Kind Hands

“Oh, and it’s the terrible two- up to no good once again!”

“Maybe we can cut Eva a little bit of slack.”

“Watch her, Mr. Bayard. She causes just as much trouble as her sister.”

“Only when they’re together, though, surely…”

Ok. Breathe.

Uh, things are good. Or they were. I’ll take us forward a little bit because the morning wasn’t anything too spectacular. We’d made it onto the train, delightfully bare as it was, and we were on our little journey towards our little seaside town. I mean, we weren’t in the UK anymore, so…what was I supposed to expect?

I was always thankful that every single train that I stumbled upon had about as many people in it as Chernobyl. It gave me time to gather both myself and the multitudes of clothing, food, and whatever else I could squeeze into a small bundle of bags in anticipation of a vacation that would never be destined to go completely smoothly.

But I was happy. Mildly anxious- but happy. It was just me and the little ones. I could feel the sun occasionally glide along my skin whenever the window to my side permitted it while I watched the girls do anything they could to stave off their inevitable boredom- well, girl. The only awake girl, no less.

Their little teddy bears had worked wonders in keeping them occupied for most of the journey. For whatever reason, the pair were enamoured with them. I’d given the little bundles of fluff a clean (or as good a clean as I could give them) but I knew that they’d return to normal soon enough. You just can’t bet against a young child’s desire to stick something familiar in their mouth.

“I’m bored,” Eve finally informed me after a relentless search of the train carriage, within which she had found four buttons and a couple of bits. Her arrival in this state was always going to happen, so I picked the girl up and held her in my lap, hoping that she would find some sort of enjoyment from the change in elevation.

“I knew you would be,” I informed her straight back, swaying side-to-side to keep her body moving. While she accepted the gesture, I made an effort to point to her sister’s sleeping form. “Why don’t you be like Eva for today?”

“Because I don’t want a sleep!”

It appeared that I’d kicked the hornet’s nest with that question. Instantly, I felt Eve push away from me and back onto her the feet, but she evidently hadn’t thought about what she was to do when she got there. Instead, she climbed back onto my seat and stood on the higher ground, looking down upon me with awe and wonder.

“I want to be here when you see it. Like, see it; I want to see it. The-the big, blue ocean,” she continued, throwing her arms open wide as if she was planning on parting the sea itself. “Like, it’s big, and I want to go in it with the sand, and didn’t you tell me once that you could smell when the sea is close? I think you did.”

I nodded along to her little monologue, chuckling to myself throughout it. “I’m flattered that you remembered,” I stated in response to the girl’s final comment before gesturing for the little one to come down- which she didn’t. “But there’s more to it than that. And we need to get ready first, too.”

“Why?”

From where Eve stood, she was able to ask this question with some authority, as useless as that was. To emphasise her futility, I lightly ran my fingers over the girl’s hand as it glistened in the sunlight. “Well, we’ve done your suncream- and you know why we do your suncream…?”

“To protect us from the sun!” the hand’s owner answered in an instant, never losing her gusto.

“Exactly,” I confirmed to her, using my leverage on her hand to keep her looking in my direction. It didn’t help. “Well, it’s stuff like that. There’s gonna be water, so-”

“-I love the water!”

Again, the little girl proved to be impossible to fully bottle up. Then again, her excitement was hardly negative, so maybe there was no point being so tight-arsed. “So, we need to bring clothes and all the lovely stuff that the princesses have leant us, as well as dropping off all our bags like we do at school.”

Invoking past memories was risky, but it helped Eve to remember where she was. “Okay,” she happily concluded, seemingly satisfied, sitting back down in my lap, this time choosing to face me.

“You never feel the need to ask, do you?” I wistfully enquired in the wake of the girl’s movements. Eve gave no response to speak of; her eyes were closed during the time that I spoke.

As a result, I felt as if I could get away with some tomfoolery. Having suddenly come across as rather parched (which is a poncey way of saying that I was thirsty) I spotted a water bottle in my bag and made a terrible decision: to make use of my ill-begotten magic.

I suppose that we all need to exercise our minds every once in a while, so the bottle eventually began its journey once I’d gotten a ‘grip’ on the thing. Even though I’d done it before, it was amazing to watch the object move, seemingly without any reason to do so. Granted, I hated myself as I did it, but my arms were tired- and I’d need to get over my incessant self-loathing at some point.

