Tide Knot

by Helen Dunmore

  “What’s the matter, Sapphire? Why are you screwing up your face like that?”

  He really doesn’t know. Faro knows a lot about the Air, but not that humans weep.

  “I’m sad, that’s all. It’s called crying.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” says Faro eagerly, “but I’ve never seen it.” He makes it sound as if I were performing a juggling trick. “Show me how you do this crying.”

  “No, Faro, it doesn’t work like that. I don’t want to cry anymore. I’ve stopped, look. But what do the Mer do when they are sad if they don’t cry? What do you do if someone dies?”

  “We keep them in our memories.”

  “I think we should go,” I say abruptly. I want to get away from this place, with its mournful atmosphere. How could this have happened? How did the sea rise so suddenly that whole islands were swallowed by it, and people didn’t even have time to get into their boats and escape?

  I take a last look at the drowned village. There are the hulls of fishing boats chained to the harbor floor. They wouldn’t float now, even if you could bring them to the surface. Seawater has rotted their timber. What would the people who lived here think if they could see this?

  Tears are prickling and stinging behind my eyes again. I can’t help it. It hurts more to cry in Ingo than it does in the Air. I don’t want Faro to see how upset I am or to watch me with his bright, curious eyes as I do this strange human thing called crying, so I put my hands over my face. What was it called, this drowned village? It must have had a name.

  Tell me what you were called, I say very softly inside my head. Tell me your name.

  No one answers. The sea surges around me, lifting me. There’s no moonlight anymore. I can’t see anything. Ingo is dark and full of sea voices that seem to come from everywhere. The sea lifts me again and carries me away with it.

  I wake in my bedroom in St. Pirans, struggling out of a sleep that sticks to me like glue. My room is very small, only wide enough for my bed and a narrow strip of wooden floor. There’s a shining pool of water on the floor. My porthole window is open. Maybe it’s been raining, and the rain has blown in. No, I don’t think so. I dip my finger in the water and taste salt. Ingo.

  The house is silent. Everyone in St. Pirans is fast asleep. I look at the digital alarm clock that Roger gave me after I missed the school bus for the third time. Its digits glow green: 03:03. There’s a heap of wet clothes on the floor by my bed—my jeans and hooded top—and my hair is wet. I must have changed into these pajamas after I got back, but I don’t really remember. It’s all cloudy.

  But the memory of the drowned houses is all too clear. The windows looked like empty, staring eye sockets in a skull. I don’t want to think about it. I want to push it out of my mind.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT’S DAYLIGHT AGAIN. SAFE, ordinary daylight where the things that seem huge and terrifying by night shrink like puddles in sunshine.

  I’m down at the beach with Sadie. Mum’s already at work, but it’s Saturday, so no school. I’ve cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the living room, and now I’m free.

  Sadie is like daylight. When I stroke her warm golden coat, all the shadows disappear. She looks up at me questioningly, wagging her tail. We’re standing on the bottom step that leads down to Polquidden Beach. Am I going to let her run?

  I am. Dogs are allowed onto the beach after the first of October, and it’s mid-November now. Sadie’s got a good memory, though, and that’s why she’s hesitating. She remembers that when we first moved to St. Pirans in September, dogs were still banned from the beach. Every year from April to October, when the visitors are here, dogs have to keep away. I think it’s unfair, but Mum says you couldn’t have dog dirt on the sand where people are sunbathing.

  All September I had to keep on explaining to Sadie: “I’m sorry, I know you want to run on the sand, but you can’t.” The more I get to know Sadie, the more I realize how much she understands. She doesn’t have to rely on words. Sadie can tell from the way I walk into a room what kind of mood I’m in.

  Now she’s quivering with excitement, but she still waits patiently on the step.

  “Go on, Sadie girl! It’s all right; you can run where you like today.” Sadie stretches her body, gives one leap of pure pleasure, and then settles to the serious business of chasing a seagull in crazy zigzags over the sand. Sadie has never caught a gull, and I’m sure this gull knows that. It’s leading her on, teasing her, skimming low over the sand to get Sadie’s hopes high, then soaring as she rushes toward it.

