by Meg Rosoff
Kit talked to Denise for a while about the music festival up the road and all the traffic and inconvenience it caused.
‘But doesn’t it bring in more business?’ asked Kit, in a voice that suggested he cared. ‘All those extra tourists?’
‘They don’t buy here, just expensive stuff from town and drugs on site. It shouldn’t be allowed.’ Lynn had her posh voice on, especially for Kit.
‘You’ll flirt with anyone,’ I said when I finally dragged him away.
‘I was not flirting.’ He rode his borrowed bike in slow circles around me.
‘Jesus, Kit, can’t you find someone else to annoy?’
‘Am I annoying you?’ He smiled his slow smile.
‘You are.’
‘That is not my intention.’
I stopped short. ‘What exactly is your intention? I only ask because every time I see you I end up feeling just … so …’
I searched for the word. Humiliated. Tears sprang to my eyes and I brushed them away with the back of my hand. Part of me knew he would take advantage of genuine emotion to advance his game, and part of me just wanted him so badly that by the time we kissed I had no thought of asking him to stop. We kissed in the middle of the road, him still on his bike, both hands on my shoulders so that if I stepped away he would fall over.
He swung his leg over the seat of the bike and with the hand that wasn’t holding it steered me off the side of the road to where the hedge hid the field beyond, and then pulled me down on top of him on the grass and slipped both hands up under my shirt and along the smooth skin of my stomach and it was skin against skin and mouth against mouth and his mouth was … Oh, what was I doing?
I knew what I was doing.
I expected urgency but he took his time, controlled matters with a precise sense of what he wanted and where and how. I couldn’t breathe for wanting and waiting and finally at long last having. And finding out just how good he was at proving that a person might almost die from wanting and having.
Afterwards I lay dazed and waited for my breath to return to normal. I turned my back on him, pulled my jeans up and hugged my knees, and he touched my face calmly as if something had happened that was now over. But there was no quenching it for me. I yearned like a greedy child. Again, again, again.
He was standing now, holding out his hand to pull me up.
What have I done? I asked myself. What have I done?
‘You,’ he said, wrapping me in his arms and whispering close to my ear. ‘You change everything.’
I’d waited so long to hear those words that I didn’t even care that they weren’t true.
22
The next morning I came down late and everyone was somewhere else except for Hugo, who sat facing outward on the opposite side of the deck, long legs dangling, semi-invisible, drawing in his notebook with an old-fashioned pen and a bottle of black ink. He turned when I arrived and caught my eye and in that instant he knew. His expression changed not a whit, there was no flare of disgust or resignation or triumph; just the slightest contraction of the pupils and an extra beat holding my gaze and then he went back to what he was doing.
Kit and Mattie arrived when I was halfway through breakfast, followed by Alex, who’d been up for hours and had already eaten so he didn’t hang around. I went on buttering toast exactly as usual.
By now I knew that if I asked Kit how he really felt about Mattie he’d say she was an amazing girl. And me? I knew how he felt about me. I changed everything.
I think that when he said those words he meant them, though perhaps not in the deeper sense of actually meaning them. I racked my brain to figure it out. Was this just what relationships were like these days? Whatever you felt like with whoever was there? I didn’t want to look as if I didn’t understand the rules.
Perhaps he just needed everyone to love him. Even I didn’t need that much love. Even Mattie, I thought, didn’t.
Looking up from breakfast I saw that he was still holding hands with Mattie, drinking coffee with his other hand and watching me with a small smile. When Mattie went inside to get more milk he leaned closer.
‘Don’t think so hard,’ he said in a voice that caused my whole body to flicker. ‘I can see your brain starting to smoke.’
‘Fuck you.’
He grinned.
I had stopped noticing Hugo, but became aware of him again. He got up to leave, carefully screwing the top on his bottle of ink and gathering up his drawings. He didn’t look at any of us as he walked past, and nobody much noticed him, so that when he flicked his pen, spattering a comet of black ink across the back of Kit’s white shirt, no one saw but me.
