The Sea House (9 page)

‘Sorry’ – Grae was hovering by her door, pacing up and down – ‘but I was wondering, could I… it’s just Em’s cut her foot. I’ve tried calling a taxi but I can’t find one even as far as Waveney that’s free.’

Lily looked at him. He didn’t seem like a man capable of throwing someone down the stairs. He smiled at her, anxious, and his face was Arrie’s, heart-shaped, golden brown. ‘I’ve wrapped it up, but it’s still bleeding and I think maybe she needs stitches, or a shot of tetanus.’

‘Of course. Wait one minute.’ Lily rushed into the house to find her keys, and by the time she came out again Grae had brought out both the girls. He was holding Em by the hand, leading her towards the car. One foot was wrapped in a tea towel and her face was streaked with tears.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ Arrie was whimpering, and Grae put an arm out to her. ‘It’s all right, I’ve told you already, it’s not your fault.’

Lily opened the door and waited while they manoeuvred themselves into the back. ‘What happened?’ she asked as she reversed.

‘They were playing up by that old mill, and… What happened, Emerald?’

‘Arrie pushed me in.’

‘I didn’t mean to!’ Arrie wailed, and Grae sighed as if he was too tired to say anything more. ‘There must have been something sharp in there, that’s all.’

They drove silently up the long straight road, through acres of corn, pale green and swaying, turning right by a mud-brown field of pigs. The field was dotted with small tin houses, and the pigs, like campers, smiling, stretched out beside them on their sides. Lily curved inland around the swamp mouth of the estuary, slanting back towards Eastonknoll, over the hump-backed bridge. Once they reached the outskirts of the town, Grae directed her past the tea shops and the scouts’ hut and the town hall with a poster advertising a meeting of the WI, and on towards the sea front, zigzagging through back streets, until they pulled up in front of the surgery. ‘Right,’ he said with evident relief, and without asking if she was needed Lily followed them in.

The waiting-room was empty and Grae and Emerald were ushered away through white swing doors.

Christ, Lily thought, next time I’m in London and I need Accident and Emergency, I must remember it’ll be quicker to drive here.

Arrie had crouched down on the floor and was building a tower of bricks, pressing so hard on each plastic block that the raised circles were pockmarking her palms.

Lily knelt beside her. ‘Can I help?’

‘I didn’t push her.’ Arrie’s whole face had fattened up with tears. ‘I grabbed her, that’s all, and she tripped in.’

‘It’s all right.’ Lily began passing her the coloured blocks. ‘But how did you get back?’

Arrie looked at her suspiciously. ‘She hopped, and then…’ She glanced round quickly. ‘Bob the Bog gave her a ride.’

‘A ride?’

‘He carried her.’

They both glanced at the receptionist, clean and smooth, her head bent over the desk.

‘Who is Bog the Bod, I mean… Bob the…’

Arrie started to giggle. ‘He’s… He’s our friend, and Alf’s,’ and then the swing doors swished open and Grae reappeared holding Em by the hand. Her foot was bound round with a thick cream bandage and, compared to the other, looked startlingly clean.

‘Did she need stitches?’ Lily struggled up.

‘Superglue.’ Grae said, disbelieving. ‘I could have done the job at home. They squeezed it in and held the cut together, just like… I don’t know. A chair.’

‘Ice-cream,’ Em whispered. ‘You promised.’

‘Yes, it’s true.’

Grae let her climb up on to his back and they walked out on to the front. There were people sprawled inside their beach huts, others building castles on the sand, and children in huge black rubber rings floated about in the sea. They walked until they reached the tea hut, and both girls, taking advantage of the drama, chose huge double-flaked 99s.

‘I think we’ll have four of those,’ Grae ordered, casting a glance at Lily, his eyes bright slits of blue. And so they sat on the sea wall, the four of them, licking, turning their ice-creams slowly round to catch the drips. The sea was empty, flat and shimmering, the tide pulling out, drawing with it sand and stones and seaweed, a thin layer with each wave. Em, seemingly recovered, hopped off along the beach, and Arrie scurried behind her, head bent, looking for treasure. They found a hag stone, meant to bring you luck, although Lily thought they looked sinister, eye sockets with the centre eaten out. ‘Keep that for me,’ Em said, pressing it into Lily’s hand and Arrie found a worn green piece of glass. It could have been jade, so fine and milky, and Lily slipped off the wall and began searching too. There was amber on this beach apparently, but instead she found a one-pound coin, a pale pink pebble, transparent when wet, and a flint, cracked open, with the tiny fossil of a sea horse embossed into its side. She glanced back at Grae. He was quite still, his face set, watching them, and she wondered if he was thinking about Em slipping down into the swampy water of the mill.

