by Gillian Best
‘Remember to lock the door,’ he said.
‘Goodnight Henry.’
I washed and dried the plates, and I felt badly for him with no family, going home to an empty house, but there was nothing I could do. I left the kitchen light on for Martha and went upstairs. Webb followed me, which was unlike him as normally he waits by the door until everyone is home. I dismissed it though. Henry must have the dog on edge – he has that effect.
I took one last look out the window but our street was empty so I got into bed and pulled the duvet up to my chin. I rolled over and put my hand in the empty space where Martha should have been and when I closed my eyes I caught the faintest bit of her smell, that distinct combination of soap, fresh laundry and the sea. I inhaled deeply and it was almost as if she was there.
Falling Down
‘Richard,’ I heard my mother say in the kitchen, in that tone she had that did not encourage questions. ‘You’re taking her with you.’
‘She’s a ten-year-old girl, she’ll have no interest in fishing,’ my father replied.
‘She’s been cooped up in this house for far longer than is good for her. And she’s doing my head in.’
My mother’s head was a frequent source of trouble for our family, her moods could easily fluctuate and it was difficult to tell which side you might end up on. The chances of winding up on her bad side were far greater when she could be seen gripping the countertop as though it were able to support her as she alone bore the frustration of our annoyances, or if the pitch of her voice was higher than usual. Her voice rose quickly upon coming home from visiting one of her better-off friends – more often than not, my father and I seemed capable only of reinforcing what she saw as our collective shortcomings. When we were particularly irksome we could generally be found sitting quietly in the lounge reading.
‘Send her out to play in the garden,’ my father said.
‘Richard,’ my mother cautioned in a tone I would come to know very well.
I pictured my father hanging his head as he replied. ‘Fine, dear.’
Though I was not pleased with the way my mother directed my father, I was keen on the forced outing and my bare feet on the wood floors barely made a sound as I skipped back to my room from the top of the stairs, my main listening post and the source of much of my insight into my parents’ innermost thoughts. At least, the ones they shared with each other. I suppose their most private thoughts were kept in darker recesses, in places they hardly went themselves.
‘Martha!’ I heard my father call from the foot of the stairs. ‘Put your shoes on and grab a jumper, love.’
I looked out my bedroom window across the rooftops that stretched out towards the flash of the sea on the horizon. The sky was clear and though it wasn’t the bright blue of picture postcards, it seemed like the day was warm enough to go without a jumper which stood every chance of being lost or forgotten, but I did as I was told, taking my least favourite cardigan – mint green with a Peter Pan collar that I despised because it looked like a lime sherbet sweet – and hoping that the outing might provide a believable excuse for me to be rid of it. Though, if having to carry around a cardigan were the price of the excursion, I would happily pay it. Invitations like this did not come around often and if I behaved myself the chance of a second invitation seemed good. Fishing held no interest to me, but the prospect of leaving the confines of our house, garden and road was thrilling. Such escapes were few and far between, even now, a year after the war had ended.
My father stood by the door with his fishing line and a metal lunchbox that I knew contained the hooks and worms he would need my help with. I presented myself to him: feet together, back straight, saluting. It was a habit I had developed when he had come back from the fighting and I had hoped it would convince him that I was respectful and knowledgeable enough to hear about his adventures in France, especially the story that would explain how he had lost his right arm. It didn’t work, but it was one of the few things that could make his face soften.
‘You carry the tackle,’ he said, as he stepped out of the way so I could open the door for him.
I turned the handle and stepped aside. He walked past me, not stopping to make sure I had closed the door properly which made it perfectly clear to me that he and I were not going fishing together, but rather that I was an interloper and would have to pull my own weight and do my best to keep up.
I walked as quickly as I could which nearly turned into an ungainly run as I struggled to keep pace with him and the metal box, which dangled from my hand and crashed into my bare knees. I would have fresh bruises by the time we returned and my mother would feel compelled to remind me that my clumsiness was wilful. She did not believe it was possible for a girl to be so ungainly and in this way – and many others – I was cast as an unfeminine disappointment. I knew she would have preferred a daughter like my friend Cath who could not only plait her hair properly, but enjoyed the types of dresses that I felt were restrictive and adorned with unnecessary ruffles and frills.
But my mother would come later and so I focused on my father’s figure as I followed him down the road that cut through the hill in a loopy “s” formation. It was a winding, twisted road and because of that it gave the boring street with nothing more than nearly identical houses a sense of jollity.
‘There is to be no talking,’ my father said, when I had caught up to him.
I nodded in agreement. This was serious business.
‘You’re to put one worm on each hook. No more, no less.’
I nodded.
‘Take care not to drop the worm. I don’t want to be surrounded by dead worm bodies the rest of the afternoon.’
I kept nodding my head.
‘And you’re not to jump and dance around. Not like last time.’
