Deep Water (4 page)

As she hurried away to collect the car, Andrea’s relief gave way to depression. She had hoped for so much from their holiday. Ever since his heroic fight back against polio had begun, Peter’s leisure time had been swallowed up by challenge and struggle, just as his working hours had been for years. That was almost the worst thing his illness had done. I’m thirty-five, she thought, and this is how my life is passing. How can I respond to a man who has no idea of the impact his behaviour is having on me? From woods near the river, the twin notes of a cuckoo pulsed on and off as if urging her to make haste while she still had time.

*

Justin jumped onto the shingle from a
barnacle-encrusted
rock. Because all his holiday clothes were in Kenya, he was wearing an aertex school shirt with grey shorts. Leo’s well-meant offer to wear school clothes too had only made him laugh.

‘Perhaps we’ll find a German mine,’ cried Justin, glancing along the beach, as if such an object might suddenly float into view.

‘What would you do?’ asked Leo, continuing to pop the bubbles in a strand of seaweed.

‘Fetch the navy and watch them disarm it.’

‘How would they?’

‘A man looking like a plumber comes, though he’s a naval officer really. He gets out lots of tools, and opens it up.’

‘How do you know?’

‘One got washed up near my aunt’s place in Sussex.’

Leo wished that occasionally
he
could tell Justin something he did not already know. They had left their bicycles in the woods behind the beach and were walking along the shore towards a fishing village on the estuary. Earlier that morning Andrea had promised to find a sailing boat for them.

A fishing boat with red-brown sails was coming in from the sea with clouds of circling gulls in pursuit. Further out, a grey fast-moving vessel was entering the estuary. The throb of its engines soon became continuous. Slanting through broken clouds, a shaft of sunlight caught the little grey ship as if in a spotlight. It looked brave and festive with its fluttering white ensign, and bright sheaves of spray curling from its bows.

‘That’s a motor gunboat,’ said Leo, delighted to be able to recall in detail the model of an
MGB
in the school craft room. As the ship came closer, he could make out a stubby gun turret in the bows and people on the bridge.

‘Could be an
MTB
,’ countered Justin.

‘We’d see the torpedoes if it was.’ Leo was the proud owner of
Warships
of
the
British
Empire,
a well-thumbed volume packed with photographs and silhouettes of ships of all sizes.

As the gunboat passed a few hundred yards out in the river, machine guns were clearly visible on the wings of the bridge, as were Oerlikons amidships. Further astern, a row of black barrels looked like depth charges. Before the warship could disappear upstream, the boys had clambered onto a rocky promontory and from there saw it sweep in a broad
arc upwind, towards a large cylindrical buoy. A deeper roar filled their ears as the engines were put astern, making the water froth and boil. Four other naval craft were shackled on to adjacent buoys: an
MTB,
two fishing boats painted in naval grey, and a minesweeper. A launch now sped away towards the
MGB
from a pontoon attached to a stone quay.

‘What’s going on?’ muttered Justin. ‘They’re in one hell of a rush to get out to that ship.’ Behind the quay was a rough lawn dotted with sheds and Nissen huts, and, behind these, a white house dwarfed by a tall flagstaff. ‘Some kind of headquarters.’

‘So what?’ Leo suddenly felt irritated by his friend’s breathless fascination. ‘It’s not the Grand Fleet, is it?’

Justin scowled at him, so Leo did not go with him to investigate the pontoon. Nor was he with Justin when the launch returned from the
MGB,
filled with officers and men. Instead Leo sat alone on the rocks poking at anemones for a while, before wandering along the beach towards Porthbeer village.

The fishing fleet was in and some of the boats had not yet lowered their russet sails. A man on the quay was tipping fish guts into the harbour while gulls screeched and dived. On a weed-stained slipway, a fisherman was scraping barnacles from his boat’s hull, while another was painting the keel with red lead. A reek of drains merged with the stink of lobster pots.

‘What a pong,’ said Justin, joining Leo on the quay.

Below them in the harbour, two boys were
swimming
between the boats. Leo was amazed they should want to swim in such a smelly place. A woman in a black shawl shouted at them to get out. The incoming tide slapped against the boats, making the boys’ heads bob up and down. When they stumbled up the steps, Leo saw that they were naked.

