The House on the Edge of the Cliff

by Carol Drinkwater

  ‘Any special instructions for the girls?’ I asked her, with a smile.

  She shook her head. Anna and Christine, eleven and eight (different fathers, neither of whom was in the picture now), were both strong swimmers, she assured me, and both fully aware of their looks and budding femininity. Sam’s three were definitely more boisterous, even Trish, a tomboy at heart, except when she was in the company of her two rather feline cousins. Then she begged use of, or even ‘borrowed’, my lipsticks and blushers, tottered about in my high heels and wrapped herself in some of the more glittery choices from my wardrobe.

  And I was fine about it.

  ‘They have sarongs and sunblock and will lie in the sun or wander off in search of shells to make bracelets and necklaces. Anna is big on handmade jewellery at present. It’s her latest “thing”, her passion, and, I have to say, she’s rather talented at it.’

  I sipped my coffee, sliced open a kiwi fruit and listened attentively, making mental notes, keen to get it all right.

  It was two years since the girls, Peter’s daughters – why do we still refer to them as girls when they will soon be approaching forty? – had been here together with their full squad of children.

  ‘Listen, neither of you has anything to feel concerned about,’ I promised, with a laugh. ‘My day will be totally dedicated to doling out ice creams and Offspring Watch.’

  ‘No more than one ice cream each, please.’ Sam’s command.

  I was in one of the bathrooms along the guest landing, unloading beach towels from an airing cupboard, readying my load for the day. Six towels with a few smaller ones in reserve. Sam and Jenny were in one or other of the bedrooms, unpacking bathers and flippers, throwing together all the paraphernalia required for the children’s hours at the beach.

  ‘Should I make sandwiches and take them along with bottles of squash or should I march them all back up to the house for a spot of lunch, a drink and perhaps a shower?’

  ‘A snack in the kitchen will work fine,’ shouted Sam. ‘Maybe take some apples with you to the beach and a couple of cartons of juice. Don’t let them dehydrate.’

  ‘Nobody needs a nap in the afternoon?’ I called through the walls, noting previous instructions, ticking them off my mental list.

  ‘No,’ was the response in unison from both mothers.

  Harry appeared, like a rabbit popping out of a hat, at my side, snuffling close.

  ‘Nanny Two?’ he began, his voice soft and conspiratorial, while nudging his frame against my thighs, sucking his thumb.

  ‘Yes, my darling?’

  ‘I can swim super-well without my armbands. Mummy’s just fusspotting.’

  ‘Good boy, that’s excellent news.’ I was counting seven towels now balanced on my knee and two small bathrobes with hoods, although the likelihood of anyone catching cold in May along this Mediterranean coast was highly improbable. For the past two weeks we had been enjoying an unseasonably warm spring, which frequently pre-empted stupendous storms, but none had yet been forecast.

  I was rooting in the cupboard for comfort clothing – baggy T-shirts, fleecy zip-up blousons – should there be a water incident. Or … Lord, I didn’t know. Water up the nose, a fall on the sand, an argument that led to tears. I was being over-cautious in the way only a non-parent could be.

  ‘Will you come in the sea with me and I can show you? Breaststroke and crawl, I can do whole widths of both, although I’m less good at crawl.’

  ‘Yes, of course. We’ll have a dip together.’

  ‘Marcus wants me to wear my armbands because then he’s the big boy, the swimming champ, and I’m the baby. But I’m not, Nanny Two. I’m six.’

  ‘I know you are, and isn’t it splendid to be six? Mummy told us last night that you had a lovely party.’

  He stared at me, his head thrown back, light toffee-brown owl-eyes beneath a frowning brow. ‘Have you ever been six?’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  I began to edge to the side of him to pass by. I would have ruffled his hair but my arms were full. ‘Grab your swimming bag and I’ll see you in the kitchen. Tell the others to get a move on. Sam!’ I called through the walls. ‘You and Jenny need to get on the road or you’ll be late.’

  ‘Can I leave my armbands in my room, please?’

  ‘No, Harry, bring them with you.’

  ‘Oh, Nanny Two,’ he whined.

