The Sea Change (11 page)

‘Don’t worry, Mama. I did tell
her how grateful you’d both be.’ My voice sounded flat but I couldn’t
lift it, no matter how hard I tried.

‘Is everything all right? You seem a
little out of sorts,’ remarked my father, who was laying a pair of his socks on
the hearth to dry.

‘I’m fine … thank you,
Father.’ I tried to unearth a way of telling him but the words shrivelled inside
me. It was as if, by giving it air, I would make it more real.

‘Off to bed, then. We shan’t
keep you up any longer.’ My mother nodded towards the hallway, leant back in her
chair and relocated her place on the page with a finger. She always read in the kitchen,
hauling in one of the comfy chairs from the study and thumping it down next to the
stove. There was hardly any point in us having the other rooms because we spent most of
our time in there.

‘Good night. Sleep well,’ I said
to them both, walking towards my mother’s chair.

‘Sleep tight, my darling,’ she
replied, pulling me towards her for a kiss. I glanced at the volume of poetry in her
right hand and thought again of Pete. There would be no more letters. Perhaps he had
been writing to Freda as well as me. I rummaged around for a memory of her opening an
envelope with the same texture and shade of cream as the ones Pete sent to me. Unable to
recall one, I set about inventing one: a morning when I arrived at the breakfast table
to find Freda’s head bowed over a sheet of familiar handwriting. Then, in my
mind’s eye, I burnt the letter in the fire, right in front of her nose, watching
the edges curl and vanish.

Father kissed me on the forehead. I left the
kitchen and
climbed the stairs. Rather than returning to my room, I
slipped through Freda’s door and sank down on her bed. She had made an eiderdown
quilt with the same pattern of pink roses as the wallpaper she had selected from the
shop in Wilton. I ignored my reflection in the mirror above her dressing-table; the rain
had brought out all the scarlet in my cheeks and the crying had left small sacs of skin
under my eyes. I thought of Freda’s face – the notion of it marking me in a way it
had not done before. Her conker-brown curls. Her button nose. Her doll-like skin. I
couldn’t believe how naïve I’d been, worrying all this time about Annie when
the real threat was my own flesh and blood. Freda and I were not at all alike; if there
had been a resemblance, perhaps I could have forgiven him more easily.

I lay awake in bed, the inside of me a
cave, listening for her return. I tried to predict which door she would come in through
and what excuse she would give Father and Mama. Maybe she, too, had had a change of
clothes hidden in the churchyard. When, at last, I heard the latch, I crept onto the
landing. I heard my mother’s voice, as composed as a cantata, in the hall.

‘Hello, my darling, did you enjoy
yourself?’

Freda’s reply was lost in the folds of
the coat she was taking off. I watched her hang it on the stand.

‘Oh, I am glad. I expect the NAAFI
girls were good company. So kind of them to invite you.’

‘Yes, Marie’s a good sport. I
wish you’d been there, Mama. The hall was full to bursting.’

‘Your father never did like to dance
in public. He gets so bashful – you should see him!’ She seemed lost for a moment
in recollection. Then she looked up again at Freda. ‘Hurry on up to bed now.
Father and Violet are already fast asleep …’ She paused. ‘And, Freda, I
must ask that you don’t tell your sister about the dance,’ she instructed,
in a whisper. ‘If she discovers your whereabouts this evening, she’ll only
want to go along to
the next one. Heaven knows, Pete has probably tried
to take her already. He’s harmless enough right now but we wouldn’t want it
to … develop. And these dances have a way of fostering … Do you
understand?’

‘Perfectly, Mama. Pete’s a farm
boy. Violet is the parson’s daughter.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t put it
–’

‘We may as well call a spade a
spade.’

A faint look of surprise drifted across
Mama’s face. I wanted to call down from the banisters and tell her everything –
how she was wasting her concern on me. Freda was right: he was a farm boy. Just a farm
boy, for pity’s sake. And two years her junior. So why him? Of all people, why
him?

