by Sarah Jasmon
‘What’s with the third degree?’ Victoria sounded impatient.
‘I was only asking.’
‘It’d be a cool place to stay, though, wouldn’t it?’ The boat was out of sight behind the trees. ‘I’d love to live there.’
‘Hmm.’ Helen rubbed at her temples. ‘The floor was sticky.’
‘Not good enough for you?’ Victoria walked a bit faster, then turned with her hands on her hips. ‘I was watching you, sitting there like you had a lemon in your mouth.’ Her voice was rising. ‘I thought you’d like to meet them. They’re interesting!’
‘But—’ Helen didn’t get a chance to say anything. Victoria had already spun round and was striding off along the road.
She caught up with her at the highest point of the bridge. Victoria was looking back along the water. As Helen came up to her, she turned.
‘You know, the trouble with you is, you can’t cope with people making choices that are different.’ Her voice was conversational and her eyes were fixed on a point somewhere over Helen’s shoulder. ‘You’re so worried about getting things dirty or getting them wrong. It’s pathetic.’ She started down the far side of the bridge. ‘And if you want to know,’ she carried on over her shoulder, ‘it’s not like you were invited. You followed, like you always do.’ Her voice drifted back. ‘You stay at home with your daddy and his stupid boat – I’m going to find one that floats.’
Helen couldn’t quite grasp how quickly the afternoon had changed. She held on to the rough stone of the bridge until the dizziness subsided. There were voices coming down the road behind her now, Moira and Dave, on their way to hitch a lift into town. As if anyone would stop for them. Helen broke into a run and, keeping her head turned away from the cottages, she headed for home.
Chapter Fifteen
She didn’t even have to pretend to be ill. The migraine, which had been rolling up since they were on the boat, took over her head. It pinned her to the bed, reacting to the slightest shift by sending a fan of pain across her skull before concentrating itself in one particular spot above her right eye.
She could at least see by the morning, but lifting her head from the pillow set the pain off again. It took Mick until lunchtime to come and see where she was.
‘I thought you were round at that cottage again.’ He didn’t come all the way in, but kept the door half-closed across his body with only his head and one shoulder in the room. ‘Do you need anything? I’m going into town.’
As she listened to the car drive away, she shifted her head to a cooler spot, and wished she’d asked her dad to get her some water. And she needed to go to the bathroom and she needed more paracetemol. If they had any. Abruptly, she was weeping. It was so lonely, being ill by yourself. She wanted to have someone feel her forehead and tell her she was OK. Her mum would have got her clean pyjamas to feel more comfortable. She would have settled her on the sofa with pillows and a rug, and would have brought her tomato soup. The house was indifferent to her tears.
The headache kept her in bed for another day, and she lost track of the time, giving in to the twilight shifting that happened when you slept all day. Her subconscious conspired in not thinking about Victoria, or about Moira. Instead, as she twisted around in her tangled bedsheets, it was Seth that she latched on to. Seth, who never made her feel stupid, who said nice things and had drawn her picture. She replayed every conversation they’d had, every glance, drawing the endings out in new directions, building new scenes where he reached for her hand, her face. He drifted through her half-waking dreams, forever out of contact, but always keeping Victoria at bay. Finally she shot upwards through half-consciousness, her pyjamas drenched, from a nightmare in which she’d ended up with Seth in the narrowboat. He’d been leaning in to kiss her, but his face had transformed into the leer of Dave, and she’d heard two sets of laughter coming from the other end of the boat. It took her a long time to get back to sleep.
The headache dragged on for two days. Even when the pain had receded, getting up felt like too much effort. When Mick brought her a plate of sandwiches and a mug of tea, it was so unbearably touching that she found herself crying again after he’d gone. It was the first time in ages she’d felt hungry, though, which had to be a good sign. She pushed herself up and looked around for a book to read while she ate.