  ‘Maybe we’ll wear one each. How does that sound?’

  Once Sam, Jenny and Peter were on their way, I began the almost insurmountable task of rounding up the kids to assemble on the veranda and we headed in a crocodile – Marcus at the front while I brought up the rear – carefully down the steps to the beach where we laid out our little station, ‘our camp’, for the day. Towels were placed neatly one alongside another in a row, like a brightly coloured picket fence.

  Marcus and Anna had both pointed out to me that I had forgotten to pack parasols. Oversight corrected, the boys were erecting and opening them while the girls were fussing over their costumes and the colours of the slides they would be using to pin up their hair. I was flagging, and the day had barely begun. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was already close to midday. By the time all was in place and we were settled, it would be time to start handing out the sandwiches, which, in spite of Sam’s advice, I had hastily slapped together.

  Marcus and Trish had decided to go swimming. Harry was jumping up and down at his brother’s side, eager to accompany them.

  ‘Not without your armbands,’ insisted Marcus, a tad bossily. Harry swung to me for support.

  ‘First swim with them,’ I pronounced, ‘and later we’ll see.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Tears were forthcoming. Cheeks reddening.

  ‘Harry,’ I insisted. ‘First you swim with them and we’ll reconsider the situation for the next dip after lunch, okay?’ My voice was firm, bridging no refusal.

  He glared at me, shocked by what he perceived as my unexpected lack of support. Then he acquiesced, with little grace, fretting and complaining, whimpering like a chained dog. Marcus took his hand, appeasing him, and the three of them, Sam’s delightful family, set off together into the water. Squeals as a toe, then a foot followed by another white limb breached the deliciously inviting water. The sea was calm. Turquoise blue flecked with a snowy silver, it caught the bright sunlight, like yards of unrolled silk.

  There seemed no danger so close to the shore, although I knew better than anyone that you could never count on that. Drowning happens in seconds. A body swept out to sea, never to be recovered.

  I stifled the retrospection and settled myself on my towel, leaned back on my elbows, outstretched legs bare beneath beige Max Mara shorts, to observe the high jinks and larricking in the roll of gentle waves.

  Harry was jumping up and down, showing off, beckoning to me, both arms aloft. I lifted a hand, unbalancing myself, and waggled my fingers to return his salutation.

  ‘May I borrow your comb, please, Granny?’ Anna purred, at my side. She was so ladylike, so polite. I wished she wasn’t, wished that she was a little more rough-and-tumble, edgy perhaps, more like her cousins.

  ‘Aren’t you two going in the sea?’ I urged. I turned my head and took in the exquisite beauty of the pair of them. China dolls. Skin like candle wax. Both so different, genes from their fathers, yet still with Jenny’s fine bone structure and natural refinement. They might have been off to a ballet class.

  ‘First we need to put our hair up in ponytails and buns and rub in some cream. I don’t want to go red.’

  ‘And I don’t want to peel and look all scaly like a horrid lizard,’ shrieked little Christine, with an earnest pouty expression. She had lost one of her front teeth and was lisping a little.

  I burst out laughing. ‘Lizards eat the mosquitoes that bite you and make you red and itchy, as well as the flies that congregate in the kitchen. They’re anything but horrid. I think you’ll be fine with a little cream if you keep out of the full heat. We haven’t reac
hed midsummer temperatures yet. My comb is in the green plastic pochette. Help yourself.’

  A scream from the sea caused me to jump. I was on my feet in seconds, scanning the view. Marcus and Trish were in sight, but …

  ‘Where’s Harry?’ I yelled, exposing unnecessary anxiety.

  ‘I’m here,’ he whooped, mouth wide open, popping up like a slippery seal from beneath the shallow waves. ‘I was looking at the fish, all shiny like moving spoons. There are squillions of them, Nanny Two. I’m going to count them and you can guess how many.’

  ‘You can’t, silly. There are shoals of them, but not millions. Not even thousands,’ corrected Marcus. ‘Will you throw the beach ball, please, Granny?’