The girls made a castle, with towers and turrets and a drawbridge over a moat, and Em’s white bandage was forgotten, camouflaged with sand. Grae called them. He’d brought a tray down to the beach, loaded with toasted sandwiches, apple juice and a huge brown pot of tea.

‘Dad!’ His children leant against him, amazed, but he just shook them off and poured.

‘Milk and sugar?’ he asked Lily as he stirred.

They sat against the sea wall and basked in the low rays of the sun.

‘It looks cloudy in Steerborough,’ Lily said, shading her eyes as she stared out along the coast, and Grae told her how the horizon was so huge it was possible to choose your weather and drive.

‘Once,’ Arrie told them, ‘when we had a car, we drove all the way to Lowestoft so we could have a picnic in the sun. ‘Didn’t we, Dad?’ Arrie persisted. ‘When we had a car, didn’t we chase the sun?’

Grae touched her head, absentmindedly, but he didn’t reply. Lily shivered. The sun was sinking red behind the lighthouse, its warmth stopping just short of the shore. The beach was striped in shadow, the bright stones turning dull, and as if they had all agreed it, they got up and walked back to the car.

There was sand in Lily’s hair, and her legs and arms were covered in a sheen of salt. Her hands were dry, her fingers smooth as dust, slipping as she gripped the wheel. When she got home, she thought, she’d lie in a hot bath, tease the wind out of her hair, but as they turned on to the Green, there was a car parked in her space.

‘Cheek,’ Lily said, relishing the idea she owned this patch of ground. ‘What’s going on?’ And it was only then that she recognized the car.

‘Thankyou.’ Grae turned to her as the children scrambled out. ‘Really thankyou. If you ever need anything…’ He gave her a wide smile. ‘More kindling?’ And just at that moment Nick opened her cottage door.

15

Max stopped halfway down the lane and listened. Almost always, after an infection, his ears were worse. They whirred and popped and crackled, and once for three long days and nights he’d heard the robust singing of a male voice choir. But today his ears were cloaked in a warm blanket of quiet. It was like looking through a window – the trees gently swaying, a dog with its mouth open, the slap of a gate swinging shut. He walked past the Lehmanns’ house – Hidden House, it was called, he hadn’t noticed that before – and set his stool up in front of the thatched cottage on the other side. The walls were weathered brick, pink-seamed and darkened by the wind. The thatch was steep and grey, netted in with string like an old lady’s bun.

‘What are you doing?’ It was Elsa, leaning over him, scrutinizing the place where her husband’s house should be. Max looked up into her face. Rose and quartz and chestnut, her eyes, a fractured splintering of blue. ‘You’re leaving us out?’

‘I’m sorry.’ He shook his head. He’d tried, he wanted to tell her, but it was impossible to fit it in. Elsa turned away. He could feel her back just to the left of him, her ankles, her calves showing below a cotton skirt. He knew she was looking at their house, examining it, and then, without a word she walked away.

There are artists
Henry wrote,
who make the mistake of setting up for themselves a standard of beauty. They choose to paint only those things which can be made to conform to that idea. This is the attitude of the critic and not the artist. Now if you compare this attitude with that of Degas, Manet, Monet or Pissarro, who all went to nature like children to
find new beauty, and whose work points to the fact that beauty exists everywhere, then you will find that the critic leads nowhere, whereas these others are like a river carrying you to wherever you want to go.

Max thought of Helga, and the pictures of her he no longer had. They were the first things he’d done that he was proud of, the first pictures that were actually his own. Helga Gau. His friend and playmate. The daughter of the fishing family that lived next door. She was a straight, thin girl with hair cut square as a box, her face the colour of sand. They’d ridden their bicycles together, scooped eels up with their nets, and then one summer he’d arrived and found her changed. There was a new-milk look in her eyes, and her hair was long. When she walked, her hips, still narrow, swayed in little jolts from side to side. Helga was the one person who never seemed to notice he’d gone deaf. She’d call to him, curse him when he didn’t come, and slap him on the arm. Now she wheeled her bike round to face him, tilting her head as if to slide the words out on a spoon. ‘Come.’ Max wasn’t sure he liked this new slippery girl, but he pulled his own bike out of the shed and vigorously pumped up the tyres. Helga stood and watched him, her pale hair blowing in the wind, and when he was ready she swung her leg over the cross-bar and sped off along the lane. Max flew along behind her, watching her straight back, the way her shoulders seemed to be pressed down, lengthening her neck. They cycled fast along the lane that led away from the harbour, and when it petered out they jumped their bikes like horses over the ridged land until they were on the track that led to Neuendorf.

