The Sea House (26 page)

‘Thankyou.’ He closed the door, and together they went downstairs.

Elsa was standing in the hall, smiling at Thomas, stretching out a hand. ‘I see you two have met,’ Gertrude broke in.

‘Thomas Everson, Elsa Lehmann, and this’ – she turned as if to introduce a minor Royal – ‘is my guest of the summer, Max Meyer.’

‘Hello, hello. Good evening.’ Thomas blushed and Gertrude poured them all sherry.

‘So what is it you do here in Steerborough?’ Elsa turned back to Thomas, and he explained how he’d been left Fern Cottage by a godmother who had died earlier in the year.

‘Your parents chose well for you,’ she said.

‘Yes. I lost my father when I was seven years old, and since then, it’s true, people have been kind.’ There was a moment’s silence as respectfully they all took a sip of sherry.

‘In the war?’ Elsa asked, and Thomas said that no, his father had died of pneumonia a month before the start.

‘Will we wait?’ Gertrude looked towards the door. ‘The pie might keep…’ The pie in fact was already ruining, the pastry sinking into the sauce.

‘Wait for Klaus?’ Elsa looked as if she had entirely forgotten her husband. ‘No, of course. He would insist we start. I’ve been expecting him since lunchtime. He must have been delayed on the road.’

Gertrude brought through a tureen of soup and started to ladle it out.

‘Thankyou,’ Max muttered, but he was lost to them tonight. His ears were full of noises. Crackling and whining, whistling. Am I losing my balance? he wondered as his spoon swayed before his face and, to steady himself, he repeated, ‘I’ve finished my scroll, my scroll, my scroll.’

‘A second helping?’ Gertrude was leaning into him.

Yes, of course, but he didn’t want to sit still. He wanted to race out into the night, drown his ears against the raging weather, watch for phosphorescence in the sea. Dutifully he ate. Spooning in the shards and shreds of pastry, sauce and chicken, custard, fruit. Eventually they were released from the table, and they stood uncomfortably before the unlit fire.

‘It doesn’t seem that Klaus will arrive tonight,’ Gertrude said.

‘No,’ Elsa agreed.

‘Leave the dishes.’ Gertrude stretched, to show them that the evening was finished. ‘Betty will be in in the morning.’

‘So…’ Elsa fetched her shawl and coat. ‘I’d better get back, in case…’

Thomas stepped into place beside her. ‘I could walk you home, I’m going that way myself.’

Max stumbled to her other side. ‘No,’ he said, exceedingly loudly. ‘I shall walk you home.’ There was a pause and everybody laughed.

‘Perhaps I should come too?’ Gertrude suggested, but all the same she hustled both men into the porch. ‘If you’re not back by midnight,’ she called to Max as they started down the lane, ‘I’ll fetch the lifeboat men,’ and Elsa turned and waved at her and thanked her for giving them all so much hot food.

‘Hot food!’ Gertrude shook her head, and she cleared the plates herself.

Max shook Thomas’s hand on the corner of the Green.

‘Goodnight,’ he said to make it clear that they were parting, and he hurried on with Elsa. The moon was high and bright, but as soon as they had stepped down into the dip of the harbour they found themselves wading through water, ankle-deep. ‘I am sorry.’ Max tried to take her in his arms, but she pulled away, aiming for the skeleton of ridges between one stretch of sea water and the next. He followed awkwardly, trying to keep up, the wind whipping against him, flinging her shawl into his eyes. Eventually they climbed up on to the wooden veranda and were almost blown through the front door. ‘I am so very sorry,’ he tried again, and Elsa put a finger to her lips. She looked around. The room was empty. She ran to the ladder and began to climb. ‘No,’ she called, finally smiling at him, and idiotic with relief he followed her up.

The room was cold. The windows shivered in their panes. Max stoked the iron stove with logs, waiting for it to flame, and when he looked round Elsa had climbed, with all her clothes on, into bed. ‘Come,’ she said, and she held out an arm. Max pushed in beside her. He rubbed his woollen feet against her stockinged toes and slid one finger through the buttonhole of her blouse. She forced her hands into the lining of his sleeves and nuzzled her face against his shirt. ‘I missed you.’

