Sea Change (31 page)

‘Oh, Judy, I - I just wanted to see you, that’s all.’

She seemed satisfied by his honesty, or satisfied that he was at least no match for her. ‘I know.’

‘To know that you’re all right.’

‘I am. I am all right. Are you?’

He hadn’t been sure how much of his espression was visible to Judy - his part of the brick path had been a shadowy place. In fact, he wasn’t sure how much Judy had
ever
seen in his expression.

As always, she had backed away from the essential. ‘How is life on the boat?’ she’d said. ‘I think of you sometimes, on cold days. It can’t be nice.’

Guy hadn’t replied. He didn’t want to be led into an offhand conversation so easily. Judy’s good at that, at avoiding. He’d remained quiet, hoping it would draw her out. Her house, it wasn’t so dissimilar to the one they used to own. And she’d planted things in the garden that he had once planted, in theirs. It was revealing.

‘Do you want to come in?’ she’d said.

‘Me? No - I’m OK out here, on the path.’

‘Sure?’

He had tried not to stare at her. But she was fascinating. This was Judy, with shorter hair, curls less springy than he remembered, with a slightly thickened shape already, although he didn’t want to look. Still the same sharp angle between shoulder and neck, the same small earlobes that were so soft to touch, the same sunken dip at the base of her throat. But a new necklace there, something he didn’t recognize, and not her taste, either. New clothes also; colours she always chose but now she was dressed for comfort and warmth, not for style.

His silence seemed to disconcert her. She’d known you can’t truly hide from someone, once you’ve shared all with them, however long ago.

‘Guy. Are you going now?’ she’d said.

Guy didn’t know. A few hours later he would be heading out to sea in the
Flood
. Everything was packed and ready. ‘I think so,’ he’d replied. What, actually, had he expected from her? For her to acknowledge her mistakes? It wasn’t her way.

‘Well, I’m glad you came here. I really am,’ she’d said.

‘Me too,’ he’d lied.

‘We should be in touch.’

‘Yeah,’ he’d lied again, blandly, his voice sounding disembodied to him, from his actual presence there at her doorstep. It’s as if he and Judy were now talking on the phone to each other, with the feeling of distance as a given, between them.

He realized he’d been stripping the forsythia of its leaves. ‘Sorry about the plant,’ he’d said, lightly.

‘Guy. I want to tell you something,’ Judy had said, suddenly cautious. ‘It’s going to be a girl.’

There’d been the hint of an apology in her voice. A significant moment for them both, and Guy had felt the closeness, suddenly enveloping them, as if there’d been some strangely physical tie, after all these years, which still bound them in a way he’d never quite understood before. The presence of their child, it must be.

‘I’ll go now,’ he’d said, simply.

‘OK,’ Judy had replied, suddenly sounding a little less sure of herself.

‘Judy? Should we have a hug?’

She’d considered it.

‘Yes.’

He’d held her, the small shape of the wife he once knew, so well, touching the thinness of her bones in her shoulders and the shallow curve of her back and the unmistakable shape of the new life that was growing in her. Her hair was thicker. He remembered how that had happened last time.

‘For Freya,’ he’d whispered. She’d hesitated. Then he’d felt her arms reaching round his sides.

‘Yes. For Freya,’ she’d whispered back.

Guy stares into the patterned shades of shingle spread along the shore, remembering how he’d walked back down the path from Judy’s house as the door shut behind him. A chapter closing. He had driven without looking back, away from her house, he knew, for the last time. Ready now, to head into the sea. Having seen her, pregnant, the centre of her own life now, it had made him realize what he had to do. Maybe she’s happy, maybe not yet, but she’s on her way to it. That’s enough for any of us.

He thinks about the journey that’s arrived at this point. Of all the water that’s passed, the waves he’s seen, the tides that have come and gone, and the nightly reinvention of a life he lost and has wanted to recreate. Unpacking the daily miracle of ordinary life, albeit a remembered or an imaginary one. He thinks about the wake of the
Flood
, erasing all that time. All you leave behind is a path that can’t be followed.

