Water Theatre (16 page)

“It's a dare,” she called, tying back her hair, “a double dare.”

“She hasn't even got a towel,” Adam muttered, as Marina walked towards the dam. But his sister was already stepping out of her clothes, her slender back and limbs pale against the blackened beams and stones. At the brink of the dam she looked briefly back at them, waved, and then turned again, lifted both arms high in the air till her body strained at full stretch, and plunged into the water.

Long seconds passed before she broke the surface, shouting against the cold grip of the dam, shaking her head in a spray of light. Furious with himself for lacking the nerve to join her, Martin knew that the image was imprinted on his memory for ever.

On each visit to High Sugden, Martin learnt more of the truth of what was happening in British Equatorial West Africa than was to be found in the pages of
The Daily Express
which his father brought home each day. The campaign of civil disobedience begun by Kanza Kutu and other leaders of the People's Liberation Party after Emmanuel had been detained was now disrupting life right across the colony. Just as Hal had predicted, Governor Dawnay's efforts to choreograph an orderly movement towards independence around the conservative lawyer, Ambrose Fouda, failed to attract popular support, and the riots and demonstrations organized by the PLP throughout early June proved so effective that the British government wearily considered sending in troops. Before they could be mobilized, the dockers came out on strike, demanding the immediate release of Emmanuel Adjouna. When the copper miners of the Central Region joined the strike two days later, it became clear that the colonial era would end on terms set by the energetic new breed of African politicians, not by the old guard in Port Rokesby and Whitehall.

From the first hour of his imprisonment Emmanuel Adjouna had become the living symbol of a people clamouring for liberty. Belonging to neither of the great tribal factions, he was the only politician who could command loyalty among activists from both the Tenkora and the Nau. Only his PLP party was able to mount an effective majority in the newly constituted parliament, and only his release could end the current stalemate in the colony's affairs. So, with events progressing exactly along the lines that Hal and Emmanuel had foreseen, it was now only a question of time before a new nation was freed.

*

Jack Crowther bought a television set that year. Even though he had once vowed that he would never allow such an unsociable thing inside his house, he was swiftly mesmerized by its passing show of images. As soon as he came home he would switch it on and, as often as not, he would still be watching when his wife declared that she was going to bed. Sometimes he would wake with a start, hours later, dragged from sleep by the whine of the box, to find himself staring at a blizzard on the screen.

Having taken in the headline news one night, he was about to switch channels when Martin heard the newsreader's reference to Port Rokesby in British Equatorial West Africa. “Wait,” he said, and the command was so urgent that his father's finger withdrew from the switch. “It's Emmanuel,” Martin cried, pointing to a figure on the small monochrome screen. “I know him.”

Jack Crowther frowned at his son first, then at the screen. “What do you mean, you know him?”

“It's Emmanuel Adjouna. I met him first time I went to Adam's. He's a friend of Hal Brigshaw's. He's a friend of mine.”

“You said nowt about it.” Jack frowned. “But then tha' never says owt to me.”

But the truth was that Martin could hardly recognize the gangling figure who emerged from the gate of Makombe Castle amid a din of gongs and drums and singing from the adoring crowd outside. Blinking in the fierce light and still wearing a prison uniform with its pattern of arrow heads stamped on the smock, Emmanuel looked more like an escaped convict than a national leader. But a moment later, in full view of the crowd, the gaunt African pulled the smock over his head and wrapped his lean body in the folds of the traditional cloth which one of his supporters handed to him. Raising both arms above his head, he shouted out a single word –
Freedom
– and the shout was taken up by a crowd that had seen its own destiny made visible in that simple act.

Listening to the commentary, Martin realized how little personal knowledge the reporter must have of Emmanuel Adjouna. After only a weekend in the African's company, he was sure he knew more about the man himself.

“Sounds like more bloody trouble,” his father muttered.

“You know nothing about it,” Martin answered.

“Oh aye? You've been to Africa, have you?”

