The Sea House (5 page)

9

‘Am I in your way?’ Gertrude asked him, when to her delight she found Max at his easel sketching in the outlines of her house.

‘Yes,’ Max said, and then he saw that, of course, he had offended her.

‘It’s quite all right.’ Gertrude had her book in one hand and was tugging at the deckchair, pulling it with her to the back of the lawn. ‘I’ll move.’

Max wanted to explain his unease over the human form, how if she was there, even on the edge of his eye line, he would feel compelled to paint her in.

‘Really, it’s perfectly all right,’ she said, when, between them with great awkwardness, they had succeeded in moving the one flimsy chair.

‘I suppose I could have worked around you.’ Max was able to breathe again now she was out of his view, but Gertrude looked up sharply.

‘I said it was all right.’

Max sketched roughly with a soft thick pencil. The beauty of Marsh End, he realized, was not in its actual features but the way it rested on the ground. The texture of the lawn, the old, old earth, and the way the bench belonged there, tucked into the wall. The house was almost square, and he began inching sideways to feel its corner, to get at the side view.

Gertrude’s head jolted up from her book. Where was he going? She could see him, his canvas abandoned, sidling away. She exhaled deeply and let her shoulders drop. They had the rest of the summer. What difference did it make? If he wanted to ease his grief by wandering, then who was she to fail to understand.

Max was examining the grained glass of the porch. It was clear to him now. Lehmann must have built it. Ruined the old line of the house with his vision and his lines. Well, Max would make a sketch of it, show him in a picture how ludicrous it looked. He went inside for paper. He’d used up the loose sheets he’d brought with him, used them all up on making Steerborough maps. He looked around the living-room. Surely Gertrude must have some paper hidden somewhere, and, not wanting to disturb her, he opened the walnut bureau, peered into its cupboards and drawers, but found nothing but a sewing basket and some supplies of sugar and salt. The compartments of her roll-top desk held only stationery, too small and dainty to be of any use, and even the larder, which he opened in desperation, had nothing but jars of chutneys and stewed fruit. Unable to stop looking, he tugged at a small door under the stairs, and as if it had been waiting there, a roll of paper fell out and unravelled at his feet. It was lining paper, dusty round the edges, the outer layer mottled yellow with disuse, but it was strong and plain and perfect. He took a board to rest it on, and hurried back outside. But without a knife or scissors to cut the paper, he simply chose the first clean section and let the rest flow over the edge of the board, cascading down his legs and out along the ground. Quickly he sketched in the old front of the house. He did it easily, like a boy released from school, taking pleasure in each stroke. Say something. He thought of Henry, and he smiled to think that for once he did have something to say.

Max was so pleased with his drawing that he crept round to the back garden, purposefully not looking at Gertrude, who was still intent on her book. Very gently he picked up his box of paints. He took a sheaf of brushes, his palette and a flask, and, leaving only the canvas on its easel and his bag of oils, he tip-toed back to the front. Each brick, or the impression of each brick, each reddened tile, each leaf of ivy clinging to the wall, he would put them in. He worked on through lunchtime, through the afternoon, until there was nothing to be added but the flimsy flat-roofed porch. He attached it, just as incongruously as it had been built on in real life, and, aware suddenly of the thinning light, he carried his picture, the roll still attached, into the house and up the stairs, and laid it on the floor beside his bed.

This is too much like the task of a tired and weary man
. He had Henry’s letters off by heart.
You say you had four hours? It would have been better to have done four smaller drawings, and not to have taxed yourself so much
. But there was nothing weary about the front of Gertrude’s house. He lay down on the bed from where he could see it perfectly, spread out on the floor, still glittering with light, and, amazed by his own stamina, he fell into a dreamless sleep.

Gertrude was preparing supper when the clouds broke over the sea. She moved to shut the windows, and then she noticed Max’s easel still set up, the canvas optimistically turned to face the house. ‘Max!’ she called, knowing he wouldn’t hear, and so instead she ran out into the sleeting rain to bring the picture in.

Yawning, Max came downstairs, just as lightning cracked across the sky, lighting up the garden, the high branch of the tree, and the sight of Gertrude, fighting through the rain. ‘Let me, please.’ Max rushed out through the French windows, and together they released the canvas. There was a roll of thunder, and then more lightning came forking down. Gertrude gasped and for a moment they looked into the eerie whiteness of each other’s eyes.

‘Go in!’ Gertrude shouted and Max turned the canvas against him and stumbled with it into the house. Gertrude was struggling with the doors, wrenching them out of the storm, bolting them fast. Max took a quick look at his sketch, embarrassed by the smudges and soft lines for which they’d risked their lives. Quickly he set its face against the wall.

