The Summer of Secrets (23 page)

Her dad cleared his throat.

‘I always thought I’d have teak panelling, a proper galley. You know, fitted, with a nice finish.’ They sat again in silence. Then he raised himself a bit, shifted his backside further into the seat. ‘I mean, this ply …’ he waved his hand around at the walls.

Helen picked up a curl of wood shaving and twisted it around one finger, staring at the floor. She wanted him to be cheerful, to be planning things.

‘But it’s good, though, being on the water? It’s like the boat’s in the right place at last.’ She struggled to find what she wanted to say. ‘And there’s time to do it better, isn’t there, now you’re waterborne?’

Her dad gave her a smile.

‘Waterborne.’ It was as if his gaze was travelling through her, that she wasn’t there. ‘I always thought we’d be having adventures together, you and your mum and me.’

She felt the boat rock, heard tiny slaps of water hitting the side. Her dad’s eyes came back into focus, and he stared at her as though for the first time.

‘Funny how things work out.’

She thought of all the years he’d spent sitting in the empty hull, all those afternoons and evenings, sitting in his chair with his beer on the floor, imagining his perfect boat. Her vocal cords were tight, almost painful.

‘I wish I’d helped you before.’

He reached across to pat her knee, his gaze once more lost in a private world. She wanted to ask him why: why the boat? How did he feel about his wife leaving, what was it that made him so sad? Words crowded to the front of her head, swirling, as she tried to think how to start. The moment hovered, opening into a sense of infinite possibility before, without warning, collapsing as if it had never been. She coughed to hide her mangled thoughts and her next words came out in such a cheerful tone that she felt herself blush.

‘There’s the party tomorrow, and we’ll christen it properly.’

He gave a shake of his head. ‘She.’ He turned his face towards her and smiled. ‘They’re always she.’

Helen left him there, in the end, his eyes closed and his chin resting on his chest. It was as if he’d forgotten about her. As she climbed down on to the bank, Victoria’s head came out of her bedroom window.

‘Come round the back, I want to show you something!’

There was no sign of her, though, when Helen reached the garden. The cottage had a sleepiness about it, so she sat on the back step to wait, running her fingers against the cropped ends of her hair. The grass was yellow and defeated, and a scuffed bareness was creeping across the area nearest to the cottage. Helen thought about the Weavers and their perfectly smooth lawn, and the sprinklers circling in their choreographed patterns. If the world came to an end, the Weavers would be there, worrying about the effect it was having on their borders. The door opening came as a surprise, and she fell backwards. Victoria was wearing a beret, pulled down over one eye, and baggy black trousers with a faintly military appearance. She stepped over Helen’s supine form.

‘Come on.’

‘What are we doing?’ Helen got slowly to her feet and followed her. ‘Planning an insurrection?’

‘Not yet.’ Victoria carried on walking. ‘Though I do have a plan.’

The bottles were in the shed at the bottom of the garden, standing in a row on the shelf. Old beer bottles with hanks of flowered fabric stuffed into the tops. The glass was brown so Helen couldn’t see what was inside, but there was no missing the smell of petrol.

‘What are they?’ The fumes were making her feel dizzy, as if they were soaking into her hair, her clothes.

‘Molotov cocktails.’ Victoria regarded at them with a pleased expression. She glanced round. ‘Petrol bombs?’

‘I know what it means.’ Helen turned her head to check on the door, knowing it was stupid but unable to stop herself. ‘But why? And how did you find out how?’

‘I went to the library to find a book about it but they didn’t have one.’ Victoria was straightening the bottles, making minute changes to their positions. ‘That’s what I was doing yesterday.’

‘You don’t say.’ Helen put the heaviest sarcasm she could into her voice. ‘Nothing there under P for petrol, or T for Terrorism?’

Victoria’s voice got louder. ‘So I was wandering down the road, wondering what to do next, and there were some boys sitting on a bench and they sounded Irish, so I went and asked them.’

Helen stuck her head outside, breathing in a head-calming lungful of air.

‘Oh right. Yes, of course.’ She glanced back in. ‘Can we carry on outside? I’m going to be sick if I breathe in any more of that stink.’

Victoria seemed surprised. ‘Don’t you like the smell? I think it’s lovely.’ She carried on talking as she pushed herself upright. ‘If you must know, I found something in this book of Moira’s.’