  I want Sadie to run and run, as far as she likes. I know she’ll come back when I call. And besides, I want her to be free.

  Since we moved to St. Pirans, I’ve been having these dreams. Not every night, not even every week, but often enough to make me scared to go to sleep sometimes. In the dream I’m caught in a cage. At first I’m not too worried, because the bars are wide apart and it will be easy to slip out. But as soon as I move toward them, the bars close up. I try to move slowly and casually so that the cage won’t know what I’m planning, but every time, the bars are quicker than I am. It’s as if the cage is alive and knows that I’m trying to escape.

  I still can’t believe that we are really living here in St. Pirans. Can it be true that we’ve left our cottage forever? And Senara, and our cove, and all the places we love? Conor and I were born in the cottage, for heaven’s sake, in Mum and Dad’s bedroom. How can you shut the door on the place where you were born?

  Mum’s promised that she’ll never, ever sell our cottage, but she’s renting it out to strangers. The rent money pays for us to rent a house in St. Pirans, where we have no memories at all.

  It seems crazy to me. Completely crazy in a way that the adults all believe is completely logical.

  You’ll make so many new friends when you’re living in a town!

  You’ll be able to go to the cinema and the swimming pool.

  They’ve got some really good shops in St. Pirans, Sapphy.

  Why would anyone who lives by the sea want to go to a swimming pool anyway? Swimming pools are tame and bland and fake blue, and they stink of chlorine. The water is dead because of all the chemicals they put into it. The sea is alive. Every drop in it is full of life. If you put water from a swimming pool under a microscope, there would be nothing. Or maybe some bacteria if they haven’t put enough chemicals in.

  Even the sea gets crowded in St. Pirans. It’s quieter now because the season’s over, but everyone keeps telling us, Wait until the summer months. You’re lucky if you can find a patch of sand to put your towel down in August. There are four beaches and a harbor and thousands and thousands of tourists, who swarm all over the town like bees. Conor and I sometimes used to come to St. Pirans for a day while we were still living in Senara. Just for a change. A day was always enough. You can’t swim without getting whacked by someone’s board. Sometimes there are even fights between different groups of surfers, the ones who are local and the ones who have come here in vans from upcountry. They fight over such big issues as one surfer’s dropping in on another surfer’s wave. Imagine thinking that the sea belongs to you and fighting over waves. That’s another sort of St. Pirans craziness. I must tell Faro about it. It would make him laugh.

  “Sadie! Sadie!” Suddenly I see that Sadie is way over the other side of the beach, bounding toward a tiny little dog. It’s a Yorkshire terrier, I think, skittering about by the water’s edge. Sadie won’t hurt the Yorkie; of course she won’t. But all the same I begin to run. At the same moment a girl of about my age sees what’s happening and jumps up from where she’s digging a hole in the sand with a little kid.

  “Sa-die!”

  Is she going to listen? Does Sadie really believe that I’m her owner now? Yes! A few meters away from the terrier, Sadie slows and stops. You can see from her body how much she longs to rush right up to it. She glances back at me, asking why I’ve spoiled what could have been a wonderful adventure.

  “Good girl. You ar
e such a good girl, Sadie.”

  I’m out of breath. I drop to my knees on the wet sand and clip on Sadie’s leash. The terrier girl picks up her dog, which is no bigger than a baby.

  “I thought your dog was going to eat Sky,” says the girl. She has very short, spiky blond hair, and her smile leaps across her face like sunshine.

  “Sky. Weird name for a dog.”

  “I know. She’s not mine. She belongs to my neighbor, but my neighbor’s got MS, so I take her for walks. Not that she walks far. Sky, I mean, not my neighbor,” says the girl quickly, as if she’s said something embarrassing. “Sorry,” she adds, “too much information.”

  I don’t even know what MS is, so I just say, “Oh. I see.”

  “Is this your dog?” asks the girl longingly.

  “Yes.” It still feels like a lie when I say that. It’s such a cliché when people say that things are too good to be true, but each time I say that Sadie is my dog, that is exactly how it feels. Much too good to be true. I worried for weeks that Jack’s family would want her back, but they don’t. She’s yours, Jack’s mum said. Dogs know who they belong to, and Sadie’s chosen you for sure, Sapphire. Look at her wagging her tail there. I never get such a welcome.

