Yarns Without Threads 

One faint shriek. Then another. Three girls fling themselves over the top of the last dune and skid down warm flanks of sand. Marram grass slashes their ankles and sand kicks up behind Clare and Peggy, into Hannah's eyes. She's the heaviest and the last. Dazzled, laughing, out of breath, prickling with sweat under their dress-shields, they flounder through the knee-deep shifting white sand, and then down and down in a heap on the hard, flat beach. Clare and Hannah collapse together, their mouths full of each other's hair. Their ankle boots are heavy with sand. Their hair has come down, and their straw hats flop against their shoulder-blades. They clasp each other. They smell of sweat and sunburned hair, and there's a faint smell of violet perfume from Hannah, who has lavished the last precious drops of Wood Violet on her wrists and under her ears. She doesn't know where she will get another bottle, but today she has something to celebrate. There is her half-day's holiday from the shop, there is this perfection of early summer, and, above all, kept until last for fear of the ill-luck which always trudges in the wake of complete happiness:

'Johnnie's coming home!' she sings out, throwing herself on her back and kicking up her legs into the blue dizzy tunnel of sky above them. ...

It's a rare hot Saturday in May, and the girls are out in it, free for the afternoon. Hannah is free until she has to go back to sprinkle the shop-boards with water and sweep the dust. Peggy is not required until six o'clock, because little Georgie's parents are taking charge of him themselves for once, and he is going to visit his grandmother. Not required like a piece of luggage which is indispensable but can go in the guard's van for the time being, thinks Clare. And Clare has done her week's baking, and made her father turn out of his study while she cleaned it. Her bread came out of the oven hard and grey, but even Francis Coyne is unlikely to be fastidious about it. No one can do better now, not with this flour. It is all they can get, and Clare knows they are lucky to have it. In the cities women queue for hours, and besiege the bakers' shops as soon as they open. But she won't think of that now. It is Saturday afternoon, and she is lying in the sun, which fixes on her dark dress like a burning- glass, soaking away the tiredness in her thigh muscles. Out of the wind, it is almost too hot. She hoists herself up on her elbows, and the wind tugs at her again. The coast and country stream with light. Sea and grass pucker like cat's fur under the warm May wind.

The girls' hair flaps across their eyes. They struggle to catch up the ends and pin them tight, but it's no good. Oh, well, what does it matter.

'Keep still, Peggy, till I pin it up.'

Flushed, giggling, they start to put themselves to rights.

But not Clare.

'God above, Clarey, what are you doing?'

Clare's fingers flicker down the hooked side-fastening of her dress. She's done it. She hauls up a double handful of the dark blue cotton stuff and pulls it over her head. Her close-fitting bodice sticks, and she wriggles herself free of it. The last of her hairpins comes out and her plait swings loose, then begins to unrope itself, strand over strand. In her plain white chemise and petticoat she bends to unlace her boots, then kicks them off. Hannah and Peggy watch her. A slow smile curls at the corners of Hannah's mouth.

'You're never going in!' she breathes.

Clare strips off her stockings. Now petticoat, chemise, stays . . .

The warm wind blows across her body. She shivers with delight, raises her arms.

'Oh, it's lovely!'

Hannah glances at Peggy. They both look round.

'There's no one to see us,' says Clare.

And it's true. Behind them the Towans are bare and dazzling. The wide beach curls away towards the estuary. Larks scream as if they have thrown themselves up into the sky and stuck there. Over the sea there are gulls slanting across the bay with scarcely a wing-beat, tilting, balancing themselves on currents of air. The tide is nearly full now, and the small waves are tipped with foam by the wind.

'What about the coast-watchers?' says Peggy.

'There's no one around,' says Clare. 'Oh, come on. You did last year.' Before you went to work for the Smythes and learned to run like a hen and stick your finger out when you drink tea, she thinks.

She stands there, making her arms swim through the air. She is white and glistening in the stream of light reflected off the sea. In her dark blue dress she looks as shallow-breasted and narrow-hipped as a young girl, but naked she is bigger. White, firm, curved, imperfect. She is older.

