The Safe House (14 page)

‘Well…’ began Michael in an understanding tone.

‘Dad…’ I started in a wail that I recognized belonged to my childhood.

But Finn’s voice cut through, soft and clear.

‘As far as I understand it, Mr Laschen, trauma is an over-used word. People use it when they often just mean grief or shock or bereavement. Real trauma is something different. People don’t just get over it. They need help.’ Her eyes flicked to mine for a moment, and I gave her a little smile. The room felt oddly quiet. ‘Some people who are traumatized find life is literally unbearable. They’re not weak cowards or fools; they’ve been injured and they need to be healed. Doctors heal the body’s wounds, but sometimes you can’t see the wounds. They are there, though. Just because you suffered and didn’t complain, do you think other people should suffer as well?’ No one spoke. ‘I think Sam helps people a lot. She saves people. It’s not about happiness, you see, it’s about being able to live.’

Michael leaned across and took the fork, which she was still pushing around her plate. He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him gratefully.

‘Finn and I are going to make everybody coffee,’ he said, and led her from the room.

My mother noisily clattered our pudding plates together.

‘Teenage girls are always very intense,’ she said understandingly.

I looked over at my father.

‘You know what the problem is?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Your door’s sticking. I’ll bet it’s the hinges. I’ll look it over later. Have you got any carbon paper?’

‘Carbon paper? Why would I have that?’

‘For spreading down the lintel, find where it’s rubbing. There’s nothing like carbon paper for that.’

Nineteen

Once, when I was about ten, we went on our summer holiday to Filey Bay up on the east coast. I’ve never been back, and all I remember about the place is sand-dunes and a fierce and dirty wind – how it swept along the sea front in the evenings, rattling the cans that had been left lying on the pavements, sending crisp packets into the air like small tatty kites. And I remember, as well, that my father took me out in a pedal-boat. My legs would hardly reach the pedals, and I had to sit forward on the seat while he sat back, his legs – skinny and shiny white in his unaccustomed shorts – skittered away. I looked down into the water and suddenly could no longer see the bottom, just a depthless grey-brown. As if it happened yesterday, I can feel the panic that flooded through me, leaking into all the compartments of my mind. I screamed and I screamed, clutching my bewildered father’s arm, so that my mother, waiting on the shore, thought something terrible had happened, though our little red boat still bobbed safely a few yards out. I don’t feel safe with water, and although I know how to swim I try to avoid doing so. When I take Elsie to the swimming pool I tend to stand knee-deep and watch her splash about. The sea, for me, is not a place to have fun; it’s not a giant leisure centre but a terrifying expanse that sucks up boats and bodies and radioactive waste and shit. Sometimes, especially in the evening when the layered grey of the sea blurs with the darkening grey of the sky, I stand and look out at the shining water and imagine the other, underwater world that lies hidden beneath it and it makes me feel dizzy.

So what did I think I was doing going sailing with Michael Daley? When he’d phoned me up to arrange it I’d replied, in my enthusiastic voice, that I would love to go out in his boat. I like people to think that I’m brave, dauntless. I haven’t screamed with fear since I was a little girl.

‘What shall I bring?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. I’ve got a wet suit that should fit you and a life-jacket, of course. Remember to wear gloves.’

‘Wet suit?’

‘You know, the kind of rubber suit divers wear – you’ll look good in one. If we capsized you’d freeze without it at this time of year.’

‘Capsize?’

‘Has this phone got an echo or is it just you?’

‘I can’t possibly fit into this.’

I was looking at something that resembled a series of black and lime-green inner tubes.

‘You have to take your clothes off first.’ We were in my living room. Danny had gone to Stamford to buy some paint, Finn had gone to the corner shop for milk and bread and Elsie was at school. Michael was already wearing his wet suit, under a yellow waterproof. He looked slim and long, but faintly absurd, like an astronaut without his spaceship, like a fish out of water.

‘Oh.’

‘Put a swimsuit on underneath.’

‘Right. I think that I’ll do this in my bedrom. Help yourself to coffee.’

Upstairs I stripped down, put on my swimming costume and started to push my legs into the thick black rubber. God, it was tight. It closed elastically around my thighs and I tugged it up over my hips. My skin felt as if it were suffocating. The worst bit was getting my arms into the sleeves; I felt as if my body was going to buckle under the pull of the rubber. The zip did up behind but I couldn’t reach it – indeed, I could hardly lift my arms higher than horizontal.

‘Are you all right?’ called Michael.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want any help?’

‘Yes.’

He came into the room and I saw us both in the mirror, long-legged moon-walkers.

‘I was right, it does suit you,’ he said and I pulled my stomach in self-consciously as he did up the zip, its cold metal and his warm fingers running up my knobbled spine. His breath blew against my hair.