He held her so tight that steam began to rise from the checked wool of her coat. The stove was roaring now, and Max felt his body melting under the bedclothes, Elsa burning into him as they lay wrapped together, their fingers enmeshed in seams and slits, fumbling with vests and suspenders, their blood about to burst. There were pearl drops of sweat on Elsa’s forehead and the colours in her face were unbearably bright.

‘What is that?’ she asked when they lay cooling, the covers pushed off them, the fire almost burnt down. Max looked at her and saw that she was frightened.

‘Surely it’s not possible for him to arrive…’

‘Shh.’ Elsa gripped her arm. ‘There it is again!’ She got up and went to the trapdoor. ‘My God.’ She looked across at him and just then he felt it – the house shuddered as if it had been hit. Max hitched his trousers up with half a brace. He crouched beside her and looked down, and there below them, in three foot of water, the furniture was floating about in the room. The table, the bench, the high-backed chairs, knocking against one another in the flood. Max put his foot on the ladder, but Elsa caught his shirt. ‘No,’ she screamed, and just then the top half of the dresser toppled on to its back. The cups and plates and saucers lay in it like a boat and they watched as it steered itself towards the ladder and rammed against the wood.

Max and Elsa sprang back from the hole. ‘God in heaven,’ she said, and she ran to the window. They were in the middle of the sea. Water spread away from them on every side. ‘HELP,’ she called, and the room shivered with another crash. Max put his arm around her and pointed. The white hull of the Tea Room was moving. It had come free from its stilts and was sailing in to land. They watched it bobbing, elegant, the lace curtains at the window, a geranium in a patterned pot, close enough to see as it floated towards the black mouth of the estuary. ‘HELP,’ they both called together, and Max looked up at the roof above them to see where they might shelter next. Little Heaven was moving now, surging and rocking in against its neighbour, a low house, flimsy, taking it too as it swept towards the shore.

Elsa and Max ran to the far window and looked behind them at the sea. It was coming in, wave after wave, submerging the dunes, pouring into the marshes. Below them the water had risen. The chairs were on their backs, the table sunk, but the dresser was still there, rocking back and forth. Max stared down into it, wondering, could they use it as a raft, when he saw a bottle floating past. He lowered himself on to the stumps of the ladder and clinging with one hand to the boards above him, he hooked it up.

‘Whisky!’ He held it out to Elsa. She cracked open the top and took a long hot swallow. ‘I won it in the raffle at the fête.’ Max poured it into his mouth, and with each thud and shudder they swallowed a gulp more.

‘Spare sheets, blankets, pillowcases, and life jackets!’ Elsa remembered. They rushed to the cupboard at the end of the bed and found the mildewed jackets lying on a shelf. They put them on, almost incapable with laughter as they fiddled with buckles and straps, and when eventually they took up their lookout posts again they saw theirs was the only house left.

‘Look at our view now.’ There was nothing between them and dry land, just water, in a huge dark sweep. Max reached out for the bottle but Elsa held him still. ‘I want you to know’ – she pressed one hand to her stomach – ‘I think… I am almost certain’ – tears oozed up out of her eyes – ‘that you’ve given me a child.’

Max held her. If the tide could only turn, take the house with it, drift them to a hidden slice of land. Take them to Holland, Belgium, take them to Australia, where they could start the second half of the century in peace.

34

A small crowd gathered to watch as Nick’s car was attached to the back of the truck. ‘You can sit in it,’ the AA man told him, ‘or come up front with me.’ Nick swung his bag on to the high seat as if to claim a place, and Lily reached for his hand. ‘Couldn’t you stay?’

‘Well… you can’t ask for your vehicle to be towed a hundred miles, and then stay and have a picnic.’

‘So it’s you they’re rescuing?’ The certainty of his going had released her, and there, reflected in the tint of his glasses, was her smile. ‘You’ll miss the fête,’ she said, ‘and the Millennium exhibition.’

‘I’ll live.’ He kissed her warmly. ‘And, Lily, please, don’t hate our life.’ The van whirred into life, its black and yellow squares a hornets’ nest of drama, Nick’s car, low slung, almost sheepish as it trailed behind.

