Ready To Sail

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The fleet was ready and waiting to take her away. Or so Agnes Simmons liked to believe. She had been coming to docks every day for most of her life, watching the ships coming in and going out, or moored, waiting for the next adventure.

People thought she was a silly old woman, and possibly she was. But they didn't understand her, or know what was in her heart. She had wanted to be a sailor when she was a girl, but in those days, women weren't allowed to be sailors, or even join the navy. Except as nurses and she most definitely did not want to be one of those.

She knew how to sail a sailboat. She knew the winds and tides. She knew the ocean, its moods, its whims. Yet she could not be a sailor by profession. It made her heart ache. No-one in her family understood how she felt, especially not her brothers who would tease her mercilessly. She loved them anyway. Her father used get angry with her. “What sort of daughter have you raised, Mrs Simmons,” he'd say to her mother. Her mother was not so harsh. She understood a little of Agnes's wayward nature, having known the heart ache of not being allowed to be a soldier when she was a girl. She was sure her girl would grow out of it, just as she done.

Then the Great War happened. Agnes watched all three of her brothers sail off to fight. Her heart was sore with envy and unhappiness. She wanted to sail with them, be beside them, keep them safe. As it was, only one brother came back and with only one leg. He would never speak of his days at sea. He rarely spoke at all yet he howled at night as if a demon was torturing him.

Eventually, Agnes fell in love with a man who loved the sea almost as much as she did. They were engaged to be married but then World War Two happened. She applied to join the navy, but there was no call for women on boats, and she already had an office job. She withdrew her application. Instead, she watched another man she loved sail away, and again she never saw him sail back. She never fell in love again.

Instead she came to the dock and watched the ships. They reminded her of all she had loved and lost, of her unfulfilled dreams and hopes. It never made her sad though. For she truly believed that they all still existed, man and boy, dream and hope, out there on the wide, wide ocean. 

She was ready to sail now - as she always had been.

Inspired by a prompt from Cynthia Morris in her quarterly Free Write Fling.