Between Sea and Sky

by Nicola Penfold

  From inside Atticus’s cabin, I can hear murmuring voices and shouts. Someone crying, or two people. I edge further away. Privacy is a rule here, Pearl said.

  A door slams hard and the whole farm seems to shake. I grip on to the rope.

  Pearl comes and stands beside me. Her hair’s come away from her face and there are tears streaming down her cheeks. It feels awful, seeing her like this. Like the hard shell around her has come away, and she’s soft inside, hurting. “You better tell your mum then,” she says.

  I stare back uncertainly.

  “To take him,” she says. “Dad. He says he should go. He says he wants to.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say inadequately.

  “Yeah, well,” Pearl says bitterly.

  “The hospital’s the right place for him. If he’s really sick,” I mumble, not wanting to meet her eyes directly because they’re sore and red.

  “It wasn’t for my mum,” Pearl retorts, though quieter now. Younger. Suddenly she sounds just like Clover.

  “I had my appendix out there once. In that same hospital. I got better,” I say. Stupidly. Appendicitis hardly compares with whatever their mum had.

  Though sometimes appendicitis is fatal, Mum told me afterwards when I was back home, safe in bed in the compound. The medicines for infection, the antibiotics, not many of them work any more. Infections can kill. Mum’s concerned about Atticus’s foot for good reason.

  Pearl stares blankly, then steps off into the water and disappears. I scramble to my feet to look into the dark water. She’s completely gone, swallowed up by the sea. There’s just a circular trail in the brown water where she must have gone under.

  I yell her name. The rings on the surface are disappearing already, closing up. I can’t see any shapes or shadows. There’s hardly any trace left. Panic ripples through me. “Pearl! Pearl!” I scream over the water.

  I’m about to run for Mum or Clover, when the top of a head surfaces a good twenty metres away. Blithely coming up for air.

  “Pearl!” I cry. “Are you OK?”

  She doesn’t even turn back.

  “Don’t you want to say goodbye? Your dad will be going soon,” I shout after her. I can hear the motor from George’s boat approaching on the other side of the oyster farm.

  Pearl doesn’t hear, or maybe she does, because after a few seconds, she dives back down.

  They’ve already gone. The farm feels different. Lighter. Emptier. Sora’s gone, but Dad’s gone too, and I wished it.

  “Take the infection back to shore

  Leave us clean and pure.”

  I wished it on the wentletrap. I thought Sora was the infection – her and her landlubber son – but the sea always decides and the sea claimed Dad too.

  The strange thing is, now he’s gone, I feel almost glad. Because now he’s not my responsibility to get well.

  There are voices coming from Mum’s greenhouse and I walk over to see what’s happening. Nat and Clover haven’t wasted any time. They’re already fixing the panels. The door to the tool shed is open. Things are strewn over the floor and the air reeks of creosote. It scratches at my lungs.

  In the greenhouse, Nat’s telling some kind of story, theatrically, like he’s trying to make her laugh.

  They stop when they notice me. Clover’s face darkens a little and Nat fixes a sympathetic look on his face.

  “You spilled creosote in the shed,” I say.

  Clover’s face stays the same. “It was impossible not to. That store cupboard’s a mess.”

  I stare at the tools on the greenhouse floor. The hammer, file, pliers, screwdriver, wrench. Dad was always doing something with these tools, and then oiling them carefully before he put them away. Rust is your enemy at sea but Dad was always ahead of it. I haven’t seen the tools for months.

  Clover doesn’t even stop for breath. “There was a radio call from Sora. Dad’ll be gone for ages. Days, maybe. We don’t have to worry about them seeing the butterflies any more.” She’s almost triumphant. “You didn’t want to say goodbye?” she adds, accusing.

  I don’t say anything. Nat glances sideways at Clover. They’re allies against me.

  “Mum says she’ll stay with your dad a day or two, while he settles, to make sure he’s getting the best treatment, and…” He sounds embarrassed. “So he’s not lonely, I guess.”

  “How will that help? He doesn’t know her,” I retort.

