The Sea House (10 page)

‘Helga…’ He didn’t know if he was shouting or whispering, so he pressed his face into her hair, straining against her as she stroked him, once, twice… and he was bursting through the walls, rearing up to take a jump and just as quickly arcing down again. He crumpled at both knees, and as he slumped, he looked at her and saw that she was far away, gazing out beyond him, at the knots and waves of the shed walls.

Max was sitting on the floor, squeezed into the corner, where spiders hung on ropes of air. He could feel his stickiness all around him, congealing as it cooled. Helga reached into the basket of her mother’s bicycle and brought out a towel. She smiled shyly as she handed it to him, and he felt himself blush hotly as he took it, mopping at himself, thanking her as he handed it back. She rolled it up again, and replaced it in the basket. ‘Thankyou, so much,’ he’d said, but it was only later as he lay in bed, trying to recreate the feeling of her hand, that he realized how he hadn’t touched her, hadn’t lain a finger on her body, hadn’t kissed or even stroked her hair.

Max woke early the next morning. He chose a book and lay down in the shared garden beside the path that ran straight to the sea. He looked up for her after every line, and when by eleven she hadn’t appeared, he knocked on the kitchen door to ask for her.

‘She’s gone to Stralsund,’ her aunt told him, ‘taken the steamer, won’t be back until tomorrow night.’

‘Thankyou,’ he said, and he felt himself prickle all over with mortification as he backed away.

Max cycled up to Kloster, the rough track rising, lifting away from the flat land until you could see the whole island spread out below. There was yellow broom growing on the hillside and the scent of it uncurled as he laboured up the last slope of the hill. He abandoned his bicycle and ran panting to the top. There was a bench, positioned for visitors, but he walked on past it, until he was almost reeling over the cliffs at the far end. From here, instead of looking out over the island, he stretched his eyes to the horizon, searching for Denmark, Sweden, or the coast of Russia, a day away by boat.

16

Nick looked out of place in the tiny palace of Fern Cottage kitchen, the cups and saucers laid out in a row, the mugs all facing the same way.

‘Where were you?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been here for ages.’

‘I’m sorry…’ Lily shook her head. ‘I had no idea… I thought you were too busy…’ She noticed his trousers, not white but almost, the colour of clotted cream.

‘And I can’t believe you didn’t lock your door.’

‘Oh Nick!’ She had that sinking feeling of a misunderstood child.

‘Come here.’ He pulled her against him, and she felt the wall of his ribs, his chest so warm it heated through the cotton of his shirt. ‘I’ve missed you.’ He was kissing her, too deeply, so that she had to pull away, and as she did so she saw him reach out to draw down the flowered blind.

‘Not here,’ she whispered, pretending to be scandalized, and so he half picked her up and hustled her upstairs. The staircase was so narrow that they almost slipped on the old carpet as he kept hold of her, both hands on her hips, half lifting, half pushing her along. Lily wavered on the landing. It’s too soon, she thought, and she found she had to shut her mind off to the party wall, the thought of Em and Arrie, Grae.

There was a silent moment of formality as she drew the curtains and Nick took off his shoes.

‘We could push the beds together?’

She was losing it, the thin trickle of desire, but Nick began undressing her, turning her round as he did so to face the dressing-table mirror.

‘Look at yourself,’ he said, and there she was, lint-white in the gloom, her breasts rounder, the nipples pinker than they ever were when she was alone. Did she change for him, she wondered, and she looked at the tiny, pleasing curve at the top of her legs that waxed and waned depending on her weight. ‘Aren’t you beautiful? See?’ She looked at her face. Her nose was sunburnt, her hair tied back, the straggly ends looping round her ears. The two parts of her body didn’t seem to fit, the smooth pale curves, good for nothing, it seemed, except for sex, and then there was the ruddy intentness of her face. She closed her eyes and let herself sink into her body, take on her voluptuousness, reach down for the hot well of desire waiting there inside.

