Deep Water

by Tim Jeal

  *

  That afternoon, Sally called up to suggest getting together. Andrea could not tell from her disembodied voice whether she would be distraught or stoical when they met. And even when Andrea found her sitting stiffly on a horsehair settee in the private bar of the Anchor Hotel, she could not guess at her mood.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t invite you chez moi, darling, but I’m turning over a new leaf.’

  Andrea looked at her open-mouthed. ‘I’ve become an unsuitable friend?’

  ‘A scarlet woman, no less. Not that anyone knows except me.’

  ‘I never told you a single thing, Sally.’

  Sally inclined her head. ‘Remember that time when you rang to ask if I knew when Mike Harrington was back from France? Don’t fuss, dear heart. Your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘My secret?’

  ‘We’re big girls, Andrea. Don’t be a silly prune.’

  Andrea couldn’t help smiling. ‘No prunes, I promise.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a gin.’

  When Sally returned with two glasses, her sprightliness had vanished and she looked depressed.

  ‘I love him, Sally. You’re right.’

  ‘As always,’ she growled, taking a large gulp of gin. ‘I’m afraid I was being serious about not seeing you. I’m out on my ear next time. So I’ve got to be good.’

  ‘Will that be easy?’

  ‘With James dead and buried? Jesus Christ!’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry, Sally.’

  ‘Don’t go on. Things could be worse. John’s a good man. Frankly, love’s a luxury at my age.’ Sally raised her glass. ‘Well, bottoms up!’ She downed the rest of her gin in one swallow. ‘If I were you, Andrea, I’d make the most of Mike while he’s still around. The only thing I regret is not making love to James more often.’ She made no sound as tears flowed down her cheeks, cutting channels through her make-up.

  ‘Will I see you at Elspeth’s?’ asked Andrea.

  Sally shook her head. ‘I can’t risk going there. John’s only agreed not to tell our son about my goings-on if I stay away. I couldn’t bear to be hated by him.’

  ‘He might not react like that at all.’

  ‘Darling, he thinks the sun shines out of his father’s bottom.’ Sally stood up and managed a stiff little smile. ‘Maybe Leo wouldn’t mind, but my Mark jolly well would.’

  Shaken by her friend’s words, Andrea tried not to imagine Leo’s righteous anger on his father’s behalf. Sally said sadly, ‘It’s been fun knowing you.’

  Andrea found a pencil in her bag, and, tearing a page from her diary, scribbled down some figures. ‘This is my Oxford number. Come see me.’ Sally took the paper without comment.

  They said goodbye in the village street outside the Methodist Chapel with the words EBENEZER, BETHEL written across the cracked yellow stucco over its door. In a God-fearing community no doctor would be able to afford to keep a wife who became a scandalous figure, and so many eyes and ears would be eager to detect the signs of transgression.

  On parting from Sally, Andrea drove to the school on the pretext of practising on the piano, the real reason for her visit being to take sheets and blankets. On an earlier occasion, she had noticed numerous small cushions in the younger children’s reading corner. Piled together, these would make a mattress of sorts. In broad daylight, with the children’s paintings on the walls, and with shells and fossils on every surface, she found it hard to imagine lying on the floor with Mike. But at night these incongruous details would fade away, leaving their improvised bed as the undisputed hub of their universe. ‘This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.’ For days, Andrea had been attributing her own tastes and likings to Mike, and not just John Donne’s poetry. Years ago, when discussing romantic love with Peter, he had quoted Freud on narcissism, claiming that lovers invariably overestimated their beloveds, since their own personalities benefited by the association. But what was wrong with overestimating, when it was so magical to value another human being highly? Nothing at all, she told herself, as she took her contraceptive cap from its box and went to the bathroom.

  By the time she left the house, having satisfied herself that the boys were asleep, it had started to rain. This bothered Andrea, not because she minded getting wet but because she had decided to say, if Leo found her bed empty, that she had been unable to sleep and had gone for a walk to relax herself. This would hardly sound convincing with rain teeming down, but she had already decided not to take the car, since it might have wakened the boys.

