Big Low Tide

by Candy Neubert

  – Daniel Duncan! Dear little boy. Come and let me kiss you!

  Danny takes one look at her bearing down on him, her large bosom quivering under a wild paisley print, and he is off over the tombstones and the wall and across the fields.

  Patrick tugs at his father’s elbow in dismay. Danny could be gone half the day and they have to clear the reef two hours either side of low water.

  – right you are, Mr Vauquier. I’ll see to it in the morning. Won’t forget. Bye now.

  – Dad! Danny’s run off – bet I know where. The hay barn at Mr Corbin’s.

  – mm. What time’s low tide?

  – 3.47.

  – right. We can leave by... twelve thirty, easy. I’ll fetch the lad and take him straight to Deborah while you go home and change. Are you old enough to pack up the lunch?

  – what’ll we have?

  – surprise me. I’ll do the flask. Off you go.

  _____

  The oars are smaller at the ends but even so they are too big for his hands. It’s difficult to row without splashing but he can keep straight now and not spin about in circles as he used to. The outgoing tide helps, and his father has given no word of instruction. Patrick is the captain.

  The Nan is swinging gently on her moorings in deep water. She’s an old lifeboat from a big ship, her curved planks overlapping. Clinker-built, Dad says, but Patrick prefers to say, overlapping; it sounds more watery.

  He manoeuvres the dinghy alongside, remembering to lift one oar early to allow for drift. They stow their things aboard – picnic, water, coats, oars. Peter knots the painter over a cleat and lets the dinghy slip astern. He’s the captain now.

  The boat noses away with the light airs fanning her sail in little puffs. On this side of the reef the orange buoys mark the lobster pots, a string of plastic baubles over their death traps, trailing long chains down into the dark. Patrick stares after them. This might be a good time to ask. It might. But unless a question comes out straight away it grows bigger in his mouth and it won’t come out.

  His father cradles the tiller as if he likes silence.

  They cross the Piqûre Rocks swiftly. The boy watches the Nan’s shadow running alongside, slipping into the gullies and leaping up towards him where it is shallow. Seaweed and stone, green and brown, silver and gold. The ocean on the other side is another water altogether, the air across it colder; it goes all the way to America. He keeps his head down; the boom is swinging about.

  They’re headed for the lagoon where the reef curves. The flat pool appears only on very low tides – two boats are here already in the lee of the rocks and they wave towards these as they pass, dropping anchor at a good distance. Peter busies himself with the sail, which, folded, reminds Patrick of a kind of pastry.

  – why’ve you got blue eyes, Dad?

  – mm?

  – I mean, and not me. Or Danny.

  – it’s genetics.

  – will I get genetics?

  – ah. It’s not something you get. Well, you do, I suppose, but only in the beginning. Then it’s just the way you are.

  – is Aunt Elsa a witch?

  His father hesitates for a moment, and then gives a slow smile.

  – I might’ve thought so once or twice, years ago. What put that idea in your head?

  – they say she’s mad.

  – who does?

  – at school.

  – ah well. They say a lot of things, some right and some not. Your aunt is more an... unquiet soul.

  – oh.

  There’s no sound for a moment, and the boat sings the cadence of the sea.

  – is Mummy an unquiet soul?

  – no. Come on, let’s open up this bag, then. See what we’re having for our Sunday dinner! Two packets of crackers – good for seasickness. Cheese, apples, good. Knife, good chap. Beans? Is there a can opener? Never mind. The marshmallows look interesting; let’s start with those.

  They eat, and their words sift away further and further from their hearts. Later they take the dinghy into the reefs, taking turns with the oars. The tide percolates out through the pools and swirls back again. The surfaces turn from green to white to red and the earth pulls round and the sun stays behind to shine on America.

  _____

  They cycle home in the twilight. It isn’t far, but it’s up-hill, and Patrick has the exhaustion of the sea on him. In the kitchen he drinks milk and smiles at his father and feels the salt prickle on his skin under his clothes.