‘It’s quite a storm, and right above us.’ Gertrude moved to the window as another wave of thunder rolled. And sensing how disappointed she was in him, he moved with her, and they stood there, looking out at the waving branches, starting each time the lightning cracked. But the storm was moving away now, the seconds lengthening between each lightning flash and, as they watched, the black clouds were blown out to sea. Gertrude turned from the window with a sigh, and when she suggested supper, Max nodded, ravenous, taking the tea towel from her, insisting on helping so that they knocked against each other in the galley of the room.

There were flowers on the table in a little local vase. Max stretched his hand out to them, cradling the ceramic belly of the pot.

‘Mrs Lehmann’ – Gertrude nodded towards them – ‘she brought them over this afternoon.’

Max drew away his hand. How could he have failed to see her? He’d been sitting by the front door all day. To hide his confusion he examined the flowers. A bright red poppy, its petals trembling, its stalk sinewy and thin. It was resting among a spray of corn. Max thought how he used to pull off the unripened ears, peel back the pale green husks and suck the kernels, the juice inside like beech nut, sweet as milk.

‘Yes, I was reading about the power of soiling, how some children use it as a tool,’ Gertrude was saying, ‘and then I looked up and there was Elsa Lehmann gliding through the hedge. She’d been walking in the salt marsh, she said, and thought she’d just come by.’

‘I didn’t think you could pick poppies without breaking them.’ Max put out a finger to touch the soft fur of the stalk, and just then, as if in obedience, one damp papery petal fluttered off into his hand.

They ate in silence. From time to time Max glanced at Gertrude, wondering if, like him, she was worrying that Elsa might have been caught out in that storm. She might even now be stranded, shivering, too stung by rain to get back to her home.

But Gertrude was thinking about Alf. Would it be more beneficial, she was wondering, if instead of piano lessons, she were to offer help of a more analytical kind?

The first thing Max saw when he woke the next morning was his picture spread out below him on the floor. It wasn’t as good as he’d remembered it, the glisten was all gone, and without warning he was overwhelmed by an image of his father. His spirits fell with such force that he had to ease himself down to the floor. He must keep moving, or he’d sink, and he wasn’t sure he would ever rise back up. Slowly, slowly, he crawled across the room. Henry’s letters, in their case, were propped against the wall. He reached for them and held the leather close, breathing it in, nuzzling it against his face, chewing the soft edges between his teeth.

Yes
, he read, when finally he’d roused himself enough to slip a letter from the case.
Much, much improved. Go on like this and nothing will hold you back
. Where, he wondered, was that picture now.
Meyer
… Henry had turned stern.
It is all nonsense to take tips from people as to how things should be done. How does the ground model itself? And in what direction does the grass grow? It is YOUR solution to these problems that I want to see
.

To lie still, Max thought, and never get up, but he forced himself to the window, and clinging to the ledge he pushed open the casement and leant out. The day was soft. A primrose-yellow morning lined with blue. The storm had taken something with it, and just for a moment he felt lighter, purer, more able to forget. Quickly, before his spirits slumped again, Max pulled on his clothes. He rolled up his painting and, without waiting for a cup of Gertrude’s brown brewed tea, he took up his water colours and set off along the lane.

He walked purposefully towards the church, past the crooked house, the old farm and the postbox with its royal red seal. He walked until he was outside the village’s last house. It had a trellised porch, white-painted, with three steepled windows in the roof. Its small square garden was fenced in, and beyond it there was nothing but heath land as far as you could see. Max sat down on the stump of the old gatepost, the iron of which had been torn out, patriotically, for the war. He unrolled his scroll of paper, revealing Gertrude’s house, and just beside it, white and ready, a waiting, empty space. Heath View. The house reminded him of apples, the wood painted in the palest green, its windows, pips, its bricks laced through with pink. Max was just peering closer to gauge the exact shade of the wood when a woman stepped out. She hovered on the path, staring at him, suspicious, and then, turning back, she locked her front door.

10

Lily took a triumphant bite of her toast and, folding Nick’s letter into her pocket, she sped across the Green. She’d done it. She’d forced him into writing, and not just a letter, but a love letter.

For God’s sake, Lily
, it started.
Surely there must be another phone box somewhere? Or give me the number, why don’t you, and I’ll ring up and complain. Sorry to go on
– his writing was smaller and less legible with each line –
but why are you the only person in the world without a mobile? I miss you, that’s all… It’s hellishly busy at work, but I’m not going to say another word until you get on your bike, or your mule, or whatever it is you travel about on up there, and get to a phone box. I want to hear your voice.

As she dialled, Lily scooped coins out of her purse. Tenpences, twenties, two fifties and a pound. She stacked them up in little piles beside the pebble and the ever-present note.
Call 999. Wait by the wall
… Lily stared at the faded paper, its texture already grained with sun and damp, and she was just leaning over it, peering into its jagged face, when Nick’s message cut in. ‘You know what to do.’

