The Sea Change (9 page)

My step-dad tore one down once – a small
cushion on a string with ‘Home is where the heart is’ embroidered on it. He
threw it onto the floor beneath the sink where it bounced harmlessly on the lino and
cosied up to his feet. He thought I hadn’t seen him do it.

James was always too kind about my mother.
He felt sorry for her, I suppose. Before we left for Istanbul, he drew up an itinerary
for her, with the dates on which we were expecting to arrive in each town. Istanbul in
early April, Tabriz two weeks later, Tehran the next day, Lahore at the beginning of
May, Delhi in June, then again in August. I was furious with him when I found out.

‘It’s nothing, Alice. I
can’t see how it will do any harm.’

‘I don’t want her to know where
I am.’

‘It’s not as if she’s
going to follow you out to Iran.’ He laughed.

‘I know. But it’ll nag me – the
fact she knows where I’m going and where I’ve been.’

‘It’s just for her peace of
mind. You’re her only daughter.’

‘Yeah,’ I scoffed. ‘And
don’t I know it.’

I wish I could sleep like Ravindra. But
there’s so much sun and nothing solid to hide behind. It makes you crave darkness,
dampness, a basement room with a floor and walls. I close my eyes and imagine our patch
of the ocean evaporating, drop by drop, so that we are lowered into a vault of glassy
columns and laid to rest on the seabed. The roof softens into a mattress and James is
next to me. We’re back to back, as we always are, curled away from each other like
an
x
in algebra. Sleep comes just as the sea
caves in on us. I
fumble around frantically for him, knowing that, if we’d broken a habit, if
we’d slept nose to nose, I could have caught a final glimpse of his face.

He gets angry when I don’t look at him
properly. But he’s older. And, unlike me, he can hold a stare. I hoped my
awkwardness would dissipate after I left school; Mum said that when I was older I would
find it easy to talk to all sorts of people. But, to my dismay, it persisted through my
adolescence and into my university years. Even after all our months together, I prefer
the ground or the sky to the sight of James returning my gaze.

‘What are you drawing?’ he
asked, when we first met. I was sketching the sea of tents that stretched over the
fields ahead of us.

I turned the pad over.
‘Nothing.’

He sat down on the starched grass next to me
and I was aware, suddenly, of his skin and eyes and mess of hair – aware of them without
even looking.

‘I’ve seen your pictures –
I’ve watched you work on them around the place.’ I thought of the drawings,
hidden in my tent, of ruined abbeys and palaces with their hollowed windows and
ivy-riddled stone. I felt exposed: he had glimpsed something he shouldn’t
have.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know
your name,’ I ventured.

Ignoring my question, he reached for the
piece of paper in my hand. I snatched it into a ball just in time.

‘I just wanted a closer look.’
He smiled, unfazed.

‘I was going to throw it
away.’

‘What was the point of drawing it,
then?’ He laughed, pulling out his Player’s No. 6 instead and placing a
cigarette between his teeth. He lit up with a match and cradled the flame with one hand.
Then he took it from his lips and exhaled the smoke gradually, the wind carrying it off,
like the carriages of a train. ‘I’m James.’

I did not reply; instead, I tightened my
grip on the screwed-up
ball of paper as if to squeeze out the ink. I
could hear the strum of a guitar muffling through the canvas of the tents and someone
singing the Beatles’ ‘She’s Leaving Home’. The song flurried in
places and faded in others. It spoke of sacrifice, of how they had given her most of
their lives.

‘You’re not making this very
easy for me.’ He sighed, wincing into his cigarette. I would soon learn that he
had different ways of smoking for different ways of talking.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’ He
raised a hand and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. I tried not to shrink away.
‘You’re interesting. I’d like to take your photograph.’ He
patted a brown-leather case that hung on a strap over his shoulder, smoke unreeling in a
river from between his two fingers.

‘Why?’ I murmured. The feel of
his touch on my ear persisted long after he had removed it.

He took another drag and made no reply. I
waved away the smoke as if I resented the intrusion. In truth, I enjoyed the smell –
craved it, even, like a language I could understand but not yet speak.