“No, but…”

“Well, I have, lad! From Cairo to bloody Cape Town, and I know a troublemaker when I see one.”

“He's a brilliant man.”

“That's what got him put away, was it?”

Father and son were not looking at each other as they spoke. With the memory of earlier quarrels hot inside them, neither wanted a pointless debate about distant matters, so Martin bit back his answer. Jack Crowther snorted, as if registering a small triumph. “Just 'cause you passed your Advanced Levels and got into that college, it doesn't mean tha' knows owt about life.”

By now the brief item out of Africa was over, and Martin's mind was already elsewhere. The black-and-white pictures he had been watching might have been grainy and small, but they had magicked Emmanuel into his home from a country three thousand miles away. Such was the power hidden in that box of tubes and wires. Then it occurred to him that if his father had bought a television set, it surely couldn't be long before there was one in every sitting room. The journalists and cameramen behind the screen were reaching into homes where books were rarely opened. They could widen the horizons of millions of other people as his own horizons had been widened by his visits to High Sugden. He remembered the challenge that Hal had put to him there:
the people need intelligent men like you to get out into the world and tell the truth about what's happening
. Was this then how it might be done?

Martin felt everything on the move around him. In that moment he sensed that he had been granted something more
than a glimpse into the success of Hal's plans for Africa. He had also caught sight of a career that might, with ambition and a touch of luck, take him out of this gloomy cellar into the heat of action in a rapidly changing world. Staring at a garish show on the little grey screen, he felt the future knocking at his heart.

Only a few days later, Martin and Adam felt an oppressive shadow lifted from their own heads. Both of them had been obliged to register for National Service in the armed forces that year. Hal had advised them to apply for deferment until they had completed their time at university. “Chances are the whole nasty business will be over and done with before you take your degrees,” he said. “You won't even have to make a stand as conscientious objectors.” And now, like a further sign of freedom in the air, their notice of deferment came through.

So they were free that summer to make the easy passage from sixth-formers to undergraduates, taking off with Marina and the dogs across the moors and through the crags. They were times of uncomplicated pleasure, enjoying the air, the midsummer warmth, the taste of water drunk directly from the troughs and becks. They played word games as they walked, argued the respective merits of traditional and progressive jazz, talked intensely about books and politics, about films and modern art. They drove to Manchester to see a major exhibition of Van Gogh's paintings, where Martin watched Marina studying the texture of the canvases with the same rapture as he had seen her watch the distant lightning-riven clouds of a thunderstorm across the hills.

Once they walked out on a midnight hike, listening to the pour of water among the boulders in the clough, hearing a curlew call as first light broke before they made their return, exalted by dawn, over the high tops. Then they took trips by car to the coast, eastwards to Whitby, west to Morecambe Bay, and increasingly, for Martin, each occasion felt vivid with
the possibility that at any moment Marina might turn and recognize that their lives were irrevocably bound to each other. Yet that moment never quite came. However much they laughed together, or gazed in wonder at the raw beauty of things, the promise he had sensed in those hours went unrequited and, because he couldn't bring himself to speak of them, the hopes they encouraged seemed as unreachable as the landscape of a dream.

Then, one day, he came home from the library to find Marina standing in the porch of Cripplegate Chambers, sheltering from the rain. “I had an hour to kill,” she said. “I decided it's time you showed me where you live.”

“You weren't invited.”

“I know, but I'm here.”

She smiled at his frown.

He said, “I wish you hadn't done this.”

“Adam said you'd say that. I couldn't persuade him to come. He said it was a bit pushy.”

“He was right.”

But Marina merely smiled and shrugged. When he didn't move, she walked past the polished brass plaques, pushed open the inner door with its frosted-glass panel and stepped through into the hall. She was gazing up at the elegant twist of the staircase through three floors as he came in after her. From behind a closed door to the left came the muffled whine of an electric drill. Marina feigned a wince as she read the brass shingle, which announced THEODORE NASH,
Dental Surgeon
. She smiled at Martin again. “Now which way do we go?”

