by Sulivan, Tricia; Nevill, Adam; Tchaikovsky, Adrian; McDougall, Sophia; Tidhar, Lavie
She was surprised and relieved to see that less than an hour had passed since she left the beach. Postcards, she thought. Don’t whatever you do forget the postcards.
She snatched up half a dozen at random from one of the spindle racks outside a newsagent’s, paid for them then retraced her steps along the esplanade.
Trevor was in more or less the same spot she had left him. She called a bright yoo-hoo, which was most unlike her. He raised his hand briefly and waved then continued peering downwards into his rock pool. She wondered what he was looking at, how soon they would be able to take a break for lunch. The smell of the sea was making her feel hungry.
They drove out to a pub called The Lobster Pot just north of Hayle. Trevor said he wanted to get away from the tourists.
“You can show me your old haunts,” he said. It was strange, the way he insisted on her having a past here even though he knew perfectly well that most of her memories dated from trips she had made with him.
Usually his elective amnesia annoyed her; on that afternoon it filled her with wistful affection.
It’s because you want what he says to be true, she thought. It reminds you that you might have selkie blood.
She laughed, and thought of Jeff Turner, asking her bold as brass where she was from. She wondered what he had meant about her understanding the sea. That might have been true once, she thought. But I gave up my knowledge. I gave myself up for lost, like the boy who drowned.
A memory surfaced for a moment and then receded. The boy on the beach that time, she thought again. He was a bad swimmer. There was no way Jeff Turner could have known about the boy, and yet he seemed to know a lot of things he shouldn’t have done. Perhaps that’s just what artists are like, she thought. The good ones, I mean. She smiled to herself, hugging the thought of Turner in his yellow cap.
Trevor was backing the Escort into a space in the Lobster Pot’s car park. He glanced at her sharply, as if she were a particularly tricky obstacle he had to navigate.
“What’s got into you all of a sudden?” He kept his eyes on her a second longer before braking hard, sending the vehicle bouncing forward a couple of inches before jerking it to a standstill like a Labrador brought up short at the end of its leash. Then they got out of the car and went into the pub. It had been refurbished in sixties modern and was rather ugly but the views from its large plate windows were spectacular. The sea shimmered like a sheet of rippled glass, its jewel colours swirling together like intertwined silks.
So beautiful, she thought. Like a foreign country.
It had been in a foreign country that the boy had died. When she was eight years old she and her mother went on holiday to Greece. They had gone snorkelling together, just the two of them, and the revelation that her mother could swim was almost as astonishing as the glimmering, luminescent world she had discovered just a few feet below the water’s surface.
Small fish, slick as knives, slipping like liquid bronze into the densely weeded crevasses in the sunken rocks. They were terribly busy, those fish. They reminded Christine of the olive-skinned, beetle-browed women hunting for bargains in the markets of Kalamata.
It was the first time she had visited a foreign country, and for Christine the holiday had become mythic in its scope and dimensions. Each day was a new page in history. Each sunset down by the harbour was like the ending of an era.
But on the ninth day of the fortnight something dreadful happened: a boy staying at the same hotel as them was killed in a swimming accident.
“He hit his head on a rock,” Christine’s mother told her. “He should never have dived in where he did. He should have known the sea was too shallow.” She said that Christine should keep quiet about the accident as much as possible, that it wasn’t fair on the boy’s family to have people gossiping about it.
“It could have been me,” Christine said.
Her mother told her sharply that she was wrong. “You would never have been that stupid. You swim like a fish.”
And it was true, or at least it was then. The odd thing was that she had never been into the water after that summer.
How strange, Christine thought. I haven’t thought about these things in years.
Trevor chose a corner table by one of the windows.
“Do you suppose they’ll come and serve us?” he said. He glanced towards the bar. “Seeing as we want to order some food, I mean.”
Trevor hated going up to the bar. That was one of the first things Christine found out about him. The discovery had disappointed her, not for what it was – the revelation that Trevor was uneasy in the presence of men more overtly masculine than he was – but because rather than admitting to his discomfiture he tried to conceal it with blustery excuses.
“I’ll go,” Christine said. “It’ll save us waiting. Have you decided what you want?”
“I’ll have the seafood pancake. And an orange juice.”
Christine thought she might have the same, only with a glass of white wine instead of the fruit juice. Trevor hardly ever touched alcohol and she had grown used to doing without it. But today she had something to celebrate and she intended to do so. Her stomach knotted with excitement at this small act of defiance.
“I know you, don’t I?” said the bar girl. She looked older than Christine by at least ten years. Her hands were ruined, by constant immersion in hot water most likely. Her hair though was still magnificent, coiled on top of her head like a great black snake. “Or I know your sister.”
“I don’t have a sister,” Christine said, laughing a little. It’s the day of revelation, she thought. She did not know if the painting was at the root of it or if the painting was just one more proof that something in her life – she did not yet know what, exactly – had begun to change. “You might know my mother though. She grew up not far from here. Ailsa Tregorrow?”
