Underwater Breathing

by Parkin, Cassandra;

  “I’m going to be a scarecrow,” said Ella. “For the next time I come to see you. But I’m a bit scared of the cliff. But, I’ll be seven on the nineteenth of December, so then I’ll be braver.” Her face was anxious. “If you don’t mind waiting, I mean. But, I can only come when Mummy’s sleeping. Because I can’t come when Mummy’s awake.”

  For a moment, Mrs Armitage was back in her dream, with the sea set to a thick muddy soup and the light in Ella’s house calling like a silent siren. A better woman would do more than she had done, would not rest until she had found the truth and put everything to rights. Her husband would have done exactly this; he always loved a good project, a good opportunity to prove himself. But she was not her husband. She would make her own choices.

  “I don’t mind waiting,” she said. “You can come to me the next time she’s asleep.”

  Chapter Nine

  Now

  When Jacob woke, the brightness of the sunshine made his eyes water. At some point during the night he must have opened the curtains. Groping back through the mists of sleep, he managed to summon a faint half-recollection of Ella appearing in his doorway, of him holding open the cover of the duvet for her to creep in beside him, of her going to the window and pulling open the curtains, of the startling chill of her feet against his calves and the tickle of her hair against his chin. Was that real? Had he really let a strange girl with his sister’s face crawl into his bed in the early hours of the morning and sleep there? Surely not. He must have dreamed it and opened the curtains himself.

  He glanced at his phone. It was early, not even six, but he felt a sense of bone-deep wellbeing, as if he’d slept for weeks and weeks and was now waking to a bright new day filled with promise and excitement. How long had it been since he’d had a night where he didn’t have to spend hours patrolling the house with his father, searching the shadows for phantoms? With this much sleep he could hold up the cliffs on his shoulders.

  One day on Mercury lasts approximately 1,400 hours

  Or, as teachers call it, “Monday”

  I am THE FUNNIEST PERSON YOU KNOW rite?

  - D

  Love it :-D

  - J

  He peered around the door of his father’s room. His father was awake but quiet, standing by the window and looking emptily out into space. When he turned around, Jacob saw that the front of his pyjama bottoms was soaking wet.

  “Hey, Dad. It’s me.”

  “Course it’s you, who else would it be? Morning, son.” The cold damp fabric clinging to his thighs must be un-comfortable, but he seemed oblivious. Perhaps he genuinely hadn’t noticed. Or perhaps he was embarrassed, and hoping he could pretend nothing was wrong.

  “Shall I get some toast on, then?” he said, trying to keep his voice sounding casual. “And a pot of coffee? While you have a shower?”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “I thought, you know, a nice way to wake up.” He didn’t care for himself but he minded for Ella. He wanted her to see their father clean and presentable, not smiling that peaceful idiot smile rendered terrible by his piss-soaked pyjamas. “Or how about a bath? I’ll put it on for you, shall I?”

  His father laughed. “I’m not having a bath first thing in the morning.”

  “Okay, a shower, then. Have a shower, Dad, you’ll feel loads better.”

  His father’s expression was suddenly very knowing.

  “Want me presentable for the girlfriend?”

  “Dad.”

  “Don’t worry. I know she stayed the night. Heard her getting up this morning. Quiet as a little mouse she is. Very discreet. What do they call her again?”

  “Ella, it’s Ella, she’s Ella.” He waited, but there was no flicker of recognition, only that faint roguish oh-you-crazy-kids expression. “I’ll see you downstairs, okay?”

  “Make her a nice breakfast,” his dad called after him.

  How many times had he come down these stairs with Ella’s ghost just ahead of him, one hand clutching the toy currently most in favour, muttering a song under her breath? He’d conjured her so often that the memory was almost more beloved than the reality, the reality of his almost-grown-up sister in the kitchen, and the faint homely clinks and chinks of plates and cutlery and the rising swish of the kettle coming to the boil. She’d come back to him, but as a stranger, and now his life, which had been anchored to one spot for so long, was sailing into the unknown. For a treacherous minute he wished he was still alone with his memories. What was he going to do? What were they going to do? What would happen when Ella had to leave? What would happen then?

