Breathing Underwater (20 page)

You don't care any more. You're drifting, flotsam, with no will of your own. You feel sleepy. You feel nothing. The water carries you out, on and on, until a bigger wave catches you, lifts your body, sweeps it forward, breaks and smashes you down on to the rocks. Your skull cracks.

It's just an accident. You never meant it to happen like this. All you wanted was to get your head clear, sort yourself out, and start all over again, nothing more complicated than that. Swimming, sailing, whatever: horses for courses . . . You never meant to die. Of course not.

 

Another wave. Another gulp of water. Salt.

Freezing cold.

Numb.

Can't struggle.

Can't.

That early morning on Periglis, years ago, when we found the body of the drowned fisher-boy: remember, Joe? Peaceful. Nothing hurting any more.

 

‘
Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made
. . .'

 

Gramps.

 

Your precious life

Be happy

We love you to bits

Take care, Freya!

 

Numb now. Sleepy. Drifting.

It doesn't matter, not any more.

Nothing matters.

Joe's face is pale, like the moon's reflection in the dark water. He gasps for air; I feel his breath, close up to my ear.

The next shuddering breath is mine. Hands hold me, lift me up, so that with my next breath I get air, not water. My brother is swimming beside me, holding me up with one arm so I can rest and breathe again, steadily piloting me towards the shore.

Minutes, hours.

I'm hardly swimming at all, but Joe is, steady at my side. He won't let me give up. He carries me in, closer to the beach. It's just enough to let me rest, just long enough for me to get my breath back. My arms and legs start to tingle, energy seeping back in. I begin swimming, sidestroke, again.

My arm, reaching out, scoops through the water.

Kick legs.

Dip. Scoop, pull through the water.

Breathe deep, steady. Find the rhythm again.

Joe's arm is still beneath me, supporting, but I can hardly feel it now.

Almost there.

Next time I lift my head I can see breaking surf, the slope of the beach. We're swimming in shallow water. Finally, my feet find the sandy bottom.

Finally, Joe lets me go.

 

I don't look back. By the time I've staggered up the beach to my towel and clothes he's gone. I'm shaking all over, cold to the core, sick. But I'm safe.

The wetsuit clings to my trembling, freezing body: I've hardly the strength to peel it off and dry my goose-pimpled flesh, or pull on my clothes. Bit by bit, teeth chattering, I manage it, and the blood begins to flow again, tingling and warm, all through my body. As I start the walk back, it gets stronger, like a warm flow from the top of my wet scalp to the tips of my fingers and toes. And something else, too: an amazing sense of freedom, of release, begins to dance in me. Something extraordinary happened out there. And I came through, and I'm all right. But it's more than
all right
: a feeling too tender and new to put into words.

As I climb up the path from Beady Pool, I sense how late it actually is. There are no lights from the pub, or from any of the houses on this side of the island. I've been in the sea for hours.

The bracken and low gorse bushes either side of the small footpath scratch my bare ankles as I pass. A bramble snags my skirt, but I don't stop to untangle it, just tug myself free and walk on, the dripping wetsuit heavy over my arm. Every so often I stop to change arms.

Something – an animal of some kind, snuffles ahead of me. I stop a moment, and the shadow takes shape: a dog. Its eyes shine as it turns its head. I make out the white patches on its fur, the plume of a tail wagging. It's the young dog from the farm.

‘Bess?'

She comes towards me, body crouched low, tail wagging, and I reach my hand out to touch her. She starts at the bulky shape I'm carrying, whimpers.

‘It's OK,' I soothe. ‘Hey, Bess. It's only me.'

Her breath is warm on my cold hand. I smooth her soft back, feel the way her skin is still loose on her frame, the way she quivers as she stands next to me. When I start walking again she falls in behind me, trotting at the same pace, as if she's keeping me company. It's just her and me. Everyone else is asleep.

When we get to the lane the sky seems much darker. Thick clouds have covered the moon and the stars. The air is cool and wind gusts in the trees, shaking the leaves and sending shadows leaping across the lane.

‘Don't bark,' I whisper to the dog. ‘We don't want to wake anyone now.'

At the gate, I leave her behind. She stands and watches, as if she's waiting for me to go round the house and out of sight before she goes back to the farm.

I dump the wetsuit in a heap in the shed. I'll rinse it out in the morning. There's a hollow sound of something small rolling out over the wooden floor; I bend down to pick it up. It's not a pebble, or a shell. It's hard and smooth and cold in my hand, and perfectly oval. I've already guessed what it is, way before I get up into my room and switch on the light by the bed. Tonight, nothing is a surprise. It's a bead, green spiralled in gold, sea-worn and ancient, made of Venetian glass.

Twenty-five

 

 

It's the first thing I see when I open my eyes the next morning, on the window sill where I left it last night. In the daylight the bead looks plainer and less magical, but I know how rare and special it is. All these years of looking and I've never found one. It seems remarkable that it should somehow just be bundled up in the wetsuit like that. Did it wash in with me on a wave, somehow caught up in the wetsuit? Or had the tide already left it on the sand and by some trick of luck, some accident, I picked it up with my towel and wet things as I left the beach last night?

