Rope of Sand

by C F Dunn

  I regarded that as an understatement, acutely aware of Ellen’s image sitting in full view on Matthew’s desk. “And it doesn’t bother you that I’m here, Henry?”

  “It took some getting used to, I don’t deny it. Matthew told me about you a long time before we met a few days ago. At first I didn’t know how to feel, but I’ve seen the change in him. He’s more like I remember him before the accident, less withdrawn.” Henry rubbed the bridge of his nose in the way that was becoming very familiar. “My mother will die, Emma. Matthew loves her and he has done the best he can for her, but he cannot turn back time. In some ways your coming along when you did has been a blessing – in disguise, I grant you – but a blessing all the same. It’ll allow my mother to die knowing he’s not alone, and that will ease her leaving.”

  I considered the man in front of me whose generosity of spirit far surpassed my own, who regarded me so benignly, and wondered – not for the first time – if I would be so giving in similar circumstances.

  “Matthew said that Ellen would like to meet me.”

  Henry nodded and he chuckled good-humouredly. “So she would. I take it you’re not so keen?”

  I shrugged apologetically. “In the circumstances it would be a little strange. I wouldn’t know what to say to her and I can’t see how meeting would help in any way. If anything, I would have thought that it would be disturbing for her.”

  I could hear myself trying to persuade him of the veracity of my argument, but he smiled gently, making me feel guilty instead. “I think it goes back to what I said earlier, Emma – that Ellen is curious to know who she is leaving her husband to, but also, I suspect – knowing my mother as I do – that she will want to share some information with you. She bears you no resentment, you do realize that I hope?”

  I felt myself redden and squirmed in my chair. “I don’t know why she doesn’t – I know I would – but if you think it will help her, then, yes, of course I’ll meet her.” I didn’t want to, Heaven knows I didn’t, but it seemed the right thing to say at the time given her willingness to forgive my usurpation of her husband. Would any circumstance make this right other than her death?

  Henry seemed pleased by my response. “I’ll let Dad know and we can get something fixed sooner rather than later; time isn’t on our side.” He smiled sadly and I felt for him. “Still,” he said, “are you looking forward to this afternoon?”

  “Why – what’s happening this afternoon?”

  “Barbecue,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Barbecue

  The air was rigid with cold. Newly fallen snow formed a crust of ice that ripped and splintered the rays of the late-afternoon sun.

  I stood in the deep shadow of the house and placed a tentative foot on the frozen surface; it bore my weight. Stepping into the light, I followed the gentle slope down from the house towards the river. A line of tracks revealed where Harry, Joel, and Ellie had traipsed back and forth collecting wood all morning for what Henry had been pleased to call the “barbecue” but looked more like a colossal bonfire. I turned around at the sound of fleet steps, my breath hanging in the air like the smoke of a steam engine.

  “You look suitably wrapped up,” Matthew approved, casting a quick eye over me.

  “So do you,” I returned. “But you don’t need to be, do you?”

  “For the sake of normality I do. It’d give the local wildlife a shock if I didn’t.”

  “To say nothing of me,” I sighed. The idea appeared to amuse him and he seemed about to comment, thought better of it, and put out his hand instead.

  “Come on, let’s join the others.”

  I trudged over the snow, revelling in the slight give of the crust beneath my feet and the correspondingly satisfying crusp of sound that accompanied it, leaving a broken set of imprints behind me. It had been two days since my episode with the coffee, but my senses remained ever so slightly heightened: every sound, every touch, every smell sharper and more vivid than before.

  Ellie laboured in the process of dragging a log, three times her length and almost twice as thick, up from the riverbank, but a snapped-off branch kept catching in the snow like a ploughshare.

  “Boys…” Matthew indicated with his head.

  “Yeah, sure, onto it.” Harry trotted over to his sister. “Yo, El – need a hand?” He gave her a beatific smile and she gave him a scouring glance in return, and dropped the log.

  “Not from a weakling like you.” She picked it up again, daring him to come any closer.

