The Drowning (9 page)

Jenna straightened her back. She stared out of the window at the faultlessly blue sky; at a boy on his skateboard, his face solemn and determined, rattling down towards the Digey; at a seagull standing on one leg, relentlessly pecking at a cobblestone before his throat heaved its unflagging, single-note call.

She said, “It’s going to be another lovely day.”

Not that I’ll see any of it from in here.

The heatwave broke that Sunday morning.

Showers of rain lashed the beaches. Crowds of disappointed bodies scurried for cover. Gulls screamed into the sky. Cats crouched indoors on window ledges, staring out. Jenna bundled the washing off its narrow line in the courtyard.

Mum shuffled downstairs looking puffy and listless. She wore an emerald-green suit with a matching shirt which seemed to drain the colour from her face. A ladder in one of her stockings snaked its way relentlessly towards her knee.

“Do I look all right, Elwyn?” Pat, pat, went the hand to the hair. “I seem to have put on a bit of weight.”

“Fine, dear, you look just fine . . . I love that colour on you.” Dad beamed at her. “Doesn’t she look wonderful, Jenn?”

Jenna slammed another ironed shirt on the pile.

“We won’t be late.” Dad said. “Pity about our open-air table. Looks like we’ll have to eat under cover if this rain goes on . . . I’ve left you an avocado salad in the fridge, Jenn. One of my specials.”

Yeah, sure, throw some food at me and hope it’ll make everything OK.

The minute they’d left, Jenna switched off the iron, took a deep breath and walked determinedly up the stairs.

She pushed blindly into Benjie’s room and shut the door. The room was trapped in impossibly stuffy air, as if it hadn’t been lived in for years. She threw open the window. Gulls circled the rooftops, eyeing her.

She turned and forced herself to look around the room. The space on the low table where the guinea pigs’ cage had been loured at her emptily, covered in a film of white dust. Huddles of books, comics and toys littered every other surface. The insides of a radio spewed across Benjie’s desk. On the floor, the train set stretched in elegant curves around bundles of crumpled clothes.

She bent to pick up a pair of Benjie’s jeans, a favourite T-shirt; held them to her nose, pressed them against her face to push back the tears. She wanted to throw herself on Benjie’s bed, call for him, magic him back from the dead so that she could turn to watch him: playing with the train, pushing parsley into Klunk’s little face, tinkering with pieces of the radio.

It’s no good. He’s never coming back.

She stood up, her legs weak. Furious and miserable, she flung the jeans and T-shirt on to the floor by the door.

Just pretend this room doesn’t belong to Benjie.

Pretend you’re a cleaner in a hotel . . . You’ve got half an hour . . . Start by stripping the bed.

She pulled at the duvet cover, tore it off, hurled it across the room. She lifted a pillow and stripped off its case. Then another pillow. She remembered the thousands of times on her way to bed when she’d pushed at Benjie’s door to make sure he was sleeping peacefully, seen his fair hair and soft, round face, thoughtful with sleep.

She punched at the pillow and then began to hug it, murmuring Benjie’s name, tears scorching her eyes . . .

Mechanically, she made up the bed with fresh linen, opened Benjie’s cupboard and packed away the toys. On the floor of the cupboard sat the box for the train set. She unhitched the engine and the separate wagons, pulled apart each piece of track and stacked them in a pile.

She opened the box.

In it lay a small red notebook. She turned to the first page. Benjie had labelled it in his neat black handwriting.

This Diary Belongs to Benjamin Pascoe.

Top Secret!

Keep Out!

Jenna picked it up and sat back on her heels.

A vague memory niggled at the corners of her mind: of hearing a wild scrabbling, the closing of a cupboard, whenever she’d knocked on Benjie’s door.

Was
this
what he’d been doing, hiding this away?

She wiped a grimy hand over her forehead.

A gull flapped on to the window ledge and began a long, excruciating wail.

Jenna knelt on the floor for a long time.

