Magilligan

It’s seven miles long that beach, though it’s called a Strand here on the North coast of Ireland. If you stand at one end of it, you certainly won’t see the other. White, white sand, made from millions upon millions of shells, ground to almost nothing, tumbled in the wash of the waves.

The sand is hard at the shoreline, but further inland are lines of shells, some still whole, whorls of whelk, some small and pink, shattered sea urchins, and sea glass; jewels glinting among more common shards of white. Further from the shoreline the sand softens. Here you can’t walk and keep up any steady pace because your feet sink sideways sometimes and knock the balance off you. Behind this rise the dunes, a word too small to describe their grandeur. Sculpted by the wind, held steady by rough grasses, they stand sentinel, making echo the roar of the sea.  And it’s windy here, you won’t hear your thoughts; they’ll be drowned in the sound of the ocean.

Can you see a woman walking along the line of shells, stooping occasionally to pick up one which catches her eye? She is carrying a tin to put the best of them in. Her headscarf flaps as it saves her hair from the wind. Further up the beach there’s a man leading a donkey and cart, and two girls collecting driftwood at the base of the dunes, wood tossed there by enormous Spring tides. The girls hurl themselves down the beach, against the wind, and throw their treasure into the cart.

The sun’s getting lower behind the dunes and the woman needs a hand to get into the cart with the children. The sand whistles, blowing across the vastness of the Strand and around the family as the man leads the donkey, head down, toward the north end. They grow smaller then disappear in the incoming dark.

In the morning you might watch the father as he cycles off to work... Only as far as the horizon though, as it’s of no interest where he goes after that. Later, you’ll see the girls appear at the edge of the dunes, claiming the whole sweep of the Strand as theirs, waving their arms, pointing, and choosing their direction. Follow them as they head south playing chase with the waves before veering off into the labyrinth of the high dunes.

They’ll climb to the top of a dune and look down the length of the Strand, believing they can see forever. Some days you’ll see them slide down a dune and run along the hard sand at the edge of the waves, spray rising at their heels— running and running, until they can’t run any more, and still they won’t have reached the end.

Today you see them squinting up at the sun, deciding if it’s high enough in the sky to be lunchtime. Then, tucked out of the wind, they take sandwiches and books from their backpacks.  

Can you hear that noise? Look up… there high in the sky, yes, it looks like a helicopter! The girls have heard it too and are scrambling up to get a better view. They’re jumping, waving and yelling at it. The sound becomes a monstrous roaring as the helicopter comes lower, moving in their direction.  They are craning their necks and shielding their eyes against the sun to get a better look at it. Still it comes lower and now you can see the RAF roundel on its flank. Don’t the girls look so slight in the shadow of that beast? They’re standing closer together, perhaps even holding hands as it hovers over them. Rising now, that whirlybird gets smaller and quieter, fading as it turns inland.

The girls run down to the edge of the sea and stare in the direction the helicopter took. The sky has darkened, it’s coming on to rain. Listen while they agree not to tell anyone of their terror. They’re running now, passing close by you, pursued by fear, heading home.

What they can’t know is, in a few weeks’ time, the family will leave their house, with all their lifetime’s belongings in a van, and move to the town. Trucks will arrive, and army jeeps drive the length of the Strand. Buildings will quickly appear among the dunes, and it will be called a Camp, spreading further and deeper inland. Soon it will be filled with prisoners.

Leave now, you won’t want to stay to watch that happen. You won’t want to be among the crowds filling the Strand, protesting at the Camp as rubber bullets are fired among them. The girls won’t ever be back. You won’t see them here again. They’ll be in some school, straining for just the sound of the place, that faint sound you hear in the inner twists of a shell.

Text and images are by Jeannie MacLean