  He called to his brother. “Hey, bro’, our little sister needs a hand.” Joel chucked a log on the pile and joined them. “What’d’ ya reckon?”

  Joel didn’t need to be asked twice. “Ri-ght!” He bent down and casually scooped a handful of snow, patting it into a ball as he moved to Harry’s left. As the boys separated, they crouched and began to close in on their sister, stalking her like mountain lions. Ellie deposited the log with a thump, her eyes narrowing. It appeared grossly unfair, two against one, but Matthew followed the manoeuvres with acute interest. Their parents had crossed the ground to join us, Dan grinning in anticipation. Jeannie, on the other hand, didn’t look at all happy.

  Joel’s low chuckle sounded menacing in the bitter stillness of the air. Ellie backed off, looking right and left until she had clear ground between herself and her brothers. Step by step the boys closed in on her until they were no more than a car’s length away. Without warning, Joel hurled the snowball with immense force in her direction. As she ducked, they lunged, their arms already extended to imprison her. As quick as I could draw breath, she leapt like a hind, springing from a standstill onto Harry’s forearm and then Joel’s shoulder, up and over and away, landing lightly on the snow a dozen feet behind them, laughing at the consternation on their faces.

  “Geesh, how do you do that!” Joel exploded.

  I looked up at Matthew. “Yes, how did she?”

  “It’s one of the benefits she seems to have inherited.” He ducked as a snowball sailed over his head, landing harmlessly beyond him. Whumph, another snowball landed close by, then another, hitting me on the arm. Matthew’s head whipped around. “Looks like an outbreak of hostilities,” he grinned.

  “Joel, Ellie, stop that,” Jeannie called out.

  “Looks like it,” I agreed, shovelling up snow in my gloved hands and moulding it the best I could. I dodged another, suspecting they viewed me as a soft target. “This snow’s too dry,” I complained, avoiding yet a third.

  “Try the snow underneath the new stuff,” Matthew suggested, launching a snowball that hit Joel squarely in the middle of his chest. I dug down and tried a handful of the older snow, which compacted more easily. Flump.

  “Ouch,” I muttered as a snowball hit my thigh.

  “Harry, you mustn’t…” Jeannie scolded him.

  Thwack. I hit Harry with a satisfying lump of snow, his dark jacket bearing the evidence of the white explosion, and narrowly avoided Joel’s missile from my left. Matthew covered me while I rapidly formed another ball, launching as Joel reloaded, hitting him on his leg. Ellie secured a sound win against me, much to my fury, before Matthew scored a hit on the back of her hood that had her spinning around to defend her rear. He caught a snowball as it was about to hit my face and relaunched it successfully. Already gasping, I tried to keep up with the speed of snowball production and attack.

  “Incoming!” Joel yelled as Matthew fired off a series of missiles with breathtaking speed, each one meeting its target. “Ye-es!” I celebrated.

  A brief pause followed as Joel signalled to his siblings, and the three separated and went into an attack formation.

  “Stick together,” Matthew advised. “Don’t let them separate us.” By “us” I knew he meant they were targeting me as they sank lower to the ground, snowballs in hand and a predatory look on their faces, their eyes following my movements. This, I thought, is what it must feel like to be hunted and, despite the familiarity of the
setting and the benevolence of the group, a thrill – almost like a whisper of fear – clawed at my throat.

  Matthew hunkered down into a defensive position, placing his body between the circling group and me. With a shudder I realized I had seen him do the same before, when the bear readied itself for attack not so very long ago.

  Harry tested the balance of a snowball, eyeing up the growing gap on Matthew’s flank. Matthew edged to cover it. Ellie worked the opposite flank as Joel moved in on the centre, trying to find a flaw in Matthew’s defences. I saw the hooded intent in their eyes, I sensed the urgency behind their stealth… and something inside me snapped.

  I turned and bolted for the shelter of the bonfire. “Emma!” Matthew called out in frustration as I ran.

  “Sorry!” I threw back at him over my shoulder, making for the relative safety of the heap of burning timber.

