The Juliet Stories (9 page)

Juliet and Isobel walk in the waves that lick the sand. “Don’t follow us,” Isobel tells her brothers.

“You’re following us,” says Dirk. He and Keith are the same age. Jonathan is two years younger and silent.

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

Isobel sighs. “What were we talking about?” she asks Juliet.

The boys with the shark are ahead of them, down the beach. That’s who they’re following, all of them, walking north on sticky sand, allowing the salt water to wash in and out over their toes.

It doesn’t feel like they are going too far, not at all. The beach looks short from one end to the other, and Isobel says they are allowed to go wherever they like, but as they walk and walk and walk, distance becomes an optical illusion, a trick.

The village core is only a few streets wide, and soon they are past it. Concrete houses are replaced by primitive structures, few and far between; the smell of cooking fires. Wild greenery grows up to the sandy perimeter. A cow with a hump, more like a buffalo, wanders loose, foraging for feed.

They hop from stone to stone across a sludgy stream that feeds into the ocean. Isobel has to turn around to help Jonathan. She and Dirk debate the annoyance: “I didn’t bring him; you brought him; you take him back.” But Jonathan doesn’t want to go back.

Gloria and Heinrich have been reduced to two miniature figures in the centre of the beach. The children wave and believe they see hands waving in return.

Past the stream, more rocks crowd the sand, tumbled from the cliff that marks the end of the bay. The rocks are black and slimy with seaweed. Some they pick through like a maze, and others must be scrambled over.

“Cool!” Keith finds a pool of water on top of an indented boulder in which a tiny fish swims, in its own private lake. The children discover more puzzling puddles atop tall rocks, high above the water that washes in, but none of them can read the warning.

They pause between rocks, the five of them, on a sheltered plot of sand warmed by the sun. They have come to the end of the beach, beyond which boulders make a gradual ascent up the rock face and curve around into the open sea; but they can’t tell from here.

Nobody says: Let’s go back now. Nobody wants to be the one to say it.

Dirk’s white hair lifts in the breeze. Juliet notices his green eyes. Though younger, he is already taller than her. She fights the urge to grab him and push him. She wants to beat him at something: climb faster, climb higher. It is the only suitable expression for what she feels.

She scrapes her knee in her hurry to climb the next stone, Keith and Dirk at her heels.

Isobel, stuck with Jonathan, falls behind.

The waves are higher, wilder, louder. Juliet pushes on without thinking, following the San Juan boys, who disappear from view, then reappear, always seeming to be just around the corner. The sun stands at noon. The wind rises.

And so does the tide, with stealthy speed. There is no more sand below them. Water runs in between the boulders and eats away their passage to shore.

“Wait for us!” Isabel hollers, and Juliet pauses.

She and the boys stop. They look down, and they see ocean below them, clear beneath frothy waves, limpid green.

Juliet smells smoke, but it is Dirk who discovers its source, above them. He and Keith climb up and up until they are standing on a ledge looking down on Juliet, now joined by Isobel and Jonathan.

“It’s a cave! A real cave!”

“I’ll never get him all the way up there,” says Isobel. “He weighs a ton.”

“Do not!” says Jonathan.

The cave is not deep, as Juliet expects, more like a cupped hand of rock, a shallow shelter overlooking the bay. She climbs into it and stands. She can’t see her mother on the beach, but perhaps it is too far. Isobel lifts Jonathan and scrambles up last.

“Thanks for nothing,” she says to Dirk, but she too is drawn almost instantly into this perfect pocket, this camp improvised by the San Juan boys. It is clear that they visit the hideout often: a collection of dry sticks and driftwood stored in one corner; a vessel of rainwater that can be covered by a lid. Everyone takes turns dipping their hands and drinking from cupped palms.

The three boys, not much older than their visitors, welcome them courteously. One dusts the floor with his hand before offering the girls a seat.

Another guts the shark with a knife and throws the guts onto the rocks for the seabirds.

Over the open fire, several whole fish sizzle, stabbed onto sticks. Everyone is suddenly ravenous. They eat with their hands, carefully, so as not to choke on the bones.

