Breathing Underwater (9 page)

Thirteen

 

 

It's mid-morning, the next day.

‘Coming, then?' Gramps is pulling on his boots and waterproofs at the back door.

‘You really don't have to go, Freya.' Evie says. ‘You know how cold you get on the boat.'

‘I don't mind.'

‘Mind you wear life jackets. Both of you.'

Gramps never used to bother. I wonder, briefly, as I go to fetch two life jackets from the hook in the shed, whether Evie blames him for Joe not bothering enough either. Except that when I think about it, Joe did. Bother, that is. He always wore a life jacket on the dinghy. Apart from that one time. It's just one of the things that doesn't add up. Doesn't make sense.

I follow Gramps out through the gate on to the lane. Two men are looking at the lighthouse buildings, holding clipboards. Gramps raises his hand in greeting as we go past.

‘Estate agents,' he hisses, soon as we're out of earshot, as if they're a lower form of life.

At Periglis, we dump all the gear in the rowing boat and drag it down to the water together. Gramps lets me row. It takes a while for me to remember how to get the rhythm going, but I do. The tide's running out which makes it easier. To help with the rhythm, Gramps recites lines from Shakespeare:

‘ “
Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made
. . .” '

As we get level with the end of the rocks the surface of the sea changes; out of the shelter of the bay the wind's whipping it up.

‘Steady there. Here she comes.'

I brace myself as the wind slaps the side of my face. The boat rocks. A shiver goes down my spine. I think of Joe, out here in the dinghy by himself, in the dark.

‘Left a bit,' Gramps says. Bit by bit he guides me out to the line of buoys and I hold on to the rope so he can start lowering the crab pots. I row from one marker buoy to the next, round in an arc. My arms begin to ache.

There are rocks all round here, which is why it's a good place to catch crabs. But you have to take care not to snag the boat: it's hard to see where the rocks are, at this point of the tide, when it's high enough to keep them covered. If you caught the boat on them, it would easily make a hole, and the boat would fill and sink in minutes.

‘Could we swim from here?'

Gramps shakes his head. ‘You're a strong swimmer. You might make it. But the tide would be pulling you out. It's further than it looks. It's always better to stay with the boat, if you capsize.'

We're both thinking about
Joe
, of course. The dinghy, upside down. The ache in the pit of my stomach shifts, moves under my ribs, to my lungs.

I lean over the edge, trail my hand in the green water. It's biting cold. Deep beneath, between the rocks, seaweedy forests sway, pulled by the invisible currents. It's so clear you can see tiny fish darting in shoals in and out of the forest, shadows moving in the darker patches beneath. When the surface smoothes I see my own reflection, a face peering back at me from under the water. I shudder.

‘What happened to Huw?' I suddenly ask, just as Gramps is lowering the last pot. Evie was right about how cold it is out here on the water. My hands are like ice. ‘Why isn't he working on the
Spirit
this summer?'

Gramps sits back in the boat and stares at me. The wind is making his eyes water. He doesn't answer. Maybe he didn't hear. Or perhaps he doesn't remember Huw. A seagull flies low over the boat. It sounds like it's calling the name:
Huw Huw
.

Gramps' breath sounds wheezy. He's sort of hunched over, a bit slumped.

‘Gramps? Are you OK?'

He nods, straightens up a bit, tucks his raw red hands under his armpits to warm them up. ‘Time to head back.' His voice is croaky.

I don't ask him about Huw again. His face is too red, and his eyes are watering; his breath labouring in his chest. He doesn't look right; perhaps he's got too cold. My own hands are freezing and my arms aching but I can't ask him to row, so I get back into position, pick up the oars again.

After a while, the splash of the oars dipping in and out, the trickle of drips from the tips of each paddle, begins to mesmerise me. My thoughts drift. I think about the world beneath us, down, down, down. Water washing stone, grinding it slowly into sand. There are stretches of sea-bed between the islands which used to be valleys with village settlements, thousands of years ago. The sea level has slowly risen, covering it all up. Deep down, a whole flooded life is metamorphosing into something else. Fish swim through the places where houses would once have been; eels slither over ancient doorsteps. I imagine our boat gliding over empty rooms, sand drifting and burying the remnants of people's lives: old cooking pots, a small leather shoe, a string of beads. Sea levels are rising all the time. Faster now, with global warming and that. One day, this whole archipelago will be underwater. Nothing left.

A rubber dinghy with a noisy outboard engine swings into view. Their wash rocks our boat violently, so we have to stop rowing and cling on to the sides. Gramps yells at them and they swerve away. Someone waves.

‘Some lads from the campsite,' he says. ‘With diving gear.'

 

Izzy's on the beach at Periglis, watching us come in. She helps us bring the boat back up to the slipway and turn it over to let the water drain. She flirts with Gramps and he loves it.

‘I'm just about to go over to Beady Pool,' Izzy says to me. ‘Looking for stuff, if you want to come.'

I hesitate. I'm starving, for one thing, and then there's Gramps. But he seems fine now we're back on dry land. Only a bit wobbly. And there isn't much to carry back, just the oars and life jackets.

‘It's all right. I'll be heading back home,' Gramps says. ‘You two go and enjoy yourselves.'