Then, without reading a single word, she closed the diary, crammed it into her pocket, finished cleaning the room and hurtled downstairs, carrying a pile of Benjie’s dirty clothes. She stuffed them into a black bin-liner and threw it away.

Rapidly, without tasting anything, she ate the avocado salad with a slice of Dad’s crumbling wholemeal bread, clattered the dishes into the sink.

If I don’t get out of this place for an hour, I’ll go mad.

I’ll take Benjie’s diary to where he drowned and fling it in the sea.

If he had any secrets, I reckon they should be allowed to die with him.

She tugged on her trainers and threw a raincoat over her shoulders. Curled in his basket in the hall, Dusty watched her go with the merest flicker of curiosity.

The rain held itself softly in the air, like a filmy curtain.

Jenna began to jog: through the Digey into Rose Lane, down Bunker’s Hill, along the Wharf to Quay Street, through Sea View Place and Wheal Dream to Porthgwidden Beach. She perched for a moment on a wooden picnic table, her heart thumping. Then she was on the move again, across the path above Porthgwidden, up the damp, grassy hill to the Island and St Nicholas Chapel.

From the top, she could see the whole of St Ives: its sprawling huddle of rooftops, the harbour and all three curves of beaches, the great wash of cloudy sky which the sun struggled to pierce. Miles of sea spread in front of her, blue-grey, full of secret life, its surface pockmarked by the mizzling rain.

She dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans.

She pulled out Benjie’s diary and stood there, willing herself to fling it away, over the edge of the cliff, into the jaws of the sea.

She froze.

She remembered standing on the rocks, her shoulders burning, her heel bleeding, shrieking Benjie’s name into the silent blue. How she’d have given anything to have heard him call, “Hi, sis! I’m over here!”

What if Benjie’s accident and his diary are somehow connected . . .

Suppose the diary contains a clue to what happened to him that afternoon . . .

Don’t I have a duty to read it?

She turned her back on the sea and took refuge from the rain against the low wall of the chapel.

Cradling her hand over the diary to protect its pages, she began to read:

Monday

We walked down the hill together after school, just G and me. I think she’s very special. The others didn’t notice. They went on ahead and left us alone. G always calls me Benjamin. I like that. I hate being called Benjie. It sounds so babyish. Mum calls me My own little Benjie. Yuck. Puke. Yuck.

Thursday

This afternoon we did work in pairs and I was a pair with G. The others started to giggle and point but I don’t care. Now they giggle and jump out at us when we walk down the hill together. She says, Benjamin, take no notice. So I don’t. As long as it’s G and me together I don’t care about them.

Saturday

We said goodbye on the corner of the street while Mum was in a shop. G is going away for Easter and I won’t see her until next term. I’m very sad. I gave her a special present. She loved it. She put it on. She said, Goodbye, Benjamin. See you very soon. But soon feels like a long time away to me.

Sunday

I spent all day playing with Klunk and Splat, but all the time I thought about G. How she looked when she put my present on. How her eyes looked at me, all lovely and dark. I think she’s beautiful.

Tuesday

First day back at school. I could hardly wait to see G again. But as soon as she came into the classroom I knew something was wrong. She wouldn’t even look at me. She just pretended I wasn’t there. I walked home on my own and I couldn’t eat any tea or anything. Mum said, Oh, my little Benjie, whatever’s wrong. I said, Go to hell, under my breath, but she didn’t hear.

Wednesday

Everything is different. Something happened in the holidays. I don’t know what. G won’t be my pair any more. She says she can’t be my best friend. I said, Why not, why are you being like this? She wouldn’t tell me. And she won’t walk home down the hill with me. So I tried to pretend I didn’t care. When I got home I came up here and broke all my new radio into pieces and trod on them one by one.

Friday

G has ganged up against me with the others. I can’t believe it. After school I tried to tell Dad, but the tea room was full of silly people. I came up here and cried. I wanted to tell Jenn, but she was practising in her studio. She said, Go away, can’t you see I’m busy, we can talk later. But when later came I was tired and angry. I didn’t feel like talking any more.