Max had been told so often not to go to Neuendorf, to where the naturists had taken over the beach, that he found himself looking over his shoulder. But Helga cycled on. She pedalled fast, never looking round, and so Max leant into the wind and gained on her, bit by bit, until they were riding side by side. Her shirt was pushed flat against her chest, the wind pressing into her, and there, as if they had sprung up overnight, were two small breasts. Max looked down, surprised that she would change without him, and, self-conscious, he began to follow the arc of his front wheel. A second later he was lying on the ground.

‘You silly fool.’ Helga skidded round to help him. ‘Keep your eyes on the road.’ And as he hobbled up, he found he’d grazed the length of his arm. ‘Come on,’ she said, examining him, ‘we’ll wash it.’

They splayed their bikes against a sand dune and ran down to the sea. Max squatted in the shallows and laid his arm against the surf. The salt water lapped in and stung his graze, but when he withdrew it it hurt more. He kicked off his boots, pulled his shirt off over his head and waded in. His shorts darkened with each step, the small hairs on his belly electrified with cold, and, although he was sure Helga was calling to him, he didn’t look round. He could feel her following him, the current of her body pushing out into the shallow sea, and his heart beat faster the further he strode out. Her fingers, he imagined, must be moments from the hollow of his back, and he plunged, kicking to escape her, and only when he emerged did he allow himself to turn his head.

Helga was still standing on the beach. Her hand was up, shading her eyes, and just beyond her, a naked couple were playing a game of ball. They looked married, even without their clothes, their bodies worn and solid, matching as they stretched and threw. They seemed joined together, throwing, catching, throwing the ball again, while their feet stayed rooted in the sand. Max lay back into the waves, resting his head on water. He did a little flip and pushed himself under and when he looked up again Helga had taken off her skirt. She was standing in her white underwear, unbuttoning her shirt. Max began frantically to tread water. He mustn’t swim towards her, but neither could he bring himself to turn away. Under her white shirt, she had a white vest, and under her vest – she was pulling it off over her head – there was nothing but her newly moulded chest.

A small ripple broke out in the easy rhythm of the naturists’ game, as the ball spun out of the man’s hand and rolled towards the sea. Max laughed and floated for a moment and when he looked back the woman was retrieving it, her body softening for a moment as she bent to scoop it up. Helga stepped out of her underwear, laying it with her clothes in a pile, and then she was wading out to join him, throwing herself down and skimming out along the knee-high surf. Max felt his body grow rigid in the water, an energy pulsing through him as if he were being pumped full of iron ore. Helga was swimming towards him, and with every stroke he felt himself grow hard. He wanted to push his hand into his shorts and release himself into the sea, the brushing of the cotton, the restriction was almost more than he could bear, but she was closing in on him and he was so paralysed it was all he could do to remember how to float.

‘Hello.’ She was flitting round him like a dolphin, her snubnosed, freckled face lit up with drops, her hair still gleaming, dry, the ends like rags. She looked at him for a moment, and then she put her hands on his shoulders, and without warning, pushed him down. He’d had no time to breathe, and he was gasping, his eyes open, looking up at her naked body, as white as roots below the sea. He lashed and struggled, choking, kicking at her knees, until her hands weakened, and laughing she flung herself away. Max had to fight to hold his tears. His body was weak, his erection gone, and, instead of shouting, he turned and crawled away in long sad strokes. When he stopped, he lay back on the sea, staring up into the sky, calming himself, stretching his arms and legs as straight as they would go. He lay like that for a long time, glancing round occasionally to get his bearings from the beach, until there was nothing to be done but swim back to the shore. He found his shirt and boots lying where he’d left them, but Helga’s pile of clothes was gone.

‘You were too young, of course’ – Klaus leant in towards Max – ‘to fight in the first war?’ They were at Gertrude’s, drinking sherry, braving the garden and the evening gnats.

‘Yes…’

‘I was fourteen when the war started.’ Klaus was leaning back, pulling on his cigar. ‘If I had been younger I might have escaped it. “Thank god,” my mother said each birthday, “I had my girl children first,” and it’s true, my life was probably saved by being the youngest of four.’

‘My father fought…’ Max said, but Klaus was still talking, remembering the day that he was seventeen, the day his mother’s prayers ran out. The day he marched off to the Front, quite sure it was just his effort that was needed to give that final push. ‘But within six months I was at home again, helpless as a child, thin and wretched, my whole body… – you’ll appreciate this, Max – a shade of palest green.’

‘Were you wounded?’ Gertrude asked. The word sent a tiny shiver through her –
wounded
, as if she’d just that minute been pricked by a pin.