We watch him walking slowly up to the path.

‘He's cool, your grandpa,' Izzy says.

I nod. ‘He goes a bit dreamy and odd sometimes.'

‘I like
odd
,' Izzy says. ‘More interesting. Come on, then.'

‘I should stop off and get some food really. I'm starving.'

‘We can go via the shop. I've got money.'

 

We spend all afternoon together at Beady Pool. The tide's ebbing, so there's the whole length of the sand and shingle for us to search along for bits and pieces for Izzy's jewellery. We spread our treasures on a flat stone to dry in the sun: pieces of turquoise glass smoothed by the sea; fragments of orange weed, like coral when they're dry; feathers; a skein of fine nylon rope, bright blue; shells with mother of pearl; tiny tortoiseshell cowries.

‘I've looked a million times here for beads,' I tell Izzy. ‘You know, like the beach is called after, from that shipwreck way back. How amazing that would be. You could charge the earth!'

‘Our shells are just as pretty.' Izzy arranges them into patterns on the stone. She sits down on the sand, starts drawing with her bare foot. I watch her. I can't help it. I've been like this all afternoon. It's as if she trails magic after her. I want to know how she does it. It's something to do with the way she knows exactly what she wants to do, all the time. She's always in the present moment, not thinking about anything else. I wish I could be more like her.

She draws patterns and shapes in the sand, with the flat edge of a pebble. She draws a girl with hair like her own, but a fish's tail.

‘So, Freya, why are you here by yourself? Where are your parents?' Izzy asks.

I explain about them working, and moving house, and how it's been the same most summers.

‘They come over to join us at the end of the holidays, usually,' I start to say. ‘Only this year . . . I'm not sure. Dad might come. Mum says she won't. They're not getting on very well. They hardly talk to each other. It's horrible. They don't tell me anything. I'm worried they're going to split up.' Just like that, I've blurted out all the stuff I've been bottling up for so long.

Izzy carries on doodling in the sand. She draws a house, gives it windows and a door, a chimney. She makes a pattern like roof tiles. ‘It might not be as terrible as you think,' Izzy says. She adds a tree, and a garden fence with a gate, and a path up to the front door. ‘My mum and dad split. I lived with my mum. The first two years she was sad all the time, but then we got used to it. ' She smiles. ‘You'll be OK, you'll see. And anyway, maybe you're wrong. Maybe it's just a difficult patch. All relationships have those, you know.'

It seems weird, thinking about Mum and Dad like that: in a
relationship.
As a couple, kind of separate from me and Joe.

‘What about your dad, though? Do you still see him?' I ask her.

Izzy shakes her head. ‘Hardly ever. His choice. His funeral.' She brushes sand off her hands.

Doesn't she mind? It fills me with misery, the thought of not seeing Dad. But he would want to see me, I know he would. He wouldn't let me go like that, so easily. Which means I'd have to live in two places, or choose between them . . . It's all too horrible to think about.

Izzy stops drawing. She sits back and looks at me. ‘So. When's your birthday, Freya?'

‘July.'

‘What day?'

‘10th. Why?'

‘So you're Cancer.'

‘What?'

‘Your star sign is Cancer. Home-loving, sensitive, but with a hard shell, to protect yourself from getting hurt. Don't like change.'

‘I'm not really into that stuff. Don't believe in horoscopes.'

‘Don't you? What do you believe, then?'

I think for a bit. ‘I'm not sure,' I say eventually.

Izzy's moved on to draw a merboy next to her mermaid, with hair a bit like Matt's. ‘But you are sensitive, with a shell?'

‘Suppose.'

She stops drawing a moment to look at me. ‘I heard something about you. Least, I think it was you. Sally was saying something about last summer. An accident?'

‘My brother died.' My voice cracks. I still haven't got used to saying those words. I'll
never
get used to saying them.

She leans forward, her voice sort of breathy. ‘That's terrible. That's so sad. What happened?'

My heart's thumping. I have to keep swallowing. I can't speak.

Izzy puts her arms round me. She doesn't ask any more questions.

I cry softly, and Izzy just sits there, hugging me, for a long time.

 

It starts to get cold, sitting still. Izzy stands up, stretches. ‘I think we should do something together,' she says, ‘to free you from all this sadness.'

She starts smoothing a patch of sand next to the mermaid and the merboy. She draws the outline of another figure. It's like one of those chalk outlines in a detective film, to show where the body was, to begin with, but then she starts heaping up the sand, so that it looks like a body is actually there. After a while I can see it's meant to be me. She gives me seaweed hair and pebble eyes, and then she goes along the edge of the sea, looking for something. She comes back with a flat black pebble with a hole at the top, and she threads it on to a thin piece of nylon thread unravelled from a piece of old fishing net. She threads two small shells either side of the pebble, then ties a knot. She places the necklace on the sand version of me, then comes to stand next to me. She puts her arm round my shoulders.

‘There you go,' she says, in her lilting voice. ‘A talisman, to cure you of sadness. Now you will start to feel better.'

I almost believe her.

I
want
to believe her.

If only it could happen like that.

We stay there, not really talking or anything, but it feels nice, like something really special and important has happened between us. The sea slowly ebbs. It leaves stretches of glistening silver sand.