Monday

They stopped me on the hill. All of them. I had to run to get away from them but then I fell over. My glasses came off and they laughed. I started to cry in front of everyone. I wish I didn’t do that. It made them point and laugh even more.

Wednesday

They’ve got a new song. I hate it. When I hear it I feel scared. I don’t know what they’re going to make me do. They sing, Bye bye baby try, You must do it, Do or die.

Monday

P is the worst. Twins can be terrible because they are so close. They are the leaders now, the two of them. Teacher doesn’t let them work in pairs in school but outside they are always together. It never used to be like that. I wish I had a twin. Together with my twin, we would fight back. Show all of them how mean we could be.

Friday

I wait for the others to go down the hill before I go home. Mum says, Where were you, why are you so late? But I don’t tell her anything. Dad is always cooking and Jenn is always dancing. There’s nobody I can tell.

Monday

They want me to do something really terrible. If I do they say they will leave me alone. I’ve said, no, I won’t do it and I don’t care about them. I don’t care about anybody now.

Jenna closed the notebook. There was more, but she could not face it.

She looked across at the sea, suddenly hearing its roar, tasting its salty spray on her lips. A cold, solid anger gripped her heart, followed by remorse.

None of us were there for him. Who
are
these twins who made his life such a misery?

Jenna suddenly realised with a shock that she’d known none of Benjie’s friends. Mum hadn’t exactly run an open-door household. When Benjie was home, he’d almost always been alone, in his room doing his homework or playing, or watching television in the living room. Occasionally, when Benjie had had someone round, Jenna’s own punishing schedules had meant she was somewhere else at the time. Now, there was no one to whom Jenna could turn to ask.

Sunk in her thoughts, she hardly noticed the walk home.

In her room, she slid the diary into her desk, dreading the next instalment.

She climbed the stairs with Aunt Tamsyn and opened the door of Benjie’s room.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

Her aunt flung her small suitcase on the bed. “I’m sure I will . . . Everything looks extremely neat and tidy.”

Jenna swallowed. “I cleaned the room this morning, packed Benjie’s toys away. Dad asked me to. We hadn’t touched it since—” She clutched at her aunt. “Will it get better,Tammy? I can’t stand much more of this.”

Her aunt stroked Jenna’s hair. “I’ll take your mother off your hands for a bit, give you and Elwyn a chance to get your bearings.”

“You won’t mind?”

Tamsyn gave a short laugh. “Look, I’ll be working as usual. I’ll give Lydia a key and she can come and go as she likes. In the evening we’ll have a meal together and she can tell me how she’s spent the day. I’ll take her to a couple of shows in the West End.”

Jenna said bitterly, “Lucky her!”

“Yes, well, it’ll serve its purpose. She’ll get over this black depression, I promise you. We’ll have her back to work in no time.”

Jenna moved to the window. Lights from the town had begun to pierce the rain in tiny showery sparks. “I’m not sure we will.”

“What do you mean?”

Jenna shrugged. “Just a feeling . . . Benjie was the centre of her life. She’s never liked me much. Dad’s done his best to comfort her, but she uses him like a drudge. I saw them when they got back this afternoon. She looked bored out of her skull. He looked shattered. He made a real effort for her birthday: flowers, breakfast in bed, gave her a necklace he’d spotted in town, lunch at the Porthminster . . .”

Tamsyn said grimly,“She doesn’t know how lucky she is.”

Jenna looked across at her. “Too right. Mum despises Dad for loving her so much. Secretly she thinks he’s a mug. She can twist him round her little finger.”

Tamsyn flushed. “He deserves better than that. He’s always been the most wonderful brother. He should have someone who loves him back.”

“Yes.” Jenna ran her tongue over her lips. “Do you know what I wish?”

“What?”

“That he’d find somebody else . . . Trouble is, my dad’s not like that. He’d not even look at another woman, not in a hundred years.”