Shark meat is denser than fish. The San Juan boys discuss meals past. They claim to have caught and cooked a pelican, and as proof show off a pelican’s skull, but Isobel teases them: You found that on the beach. The conversation is in Spanish, and Juliet’s is weakest. She listens in silence until one of the San Juan boys addresses her directly.

“Do you like the fish or the shark best?” Keith translates.

“I know what he said!” But words for a reply slip from her. She shrugs. The San Juan boys laugh and Juliet flushes and says, in English, “The fish.”

Dirk tells the boys, “She likes the fish,” and Juliet discovers that the question was not idle. The boys wish to offer her more food, whatever she desires.

Isobel prefers the shark. She sits primly upright, her legs crossed at the knee, feet curled around her left hip. Unlike Juliet, she does not lick her fingers but eats delicately off her palm and brushes her hands together lightly to clean them.

Until the tide turns, the San Juan boys tell them, there is no way back to shore. No one finds this news unwelcome.

When the girls need relief, they scramble over rocks around the corner, towards the open sea, until they are out of sight. Perched side by side, trying to pee down a crevice, Isobel and Juliet get the giggles. It isn’t anything; it’s everything. They want to laugh. They have to. Pulling up their underwear, they are doubled over, weak, helpless. Just a glance at one another brings on fresh waves.

Back at the cave, the bigger boys play a game that involves pairing up and slapping the inside of the other’s wrist with two fingers, taking turns — 
slap, slap, slap
 — back and forth until one boy can no longer stand the pain. The other is the winner.

Keith and Dirk trade slaps until their fingers are puffed and raw. Juliet hopes that Dirk will win, but she is helplessly proud of her brother, his teeth gritted, his tanned, round face set and determined. There is no mercy; this is not a game for girls.

“Give it up,” says Isobel. She pulls Juliet down by the wrist and they lie side by side, faces towards the sky. They indulge Jonathan’s limited imagination, which can find nothing but trucks and guns in the cloud shapes.

At last, two San Juan boys separate Keith and Dirk: a truce.

Isobel inclines her mouth towards Juliet’s ear. “I think that one likes you.”

One of the San Juan boys dips his fingers in the bucket of water and spritzes the girls, who sit up and gasp. “Told you,” says Isobel, in English. “He likes you.”

Another boy punches the first in the arm. They exchange punches back and forth, smiling sheepishly.

“Ignore them,” says Isobel. At any moment the weather could change — the clouds could roll, black and tumbling, blown by an angry wind — but it won’t. The children are not bored or hungry or tired, and it does not occur to them that a search might be underway.

If Juliet is giddy, if she is bold, if she exudes a vague hysteria, it is because she has no awareness of being afraid. Anxiety flickers deep under the skin, so far down it is interpreted as a thrill, as the hum of unease that accompanies adventure, enlivening the body, and it is with regret that the children watch the tide recede, become low enough for safe passage.

The San Juan boys clean up, kicking out the fire with their bare feet, tossing bones to the birds. One lifts Jonathan onto his narrow back and the descent proceeds quickly.

“Uh-oh,” says Isobel, the first to notice Heinrich and Andrew on the rocks below.

Everyone deflates just a little bit. The San Juan boy drops Jonathan gently. Without being close enough to hear what Heinrich is saying, everyone knows it is not good. Juliet spots Gloria on the beach, and is glad that her mother has been stopped by the fallen boulders, Emmanuel in her arms. Wrath pours off her.

The San Juan boys vanish into the landscape.

“Totally unacceptable!” Juliet hears.

“Pappie,” Isobel mutters under her breath. Isobel’s family speak to one another in English in public, but in private they often use Dutch or German.

“We’re fine!” Dirk shouts.

“Just ask us how bloody fine we are!” Heinrich has lost a sandal and his foot is cut. “All of your privileges — gone!”

“What privileges?” Dirk says, and Juliet is impressed by his boldness and stupidity.

Neither family is a hitting family, though for a moment, now that he’s near enough, Heinrich looks to be considering otherwise.

“Nice day for a hike.” Andrew pulls Heinrich’s rage onto himself, gently. He winks at the kids. “Where were you hiding?”

“We weren’t hiding,” says Dirk.

“This will never happen again,” says Heinrich.