  Then he opened the door and Ella turned towards him and he saw, behind the warm smile, the same fear that was nipping at the backs of his knees, and felt the whole weight of his astounding good luck break over him like water, leaving him breathless and fully awake, eager for whatever the day was going to bring.

  “I made a start on breakfast,” Ella said, holding up the spatula as if it was something precious she’d borrowed with-out permission. “I heard your – I mean our – you know – moving around upstairs so I thought I should maybe get some bacon on. Do you still have bacon and eggs in the holidays?”

  “You didn’t need to do that.” Jacob took the spatula from her hand. “You’re the visitor, you’re supposed to be getting the good service.”

  “I wanted to help.”

  As well as beginning breakfast, she’d opened the blinds and the window. No wonder he felt so filled with wellbeing. He wished fiercely that he could leave them as they were.

  “Dad’ll lose the plot if he sees these open,” he said apologetically. “He can’t cope with the idea of people being able to see in. He’s – well, you probably noticed, he’s a bit paranoid –” Above their heads, the ceiling creaked.

  “Is that him? Is he upstairs?” Ella glanced towards the door.

  “It’s okay, he knows you stayed the night. He – um – oh, I’m really sorry about this, but he –” In spite of himself, he could feel himself blushing, not just his face and neck but his whole body tingling with heat, and he bent over the pan of bacon and hoped vainly she would think it was the heat of the stove – “he’s still convinced you’re my girlfriend. I know that’s really gross and awful but he honestly can’t help it, I think he’s –” he managed to stop himself from saying he’s forgotten you. “He’s got confused.”

  What kind of reaction should he expect? An appalled giggle, perhaps, or an echoing of the deep embarrassment that trembled up his spine like a tuning-fork. A shy turning away. A flat refusal (well we’re going to have to tell him and tell him and tell him until he gets it because there’s no way we can –) Instead Ella nodded seriously, the face of someone committing important information to memory, medical instructions perhaps, or care advice for a potentially dangerous animal, and then said, “You’ve got a girlfriend? And he thinks I’m her?”

  “No, it’s not that. He’s not sure who you are, so that’s what he’s come up with.”

  “And does he mind me being here? Is he going to be angry with me staying?”

  “No. I – I think he thinks it’s quite sweet. I know that’s awful.”

  “He can’t help it.”

  Did she really not mind? It was difficult to read her face. She looked as if she was trying to work something out in her head. He reached for the box of eggs. “I know it’s really gross.”

  Instead of answering, Ella hesitated, then put a shy arm around his waist and leaned against him for a second. The way she used to hug him when she was small. He remembered the way her hair looked when he glanced down at her, the roughness of its unbrushed tangles against her scalp, waiting for the lick of their mother’s hairbrush. Now she was old enough to brush her own hair, and tall enough for her head to rest against his shoulder. When she let go, the places where she’d touched him felt cold, as if she’d stolen the warmth from his body with her own.

  “Morning, you two love-birds,” said his father, cheery and bright and inapp
ropriate from the kitchen door, and Ella jumped. “Glad to see Jacob’s got things under control.” His dad was in his dressing gown, looking clean and damp from the shower. “I’m sorry, pet, I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “I’m Ella.”

  “Course you are. Sleep well? I know, none of my business.”

  The wink his father gave Ella made Jacob want to slap him. When he cracked the first egg against the side of the frying pan, the shell shattered into fragments and had to be retrieved with a teaspoon. Ella poured tea from the pot, added milk and sugar, took the mug over to her father, barely flinching when he patted her arm. Jacob, watching as well as he could around the edges of the eggs, forced himself to stay calm. It wasn’t his father’s fault that grief and alcohol had drilled great holes in his memory. And, amazing miracle, he hadn’t yet insisted on checking for break-ins. Perhaps this was the start of a new phase in their lives.