Very slowly Lily followed them up the hill. What will I do now? It struck her that from today she had only two weeks until her lease expired. ‘Why,’ she’d asked the lady at the estate agents, ‘can’t I take it on?’ and the woman had looked at her, surprised. ‘It’s only available until the first of September,’ she’d repeated, and Lily had been forced to go outside and stare into the shop window at the farms and cottages, beach huts and converted barns, all for sale at more than she could ever imagine being able to afford.

Two weeks, she told herself, and she tried to imagine going home. Heard the metal echo of the door as it clicked into its lock. There she was, dragging her bags along the corridor, anxious not to drop a sock, and she knew as she came into the bedroom, felt the bewilderment with which she viewed the wall of ordered clothes, that she couldn’t go back. Maybe her old studio flat was empty. Could she risk the smirk of her landlord as she carried up her things? ‘Still hanging on to those paintings?’ he’d ask as she hauled them up the stairs. It would be cheaper and easier to stay in Suffolk. Find work, find somewhere else to rent. Grae’s cottage was still empty… She glanced into its black windows. But she stopped herself, shaking out the thought.

Lily lay face down on Fern Cottage sofa, her legs trailing off over the arm. A chatter of birdsong trilled in through the open window and with half an eye she traced the rainbow edge of patterns trapped in the corners of each pane. What was she going to do? For a moment she was back home with her mother, kneeling beside her, stringing up bead necklaces, colouring and clipping, winding wool round discs of cardboard to make pompoms for which they never found a use. If only she still lived there, she could go home, and then a shadow fell across her from the open door. She roused herself numbly, gathering her strength to lift and turn, find out who it was, when a weight flung itself on top of her and pressed her down. Her chin knocked on the rough edge of the sofa, and her leg was twisted to one side. She struggled, her mouth pressed into the fluff and dust of brown, and then, finding herself pinned immovably, she screamed so loudly she thought her voice might tear. Run. Even if he has a gun, one in four, four in one, four in one hundred, and then she remembered her elbow and prised it free. She swung it down towards the floor and rammed it up with all her strength.

‘Ahhhhhhhh.’ Grae was lying on the carpet, holding his ribs where he’d been stabbed.

‘My God.’ She crawled towards him. ‘Grae, my God, what are you doing?’

Grae doubled over in pain.

‘Grae.’ She sat beside him, stroking his head, breathing in the oil-damp tobacco scent of his hair.

‘What am I doing??’ He looked at her coldly. ‘I was trying to give you a kiss.’ He pulled away, wincing as he stood up. ‘I don’t half know how to choose them.’ His mouth was thin with disappointment as he walked out of the room.

‘Grae…’ she called, but only softly. She stayed sitting on the floor. ‘Oh God,’ and she took Nick’s gift from her back pocket, ‘Tips on Staying Safe’, and tore it up.

Lehmann’s last letter lay in the heap of books by the door. The postmark was just visible. November 1953.
Elsa. You were right. The road is blocked, half sunk with water, earth from fields lying in the way. I have given up and returned home and tomorrow I shall try again. But I thought I would send this letter in case the postman has more luck in getting through than me, but more than anything I am sending it out of habit, so that you will know that whatever happens in this life, or in the next, I will always think of you. I want you to know that I am sorry for the things we couldn’t do together, the places we didn’t go, the people we had to leave behind, the little ones, invited, who chose not to come. But more than that, I’m grateful for the time we had. Don’t ever be sad. You loved me, and that was all I asked.

Lily read the letter again. Klaus Lehmann, 1900–1953. Did he know that he was going to die? She pushed her hand into the envelope, but there was nothing to give even the smallest clue. She went through to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Her chin was grazed from her tussle on the sofa and her eyes were red. Very slowly she began to brush her hair. Lehmann, driving through the swollen roads of East Anglia, following his last letter, silt and earth from fields washing across his way. Was that how it happened? Or was he ill? And then she knew, and it shocked her that she’d never been quite sure. Grae wasn’t the wife-beater. She thought she’d known it, but now she realized, she’d always had a doubt. ‘I must apologize.’ She was still brushing and her hair began to lift with static until she looked like a clown and she had to sprinkle it with water to smoothe it straight.