‘What shall we do today?’ Mattie asked, sitting down again.
‘I thought I’d go over Mal’s lines with him,’ Kit said. ‘Hope’s right, he’s awful at it. Seems the least I can do.’
Mattie stuck out her lower lip. ‘Oh,’ she said.
Kit grabbed her round the middle and snuffled around under her clothes like a pig till she snorted with laughter and pushed him away.
‘Why don’t you come along and play Ophelia? You’d be great.’
But that wasn’t what she was after, and she said she’d rather go into town with Mum.
‘I’m not playing Ophelia either, before you ask.’
He grinned at me. ‘Aw, come on.’
Mattie hated that he’d nearly asked me too.
‘Don’t know what you’re missing,’ he said, getting up. And then he wafted off back to Malanhope’s.
Mattie had tears in her eyes but she turned away before I could say anything. And what would I have said?
I went back up to the watchtower and lay on the bed. The day was hot and still; the temperature rose and rose. The beach would have been cooler but I was too torpid to move so I dozed and thought of Kit and his expert cool hands. I knew he didn’t feel for Mattie what he felt for me, Mattie was too pretty and simple. He came to me for something tangled, dark, compelling. That’s what I told myself.
I heard a quiet knock, so quiet that at first I wasn’t sure if it was an actual knock or just someone on the stairs. I got up to open the door, not entirely happy to be disturbed.
Surprise! Hugo.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He was angry.
‘Why is anything I do your business?’
We glared at each other for longer than was comfortable.
‘You should know better,’ he said at last.
‘Oh should I? Shouldn’t your brother take responsibility for the way he acts?’
‘Obviously.’
Obviously? I stood, hands on hips, staring at him. Uncertain suddenly. ‘What does that mean?’
‘He’s an asshole. That’s what it means.’
I stared.
‘People fall in love with him. Don’t you see?’
I knew that, of course I did, but I didn’t want to hear it from Hugo. ‘Why does what I do matter to you?’
Hugo blinked slowly. His eyes darkened and his whole expression clouded over. ‘You don’t get anything, do you?’ he asked. ‘I’m trying to help and if you weren’t so dumb you’d get it.’
His gaze shifted to the wall behind me, where my large drawing of the dead cormorant hung. Hugo stared for a few seconds, then turned and left the room, thrashing blank space out of the way to get through the door. I didn’t see him emerge again on the beach. He was either lurking in the kitchen trying to psych me out or had vanished into thin air.
I flew down the stairs. ‘Hugo!’
Alex looked up from the computer. ‘No Hugo here.’
I felt like stamping my foot in frustration. No sign of him outside the house. No sign of him inside. What was he, some kind of shape-shifter? I ran down the path to Malanhope’s but there was no sign of him there either.
‘Sorry, darling,’ Mum said.
‘Cake?’ Hope held out a plate of apple cake.
I slammed the door and turned towards home, bumping into Mal coming up from
the beach.
‘What’s up?’ he asked, frowning.
‘Nothing.’
‘Talk to me,’ he said, and pulled me away from the house.
‘Fucking Goddens,’ I said at last.
‘Ah.’
I shook my head, trying to dislodge words. ‘Hugo’s impossible. I don’t know how to be friends with him or even if it’s worth trying. Sometimes I think I like him and other times … he’s just infuriating.’
Mal nodded. ‘And?’
There was nothing I could tell him about Kit. ‘Kit …’ I started. And then closed my eyes. I didn’t know what I could say.
Mal was silent for a minute. ‘Imagine your mother was Florence Godden.’
‘No thanks.’
‘And no sign of a father. Sent away to school, dragged around the world, dropped for months with people you don’t know … it’s not much of a school for relationships.’
‘Sociopaths, maybe.’
Mal raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a bit harsh.’
I stared at my feet.
‘What about Kit?’
‘What about him?’ I could hear myself. I sounded furious.
He peered at me. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
My jaw was welded shut. I couldn’t speak even if I’d wanted to.
We walked on for a bit.