  Nat shrugs. “Mum’s nice. She’s kind. She’ll look after him. And she’ll send us updates.”

  “You won’t want to stay here without her, will you? We can take you ashore. I’ll do it now,” I say.

  Nat shifts his weight from one foot to the other slowly. He looks taken aback by what I’ve said – the possibility of leaving.

  “You can go back to your friends,” I push. “And we won’t need to babysit you any longer.”

  “I can take care of myself,” he says defensively. “I don’t need looking after.”

  “You don’t like being here,” I press. “We can see that. You told us yourself you didn’t want to come.”

  Nat flushes.

  “Pearl!” Clover protests furiously. “He does like it! When you’re not around he likes it!” She swings round to Nat. “You won’t go, will you, Nat? You’re the best thing that’s happened round here for ages.”

  A new wave of red blooms on Nat’s face. Clover might as well fling her arms round him and beg him to stay. “If I’m not in the way, I’d like to … stay,” he says tentatively, looking at me, as though asking for my permission. “I could help maybe, now your dad’s gone.”

  “Besides, Sora wants us to carry on with her work,” Clover says importantly. “She’s entrusted some of the tasks to us. The recordings. Sea temperature, water levels and tide times.”

  “To you too,” Nat interrupts hastily. “Mum wanted to speak to you before she left, there just wasn’t time to wait. She’s going to try and get George to stop off tomorrow, to check in on us.”

  I sigh impatiently. “George knows Clover and I can take care of ourselves.”

  “I know. Mum’s just like that. And I would like to stay, honestly,” Nat says.

  I pause. If I insisted Nat should go, would he? Would he go back to land, and it could just be me and Clover for a while. Clover would be hopping mad with me for driving her new friend away.

  “Suit yourself,” I say tersely. “Just be careful with those insects. Don’t go getting us in trouble.”

  I turn away, not sure where to go, but not wanting to be in the greenhouse, seeing how they’re changing it already. Even if Mum would be happy someone’s bringing her greenhouse back to life, she wouldn’t want it to be him. A stranger.

  I go into Dad’s cabin. It smells stale and empty. I open the tiny porthole windows.

  There are bottles on the floor, rolling hollowly from side to side. I collect them up for the crates we have waiting on the main platform, ready for the next trip ashore. Dad can’t have tidied them up for ages. Maybe I shouldn’t take all the bottles at once, or Nat will get the wrong idea.

  I strip the sheets from Dad’s bed. They’re damp and reek of sweat and something else. Sickness, I think. Just like this room used to when Mum was last here.

  I’ll get them washed while he’s on land. Washed and wrung and bleached clean by the sun for when he comes back. I wonder if Dad can see the sea from his hospital window.

  Nat said he got sick once and the hospital got him better. Their medicine. Their antibiotics. Maybe Dad will come back better than ever – strong and healthy, like he used to be.

  I hope Dad knows I would have said goodbye, if my head hadn’t been pounding. If my tears could have held. If there hadn’t been new people around to watch me cry.

  It’s my fourth day on the oyster farm and I’m sitting on the edge of the platform, the water wrapping around the sides of my legs. “Ouch! It’s cold!

  Clover grins. “If you think this is cold you should try it in winter!”


  “Urgh! How can you go swimming in winter?” I say.

  Clover smiles. “It’s just what you’re used to. Pearl says we have saltwater in our veins, not blood.”

  As if summoned by her name, her sister appears looming over me. “You’re going to swim?” Pearl asks slowly, like it’s a supremely bad plan.

  “Try to,” I reply, squinting up at her.

  “You’re burning,” she says, handing me a glass pot of waxy cream. “You should put this on.” She turns her head to Clover. “You should find him Dad’s sunglasses too.”

  “Ah, you’ll be all right for a while, Nat,” Clover says, as I start to unscrew the little pot, unsure what to do with it. “It’s still early. I’ll remind you after your lesson.”

  “You better had,” Pearl answers. “He’ll blister.”

  I open my mouth to say thank you, but Pearl’s already gone. A moment later I hear a motor stuttering into life in the little harbour.

