Deep Water, Thin Ice (26 page)

‘Oh for God’s sake, Theo, it’s not like that. I’ve not been
running after
anyone.’ She paused, trying to suppress her anger. ‘I’ve only been there a few times, on the reserve. I’ve just watched the birds, helped him with a couple of jobs. It all happened by accident and it did me good to just get away, to be somewhere completely different. Don’t you see?’

‘Just you and him, alone there. Yes, I think I do see Alex.’

‘No, no.’ She thumped the nearest worktop in frustration. ‘You’re being ridiculous and making it into something it’s not.’ She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, stretching out a hand towards him, fingers spread as if holding back something pressing in on her. ‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but I didn’t do it intentionally…Well I did, because Mick – that’s the guy that runs the place – asked me not to tell anyone. He doesn’t like visitors and likes to keep the place quiet. I didn’t mean anything by it. I took Ben there because I knew he’d love it. Simple as that.’

Theo looked at her fiercely as if trying to look inside her brain.

‘Really?’

‘Yes really.’

‘And this Mick…what’s his name?’

‘Fenby.’

‘He means nothing to you?’

‘Of course not. I told you: he’s just a friend…sort of. I don’t really know anything about him.’

He suddenly strode across the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her and hugged her hard and long.

‘Oh Alex, don’t ever keep anything like that from me again. I’ve been tortured, thinking I’d lost you.’

She leant her head against his chest and closed her eyes with a sense of relief. But she found herself wondering what this relationship she had with Theo was exactly, a relationship in which he seemed to expect so much. She’d been on the point of asserting that it was all about trust and clearly he didn’t trust her. But that suggested that she was tied to him in some way, that she had made some longstanding commitment to him, and she suppressed the remark. Whilst she had no desire to deceive him, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be fixed in that way yet. She wanted to be with him but it had all happened so quickly; it had too much momentum. Should she try to explain that to him, she wondered? But by doing that, wasn’t there a risk that she would merely intensify their relationship all the more, like using water to try to quench burning oil? She bit back the words, certain the whole thing would blow over.

*

‘Ten days initially but the trip might be extended,’ Theo told Alex before leaving her. ‘It depends on how well it goes. They’ve taken an option to run on for a further ten days. The yard’s quiet so Patrick’s not fussed.’ He’d been very careful in his choice of words, not wanting her to question what he was doing or where he was going. The crewing job was true enough; only the timescale was a fabrication. He knew he’d be back in Britain well inside the fortnight. ‘The Caribbean’ll be lovely at the moment,’ he continued, ‘but I’d rather stay here with you.’ It was the beginning of the second week of January and he’d kissed her goodbye while she still lay half asleep, the second time he’d shared her bed since their New Year spat.

Back at The Lodge, throwing clothes and personal necessities in bags with the speed and assurance of someone who’d done it often enough to make thought unnecessary, he wondered how far his relationship with Alex had progressed since her return from London before Christmas.
Had
it progressed? He wasn’t sure. They had slept together again but it was he who had initiated their love-making not her, and though she’d responded, he felt her commitment was still uncertain. Despite his concern to avoid her questioning, it occurred to him that she actually displayed little curiosity about his movements and, paradoxically, he found that worrying. Previous girlfriends – and certainly Helen – liked to try to pin him down. Alex appeared happy in his company and she was affectionate but not effusive. He’d persuaded himself that she was falling in love with him or at least that she wanted to think she was. What her true feelings were was anyone’s guess. She’d never appeared jealous of time he spent away from her. And then there’d been that row. What significance had that had?

The news that she’d been visiting the man on the Grenloe had come as a shock. But for the innocence of the boy he might never have known anything about it and that worried him. It wasn’t so much that he thought that she was having any kind of affair with the man – he’d seen the Birdman a couple of times skulking through the village and the idea was laughable - but that she’d consciously not told him about her visits. He’d thought Alex easy to read, open, that she wore her heart on her sleeve, but now he’d seen a side to her character which made him less certain.