The abruptness of it always fazed her, as if the last thing in the world he wanted was another call.

‘It’s me.’ The sound of her own voice made her tentative, and she realized it was some days since she’d uttered a word. ‘Listen, thanks for the letter. Oh Christ, I’ll try you at work.’

But Nick wasn’t at work.

‘He’s off… Is that Lily?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, he’s… Hang on.’ She could hear his assistant, Tim, filling up the kettle, hear the water pounding into the metal drum. ‘Yes, he’s gone to Paris to check on…’ Another phone started ringing and Tim must have splashed water up his arm. ‘Oh fuck!’

‘It’s all right,’ Lily shouted over the noise, ‘I’ve left a message on his mobile,’ and, deflated, she put down the phone.

Lily piled her change back into her purse. She picked up the pebble. It was round and worn, stripes of ivory and gold, the rings of colour grazed and faded at the edges as if it were a million years old. Lily rolled it in the palm of her hand, and without knowing why she slipped it into her pocket, leaving in its place a twopence coin.

Lily walked the long way round to the shop. She took deep strides, sucking in the air, the soft grass smells, the honey scent from a bedding of white flowers, and then on the corner of a lane, a sharp blast of currant stopped her in her tracks. It made her think of London, the incongruous smell of nature on a city street. Dust and damp and cat’s piss and the sharp sap of the stalks. Lily snapped off a dark green leaf and pressed it between her finger and her thumb. The veins were red like rhubarb, the juice bitter with the tang of fruit. There had been a plant like this on the corner of the street where she grew up. She had often stopped by it to finish up her sweets, breathing in the acrid smell that came to her in bursts as she waited for her mother to come home from work. Lily uncrumpled the leaf and, folding it carefully around her pebble, she pushed it into the pocket of her jeans.

Stoffer’s, the village shop, was stocked with everything you might ever need. As well as fruit, vegetables and cheeses, bread and tins, and packets of dried food, there were beach balls, fishing nets, buckets and spades. There was a whole shelf of biscuits and just opposite the till, at eye level to a toddler, a hoard of penny sweets. Two children were crouched over, holding plastic tongs, and as the door rattled shut behind her she recognized Em and Arrie, clutching miniature paper bags. Mrs Stoffer was leaning over the counter watching them, and when Lily caught her eye, she gave her a look full of misgiving.

Lily concentrated on the postcards. There were photographic highlights of at least five local villages and towns. Harbours, castles, sunsets, the ruins of a church. And then on a stand all of their own, a rack of ‘local artists’. Lily examined each pale and faded scene. The beach deserted, the beach with paddlers at low tide. There were watercolours of the ferry, with and without a queue, and one picture of the wooden house, up on its stilts, cornered on three sides by water as the estuary swooped round to meet the sea. Each picture was four-fifths full of sky. It made the land look insignificant, as if it were unable to keep up. If she were to paint this scene she would only paint the sky, and she smiled at a sudden image of herself, sensible clothing, sandwiches, and an easel dug into the sand. Instead of watercolours she chose a photograph of the Eastonknoll lighthouse, its lookout a lattice of white icing, its dome a blob of cream.

‘Twelve pence…’ the lady was counting the sweets out by the till, peering and poking at Arrie’s paper bag. ‘Fifteen, that’s twenty-seven pence.’

Em dug her hand deep into her pocket. Her face was a mask of worry as she picked out the coins. Mrs Stoffer held the bags as if they might have to be returned, as if she’d been in this particularly tiresome situation before.

‘Twelve, thirteen, sixteen…’ Em laboriously counted pennies while Arrie stood beside her, wistful and concerned. ‘Twenty-two?’ she offered hopefully and Lily looked up just in time to see Mrs Stoffer shake her head.

‘It’s all right. I’ll make it up.’ Lily pushed her postcards forward, and she slapped a two-pound coin down on the counter as if she were a millionaire with a chauffeured car idling outside.

Together they walked back down towards the Green. ‘No school today?’ she asked them, and they explained about their mum taking the car. ‘There’s no bus, you see, and… well, some days it’s too far to walk.’

‘Where is the school?’

‘It’s over at Thressingfield,’ and, spinning round in the direction of the main road, they pointed vaguely at the horizon. ‘Sometimes we get a lift with Mr Blane, but he wasn’t going in today.’

‘Oh,’ Lily said as they strolled back down through the village. ‘I expect she’ll be back soon.’

Em hung her head and Arrie, with grubby fingers, slid a flat green octopus into her mouth.

‘I didn’t mean…’ Lily bit her lip. ‘I mean, I’m sure…’

‘Anyway,’ Em said quickly, ‘Dad’s getting a new car.’

‘Not new new,’ Arrie corrected. ‘But new for us.’

Em offered Lily one of her sweets. They were like jelly babies, but much harder to chew. Strange flattened shapes, rubbery and thick. For some time it was impossible to speak.