  Upstairs Danny sits up in bed, and watches him with bright eyes.

  – I been playing with Melissa.

  – yeah?

  – yeah.

  seven

  In Number 7,The Steps, Mrs Pickery is busying herself in the kitchen on Monday morning, making her flask for work. She made the sandwiches last night, and while the tea draws in the pot she puts the sauce and pickle on the table for her husband. Her overalls were washed at the weekend as usual and are now folded and clean for work, which poses a bit of a problem. For Mrs Pickery is not going to work.

  She takes a cup of tea upstairs to the room once occupied by her daughter and now by her husband. She leaves it on the bedside table and he opens one watery eye and grunts.

  Downstairs she fills her flask with milk and sugar and tea and rinses the teapot. She riddles the fire and banks it up with coal, making the same amount of noise as usual; it’s years since she was quiet for him, ever since he took early retirement, really. She gives a little snort. Anyway he says he’s getting deaf so he can hardly complain about noise, can he?

  In the hall mirror she ties a headscarf under her chin and then appears at the front door, letting the latch fall behind her. She turns left and heads down Turkenwell towards the square, then turns sharp left again, and then again. Up the passage where the bins are kept, behind the estate houses to her own back door, for which she has a key at the ready. Very quietly she closes this behind her, creeping light-footed with her bag to her room. Then she slips back into bed.

  Wilf Pickery sleeps on. At about ten o’clock he sticks his feet out from beneath the covers, and then his knees. He sits for a moment and scratches at his vest. Slowly he pulls on his trousers, goes to the bathroom, coughs, hawks, flushes the toilet.

  In the kitchen he sets the kettle on the hob and pokes the fire, making it collapse. Mrs Pickery nods in recognition of every sound. In the pause she knows that he’s lighting a cigarette and reviewing the racing results in yesterday’s paper. He will make himself a ham and pickle sandwich. He’ll flick cigarette ash into the coal scuttle, a habit she abhors and which surely puts him on the level of a pig. In about forty minutes he will leave the house and make his way to the Swan, where he’ll arrive a few seconds after opening time.

  When he’s gone, Mrs Pickery sits up and pours herself a cup of tea from her flask. For a moment she listens attentively. Wilf says you can’t believe the goings on next door sometimes, and she doesn’t want to miss anything. However, from Number 5 there is penetrating silence. She turns on the radio and settles back into the pillows.

  _____

  The silence next door is due to emptiness. Brenda has at last woken up in Le Clef du Ferme, to where her desires have led. She sits now, mid-morning, at the bedroom window, squinting pensively out into the garden. There is the lawn where she and Gerry were locked together last night; last week it was in a field – she’s read about this kind of thing. An outdoor lover. It adds a different angle; it’s not a problem, though rather chilly.

  There’s something at the back of her mind she can’t quite recall from the heat of the moment – the phone had sounded in the house, but that isn’t what she remembers; it had only given a few rings. No, there had been another sound... a door shutting maybe? Perhaps it is usual to feel overlooked, lovemaking out of doors. Perhaps that is the whole point of it.

  This morning there’s no sign of anyone having been here, hardly even of Gerry himself. His clothes lie on the chairs, his wine glass lies on the fl
oor, he lies in the bed. But Brenda has been to the kitchen to make tea, and found no tea to make. No tea, no coffee, no milk, no edible anything. Only clean white tea cups hanging in the cupboard, and a bone dry kettle.

  All right, Mr Weirdo, she thinks; I’ll find my own breakfast. She slips her dress, crumpled and rather muddy, over her head, and crams her shoes and stockings into her handbag. She gives the sleeping Gerry a long look, but he does not stir.

  The rooms of the house spread out from the corridors. It seems a hotel without the staff; Brenda can almost fancy she sees a chambermaid slipping behind the door. She gives her head a little shake to clear the nonsense away. On the driveway, on the road, her bare feet feel the cool surface as they haven’t done for years. They will become sore, but she doesn’t mind. She has forgotten her uncertainties; she is concentrated elsewhere.