  “She’s beautiful.” The girl stretches out her hand confidently, as if she’s sure that Sadie will like her, and Sadie does. She sniffs the girl’s fingers approvingly. I give a very slight tug on Sadie’s leash.

  “We’ve got to go,” I say.

  “I must take Sky and River back too. That’s River, over there at the bottom of the hole. He’s always digging holes. He’s my little brother.”

  River. Weird name for a boy, I nearly say. I stop myself in time, but the girl smiles.

  “Everyone thinks our names are a bit strange.” She looks at me expectantly. “Don’t you want to know what my name is? Or would you rather guess?”

  I shake my head a bit stiffly. This girl is so friendly that it makes me feel awkward.

  “Rainbow,” she says. “Rainbow Petersen. My mum called me Rainbow because she reckoned it had been raining in her life for a long time before I was born, and then the sun came out. My mum’s Danish, but she’s been living here since she was eighteen.”

  There is a short silence. I try to imagine Mum’s saying anything remotely like that to me and fail. The sun came out when you were born, Sapphire darling. No, I don’t think so.

  The girl—Rainbow—looks as if she’s waiting for something. She picks up the terrier, and I say, “Well, ’bye then.”

  She looks straight at me and says seriously, “You know my name and my little brother’s name and Sky’s name. Aren’t you going to tell me yours?”

  I feel myself flush. “Um, it’s Sapphire.”

  “That’s great,” says Rainbow warmly.

  “Why?”

  “I’m so glad you haven’t got a normal name like Millie or Jessica. Sapphire. Yes, I like it. What about your dog?”

  “She’s called Sadie.”

  The girl looks at me again in that expectant way, but whatever she’s expecting doesn’t happen. After a moment she says, “Okay, see you around then, Sapphire. ’Bye, Sadie,” and she goes back to where River is digging his hole.

  It’s only when she’s been gone for a while that I realize she wanted to know more about me. But there’s nothing I can do about that now, and besides, as old Alice Trewhidden always says, It’s not good to tell your business to strangers.

  You’d have thought I was Rainbow’s friend already, the way she smiled at me.

  Conor’s gone fishing off the rocks at Porthchapel with Mal. Mum was right: Conor has got to know loads of people in St. Pirans already. I suppose it’s partly because he goes to school here, but it’s also just the way Conor is. I don’t know all his friends’ names, but they’re mostly surfers. Conor speaks surfer talk when he’s with them. He and Mum and Roger all keep telling me I should surf, but I don’t want to anymore. If you’ve surfed the currents of Ingo, why would you want to surf on Polquidden Beach or even up at Gwithian? It would be like being told that you’re allowed only one sip of water when you’re dying of thirst.

  Conor doesn’t feel the same. I tried to talk to him about it once, not long after we came to St. Pirans.

  “Saph, you’re not giving St. Pirans a chance,” he said. “There’s great surfing here. You used to like bodyboarding at the cove.”

  “That was before we went to Ingo,” I said.

  Conor looked at me uneasily. He doesn’t talk much about Ingo now we’re in St. Pirans. It’s as if he thinks we’ve left Ingo behind, along with the cottage and everything we’ve known since we were born. Or maybe there’s some other reason. I have the feeling that Conor is keeping something from me. Mum says he’s growing up and that I can’t expect Conor to tell me everything now, the way he did when we were younger.

  “Don’t you feel it’s pointless, this kind of surfing?” I asked. I wanted to probe what Conor was really thinking. “I mean, compared to surfing the currents, it’s nothing. Once you’ve been in Ingo, you can’t be satisfied with messing around on the surface of the water.”

  Conor’s face was clouded. “I can’t live like that, Saph, not properly belonging in one place or another,” he said. He sounded angry, but I don’t think he was angry with me. “I’ve got to try to belong where I am. It’s no good to keep on wanting things you can’t have—”

  He broke off. I didn’t answer because I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “I know you miss Senara,” he went on.