‘It’s like they’ve set themselves up in opposition to each other,’ Mal said. ‘The light and the dark.’ He paused long enough for me to wonder which was which. ‘I don’t even want to guess how they reached that point.’ Mal stopped and peered at me. ‘You’re not …’
I didn’t help him.
‘You’re not … You haven’t? Do you want to give me a bit more information here?’
I didn’t. Pathetic enough that Mattie couldn’t ask why Kit stood her up; I wasn’t about to talk about sex with a sociopath in a field.
I sighed. ‘Everything just feels like hard work all of a sudden. Summer used to be fun.’
Mal nodded. ‘I know what you mean. I’m sorry it’s turned out like this.’ He rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘But you’ll be OK. You’re smart and tough and talented.’ He tried to meet my eyes. ‘Downright amazing, you are.’
To be honest, I’d had it with amazing.
I left him and headed down to the sea. He didn’t follow. The tide was out and a handful of people still lingered on the slope of the beach. Hardly anyone was in the water, too scared of rip tides or fatal undertows to let their kids in without a lifeguard. I pulled off my shirt and dived in. The shock cleared my head. I floated, bobbing over the waves, then set off down the coast in the direction of the tide with my adequate crawl, keeping it up till I was too tired to continue. The return was much harder and I made almost no progress for ages, at last managing to scrabble up the shelf, exhausted. I stopped in a foot of water to drift, floating and spinning with the waves until I’d rested enough to stagger back up on to the warm sand to dry.
It was the best time of day, when adults drift off home for gin and families set off for supper but the sun still feels hot.
Was any pleasure more perfect than the slow progress from cold to warm?
I lay dreaming of Kit’s sure hands and slow smile, and wound barbed wire around my thoughts to exclude Hugo and Mattie.
When people express nostalgia for youth, I always suspect they have inadequate recall.
23
Two weeks left of summer.
‘Day after tomorrow’s The Big Sail,’ Dad said, ‘Mal, Kit and me. Crack of dawn, around the point, don’t expect us back till nightfall.’
‘Or sober,’ Mal said.
‘How come Kit gets to go and not me?’ Alex was furious. ‘He’s not even related.’
‘Next year,’ Mal said, but Alex wasn’t having it.
‘Remind me to grow up to be everyone’s lover boy,’ he said, and stormed off.
But Dad didn’t end up going. The stables phoned that afternoon to say Tam was in casualty with a broken arm. Dad and Mum waited hours for an X-ray, which revealed a messy fracture; they would keep her in and operate the next day. Tam was stoical but by morning the waiting and the pain had got to her and she cried and cried till they sedated her for surgery. Mum stayed at the hospital while Dad came home for a change of clothes, returning to find her groggy from anaesthesia with her arm in plaster. Mum was drawn and tired, but after all, she said, it was only a broken arm.
Back at the beach, Mal and Kit decided to go for it on their own because the tides would be exactly right and if they waited for Dad they’d lose the moment.
‘Off you go,’ Dad said on the phone, ‘don’t mind me. I’ll just borrow some of Tam’s meds for merriment.’
Mattie made a not-very-aggressive attempt to get invited along in the boat, but Mal fended her off, saying, ‘This is all about male bonding,’ and he and Kit each put an arm around her and kissed her till she collapsed laughing, and then Kit picked her up and kissed her again, in front of everyone, which made her so happy she didn’t mind staying behind.
I missed the famous kiss but heard about it from Alex, Beach Twitter working overtime to spread whatever news might be of interest to the masses.
Mal and Kit set out early in the morning on a lee tide through the deep channel. The combination of wind and water sent them off at speed.
‘They’ll have a hell of a time getting home,’ Alex pronounced. He had excellent instincts for natural forces, so no one argued. ‘Kit says he can sail, but I’m not convinced. And Mal’s mostly good at being crew. They’ll miss Dad. He never gets stuck.’
Once they left, everything felt quiet and a little flat. It pointed out with total clarity how much the summer ministry of fun (and intrigue, deception and sex) depended on Mal and Kit. Without them, life felt strangely empty.