I turn it over in my palm. Hundreds of years old, and it's landed here, in my hand. I rub it with a corner of the sheet, shining the green glass till it's almost good as new. The gold spiral is inside the glass, somehow. Perhaps Izzy will make it into a new necklace for me.

Instinctively, my hand goes up to my neck. There's no necklace there. The string must have broken when I was swimming last night. My talisman necklace has gone for ever, lost to the sea.

Some things get lost, others return. That is how it is: the way of things.

A squall of rain spatters the window. The fine weather's broken, like Gramps said it would. There'll be no more swimming today.

 

‘It's chilly,' Evie says when I finally come downstairs for some breakfast. ‘I'm going to make us a fire, even though it's midsummer!'

She goes to the shed to find wood, and an axe. Just too late, I remember the wetsuit dumped there last night in a sandy, dripping heap.

I find her hauling it out on to the lawn. ‘Such a mess, Freya! Honestly! How long has this been here?'

‘Only yesterday. I was going to wash it out and I forgot. Sorry.'

Evie's got tears in her eyes. ‘It's Joe's. Just for a snap second I thought Joe was still here.'

I put my arms round her, and we stand together in the shed, both thinking about Joe. But something's different for me now, after last night. Some of the sadness has shifted.

Evie sniffs. ‘I'm glad you're using it. It's a good thing. We can't go on like this for ever, not touching his things. He isn't here any more, not in the same way, at least. Because in another way he's always here. Everywhere. I see him. Hear him. We all do, don't we?'

‘Yes.' It's such a relief, to hear Evie say that.

Evie disentangles herself. ‘Which is why it would be a very good thing if your mother would get herself here and face up to it once and for all.' She sounds almost cross.

I don't say anything.

‘Give it a good rinse, and hang it up. Does it fit?'

‘Nearly,' I say. ‘Good enough.'

‘That'll save us a few quid, then!' She tries to laugh, but it comes out more like a sob.

‘Shall I chop some kindling?' I say. It was Joe's job, before.

‘Yes.' Evie takes the basket from the hook and fills it with logs to take back in. ‘Careful with the axe. Use the chopping block.'

The rain carries on all day. Mid-afternoon, Danny turns up at the door, dripping wet. Evie asks him in. We've both been sitting by the fire for ages, reading. Gramps is still sleeping, upstairs. It's good to have a visitor.

‘How was the gig-race?' I ask Danny.

‘Fun,' he says. His hair's gone longer and straighter in the rain. His eyes look extra bright. ‘We lost. Second to last.'

‘We always do,' I say. ‘Did you go to the pub, after?'

‘For a little while. It got a bit rowdy. I missed you not being there.'

I smile.

‘The fire's nice. We're freezing in the tent, and there's no space. So Mum and Dad and Hattie have gone to Main Island. There's nothing to do when it rains, is there?'

‘Suppose not. Sometimes Sally opens up one of the barns, for table tennis and stuff.'

Danny kicks off his trainers and they steam gently in front of the fire.

‘Want to play a game? Evie and Gramps have loads. Funny old ones, mostly. Like an ancient version of
Trivial Pursuit
. You won't know any of the answers.'

We rummage through the drawer, getting out board games like
Sorry!
and
Scrabble
and some old quiz. We find a compendium with
Ludo
and
Snakes and Ladders
and
Housey Housey
, and play each one, laughing loads and cheating like mad. At the bottom of the drawer there's the box of
Cluedo
I last played with Joe. Danny hauls it out and begins to set out the pieces.

‘Matt and Huw both got hammered, last night,' Danny says. ‘They were arguing about Izzy.'

‘What about her?'

‘I dunno. Huw said something about her Matt didn't like.'

‘Huw should keep his nose out,' I say. ‘Stop messing things up for people.'

Danny looks at me. ‘Sorry.'

‘It's OK. Why doesn't he get his own girlfriend? He's good-looking enough.'

‘More than Matt?'

I feel myself blush. Keep my head down. ‘Pass me the dice, then, Danny.'

My heart isn't in the game. Danny's isn't either. He keeps looking at me, and I can kind of guess why; it's obvious really. Everything would be so much simpler if I liked him like that too, instead of Matt. But I'm beginning to understand it doesn't work like that. You're not really in control, not with this falling-for-people stuff. You don't plan who you're going to fall in love with. It's all random – chance accidents of time and place. People are always falling in love with the wrong person, aren't they?

I don't mean I'm actually
in love
with Matt. It's just . . . well . . . it's hopeless. He's in a different league. And he and Izzy belong together. And I like Danny loads as a friend, just not anything more.

 

Evie brings us homemade scones. She's obviously just loving having a boy around the house again. She goes back into the kitchen and sings along to the radio. She hasn't done that in ages. She wants him to stay for supper, but Danny says he's got to get back. His parents don't know where he is.

‘Bring them all. They could have a meal here and dry out!'

But Danny's gone shy again. He stutters, ‘No, thank you.'

‘He's such a nice boy,' Evie says, as he goes out the door. He probably heard her. She probably meant him to. ‘Was I very embarrassing, Freya?'