  I bent to the towels and reached for a large lightweight multi-coloured ball, which I hurled towards the sea. It fell wide of its mark and rolled and bumped carelessly towards the water. Marcus loped from his turquoise bath, scooped it from the sand and lifted it above his head, arms outstretched and dripping. Aiming it horizon-wards, he pitched it with skill. Trish and Harry jumped and squealed, while I settled myself back on my towel and rolled over onto my stomach, digging into my bag for my book, Tender Is the Night. Having finished The Japanese Lover, I was now on my biannual rereading of my favourite Fitzgerald.

  Jenny’s two girls were creaming each other’s back, small nail-varnished fingers stroking and kneading in perfect circles, a fair-skinned twosome. Both were clad in striped bikini bottoms but only Anna sported her matching top. Both were flat-chested, but Anna was already self-conscious about her nipples, her budding breasts and developing girly figure.

  I smiled. ‘When you’ve done that, go and play ball with your cousins,’ I encouraged them.

  The sunblock neatly repacked in their shared toiletries bag, they slipped their hands together, like a pair of delicate angels, and took flight for the sea. Peace descended, not that I objected one iota to the children’s energies and attentions. Quite the opposite. I lifted my gaze upwards towards the house and suddenly, freakily, I heard clearly the barking of a dog. It sent a shiver through me. It sounded just like Bruce, Agnes’s dog. Bruce, yapping and frenetic. His frenzied barking that fateful night. My sixteen-year-old self bent double, crippled with cramp, shock and misery.

  Where is he, Peter?

  I don’t know.

  He’s not coming back, is he? He’s drowned, hasn’t he?

  Why these memories rising? Why this haunting?

  It had been a long time since I had allowed my thoughts to drift back to that summer, to that harrowing August night. Whenever they did, I dismissed the images forcefully. However, since yesterday, since the family had arrived or even before that, an amorphous shadow was nudging up against me, pushing its way to the surface of my mind, and I was unable to shrug it off or pinpoint what might have seeded it.

  Was it connected in some way to Peter’s impending operation? The vulnerabilities of our lives? The face of death? The apprehension that if the risk, that minuscule risk, kicked in and Peter didn’t recover, didn’t regain consciousness, I would be facing the rest of my days widowed and alone? I had spent so many years without Peter, running from him, that the few we had shared and savoured were so precious.

  ‘Nanny Two, what time can we eat our sandwiches and chocolate cake, please?’

  I lifted my gaze to the small drenched boy, his hair standing on end, chewing at his towel. His presence washed over me, a comfort as big as the world. ‘Who told you it’s chocolate?’

  ‘You always buy chocolate cos you know it’s my favourite and Mummy says you like to spoil me.’

  After our sandwiches and gallons of squash, which prompted the children to traipse one after another back to the house to wee because I adamantly refused to allow them to urinate in the sea or in the shadows of the mighty boulders that enclose our bay, we settled to books or puzzles or, in the case of Anna, threading a sparkly necklace of translucent aquamarine beads. Trish was singing to herself, drawing boats and clouds with a stick in the sand.

  The barking of that ghost dog erupted again. I glanced up, scanned the length of the sand dunes as far as the cliff top, convinced someone was there – a trespasser, a phantom – but at each raising of my head, I confirmed the grounds were empty. No man, woman or beast was prowling our hillside.

  This was absurd, irrational and absurd, and I was spooking myself over nothing. I had to get over it.

  My phone rang.

  It was my agent, Ken. His telephone call had come out of the blue, and with it a rather enticing offer. A leading role in a new play destined for London’s West End. My immediate refusal, my desire to be at Peter’s side for the foreseeable future, certainly throughout the upcoming months, took an explanation that ignited questions. After Ken had accepted my decision, we chatted and gossiped about inconsequential matters and I invited him, with his lovely wife, to fly over for a few days during the late summer season for a long overdue weekend of wine and jollity.

  When Peter was better. When he was cured.

  My skin was getting lightly bronzed, toasted in the gentle heat. I had temporarily forgotten the activities and exuberance of the youngsters: they had not broken into my conversation. It was out of character for me to spend so long on the phone. How long I didn’t know, but the sun had moved west by the time I said goodbye and switched off the call. It was still high above the horizon but noticeably to our right when I sat up and gazed out towards the water. A wispy cloud or two had entered the scene and there was a dimming of the light. I hoped this was not the first harbinger of change, of an incoming storm.