  My ruse worked better than I thought. “Ye-hah!” Joel and Harry yodelled, splitting up, each running faster than I had ever seen them move before to circle the bonfire before Matthew could intercept. Clump. I spun round. Thwump. I ducked sideways as a third ball flew past, then a fourth. A rapid volley hit me from three sides, feeling more like balls of ice than snow. Oh, heck, perhaps this hadn’t been such a good idea. All three siblings had positioned themselves for the attack when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Matthew launch himself at Harry, knocking him off his feet. There ensued a brief flurry of limbs; then Harry yelled, “OK, OK – I surrender,” and lay panting on the snow, as Matthew leapt up and rounded on the other two youths just as Joel took careful aim and walloped a snowball with full force, knocking the breath from me.

  Groaning, I bent double, clasping my stomach with both arms, and collapsed to the ground in agony. A stunned silence fell on the group.

  “Joel, you idiot!” I heard the sound of running feet. “I told you not to throw so hard. Matthew, Matthew – Emma’s hurt.” Panic jangled Ellie’s voice as she bent over me. I moaned, barely opening my eyes. Her anxious face was replaced by Joel’s mortified expression.

  “Emma! Geesh, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry. Matthew, Emma needs you!” He looked around in desperation, but Matthew hung back

  “Joel…” I mumbled, my hands clasping at the snow in torment, my legs writhing.

  “Joel…” I whispered, my lips barely moving.

  He leaned closer still. “Emma, what is it?”

  I fixed his harrowed eyes with mine. “Vengeance – is – mine,” I hissed and whisked one hand up to pull his jacket open while neatly depositing a large handful of compacted snow down his neck with the other. He yelped and jumped back, nearly knocking Ellie over in the process, scrabbling at his coat as the snow melted in icy streams down his chest.

  “You… you…” he spluttered as he made a grab for me, but I escaped from beneath his legs across the snow to where Matthew stood watching, his whole body shaking with laughter.

  “That’s gross, you cheated!” Joel accused, leaning forward and pulling his jacket open, shaking what remained of the snow from his clothes.

  “Hardly,” I called. “I just used a diversionary tactic, that’s all. Oh, and by the way…” I held up a gloved finger just to make my point, “… it worked.”

  Joel scowled at me, but the water must have been less cold now because the scowl didn’t reach his eyes. “You took advantage of my good nature,” he said mournfully.

  Matthew finished sweeping snow from my shoulders. “You should know better than to let your defences down, Joel,” he said, suddenly serious. “That’s how you get stabbed in the back.” I detected the ghost of his past, but within seconds he smiled again, and only he and I knew of the betrayal to which he referred.

  “Yeah, right, I’ll try to remember that next time.”

  “Who said there is going to be a next time?” I asked, primly, thinking I would undoubtedly be the loser in any subsequent game. Matthew lightly tugged my plait like a bell pull. “Oh, I’m sure it can be arranged.”

  Joel erupted into a broad beam at the thought, but as Jeannie left Dan’s side and came towards us looking decidedly annoyed, with her thin features drawn into a point, the smile fell from his face.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack with your antics, Joel. You shouldn’t use your training like that – it’s dangerous. You might have really hurt Emma. Matthew, I’ve made it clear that I don’t want him or the others encouraged to use their abnormalities.” She made them sound unclean.

  Joel rolled his eyes. “Just leave it, Mom, it was only a game.” He turned his back and stomped off to kick a piece of wood back into the pile where it had fallen free of the bonfire.

  Matthew watched him, unsmiling. “Joel needs to practise his chosen craft just like the rest of us, Jeanette – it’s what will keep him safe in the future. And he’s no more to blame for the antics, as you call them, than anyone here. As for your children’s strengths, it’s as much a part of them as breathing is to you, and you know that. Your denial will serve no purpose other than to ostracize Joel. He needs to know that you accept him as he is.” This obviously represented an old bone of contention, a festering ulcer that erupted now and again that responded to treatment, but never quite went away.