Helen let herself fall out of the door, collapsing on the grass and taking in an exaggerated breath. Victoria wasn’t paying any attention, though, which made it all a bit stupid. She shifted back so she could lean against the wall. Moira. Of course.

‘What book of Moira’s?’

Victoria stepped over her legs and carried on towards the corner beyond the blackcurrants, where a patch of old concrete was all that remained of another old shed. Helen pushed herself up with a sigh. Victoria had settled into a spot warm from the first of the sun and as Helen followed, she couldn’t help wondering how hot the shed would have to get before the bottles spontaneously exploded. Victoria’s eyes were closed, her face tilted towards the sky.

‘A book. It was in a bag of stuff she left.’

‘What bag of stuff?’

‘Just stuff. Do you want to hear my idea or not?’

‘What idea?’

Victoria gave a long sigh. ‘My idea for the party?’ She rolled her head from side to side, letting it come to a rest facing Helen. ‘Forget the champagne and ladies with nice gloves. Let’s launch the boat with a Molotov!’

She apparently expected applause, but what the hell was she on about? Helen’s brain fumbled with her meaning for a split second before turning up a mental image of the Queen standing by an ocean-going liner, swinging a bottle, flames exploding on impact: ‘
I name this ship … boom!
’

‘Why would you want to throw a petrol bomb at the boat?’

‘Not at the boat, stupid.’ Victoria was enunciating clearly as if Helen was very stupid ‘It’s
symbolic
. We’ve got the bonfire ready to go, but instead of lighting it with a boring old match, we use the idea of breaking a bottle to launch a ship and throw a petrol bomb in.’

That was the trouble with Victoria. She made it all sound so clever and plausible, and any objections sounded so …
boring
.

‘I don’t see why you have to bring petrol bombs into it.’ Then she remembered the afternoon in Moira’s boat, listening to her going on about resisting the power of the state, of violence being a necessity in the struggle. Bombs, she had said, were symbols of action, of standing up and saying change was going to happen. ‘So whose state are you protesting against?’

Victoria sat up, locking a fist across her chest and staring over to one side.

‘Oppression in all its many forms.’ She kept her head fixed, but swivelled her eyes so they were turned towards Helen. ‘You know you want to.’

‘I don’t, actually.’ Helen scraped a thumbnail across the lichen on a lump of concrete. ‘Is this because of Moira?’

‘No, it’s because of me.’ Victoria’s voice took on an edge of annoyance, but her next words were matter-of-fact. ‘I want to see what happens, that’s all. And it won’t be any fun unless you do it too.’

It was her weak spot, as Victoria well knew.

‘OK, one. Though I don’t think you’ll be able to light a fire that way.’

‘We’d better try it then, hadn’t we?’ Victoria grew business-like. ‘The greenhouses would be the best place. No worrying about broken glass and there won’t be anyone watching.’

So the details were already worked out. As if it was a picnic or something. Helen’s attention slipped. Victoria suited the beret, the longer ends of her hair sticking out beneath the slanted edge and her eyes darkened by the shadow it cast. Helen leaned over and made a grab for it.

‘And if the peeping Tom turns up, we can ask him to join in.’ She pulled the beret on to her own head and tried to see her reflection in an old window frame propped against the hedge. It was too dirty to show her much, but she thought it suited her.

Victoria frowned.

‘Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously …’ She made a long arm and took the beret back, giving one edge a sharp pull as she settled it in place. When she was satisfied, she pointed at Helen. ‘If you’re good, we’ll get you an Arafat scarf.’

They took a bottle each, and scrambled through the hole in the fence. The field beyond had been harvested and stacks of bales dotted its expanse. Helen had an urge to run from one to the next like secret agents, but Victoria had already set off, and was far enough ahead that Helen had to jog, holding her bottle at arm’s length and hoping she wouldn’t spill any. She was beginning to feel light-headed, her limbs working independently of her brain. She pictured herself emptying the petrol on to a haystack and dropping a match on to it, and a flutter of panic jiggled under her ribcage and made her stop. What if she actually did it? It seemed possible, as if her hands were about to start the action.

‘Come on!’ Victoria’s shout jerked her back to the early heat, the intact bottle in her hand. She took a deep breath and set off again.