Lily walked the long way round to get to Grae. She needed time to calm herself and to stop her face from creasing into a mortified smile each time she thought of her elbow and its power. She crossed the bridge and walked along by the river, planning to cut back on to the ridge of sea defences, and step down to him across the sand. But once she was on the marshes, she couldn’t stop. She was drawn on by a field of flowering thistle, its down white as a bed, and by the soft wood of the walkways, the wire mesh clinging to the planks like moss. Visions of Grae crowded in on her. His blue eyes squinting from the window of the waterlogged car, his mouth twisting away from a smile. She saw him working in Fern Cottage garden, sawing and hammering, his hat pulled over his ears, his plaid shirt jewelled with rain. And then his face so close to hers, laughing, the blue and sand colours of him, the smooth lobes of his ears. A sharp flick of desire licked through her, tingling in her knees, and then, remembering, she cupped her elbow in her hand and winced. She could feel the ache of it and, closing her eyes for a moment, she moaned with regret.

She was almost at the mill. She knew this ground now, in the same way she’d known each inch of pavement, each kerbstone of every corner of her walk to school. She knelt down to stroke the silver thread of grasses growing out of the river’s edge, picking one to whisk away the swarms of midges hanging in the air.

The mill water was high, still swamped from last night’s tides, and, as she stared down into it and then up through its cracked roof at the sky, she was gripped by the thought that she was not alone. Stop it, she ordered, the wretched ‘Tips on Staying Safe’ spelling itself in her mind, but her skin was cold with worry and her pulse was out of her control. Carefully, silently, she twisted in the doorway. There was nothing there but marsh and sea, a deep oblong of sky. She stepped out and turned, and then she saw them – the bog man, Bob, and A. L. Lehmann, tussling in a kind of dance. Their profiles were identical, their eyes over-shadowed by the same unruly brows. ‘Take it,’ Albert Lehmann hissed and, as they wrestled, Lily saw that he was forcing money into the other man’s hand. Bob staggered back, the notes slotted into the black slashes of his arm, and then, standing very still, he let himself be hugged.

Lily crept round the side of the mill and ran. She streaked along the plank paths and hurtled through the avenue of grass, scrambling over the hillocks of mud until she was in the woods. More slowly she climbed the gate. There ahead of her was the lane that cut back up to the village hall and, as she expected, the grey Morris, parked half in the ditch. She stopped and caught her breath, and then, leaning on the faded bonnet, she decided she would wait.

‘Excuse me.’ At least an hour had passed, and Albert Lehmann was fumbling with a key, attempting to open his car door.

‘What happened to him?’ Lily asked, scrambling up from her seat against the tyre.

Lehmann slid in behind the wheel. ‘It was an accident,’ he muttered irritably. ‘He didn’t start the fire.’

‘The fire?’ Lily was bent over at the door, looking in at him through the car window.

‘He wanted to preserve it. Our father’s design. Lehmann’s design, I mean. Through all those years, more than anything else that was what he wanted.’ Albert started up his car. ‘And then, when he discovered… well… it was hard for him. He’d been living in the house. But it was an accident.’ He looked hard at Lily. ‘He even called the fire brigade when it got out of control, but there’d been an arson attack on the Common, children setting fire to gorse, and by the time they got here the house was burning and he was just waiting by the wall.’

Lily was hardly following. ‘When he discovered what?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’

The car was nudging forward, roaring as it pulled out of the ditch. ‘But I meant your father. What happened to him in 1953?’

‘He never meant it to happen.’ He shook his head, and sorrowfully he drove off along the lane.

Lily bought four ice-creams from the Mr Whippy van and carried them down to the beach. She stepped over the sand, walking more quickly as they began to melt, arriving triumphant by the beach huts with all four ice-creams intact. But the beach hut was deserted, its window boarded up, and when she pulled at the handle she found a padlock on the door. Lily sat down at the table, still there with its three chairs and, slowly, in rotation, she began to lick the drips from each ice-cream.

‘Our father,’ she repeated, ‘our father’s design.’ So A. L. Lehmann and the Bogman were brothers. Robert and Albert. Bob and Bert. And she remembered the photograph of the woman, haunted, holding those swaddled twins.