  “Listen.” The mug of tea slammed into the table; a great slop of beige spilled out over the side. “Did you hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything, Dad.”

  “Listen!” His father’s hand was imperious. “Turn off that pan right now. I need to hear.”

  “Dad. There really isn’t anything there.”

  “What the fuck would you know anyway?” His father glared at him. “You’re a fucking idiot.” Ella shrank noiselessly back against the counter. Of course she was terrified. How could she not be? His father pushed his chair away from the table. “Come on.”

  “I can’t leave the eggs.”

  “Eggs!” His father was actually spitting with contempt. “There’s someone trying to break into our house, you unbe-lievable idiot! Now bloody well man up and come with me.”

  He couldn’t help the sudden rage. The day had begun with such beauty, and now his father was ruining it. His head insisted that arguing with a paranoid dementia sufferer was pointless, but he felt like a warrior on the battlefield, getting a dusty scroll of paper from some remote high commander: this seems like a bad idea chaps, maybe back off for now. He was going to win this one. Just this one.

  “Dad! Will you listen to me! First of all, this is Ella, do you understand! And she’s not my girlfriend, that’s a disgusting thing to say, she’s my little sister for God’s sake, she’s your daughter! There is nobody fucking there! There never is! Now sit down and drink your bloody tea and wait while I make your breakfast and shut up about people coming into the house before I fucking well make you!”

  The roar of his voice echoed in his head. The eggs and bacon crackled quietly in their pans. The sunshine crept around the edges of the blinds. He braced himself for the blow he knew was coming, telling himself fiercely I won’t cry, whatever happens I won’t bloody cry, but there was nothing but that terrible sizzling stillness that pressed against his ears. The smell of food. The minute fractions of sunlight that his father would tolerate. And then, a new sound, something he was sure he should recognise but that was so far away from what he was expecting that, for a few moments, he was unable to process it. His father was weeping.

  “Oh Dad,” he said, sick and wretched.

  “Don’t you touch me!” His father hunched away as if he thought Jacob might strike him.

  “I’m sorry,” Jacob said. “We can go and look if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “You’re always against me,” his father whispered. “You never believe me, never, you laugh at me when you think I’m not looking, but I see you…”

  “Don’t say that, it’s not true. Please, Dad, I don’t ever laugh at you.”

  “I don’t have a daughter, do you understand? I’ve got you and nobody else, it’s just us two, but now you’re against me. And you take things out of my room when I’m asleep, you hide things from me, I wake up and see you doing it –” his father was working himself into a frenzy now, the rage and panic that bubbled constantly beneath the surface looking for an outlet. Here we go. Get ready for impact.

  “Mr Winter?” A soft female voice, and a hand resting on his father’s forearm. “I’ve made you some breakfast. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “I’m Ella, remember? I – I’m Jacob’s – um – friend. You said I could stay, remember? So I’ve made breakfast to say thank you.”

  “I – um – oh, what was I – ” his father’s hands groped and fumbled at the air as if the words he wanted were visible before him, dangling out of reach. “I can’t remember, there was something I had to –” The chink of china against wood distracted him. “Where’s Jacob? I was looking for –”

  “He’s here.” She put the knife and fork down beside the plate, letting them chink and clatter. “Would you like ketchup too?”

  A moment of blankness, as his father groped for the correct social mode, the right bit of scripted dialogue to carry him forward into the future, and then – thank God, thank God – that indulgent roguish smile re-surfaced, and his father was shaking his head and chuckling once more.

  “Jacob, you’re a disgrace,” he said. “Guests don’t cook their own breakfast.” His gaze turned to Ella. “I didn’t raise him to behave this way.”

