Endless Blue Seas

by Annie Dyer

  What do I do, Alice? I’m not sure I want to stop talking to him.

  Love,

  Marcy

  I had found the picture that was taken, the one mentioned in one of her earlier letters. It was tatty around the edges and faded, the shades of sepia dulled with age. My great aunt had clearly discovered chemistry and by the sounds of it, so had Donald.

  Reading more was an option, but I had no idea what I was going to find out – if anything. When the last page was read, the final story my aunt could tell would be over.

  “You’re up early.” Gabe’s voice was lazy. He stood at the doorway wearing grey sweatpants and smile, the material far too thin to conceal much. I had no complaints.

  “You need an ensuite.”

  He laughed. “I can plan that in. Maybe it’ll encourage you to stay when you come home from London in the holidays.”

  I sat up straighter, the words waking me up more than any coffee would do. “I don’t fancy traipsing from the barn to here in December when it’s blowing a gale and freezing cold.” We were talking about five months’ time. Last night this was a summer romance. Had there been a shift or were we having a jokey conversation and it was too early to think of what it suggested.

  “What are you reading?” He sat down opposite me.

  “My aunt left these letters in her belongings. I’ve started reading it. It feels weird, because she was a really private person about when she was younger and I don’t really know what to make of it.” I laid the book down on the table, my eyes remaining on the leather cover rather than Gabe.

  “Tell me what you’ve found out. I spent a little time with her before…”

  He didn’t want to say the words.

  “Before she died. It’s okay. I won’t break. Her not being here is like having an open wound, but there’s peace in it too. She’d been ill for some time. And she was old. Her friends had died years ago and I know she missed them.”

  He nodded. “I spent some time with her. She talked about the island and what it was like but it was like listening to a really interesting history book. I didn’t learn a lot about her.”

  I laughed, nervously. I hadn’t really spoken to anyone about what I’d found out, and what I was working out. “I think she had an affair with a married man. One who moved here and owned some of the boats. His wife died and I don’t know how. I don’t even know if what she wrote was true or a fantasy or an embellishment of the truth.”

  “Have you asked your nan?”

  “A little. She gives me that knowing look and leaves it at that. I’m just a bit stunned. I didn’t think Marcy had… relations.”

  He laughed, far too loudly for this time in the morning. “Relations? Anya, is that what we had last night? Maybe have again if I can get you back into my barn?”

  I grinned, feeling a little shy. My hand rested on the leather cover. I pushed it over to him, not second guessing what I was doing. “Do you want to read it while I make coffee? I’ve read up to the photograph.”

  “If you don’t mind. I won’t read past where you are.”

  “I know.” Because he got it. He knew I needed that piece of her.

  Gabe read while I brewed, his face serious. I watched him when I could and felt something inside me warm at the sight of him, his studious expression, mussed hair and arms full of tattoos. Arms that moved me and held me.

  I wasn’t sure if I could keep this to just one season.

  And I wasn’t sure if that was right.

  Gabe

  When I was a kid, I had these fuzzy felts, little silhouettes made of felt that I stuck onto a board to create a picture. The pictures didn’t change, just the setting or the scene I’d create. They now reminded me of my family. Wherever you placed them, they were the same. We’d grown up in a household that was steady, stable, not overly wealthy, but we’d never wanted for anything or had to worry about money – having too much of it or too little. And they had no false airs and graces.

  They’d been through a lot. It took my family about nine months to realise that although my world had ended with Ryan’s death, a piece of their world had ended with it too. I was different: the son, brother, uncle that they knew had gone and a shell devoid of any interest in anyone else had been left. Grief made me its bitch and I had no guilt about that. It wasn’t a permanent state but a route I needed to travel. I never understood that at the time, being too focused on what I’d lost to see what was still there.

  My sister appeared on a day when I was taking down walls. I’d decided that there was no need to keep the addition that should’ve ended up in a coffee table book about the world’s worst extensions and I had the need to get rid of the barriers I kept starting at. It was time for a lot of things to change.

  “I’ve brought you two willing helpers who want to demolish anything.”

  I’d already jumped the moment my music had been turned down. Hearing her voice in person after so many months of it just being over the phone was surreal and slightly scary. I’d missed her; but I knew she’d have more than a lot to say.

  Two helpers that were taller than the last time I’d seen them, two terrors that ran straight into my legs as if they were trying to rugby tackle me. I bent down and started to tackle them back into big bear hugs, making them laugh and pull at my hair and beard.

  “Uncle Gabe! We’re going in the sea!”

  I shook my head. “The poor sea, being contaminated by you two!” After another few minutes of being tormented, they wriggled out of my hold and escaped outside. I followed them with Janie. They weren’t careless kids and Janie had instilled a healthy sense of danger into them, but given that my house was beginning to look like a building site, we needed to keep half an eye on them.

  “I’m surprised.” Janie looked at me with the same eyes that I saw when I looked in the mirror.

  “What at?”

