by Rosie Thomas
With the door closed she felt safe. A fly buzzed against the window-pane. The forlorn room held her enmeshed in its drowsy heat. There were thirteen steps from the door to the window; she had already counted them. Her belongings were unpacked, sparsely laid out on the shelves. There was nothing else to do up here and the sea and the island were bathed with clean blue light. The water of the bay was dotted with cheerful coloured sails. She should put on a swimming costume and go out, like Ivy, into the sunshine.
May had bought a new one-piece from Macy’s. It was red-and-white plaid and she had thought she looked okay in it. A bikini was out of the question and now when she put it on she saw that even this suit showed the cellulite at the top of her legs. She stood for a long moment looking at her torso in the mirror over the dresser, then blindly turned away. If she didn’t go out now she was afraid she never would. She might climb back under the bedcovers and stay there with her knees pulled up to hide her stomach.
The fly had fallen to the window-sill. The buzzing was louder and desperate. May retraced her steps to the door. But when she grasped the handle and pulled it wouldn’t open. It only shifted slightly, resisting her efforts. It was as if someone else were leaning a shoulder against it. To keep her there, within the stuffy confines of the room.
With her breath catching in her throat May pulled harder. The door suddenly sprang open and she gave a muffled croak of surprise. Without looking back she fled down the stairs and through the screen doors on to the deck. There was an old woman in the garden of the next-door house. She had been bending over a clump of tall blue flowers, but she saw May and stood up, straight-backed, watching her with uncomfortable intentness. Even at this distance May didn’t like it. She ducked her head and ran down the sandy path, rough grass whipping at her ankles.
John looked up from his book. ‘Sun cream,’ he called after her as she raced by.
‘Ivy’ll have some.’
She wanted to get to Ivy. Without thinking, May ran down to the beach. She could see her sister in her bikini, standing gracefully, her weight all balanced on one long leg and angled hip. She was raking back her hair with her fingers and talking to some boys.
When May panted up to her she half-turned, startled, and smiled. ‘This is my sister, May.’
The three boys were standing in a dazzled semi-circle. Of course Ivy drew them like moths with no thought but to incinerate themselves in her flame.
‘This is Lucas, May. And … um …’ She didn’t try to conceal the fact that she hadn’t remembered the names of the others.
‘Joel. And Kevin.’
The middle one fell over himself to supply the information. Ivy gave him a small, considered smile and he blushed. Joel was about sixteen and Kevin a year or so younger. They looked just like the two hundred boys May knew in school in New York, who all wanted to date the same twenty skinny girls. Lucas was different. He was older, perhaps even as old as twenty. He had beige-blond hair pulled back in a pony-tail, a slippery golden tan and a lovers’ knot tattooed on his left bicep. May realised that she was openly staring at him and felt dull colour rising in her face as she dragged her eyes away.
‘Your sister?’ Lucas said in amusement.
May stood with her arms folded across her chest, numbly exposed in her stupid red-and-white swimsuit, feeling the sun hot on the top of her head. ‘Have you got the sun cream?’ she demanded of Ivy. She had forgotten the eeriness of the house. It was time to retreat from all these pairs of eyes. There were two women sitting on rugs only a few yards away and John was strolling across the sand with his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts.
‘Sure.’ Ivy produced a tube from her straw bag. ‘Want me to rub some on your shoulders?’
‘No thanks,’ May snapped. She took the cream and marched away.
‘And this is my dad,’ she heard Ivy saying.
‘Hi. I’m John Duhane.’
Marian was already on her feet, on her way to greet the newcomer.
‘I’m so pleased someone has taken the Bennisons’ place. I couldn’t bear to think of it sitting empty, with all that sadness trapped inside it. Are the young women your daughters? They’ll make the house laugh again, I know they will.’
John hadn’t yet told Ivy and May about the death of the Bennison girl. It had seemed the last of too many negatives about the whole trip, but now he knew that he should have done so.