Last time I had not been at my best. I had been listening to the radio quite intensely the week before and worked out an elaborate dance I had insisted on demonstrating for my father and his friends. My father was not impressed, but it hadn’t mattered. I was captivated by the sound of my feet on the wooden slats of the pier, mixed with the echo from the waves washing up on shore and that had been more than enough excitement to fill my mind to near bursting, leaving little room for his lecture on proper behaviour.
‘Keep out of the way,’ he said. ‘And be quiet.’
This last instruction was the most important. Coming down to the pier was a rare chance for my father to meet up with his friends – especially the ones my mother did not care for – and to talk about the sort of things that young girls should not know about. His instruction to be quiet extended not only to the day that spread out before us, but also to the evening when we had returned home. My mother was not to know about any of this, as far as she knew we would go fishing and nothing else. There would not be a mid-afternoon trip to the bowls club where my father and some of his chums might enjoy a cheeky drink from a spirit flask. This part of the afternoon had to be kept from my mother at all costs. It was such a delicate matter that we did not even speak of it between ourselves.
My father, I assumed, had many secrets, and to be part of the circle he confided in, even if the secret wasn’t much, was something I cherished. He didn’t have much choice but to take me into his confidence, and I never felt it was an obligation on his part. When he gave me the signal that we were going to go and see the boys at the bowls club, he met my gaze and held it for a while and I felt as though he recognised something in me that my mother would never see.
We rounded the last corner and my father put his hand out, barring me from running across the road. He checked once and then again and when he was certain it was safe we crossed the road and walked up behind the seafront hotel with its cream walls and black wrought iron balconies that reminded me of exotic places I had never been to.
But the most fascinating thing was the pier dotted with men and their fishing poles. I had learned enough by then to know that being admitted into this circle of masculinity was a ra
re moment, not to be taken lightly. I had been privy to my mother’s world, listened to her and her friends natter on about hairstyles and slimming regimes and the little tricks to get rid of persistent mould, and it was the sort of conversation that was so dull that even pretending to be interested was impossible. Now and again there was something halfway worthwhile that hinted at the possibility of intrigue or a life much more appealing than what I knew awaited me when I grew up and began my life of Domestic Bliss, as they called it. The whiff of a suspected affair was a rarity, rarer even than Christmas, and mostly my mother and her friends talked about the boring details of housewifery. But the men on the pier told stories that took place in locations far away from Dover, from England and our day-to-day lives. The most frequent stories were about the war and they weren’t half as grim as my mother made them out to be. Peter the pigeon man was one of my favourites, having been directly involved in the Army Messenger Ministry.
It wasn’t just the other men who talked; it was my father too. And if the men forgot about me, and felt they were in private, then I learned some of what he had been through, what he had seen and done in the war. I always hoped I would overhear the story of how my father had lost his arm. It was something that I had never heard my mother mention. That she was quiet about it was noteworthy: she considered nothing else outside her bounds.
There was also the fact that for as long as I could remember the pier had been off-limits due to the soldiers guarding the entranceway, but now that the fighting was done and they were gone, the pier was ours.
As we walked along, the pavement gave way to the wooden planks that were weathered by storms coming across the Channel and my father looked for a suitable place. He searched for familiar faces and pals he might want to catch up with. Depending on his mood we might sit next to younger, chattier men or if he felt the need for peace and quiet then we would take our place next to the older, silent ones. Both were good in my mind: the younger ones could be counted on to tell amusing stories that were utterly unsuitable for my young girlish ears and the older ones told tales that I could have never imagined.
My father nodded to two younger men and I took that for a sign that he was in a good mood. We stopped next to them and they chatted briefly before my father leaned his line against the railing, which was my cue.
I opened the metal lunch box, removing the bread and butter sandwiches my mother had packed for our lunch before taking the bucket of worms out, and while my father got caught up on the latest fishing news I threaded the first worm on the hook and handed the pole back to him.
He turned and nodded to me, saying nothing. It was our signal that I was to make myself scarce.
There was a rhythm to it, and it was important to get into it as quickly as possible. Prepare the hook, hand the pole back to my father and then fade into the background for a while as he tried his luck. I was to get on with whatever caught my fancy while also remaining attentive so that he never had to wait for another worm. His friends would have helped him I’m sure but he would never ask. If I did it then it was a favour, a skill he was teaching me that I might be able to put to use later. It was a child’s job and for him to be unable to do it himself was bad enough, but to need the help of a grown man more capable than him would put too much pride at risk.
He cast the line off the edge of the pier and I backed away, satisfied that my job was done and I had the next twenty minutes or so to myself. I skipped off down to the very end of the pier.