  She laughed. “You’ve started. I thought this place would still look like a relic from the sixties.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. She’d expected me to had done nothing with it, for me to have been the wreck I was when she’d travelled here with a van she’d hated to drive filled with boxes of my stuff. Most of it I’d never unpacked.

  “Anya kept making comments.” I hadn’t said much about Anya, not wanting my sister to get the idea that it something more than a summer fling. “The barn doesn’t have a bathroom for a start.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “I’m pulling down everything that was built after nineteen-thirty, which is about seventy percent of it. That started a couple of weeks ago. I received planning permission yesterday for what I wanted to do.” I’d expected more resistance to what I’d put forward, given that the style would be completely different, going for a New England style look, with vaulted ceilings at the front, full glass frontage to make the most of the views and then at the side a two storey extension with a balcony that wrapped round. The original building would become the snug downstairs, the upstairs eventually converted into a guest suite.

  Janie had heard enough about buildings since I was a kid to understand what I was talking about when I fell into using terminology, and knew enough to question me.

  “What’s your timescale?”

  “I’ve pulled in favours.” Many. And at cost.

  “Before Christmas?”

  “Mid-November is my aim. The realistic goal is Christmas. But I’ll be able to live in here properly from the start of October.”

  She nodded. “This makes me happy. And you know what? It would make Ryan happy too.”

  My sister had never shied away from talking about him, unlike everyone else who thought that just mentioning his name would send me to the nearest bottle.

  “I know. I’ve tried to use design features that he would’ve suggested.” I had in all the plans I’d done in the last three weeks. The job on the island had led to three more, two quite extensive ones. Somehow I’d managed to get around fairly easily, sometimes by boat, other tim
es by bike. No one had asked why I didn’t drive. I guessed word had gotten around.

  “This is good.” She looked at the building, eyes narrowed. My nephews screamed loudly, blending with the seagulls. We ignored them.

  “How’s Liam?”

  “Coming home. Six weeks. He doesn’t know how long for. There’s a possibility of him being based here and stepping into some training officer role.” Her words lacked the edge they’d carried a week ago. This was news.

  “That sounds positive.”

  “It is, Gabe, but we had to take a long journey to get there. He’s still not a hundred percent, so he may go back for one more last tour. He’s a bit like an aging rock band – can never quite give it up even though everything creaks and their voices have gone. But he’s acknowledged that his boys need a father that’s actually here and not just via an internet connection.” She walked around the side of the house and turned to face the sea.

  It was clear today. The sea stretched out between the island and the mainland. It looked calm, the blue a fine sheet that seemed to dance, but it concealed depths that could be deadly.

  “I get why you’re here.”

  It was the first time she’d said something that would encourage me to stay.

  “To be able to paint somewhere like this and have this life. I envy you.”

  I stiffened. Stuffed my hands in my pockets. Looked out to sea and tried to hate what I saw.

  “Gabe, stop it.”

  My sister, the fucking mind reader.

  “I’m not going there with telling you that it wasn’t your fault because been there, done it, wore the T-shirt so much it’s being used as a duster. I understand why here is a good place to be, and so would Ryan.”

  For the first time I chose not to argue with her. “I know. He’d have moved here when he was sixty though and his dick had fallen off from all the diseases.” It had been a standing joke that he slept with too many women to not deserve a nasty bout of clap or something. Not that he ever had an STD to my knowledge, and, according to him, it was always wrapped up.

  “Maybe. But even if this wasn’t a place he wouldn’t have approved of, that doesn’t matter. You’ve got to start doing things for you. Like Anya. This is the longest I’ve ever known you be with the same woman exclusively.”

  I looked at my sister and wondered how the hell she managed to remember all of this. Maybe I’d mentioned Anya more than I’d planned to.

  “It isn’t serious. She’s only home for the holidays.”

  “Home?”

  She didn’t miss a beat.

  “She spent most of her childhood here.”

  “But she thinks of this as home?”

  I nodded, looking for something to point out to distract her from asking any more questions. It was too quiet. Even the boys weren’t helping, having sat down on the grass with some toy that was keeping them both strangely focused.

  “I saw her at the guesthouse. She’s very pretty.”

  I smiled because I couldn’t not.

  Since the day when her boat had capsized, we’d grown closer. I spent most nights with her, sometimes in a local bar or restaurant or on the beach, sometimes we’d go for a walk with my camera and take stupid photos and selfies. I knew that when September arrived I’d be alone again and I wasn’t trying to lie to myself that it wasn’t going to happen. Anya had another life to return to. I had to carry on with mine.

  “She is. And smart.”

  “Even though she’s going out with you?” Janie elbowed me.

  I looked at the ground and grinned like an idiot. “But she’s going back to teach at her school in September.”

  “And she might move back home. Especially with what happened.”

  I shrugged. She’d talked about it recently, when we were in bed after she’d spent a good portion of the evening riding me like a horse at a fun fair. She wasn’t going to stay at her current school, which was what she’d planned, wanting a move into management. But she didn’t know where. I explained it to Janie who smiled and looked knowingly away from me, as if she had some crystal ball that she couldn’t use on herself.

  “Let’s take the boys back to the guesthouse and you can introduce me properly.”