‘Put your boots on’ – he handed me a pair of neat rubber shoes – ‘and then we can go.’

The wind blew in icy gusts up the pebbly beach, where Michael’s boat was pulled up in a line with other dinghies. His boat-house was apparently where he kept his windsurfers and spare tack; his dinghy lived outside in all weathers. A strange humming sound, a bit like forests on a fierce winter night, came from the denuded boats: all those cord-things (‘Shrouds,’ said Michael) which held the masts up were rattling. The small waves were whitetipped. I could see squalls rippling across the slatey water. Michael tipped his head back.

‘Mmm. Good sailing weather.’

I didn’t like the sound of that. Out in the estuary I could see the single small shape of a white-sailed dinghy, tipping alarmingly so that it seemed to stand up out of the water. There was no one else around at all. The horizon disappeared into a misty greyness. It was the kind of day when it never became completely light; a dank gauze lay across the water.

Michael pulled the thick green tarpaulin off his boat (a Wayfarer called
Belladonna
, he told me, because of her black spinnaker; I didn’t ask what a spinnaker was). He leaned into the bottom of the boat and pulled out a life-jacket.

‘Put this on. I’ll just get her rigged.’

He shook a large rust-coloured sail out of a nylon bag and started to push long flat sticks into pockets in its fabric.

‘Battens,’ he explained. ‘The sails would flap all over the place without them.’

Then he unhooked a wire from the base of the mast and cleated it into the top of the sail; the bottom be threaded through the boom – I knew the name for that – and fastened firmly.

‘That’s the mainsail,’ he said. ‘We won’t actually haul it up until we push her into the water.’

The next sail he buckled to another wire which he unclipped from the mast. He attached its outer edge to the forestay with lots of small hooks and left the sail puddled on the deck. Then he pulled a long rope through a hole at the base of its triangle and trained the ends along either side of the boat, pushing each through the handles, and tying a knot shaped like a figure of eight to stop it escaping. Finally, he produced a small black flag, tied it to a string secured to the mast and pulled it up until it wavered and then jerked into place on the mast’s tip.

‘Right, let’s pull her into the water.’

I was struck by his air of authority. His hands were strong and meticulous, his concentration was all on the job. It struck me that he must be a good doctor, and I wondered how many of his patients fell in love with him. Together we pulled the
Belladonna
, still on the trailer, down to the water’s edge, where Michael pushed her into the choppy waves while I held the rope.

‘Don’t worry about getting wet,’ he called as he clambered into the boat and started putting the rudder in and hauling up the slapping expanses of sail. ‘You’ll actually feel warmer once there’s a bit of water between your suit and your skin.’

‘Right,’ I said in a quavering voice and waded into the sea, painter in my blue hands, which stung where they hadn’t turned numb, for I’d forgotten my gloves. ‘When?’ I yelled.

‘What?’

‘When will I feel warmer? Ice is coursing around my body, Dr Daley.’

He laughed, his even white teeth gleaming, the sails rolling wildly around him. Suddenly, as first the front sail and then the back one were pulled up the mast, the boat stopped jerking around and strained purposefully; it was no longer like holding a twitching kite; more like holding a dog who is eager to be off.

‘Push her nose out a bit,’ Michael called. ‘That’s the way, and then jump in.
Jump
, I said, not fall.’

I landed in the bottom of the boat, flapping like a fish, and hit my knee. The boat keeled immediately and water slopped over the side. My face was about six inches above sea-level.

‘Come over to my side,’ instructed Michael, who did not seem unduly alarmed. ‘Now, sit on the side here, beside me, and put your toes under that strap there, it’s called the toe strap. That way if you lean out you won’t fall in.’

He was holding the tiller in one hand, and with the other he leaned forward to push down the centreboard and gathered in the rope attached to the small sail and pulled it taut. The sails stiffened and I could feel the boat lose its sluggish sideways drift and pick up speed. Indeed, it picked up far too much speed for my liking.

‘Right, Sam, while we’re on this tack and the wind’s quite gentle…’

‘Gentle!’ I squawked.

‘It won’t really pick up until we’re around the point and out into more open waters.’

‘Oh.’

‘All you’ve got to remember is that we are using the wind to take us where we want to go. Sometimes it will be coming from the side, and that’s called reaching; sometimes it will be right behind us, that’s called running. And sometimes we will be almost going into it…’

‘And that’s called falling over, I suppose,’ I croaked.

He grinned at me.

‘Your only job is to hold this jibsheet’ – he tossed the rope attached to the small sail into my lap – ‘and control it. The more we go into the wind, the tighter you pull the sail in. When we are running, you let that sail right out. When I shout “Go about”, all you have to do is let out the sail, and then pull it in on the other side. I’ll look after everything else. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘There are some spare gloves in the bow.’