She’d swept the books from Victoria’s reading list off her desk and into a corner. The cover of Moby Dick was bent right back, and the sight of it was strangely satisfying. She wasn’t going to read any more of them now, anyway. But the two Piet had given her were perched next to her light. She picked them up. The first had a woman on the front cover, a woman with long blonde hair who had been photographed from behind, her face turned back and her head draped in the loose hood of a cloak. She bore a slight resemblance to Moira, though, which was enough to send it into the corner with the others. The second one was thin, shorter than one of the school stories she’d been reading. Bonjour Tristesse. It was one of those annoying books that didn’t say what the story was about on the back, only giving a comment from a newspaper. There was a poem on the first page, in French as well. She nearly changed it for something easier, but the effort involved was too much. So she settled back, and began to read.
When she emerged at the end, it was to the same feeling she’d had with War and Peace, but this time it was even more intense. She couldn’t believe she was back in her room, that only hours had passed. Her hands and feet, sticking out of her pyjamas, the familiar shapes of bed and cupboard and desk: they all belonged to the wrong world. It was as if she’d split in two and one half had been left behind. In her mind, she was on the beach, like Cecile, with white sunlight burning through her eyelids and sand caught beneath her fingernails. She hated Anne, always going on at Cecile and telling her what to do. For a second, Helen came back from the book’s world fully, hearing her mother before she’d left, always nagging about homework and exams. And the arguments before she’d left, Helen crouching at the top of the stairs, trying to work out what was happening, watching her dad’s face sagging in despair at his failure to understand. Neither of them would have had any place in the villa in Nice, though. Helen pushed the memories away, trying to get back into the book’s world, but earlier. On the beach.
She would be lying there, listening to the sound of the sea and feeling the sun’s heat. Her eyes closed, she could see the green of the woods leading up to the road and saw him stepping out of the shade. Seth, of course, in her version of Nice. He would come towards her and sit down, letting his fingers trail along her bare arm and then up so that they caught her hair. And he would lean down, like Cyril, and she would feel the press of his lips. Again and again she replayed the scene, using her own fingers to brush against her arm, and along the soft skin of her belly, letting the outside world recede.
It was late in the afternoon before she got around to dressing and leaving her room. She took the stairs with extra care, feeling for each tread. Her head felt too light still, and unused to her height. As she stood in the kitchen, cutting slices of bread to have with butter and jam, she could hear the whine of the jigsaw coming from the garage. The air outside the window was full of the odd fragrance of sawdust. She ate one more slice before slipping out to peer through the open garage door. Her dad was smoothing a hand over the surface of a wide piece of plank, and he gave a grunt as he hefted it up towards the top edge of the hull.
‘Try it for size.’ His voice surprised her, but he was talking to someone inside the boat, not her. Piet’s muffled voice rumbled back, the words blurred. She felt a degree of comfort from the normality of the work, and the feeling that perhaps everything would be OK warmed her as she watched her dad cross over to the wood piled against the wall. He spoke again over his shoulder.
‘Did I say I found someone giving ballast away?’
It was nice, somehow, to be eavesdropping, as the two of them carried on with their work, oblivious of her presence. Piet’s head appeared over the gunnel.
> ‘We’ll be ready for it tomorrow.’ There was a pause in the conversation as Mick began to shape the end of another plank with the jigsaw. When he was done, Piet carried on talking. ‘And the engine could well be arriving today. I’m reckoning on putting a rope over that beam, there’ll be enough of us to pull her in.’
Helen backed quietly away.
She was in the dining room rummaging through the sideboard’s cupboards when she heard Pippa. For an unsteady moment, she thought the footsteps could be Victoria, but they were too light. Pippa called out, but she didn’t respond at first, the weight of it being not-Victoria taking the words away. Pippa’s feet went down the hall to the stairs, and she made an effort.
‘I’m in here.’
The feet ran back, and Pippa’s head appeared around the door.
‘I haven’t got anything to do!’ She plumped down on the floor next to where Helen was sitting and backed up her complaint with a sigh. ‘And you haven’t been to see us for ages.’ She leaned against Helen’s arm. ‘I’ve missed you.’
It was something, however small, and Helen felt a surge of affection for Pippa. She put her arm around her and gave her a squeeze.