  They were words she’d never said about any other woman I’d been with. Surprisingly, I wasn’t scared.

  Anya was outside in the garden with Harry, who was playing a game of something that meant his aunt had to chase him. She was trying to look enthusiastic and I could see the teacher in her coming out as she spoke to him. I could also see that she was dying to sit down with her book and the glass of wine that was next to it.

  “Gabe!” She paused and a small hand tugged her. “Look, Harry. Gabe’s here with his nephews. You might finally have someone to play with.” He hung behind her legs, suddenly shy.

  I laughed and crouched down, beckoning him to me. “Come here, H, and meet these two.”

  He prised himself away from Anya and ran to me, jumping into my chest and giving me a big hug. He’d become keen to see me over the last few weeks, although he’d never mentioned what happened when he ended up in the sea.

  I called my nephews over, who looked a bit reticent at first, but three minutes later they were chasing each other round the garden.

  “Hopefully that’s them set for summer.” Janie sat down on a nearby bench. “Because I forgot to mention I’d extended our stay to five weeks. Which is when Liam should be home.”

  Anya looked from me to her. “Gabe told me that he was in the army.”

  Janie smiled. “I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Janie, Gabriel’s sister.”

  I groaned audibly. No one ever used my full name, unless it was Janie trying to divert attention.

  Anya giggled, a sound that went straight to my dick as it was the same one she made when I had my mouth just below her belly button and I was heading south. I caught her eye and she blushed, so I knew she’d read my mind. I’d probably stay with her tonight rather than her come back to the barn. I wasn’t on the boats in the morning, but I’d promised her nan I’d do a few jobs around the guesthouse, a bit of general maintenance. Then I’d take my nephews to the beach and watch them build sandcastles and trash them. The demolition duo.

  “He never likes his full name being used.” Anya picked up her wine. “I tried once and he… well, let’s leave that story. Would you like some wine?”

  “I’ll go to the bar for some. I need to set up a tab.” Janie stood up.

  Anya shook her head. “No, let me get you some from my wine rack. I can’t charge you when you’re Gabe’s sister. What about the boys? A juice or a coke?”

  “Juice.” I could see Janie appraising her. “Anything fizzy makes their horns more visible.”

  “That sounds like Harry. Gabe, beer?”

  I nodded and watched her walk inside, my eyes on her ass. I knew my sister would be studying me, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let her being here cramp what time I had left of my summer with Anya.

  “We’re going to have a proper conversation about her in a few days’ time, Gabriel.”

  I ignored her, changing the subject to our parents until Anya came back and saved me from being psychoanalyzed.

  The wine she carried was a magnet for Janie’s eyes and I figured my sister really had been struggling to do anything apart from work and parent for months. The realisation made me ache: I should’ve been there to help her out, but I’d been too lost to do anything apart from keep breathing some days.

  “White okay? It’s too warm for red.” Anya held a glass out to her. I sat back and listened as they began to talk about wine and preferences, things I was oblivious to as I preferred beer to anything else.

  Their conversation continued. I left them to it, instead watching the three boys who were in the process of forming an unholy alliance. They were itching to get into the summerhouse and I saw a sleepover occurring in there in the near future.

  “Has it put you off being a parent?” I
heard Janie ask Anya. “I guessed that with the job that I do.”

  I tried to smother a smile at their conversation. They’d automatically focused in on the fact that they both worked with kids. Within ten minutes, Anya was talking theories and difficulties and they were both bemoaning waiting lists.

  “No. I think it is different with your own. I’d like that at some point. If I’m ever in a relationship where that could be a possibility.”

  Harry ran into her arms, gave her a hug and sped off with his new friends.

  Janie turned to me and pointed. “Him. He’s great with kids.”

  We both laughed awkwardly. “Five weeks, Janie.” My words were a warning. But she’d consumed alcohol so that warning wouldn’t be registered.

  “Five weeks is long enough. Besides, I’ve seen how you look at each other.”

  Anya didn’t avoid catching my eye. Instead of us both trying to avoid any acknowledgment we held the gaze.

  I’d had many moments in my life that had frozen into my memory: a night outside after a hot day with a group of friends, just laughing and joking, but it felt like a point in time when everything was perfect. There had been my graduation when me and Ryan and our families had just been at this point where everything was as it should be and then there was now.

  We’d had weeks of sex and company and conversation. And understanding. A bolt fired through me, but rather than tear me apart, I saw stars.

  Ones that shone. Ones that I’d never imagined before.

  She made me see light when I thought there was none. She made me feel like life carried on and I wanted it to. I fucking wanted it to.

  “Saying no more.” Janie sat back and sighed, watching the kids.

  There was something perfect that night. One I’d remember.

  Anya

  Janie changed the dynamics. Gabe’s time became butter, spread richly but thinly and I missed being the centre of his attention, except when we were in bed, which became every night. It was easy. The times when I was lost to thinking about a young boy and his baby sister who never had a chance and he let me be, knowing I didn’t need words or holding, just time to reflect and adjust my sails.