The Sea Change (20 page)

I wait for around an hour; the time is
full-bodied and exhaustingly slow. Seeing the tea queue diminish, I make my approach,
hoping the sight of me will remind her about the telephone.

‘Sister?’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you again.
You said you could take me to the telephone booth?’

‘Yes, yes.’ She picks up the
edge of her sari, grasps my hand and slips on her sandals at the door of the house.

We walk halfway down the hill to a line of
concrete units just short of where the wave died. I follow her into a cupboard-sized
room with a narrow slit of light at the top of the wall. The heat here has fermented
into a furious temperature and it is difficult to breathe. I look up at the fan that
lies dormant above a well-organized desk. In the corner, a telephone is drilled to the
wall between two screens, which are largely redundant as the booth is in full view of
the desk. A man emerges through the door – presumably her husband. She talks to him and
he frowns at me.

‘What can you give him, sister? He
won’t take rupees.’

I look down at myself. I have nothing on me
except James’s shirt, my mother’s coral skirt and my wedding ring – the last
thing I have left of James.

‘Please, I will pay him when I am
home. Whatever he wants.’

They launch into another discussion. The
husband sighs and raises his hands, his words speeding up. She interjects, taking me by
the hand again and smiling at him as if to make my case. She turns back to me. ‘No
problem, sister. He says he will book a call. What is the destination?’ She pulls
across a blank sheet of paper from the far side of the desk and hands me a pen.

Her husband crosses his arms. He looks far
from happy.

‘Are you sure?’ I ask.
‘What did you offer him?’

‘Masala dosa and chapatti.’ She
smiles.

‘Thank you. I don’t know what to
say.’

‘You will send my wishes to your mother.
You must tell her that her daughter is well.’ Her eyes soften for a moment, and
sadness graces her face. She turns to her husband again and gestures at the log book on
the table, the one he must use to record the bookings. He runs a finger along a line on
the page, then goes to the booth to make a call.

‘Tomorrow, sister, at twelve,’
says the woman, after he has replaced the receiver. She ushers me out of the office.
‘It’s dark already. Will you stay with us?’

‘Thank you, but I have to keep
searching.’

‘With no light?’

I shrug my shoulders vaguely. Sleep seems
such an impossibility that there doesn’t seem any point in trying to rest.

‘Okay. Twelve o’clock, my
husband will be here to meet you.’

Outside, the earth turns from the sun as if
it were any other day. Night arrives in quick increments. In Wiltshire, the sunset was
always shifting with the winters and summers, but here the light departs on cue: an
inbuilt clock. The town, which would usually have glittered at night, is as dark as the
sea. Noises seep disembodied from the hillside: a foot dislodging rubble or a rat
scratching through a pipe. I try in vain to find my way back to the wreckage. The woman
was right. I’ll have to wait until morning. Back outside the office, I try my best
to sleep. But I think only of home – of Mum staring into the cavern of the bath as she
wipes it clean. Over and over she would wipe it until she could see her own eyes
blinking back at her. It was not so much the cleanliness that she enjoyed but the feel
of the enamel sliding under the cloth. It was small tasks, like that one, which absorbed
her; she never cleaned the entire house, only minor parts of it – afraid, perhaps, of
leaving things incomplete.

After reading her letter in Istanbul, I had
visited the post office in Quetta to check for more post. But she had not written again.
It puzzled me, that silence, and I found I thought of her
more often.
When we arrived in Lahore, James picked up an aerogramme, which had been there for more
than a week.

Dear Alice,

I hope this finds you safe in Lahore. You would have been very proud of me: last
week, I took a trip up to London on my own to the British Library to look at
some paintings and photographs of Pakistan. I had to put in a request for the
photographs before I arrived. I thought it would help me – to be able to picture
where you are. I couldn’t quite imagine Pakistan before, let alone Lahore;
it seemed to blur with India and Afghanistan in my mind. But now I can envisage
perfectly that dusty red stone which they use in the buildings and the flatness
of it all. The train was diverted awfully on the way back from the library. I
was glad your father couldn’t see me; I have never been good with
journeys, not in the way that he was.

I often wonder if you ever think of him on your travels. I’m sure you do.
You had plenty of questions when you were younger. But I couldn’t furnish
you with many answers and I suppose that’s why you stopped asking. The
truth is, there is so much that I should have told you. I know you will think I
am writing out of desperation – inventing reasons to see you. But there are
things I would like to tell you, Alice, if you will give me a chance.

Your trip has been good for both of us. It has given me clarity – and I know now
what should be done. I can only hope that all these miles you have put between
us will help you see that, despite my failings – of which there are many – I do
love you. Perhaps more than a mother should.

She ran out of space at the bottom of the
page, pushing the words into a concertina in order to fit them in. I didn’t give a
moment’s thought to what she wanted to tell me, not until she
wrote to me again in Delhi. I just assumed it was another memory that she mistakenly
thought might compensate for Dad’s absence. I travelled, oblivious, from Lahore,
feeling my stubbornness towards her thaw. In Delhi, everything changed – between her and
me, between myself and James. I trailed my anger through Tamil Nadu until it settled
into numb shock. She had held onto things that long since ought to have been mine.

In my dreams, the debris evaporates with the
night and the streets are as smooth as the enamel in my mother’s bath. But the
heat soon bleeds into the morning and the smell – which pervaded even my sleep – returns
more strongly than before. I wake up to find the ruins as real as ever.

Outside the office, I have no way of telling
the time, except to watch the sun arc up to the top of the sky. It reaches its summit
but there is no sign of the husband or his wife.