There was no one on the Green and Lily sat on one of the two swings, watching while Em kicked higher and higher into the blue sky. Arrie was polishing the slide. She was using her bottom as a duster, walking up backwards, rubbing at each section until the stainless steel shone. Finally, she said, the slide was ready, and with a small bow she sped down at great speed and shot off the end. She landed in a dusty dip of wood chips, and Lily noticed, when she struggled up, that the seat of her leggings was worn thin.

‘Does she do this often?’ she asked Em, and Em said it was her job. ‘I pick up the litter, and Arrie polishes the slide. We asked Alf if we could, and he said yes.’

‘Who’s Alf?’

‘Alf??’ Em looked at Lily as if it was impossible not to know. ‘Oh, he’s… he…’ She turned almost upside down. ‘He’s on the… he’s at the… he’s sort of the boss.’

Arrie had finished sliding and now she hovered in front of Lily. ‘Do you want to see something’ – she stepped up close – ‘secret?’

‘I’d love to,’ Lily said.

‘Arrie!’ Em jolted her swing upright, her eyes furious, warning her to stop.

‘What?’

There followed a moment’s silence in which they communicated with glares.

‘Oh, come on, then, if you really want to,’ and, screwing up her eyes at Arrie, Em took Lily by the hand.

They walked down the lane towards the sea, but instead of crossing the bridge they veered off along a smaller path, banked with long grasses, ducking to avoid the brambles that looped out and caught them on their way. The path wound and dipped, the river on one side, marshes and hillocks of thick grass on the other. Eventually they came out on the salt marsh. There were bright patches of water glittering between sedge, and tiny hardened paths, wide enough for one. The sedge was head-high, bleached white by last year’s sun, waving very gently in the breeze. Occasionally they came across a shorn patch, mowed down like a boy’s hair, taken away for making thatch. Then it was flat and silent as far as the sea, although living in these marshes were birds and voles and coypus, water rats and bitterns, even if Lily had still not heard a single sound. Every few yards they crossed over water, back and forth on planks embedded in the bank.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, wondering how anyone could know their way so well, and just then Em doubled back over another bridge.

‘There it is,’ Arrie said, and on the horizon were the ruins of a mill. It looked like an abandoned sandcastle, its roof missing, one corner crumbling in. ‘Shhh, it’s haunted.’

Em turned, and at her hiss a pair of great black birds rose out of the long grass. They flew fast, straight ahead, their legs tucked up, landing on the river on two posts. Luxuriously they spread their wings and held them out, bat-shaped, as if to dry. Lily watched them, felt them watching her.

‘Come on,’ Em and Arrie called, and she turned and ran after them towards the mill.

‘You don’t come out here alone, do you?’ she shouted, but they didn’t look round.

From the doorway of the mill, a short flight of steps disappeared into a stagnant pool of water, and there floating on the surface were some sticks and a red, high-heeled shoe.

They all peered in. ‘Hello, lo, lo, lo.’ Em let her voice echo between the walls, and they all looked up at the cone of sloping brickwork, the circle of pale sky.

‘Who says it’s haunted?’ Lily asked, and just then a shadow fell on them, chilling the air. Arrie clutched her arm.

‘It’s all right,’ Em said, ‘it’s just a cloud,’ but she took Lily’s other arm.

They moved round the side of the mill and sat on a block of granite implanted with shells. They sat there in silence, waiting for the sun to come back out. Both the girls kept their faces turned upwards as if their lives depended on it, while Lily looked along the coast. There was a huddle of houses on the first curve and a mass of boats beached up on the shore, and just beyond it, shimmering silver, was a huge dome.

‘What is that place?’ she asked Em, but Em was still watching the sky.

‘It’s Daddy’s job,’ Arrie told her.

‘It used to be.’ Em wrenched her eyes away. ‘Not any more. It’s a nuclear power station. They make power.’

‘No.’ Arrie was perturbed. ‘They make bacon rolls.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Em nodded, serious. ‘And bacon rolls.’

It was after midday when they finally returned to the Green, and the first person they saw, standing by the foot of the slide, was Em and Arrie’s father. The two girls shot each other a quick look, and Arrie put her hand up to her mouth. ‘We never even showed you the secret!’

But Lily was hurrying forward. ‘I’m sorry,’ she called. ‘It’s my fault. They’ve been with me.’

His eyes looked strained, tired with searching. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I thought they’d be all right.’

Arrie sidled up against him, twisting her small body for a stroke and Em stood with her head against his arm.

‘I’m Lily, we haven’t really met… I’m renting next door…’ She trailed off with the implications of this. The thin walls, the thud on the stairs.

‘Grae,’ he said, his head nodding forward, his eyes half closing in the faintest hint of a smile, and he put his hand down and ruffled Arrie’s hair.