‘Open your eyes,’ Nick urged, ‘look at us,’ and although their bodies did look beautiful, welded together like two waves, she couldn’t ignore the familiarity of her face. It was comical, ridiculous, like someone peering through the cut-out cardboard at a fair, and so she closed her eyes again, and let herself sink into pure sensation, with the first hot thrill of him like shards of sunlight flying up into the night.

Afterwards they lay under the sheets and blankets of the single bed, watching the light against the curtain fade until eventually the room was dark. ‘Did you get the contract?’ she asked. ‘Have you heard?’

Nick flicked on the lamp. ‘No, they still haven’t decided. It’s possible they might keep us waiting for another week.’

Lily started to get dressed. ‘Would you like tea? Or… We could go out for a drink?’

‘Yes.’ Nick glanced around him. ‘Yes, let’s get out.’

The cloud that had been gathering must have thickened, because now when they stepped out into the lane the night was black. ‘Christ,’ – Nick grasped her arm – ‘I can’t see a thing.’ They stood still, waiting for the darkness to separate and let them through.

‘Shhh,’ she said, although the sound was all around them. ‘Can you hear it? Can you hear the sea?’

Nick had one arm outstretched and he was edging forwards. ‘Come on or we’ll never get there. They’ll be ringing out last orders while we’re still searching for the pub.’

‘OK.’ She led him by the arm, and as they turned the corner their path was lit up by the window of the house next door. The curtains were still open and she could see Grae and the children sitting at the table, slapping cards down by the light of a lamp. Quickly she glanced away. ‘When I first arrived,’ she whispered, as much as anything to remind herself, ‘there were the most terrible rows… I don’t know what was going on, but one night… There was such a fight… Well, I haven’t seen the wife since.’

Nick jerked round to peer in. ‘That’s what happens in the country. There’s fuck all to do, so just for entertainment people come home and beat up their wives.’

‘Well…’ She felt a stab of guilt. ‘Unless it was her, beating him up?’ And Nick began to laugh.

There were two huge dogs asleep on the floor of The Ship. They lay outstretched between the fire and the door, and Nick and Lily had to step over their haunches to find a seat. ‘Just look at this place!’ Nick said, and the five men, seated along the bar, dark pints of bitter waiting to be drained, all glanced towards them.

‘Shh.’ Lily frowned, but it was true, the pub was unbelievably decrepit. There were strings and nets and animal traps trailing from the ceiling. The publican was only just visible in the cave of his bar.

‘What’s he wearing?’ Nick talked out of the side of his mouth, as if this would turn his words to a whisper. ‘It looks like a corset!’

‘I’ll get the drinks,’ Lily insisted. She didn’t trust Nick not to stare, but while she waited she found herself transfixed by the barman, his beetroot face, the lank hair scraped across his scalp. Laced tightly over his patterned jumper, once white but now grey with grime, was what she could only imagine to be a surgical support.

‘Yes?’ He startled her. ‘What will you have?’ Lily looked up into his swimming eyes and realized it was his corset, and only this, that was keeping him up.

‘A pint of bitter and… and…’ Almost as a warning against the danger of alcohol, the barman took another swallow of his pint. ‘And an apple juice please.’

The pub was stifling, the fire heaped with ash-white logs of wood. Nick and Lily sat in the window seat, lapping at the draught, batting away the wood smoke that coiled and circled the room. ‘It’s June,’ Nick protested, and Lily, feeling she must defend this village, Lehmann’s village, where until now she had felt entirely at home, said more irritably than she intended, ‘He’s ill for God’s sake. Maybe he feels the cold.’

Nick raised his eyebrows at her, and they sat in silence staring at the dogs, their great hot bodies overlapping as they slept, their paws like brass casters, their pink tongues lolling out. They were dreaming most likely of basking on a desert plateau, of watching birds of prey go wheeling round. Or maybe they were chasing rabbits over sand dunes, dribbling and snapping as they sprang away.