Of course it won’t. It can’t, though it’s nothing to do with a grown-up’s decree, one way or the other. Escape is like being struck by lightning, as rare and as inexplicable. Being found again? Well, that’s nothing special. That happens daily: interruptions that startle children back into the world of time and safety, and the rules that would bind them here for good.

“I’m too angry to hug you,” Gloria says, even as she squeezes until Juliet and Keith think they will pop. “Stupid, stupid children! How could you be so careless with your precious lives?”

It is impossible not to feel ashamed. The shame seems unfair, a layer of adult misery burdening their happy day. Neither Keith nor Juliet wishes to share the details — any part of it — with their mother. She would never understand. And they see, suddenly, that it is her they were escaping, her and all the rest of them: the grown-ups.

The sound of the kettle whistles in the Roots of Justice kitchen, the clatter of coffee being prepared and served, the companionable murmur of voices: Andrew’s and Gloria’s and Heinrich’s. For supper Andrew will make his specialty: omelettes to order, with a choice of tomatoes, onion, and
queso fresco
, a soft white cheese. There is a surfeit of eggs in San Juan’s market, and a dearth of much else.

Clara arrives carrying a bottle of red wine, and Gloria and Heinrich join her on the porch. She is not as interested in the story of the foolish children as Heinrich thinks she ought to be.

“They are here and well, as far as I can tell.” She kicks off her sandals and tucks her bare feet under her on the swinging wooden bench. “They used their common sense. They didn’t attempt to walk back to shore until high tide had passed. Besides, punishment is futile, wouldn’t you agree, Heinrich?”

“Not if it prevents future disaster,” says Heinrich.

“And does it?” his wife asks. “I should very much like to know.”

The grown-ups have not finished eating when the power is cut.

Ahhh
is the sound around the table. The children hear it from the porch, where already it is dark. The hunk of moon reflects off the water in the bay, and the rocks and their cave are far away, vanished, though not from the mind’s eye. They hear the clink of glass on glass and laughter as someone attempts to pour wine in the dark — no, it is Gloria’s laughter they hear.

Clara comes onto the porch. “We are going home,” she tells her children, who fail to rise. Heinrich follows and presses against his wife, his fingers kneading her shoulders.

“Stay,” he says, but she shrugs herself away.

She’s so tired, she says, by the end of the day. Her mind just shuts off.

Andrew lights candles and drips wax to stick them into plastic cups, which he arranges along the low porch wall.

“Oh, please, won’t you stay?” Gloria goes to Clara as if to touch her, though she does not.

It is at this moment that gunfire rattles. It could be coming from the street beside them, that is how near it sounds.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud
, quicker than Juliet can click her tongue. Automatic weaponry. And then a shrieking sound in the air, wailing, cutting the sky as it falls. Silence. And again the shrieking fall.

Their panic shocks them, the pushing and shoving, Gloria crying for Emmanuel, whom Juliet remembers was near her, sitting on his bottom and playing with a Dinky car, when the gunfire began. She could see him then but not now, though there is no reason for it — has she gone blind? — and she is on hands and knees searching the porch, knocking her head on the swing.

“Gloria,” says Heinrich in a clear voice. “Gloria, I am holding Emmanuel in my arms. He is right here with me.”

Andrew blows out the candles.

“God, we came here to get away from a bomb.” Gloria’s voice shakes.

Clara calmly calls out the children’s names, one by one, like a teacher taking attendance. She asks them to reply “I am well,” and they obey.

Andrew points at the lit sky. “It’s not a bomb. It’s tracer fire. Harmless as fireworks. It’s coming from the army base up the hill. They’re looking for something.”

Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a
.

“And what the hell is that?” Gloria is a shadow in the doorway, stroking Emmanuel’s head.

“Anti-aircraft artillery, also from the base. Something’s come too close to shore. Probably a drone.”

“American?”

“We’ll never know,” Clara says briskly. “This is not our business and not for us to know.”

“What’s a drone?” asks Keith.

“It is nothing,” says Clara. “We have to live here, and you do not.”

“Clara,” says Heinrich.

“I’m going home,” she says.

“The children stay until this is over.”

“Fine. I need the quiet.” She walks down the porch steps. “Safe.” She lifts her arms, offering them her vision of the sky, which continues to rain tracer fire. “Perfectly safe.”