Ice Creams and Sandcastles
"Come on, I'll get you an ice cream," Tom said to his two children, Grace and James. The small children squealed and hurried off the sand, heading towards to ice cream shop and giggling with each other as they went. "Do you want anything, love?" he asked Sybil as he got himself to stand up on the golden beach.
"No thanks, I'm okay," she said, looking up at him, raising her hand to block out the bright sun. Tom bent down enough to kiss Sybil softly and then sought out his children who were nearly at the edge of the sandy beach now.
"Wait there, you two!" he called, and although they didn't stop in their tracks, they seemed to be proceeding more slowly now to allow their father to catch up with them.
Sybil loved her family. If anything was important to her, it was them. Having Grace and James born so close together wasn't something she and Tom had planned on, but it's what had happened and they couldn't have done anything about it. Sybil was scared when she first found out that she was pregnant for the second time. Grace was only six months old at the time and James was due in eight. Sybil would have to deal with a new born and a fourteen-month old at the same time. She had no idea how she would cope. She couldn't get rid of James. She loved him even before his organs were functioning. She loved him when he was only the size of a poppy seed. Nothing would convince her to get rid of him, but that didn't stop her from being terrified beyond belief. Beyond any feelings she'd ever felt before. And, yes, she'd been scared when she had first found out about Grace, but it was a different feeling altogether. She and Tom had only been married for four months when they'd first found out that she was pregnant. They were planning on waiting for a while longer before they started a family, and neither Sybil nor Tom were entirely sure how things were going to work out, but together they knew they would manage. She expected to be scared upon finding out that she was pregnant for the first time, but she wasn't expecting fear to strike her heart the second time around. She would have gone mad; she wouldn't have been able to stay sane had it not been for Tom. Tom's the one who calmed her down. Tom's the one who told her that everything would be alright and that she wouldn't be left to deal with everything by herself. He was the voice of reason and pointed out the obvious to her when she needed it most. I'll help you, he'd said. Grace will love having a little brother or sister, he'd promised. Grace was one of the best things ever to have happened to us; this will be the same, he'd reminded. And, of course, Tom was right. There were moments when Sybil didn't know what to do. There were times when she lost all belief in herself and told herself that having two children so close in age was impossible. But, everything was sorted out in the end. Sometimes by Tom. Sometimes by grandmothers or aunts and uncles. Sometimes by Sybil, herself. But nothing stayed bad for long. Every time something happened, it was dealt with eventually; there may have been a few tears or moments of anger along the way, but there was always a happy ending. Always.
Grace was now six and James was five. As a family, the four of them had decided that a trip down to the south of England would do them good. Grace and James were on their summer holiday from school – it was James' first one after a full year in reception, and Sybil and Tom had both managed to get a week off work at the same time. They saw no better opportunity to go and spend a week in the New Forest on the south coast. A bit of sea air and light relief would do them good. This used to be a common holiday destination for Sybil as a child. She loved it. She always had. She wanted Tom and her children to experience a part of her childhood. Hers was so different to Tom's and so different to those of her children, but she wanted to give them a taste of it, nonetheless. And they seemed to have loved their time there so far. They'd gone on cycle-rides, and walks and she couldn't spend time down there without going crabbing at least once, with a crab race at the end to see which crabs were the fasted when they were poured back down the slipway into the ocean to be caught by other holiday-goers, enticing them with rashers of bacon. And, naturally, ice creams were just as important as everything else. What's the point in a holiday if you can't have an ice cream or five?
Sybil loved seeing Tom interact with their children. He'd always been good with them, but it wasn't often that he had the chance to play with them in such a relaxed state, and even less often that Sybil had the chance to see them together in such a state. He'd taught James how to hold a crab without having it snap at you. Even Sybil, who'd been crabbing practically every summer of her childhood, refused to hold a crab unless it was absolutely necessary, even if it were a small crab that couldn't harm a human if it tried. Grace was much the same as her in that respect. He'd tried to teach Sybil to skip stones, but Sybil had been astonishingly bad at it and had given up and resorted to watching Tom succeed instead. And today he'd played in the sand with Grace and James, helping them to build the best sandcastle on the beach – not the typical upside-down bucket sort of castle, but a real work of construction, with walls as tall as the children and pebbles and shells as decoration on the turrets, with a moat and driftwood drawbridge to go with it. He'd left the two of them to invent games and make new friends with the other children on the beach and had sat next to Sybil, who was lying on her front on a red and white striped towel, reading. He had collapsed next to her, run a hand over her back and kissed her shoulder, not disturbing her too much from her intensive gaze on the pages before her. "Hey," she'd said.
"Hey, gorgeous," Tom had replied.
"What are our two doing now?"
"Playing games with the sandcastle."
"Which one is it?" she'd asked, rolling onto her back to scan the beach, keeping one finger in her book so as not to lose her place.
"That one," he'd pointed.
"Bloody hell! That's not a sandcastle; that's a fully functioning palace!"