A loathed gesture or not, it was always helpful- and eye catching. As the bottle slowly moved towards me, tiny arms grabbed at it in an attempt to interrupt its flight, and I felt the resistance it created form behind my eyes. The attack, thankfully, was a failure, and my thirst was soon quenched.

Questions always followed something like this. “Why are you doing magic again?” Eve inevitably asked me, pushing her face further into mine. I shifted us both so that I could fully occupy the space above her, from which I could observe her grin wildly and wiggle on my lap in delight.

“It just saves my arms from any stress. Your sister took a long time to get to sleep,” I simply explained to the eager inquisitor. Despite mentioning Eva’s name…ish, there were no glances towards the girl’s sleeping form on Eve’s behalf. She may’ve been thinking about the whole ordeal; I certainly hadn’t had to deal with it for a while.

You see, back in the day, the staff at the nursery told me to ‘rock Eva to sleep’, but I never quite figured it out. After a while, I learned that I could make do with awkwardly rubbing my hand back-and-forth along the width of the girl’s lower back like a lethargic DJ. Even now, it seemed to be enough, but it was an arduous process.

They place so much trust in you.

“Can I do a magic?”

Snapping me out of my moment of nostalgia, Eve had asked me a simple question. A quick glance at her face offered an expression that reflected such low effort. Such a throwaway line should’ve been easily brushed off, like wiping dirt off your knees- yet it was the most terrifying question that I’d ever been asked, especially from someone so young.

The level-headed innocence that the little girl continued to exude while I felt my throat tighten didn’t help at all. It was a small request; it wasn’t something that was pondered on for many moments or even asked as a break of tradition- maybe it was even something…normal. We didn’t need to get involved with this. She didn’t, at least.

Um…but it’s okay. This is what we’re here for, after all.

We…

The-the teachers…

We need to…

…What was it again?

“I really hope not, sweetheart!”

Right. Instinct, I guess. Um…I guess this is where the body takes over. Maybe in the sense that ‘when the cat’s away, the mice will play’ or whatever that pseudonym is- is that even the right word? I bet Mrs. Stuart would know. Or we could just ask Google. That’s a good thing to do with the children. I was always told that there was great benefit in talking to the children about how you didn’t always know everything.

I was only ever told, mind you.

“You’re perfect the way you are!”

I was handsy, as I always am, with the young girl. My arms were wrapped around her quickly, to the extent that my envelopment of the child was sudden enough to make her squeal- hopefully from joyous surprise. Either way, the noise jolted Eva back to life, and she wordlessly pushed herself up from her place of slumber and into the bottom of my vision.

My brain quickly caught up with itself- yet my mind also refused to let Eve go, even while the girl in question shuffled herself around to find new leverage. I tried to speak to Eva as well, but my voice was so lacking in volume, it wasn’t even worth acknowledging. Eva certainly didn’t seem to notice.

Luckily for me, Eva’s vow of silence seemed to outstay its welcome. Having fished her teddy bear out of one of the bags that it’d rolled into during her little kip, she made a good attempt to force herself onto my lap, soon giving up once it became apparent that her sister wasn’t going to budge. This left her to slump against me while her head likely continued to spin.

I’d lost my water bottle, by the way. That was gone. Ironically so, given that I was the only person there without something in my mouth. Granted, I wasn’t particularly bothered by the girls’ collective decision that their teddy bears were more interesting than I was, as it allowed me to catch my breath and screw my head back on lest it roll off my shoulders and end up underneath the train carriage.

I clearly wasn’t fully there yet, showcased by my decision to lean down to kiss Eve on her forehead, brushing away some onyx strands as I did so. It at least gave the girl’s mouth a break from the ball of fluff that’d previously rested within it as she immediately and impatiently sought to return the favour.

I allowed this to happen, feeling tiny hands wrench my face down for easier access to the tip of my nose. The sensation was…fine, just a small peck, but it felt safe to me. Despite the rarity of this particular exchange, thankfully so, it felt routine; embedded maybe. A sane mind would’ve discouraged it. I suppose that’s the best way of describing how I was.

This wasn’t helped by Eva’s contribution. The instant that one set of lips left the tip of my nose, another set landed straight on my right cheek and lingered there for longer than they needed to. Once Eva had finally left me alone, she repeated this gesture on her sister’s face, receiving a more resounding response from her than she’d had from me.