Tam returned home from hospital late in the afternoon, filling the void with stories of the fall, the ambulance, and a general fury that she was banned from riding for the remainder of the summer. She was expected to be in plaster for eight weeks, with physio afterwards to make sure she kept full use of her hand. Nobody thought she would actually stay away from the yard, but Dad threatened such dire consequences that I almost admired Tam in advance for ignoring them. My guess was that she’d be up on Duke again in days if not hours, risking further injury, amputation or worse.
Dinner was a desultory affair, indoors because it was already starting to get cold at night and we could all glimpse September peering at us over the far edge of summer. Alex failed to start a card game, Mattie was teary (again), and I stood for some time on my widow’s walk looking through the telescope for signs of the sailors’ return. I got bored after a while. Not bored, depressed.
It was well after dark when Kit and Mal returned. They claimed to be too exhausted to talk about it.
Too exhausted to talk about The Big Sail? It was unprecedented. The whole point of The Big Sail was the aftermath, the game analysis, the post-mortem, the blame; who was completely hopeless at getting the spinnaker up, who couldn’t steer a straight line, who forgot to check that the pub closed between three and five.
But there was none of that, or almost none. Kit went straight back to Malanhope’s, claiming a splitting headache, sunstroke possibly, though there hadn’t been an over-abundance of sun. Mal went straight up to Tam’s room to offer sympathy, then stayed for a drink and to hear hospital horror stories from Dad. But he was strangely silent on the subject of the day. Dad tried to draw information but got nowhere, and anyway, his past couple of days hadn’t exactly been easy. You could see he was tired.
Our clamour for the real story just seemed to annoy Mal.
‘It was fine,’ he said. ‘Hardly the idyll I had in mind. Kit isn’t much of a sailor, we had trouble with the tides and the wind dropped out completely when we got to the point, so we just sat around in irons, didn’t make it to the pub until four. It took twice as long as it should have to get back, and it rained and once we lost the sun it was bloody
cold.’
The end.
The sketchy facts of the day were presented in an oddly joyless narrative, not crammed with the sort of hilarious anecdote we expected from Mal, not to mention the combination of Mal and Kit. It’s hard to explain how much of a disappointment it was, being the big event of the summer, and how much we’d all been waiting for the story, hoping for tales of man overboard and mutiny – true or invented, we wouldn’t have cared.
Mum asked later if we thought Mal and Kit had quarrelled, which hadn’t occurred to me but might explain the subdued story. Hard though it was to imagine Kit losing his cool, the ever-adorable Mal could be somewhat tyrannical when skippering, like almost every other sailor I’d ever met. And I suppose he wouldn’t have mentioned that in his account. I figured the real story would come out eventually, but in the meantime something about Mal’s version unsettled everyone.
The next morning was humid and grey, and a generally pissy mood reigned. Another day of clouds and bad temper made me want to hide away, possibly forever, so I went back to bed till early afternoon. Alex kept texting me to come swimming, play tennis, watch Bat TV, make lunch. I turned off my phone.
At last hunger got the better of me. When my texts for Alex to bring up some food failed to elicit a response, I put on yesterday’s clothes and went downstairs. It was nearly three o’clock and the house had an empty feel. Nobody was around; a relief at any other time that today intensified the gloom.
There was cheese in the fridge, and bread, and I stuck some of it on a plate with a couple of tomatoes, then slunk back upstairs, climbed the ladder up to the tower and sat on the widow’s walk to eat, looking out.
Even on a grey day, the beach is beautiful. A smooth cover of cloud hung just over the sea like the lid of a sandwich box; thistles, fennel and broom stood out against the beach and rows of young starlings crowded the phone wires. Across the lane I could see young bullocks, eight or so, some lying, some standing and grazing. And far off to the right was the old farmhouse, with a couple of shire horses in the meadow coloured grey with mist.
Dog walkers were famously undeterred by drizzle and I could see a few – a solitary woman with a small dog, another with two collies, an older man with a spaniel. Then further off in the distance two men with something the size and shape of a basset hound.