The boys towelled themselves and dressed in guernseys and corduroy trousers that just covered their stockings. Justin strode towards them along the harbour wall, past swathes of drying nets.

‘Those navy boats,’ said Justin, pointing, ‘what do they do?’

‘Who be ’ee?’ demanded the taller of the two boys.

Justin gazed blankly at his questioner. Leo said quietly, ‘He’s asking who you are.’

‘Oh, I’m a Jerry spy,’ snapped Justin. ‘Donner und Blitzen!’

‘We’re on holiday at Trevean Barton,’ said Leo.

The Cornish boys laughed. ‘Do ’ee think they be all right?’ one asked the other, grinning.

‘Don’ see why not.’

The taller of the two said, ‘Them sailors be rescuin’ pilots and fishin’ for mines, ol’ boy.’

Unable to work out whether ‘old boy’ was a class insult or a friendly dialect greeting, Leo was relieved to see that Justin had not taken offence. Instead he asked politely, ‘Is that all the sailors do?’

‘I cudden say, reelly. Though when convoys pass, the navy goes with ’em for their safety. Don’ want no U-boats, or E-boats to sink ’em, see.’

Leaving the beach for the woods, Justin was
preoccupied
. ‘They know more than they’re saying.’

‘Why think ’ee that, ol’ boy?’ asked Leo.

‘Because, toe-rag, the sailors who landed from that gunboat were young. But the men on the patrol boats near my aunt’s village are as old as the Home Guard.’ Leo said nothing as he dragged his bicycle out of the bushes beside the track. The flowers his bike had been lying on looked like white bluebells but stank of garlic – ideal for apple-pie beds. ‘What do
you
think?’ demanded Justin.

‘The sailors near your aunt could be unusually old for patrol boats, and the ones down here could be the normal age.’ The boys pushed their bicycles up the hill in silence until Leo snapped, ‘Okay. They really may be doing something hush-hush, but why get steamed up about it?’

‘Because finding out is more bloody interesting than catching shrimps.’

‘More bloody worrying, too.’ Leo pulled a face. There was probably no mystery at all, but that wasn’t going to stop Justin trying to solve it. Not now his mind was made up.

*

The moment Leo saw his mother sitting at the writing table in the drawing room, he thought she looked tired and depressed. He had always
considered
her better looking than the mothers of other boys, but today her beauty had a set and faded look, like a dried flower’s. He went across and kissed her on the cheek, making her smile.

‘Say, what is this, sweetheart? Nothing wrong?’

He realised his affectionate gesture had seemed odd, because he’d been spending no time with her. Guilt made him want to say he was sorry; but how could he without seeming dishonest?

‘You looked sad, mum, that’s all,’ he mumbled.

She pushed away the list she had been making and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Dad’s strained his leg. He’s lying down right now.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘The old problem.’

Leo sensed that his mother was desperate but wanted to hide this from him. Around his father’s left knee joint, some of the muscle had turned to bone during his year in hospital, and, although some of this unwanted bone had been removed in an operation, the whole joint was inclined to puff up if he walked too far. Unfortunately, ‘too far’ was not always the same distance. The condition was called ‘myositis ossificans’, which Leo remembered because his father had written a short verse about it with some very clever rhymes that he had now forgotten.

‘Poor dad,’ sighed Leo.

‘He should
not
have climbed so many stiles. Did you and Justin have a good day?’ Without waiting for Leo to give more than a very brief reply, she walked to the door. ‘I have to go get a doctor’s note for painkillers.’

When his mother had gone, Leo crossed to the French windows. Justin was in the garden with the air gun he had persuaded his idiotic aunt to give him for his birthday. As Leo watched, Justin shot at
something in the pear tree, then ran across to search among the daffodils. Leo went out and saw his friend hold up a sparrow and blow into its breast feathers as if to revive it. Then he tossed the light limp little corpse into a redcurrant bush.

‘I’m going to sit with my dad,’ Leo announced, turning his back on Justin.

The walls in Peter’s bedroom were flaking in places, showing a dirty bronze-coloured paint beneath the present dreary green. His father was lying on his bed, fully dressed, looking through a sheaf of papers covered with mathematical calculations.

‘Bad luck, dad.’

‘I was a fool to overdo it.’