In fact, Eve offered me a response as well- in the form of a question that was somehow slightly less terrifying than the last. “Why did you kiss me?”

God, that’s such an awful question. The juvenile nature of it further compounded how ridiculous this whole thing had become. There was clearly no excuse for it, and yet I tried to give one anyway. “Life’s…just hard, cherub. Don’t worry about me; I’m just thinking about a lot.”

My explanation was pathetic- mostly because I’d chosen to give one at all. I knew that an attempt to justify something like this is…a very dangerous decision, regardless of context. Yes, most people don’t go through stuff like this, but…I hate this.

This apparent revelation caused Eve to take a moment to ponder. “Are you thinking about the sea?” she eventually asked.

“No, no, no- I’m not thinking about the sea,” I replied as I hoped to laugh the situation away, even as Eve’s stare seemed fully committed to getting me to talk. “It’s more…complicated.”

“About me and Evie?” Eva questioned further, clumsily attempting to carry on with a previous train of thought. To compound this, she fumbled across her sister’s back and shoulders until she could rest atop them, pushing her face closer to mine. She clearly wanted an answer.

Given everything, I wanted to just say ‘it’s not important’ or ‘let’s have a look out the window and see what we find’ instead of actually wading into this quagmire. Yet sometimes, we make difficult decisions. “It’s just…sometimes…”

In the midst of a newfound pressure in my throat, I paused to suck in some air. I struggled to find the strength to recommence my speech once I’d heard myself exhale, but the force from the two pairs of eyes staring back at me almost pushed the words out from the base of my diaphragm. They sought to both demand and timidly request my answer in equal measure. I wouldn’t have been able to say ‘no’ to either stance. “You girls mean a lot to me.”

The staring continued. It was…it was lovely. There was no malice there. There was never any ill intent. They willed me to continue, so, on I went. “You girls have kept me going, really. You’ve…you’ve done a lot to make me happy when I…well, when I feel sad.”

There wasn’t much else that I could say- certainly not back then. Everything about this was wrong; there are ways to feel things and express things, and this wasn’t it, clearly. These girls- my students…they needed me to be strong.

But I couldn’t do it.

And now I’m excusing it.

I’d never felt so ashamed.

“David, are you crying?”

I didn’t even get a chance to focus on anything else before my emotional frailties were gently pointed out by one of the girls. Indeed, my vision blurred as I had to deal with shame as an additional burden. I rubbed at my eyes in a bid to rid them of any moisture as I mumbled to myself.

“I hope you don’t ever have to understand…”

Whether my comment was audible or not, it was fair to say that the mood was dour. Any silence that followed would be an unfortunate inevitability. Inevitable, yes- but not necessary, if a sudden and repeated banging from just in front of my closed eyes was any indication.

I snapped my eyes open to witness a sandcastle bucket being given an almighty smack, courtesy of a small, yellow spade and a small, grinning child. I’d initially jumped due to the volume, expecting the worst, but it appeared that Eve had just grown restless again, and had started to hit away.

And soon, along came another, then another, then another. I don’t know where the little one got her strength from, but she was putting it to good use as she marched around the room; I was worried that the base of her bucket might break. It was a transparently unrhythmic sound that didn’t even seem to echo within the train carriage, instead choosing to drop to the floor as soon as possible. What a dismal racket.

Then Eva joined in, finding an instrument of her own before failing to make the death march any louder, thankfully. Even so, she followed her sister around the perimeter of the aisle, almost bringing a sense of rhythm to it, bouncing along in time with the ‘beat’.

Oh, and then came the chanting. Having finally found a tempo that they liked, the girls began a repeating chant of, “Sandcastle!”, every syllable becoming louder and louder until the instruments that had started this whole mess began to feel obsolete.

I, uh…I think I liked it. Don’t get me wrong: this was really hurting my ears, yet I couldn’t help but laugh at it. It was the commitment that got me: the constant, merciless chanting; the intense looks of concentration on their faces; the way that they managed to keep the same rigid shape and marching pattern.

Sadly, I did need to put an end to it, faced with the threat of the roof collapsing on top of us. Therefore, with an increasingly loud, “Alright, alright, alright!”, I was able to bring the noise back down to a reasonable level. “Where did all that come from?”