  “It’s delivery day,” Clover says casually, when she sees me looking over. “On the ship.”

  “Oh. See ya! Thanks for the cream!” I call over to Pearl loudly, to be heard over the jumping engine. It makes me nervous, seeing another person sailing away from us, just as I’m about to enter the water for the first time.

  Clover doesn’t seem at all perturbed at our undertaking. She’s turning in the water, buoyant, like the yellow floats she’s set out to help with my lesson. She’s made a circuit, though I think she’s vastly overestimating what I’ll be able to do.

  “Put these under your arms!” she says, bringing a couple of extra floats to the platform edge. “They’ll support you in the water.”

  I look at them doubtfully.

  “Come on!” she says. “Lower yourself in. I won’t let you go under, I promise.”

  “But I’m heavier than you. How could you support me if I started to go down?”

  Clover smiles reassuringly. “It’s different in water. The water will support you if you let it. Watch me!” Clover lies on her back, legs and arms out in a cross, floating.

  “How’s that even possible?” I say with admiration.

  Clover turns upright and swims back to me. “Put the floats under each arm,” she directs. “And lower yourself off the edge. I’ll be right next to you.”

  There are cylinders of light in the water and I blink as I lower my body right in – feet first, then shins, knees. When I get to my waist I shiver at the new level of cold but I make myself keep going. Just my shoulders remain above the surface, with the yellow packages of air held precariously under each arm.

  “You’re in, Nat. You’re doing it,” Clover’s saying, her face open with delight.

  I grin. “It’s gentle, the water,” I say. I had imagined being in the sea might be like being out in the rain, but it’s not. It’s softer than that, silky. It’s not like getting wet, it’s like I become part of the water itself. “I thought it would sting, with the salt and the acidity. They told us it burns your skin. In the compound…” I stop and pull a face, realizing how gullible I’m sounding.

  Clover smiles at me kindly. She doesn’t laugh like Pearl would.

  I look down and I can see the kelp underneath, with fish darting through it. I move my legs about, like I’m cycling. “It really is like an underwater forest down there!” I say.

  “Told you!” Clover beams.

  “Mum and I came through a forest on our way to the compound,” I say. “It’s the main thing I remember about our journey to Blackwater Bay.”

  “You’re so lucky.” Clover sighs. “To have come from elsewhere!”

  “Hardly!” I laugh. “It was just another district, and Mum had to leave behind everyone she ever knew because Central thought they needed new workers out here. I was too young to remember. It’s just the journey I get flashes of sometimes.”

  “Still, you made a journey,” Clover insists. “That’s more than I ever did.”

  I laugh. The trees in the forest were green and magical, though when I try and picture them in any detail, I can’t.

  “Are you ready to try floating on your back?” Clover says.

  “I’m not sure I can put my head in,” I say. My arms ripple and distort as I move them through the water.

  “I’ll be right next to you,” Clover says. “Lean back slowly. You have to trust the water, see, to take your weight.”

  I pull a face. Part of me wants to go back to the edge of the platform. Surely I’ve been brave enough for one day? But I picture Pearl returning from the ship, asking how the lesson went. I don’t want to have given up on it without really trying.

  “I’m right beside you,” Clover coaxes. “It’s worth it. You’ll feel the sun over all of your body. It’ll warm you up.”

  I grit my teeth nervously. I’m covered in goosebumps and I’m trembling with a mixture of fear and cold. But Clover’s right – the sun is hot and inviting, and I lean back into its rays, on top of the sea, gripping my yellow packages of air. I’m floating. Undeniably floating!

  Clover whoops. “I knew you could do it!” She turns a somersault in the water, and then lies out beside me. Two stars, side by side, warm and weightless.

  After floating for a while, I make my way back to the platform edge and Clover shows me how to hold on to the side and practise my kicking. She dives and spins beside me.

  “How can you go under like that?” I ask, after a particularly deep descent.

  Clover smiles. “You haven’t seen anything yet!” Before I can stop her, she gulps a long breath of air and then she’s down, deep, till I can’t see her any more.