The woman shook her head. “I can’t say the name rings a bell. But it’s easy to tell you’re one of us. We all look alike.” She took Christine’s order and poured the drinks, then turned away to serve her next customer, still glancing at Christine from the corner of her eye.
One of us, thought Christine. What did she mean? The words stuck in her mind, prickly as burdock and as tenacious. She had always thought of herself as less than nothing. Not in the way the misery memoirs went on about, all that pointless self-loathing and low self-esteem. When measured against the world and all its troubles she was less than nothing, her marriage to Trevor and all. Now complete strangers were asking her who she was and where she came from.
Something turned over inside her, darting up under her ribs like a small bright fish.
A neon tetra, she thought. So colourful and brave for its size.
The boy who drowned was called Thomas Eltham. She had seen him playing on the beach a couple of times and even smiled at him but she had been too shy to actually speak and she guessed Thomas had been too shy also.
If she had overcome her shyness, might things have been different?
The wine went straight to her head, clouding her mind. When she had finished eating she went to the toilet, wondering at the body’s ability to so quickly turn one aromatic golden liquid into another. The cloakroom was at the back of the building and she could hear vehicles scrunching and backing on the gravel outside. She stared at herself in the mirror: a pale, troubled-looking woman in her mid-forties with the vague beginnings of jowls and hair streaked with grey.
What am I going to do? she thought. I can’t go on like this.
They drove back to the hotel. Trevor sometimes liked to have a sleep after lunch, especially when they were away on one of their trips, when he invariably referred to his nap as a siesta. He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed, reaching for the book on his bedside cabinet. It was a crime thriller, something by Henning Mankell or Jo Nesbo, the kind of reading he would only indulge in while on holiday. There was a bookmark keeping his place, an embroidered strip of damask with a silk tassel. Christine had made it for Trevor a
s a stocking filler years ago.
She studied his feet in their jacquard socks, his obvious contentment filling her with irritation and a restless energy. She lay down on the bed beside him then took the book from his hands and began undoing his shirt buttons. It was a month, perhaps six weeks, since they’d had sex. He stiffened almost immediately beneath her touch.
The last couple of years had seen him thicken around the waist a bit but she didn’t mind that. She lifted herself astride him, something she could not remember doing before even in the early days, riding him like a wave and thinking that sex with Trevor was really all right once you got him started. She imagined their bodies in close up, filmed under infrared light like dugongs or whales. Her genitals spread and glistening like the heart of a sea anemone. Trevor’s penis, strangely animate, its blunt tip blindly questing as a sea cucumber.
Holothuroids, she thought. That’s the Latin name for sea cucumbers, I’m sure. She came with a grunting gasp, as if somebody had punched her in the stomach. When she looked down at Trevor there were beads of sweat on his forehead and his eyes were closed. Wet hair straggled across his forehead, the way it had done on the promenade at Aberystwyth.
It’s the sea air, that’s all, she thought. It gets to you. Her nerve endings were still jangling. Beside her, spread on his back like a beached grouper, Trevor was already asleep.
She put on her dress, a blue cotton shift she had been meaning to wear that evening, then quietly left the room and went downstairs. The hotel felt breathlessly still, the larger reception rooms on the ground floor filled with dappled sunlight and the smell of wax polish. The reception desk stood unmanned.
The stillness seeped out through the doors, collecting in golden puddles on the pavement outside. She walked down the steep main street towards the harbour. The tide was in now. The harbour wall curved inwards, like a protecting arm. Christine stood and looked down at the water, which was so clear she could see all the way to the bottom. Large rocks rose up like castles, granite buttresses cloaked with barnacles and Cladophora. Christine wondered what else might be down there, further out.
She walked out on to the jetty then sat down on the concrete and took off her sandals. She hooked both arms over the guard rail and allowed her feet to dangle in the water. The sea encased her soles like silken slippers. She wished she could submerge herself completely. How strange it was, she thought, that she had not thought to pack a swimming costume. She didn’t know if she even owned one any more.
“It’s lovely in, you should try it.”
Christine started with surprise, almost losing her grip on the metal railing. There was a girl, below her in the sea close to the jetty. She was treading water. Her wet hair clung to her head like a coat of dark paint. She was wearing a pair of black briefs, or bikini pants, but otherwise she was naked. Her breasts with their large nipples bobbed about in the green glass water like the udders of some mythical sea creature. Christine stared at them without blinking. She tried to imagine her own body in a similar state, twisting and thrusting in the water like a manatee’s.
The girl’s face was somehow familiar, and after a moment or so Christine realised she looked like the woman who had served her in the pub where they had eaten their lunch.
“I can’t come in,” she said. “I don’t have a costume.”
The girl laughed. “Clothes are for land lubbers,” she said. She drew her arms sideways through the water and then upended herself, diving down to the bottom in a single motion. Christine saw her pick up some small object from the sand – a round pebble, a cockle shell – before swimming in rapid strokes back out to sea. Christine quickly lost sight of her. She wondered if she should alert someone. The girl would be over deep water by now. Christine didn’t like to think of what might happen if she got into difficulties.