I never fully grasped why he chose to spend
time with me above everyone else in our cluster of tents. There were prettier girls. And
girls who had plenty more to say. As was the way at the festival, we fell into a group,
with a handful of Londoners and a Swiss couple. They were pleasant enough. But after a
day or so I found myself slipping off to watch performances with James on our own; we
sought each other out without even realizing we were doing it. I was taut, unsure of
myself or my thoughts; he was full of ease. I kept my distance from him, careful not to
brush against him in the crowds. I was aware of his movements always. After three days
together, with Sly and the Family Stone on stage, he leant in close and kissed me.
I knew then, with a flood of relief, that we were each other’s.

When I open my eyes again, there’s the
heat of the roof on my belly, the bite of the sea on my hands and a faint drone, like a
washing-machine, humming in the distance. I sit up to see a snag on the horizon.
I’ve seen so many things over the last hours – pure water raining from the sky and
falling into my open mouth, a pelican swooping down to pick us up in its beak and fly us
back to the shore – that I can’t tell what’s real any more. But I’m
sure I can see something. ‘Wake up! Wake up! Quick!’ I shout at
Ravindra.

He snaps out of his sleep and sits up so
suddenly that we have to freeze to make sure the roof stays stable. I jab at the shape
on the horizon. The more we look at it, the more I’m sure of it.

‘Start paddling!’ I cry, rolling
over onto my belly and digging my arm into the water. Ravindra mimics the movement he
taught me, lying on his stomach on the other side of the roof. We move forward at a
snail’s pace. Don’t go. Don’t let the shape go. Then he stands up, the
roof tipping like a set of scales beneath him. He waves his arms. Faster and faster he
waves them.

‘It’s coming!’ I yell.
‘It’s coming! It’s coming!’ I daren’t stand up in case the
weight of the two of us sinks the roof but I start to hear the engine, throbbing through
the water, cutting it into submission. ‘Help!’

The ship is a large tanker. A floating
house. With a flat, solid deck that I want to spread myself out on and kiss. ‘Over
here! This way!’

At first we think it hasn’t seen us.
Our arms grow limp from waving. But when I shut my eyes for a while, then open them, it
gets bigger. And bigger. Until the ship slides so close to us that its wake washes over
our roof, sinking it an inch under the water. Someone throws a rope with a life-belt
attached to it and shouts. Ravindra understands and calls back. He’s grinning: a
wide, unquenchable grin. He passes me the belt once he’s fished it out of the
water.

‘No, you go first,’ I tell him,
handing it back. He gives it to me again.

‘Alice,’ he insists.
‘Alice!’ He thrusts it at me when I don’t take it.

I give in and slip it over me, clutching the
rope. Then they winch me up. I throw the belt to Ravindra as soon as I’ve set foot
on the deck. ‘Hold on!’

After hours of moving with the moods of the
ocean, the surface of the tanker is deliciously solid beneath me. I flop down below the
walls of the deck so that the sea is out of sight. A man in a boiler suit stoops to give
me a cup of water; half the liquid misses my mouth.

There is a commotion among the crew.
Ravindra is still in the water. He’s clinging resolutely to the roof and the men
on board are heckling and shouting in Tamil. He refuses to take the life-belt.

‘It’s his house,’ I try to
explain. ‘It’s the roof of his house.’

A huddle of men deliberate on the deck. They
can’t leave him. But he’s staying on the water and won’t be persuaded.
I watch as three men are lowered in a dinghy onto the sea. He begins to flail and
struggle and splash when they take hold of him.

‘
Ithu yen veedu!
’ His
voice is pleading, almost a wail. He is inside the boat now, divorced from the roof.
Just as the dinghy is winched off the water, the sea swells, overwhelming the sheet of
metal. I wait, breath held, for it to reappear. But the water stays taciturn.

Ravindra sinks to the floor of the boat. The
crew don’t understand: it is only a sheet of rusting iron. Once the dinghy is
level with the deck, I clamber inside and sit with him. He clasps my sleeve, like he did
the roof, still holding on for dear life.