And as the beach begins to lighten, incrementally, beginning to stretch in distance away from him, he has an uneasy sense of something being in the gloom, a presence he’s been unaware of.

Ghosts, he thinks, of the lives he’s led or might have led, and the people who are no longer with him, always in his mind, urging him forward. They’re out there and they’re in him, he carries all these scenes and imaginings and can never be truly alone, even in the most empty of the world’s places. The sun will grow stronger in the next hour, and it might break through this mist, making the shore glow with renewed vigour, whether it’s for him or for no one at all, it will shine and dazzle with its own sense of creation.

But the feeling of being watched persists, unnervingly, and he stares into the murky half-light and sees, about half a mile away, the thinnest of smudges separating itself from the background of sand and shingle. A second later it is gone, the stones slide their patterns among themselves in the gloom, and then it is there again, stronger, lengthening, the way things do in a wide flat landscape, coming his way. He stands to watch it, this strange whip of the mist, this weird trick of the sea-light, and in a few seconds he realizes it’s an animal. A low thin animal trotting along the shoreline in a direct path towards him. He feels naturally wary, thinks he should scuff his feet in the shingle to announce his presence, but is also transfixed by the jaunty way the animal is jogging towards him, each foot rhythmically picking up and dropping in a precise line, it has a dancer’s lightness, he doesn’t want to scare it. But then he realizes the animal is fully aware of him, and is approaching with a poised determination. As it closes down the distance between the two of them, he sees that it is a wild dog.

The dog is terribly thin, with long sinewy legs of bone and loose muscle and a tattered, gaunt face. It comes at him straight, without fear, with a cold flash in its eyes, furtively looking side to side, increasing its pace, and he sees the neck hang lower and its wary glance at the banks of stones around them, suspicion in every gesture. Just a few steps away it suddenly stops, dropping to the ground.

It arrives like that, in a manner of straightforward malice, as if it’s reacting to some act of territorial transgression. Its hind legs rise, bending its spine as it prepares to spring at him. Guy feels a hotness of panic, like a rash across his skin, and he stands completely motionless, entirely without defence. The dog makes a sudden growl, raising its upper lip in a snarl, revealing the yellowed enamel of the wilderness, tapering to bright sharp points in the shadows of the mouth, a thin pool of saliva caught behind the lower edged rim, and a livid tongue, quivering with energy. The dog stops growling, checking either side in sharp quick glances, then continues again, a low wild snarl interrupted with tiny yips and half-whimpers. Its eyes turn fractionally towards him, and a retinal flash of pale green light reflects from both of them.

Guy sees how desperate the animal is. A shore scavenger. Maybe it hasn’t eaten for days, its sides cave with each quick breath to show a line of ribs, and he knows he is no match for this thing, and as he’s thinking this he realizes he hadn’t even noticed the second dog’s approach, following the line of the first, in its very footsteps perhaps, till at the last minute the second animal has almost magically emerged from the body of the first, the matted pelt dividing diabolically, till the second dog is its own thing too, a few steps back and to the side.

Both dogs, ignoring each other but following some timeless instinctive strategy, begin to inch forward, their eyes filling with a sparkling murderousness. He knows that they are going to attack, and he will be unable to defend himself.

Guy faces them, stoically. He imagines the moment the first one will leap - the unnatural sight of its body extending, showing just how thin and empty it is - hitting him with a terrible force of wild hair and eyes, of hardness, too, of pointed pain from the teeth. Going for his arm, perhaps, pulling him down, while the second one arrives a split second later, shaking him with a body-weight of tense sinew, rolling and pawing to try and expose his neck. He assumes it will be over quite suddenly, like a terrible crash, the slamming energy of the animals almost not registering on his body, the pain arriving in a rush of so many other things, with his life obediently giving way without fuss in the manner it will have to.

But a new sensation begins to rise - an imperfection - an imbalance between himself and the wildness that has come to challenge him. Is it the fragment of a memory perhaps - the thought that something is not quite finished, not quite able to be put down? Look at the things you missed, he thinks, retrieve the things you lost. All is not lost, it’s in there somewhere, you just have to find it.

