the buggy RODDY DOYLE

There were people at the far end of the beach. Some adults, a lot of children.

An extended family, maybe—he didn’t know. He tried to see if one of the adults was carrying a baby or if there was a toddler—a padded lump—plonked on the sand.

He didn’t want to walk over, down from the path, across the sand and stones, to the buggy. It was facing the sea. If the people up the beach had been nearer to it, he’d have known that it was theirs. He’d have known that they’d parked the buggy there at the edge of the sea so the baby would drink in the air—the ozone, whatever it was—and sleep, and stay asleep for a while. But it stood out, alone. There wasn’t an adult or a sibling, a towel or a bucket, anywhere near it. It made no sense.

It was more than likely empty. That didn’t make much sense, either, a buggy abandoned on the beach like that. But he remembered abandoning a buggy himself, years ago—it would have been more than thirty years—when the frame had buckled as he was pushing it up the hill in that place in France they’d gone to on their way to the ferry in Le Havre. Mont-Saint-Michel. A spectacular place, dripping with history and religion, but all he remembered about it was the ache in his arms, and the heat, as he pushed the buggy and the toddler in it up the incline, and the metallic screech as the frame—the sides— surrendered and the toddler seemed to disappear, as if she had been eaten by the buggy. The toddler, Gráinne, was fine—she had a toddler of her own these days—but the buggy wasn’t savable. No amount of bending or hammering would have coaxed it back into shape. They’d left it beside a bin and passed three more buggies, buckled and discarded, on their way back down to the car park.