The glasshouses were silent. Helen hovered by the entrance, straining to hear any sound that would suggest another presence. Victoria didn’t even stop. The way she had the lighter out of her pocket and lit was almost choreographed.

‘Here we go!’

Her voice sounded thin, disappearing up and out of the broken roof. She swung her arm back and then forward and let go of the missile with a whoop. It wasn’t a very good shot, though, and it landed on a patch of ground where earth had built up on the concrete. Instead of exploding, it rolled and the flame went out. Victoria stood with her arms held out as if she was playing statues, not letting them drop until the tiny spiral of black smoke from the smouldering material burned itself out.

‘Well, that was exciting.’ She tossed the lighter towards Helen with no notice, and Helen fumbled it to the ground. ‘I hope you can throw better than you can catch.’

Helen bent down, sudden fury driving her against her better judgement. Trust Victoria to blame her for everything, when it was her stupid throwing that had been pathetic. She felt a need to do it better. It was someone else’s hand holding the lighter, turning the stiff wheel, watching the fluid inside rock backwards and forwards inside the purple plastic shell. The stuffy air was wrapping her up and she was watching from a distance as the bottle arced upwards in slow motion. And at the moment she let go, there was Victoria, stepping forward into the line of flight. Helen’s mouth opened to shout, but at the same time she felt her eyes close in denial. There was the sound of glass breaking, a thump of explosion. She didn’t want to see. She had to look.

‘Vic!’ her voice wobbled. ‘Vic, are you OK?’

She wasn’t sure her legs were steady enough to make it over to where Victoria lay huddled on the ground. The flare of flame died down, leaving the giddy after-scent of fuel. A scrubby clump of dried grass smouldered, sending out a thin plume of smoke. She gave Victoria a shake.

‘Vic!’

Victoria was shuddering. Helen touched her rounded back again, and the touch sent her rolling over, until she was lying with her arms and legs outstretched on the ground. She was laughing, her breath coming in short gasps.

‘Did you see me? Commando roll or what?’ She pulled herself up to sitting and wiped her eyes. ‘Helen, you’re a maniac. But did you see it go?’

‘It wasn’t my fault! How did I know you were going to get in the way?’ Helen rubbed her hands down the side of her legs, but it was as if petrol had soaked into her skin.

‘What was that?’ Victoria scrambled up to her feet, and came over to where Helen was standing.

‘What?’

‘I heard something.’ She held on to Helen’s arm, turning her head like a scenting dog. ‘Look, over there.’

Helen followed the line of her finger across the hedge and over to the first of the haystacks. She couldn’t see anything. Victoria bent over and ran across, playing up to her quasi-military persona. Her foot kicked at the bottle she’d misthrown, and it clattered across the concrete. Like disturbed pheasants, the twins broke cover and made a run for the house, whoops of laughter drifting behind them.

‘They must have been following us all the time.’ Victoria spotted a tiny strand of smoke some distance from the point of Helen’s explosion and went over to step down on it. ‘That’s all the world needs, Will as a revolutionary.’

‘You don’t think they’d …’ Helen was looking over the field to where the twins had vanished into the garden.

‘Try to blow up the Houses of Parliament?’ Victoria sounded amused. ‘I wouldn’t put it past them.’ She kicked at the patch of ground again, then came over to where Helen was standing.

A shiver ran up Helen’s spine, and she gave an involuntary shudder.

‘What?’ Victoria turned to look at her.

‘Nothing. Goose walked over my grave.’

‘No geese here.’ Victoria started to run across the field, turning back to shout over her shoulder. ‘Come on, I’m starving. No breakfast!’

With a last glance back at the glasshouses, Helen followed.

The bonfire had been built on the scrubby lawn at the back of the cottage, as far away from the building as possible without being close enough to the apple tree to scorch the leaves. Helen came around from the side path and stopped in surprise when she saw how big it had become. She hadn’t left until teatime the previous day, when the pile of wood had been reasonable, but nothing like this. Layers of pallets had appeared, and lengths of planking peeling with old paint. The scratched framework of an old sofa perched on the top, a layer of rusted springs supporting a loose-limbed effigy. It wasn’t much more than a pair of trousers and a jumper fleshed out with newspaper, but someone had painted a leering face on to what appeared to be an upended pudding basin, and it wore a battered captain’s cap at a rakish angle.