And he wasn’t sure now whether he’d played it right with his tight-lipped anger and frosty indignation. He’d sensed that, even in her apology and relief at their reconciliation, she still held something back. It was as though she were protecting the Birdman in some way, as though she cared what people thought of him. It was both extraordinary and worrying. Who was this Mick Fenby anyway? In the early hours of New Year’s Day, feigning genuine interest as well as a lover’s concern, Theo had asked Alex all about the reserve and the man who ran it, what happened there and what she did. Her answers had given him a picture of the place but not the man. Without wishing to make a big issue out of it, he’d suggested to her that she would be wiser not to visit the reserve if she knew so little about the Birdman but she’d dismissed the idea without apparently giving it any thought. He’d even detected an obstinacy in her response suggesting that the more he pursued it, the less likely she would be to heed him and so he’d backed off.

The following week he’d made a few discreet enquiries in the village but it seemed the guy had been around for years without anyone really registering much about him. Nobody appeared to either care or to want to know who he was or where he came from. But Theo cared and when he got back from his trip he was going to spend a bit of time finding out. He knew he had a short window of opportunity to nail this relationship with Alex and time was passing all too quickly. And he wasn’t prepared to let other friendships – whatever form they took – put his plans at risk.

The first week of January had been unseasonably warm and wet. Then just as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped, the thermometer fell and Kellaford Bridge succumbed to rare sub-zero night-time temperatures. For several mornings in succession the thin winter sun rose over a frosted landscape and glinted off trees made white with frozen raindrops. Beyond the harbour and the sweep of the Dancing Bears, the sea twinkled like diamonds. Inland there were heavy falls of snow. When Mick turned the radio on he heard of people being stuck in their cars on the A38, children rescued from a school trip on Dartmoor and shops running out of food because there’d been no deliveries.
A normal winter at last,
the radio presenter declared.
Global warming?  It’s just a cycle we’ve been going through. I always thought there was no need to panic.
Mick turned the radio off in disgust. Next week the temperature would probably swing up ten or fifteen degrees, the wind would howl and in some sleepy suburb somewhere there’d be a tornado. ‘There’s none so blind as them that will not see,’ his mother used to say. He’d laugh but he found it all rather depressing.
In a few years’ time we must cut our carbon emissions
, the politicians kept saying, affecting concern, as if they were in a charity relay race, holding a flaming baton which they were determined to pass on before it burnt them.

He’d had a similar conversation with Minna Downes just recently. It seemed she was a sort of latter day ‘wise woman’, obsessed with the seasons and making home made remedies. When he’d taken Harry back home on Christmas Day, Minna, grateful and relieved, had invited him in. Feeling unusually keen for company that afternoon, he’d surprised himself and agreed, joining them in their tiny two up, two down house for tea and sponge cake. Before he left, seeing him with a cut on his arm, Minna had thrust a jar of calendula cream on him, a mix of her own concoction. Given the barely-disguised poverty of the house, he’d found their hospitality touching. The next day, late in the afternoon when the sun had gone down and everyone was back inside with the curtains drawn, he pulled a trailer of logs and kindling round to their yard and then unloaded and stacked them. It had created a bond of sorts and he’d seen them again since, checking they were all right in the cold weather, moving wood inside, talking to Harry to divert him a little. Harry Downes was obviously ill and Minna, though she masked it as best she could, was struggling to cope. It was a novelty to find someone in a worse condition than himself whom he was in a position to help. He found it humbling and grasped the opportunity with wary enthusiasm.

Now, after several days of freezing weather, the ground had become solid and areas of still water disappeared under a thin layer of ice. Mick went round gently breaking the parts he could easily reach and then took a sack full of empty feeders back to the shed to refill with seeds and nuts, his cold hands clothed in fraying fingerless gloves. Desperate for food, the birds were emptying them faster than he could fill them.