He wants to stop them, wants to raise his hand to halt the senseless inevitability of the attack, and as the feeling grows he realizes what it is - that small nub of doubt, that tiniest hint of a current running against the overwhelming force of the flow, it’s his will to survive, to go on regardless, to take all that can be given, because not to take it, to give up, is no way at all. That simple, all along,
you must continue
.

He feels his heart finally begin to race with the arrival of fear, that these two wild animals might take something from him he doesn’t want to give, and an echo of another time strikes him too, a remembrance of being in that field again, with the stallion running at him, and the surprising dawning of his own strength, as if the greater the force of the assault, the greater the defence. Life has that pattern, now, a perfect equation: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Guy feels decided and invulnerable and glad that his instinct has come, at last, to survive. He owes it to her. All that you left behind is more than I was before. This has been the answer that has eluded him, the answer he sought, the purpose of all these countless miles of North Sea and storm, and he smiles at the crouching dogs, at the coiled muscles of their back legs, the claws gripping the gritty beach, the look of sheer evil in their ungodly eyes. He takes a step towards the first dog, sees confusion in its eyes and, as if he is pushing some invisible force in front of him, his own protective bubble of certainty, of resolution, he sees the dog move to one side. Its head lowers, its eyes no longer maintain contact. Guy walks closer, convinced that the threat is transferring with each step, his own strength growing as these shore dogs give way, and he sees the second dog adopting the same weakened attitude as the first, both of them, lying down in the sand as he passes.

When he looks back along the beach he sees them half-turned, half-facing him. They look windblown and abandoned and untrustworthy. The first dog is shivering with the attack it nearly made, a twisted strain in its eye that Guy still can’t trust, can’t quite turn his back on. And knowing the danger has not truly passed, he carries on walking, steadily, one step at a time, destroying their wildness with his own simple desire to continue, returning now, needing to return, his journey over.

III

It’s late at night, later than she intended, and Judy is still sitting at the small desk in Guy’s cabin on the
Flood
. She’s been here for several hours. When she arrived, the barge had been at an angle on the mud, but in the past hour or two it has lifted with the tide. She doesn’t like the new motion the boat has, the way the shadows move inch by inch every so often in the room, the way the barge makes quiet noises as the water drifts outside. The boat feels alive to her - the empty spaces of its cabins feel expectant and eerie.

On the desk are his diaries. All of them, from the past five years. She’s spent the evening reading them, and a few seconds ago a single tear had welled in the corner of her eye and then tipped on to the page, instantly smudging the ink. Judy had looked at the mark the tear made. She hasn’t cried for such a long time.

She looks around her at his cabin, his possessions, his photograph of starlings flying over the estuary that hangs above the desk. She knows so little about the years he has spent on this boat, day in, day out, making his life here, in this space. She thought she knew Guy - completely knew him - but she doesn’t. He has had a life since them, and she’s been no part of it.

Judy moves the diaries to one side. She composes herself, then dials a number on her phone.

‘Hello, is that Marta Sheridan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hi. I’m sorry to call you like this. Can you talk?’

‘Who is this?’

‘My name’s Judy. I think you might know my ex-husband.’

Judy waits, but there is no response.

‘Guy? From the
Flood
.’

It takes a moment before she hears a reply. ‘Oh - oh yes.’

‘Sorry to be direct, but I assume you haven’t heard from him?’

‘No. I haven’t.’

‘I see.’

‘Should I have done?’

‘I don’t know.’

She hears Marta give a quick, confused laugh. ‘I’m a bit lost. Could you tell me what this is all about?’

‘Of course. Look - is there any chance we could meet? It’s just I’d rather we didn’t do this on the phone. It’s - delicate. Where do you live?’

‘In Cambridge.’

‘Would it be possible for you to drive here, to his boat? It’s moored on the Blackwater estuary, at the Tide Mill, really not very far from you. Maybe an hour’s drive? Do you know it?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m absolutely swamped here - there’s so much to do. Please come and we can talk this through - I’m sorry to be so mysterious, but I think it’s best. We should meet in person. You’ll understand. Would that be OK?’