From upstairs there came the sound of a door opening and an exchange of conversation as someone left the solicitor's chambers. Seeing that Marina would not be gainsaid, he glowered at her. “You'd better come down then. I think my mother's in. She'll be a bit flustered. She's not expecting you.”

Marina watched him lift the latch on a door at the far end of the hall and followed him down the dark stone steps into
the basement. He bit his lip at the vague smell of damp as they came out into a lime-washed passage that led one way to the bathroom, the other to the coal hole. It was lit by a single bulb.

Her eyes were caught by the varnished case of numbered bells high on the vaulted wall. “I suppose that's how they summoned the servants,” she said.

“It's disconnected now.”

“Good thing too.”

He shrugged and opened the door onto the basement living room, where his mother stood at the old butler sink filling the kettle. Without turning she said, “I was just making some tea. Do you want a cup?”

“We've got company,” he answered, putting his books down on the table. “This is Marina.”

Bella Crowther made a small, regretful noise in her throat as she put a hand to the dark frizz of her hair. Above the sheen of the linoleum the furniture in the room stood very still.

“Oh, Martin, you should have said. I'd have got in something special!”

“I didn't know she was coming.”

“I'm sorry to drop in on you like this,” Marina smiled, “but I was just going past the door and I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time.”

Bella put the kettle down on the gas stove and wiped her hands on the towel hanging there. “Well, you'd better come in then. Sit yourself down, love. You look wet through. Frame yourself, Martin – take her coat before she catches her death. Just let me get this kettle on and I'll put a match to the fire.”

“There's no need. I'm not cold,” said Marina, unbuttoning her coat. Martin watched her glance take in the table with its hand-embroidered cloth, the sideboard and mantelpiece where two china figurines – a Regency dandy and his crinolined belle – stood at either side of the electric clock. “It's really cosy here.” she said. “I don't want you going to any trouble.”

“No trouble.” Bella Crowther's eyes were assessing the young woman across from her as she added, “It's not every day our Martin brings a girlfriend home.”

“She's not a girlfriend.” Only in that moment did Martin fully realize how much he had come to loathe the garishly patterned wallpaper of the room. “She's just Adam's sister.”

“Well, you know what I mean.” The gas jet popped to the struck match. “Lucky I did a bit of baking yesterday. Do you like scones and jam, Marina?”

“Very much,” Marina nodded. “Is there anything I can do? If you'll show me where the knives and plates are, I'll put them out.”

Over tea there was talk of baking and shopping, of which stalls on the market were good and which were not, and other chatter about small matters of domestic life. Martin took no interest in it except that of watching an older woman and a younger woman discover more about each other through their trivial conversation. As they carried the crocks back to the sink, his mother mentioned how many pint glasses she could hold in her hands at once in the days when she worked as a barmaid. Marina listened wide-eyed as the older woman went on to tell her more about the pubs in those days before television, and how they were so busy most nights that ale swilled from the pumps across the floor of the bar.

“By the time the bell went for last orders,” Bella said, “the soft shoes I wore were ruined. We had to get a fresh pair every night. They were cheap enough. And you should have seen the hem of my satin skirt. It hung round my ankles stiff as cardboard.”

“I bet the men all fancied you like mad,” Marina said.

“Funny you should say that,” Bella smiled, pleased with herself. “Jack used to get right worked up about it. Still does sometimes, I'm glad to say.”

When Jack Crowther came home from work, the two of them were laughing together as they peeled carrots and potatoes at
the kitchen sink. Unprepared for company, Jack unbelted his raincoat to reveal his blue boiler suit beneath, though the hand he held out to shake Marina's was well washed. He appraised the smile on her fresh, slightly freckled face. “So you'll be Harold Brigshaw's lass,” he said. “I were thinking it's time our Martin brought you home for us to see. Come and tell us summat about yourself.”