For the moment Ivy’s attention was fully occupied by the blond boy. The two of them had already begun to wander away, the younger brothers in attendance.
Marian Beam introduced Leonie, whose arms were full of baby. ‘This is Ashton and that’s Sidonie asleep on the rug.’
‘They’re beautiful,’ John said dutifully. But it was the babies’ mother who held his interest. She had a narrow, brown-skinned face and dark eyes, which met his briefly and slid away. She was pretty in a boyish way, but what struck him about her was the way her face looked tucked in, as if she was used to concealing things.
Marian was saying, ‘There’s plenty of company here for your girls. I’ve got eleven grandchildren altogether, from Lucas down to Ashton, and they all come to spend the summers with me. Is your wife here with you?’
‘I’m a widower.’
And he saw the mother look at him over the baby’s sun-hat. ‘You’re here on your own with them?’ Marian protested. ‘I call that plain heroic.’
‘Or plain foolish,’ John answered and was rewarded by another veiled glance from the daughter-in-law.
‘You must come over and join us whenever you feel like it. How about tonight? My daughter Karyn is here with her partner and Leonie’s husband is here too …’
Ah, John thought. Of course.
‘Unfortunately the other two boys and their families won’t be getting here until later, and you must meet them then.’
‘Perhaps not this evening,’ John said. ‘We should settle in up there first. We only arrived in the middle of the storm last night.’
He looked beyond the frayed brim of Marian’s hat to the Captain’s House. It stood at a slightly different angle from the others, seeming to turn aside from them and away from the full assault of the sea and wind. He could imagine that a seafarer had built it, a man who had had enough of the weather and the elements, but still couldn’t quite leave them behind. May had been standing on the lower deck looking down at them, but now she had disappeared.
Marian was insistent. ‘Tomorrow, what about that? Come over and have a meal with us tomorrow evening.’
‘Thank you, we’d like to.’
‘That’s settled then.’
Evidently Marian Beam was a woman who knew what she wanted and insisted on getting it.
The garden between the sea wall and the deck was not really a garden at all, more a strip of grass and sand, which had been decorated in places with big rounded beach stones and low bushes. May prowled aimlessly around the limits of the area, turning back when she came to the fence painted in faded blue that separated the garden from the one next door. Orange, scarlet and ginger flowers growing on the other side spilled over the fence, making a little oasis of brilliance.
May followed a stony path down the side of the house. There was an outside shower behind a screen, a big evergreen tree with a dilapidated hammock slung from the branches, a coiled-up hosepipe, which stopped her short for a second with its resemblance to a snake. When she recovered her breath and stepped forward again she immediately knew that someone was watching her. She peered behind her and up into the branches of the tree, to the little screened windows in the side of the house. There was no one to see. A cold breath fanned the nape of her neck, even though the day had turned hot.
She turned her head slowly.
The old woman she had seen before was standing on the other side of the fence, half hidden by the green leaves of her garden. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ she said.
‘You didn’t.’ May was relieved. ‘I saw you before.’
The woman held up
a big pair of shears to show May. ‘I’m doing some pruning. Turner’s supposed to come and see to it but he doesn’t always have time to do everything. Turner’s my gardener. My mother loved this garden and I try to look after it for her sake. I suppose it’s a kind of memorial.’
The woman really was quite old, so her mother must have died long ago. May liked the idea of her daughter keeping up the garden in her memory. She wished that she had something like it to do. Sometimes she and Ivy talked about their mother, but not very often nowadays. And John hardly ever even mentioned her. He just expected them to accept Suzanne or some other girlfriend instead.
‘I like your garden. It’s pretty.’
‘Thank you. I saw you looking at the Japanese garden the Bennisons did out the front. What did you think of that?’
‘Japanese? I thought it looked like someone had dumped a whole lot of stones and left the rest to itself. Gardens ought to have flowers and stuff. Lots of colours.’