  Jeannie’s mouth pulled down in a sour bow. “You know how I feel about it, Matthew.”

  “I do,” he said patiently, “but nothing is going to change because of it.”

  She gave him an odd little look that I couldn’t interpret, before turning away to rejoin Dan, who hovered anxiously with Ellie. Harry had gone after Joel, and the two of them were having a heated discussion as far as I could tell by their body language.

  “Whoops,” I said, watching her retreating back.

  “Indeed – whoops.” Matthew concurred. “There are one or two unresolved issues, which I think you might have gathered from that exchange.”

  I nodded. “Yup – a lack of humour is one of them.”

  Matthew broke into a smile despite himself. “It certainly is. She’ll be all right, but I’m more concerned to keep Joel onside; he’s not had an easy time of it. Now, we’d better see how the pig is getting on if you want to eat tonight.”

  I sniffed the air appreciatively. “I thought Henry was joking about a barbecue!”

  Matthew frowned. “I don’t know about a barbecue – I would have called it spit-roast pig – but nomenclature can be very misleading…” I walloped him through his thick jacket because he teased me again, and he oinked and made piggy snuffling noises in my ear until I laughed and protested at my torment. Matthew then called the boys over to stoke the fire, and whatever Harry had said to him appeared to have worked because Joel had regained his good humour. As he loped past us to the bonfire, he mouthed “I’ll get even” at me, and I hid behind Matthew’s strong back, thumbed my nose at him and mimed, “Oh yeah?”

  The fire ate deep into the wood, growling and hissing as each new piece became engulfed by flame. Soon the whole inferno lit the darkening sky, sparks like glowing moths rising on the warmed currents of air. I stood back, feeling my skin beginning to singe.

  “That’s a great fire, Joel.”

  He smiled sideways at me. “Thanks – that’s big coming from a cheat.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think it would get you into trouble with your mum.”

  He shuffled the snow about with the toe of his Army boot. “Yeah, well, that’s not your fault. Mom’s not keen on me being a grunt. Thinks I should’ve stayed on at school, gone to college, you know – like Harry and Ellie – but that’s not what interested me. School was boring.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket, looking defensive. “That’s not what you want to hear, right? You probably agree with her.”

  Over on the other side of the fire, Jeannie seemed to be mellowing rapidly with a glass of mulled wine in one hand.

  “Would you like some wine, Joel?” I asked, wondering if it might help him in the same way it seemed to be doing for his mother.

&nb
sp; “Uh – no thanks, Emma, I don’t drink.”

  “But… you said you liked whisky…”

  “Nah, I said that to wind Mom up. I’m dry.” He took in the expression on my face, “Yeah, hard to believe, right? I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I’ll never do drugs. Not what you expected, huh?”

  “OK,” I said. “You’ve undoubtedly got me there. That just about makes us even, don’t you think? Truce?”

  “I guess so.” We shook on it.

  “Joel, it isn’t my business what you want to do, but if it makes any difference, my father and both my grandfathers were in the Army; in fact, it’s a bit of a tradition in my family. I can’t see what’s wrong with it as a career if that’s what you want to do. Dan seems to think you’re pretty good at your job, and I know Matthew does too.”

  He made a face. “Yeah, they’ve been great. If it hadn’t been for Matthew…” He stopped abruptly, pulling me to one side as a pocket of gas exploded, shooting a burning lump of wood in our direction.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You were saying…?”

  “Sure. Matthew didn’t push the school bit when everyone else did, so I spent a lot of time with him. He used to listen to a load of crap – sorry, stuff – from me when I went through a really heavy time at home. I was messed up pretty much – I even left home for a time when I was fifteen. He persuaded me to come back though.”

  “He knew where you were?”

  “Definitely – he made it a condition when I wanted to leave for a while. He made sure I had a place to stay, money, everything – but I made him promise not to tell anyone or I wouldn’t’ve come back.” He shot me a look. “Nobody knows this, right? Nobody.”