He’d been doing the same thing when Alex had turned up a couple of days before, wearing a heavy coat, thick boots and a soft-brimmed fleecy hat. After his reaction to her visit on Boxing Day, and his clear objection to the presence of the boy, he’d wondered if he’d finally gone too far. Her obvious attachment to the boy had perhaps proved the tipping point. It was clear she’d been offended and upset and after she’d gone it had brought him up short. He found himself thinking back over the time he’d known her and all the time they had spent together. He’d be fooling himself if he didn’t admit that he’d be gutted if he didn’t see her again. But why, he couldn’t help asking himself, would she bother to keep coming? He saw himself suddenly as she must see him and the impression shocked him. What had he become? Fear, resentment and bitterness had made him both cynical and irrationally defensive. Why she had ever visited more than once was a mystery to him. So she’d told her nephew about the place and brought him to see it. So what? Maybe enough years had passed now anyway; perhaps it was all behind him and it was time for a fresh start. And then he’d promised himself that, if she did come back, he simply wouldn’t mention the Boxing Day thing; he would behave as though it had never happened and that it wasn’t important; he would show he didn’t mind.

So when Susie’s ears pricked and she barked and then ran whining from the shed, he tried to look casual. Alex found him there a couple of minutes later.

‘Happy New Year,’ she’d said, guardedly, as she walked into the shed.

He glanced round at her, gave her a smile and returned his attention to filling a feeder.

‘Same to you…and thanks for the binoculars, by the way. I forgot to say when you came before.’

Alex bent over to stroke Susie’s head and run a finger behind her ears; Susie loved that. ‘My sister was ill over Christmas,’ she said, still bending over the dog. She straightened up suddenly and he could feel her eyes drilling into the side of his head. ‘I would have told you on Boxing Day but you never gave me a chance to explain. I’m sorry that...’

‘Is your sister better?’ He turned briefly and saw her frown at the unexpected question.

‘Yes…thank you. Much. By the next day she began to improve quite quickly. And fortunately, whatever it was, she didn’t pass it on to Ben or me.’

Mick nodded.

‘Smart boy, Ben. Close are you?’

‘Yes…yes. We get on really well.’

‘Good. How old is he?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Interesting age.’

He turned again to look at her properly and smiled.

‘Are you all right Mick?’ she asked, frowning.

A deep, booming call echoed across the reserve. The air still vibrated long after the sound had gone.

‘What was that?’ Alex asked, jerking her head round and listening.

‘It’s a bittern.’

‘
That’s
a bittern. What an amazing sound. So they’ve come back.’ She hurried across to the shed door to look out.

‘The male’s back, that’s who you can hear booming. But you’ll be lucky to see him. They’re very shy birds. That booming’s his way of trying to attract a mate. But he’s too early – the damn weather’s got them all confused.’ He picked up three feeders in each hand and nodded at the three left on the table. ‘Bring those will you? We’ll put these up and then I’ll make some coffee.’

And they hadn’t mentioned Christmas again. Alex seemed reluctant to revisit it too.

Now, as he filled the last of the feeders, Mick heard the bittern call again. It was a sound which carried well beyond the confines of the reserve and it had sounded just before he’d left the tiny house on Harbour Row a couple of days before. Minna Downes had lifted her head at the sound and frowned.

‘I haven’t heard that since I was a child,’ she’d said and then turned her sharp gaze on him. ‘That means bad luck. That’s what my grandmother used to say – something bad will happen.’

Mick had grunted something non-committal and left before it occurred to her to blame him for it, dismissing the idea from his mind as so much superstitious nonsense.

*

How easily she’d slipped back into her routine of visiting the reserve, Alex thought, a few days later.
You’re doing it just because Theo said you shouldn’t
, Erica would probably have said. Her sister had asked about Mick in one of her telephone calls. ‘Have you seen any more of the Birdman?’ was how she put it, and Alex had said as little as possible about it, knowing Erica would never understand anyway. ‘So what did you tell Theo about him?’ Erica had asked archly. ‘I saw the expression on his face when you mentioned the reserve. He didn’t like it did he? He must have brought it up again. I’ll bet he could be a jealous man, your Theo,’ and she’d laughed suggestively as if that made him more appealing. Alex was surprised at her sister’s insight into Theo’s character. She’d never shown that much insight into the men she’d chosen for herself.