‘I could bring a book in here if you want to go on working.’

‘That’d be nice. I’ve almost finished this stuff.’

When Leo returned with a copy of
The
Thirty-
Nine
Steps,
his father looked up. ‘Everything all right, old chap?’

‘We saw an
MGB
in the river. Is it a spy ship?’

‘Most unlikely. It’s a shame poor old Justin needs to escape the whole time.’ Peter smiled at Leo. ‘What’s your book?’ Leo held it up. ‘John Buchan? That old stuff! I’m no pundit, Leo, but adventure novels aren’t rated highly by people in the know.’

‘It’s exciting. What’s wrong with that?’

Peter glanced heavenwards. ‘Does it have
intellectual
or
moral
excitement?’

‘It’s jolly moral, dad. Hannay’s trying to foil a plot against this country.’

‘That’s not quite what I was driving at. If he could
only save his country by sacrificing his girl’s life, then he’d face an interesting moral choice.’

‘Interesting?’ gasped Leo. ‘Don’t you mean sad?’

‘But is a sad book a bad one?’

‘Do
you
like being upset, dad?’

‘Of course not, but we’re supposed to respond to sad events in books and plays in a special way which …’ He broke off and smiled helplessly. ‘Look old chap, literature isn’t really my subject.’

Leo’s irritation with his father never lasted long. Dad was a hero to lie flat on his back for days without whining. Not that dad himself believed in heroes. He thought people couldn’t do good things
just
for the sake of other people. Instead they were always trying to appear in a good light. Leo didn’t agree with this. Dad wasn’t being brave to make people admire him. He was behaving well so he wouldn’t upset his family.

*

Andrea had telephoned the doctor and was on her way to collect Peter’s prescription from the
surgery
. After a short drive, she arrived at a large stone house standing in a garden incongruously containing Scotch pines and palms. Entering the panelled hall, which smelled of furniture polish with an underlying hint of drugs, Andrea saw a glamorous blonde woman of about her own age cross from one doorway to another, and then suddenly turn in her direction.

‘I’ve come for my husband’s prescription,’ said Andrea. ‘His name’s Pauling.’

‘Don’t look at me. I’m not the doctor’s secretary.’
The woman’s ladylike indignation at having been taken for a secretary struck Andrea as hilarious.

‘I’m so sorry. Is his secretary available?’ she asked, with exaggerated humility.

‘No, but don’t worry, I’ll find the damned thing.’

The sudden change of tone from imperiousness to matter of fact good humour was too much for Andrea, who let out a strangled laugh. The woman grinned at her as if to say, ‘Fooled you, properly, didn’t I?’ Andrea followed her strange guide through a waiting room into a small office, where the
prescription
was quickly found. The woman glanced at it and whistled. ‘Powerful stuff. Why does he need it?’

‘His leg’s bad. He had polio.’

Andrea was struck by her guide’s extraordinarily carefully made up face, which would not have looked out of place in Bond Street, but seemed strange above a highnecked wool sweater and riding breeches. She looked again at the prescription before handing it over.

‘So you’re staying in that funny little place outside Trevean Barton.’

‘I like it.’

‘Very poky, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Oh, I’m probably thinking of somewhere else.’ She thrust out a hand. ‘I’m Sally Lowther – the doctor’s wife, in case you hadn’t guessed.’

‘Andrea Pauling,’ replied Andrea.

Sally’s eyebrows were dark in contrast to her
natural
looking blonde hair; and because her left brow
arched slightly higher than the right, she seemed to be appraising the world with wry amusement. Suddenly she frowned.

‘Is your husband a bore about his leg?’

‘Is that really your business?’

‘Of course it isn’t. I’m afraid I’m terribly prejudiced against sick people. They’re so selfish. My husband never gets a moment’s peace, even at night.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘
He
doesn’t think so. Only me. He loves them all, the sicker the better.’ Sally looked at her watch and then back at Andrea. ‘Do you play tennis, Mrs Pauling?’

‘Not to boast of.’

‘Your husband’s game’s about the same?

‘He doesn’t play.’

‘Jesus! His leg!’ Sally emitted a theatrical groan. ‘Silly me. Never mind, unattached women can be very useful as partners. You must come round next time I have people over for a game.’