  I think about Pearl yesterday and how panicked I was, and then how casually she emerged back again a minute or so later. Still, I shriek when Clover surfaces. “You scared me! How do you breathe underwater?”

  “I don’t! I hold my breath, of course! You can’t breathe in the sea. Then you would drown!”

  The word drown makes my heart jump. I pull myself out of the water and sit on the edge of the platform. It feels I’ve achieved enough for one day.

  “Pearl stays down for ages,” Clover says brashly. “Whole minutes! I can too, when I feel like it.”

  I shudder, thinking of Pearl and Clover swimming at the bottom of the sea in the ribbons of seaweed.

  “There was an island in Korea where women dived for seafood,” Clover says knowledgeably, coming to sit beside me. “For abalone and conch and urchins and octopus.”

  I tilt my head. The words coming out of Clover’s mouth mean nothing to me. Ghost names, like the list of butterflies Lucas read out from the computer encyclopedia.

  “They dived without oxygen tanks and wore white cotton suits,” Clover’s saying. “They whistled as they came back to the surface.” She gives a long low whistle now, which bounces off the water.

  “Was it always women?” I ask. “Who dived?”

  Clover shrugs. “I don’t know. It was just a footnote in some book. The island was called Jeju.” She furrows her brow and looks out to the horizon.

  “Jeju,” I repeat. “Jeju. I wonder if it’s still there now, the island?”

  “I wonder if the women are still diving. That’s a place I could go, when I leave here,” Clover says, a new energy in her voice. “Pearl and I would fit right in. Dad says we’re like mermaids. Our mum used to say that too.” She kicks out with her feet. “Anyway,” she says, as though suppressing some sad memory, “you best put some of that cream on. Pearl’s right, your shoulders are going red. She’ll be mad at me if you blister.”

  I sneak into the greenhouse while Clover’s starting Nat’s swimming lesson. After making such a fuss about the creatures, it feels too awkward to look at them when he’s around. A couple of them are still soft and tremoring, but most have hardened and are further along with their transformation.

  Nat’s removed them from their jars. Some he’s placed on leaves, some still hang from the lids, which he’s fastened to one of the panels. Sora wouldn’t be able to miss them now
if she came here. I wonder how she’ll react, to her darling son having stolen pollinators?

  I can hear Nat and Clover’s voices from across the farm. I hope Clover’s being sensible – a landlubber wasn’t made for the water. I start to make my way over.

  Clover’s taken the buoys off some of the lines, to use as floats. Nat’s shrieking loudly. “You should try it in winter,” Clover’s saying happily, delighting in the chance to teach someone the thing she’s best at.

  Nat’s wearing Dad’s shorts. His chest is thin and pale, though I can see a redness on it already. His skin’s not used to the sun. I grab the sun cream from the storm trunk in the kitchen.

  “You’ll blister,” I say, handing it to him. Clover pulls a face at me. She doesn’t want me interfering.

  I haven’t got the time anyway. I’ve got a shellfish delivery to do. Sem’ll be wondering where I am.

  It’s funny the way their laughter carries across the water. I can hear it even as the little boat moves into the shadow of the old cruise liner. I wonder if the prisoners hear it too and are jealous of other people and them having reasons to be happy.

  The ship’s name is still there on the side, if you know where to look for it in the rust. Aurora. It sounds like she belongs in the sky, not the water. Sem showed me the top deck once, where there’s a sunken chamber that used to be a swimming pool. There’s a faded photo in the library of smiling people in fancy clothes, holding shiny glasses and waving flags. The ship set up for one of the parties Clover’s always dreaming about. Now the swimming pool collects water when it rains, to siphon off for inmate drinking water. The luxury cabins are cells.

  Dad says the prison ship should be closed now. I guess he’s right, but I’d miss her if she went entirely. There’s something about her presence I find reassuring, floating out there, reminding everyone else to stay away from the sea.

  I pull at the chain on the side of the hull. It runs up to a big brass bell outside the kitchen delivery hatch. After a couple of minutes, Sem’s face appears above and he throws the rope ladder down.