‘I’ve missed you too. But it’s only been a couple of days.’ Only a couple of days. She heard Victoria’s words again, floating after her as she’d run down the bridge. It felt like weeks.
‘Everyone keeps going out, and Uncle Piet keeps coming here to do things on your dad’s boat.’ Pippa sat up again, putting her head to one side and gazing into the middle distance. ‘And Fred says he doesn’t want to make mud bricks any more because it’s boring.’
Helen smiled. Pippa was tenacious of her plan to have Will called by her chosen name, though even Will himself didn’t seem to care. And Pippa’s final complaint explained the dried mud streaked through her hair, lodged under her fingernails, and covering her legs with a powdery greyness.
‘What are you doing? Can I help?’ Pippa gave one shin a vigorous rub and the mud flaked off in a shower. Helen started to say something, but stopped. The air in the room was heavy with disuse, no one would notice.
‘I’m going through our family treasure.’ She reached into the cupboard again, bringing out a small, flat box. ‘It used to be a special treat when I was your age.’
Inside the box was a set of tiny spoons, each resting in a velvet-covered, spoon-shaped hollow. Pippa hung over her elbow, her face expectant. Helen picked one out, turning it around so the figure at the top was facing upwards.
‘It’s got a man on it!’ Pippa was delighted. ‘Who is he? Why is he there?’
The silver was tarnished, whorls of discolour circling round the bowl of the spoon. The figure at the top was enamelled, his robes green and new-looking still.
‘He’s an apostle. They’re called apostle spoons.’
‘What are they?’ Pippa picked another one out. ‘He’s different, look, he’s got a different face.’ She laid it down next to the first and reached for another. ‘What was that word?’
‘Apostle?’
‘Upossel, upossel, upossel.’ The word was making her giggle. ‘Say it over and over, it’ll make your tongue trip up.’
Helen obliged, and Pippa joined in the chant, the word getting faster and less coherent as they tried to keep control of their tongues. They both ended up breathless and laughing, Pippa lying on her back in exaggerated exhaustion. She rolled over to reach for a red-robed figure.
‘But what are they?’ she asked again.
‘You know, Jesus had twelve apostles – these are them. On spoons.’
‘But there’s only eleven. Look!’ Pippa counted out loud as she arranged them in a line, alternating the colours in strict order. Red, green, blue, then back to red.
‘Well, that’s because of Judas.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘He was the bad one.’ Helen stopped, wondering how much detail Pippa would demand. ‘He betrayed Jesus. For thirty pieces of silver.’
‘Like a pirate?’ Pippa pulled her head back to admire her arrangement. ‘They have pieces of silver and long hair.’
‘Well, not quite.’ Helen gave up. ‘I know, let’s see what’s in here.’
Pippa sat up on her heels, watching as Helen eased the lid from a larger box. Inside was a set of delicate china cups, too small for tea; spoils from a great-aunt, Helen seemed to remember. She took them out, unwrapping the swathes of tissue paper and setting them up in a row. The sides were so thin she could see the shadow of a finger through them. Each one was a different, vibrant colour: purple, jade, sapphire, gold. Next to her, she heard Pippa’s indrawn breath.
‘They’re so pretty! Can we use them for a tea party?’
Helen sat back to look at them.
‘Better not. We’re a bit big for them.’
A door banged outside, breaking through the sleepy heat of the room. Helen felt a change in the atmosphere, her senses picking up something awry without being sure from where or why. She sat up, leaving the cups on the carpet, trying to identify clues. Now she could hear raised voices coming from the back of the house. What was it Piet had said about an engine? She half stood up, uneasy. Voices rang out, one of them definitely her dad’s. Then the kitchen door swung open with a bang, and the noise from the voices resolved into separate words.
‘… come in here and take over!’ Her dad barged against the table as he crossed the kitchen and Helen froze. Mick didn’t look her way as he crashed down the hall. She heard his footsteps thud up the stairs.
‘Helen …’ Pippa’s voice was wavering.