Eve answered quickly. “I want to build a sandcastle. Mrs. Stuart doesn’t have a sandpit,” she bluntly told me. To give her explanation a bit of oomph, a particularly fierce glare of sunlight burst through the window and fell upon the girl, virtually setting her bucket and spade alight.

Subtlety had never been this world’s strong suit, proven once again by the sunlight giving way to a vast expanse of sand and water just outside of the train window. Despite how I felt at the time, I was certainly taken aback by the sight of it all once I’d turned to take it all in.

In front of us was a view that could only be described as ‘picturesque’. Stretching off into the distance was a vast expanse of deep blue that captured the sunlight as it fell upon the water’s surface like glitter. Dotted here and there were fantastic, isolated beaches- not white, but a deep yellow in colour, again looking as if the sun had blessed each and every grain of sand. It really was something out of a movie- and oh, so inviting.

Occasionally, the view would be obstructed by a far-off building or rock formation, but it would always return with a look of beauty that seemed to exceed the one before it, as if the landscape itself was desperate to show us what we’d missed. It far exceeded anything that I’d seen back home. That’s not too hard actually, given that it only needed to compete with Barmouth.

Naturally, anywhere my eyes looked, two other sets of eyes would follow. Having caught sight of something for what may’ve been the very first time, both Eve and Eva were at a nearby window in an instant, making wild exclamations about the natural beauty that lingered in their vision. They spoke of this view constantly, as if their rampant discussion of the water in front of them was the only force holding it there.

In all of this excitement, it must’ve become a well-kept secret that there was more than one window. In this hectic episode, especially so soon after the last one, I knew that I’d need to step in to support. Soon enough, excitement turned to agitation, and once the girls’ altercation began to grow physical, I lifted the perpetrator away from the fracas- and we can all guess which child that was.

“You’re being obtuse,” I informed Eve, plonking her down on the seat opposite. Maybe ‘obtuse’ was the wrong word to use, as Eve’s head slowly and silently drifted off to meet her sister’s equally blank stare. “Never mind. Let’s look out this window.”

True to my word, I pointed out the window closest to the pair of us. Eve was quick to follow the movement of my finger and soon plastered her face into the glass. Then, seemingly satisfied with their fifteen seconds apart, the two sisters reunited once more, this time happy to share the small pane of glass between them.

With time, the girls’ collective interest in the scene diminished, and Eve soon peeled her face away from it. “Is it warm?” she asked, presumably to me, but she hadn’t fully committed to turning in my direction. I just shrugged.

“It looks it. I guarantee that it’s a lot warmer out there than it is in here.”

I was satisfied with this. Eve wasn’t, but she didn’t ask anything else. This naturally handed the reins to Eva, who dramatically turned to face me, mouth agape and on the edge of a revelation. “Air con,” she breathlessly gasped, as if she’d been grasping at that particular term for some time, as many four-year-olds tend to do, I’m sure.

And how the hell are you supposed to respond to that? “Probably,” I gingerly replied in the most agreeable manner possible, after which we all stood around not doing much. As luck would have it, however, we seemed to be slowing down, signalling the end of our little journey. Eve must’ve noticed this too, as she dove upon one of our bags of ‘things’ and hoisted it into the air.

Now, I’d originally imagined that we were to gently come to a stop, but whoever was in charge of the brakes was pretty terrible at their job. The three of us jolted forwards after a particularly forceful change in speed, causing Eve to swing her cargo through the air as she stumbled.

Eva was already out of reach and on the floor (somehow) during all this. As such, when a runaway tube of suncream careened its way across the floor towards the girl’s face, it was only natural that she was to be struck by it. This was, of course, in spite of the defence that she put up; the barrier that her hands created was noticeably inadequate.

The impact looked as if it would’ve been a painful one, such was its speed. Whether this was the case or not, Eva kept herself in check and seemed content with being pulled upright and patted down for good measure. A stable smile, a set of calm eyes and a lack of any redness on the skin was enough for me, so I let her be, so that I could collect my own bags.

My god, there were a lot of bags. Not too heavy- just awkward. Speaking of awkward, I tried to keep one of my hands free as I know that someone- or a pair of someones- would almost certainly try to take it. It took longer than expected, but there we go: Eve’s fingers were interlocked with my own…at least, to the best of her ability, followed by a declaration of impatience.

“Can we build a sandcastle now?”