Father’s call-up date arrived from
the War Office within the week, along with the name of his platoon. The letter sat
unopened on the kitchen table – an unwanted turn of events folded inside its
envelope.

My mother and sister ate their breakfast
with it next to them and, putting to rest their knives and toast crusts, sat in silence
for almost an hour. It was as if the letter were a lingering guest whose presence
prevented them getting on with their day. I tried to distract them with talk of my
dinner at Mrs Shelton’s but it was no use. Not even the thought of pork could
distract Freda. I bragged half-heartedly about it in front of her but she seemed
indifferent to it. Every time I expressed excitement, a motherly look would spread
across her face, as if she had long since thought better of craving such simple
pleasures. I was sent after breakfast to fetch Father from the Plain. Mama did not send
me with the letter: she wanted to be there when he opened it. I found him in
Wadman’s Coppice, accompanying Albie Nash on his early-morning shooting duties;
Imber Court had given the blacksmith a gun and half a crown to keep the rabbit
population in check. When I approached, Father was readying his aim with Albie’s
rifle at the far end of the woods. The blacksmith stood next to him; he held a dead hare
strung by the feet in his left hand. I could see the mark on the animal’s head
where the bullet had entered, glistening like a third, knowing eye.

The hare dropped from Albie’s hand
with a thud when I told my father about the letter. Father himself remained unperturbed.
If anything, he became more charged, more eager, during the walk back to the parsonage.
When finally we were all together in
the kitchen, he slit the envelope
open, as though it were as commonplace as the electricity bill.

‘It seems I’ll be off within the
month, Martha.’

‘But when?’

‘The twenty-eighth of
April.’

Mama paused before collecting together the
plates on the table, burying herself in the clatter of china. Freda stared at the
floorboards.

It seems worthless now to look back on our
fear of him going off to fight; I cannot imagine it or pity it even, superseded as it
was by horrors far closer to home. He had given himself to a war that would not wait for
him to make his journey across the sea before it reached over and claimed him.

The rest of the day was full of silence.
Nobody dared mention Father’s departure, but by four o’clock every soul in
the village knew. I had only the pork dinner at Mrs Shelton’s to distract me, and
even that could not obliterate the thought of him leaving us.

After I had had dinner at the
Sheltons’ farmhouse I met Annie on the path home. She took my hand and delivered
her news, breathless.

‘Pete’s gone to the
dance … I saw Mr Archam on his doorstep, fixing a boot. And he told me
straight.’

‘Did you ask –’

‘Yes, yes, of course. He came right
out with it, as if it were no secret at all!’

A pause thickened between us.

‘We’ve got to go to the
camp,’ I resolved eventually, landing my hand on Annie’s shoulder.

‘They won’t let us in, Vi,
we’re too young.’

‘We can find a way to
spy …’

‘But there’s a war on.
They’re not about to let any Tom, Dick or Harry past the barriers.’

‘Please, Annie, I’m begging you.
Come with me. Or else I’m not afraid to go on my own.’

She let out a long sigh.

‘Please …’

‘We can’t very well go there
dressed as we are …’ she began. I could see her thawing. ‘If we go, we
must play the part in case we’re caught …’

I took hold of her arm before she could
change her mind and set off to the parsonage.

‘You’re mad, Violet.’ She
sighed, all the while following me home.

Annie loitered in the dark of the garden
while I crept upstairs in search of some clothes. I knocked on Freda’s door and
found her room empty. The crêpe dress I had wanted to borrow wasn’t there – I
assumed she had given it to Mrs Mitchell to have the hem fixed. It was probably for the
best: I’d only have snagged it on something. I settled on an old red chiffon frock
for me, a blue-velvet floor-length number for Annie and two fur stoles – one white and
the other brown – to keep us warm. Freda’s shoes didn’t quite fit so I
stuffed socks into the toes. Annie would have to make do with her school plimsolls; the
blue dress was so long that they wouldn’t be seen. We left our clothes in a bush
at the far side of the churchyard, painting each other’s mouths with a lipstick I
had retrieved from the drawer of the dresser by the front door.