The woman laughed. ‘I think you’re right. And my mother would have approved of your ideas too. Should we introduce ourselves? My name’s Elizabeth Newton.’
‘Hi. I’m May Duhane.’
‘I’m happy to meet you, May. I saw you arriving last night.’
‘Yeah? All that rain.’
‘You reminded me a little of Doone. You still do remind me of her, as a matter of fact. Perhaps only because you’re the same age.’
‘Doone? Who’s she?’
In the quiet that followed voices carried up to them from the beach. One of them was Ivy’s and a burst of laughter came after it.
Elizabeth said, ‘Would you like to come round to my side and have a closer look at the garden?’
‘Okay,’ May said. ‘I can get over the fence here, look.’
After the tour of the garden they sat in deep wicker chairs on Elizabeth’s porch. At first sight of her May had thought that Mrs Newton must be dressed up ready to go out somewhere, maybe to a coffee party or a town meeting, or whatever it was that old ladies did in Pittsharbor. She had on a dress, silky and pleated, with a brooch pinned to the collar. She was wearing tights, too, fine pale ones that showed the brown marks on the skin of her legs, and proper leather shoes. Then, when she didn’t mention having to hurry off anywhere, May came to the conclusion that this must be how she always chose to look. It made her seem even older than she really was, as if she belonged to history instead of to May’s grandparents’ generation.
Elizabeth had proper lemonade, which she served in a tall glass jug with intricate diamond patterns cut into it. She also offered May a plate of very good chocolate fudge brownies. May took two, telling herself it would not be polite to insist that she was on a diet.
‘Who’s Doone?’ May finally asked again.
Elizabeth was looking out to sea. The island was a solid shape in the middle distance, its beach fringed with a rim of silver. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Her parents own your house.’
‘The Bennisons.’
‘Yes. Doone was their daughter. She died in a boating accident last summer. She drowned.’
May looked at her glass. There was a sweat of condensation on the smooth rim and a greasy mark where she had put it to her mouth.
‘I reminded you of her?’
‘Just because of your age. And your size and build are similar. Actually you are nothing like her at all.’
May thought again. ‘Which was her bedroom?’
‘The one on this side of the house, looking over the sea.’
‘It’s mine too,’ May said. And in case her new friend should be concerned, or think that she might be unnerved by this idea, she added firmly, ‘I like it. It’s a good room. And I’m sorry about Doone, I just didn’t know.’
Her words seemed to echo in her own ears, as if she were listening to someone else uttering them.
Two
May sprawled on the bed in Ivy’s room where her sister was getting ready for dinner at the Beams’ house. Ivy had already changed her clothes twice and May was still in the baggy shorts she had worn all day. ‘Ive, did you know about the kid?’
Ivy snapped the cap off a lipstick and coloured her mouth. She lifted one eyebrow at May in the mirror. ‘What kid? What’re you talking about?’
‘The daughter of the people who own this house.’
A shrug. ‘Nope.’
‘She drowned. Last year. Elizabeth told me. She was out sailing by herself and she fell in. She was the same age as me.’
Ivy lowered the lipstick for a second. ‘No. I didn’t know. That’s really sad.’
The shadow falling on Ivy’s face made her beautiful by dimming her china prettiness. May noticed it and for all the jealousy that clogged her veins and weighted her feet, she knew that she loved her sister. She gnawed viciously at the corner of her chapped mouth, not knowing how to deal with the realisation. She complained, ‘Why do you think Dad hasn’t told us about her? I’m only sleeping in her bedroom. He never says anything, does he?’
‘Perhaps he thought it would spook you.’
‘I’m not spooked,’ May insisted. ‘I’m not a baby.’
Ivy shrugged, losing interest. ‘Well, ask him, if you want to know. How do I look?’
‘Nice.’
Ivy had finally settled for a halter top and a tiny skirt. They left uncovered a slice of smooth flat belly. Her legs and shoulders were already turning a pale gold. ‘Nice? Don’t go crazy, will you?’