  In the Cross Keys Café she orders coffee and toast and seems unaware that the manager and his wife stare at her from the kitchen. Brenda has never believed in love at first sight. On the island where everyone knows everyone she has always known Gerry Vine. She is a le Cras and so is his grandmother; they are of a kind.

  Full of breakfast and a dazzling new energy she walks home, swinging her bag and her hair and saying good morning to cows standing at hedges. Jack Vine, in a field, sees her pass and lifts his cap and rubs the back of his hand across his eyes, shaking his head. It was his father who married a le Cras, the second time. They always were a bad lot, in his opinion.

  eight

  The questions form of themselves as we move from here to there. Dipping in and out of place and time we must wonder about Brenda, aware that some crossing of molecule and atom sent her away from her children. She herself never queried the terror that came to her when the dark head of the second-born snuffled against her chest; it was too vast a fear to probe. She never wanted Peter to touch her again.

  She may not try to understand it but her sons will pick up the thread and unravel it or not as they will.

  The one with the freckled face thinks about her and the one with the pointed face looks out at the world with her eyes.

  _____

  In the hallway of Les Puits, home of the Duncans, the phone rings.

  – hello?

  – who’s that? Patrick?

  – yes?

  – it’s Mummy. Hello?

  – hello? Yes?

  – I thought we could go out to tea somewhere; there’s a place called the Cross Keys where they keep parrots. I’ll pick you up from school tomorrow. Shall we? Hello?

  – and Danny?

  – mm? Yes, of course, and Danny. All of us. Tell your dad to bring him along. All right?

  _____

  Mrs Pickery is having the time of her life. Every day this week she has hugged to herself the special joy of hearing others go about their business. She never knew before the fine view of Mr Chandramohan’s backyard to be had from her bedroom window while pressed up against the wardrobe. She has seen that one next door return home at odd times and wearing peculiar clothing. Wilf returns at ten past three every day, after which he falls fast asleep in his chair. Mrs Pickery is then able to retrace her route of the morning, risking the neighbours’ eyes, returning through her own front door at the usual time.

  She once considered plunging her hands into the flower beds and rubbing earth into her overalls, but some delicacy prevented this.

  By the end of the week she’s completely rested. There was no argument about where to spend the holiday, no difficult task of coping with Wilf away from the public bar at the Swan, and it hasn’t cost her a single penny.

  _____

  The island is an amoeba with one mouth. Amoeba-like it changes shape with the currents through the millennia and people can feel the currents and the changes in their lives, if they stop to listen.

  In the north-east runs the Swinge where the tides running up the Atlantic coasts of Europe prepare for that narrow sphincter between England and France. The waters squeeze and jostle, producing surface ripples on a dead-calm day. Here the helmsman feels the rudder taken from his hand and the keel play games out of keeping with the wind and knows, for a moment, fear. If he has a motor he’ll wonder at its changing heartbeat, and the faltering bite of the propeller.

  In the south-west there is a mirror image of the Swinge where vessels wallow and drift. Here is the bay where the Nan swings on her mooring, and the reef we’ve already crossed with Patrick and his father. A little further lie the rocks and the waters called the Avaleur, the swallower.

  As the Port Victoria lighthouse swings its night-time arms in the east, so the Avaleur lighthouse sweeps the south-west coast. Flash, flash, and pause. Flash, flash, flash, and pause. Boats still ride up on the rocks, even the great tankers, when the crew are sleeping and the green eyes of the radar scanners bleep unnoticed on the bridge.

  Some fishermen know the east coast and some the west, but every heart pulls with the tide and hears, on some level, the waves that break out there in the dark.

  nine

  They are lifting potatoes in the south field, Jack and Peter pulling brown gashes in the earth behind the tractor, separating one canvas sack after another from the pile, shaking out the dust of last year’s earth. Stacking a new pile of filled sacks on the trailer, dust in their eyes, in their beards.