  “I know, Dad. What am I like?” Jacob sat down in his usual place, despising himself for letting himself get carried along by his father’s tide of fantasy. His father tore at his bacon, then stabbed it greedily into the fat disc of yolk. As he watched, a plate arrived for Jacob, then one for Ella, and two mugs of tea, milky beige for Ella, the perfect burnt umber for him. The shock of eating a meal in his own house that he hadn’t cooked was so sweet that it brought tears to his eyes. He forced himself to wait until Ella took her place at the table – not the place that had once been hers, Not the one that had been her mother’s, but the seat beside him that he had mentally reserved years ago for the friends he once imagined would come home with him on the bus to visit after school.

  “Right.” His dad pushed himself away from the table. “Better get dressed. Don’t you let my son talk you into helping with the washing-up.”

  “I thought he was going to hit you,” said Ella, as soon as their father was safely out of the kitchen.

  “He wouldn’t do that.” He forced himself not to tug down the sleeves of his t-shirt. “He just gets upset sometimes.”

  “When did it start?”

  “More or less as soon as – you know. I think it was the shock.” It wasn’t the shock, it was the drinking, but that didn’t alter the truth: if she hadn’t left, his dad would never have got into this state.

  “That soon? So he’s been like this for years?” Her voice quivered.

  “We’ve managed.”

  “But how do you manage? I mean, does he go to a day centre or something while you’re at work?”

  “He’d hate that, he doesn’t like going out. He stays here.” When he said the words out loud, his father’s world sounded unbearably small.

  “And you promise he doesn’t hit you?”

  “Ella, I swear, you’re absolutely safe.” It wasn’t exactly the question she had asked, but it was the truth. He would make it the truth.

  Throughout the tasks of the morning, he was haunted by a feeling of duality. The child Ella still hovered at his elbow, frozen in the moment of disappearance, never growing, never changing, with all the sweetness and the small annoyances that had become unbearably poignant in his memory. But now, her place was filled by the Ella who had come back to him, clever enough to guess what was needed and to help without needing guidance, clinging to him the way he wanted to cling to her, terrified that their lives would whirl onwards and drag them apart again. As his father dozed off in his chair and let the last inch of liquid in his mug seep into the carpet, he seemed to lose her for a while, and roamed the house for several anxious minutes before it occurred to him to look outside.

  She was leaning against the wall by the kitchen door, her hand up to her mouth in a gesture he recognised but couldn’t quite place. Then she turned towards him and he saw that sh
e was holding a cigarette.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t want me doing this inside so I came out for a minute.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She looked at him shyly. “Do you mind?”

  “No, of course I don’t.” Did he mind? He wasn’t sure. Another difference he hadn’t prepared for. Another sign that she was a young woman, her own person. The scent of her was nostalgic, the faint tobacco tang on her hair and skin combining with the shampoo and deodorant and cosmetics that made up her fragrance, tickling against some lost sweet-ness buried in the back of his brain. “I didn’t know you did, that’s all.”

  “I don’t, not really. It just reminds me of Mum, when I was little.”

  “Why? She never smoked.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “No she didn’t, of course she didn’t, you’re getting confused.” Ella looked at him sideways, clearly convinced she was right but not wanting to argue. “Maybe she started after she left or something, and you assumed –”

  “But I remember her doing it, I promise. Not in front of you and Dad, she used to wait until you were out, but she definitely did. It wasn’t loads or anything,” she added. “She didn’t want you to know and you didn’t, that’s all.”

  “But there’s no way –” realising that he was talking nonsense, he forced himself to stop. “Are you sure?”

  “She had one every morning, as soon as you and Dad had gone. She’d see Dad off to work, and then see you on the bus, and then she’d tell me to go upstairs and get dressed or clean my teeth or something, and she’d come out here and have a cigarette. And then she’d have another one in the afternoon, about half an hour before you came home, and sometimes another one at lunchtime as well.”

  Jacob found himself laughing in shock.