'Oh, go on, then,' says Hannah, beginning to undress. Clare twists her hair up to keep it out of the salt and tramples her dress out from under her feet. Hannah folds her skirt and bodice. Her big dark-tipped breasts swing free as she pulls off her petticoat. Peggy takes off her neat pearl-grey skirt and striped blouse. Then she hesitates, eels her way out of her petticoat, but will not take off anything more. No sense in trying to persuade her. Peggy is sweetly smiling and delicate and biddable; Peggy is also as stubborn as . . .

'Stubborn as a cat,' Clare said once. 'She'll purr and wind herself round you until you think you can do what you like with her, but have you ever seen her do anything she didn't want?'

Now they are ready. Suddenly they're ageless, girls from anywhere, from any time. They catch hands and run towards the water. Hannah and Clare run straight and easy, seaside girls who are used to broad, flat sands, and to roads over the moors with the wind against them. Peggy has learned a more ladylike way of throwing out her legs from the knee. She runs ineffectually: perhaps she is expecting someone to help her? Peggy is the slightest and smallest of the three. Her body bows, sheltering itself.

The girls stop by the water's edge. Peggy raises the hand which isn't holding Clare's, and shades her eyes.

'Fishing-boat coming in,' she pants.

But it's so far away that they don't need to bother about it. No one will see them at that distance. It's just a black speck among the bob and glitter of the waves. Peggy's always had better eyesight than anyone else.

The water grips their ankles like an icy bracelet. They spring back, then slowly, cautiously, in again, then back as a bigger wave licks up their calves.

'Mother of God!' says Clare, hopping on one leg.

'There's only one way to do it,' says Hannah. Once again she's the guardian of their childhood, the one who always knew how cold the water was, how far out they should swim, how long it was before they had to go home. The one who packed their jam sandwiches and bottle of tea into wet cold sand under the rocks so that it would be cool at dinner-time, while Clare and John William ran off heedlessly, straight into the sea . . .

'One . . . two . . . three . . .' chants Hannah, forcing them all deeper into the water, but Clare and Peggy wriggle out of her grip.

'It's all very well for you,' complains Clare, eyeing Hannah's thighs and buttocks. 'You're subcutaneous.'

But Hannah isn't listening. Eyes shut, blind with purpose, she feels her way into deeper water. The water surges up her, splashing her thighs, pubic hair, belly. She dips her hands in the water and rubs them over her shoulders.

Then she's in and swimming. Paddling like a dog, she swings round to the shore, shouting, 'First in! First in!'

'Come on, Peg, or we'll never hear the last of this,' says Clare. The next wave rolls water up her thighs, and she gasps and shrinks away from it, standing ridiculously on tiptoe.

'Aaah! Aaah!'

Hannah wallows, laughing at Clare. She raises an arm to splash her cousin allover her tender stomach and breasts with a thousand prickling icy needles -

'No! Don't! I'm coming in.'

Clare presses her lips tight and charges, galumphing into the waves. Waves slap, water shimmies on her eyelashes. She's in. She turns like a fish, so cold that at first she can't even breathe, then she gives out a long gasp and a scream to Peggy who is still hovering in the shallows.

'I'm in! I'm in!'

It's too cold to swim. Hannah and Clare roll and bathe in waist-deep water, just where the waves break. Clare's hair straggles down her body. They call and threaten and scorn, but they can't get Peggy in. She is paddling dreamily along the edge of the water, stirring the sand into clouds. Her head is down.

'I'm getting out,' Hannah chatters. 'You'd better. You ought to mind your chest.'

'In a minute,' Clare replies.

Second in, she must be second out. And she wants the sea to herself for a minute, the noise and swell of it, her bare flesh rocking in salt water.

But it's too cold. So cold you could die of it. Slowly, legs dragging, she hauls herself out. The sea is thick and resistant. The wind doesn't feel warm any more. Hannah is lolloping along the beach, getting dry. They have no towels. Aching with cold, Clare begins to walk up the beach. Behind her the sea sighs like a disappointment.