  “Home, you mean.”

  “All right, home.”

  “So, I miss home. That’s normal, Con!”

  “But other people are living in our cottage now. We can’t go back there, so it’s no use hankering.”

  “We could go back if we wanted. Mum could give the tenants notice.”

  “But Saph, Mum doesn’t want to. Can’t you see that? She was glad to get away from the cottage and the cove and everything that reminds her of Dad. Mum’s much happier here.”

  I know that really. I’ve known it for weeks, but I haven’t wanted to put it into words.

  “And there’s something else too,” Conor continued. “She wanted to get us away from Ingo.”

  “Mum doesn’t know anything about Ingo! She doesn’t even know it exists.”

  “We haven’t told her anything. But Mum’s not stupid. She picked up that something strange was going on down at the cove. She was frightened for us—especially for you. She even asked me if I knew why you were behaving so strangely.”

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  “Saph, why are you so suspicious all the time? Of course I didn’t. Mum doesn’t know about Ingo, but she senses something, and since Dad disappeared she’s not taking any chances. Maybe she’s right,” Conor added, sounding thoughtful.

  “Mum’s right? Right to take us away from everything? Adults know they can get away with doing what they want, but that doesn’t make it right! Conor, how can you say that? It’s like—it’s like betraying Ingo.”

  “But if you are always on the side of Ingo, Saph, then you’re betraying something too. Granny Carne said you had Mer blood, but she didn’t tell you to forget that you’re human.”

  I went up to my room. I didn’t want to talk about Ingo anymore. I was afraid that Conor might say, “Forget about Ingo, Saph. Put it all behind you, and get on with real life.”

  Yes, I do miss home. I only let myself think about it at night, before I go to sleep. I miss our cottage, the cove, the Downs, Jack’s farm. I miss watching the lights of the cottages shine out at night and knowing who lives in every one of them. I miss Dad even more in St. Pirans because not many people here ever knew him. They think Mum’s a single parent because she’s divorced, until we explain. Everyone in Senara knew Dad, right back to when he was a little boy, and they knew all our family. Even if Dad wasn’t there, he was still present in people’s memories.

  At least I still go to the same sch
ool. Conor’s transferred to St. Pirans school, but I didn’t want to. I don’t mind going on the school bus to my old school. I had to fight hard, though. Mum said that I should go to school here in St. Pirans so that I’d make friends locally and “settle in.” Strangely enough it was Roger, Mum’s boyfriend, who supported me. He said, “Sapphire’s had a lot of changes. She needs some continuity in her life.” Mum listens to what Roger says, and to be honest, Roger never talks without thinking first.

  That’s the trouble with Roger. It would be easier if I could just dislike him. Hate him even. But he won’t let me. He keeps doing things that trick me into liking him, until I remember that I mustn’t like him because it is so disloyal to Dad. But it was Roger who made sure I got Sadie. And it’s Mum, not Roger, who talks about “settling in” all the time. Roger says you have to give everything time and that we’ve all got to cut one another some slack, take it easy, and let things fall into place. Roger is very laid back about most things, but he can be tough too.

  Settling in. I hate that phrase so much. Even worse are the adults who tell Mum that children are very adaptable and soon forget the past.

  “Not Sapphire,” says Mum grimly when people tell her how quickly we’ll get used to our new life. “Her mind is closed.”

  Is my mind closed? No. It’s wide open. I’m always waiting.

  Every day I go down to the beach, to the water’s edge, and listen. When we first got here in September, there were still tourists on the beach. Naturally, Faro kept away. I didn’t really expect to see him. But if I was going to see him on any of the St. Pirans beaches, it would be at Polquidden, the wildest beach. The storms crash in here from the southwest, and at low tide you can see the remains of a steamship wreck. I think Polquidden Beach is the closest that St. Pirans comes to Ingo. The rocks at the side of the beach are black, heaped up into shapes like the head and shoulders of a man. Sometimes when I’m down there with Sadie, I catch myself scanning those rocks, looking for a shape like a boy with his wet suit pulled down to his waist. A shape that is half human, half seal, but not quite like either of these.