‘It’s OK, Pippa, it’s only my dad.’ Helen turned back to the small figure kneeling next to the sideboard. Pippa’s face was apprehensive, the beginning of tears brimming up in her eyes. One tear tipped over the edge, travelling down through the dirt on her round cheek.
‘I didn’t mean to, it was when I picked it up …’ Her voice tailed off in a sob. In her hands she was holding two halves of a delicate, deep gold-cup.
‘Oh, Pippa.’ Helen took the pieces and tried to fit them back together. Would she be able to glue it without the join showing? Her stomach clenched at the trouble she’d be in if her mum saw it. But her mum wasn’t here, was she? And a memory clicked into place, her mother’s voice, Why would I want to take anything? Weighing me down – you keep it, that’s what you like. She wrapped the pieces up in the tissue paper and put the whole lot, in their box, right to the back of the cupboard. They’d be there, glowing like a nuclear device, every time she went in the room now, but never mind. She could always pretend she didn’t know anything if anyone ever did go in there. Then a vision popped up, of herself in front of the dresser with her own children, making a funny story of the day the cup was broken. She felt a wave of love for Pippa, as if she was one of them.
‘Pippa, it’s OK.’ There was no change, Pippa’s shoulders were hunched in tightly, her face buried in her knees. Helen thought quickly, keeping one ear out for sounds from upstairs. ‘Pippa, if I give you one of the spoons, would you feel better?’
There was a nod from the curled-up figure.
‘Which colour would you like?’ Helen reached for the box of spoons and took out one with a green-robed figure. ‘What about this one?’
Pippa uncurled, but stayed on her side on the carpet. She took a long, shuddering breath. Without saying anything, she reached out a hand and touched one of the spoons. It was the odd one out, the single white-robed eleventh figure. Helen eased it out of its slot and put it into Pippa’s hand. Her fingers curled around it, and she wiped at her eyes with her other hand. The dried mud and tear stains were the saddest sight Helen had ever seen. She put the box with the remaining spoons back into the cupboard and shut the door.
‘Come on.’ She crouched down and gave one of Pippa’s shoulders a squeeze. ‘Let’s go and wash your face.’
They went outside afterwards, drawn by the small group standing in front of the garage. Helen could see Piet and a couple of men she didn’t know, w
earing checked work shirts and heavy boots, oil stains marking the legs of their jeans. With a bump in her chest, she noticed Seth on the far side. A white pickup had been reversed up the drive. As she reached them, her dad came around the side of the house.
‘Mick, look …’ Piet took a step towards him. ‘Let’s talk about it, hey?’
Her dad ignored him, going straight to his car. The engine didn’t catch. Everyone was watching him, all at different levels of involvement. Piet was shaking his head, saying something to Seth, who gestured towards the garage with one hand, his face towards her dad’s car. The two men in jeans were standing further back, waiting. They were in no hurry: sooner or later the drama would stop and they would get on with their job.
The engine finally turned and her dad wound the window down. With his eyes fixed straight ahead, he spoke. Helen could hear him quite clearly; it was his injured and dignified voice.
‘Would you mind shifting your truck? I have something I need to do.’
Piet went towards him, bending over and saying something inaudible through the window. Helen had the uncomfortable sense she should go and find out what was going on, but before she could act, Piet stepped back, shaking his head again. One of the men got into the truck and drove into the lane, her dad following. He stopped the car halfway out to wind down the window, and seemed about to speak. Then, with a crunch of gears, he changed his mind and carried on.
They stood in strained silence before the second man stepped out and signalled for the truck to reverse. Nobody else reacted, even after it had come to a halt. The man driving the truck put his elbow on the edge of the window and stuck his head out.
‘Right, shall we get on now?’
Seth was standing at the back end of the truck. The tailgate had been let down and the second man was next to him, both of them examining an engine, lashed down in the truck bed with heavy rope. Helen took a deep breath and set out towards them. Seth glanced up and gave her a smile as she approached at the same moment as Piet came round the side and put an arm across her shoulders.