In my mind I run through the digits I will
have to dial. Each number attaches itself to a body – the man at sea, the woman in the
sari. Sometimes I wonder if a person can see too much – that if what they see outweighs
what they say, something inside them will tip and sink irreversibly downwards.

Twelve noon is seven thirty a.m. British
time. There’s every chance that they’ll be at home when I ring. Even if Tim
has gone to work early, Mum will be in. When has she ever been out? Now she and Tim are
married she doesn’t have to work.

If she doesn’t answer, I won’t
have to give it words – this thing that I’ve seen. My step-dad will launch into a
flurry of reassurance: he’ll plan for a million and one contingencies – ways of
not really making things better. But Mum is the one whose voice I dread hearing on the
end of the phone, and the one that I want to hear most.

Finally the woman from the hill arrives with
her husband. Inside the office, he picks up the receiver and frowns at the tone of the
line. He tilts his hand in the air at me: it isn’t good but at least it’s
working. He passes me the phone and stands next to his
wife. I dial
the operator, wishing they’d leave me to it, but they watch me closely from the
opposite side of the desk. Finger pausing for a moment, I hold my breath, release the
dial and wait to be connected. I’m answered, and give the number in Wiltshire.
There are faint voices at each telephone exchange – I am transferred to three separate
operators. The final ring is long and low, a single tone followed by a dragging silence.
Then a click.

‘Hello, Tim Richards speaking,’
says my step-dad. His answer is so well worn that he almost sings it each time he picks
up the phone. ‘Alice, is that you?’

I can’t reply, but I know he can hear
my breathing – heavy and irregular. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Please … get Mum. I’m
in Kanyakumari,’ is all I can manage.

‘What?’

‘The wave …’

‘But – you can’t be.’
Tim’s voice becomes muffled for a moment. He is calling Mum’s name. There is
a clunk as he rests the receiver on the table. Then I hear him thumping urgently across
the house. She can’t be out. Please don’t let her be out.

‘Alice,’ he cuts in, as he picks
up the receiver again, ‘I can’t find her. Are you hurt?’

‘I – But … James is
missing … Has he telephoned or got in touch? Maybe he left a
message …’ I feel my face relaxing into tears for the first time since it
happened. ‘It took him.’

‘Don’t panic – don’t,
whatever you do, panic. We’ll find a way to get you home.’

‘I can’t leave without
him.’ The line splits our voices into echoes.

‘Everything will be all right, Alice.
I’m sure he’s all right.’ His voice roughens and trails off.

‘You’re talking as if
–’

There’s another click, the slow moan
of a dead line, then silence.

As soon as the raid was over, I ran back
with my mother and Sam to the factory. I stopped at the gate to see it completely
intact, the girls emerging one by one from the shelter. The supervisor came striding up
to us, stooping as she walked to brush the dirt from her skirt.

‘I’ll have you know that you
can’t just run away at the whiff of a siren! This is important work.’ She
stabbed her finger in the direction of the factory behind her.

‘She didn’t have a
choice.’ Sam stepped forward. ‘I made her come with me.’

‘A Yank, of all people.’ The
supervisor looked him up and down. He was twice as broad as her and at least a foot
taller. ‘You should know better than anyone how vital it is for us to keep on top
of our quotas.’ She stopped short of prodding him in the chest.

‘You can’t just coop them up
like chickens while there’s an air raid going on,’ he retorted.

‘You try telling that to the War
Office.’ She turned on her heels and strode towards the girls, who had lined up in
order of their workbenches, ready to file back into the factory.

‘It’s a miracle you
weren’t hit,’ I whispered to Sally, taking my place in the line.

‘He must care about you and your ma an
awful lot, Vi, to come and rescue you like that.’ She nodded across to where my
mother and Sam were standing.

‘Not really,’ I murmured, seeing
the flower again in my father’s mouth.

It was Pete, not Sam, who had rescued us that
day, albeit unwittingly. Earlier that morning, soon after he had started milking the
cows, he was met by a private in uniform who took him to some buildings at the far end
of the farm.

‘You’re to stand guard
here,’ the soldier said, pointing at the barns.

‘Why? What’s inside?’

‘It’s better if you don’t
ask questions. If you see them flying over, the Luftwaffe, I mean, I want you to light
these and throw them into the nearest barn.’ The soldier pointed to a pile of
hand-made torches – sticks with rags at the ends that reeked of meths.

‘But –’

‘Don’t worry, we’ve doused
the entire place in petroleum. She should get going in no time at all.’

‘Good,’ nodded Pete – never one
to admit when he didn’t know what was going on.

‘One more thing,’ said the
soldier, matter-of-factly. ‘It would be advisable to get away as quickly as you
can as soon as the barn is lit. We’ve built a shelter to the west, two fields away
– that should be far enough.’

On the evening of the raid, Pete had heard
engines approaching and dutifully set light to the barns. From the safety of his
shelter, he had watched as the Luftwaffe peppered the barn with bombs, stoking the fire
to a monstrous height until it looked as if a whole town had been set alight.

‘It was a decoy!’ he exclaimed,
after I explained about the suspected raid on the factory. ‘I made the Jerries
think the farm was the factory!’ Then he started to brag to others about his
involvement in
the great decoy
, as if he had known about the plot all along and
played his part valiantly.

I was in two minds about whether to tell
Pete about Sam. In the end, the decision was not mine to make. Towards the end of April,
when the Americans had been with us for nearly three
months, he met me
after my Thursday shift and I walked with him back to the farm at Coombe. Our strolls
had allowed me to steal time with him between his work and mine without being seen to be
too keen. There wasn’t anywhere to go other than the dances at Salisbury and
Warminster and I wasn’t about to show my face with him there any time soon. Not
after Freda.