  When she was almost ready to leave, Andrea found that the saddle of the bicycle which Justin used was several inches too low for her. So for ten minutes at least she crept about with a torch until at last she found a spanner. On the road she was filled with a wonderful sense of freedom. Everything seemed remarkable: the rain, the velvet blackness of the sky, the wind in the telephone wires, a badger lolloping across the road.

  As she reached the school and dismounted, Mike stepped out from a wedge of darkness under the playground wall. They moved together like swimmers through the rain. He was wearing a black oilskin that made him feel bulky as they kissed. His hair was plastered down, like hers.

  ‘I’m so wet,’ she laughed. ‘Let’s hope I haven’t lost the key.’

  As she held it up for his inspection, there was a break in the clouds and the yard was bathed in moonlight. Inside the deserted classroom, the face of the clock gleamed white and the narrow ecclesiastical windows cast pale fingers across the floor.

  With the aid of a torch, Andrea fetched the sheets and blankets from the raffia cupboard where she had hidden them. Then they heaped up the cushions.

  Though Andrea most certainly did not want to think about Peter at this moment, she could not help but notice the difference between her husband’s and her lover’s bodies. When Mike had undressed and was walking towards her through shafts of moonlight, the sight of his narrow hips and waist and his long legs was so strikingly unlike Peter’s shape that she could only stare. Hastening to undress as well, she quickly unbuttoned her dress and unhooked her brassiere.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured, kissing her breasts.

  ‘I’m so cold, too,’ she whispered, slipping her underskirt and step-ins over her hips in a single movement. He held her tightly and she could feel his penis against her stomach, growing in little pulses.

  ‘Should I wear something?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve seen to it.’

  She kissed him on the lips, a long, open-mouthed kiss. The tension was building so rapidly for her that she felt faint. Mike dropped to his knees, and she to hers, their lips briefly separating before joining again; his hands were moving over her, searching, stroking. Tension gripped her more tightly. As she felt the length of his body pressing down on hers, she was amazed to find herself ready. And as he moved on her, the little cushions slid from under her hips. Yet she was scarcely aware of the floor beneath the sheet. All she knew was how easily they moved together, and how right it felt. She cried out as he entered her, and heard him gasp her name.

  ‘Don’t leave me yet,’ she sighed afterwards, holding him back.

  When she let him move, relief and triumph shone from his face. Supporting himself on his elbows, he gazed down at her adoringly. Later, he asked how old she’d been when she’d had her first lover? Sixteen, she told him. Not that she’d chosen to be seduced early. Her father had forbidden her twenty-one-year-old boyfriend from coming to the house, or taking her tea dancing, to the movies, or even for a sundae. So they’d spent hours together in his blue Jordan roadster, as far away as Westchester and Long Island – any place, outside of Baltimore, where they wouldn’t be seen by friends of her parents – and the rest had followed, more or less naturally.

  Mike chuckled to himself. ‘So you had your first affair in a car, thanks to dad.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I wish we had more light,’ he murmured. ‘I can’t see the colour of your hair.
’

  ‘I guess we could risk candlelight next time.’ At the very moment of saying ‘next time’ she suffered a deep stab of panic about the future.

  Until then, the moonlight had seemed kindly. Now it seemed to fall with cold impartiality on mathematical tables, on children’s paintings, and on her lover’s naked body. Andrea heard the clock ticking, quite loudly, amazed she’d not been aware of it when they first came in.

  Since any loss of consciousness would be a loss of her time with him, she resolved to remain awake, even after Mike fell asleep. Soon afterwards, he flung his head to one side as if to escape a blow and shouted indistinct words. Andrea kissed him on the shoulder and watched his face relax again. When the same thing happened half an hour later, and his body tensed, as if he would run somewhere if he could, she woke him.

  ‘It’s all right. You’re here with me.’ And she held him.

  ‘Bad dreams,’ he muttered. ‘We all have them.’

  ‘What happened in yours?’

  ‘Our engines failed when we needed them most.’ He covered his face. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Will your next trip be difficult?’

  ‘No worse than usual.’

  She kissed his frowning forehead. ‘Would it help to talk?’

  ‘It’s part of my life that has to stay separate. I couldn’t bear you to regret our time together.’

  ‘How could I regret doing this?’

  He stroked her hair and murmured, ‘We none of us happen again. This is it, now. Even in peacetime, life’s a gift that can be taken back.’