‘What d’you want me to say? How about hot? You look like you put out big-time, as it happens.’
‘Little bitch,’ Ivy retorted, not without amusement. She was in a good mood. ‘Are you going in those clothes?’
‘Does it matter?’ May jumped off the bed, needing to hide the fact that it mattered too much. ‘Anyway, what about Steve?’ Steve was Ivy’s steady boyfriend back in the city.
‘What do you care about Steve?’
‘I don’t. I thought you did, that’s all.’
Ivy had spent weeks protesting that it was because of Steve that she didn’t want to be dragged away from Brooklyn Heights and made to spend half the precious summer in some Godforsaken seaside town like a kid being sent to camp. ‘I’m here and he’s there. Besides, Lucas is okay.’ Ivy combed out her glossy hair. ‘I saw you checking him out.’
‘I didn’t. I wouldn’t.’
Ivy only grinned. ‘No? One of the kid brothers would do for you. Whatshisname, Kevin. He’s cute.’
‘Shut the fuck up, will you?’
May stared in fury. That’s how it was between them. They veered from being almost friends to raw-skinned irritation, and back again, without any episodes of moderation. Sometimes May wondered if their mother had been around whether she might have been the mediator, smoothing over the spikes of anger and making their attempts to like each other seem less clumsy. John didn’t do anything of the kind. He and Ivy seemed to occupy a different territory, adulthood maybe, which left May stranded somewhere apart. It intensified her loneliness and made her angrier still with both of them. Yet sometimes only Ivy would do: only Ivy understood anything.
She slammed back into her own bedroom. She had spent the whole day in here while Ivy lay sunbathing. The cracks in the paper and the vertical shadows that ran like thin ribs in the grooves of the panelling had already become familiar. May imagined Doone Bennison sitting reading in this same armchair, or lying on her back making figures out of the spidery lines that traced the ceiling. Perhaps she had swung her legs off the bed like this and ducked down the stairs, and then gone out to sail the boat across the bay for the last time.
What was it like to drown?
May pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, experimentally stopping the air. Her heart fluttered against her ribs and she found herself gasping for breath.
Ivy banged on the door as she passed. ‘You coming?’
It was too late now for May to do anything about the way she looked. She could have fixed her hair, at least, or chosen a looser
top to hide her fat.
She vented some of the pressure of dissatisfaction with herself by kicking the skirting beside the base of the bookshelf. A neat section of it immediately fell forward and lay on the worn carpet with the unpainted splintery back exposed. There was a rectangular black space behind it.
May knelt down and peered into the hole. Something was hidden in there.
Carefully she reached in and drew it out. It was a hardback notebook with dusty black covers and a scarlet cloth spine. She opened it at the first page and saw girl’s handwriting not much different from her own. The first word on the top line was May.
May licked her dry lips. The faint murmur of the sea swelled in her ears until the room seemed like a giant shell that amplified the greedy waves.
The book was Doone’s, it had to be. This was her bedroom, and May had kicked against her secret hiding-place. Now Doone was writing from somewhere directly to May, and the roar of the sea rose up in her ears and almost deafened her.
She read on with reluctant fascination, her fingers shaking as she turned a page.
It wasn’t her name, she realised. It was a date: 15 May, last year. This was a diary. The dead girl’s diary, tucked into its hiding-place and forgotten.
John and Ivy were calling her.
May closed the book and blew the dust off the covers. She slid it back into the hole in the wall and pressed the loose section of skirting back into place. It fitted closely, with only two vertical cracks to betray its existence. No one would bother to investigate unless they accidentally dislodged the section as she had done. She scrambled to her feet.
John was standing downstairs next to the smoke-blackened chimney stones. He had put on a clean blue shirt.
May rocked on the bottom step, glaring her latest accusation at him. ‘Why didn’t you tell us about what happened to the Bennisons’ daughter?’ It was typical of May not to offer an introduction, just to launch straight into her offensive.