"Quite good handy work isn't it? We make a good team, the children and I," he'd said.
"You do indeed. Even if you are less than modest about your talents." He'd planted a kiss on her lips then, strong and tender.
"That's not my only talent, you know." Another kiss.
"Don't be cheeky! You'll have to save some of that for later," she'd said with a smirk and the raise of an eyebrow.
"I expect you to keep that promise, Sybil Branson!" he'd said quietly and deeply.
"Mummy, mummy!" they'd been interrupted.
"Did you see our sandcastle?"
"Yes I did – it's very impressive. I hear dad helped as well," Sybil had said kindly.
"Well yes, but only a bit."
"Me and James did most of the work," Grace had said. Totally immodest and stubborn – the perfect mix of the two personalities of Sybil and Tom.
"Come on, I'll get you an ice cream," Tom had said. That's when they'd scuttled off. That was when Sybil started to think about how lucky she was to have such a perfect family. A perfect husband and two perfect children wasn't something everyone could claim to have.
Her children rushed towards her from behind with ice creams in hand. Grace, predictably, had chosen chocolate and James had gone for honeycomb. The two of them sat down near their mother, silenced by the pleasure of the frozen food in their hands. Tom approached a moment later and sat beside Sybil with an ice cream of his own. "Do you want some?" he asked, offering her some of his ice cream, despite her having said she didn't want any.
"What flavour is it?"
"Fruits of the forest," Tom answered.
"Go on then," she said, leaning forward to take a lick. "Mm," she hummed, pondering the flavour. "Good choice." Tom took a lick himself and then kissed Sybil. Interrupted from a loving moment again, James said,
"Daddy, can we go in the sea?"
"When you've finished your ice creams, we can go and paddle at the edge of the tide, James. But you've got to finish your ice cream first, and you must promise that you'll come and put some more sun cream on afterwards because it will wash off in the water," Tom answered.
"Okay," his son said politely. The four of them remained almost entirely silent for the next ten minutes or so. Tom, Grace and James were finishing their ice creams and although Tom finished his much quicker than his children, he had to wait for them to finish in order to take them down to the water's edge. Sybil leant against him to read her book, with his arms wrapped around her middle. Tom's arms moved up and down with Sybil's deep and relaxed breathing. Her knee length purple and blue dress floated about her legs in the breeze, her hair moving in the same direction against Tom's bare chest. Tom was lost in thought and Sybil was emerged in her book. They were both snapped out of their little worlds when Grace stated that she and her younger brother had finished off their ice creams and were now ready to go for a paddle.
"Go on then!" Tom said. "Why don't you have a race to see which one of you can touch the water first?" The children stood and started to run towards the ocean at full speed. Tom gave Sybil a quick kiss and then followed his children to keep an eye on them. Sybil continued to read her book. She managed to get through another page or so, but then snapped her gaze up to search through the small crowd of people for her family. When she caught sight of them, she smiled to herself. Her children had teamed up together to splash their father. Tom was splashing them back enthusiastically, joining in their game, but letting them win all the same. How had Sybil been so lucky? Being able to claim a man like Tom as her own was something she never thought she'd be able to do. As a child and teen she'd read books where a girl would meet her soul mate and watched films where two characters discovered that they were each other's true love, but she never thought it would happen in real life, even less so to her, herself. She loved every aspect of Tom, even the annoying things. She loved that he took up too much space in bed. She loved that he had a habit of kicking his shoes off in the middle of the room and leaving them as a trip hazard. She loved that his books were all precariously balanced in every which way because he didn't have enough shelf space to store them all. She was astonished that she'd managed to have such a good life. Things had not always been perfect. She'd been frightened, worried and sad at times, but more often than not she'd been happy and since meeting Tom, she'd most definitely been in love. Completely and utterly in love. And each child had simply increased the love she felt for her husband. He'd promised her that his love for her had changed in the same way as time had gone on. She hoped it would happen again. All she had to do was figure out a way to tell him that she was pregnant again. It had been over five years since Tom had heard the words I'm pregnant from Sybil's lips. Together, Sybil and Tom had changed greatly over the last five years. Sybil knew that his reaction now would be ever so different from what it was five years ago. But despite her uncertainty, if there's one thing she knew, it was that Tom would be happy. Ecstatic even. Not only was he good with their children now, but he was good with them as babies. Sybil was glad that Tom was so good with them. It gave her the chance to have a bit of a rest when she really needed it. She sighed at the thought of her perfect family and continued to watch them splash around in the water. Life was good. Sybil was happy. And now, she was about to embark on a new chapter in life.
I hope you enjoyed this interpretation of the July Rock the AU! theme of Summer Holidays. A lot of this is based on my annual holiday with family. We go to the New Forest every year in summer and this is based around Mudeford Quay, where many many holiday-goers spend a few hours crabbing in the sun and then walk down to the beach. Please leave a review if a can spare thirty seconds.