It was a redundant question. As Freda turned
from the coat stand, her eyes rose to the banisters and fell on my shadow. A smile
ghosted across her lips – so ethereal that only a sister could have seen it. She had
danced with him because, of all people, he was mine.

I lie down in the hull of the dinghy and
try to delete the sound of the sea from my ears. The water clenches and unclenches
beneath me. If it wasn’t for the thought of finding James, I would be wishing I
was back on the tanker. An hour or so later, Ravindra tugs at my shirt, thinking that
I’m asleep. I sit up to see the ocean brimming with cars, bits of buildings and
snaking cables. The wreckage gets denser the closer we sail to the shore.

It is then that we see the first body – face
down in the water, limbs splayed in a star, as if in awe of something on the seabed.
It’s a man. I’m sure of it. A white man. ‘Stop! Please
stop!’

The driver cuts the engine and we drift
sideways towards the body. Both men cover their noses. I want to back away as much as
they do. But I can’t. Not without knowing if it’s him. Ravindra sees what
I’m thinking of doing before I do it. ‘
Illay!
’ He tries to
pull me back.

I lean over the rim. My hands lock on the
body’s fingers, which have turned to putty from having spent so long in the water.
Then the smell arrives in full: putrid rot for which there is no word that fits – the
opposite of blossom. Holding onto my nausea, I roll the man over and he starts to sink.
His face is blank, descending. There is nothing left of his features, the wave having
plundered the eyes, nose and lips and, with them, any trace of a name or even a
race.

They weren’t James’s clothes. He
was wearing a striped shirt: blue and green. I want to sigh, feel relieved, but when I
slump down on the deck and shut my eyes, the face appears again, refusing to be drowned.
How many more will I have to search? What right do I have even to be looking for him?
When he married me,
I felt too flimsy for what had occurred – as if
‘marriage’ were too heavy a word for what existed between us; as if I would
sink beneath it. It’s the kind of word that takes years to own, more suited to my
mother than to me. But James and I – we married as a way of introducing ourselves to
each other: an act of childish curiosity that, to others, is the crest of something
full-bodied and substantial. And now his whereabouts is in my hands. Eleven months.
That’s all we had together before he asked me. And I’m left searching for
him, rooting him out from among the dead, convincing myself that if I’d said no,
losing him would not have meant so much.

‘Marry me.’ He’d said it
as if it were a dare. We were leaving Delhi at the time, pressed together on the top
bunk of a sleeper train with a fan whirring bird-like above our heads. His fingers had
laced into the gaps between mine as we hurtled towards the southern tip of India. This
closeness felt new to me – as if I were emerging from a deep sleep and had forgotten
everything that occurred before. I had missed him: the day – our argument – had left me
raw with longing. But now we were acting like one and the same person again, and I had
thrown myself into him, not knowing how long it would last.

‘You don’t mean it,’ I
replied.

‘You’re barely giving it a
second thought.’

‘You’re being facetious,
that’s why!’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere in the
south. On the tip of India.’

‘But what about Delhi – everything
that happened?’

‘But you love me?’

I paused. I couldn’t remember the last
time I’d told Mum, even, that I loved her. And here was James, who made the word
feel effortless. ‘You know I do.’

‘Then you can marry me.’ He was
closer now – our knees and noses were touching.

‘You’re not serious.’

‘So it’s a definite no?’
He smiled, putting a hand on the small of my back and pulling me towards him.

‘Not definite. No.’ Mum would
kill me. She’d only met him once.

We try to start the boat but the throttle
chews laboriously at the water and, with one last gulp, the engine dies. We are just a
few hundred yards from the shore. The thought of lowering my legs into that open tomb,
swimming through everything that was loved and lost, makes my throat contract. Other
bodies, numberless, must be hidden under the water, fingers flowering upwards towards my
soon-to-be-kicking feet. The man at the wheel reaches into a compartment and pulls out
two life jackets. Ravindra throws one to me and puts on his own before climbing over the
rim of the boat. Doesn’t he care what’s in the water? The driver drops his
anchor and Ravindra calls for me to follow. I stay rigid.