I edged forward to get them, but the boat suddenly keeled further over.

‘Lean back; no, Sam, lean
back
so we keep the boat upright. Sam,
back.
’

I leaned and I felt as if I were suspended over the water, held only by brittle toes. My hands crabbed in the cold, my curved back ached, my neck lolled so that if I rolled my eyes I could see the water underneath me, alarmingly far down. The centreboard was lifting out of the water; if I looked forward, I could see water on the other side slopping into the boat. I shut my eyes.

‘We’re going about, Sam. When I say “Lee-oh”, you pull your rope free and let it flap. Then you move swiftly across to the other side as she swings around. Got it?’

‘No. If I move, the boat’s going to fall over.’

‘Capsize.’

‘You fucking call it capsize; I call it fall over.’

‘Don’t worry, Sam, we’re not going to capsize; it’s not so windy.’ I didn’t like the patronizing patience in his voice.

‘OK, let’s go!’ I shouted and tugged the rope out of its cleat. The sail flapped wildly, the boat bucked, the noise was deafening. I lunged into the middle of the boat and tripped over the centreboard. Michael pushed the tiller across and calmly stepped over to the other side, pushing my head down as he did so. The boom whipped past just above me; Michael pulled in his sheet, then mine. The noise subsided, the flapping ceased, the boat lay flat and trim on the grey water. I moved over to join him. If my hands hadn’t been stiff with cold they would have been shaking.

‘Next time, why don’t you wait until I say Lee-oh?’ he said mildly.

‘Sorry.’

‘You’ll soon get the hang of it. This is all right, isn’t it?’ The boat was quite level now and scudding along with its sails bellied and taut. ‘Just sit back and enjoy it. Look, there’s a heron. I often see it when I’m sailing. Over there’ – he pointed to a distant outcrop of rocks in the dark water – ‘is Needle Point. That’s where two currents meet. Very tricky area; especially at spring tide.’

‘We’re not going there now, are we?’ I asked nervously.

‘I think,’ he replied gravely, trimming his sail, ‘that we’ll save that for another day.’

For a few minutes, as long as the
Belladonna
kept on that course and all I had to do was sit still and watch the water coursing by and Michael’s steady profile, fair hair slicked away from his high, calm forehead, I did almost enjoy myself. The waves slapped underneath us in a steady rhythm, a finger of sun pointed through the leaden sky. Another dinghy passed behind us and the two sailors raised their gloved hands in a comradely fashion, and I managed to wave back, a cheery smile fixed to my face. Once we even had something approaching a conversation.

‘You hate to be in someone else’s hands, don’t you?’

‘I don’t actually trust that many people’s hands,’ I replied.

‘I hope you trust mine.’

Was he flirting? Because this wasn’t very good timing.

‘I’m trying to.’

‘You must be a difficult woman to live with, Dr Laschen. Does Danny find you difficult?’

I didn’t reply; a damp wind stung my cheeks and the grey sea galloped past.

‘Though he seems quite able to look after himself, protect himself. A worldly kind of chap, I should imagine.’

If my mind hadn’t been so fixed upon the far-off shoreline and the dip and thrust of the boat, the word ‘chap’ would have struck a false note. As it was, I just nodded and fiddled with the soggy knot on my rope which lay idly in my lap.

But then Michael pulled the tiller towards him until the wind was right behind us, pulled up the centreboard with one smooth movement, let out his sail until it opened like a luscious, over-blooming flower and told me to pull my sail across so that it filled with wind on the other side.

‘A spot of running now, I think,’ he said. ‘Move across; our weight should be evenly distributed.’

The bow of the dinghy lifted, and we creamed through the waves.

‘Be alert, Sam. If the wind shifts we’ll have to jibe.’

‘Jibe? No, don’t explain. Just tell me how to stop it happening.’

Michael was concentrating, now glancing up at the flag to check the direction of the wind, now adjusting his sails ever so slightly. The boat queasily rolled; we lifted and fell with a yawing motion that did strange things to my innards. My tongue was starting to feel gravelly and too large for my mouth.

‘Um, Michael.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Can you stop this boat moving around for a bit? I feel a bit…’

‘The wind’s shifting, we’re going to jibe. Let your sails flap.’

It could only have taken a second. For a brief moment we seemed to stop dead in the water while the sails hung limp. Then I watched in horror as the boom swung from its outstretched position and flung with a great sideways swipe towards us. The boat heeled over sharply. My stomach lurched and I stood up, thinking only that I had to get to the edge of the boat before I threw up.