‘Not wounded,’ Elsa told her. ‘But Klaus lay all night beside a man, dead from tuberculosis, and after that…’

‘I didn’t realize…’ Klaus talked as if to himself. ‘I was so exhausted I didn’t realize he was dead.’

Gertrude narrowed her eyes at the brown roll of his cigar. She had urged him to light it to keep the midges off.

‘After the war ended, I went up into the Alps, to Aroza, to take a cure. I lay on a terrace, eating, sleeping, reading, letting the sun beat down on my bare chest. But at night… See what you make of this’ – he turned to Gertrude – ‘I dreamt only of the war. Horses blown open, young men sliding into graves of mud. My screams threatened to wake the sanatorium, and so my doctor moved me to a little room at the back of the building, a room originally intended for storing furniture when it rained. And there, instead of my feather bed, I slept quite peacefully on a wooden board.’

He looked at Gertrude, one eyebrow raised. ‘So’ – he sighed when she offered nothing – ‘I slept on my board, tramped through the woods to tire myself out, and every day they weighed me and fed me milk and cream until I was so fat and brown and handsome that they declared me cured.’

Max looked at him. He
was
handsome. A small man, his face brown, his dark hair, although he must be fifty, only just beginning to grey.

‘But you’ve always taken care.’ Elsa laid one hand on his arm.

‘Yes,’ he said, as if to reassure her. ‘Although never could I drink a glass of milk again.’

‘And the cigars?’ Gertrude asked him. ‘Are they prescribed?’

‘Gertrude’ – Klaus fixed her with a sombre eye – ‘there is a psychological interpretation, is there not, for the need to be always chewing on cigars?’

‘Perhaps your mother didn’t breast-feed you?’ Gertrude challenged. ‘Or breast-fed you for too long?’ She waited to see how he would rise to this, but all the same she was glad her house was overlooked only by the sea. She did not want the inhabitants of Steerborough to gain more ground in their suspicion that psychoanalysis was in fact simply pornography in another form. It would pain her if she was no longer asked for her advice on fund-raising, taken off the list of village residents who could be relied on for cakes and chutney to sell at the fêtes.

‘Max’ – Elsa turned to him – ‘was your father wounded? In the first war?’ For a moment he thought she might be referring to the other war. Too recent to ever be discussed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He fought at Loos and his feet were pierced by splinters from a large grenade.’

Pierced, Gertrude repeated to herself, but there was not the same hot feeling in her gut.

‘He had an operation to remove them, the splinters and fragments of bone, but there was no serum in the hospital, and my mother had to sit beside his bed to check he did not contract tetanus. If he had trouble swallowing, it was a sign. “Help. Help!” my mother shouted when some hours later he tried to speak, and, although he never did contract tetanus, she did get him moved to a private room.’

It was an anecdote his father always told when people asked about his orthopaedic shoes. They were heavy and thick-soled, built up with stacks of black, and the government provided a new pair every year, even in 1938, even after his arrest.

But Max didn’t tell them his own story. The story of how his ears had failed. First one and then the other, when he was thirteen years old. His mother sent to Rissen for the doctor, but the doctor was away. ‘He has an ear infection,’ she called his father, who promised to find someone who would come. All through that night Max lay with a pain like hot metal pinning him to the bed. ‘Are you all right?’ His mother laid a hand on him, but he could hear nothing, just the whirring and rushing of his blood. He’d had infections before, but this one was different, this one reached from ear to ear.

In the early hours of that morning they were disturbed by a loud knocking on the door. ‘Who are you?’ His mother was alarmed to see a man dressed as a huntsman with a bow strung across his back.

‘I’m the doctor,’ and he explained how he’d been at a fancy dress party to celebrate the fiftieth wedding anniversary of his great-uncle and -aunt. He looked at Max. Peered into his ears, his eyes, his throat, but, just like the doctors who came after, there was nothing he could do to help.

Helga was waiting for him in the shed, her hair still damp, her eyes liquid in the dark. Max pushed his bike in and leant it against hers, and just as he was turning, she reached out.

‘Come here,’ she said and, although he didn’t remember either of them moving, in an instant she was pressed against him, her fingers examining his skin, sliding along his arms, around his neck, and up inside his shirt. She found the three fine hairs that had sprung up during that winter, as if in a vain attempt to keep him warm, and then she was circling his chest, stroking and tweaking, her nails pressing in. Max stood still, terrified to move in case she stopped, in case she remembered it was him, and then her hand was reaching down, pushing past the waistband of his trousers; feeling over the cold smooth dampness of his skin, the jut of his hip bone, the goose bumps on his thigh. He almost fell against her, and then her other hand was there, warm against his belly, sliding down towards the private centre of him, bone-hard inside his shorts.