It was one of my favourite places, and nobody fished there so I was free to sing and dance as I liked knowing I would not be bothering anyone but myself. Here I could talk aloud to my imaginary friend Charlotte and act out some of my more elaborate fantasies. Fantasies that were based on some of the far flung places I read about in the set of encyclopaedias that my mother had purchased for me to relieve some of the boredom I had having spent most of my life trapped in the house, waiting for the war to finish. I read with varying levels of interest: I preferred the exotic to the mundane, the aardvarks and armadillos to the ants and albatrosses. And I had most recently started the volume for H, skipping over the entry for Hadrian’s Wall, instead reading and re-reading the entry for Hawaii. It was magical: an island, like the one I lived on, it had once had a Queen, and a large continent to the east. Though the similarities ended there, I enjoyed imagining a different set of possibilities for myself, as the weeks and months passed.
There was something about the water that day that caught my eye. The sun had emerged which was unexpected and delightful and it reflected off the sea in such a way that made parts of it almost too dazzling to look at. It was calm, the waves loping forward leisurely, but there was a spot I noticed off the edge of the pier where there was a little whirlpool. It was fascinating as I’d never seen anything like it before, the water changed from a metallic blue to a muddy brown and the ripples came and went in different directions. I imagined that underneath it was a roiling, boiling cauldron and possibly the entrance to a secret world, maybe the gateway to Atlantis or King Neptune’s realm.
I leaned forward but I was at an awkward height: too short to see over the top of the railing but tall enough that the second railing blocked my view, so I crouched down on all fours and wiggled my way nearer the edge while keeping my eyes fixed on the currents below. I wondered if my father or his friends knew about this and whether or not they could provide more in the way of factual information. I wanted to know what it felt like to run my hands across the surface of the water where it bubbled up, to know what the currents might feel like against my body, but there was little chance of that, as I couldn’t swim.
I crawled forward, my bare bruised knees tender against the splintering old wood. I heard my father calling for me and didn’t realise how much time had passed but maybe he had caught something already, which would mean he would be in high spirits. I sat up quickly and the back of my head crashed into the metal railing. My hand flew out behind me to push the bar away on instinct and as I did that, I lost my balance.
It happened in slow motion as I remember it. When I played it back in my mind that night, tucked up in my bed, it felt as though there should have been plenty of time for me to grab onto something to keep myself safe and that I ought to have been able to keep myself dry.
But I didn’t manage it. That was the first day I got wet.
I fell head first towards the water but it happened so quickly that I didn’t even have time to think to take a breath. I remembered hitting the water and thinking that it was strange that it hurt so much, it felt as though I had hit something solid and hard. That moment changed the way I looked at the sea forever. Before it had been a vastness that had nothing to do with me, it was there and I knew it was cold and though I had been wading once or twice before, I had only felt the water move around me, and make way for me. But when I hit the water that day I understood that it was able to be more than one thing.
I must have called out or screamed for help because just before I hit the surface I heard someone call my name.
I hit it so hard – and I only found this out later – that I could have easily been concussed, or worse. At the time though, all I remembered was being engulfed in the cold, dark sea. It was everywhere and I was terrified and what’s worse is that I didn’t know which way was up because it was so black. Darker than a moonless night. And the salty briny murk was everywhere: up my nose and in my ears. I desperately wanted a breath but somehow I managed to keep my mouth shut.
As I flailed my arms and legs around wildly, clawing for the surface or anything that might save me, I had the sense of being trapped inside a box that was growing smaller with every passing moment. The sea felt as though it were getting dark and closing in on me. My chest felt as though it was about to burst and I was angry with myself for leaning over the edge, for doing something so foolish, and I thought about how my father would have to go home and explain everything.
I was being pushed parallel to the shoreline and after what felt
like ages but was probably close to a minute I felt my body relax and I was able to open my eyes. In that moment, I was no longer afraid. Instead of feeling trapped by the sea I felt supported as I drifted with the currents and though I was colder than I had ever felt in my life I didn’t notice because I saw something coming towards me. I didn’t know what it was, or what form it took as I could only see the water moving in a different way that I believed meant I was being approached. I didn’t know what it might be or what it might want from me, but I didn’t feel afraid. I floated, being held by the sea, watching.
The next thing that happened was that there were arms around me and I knew it was not my father and not a mermaid. I was dragged upwards and before I knew it my head had broken the surface and I could breathe again. I gulped down breath after breath as I faced the sky and was swum back to land, and once I was on dry land I burst into tears, sobbing and coughing up water.
I was carried up the beach where my father and his friends were all waiting for me. I had never seen that expression on my father’s face and I never saw it again. He clutched me to his chest, unconcerned that I was getting his clothes wet, and held me so tightly that it was hard to breathe.
When he finally released me from his grip, he draped his light jacket over my shoulders and a few of the other men piled theirs on too and we walked up toward the bowling club. No one said a thing.
Once we were inside, someone made a fire even though it was early summer and they sat me down in front of it. Someone brought me an old horse blanket and wrapped it around my legs.
‘Drink this,’ a man said to me. His hair was wet.
I took the glass and studied him. ‘Did you…?’
He nodded. ‘You scared your father half to death.’
I took a sip of the drink and turned my nose up at it.
He chuckled. ‘It’s only a drop of whisky. It’ll warm you up.’