‘Husband!’ Ravindra shouts,
treading the sea and waiting for me to join him. For a second, there is understanding
between us. James. I must find my husband. And Ravindra must get back to his wife.

He might be drowned or buried. Or, worse,
he’s seen through our spontaneity – the haste of it all – and left me in the
wave’s wake. How unswerving he was, saying that he’d known from the start
we’d be together. But my father saw Mum for what she was and gave up. It can
happen to me too: I can be left.
I can’t recover what I ruined any more than I
can rebuild Imber
,
was what Dad said to her in the letter.
Perhaps,
after all this, James and I will suffer the same fate.

I only came close to Dad once. It was summer
and I was on the verge of my thirteenth birthday. Mum and Tim were out when the doorbell
rang. Through the spy-hole, I could see a woman with a thick, bleached bob and a paste
of makeup on
her face, which, instead of covering her skin, settled in
the contour of each wrinkle. I’d heard her heels on the paving before she rang the
bell. Mum didn’t wear heels. I slipped the chain into its rivet before opening
up.

‘Hello there … Are you
Alice?’ she asked. I nodded and narrowed the gap in the door.

‘Don’t be
frightened … please … I’m … I’ve come about
Peter Statton – or Archam, as you might have known him.’ She seemed to be testing
the name on me, to see if I would recognize it. In my childishness, I frowned.

‘You know who he is, don’t
you?’

My head bowed in an uncertain nod.

‘I’m wondering. Is Violet at
home?’

‘No,’ I murmured.
‘Mum’s out.’

The woman faltered slightly on the doorstep.
For a moment, I thought she was going to make her excuses and leave. Instead, she turned
to her handbag – a big cream thing on her arm, whose lacquer caught the sunlight like
the enamel of a car. She fished out a photograph and handed it to me. The man in the
picture, who was my father, was much changed from the portrait my mother kept of him.
There were so many things that were unfamiliar; it was hard to decide what to look at
first. He was dressed in jeans and a chequered workman’s shirt, not a uniform like
in Mum’s frame. A muddy stubble had spread itself over his jawline and his hands
were rough – not like Tim’s, which tapped at a typewriter all day. He had my eyes,
and I wanted to take them back.

‘You know my dad?’ I
whispered.

‘No … Well,
yes … I’ve known him.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘I won’t trouble you for
long … Alice.’ My name clunked uncomfortably on her tongue. ‘I
thought you and your mother might like to see the photo. That’s all.’

‘Does my mum know you?’ I asked.
She returned to her
handbag again without answering and brought out
another photograph. It was of a girl, sitting on a stool, with a stone-hard face that
seemed to resist the camera. I took hold of the photo. Again, I saw my eyes staring back
at me.

Was this a test? If I got the right answer,
would there be other pictures? I wasn’t sure I wanted more; I wanted her gone.
‘Who’s this?’

‘It was taken a long time
ago … It’s me … as a girl.’ She paused. ‘I’m
Peter’s sister.’

The woman stared expectantly at me.
Don’t you know your own family, Alice Fielding?
I scanned the picture
again for a clue as to what to say.

‘Did your mum tell you he had a
sister?’ she asked.

I didn’t answer.

‘We were quite a complicated
family,’ she added. ‘It wasn’t easy for my mother – to do what she
did …’

I frowned. The woman caught my confusion and
stepped away from the door uneasily. ‘I’m sorry … I
thought …’ There was another pause. Again she seemed to be weighing up
whether to stay or go. After a moment’s thought, she reached into her handbag
again and handed me a card hesitantly. ‘This is my number. If you ever have any
questions, you only have to call. Do you understand?’ I nodded. Sadness reared
momentarily from under her makeup, but before I could ask her anything else, she twisted
on her shoes and walked back down the drive. Before long she was hidden from sight by
the rhododendron and all I could hear was the slick clop of her heels on the road.