  I glanced to either side of me. Anna, on the left, was wearing her handmade necklace. It swung from her throat long and loose, reaching snakelike to the towel beneath her. She was lying on her stomach, facing away from the sea with her legs dangling in the air and her ankles crossed one around the other. Her concentration was buried in what I mistakenly took to be a picture book. In fact, it was a jewellery instruction manual.

  ‘Those beads look fabulous,’ I said.

  She glanced in my direction and lifted her left hand up to stroke them, all blues and turquoise. ‘My sea necklace,’ she cooed, beaming with pride. ‘Would you like me to make one for you as well, Nanny Two?’

  ‘Oh, that would be splendid! Yes, please. Thank you, sweetheart.’

  Beyond her, curled up on her side like a shell and facing her, was Trish. She was staring at herself in a mirror, making faces, pouting her lips, which had been striped ruby red with lipstick. Mine, no doubt. Christine was drinking lemonade from a bottle through a straw. Reaching the dregs, the air-sucking noise she was making was loud and rather disgusting.

  ‘Christine!’ screeched her older sister. ‘You are gross!’

  I wanted to tell them that Peter and I no longer used straws and alert them to the danger to sea creatures caused by all the plastic we humans were discarding, but before I could do so, Marcus had approached and was standing over my shoulders, dripping with sea water, creating a shadow between the sun and us females. He loomed large.

  An uncomfortable memory returned. Marseille 1968.

  I rolled fast towards him. ‘What is it, Marcus? You’re masking the sun from all us ladies.’

  ‘I can’t find Harry,’ he said. I couldn’t read the expression on his face because the sun was behind him, but his voice was solemn. I sat up directly.

  ‘Can’t find him? What do you mean?’ I knew I mustn’t snap. Keep control.

  ‘He and I were playing catch together in the sea. I hit the ball really hard with my hand and it went spinning far onto the beach. Harry went after it, and while he did, I had a quick dip. When I lifted my head from the water he’d disappeared.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  Marcus shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I looked from left to right along the sea front. No sign of anyone there. No small boy to be spotted anywhere.

  I jumped to my feet, spinning and turning in every direction
. ‘Might he have gone up to the house to the loo? Did any of you girls see Harry go past?’ I asked. They shook their heads, puzzled by my consternation.

  ‘Anna, run up and have a look, please. Try his room too. Marcus, in which direction did you hit the ball?’

  My eyes were scouring the length of the beach. The bay was completely empty, save for us. A few birds at the water’s edge. Gulls overhead. No other life.

  ‘Over that way. But I ran to the boulders to see if he was hiding there and he wasn’t.’

  The tide was coming in. There was a muddle of footprints close to the water’s edge: some were spreading, losing shape, soggy, filling with bubbly water, but there were none that had wandered further in any direction from our little encampment. To the sea and back, or up to the steps ascending to the house and down again.

  ‘No sign of the ball?’

  Marcus shook his head. His shoulders were rising towards his ears.

  ‘Trish, take Christine and walk up to the dunes. He might have headed off in that direction.’

  It was a wild chance without any footprints to follow. The only other possibility, where there would be no tracks at all, was seawards. Had Harry ventured into the sea, out of his depth, panicked and …? Marcus, with his head underwater, might have missed his cry for help.

  I had missed his cry for help.

  ‘Did any of you hear Harry calling? Was he still wearing his armbands?’

  That night, all those decades back, we’d heard no call, no cry, no final attempt to be saved, to warn us of the last gasping breath of a drowning man.

  Each child stared at me solemnly and shook their head. The alarm rising within me was causing my saliva to dry up. My mouth felt glued, paralysed. My phone was back in my beach bag. Should I call Peter and his daughters, or should I wait until we’d found Harry? Because we were going to find him, weren’t we? Harry hadn’t gone and drowned silently, had he? Should I call the Lifeboat?

  Yes. I knew all too well I should call it immediately. Now. I grabbed my bag, fumbling, all thumbs, for my phone.