  ‘I can’t bear you to say that.’

  ‘You can bear it. I know you can.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s simple.’ He smiled mysteriously. ‘Together we’re invincible. Sorry; that sounds too naval: Indomitable, Invincible, Implacable.’

  ‘I’ll try and be all those.’

  ‘You’re crying.’ Deep dismay in his voice.

  ‘I shouldn’t be, since I’m sure you’ll be around till the war ends.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘Darling, I want to make some kind of promise for the future.’

  He placed his cheek against hers. ‘You’re so sweet, Andrea. But you mustn’t wreck your marriage for a bad risk like me.’

  She said urgently, ‘Mike, I won’t do anything right away. But if we’re still lovers in the summer, I’d like to tell Peter and Leo about us then. I would hate to go on hiding things forever.’

  ‘Just for now we’re fine,’ he said gently. ‘Friday’s as far ahead as I can think.’ Although he said this gently, he had ignored her pledge, and Andrea was hurt. Was he scared of commitment? Or had losses at sea made him dread feeling too much?

  Towards three o’clock they made love again. Then, as the dawn chorus was starting, they dressed and prepared to leave. After Andrea had concealed their sheets and blankets, they followed the beam of her torch. In the yard, a smudge of yellow light glowed behind the trees. Mike stood close to Andrea as she locked the door behind them.

  She turned to him, distressed to realise she’d forgotten to ask a favour she’d meant to mention earlier. She frowned. ‘I know Leo can be kind of grouchy; but if you could be specially nice to him when you come over, I’d really appreciate it, Mike.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘Can we meet Tuesday, before you go?’

  ‘I’d love to, but I’ll be awake most of the next night, so I ought to sleep the one before.’

  ‘Of course you must.’

  They embraced for several minutes under the carved ‘Infants’ sign before he walked her to her bike. As Andrea pedalled away, the moon was a pale disc and birds were singing everywhere.

  CHAPTER 12

  ‘Can I have a tail and a paw to keep?’ asked Justin.

  The two rabbits which Rose was skinning on the kitchen table looked pink and purple and shockingly naked as she stripped away their fur.

  Rose glanced at the boy suspiciously. ‘Why do ’ee be wanting they?’

  ‘Witch doctors have paws and stuff.’

  ‘Don’t let him have them,’ urged Leo, rolling his eyes as if to indicate that Justin was crazy. ‘Anyway, witch doctors don’t have paws, they have claws.’

  ‘A fat lot you know,’ muttered Justin.

  ‘I don’t hold with no spells,’ Rose told Justin fiercely. ‘And don’t ’ee go thinkin’ they won’t stink without preservin’.’

  Even when Justin promised to keep them outside in the garden, Rose still refused to listen. But her expression softened slightly as she took in his disappointment. ‘Tell you what tho’, my dearie, ef you want to go catchin’ lil crabs, I’ll give ’ee bacon rind for your lines. You can catch ’em by the ol’ harbour wall.’

  Justin accepted some rind with a bad grace, and then said sharply, ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you, Rose. You should have asked before borrowing my bike.’

  ‘I didn’ take it.’

  ‘Someone did; after supper or in the night.’

  ‘Stole it?’

  ‘Borrowed. I told you that.’

  ‘’Twasn’ me, stupid.’

  ‘You could have used it to go and see a boyfriend in another village.’ Justin was blushing with irritation and embarrassment.

  ‘Well I don’ have a boyfriend or a man friend, you cheeky pup.’

  ‘Maybe a witch took the bike,’ suggested Leo.

  ‘Witch doctor, more like,’ said Rose.

  Justin did not stay to hear more but stalked out of the room, slamming the door.

  ‘Did you play a joke on ’im?’ asked Rose, smiling mischievously and looking very pretty, thought Leo, despite her funny old-fashioned bonnet and long dress.

  ‘Of course not. I could play a better joke than that, if I wanted,’ he declared grandly.

  Rose let out a peal of laughter. ‘He didn’ half get angry though.’

  Rather flattered by her amusement, Leo felt confident enough to tell her that she need not expect him to eat her rabbit stew unless she cut the meat off the bones.

  ‘This time, I’ll do it. And ef you keep playin’ jokes, you won’t need to be frighted of no bones again.’