  – right then. That’s a good lot. Fetch the forks, would you, Peter? Behind the seat. Aye. We’ll go round the verges.

  – she could rain, I reckon.

  – she may. But we’ve time enough.

  Peter Duncan would wish this a day on the sea and not on the land. He questioned Patrick closely about what she said, and knows that the boy answered faithfully. An invitation to tea. Today. The Cross Keys. All of us. He has not counted how long it is since they saw her. Months. He and she have withdrawn into their territories like wounded animals. He bled for this woman and just managed to staunch the flow. Now – tea; all of us.

  _____

  – who you waiting for ?

  – someone.

  – I asked a question, Dunkhead. Who?

  – my mother. She’s fetching me.

  – poo! Your mum’s got a man.

  – she’s not.

  – she has too. She does it with him on the cliffs. Your aunt that’s a witch told my mum.

  – leave off me.

  – don’cha believe me? Danny does.

  – go away, Melissa.

  – I’m going anyway, Spot-face.

  Patrick scowls. He waits by the school gates as the cars pass and he stands forward hopefully and then he stands back half out of sight, searching for that face. Then a black car stops and his mother leans out of the window and her face is bright and smiling as she waves, and beside her is a man.

  _____

  In the Cross Keys Café, Peter stands at the counter with his youngest son. It was good of Jack to let him off early but still, he feels awkward.

  – if you take a seat, sir, we’ll take your order at the table.

  – ah, we’re waiting for someone.

  – Dad, I want some of that.

  – what’s that, Dan?

  – that one. That chocolate one.

  – maybe. We’re waiting for your mother.

  – and Patrick?

  – and Patrick.

  – I want it now.

  – well, we’re going to wait.

  – now!

  – listen, Dan, listen. We have to wait and then we’ll choose together. Come on, let’s sit here. Look – look out there; all those parrots. And gnomes. Take your fingers out of the sugar. What’s the matter?

  – I want cake.

  – soon. Here, wipe your face. That’s it.

  He hears her voice before he sees her and then he sees her and is not prepared for it. The soft wraps desert him and the bleeding starts again. He rises to his feet and at the same time sees a man whose face he recognises but doesn’t associate with this moment, until the worried eyes of his first son look
from the man to himself and establish the connection.

  – oh Peter, it’s you. Hello.

  She seems surprised to see him. He pushes a chair back and touches Danny’s shoulder: you asked me to bring him. She lifts her sunglasses over her hair; speaks again.

  – well, shall we sit, then? Hello, Danny. Have you seen the birds? Peter – do you and Gerry know each other?

  She seems surprised to see him.

  – I’m not staying. I just brought the boy. Have to get back now.

  – oh stay, for God’s sake, and have some tea or something.

  – Dad!

  It’s Patrick, pulling his sleeve. He nods his head, or shakes it; he doesn’t know what he is doing. The man, Gerry Vine, sits down, stretches out his legs, and takes out a packet of cigarettes. Peter steps across him; outside, he lifts his bicycle and cycles away through the weightless air.

  _____

  The time is out of joint. He knows that is Shakespeare but where does it come from? The time is out of joint. He ought to be working now and he turns towards the fields where he left Jack, but then he remembers the clean clothes on his limbs and that his work clothes are at Les Puits. Jack will be taking the tractor back to the sheds before long and Peter would prefer not to look him in the eye just now.

  He turns away from the road he travels every day and there are neat gardens and hedges and greenhouses he barely knows. A new light falls strangely for him even as it has for her, which she can call love and for him it is the other pain. The lanes leading to the cliffs are laced in white, hawthorn and allium. Peter throws down his bicycle at the end of the path and walks to the edge.

  He drops down through the gorse, pulling off his clothes, sending the scree flying. At the foot of the cliff the gulls rise up squawking and circle over his head and a cormorant lifts its wings, keeping close to the water. The tide is heavy and full and slides lazily on the rock. He doesn’t know this place and resists the thought of diving. He lowers himself into the bitter cold sea and feels the surge of it, thank God, thank God.