore myself. I have to admit, John, I was tempted for a moment but I wouldn’t leave her”. “What happened then?”. The waiter asked them if everything was alright and John ordered a dessert from the sweet trolley. He loved these remote Irish restaurants. They hadn’t heard of small portions and it suited him just fine.
“My Uncle Michael was there. He couldn’t swim but he kept shouting to us from the rocks that we’d be OK. For some reason his presence comforted me. After that, all I remember is a girl and two men seemed to come out of nowhere.”
“Who were they? Do I know them?”John was spellbound but still managed to polish off his apple pie. “No”, Shannon replied, amazed at her fiancé’s appetite. The country living seemed to agree with him.
“Nor do I. I have no recollection of the men and I think the girl was weak enough after all her efforts so I never got to see her afterwards. I was talking to Mammy the other day and she told me that one of the men died many years ago. The other man is a mystery to her. He handed her his watch and said that he was going out. He actually saved me whilst the girl stayed with my sister until the other man took them both to safety. Mammy never saw him again and could never trace him.
Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking and I felt the urge to contact her to tell this mystery girl I was doing fine and to find out how she was.

 Apparently, she was from Coventry and was holidaying when the incident occurred. Though I never really saw her after that day I thought I could see her in my head and that I had a clear picture of her. She was beautiful with long flowing hair and a bright, honest face. And in all these years I have never wondered what the men looked like. Not once.” Shannon showed him a photograph she had in her purse. “Look. She’s beautiful isn’t she?”. “You never showed me this before”, John announced a little petulantly. He was annoyed at himself for being childish but it wasn’t like her to exclude him. “Is that her?”
“No, that isn’t the girl. That is Rose.”
“Rose? Now you aren’t making sense.” John pushed his plate away.
“Do you remember the other night I sat up for a good while after you went to bed? Well, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. And a thought occurred to me that I have always imagined what she looked like. I had a clear picture of the girl who saved me in my mind.”
“Now you’ve lost me for sure.”He surveyed Shannon’s sweet speculatively. She hadn’t touched it yet. Come to think of it she hadn’t eaten much of her dinner either.
“In 1933, Daddy’s sister Rose was at the same beach with some of her family and friends. She was swimming when her friend got into difficulty. Rose went to her rescue and though the other girl survived, Rose was drowned. She was 16. Her Mother was there and saw it all. And I realise now that the image I held in my head was not that of the girl who saved me but of my Aunt Rose. Somehow or other my brain had latched on to a photo I’d seen of her when I was a child.”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t know. That is so sad.”
“And it has finally dawned on me that that is why I really do not like the sea and I sometimes even hate it. I remember it was so cold, so very cold. For a long time now I had blocked it out of my mind completely.

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