  ‘He can be a dratted nuisance sometimes,’ muttered Leo, having just realised that Justin had said something extremely worrying.

  On entering the garden, Leo was surprised to see his friend clapping his hands to chase off some cackling jackdaws, apparently robbing a nest in the elm. To see Justin – the killer of sparrows – helping other small birds surprised Leo, but not enough to divert him from the question that was making his heart thump. He walked across to Justin, and asked straight out, ‘What makes you think someone borrowed your bike?’

  Justin seemed to be about to speak, but then lowered his eyes and kicked at the dying foliage of some daffodils. ‘I only said it to annoy Rose.’

  ‘You invented it?’ cried Leo.

  ‘Are you deaf. I said, Y-E-S. Comprendo?’

  Leo followed Justin almost to the house as he strode away, but then decided against arguing with him. He didn’t believe what Justin had just said, but there were still too many days left of the holidays to risk a big row.

  *

  Andrea woke and immediately closed her eyes again, cocooning herself in the warmth of recollected pleasure. But almost at once she stirred and sat up. Oh God! Sunlight was stabbing through the gap in the curtains, casting a bright rectangle on the faded rug by her bed. She had set her alarm for eight and had gone back to sleep again, seconds after stopping it. Dazed with lack of sleep, she swung her legs to the floor. If she dressed at once, the boys might never know that she had slept in. On several other mornings she had eaten breakfast before them, so, today, if she could slip out into the lane without being seen, and then return, they would think she had been awake for hours. She struggled into a sweater and a pair of slacks, and was brushing her hair when she remembered something. What a fool she’d been not to lower the bicycle seat before going to bed.

  From the stair
s she saw the machine resting against the wall. Had it been moved a few feet down the hall since she’d placed it there before dawn? Impossible to say. At night everything looked different. To get the spanner was the work of moments; but where were Leo and Justin right now? She could hear Rose moving about in the kitchen. What could she say to explain herself if any of them saw her tinkering with the saddle? No excuses came to mind. But what the hell; it had to be done. Her hands remained impressively steady as she made the adjustment and pressed down the saddle, fixing it in about a minute. How could she have neglected to do the one thing that mattered? She replaced the spanner in the tool box, and stood for moment in dazed self-reproach. At that moment the boys came in from the garden.

  ‘Are you guys going any place this morning?’ she asked, hoping to pre-empt speculation about where she had been while they’d been eating breakfast.

  ‘We’re going to catch crabs in the harbour,’ said Leo, as if announcing an impossibly boring activity.

  ‘Aren’t they caught in pots?’ asked Andrea pleasantly.

  ‘We’re only after the small ones that hang out under stones.’

  ‘And eat rotten fish and rubbish in the harbour,’ added Justin.

  ‘Chacun à son goût,’ laughed Andrea, following them out into the lane with their bicycles. As Justin swung his leg over the saddle and mounted, she saw his look of amazement. Oh Jesus, he’d already noticed that the seat had been raised. Her surreptitious readjustment would only have emphasised the significance of his discovery. She waited, desparingly, for him to denounce her. But, after glancing at her for a moment, he looked away. He knows, she thought. He knows.

  CHAPTER 13

  Until they cleared the Lizard, conditions had been ideal, with pale unbroken cloud concealing them from enemy aircaft and a choppy sea preventing the formation of a long and easily spotted wash. But below the headland, Mike could already make out, through his binoculars, a line of jagged peaks with breaking crests, and, above them, darker clouds rolling in from the west like damp ink stains seeping across the sky. Though reckoning the forecast of Force 5, gusting 6, would prove an underestimation, he was eager not to reduce speed before nightfall. So Luciole was throbbing along at almost twenty knots as she reached the top of the first big swell. She hung suspended for a moment at the crest, her screw out of the water and racing, before she hurtled down the wave’s smooth slope. Mike’s stomach was left behind long before the fishing boat’s bow hit the hollow of the wave. Out on the narrow bridge in front of the wheelhouse, wearing a Breton fisherman’s canvas smock rather than an oilskin, Mike saw the green and white curtain tumbling downwards. Soaked and spitting out salt water, he shook his hair like a dog, swearing aloud as a cold trickle reached his boots via the small of his back and his trouser legs.