We’re delighted to publish the winning entries and the runners up from our 2021 short story competition. Young writers from all over Ireland competed for prizes of €250, sponsored by Tertulia Books in association with Spot-Lit EU. The competition’s theme, “Waves”, inspired work of an extremely high standard. The winners were selected by acclaimed YA author and guest judge Deirdre Sullivan. We thank all who entered and we encourage everyone to keep writing.
Beth Ann Wilson (17) was runner up in the senior category with the short story A Man and the Waves.
A Man and the Waves by Beth Ann Wilson
For a moment I was back home. My real home. An eight-year-old boy huddled between the bodies of his older siblings and clutching the body of his little sister to him as the storm just beyond our door bashed and slammed into our home. Jean was crying, like most four-year-olds do when their mum has gone out and the world outside has suddenly become scarier than it had ever seemed before. The rain had been relentless, like bullets raining from the sky, though back then I wouldn’t have made such a connection, back when I was still a boy.
That had been the last day we’d seen our mum. The last day we’d been a family. After that we’d been spread out to different orphanages, and then even further than that. Maybe it was the thought of travel or separation that had brought the memory back to me now. I hadn’t thought about those times for so long.
With a crash of a mighty wave against the steel ship I was brought back into the present. I wasn’t an eight-year-old boy. I was 17, and in the Navy, fighting in The War for Britain.
The wind was a howling beast, and the waves were crashing in from all sides of the ship. The rain was worse than it had been when I was eight, or maybe it just seemed like that because I was out in it, with new brothers. The term felt alien to me, but as soldiers we were bounded together, even if it was by experience and not blood, maybe that made them more deserving of the term, the concept of family and loyalty always seemed to change from person to person. It was blood, it was crying together, laughing together, it was the piece of rock and soil you happened to be born on, it was something you sought out, something that found you, something I didn’t have time to stand around and think about.
I heard one of them call my name and I resumed my duties, following the protocol we’d been assigned to deal with such storms. As I looked out onto the endless ocean, the sky and sea almost identical in their shades of dark blue and black, I wondered if anyone would remember these stories. I knew in the past such storms would have been explained away through imaginings of sea monsters, or demons, or old gods bringing their wrath upon us mortals. But now more than ever we knew the world didn’t need a reason for storms such as this. The world didn’t need to provide monsters under the waves and foam, not when men like Adolf Hitler walked the earth anyway.
I carried on with my assigned tasks, not meeting the eye of any of my fellow soldiers, all too focused on getting us all through the storm. Though even in the best weather conditions I would often keep to myself. By law only men of 18 should have been able to join, and I did not need anyone on board figuring out I was still a year too young.
My hands had gone bright red from the cold, and my fingers ached with every movement. My uniform was becoming more and more soaked with each passing second, the wet material only working to slow me down. And that was how it was for that entire night. Wet uniform, hands as red as apples, fingers feeling as though they would snap off in the wind, and the wind howling, with waves crashing and smashing, as though the sky and sea were at war, just like the rest of us.
The next time I would be so aware of the waves, was in America. The war was over, and my ship had been brought up to New York. We’d lost many the past few years, and I was now a man, 20 to be exact. Along the beach families were cheering, waving their American flags, their signs declaring “Peace” and “War End”, families hugging and clutching each other, and I wondered how many of the boys in the crowd had only just returned home.
The sea was calm that day, though waves still rolled in with the tide. I knew in years to come this is what I would think of when I remembered America, beaches of white and golden sand, the sea lively but not the beast I had seen before, and the crowds upon crowds of people, cheering for us as though we were heroes. And, perhaps we were, but in that moment, I certainly didn’t feel like one. I felt tired from battle, hot under the late spring sun, and the crowds and cheering families felt too much at that moment, too American for me.
But I could understand their cheers and cries of joy, after all the war was over. This battle was done, and celebrations could finally be held, and we could smile and laugh in the name of hope and loyalty, with our families reunited. And there it was again, family. I wondered for a moment whether any of my brothers, brothers by blood I mean, had joined the fight. They surely must have, those older than myself at least, and younger ones after their birthdays. Or perhaps they had joined when they, like me, were too young.
I looked out at the sea, the waves sweeping in and out at a more relaxed pace. Were any of them at sea? On a boat on some other beach, facing a different cheering crowd? And what of Jean? Was she standing in one of those crowds, perhaps waiting for someone to return home? She would be old enough now to have perhaps found a young man. Wherever they were, I wondered if they were looking out onto the water, the ocean but different waves.
I felt myself being pulled by my brothers-in-arms, or perhaps former brothers-in-arms now that the war was over, up to the edge of the ship. They smiled and waved at the people, and I attempted to portray the same role they performed so flawlessly, all the while wondering when I’d finally be able to actually relax for five minutes.
Then it was 1951, six years later, and I was on a different boat, heading for a different destination, with different company. My wife, Annie, held my hand as we stood on the deck of the ship, heading for her home of Northern Ireland. I’d been working in London as a chef, and Annie had been visiting her sister, both intending to emigrate to Australia. There had only been two witnesses at our wedding, but it was enough for us. Annie has a big family, all waiting to welcome us when we arrive. Maybe this is what family is meant to be, something that eventually finds its way to you. The wind was cold, and Annie had the collar of her red coat turned up against it. It shouldn’t be too long now before we arrived.
The waves that day were gentle, lapping up against the boat, but the winds weren’t so strong as to give any force behind them, it was just cold. Annie had insisted we come up onto the deck for arrival, she wanted to see her home as it came into view, properly into view that is, not just a rock in the distance.
I wondered if maybe I should have felt sadness for leaving my birthplace. After all, I had been raised there, fought for it, put my life on the line in the name of serving it. But I did not. Maybe I knew that England had never really been my home, nor had any of the other countries I’d been to and seen during the war. I knew when Annie and I had our children they would more than likely see themselves as Irish rather than British, as her family did, and maybe they wouldn’t want to travel like she had done. To London, Australia, America, or wherever else. I had had my share of travelling. I had spent so much of my life going from place to place, more than anything I wanted a solid home beneath my feet, and a solid family. And that was all now possible, because of a wonderful young woman called Annie.
It has been years since then now. The 1900s have been left behind completely. I am more than a husband now. I am a father, a grandfather, even a great-grandfather. It was difficult the first few years, for all of us, but in the end, I am happy with the family that found me. But only recently life has given me another blessing. My son-in-law has found someone I never thought I would see again.
I look down at the photo of my little sister, as she will always be to me. Jean smiled back at me, sitting beside her husband. I had no idea my daughter and son-in-law had been looking for her, but they had found her. In Germany of all places. And as I am driven down to the docks, where I am to board a ship and sail over to see her, I look out once again at the waves.