She won’t though, Christine thought. She can swim like a fish.
She remembered seeing Thomas Eltham the moment before he dived into the water. He held himself straight as a bulrush, his arms pointing above his head.
The harsh white sunlight of Kalamata blazing off his ribby torso in diagonal rays.
Not there, Christine had screamed inwardly. It’s not safe.
Why had she not shouted aloud? Logic told her even then that there hadn’t been time. Guilt whispered that she had wanted to see what would happen, to have the scene play out before her eyes like in a horror movie.
She had seen Tom’s soul part from his body then swim upwards in the clear water, shaking its little boy’s head as it broke the surface then dive-leaping like a skua into the air. Diamond droplets of water streamed down, marking the place where his body had come to rest.
I didn’t really see that, she thought. I couldn’t have. And yet the memory, now that she had it, was sharp as a knife.
The boy’s father let out a roar. He plunged into the sea, churning up the water like a mustang maddened by bees.
He carried Tom’s body ashore. Another man, the father of a boy Tom had chummed up with, came tearing down the beach to help him. Later on, Christine saw Mark Eltham crying in the arms of this man as if they were brothers, though Christine’s mother told her they had only known each other since the start of the holiday. Christine wondered if they would stay in touch when they got back to England, if Tom’s death would draw them together permanently or whether they would end up wanting never to see each other again.
The other man’s son was still alive, after all.
Her grandmother used to say that when a selkie died she turned into sea foam. Christine thought that as far as dying went it didn’t sound too bad.
She unhooked her arms from the guard rail and stood up. Her feet left wet prints on the concrete, perfect outlines of themselves that began to dry and fade the moment she stepped away from them.
I should get back to Trevor, she thought. He’ll be awake by now. For the first time ever she asked herself whether she intended to remain with Trevor for the rest of her life.
What’s happened to you? she thought. The only thing that’s different is that you bought a painting.
She tried to imagine what she would do in any case if she did leave Trevor, where she would go. She had ten thousand pounds in her savings account, money that she had earned before she married. It would be enough to start with, she supposed. What was harder to think about was actually telling him.
He would not yell or cry, she knew that, he would be bewildered. She thought bewildered would be worse than angry. It would be worse than anything.
Could she really face being the cause of such unhappiness?
Just as she reached the hotel she met Trevor coming out. His hair looked uncombed, flattened from where he’d been sleeping on it. He was in the middle of tucking his shirt into his chinos.
“Where on Earth were you?” he said. “I tried calling you on your mobile but you’d left it behind.”
It was true, Christine realised. She’d gone out without taking anything, not even her room key.
“I went to have a look at the sea,” she said. “I’ve only been gone five minutes.”
“Someone was trying to call you,” said Trevor. “That gallery. They were querying our address or something. They seemed to think you’d bought a painting. I told them they must have made a mistake.”
“I did buy a painting,” she said. “The Jeff Turner. I was talking to you about it this morning.” Anger rose within her like the silver-bright column of mercury inside a thermometer. She realised that Trevor knew nothing about her. The person he thought of as her had not existed for years.
Later, in the darkness, she would wonder how things might have turned out if Trevor had smiled at her and said he looked forward to seeing the painting when it was delivered.
Instead he tutted.
“Where on Earth are we going to put it? It’s not like you to waste money.” His arms fell to his sides in a familiar gesture of irritation.
“It’s my money,” Christine said. “I thought I’d hang it in
my sewing room.” She wondered if they were having an argument, and was surprised when the idea excited her.
“The spare room? What on Earth for? Don’t you at least want to put it where people will see it?”
What people? she thought. I want to put it where I will see it. No one else. No people. She looked down at her feet. There was sand between her toes.
“Well, it’s your money,” Trevor conceded. He shrugged, as if that was the end of the matter. Christine realised that whether it was or not was up to her.
“Let’s go in,” she said. “I’m getting cold.”
She showered and changed. She realised she was putting on clean clothes for the third time that day. Whether this was carelessness or craziness she wasn’t sure; it seemed she was now capable of either. When she came out of the bathroom Trevor was sitting at the cramped little hotel desk writing notes in his all-weather journal.
He examined her warily.
“What would you like to do this evening?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Christine said. “I think I’ll just write my postcards.”
“We could go to that fish place for dinner, if you like?”
“That would be nice.”
One of the restaurants in the town had a two-star Michelin chef. Trevor cared even less about expensive food than he did about art but he always insisted on going to The Schooner because he thought Christine liked it there.
She opened her handbag and took out the postcards. There were two of the harbour, one of the lighthouse, two others of Cornish seabirds. She wrote a brief inconsequential message on the back of one of the harbour cards for her next-door neighbour Karen. The picture of the lighthouse she chose for her mother. Ailsa Tregorrow was eighty-eight now, living in a tiny one-bedroom flat in Kingston-on-Thames. Trevor seemed convinced she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, that they should start thinking about moving her into sheltered accommodation. He had been saying the same thing for ten years. Christine knew her mother didn’t have Alzheimer’s any more than she did; it was just that she no longer cared what people thought of her.