Beside them on the wall was a small gallery of photos and each time Nick went to the bar, Lily stared into the faces of fishermen. Harry, Kitner, Seal, Dibs and Mabbs and Mops, all in their corded hats. There was one photograph of the old chain ferry taking an elephant across, while another elephant stood on the riverbank, its trunk raised, its mouth open, as if unable to accept that the only other creature of its kind in the whole of Suffolk was leaving it behind.

Nick drained the last of his drink as the barman called time, and the same row of five men watched them as they got up to go.

‘There’s another pub we can try tomorrow. Further up the village.’ She took his arm to guide him as he stepped out into the dark, but he stopped and peered around as if sniffing for the sea.

‘I’m not sure I can stay
all
weekend,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Shh, I can hear it.’ They listened. ‘It sounds rough,’ and Lily looked up at the thick dome of the sky, without a star or a hint of moonlight and hoped that there was going to be a storm.

‘What’s so important, anyway,’ she asked once they’d started forward again, ‘that you have to go home as soon as you’ve arrived?’

‘Lily.’ She couldn’t even see him, only feel the pressure on her arm. ‘I’m working, it’s a very busy time. This’ – he added after a moment – ‘is a retirement village, and I’m
not
retired.’

Grae’s cottage was dark now, and all around the Green, as if to prove his point, the houses were shut up for the night.

‘Don’t you ever lock your door?’ Nick asked as she pressed down on the handle, but without answering she left him to follow her in.

Nick’s work was laid out on the table, his fine graph paper spread over the laminated cloth, his Rotring pens, his ruler, the elastic bands he flicked when he got stuck.

‘Listen,’ she said, flooded with sadness, ‘please listen to this.’ And she reached up to Lehmann’s letters in their cream and purple envelopes, and lifted one down.

My beloved El,

You’ve ordered a love letter and this is exactly what you shall have; you should never think that I was cross with you because of your decision. I was merely a little tired of how many times you changed your mind. But it shall never happen again. I shall never again doubt your love, even in the slightest. From your short hair to your even shorter fingernails and down to your little toes, from one end to the other and to your middle soul, you are very dear to me, with courage or without, with a lot or only a little sense in your decisions, none of this shall matter.

Lily looked over at Nick, who was listening, his head bent, his forehead ruffled in a frown.

My El,

A telegram from you has just arrived. At 9 p.m. So three and a half hours after it was sent. It is a wonderful feeling for me to know that you are lying down now at the same time as me, and that your morning will also be the same as mine.

‘Look,’ Lily said, handing him the map, ‘he made a plan for her of every room that he stayed in.’

There was a silence while Nick scrutinized it. ‘How on earth,’ he said slowly, ‘do you think all this is going to help you with your work? At this rate you’ll fail on your thesis’ – he looked quite shaken – ‘and after all the work that you’ve put in.’ He began to clear his things, packing them away neatly into his bag, and when he finished he went upstairs to the bathroom and Lily listened as he brushed his teeth.

She reached up for another letter.

My sweet Elsa,

Here I lie many hundreds of miles away from you, in such a fury you can hardly imagine, waiting for those tender letters which should be hurrying towards me. How can I imagine your life when you’ve stopped sharing it with me, and I know nothing of your days except the rooms in which they are played out. You only have two duties during this in-between time. The first, and most important, is to look after yourself. The second is to write to ME. Everything else. Lunch with the Mendels, afternoon tea, visiting Eva, these all come far down the list. It must not be allowed that in more than a week I only receive three or four postcards, and a telegram in apology. Until the next long letter. Angrily, but still yours, L.

Nick was reading, not in her bed but in its twin. He was naked, the pink sheet under its cream blanket rucked across his chest. She stood in the doorway and watched him, incongruous against the pastel shades of the bedding, like the wolf from ‘Red Riding Hood’ dressed up and pretending to be Granny.

‘What?’ He looked up.

‘Nothing.’ She shook her head and, slipping out of her clothes, she climbed into her own bed.

‘Right,’ he said then, switching off the light between them. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’ Lily felt so lonely that she had to turn away and, muttering half-remembered verses, she forced herself to sleep.