Sea Change

by Jeremy Page

  Freya’s sitting in the front while Judy sleeps in the back. She has the road map across her lap and, unlike her mother, she’s able to pore over it without feeling sick. She gets that from him, and she also shares his love of maps - it’s enough to know precisely where you are, if not exactly where you’re going - he told her that. He can sense the woman she might be one day: supportive, friendly, never quite losing her humour. It’s comforting to think she has such a good heart.

  He’s had Rainy Night in Georgia constantly going round in his head for the last few hours, he’s sure he hasn’t been humming it out loud, but somehow Freya’s picked up on it too, she keeps half-singing it herself, while she looks at the map. Guy thinks of his favourite line from the song, about shaking the rain from your sweater, and remembers Judy singing that same line in Fergus’s garage when the band were practising. Nice, really, that they were now in Georgia together, in the rain. Life had an elegance about it sometimes, of moments playing out you never thought would.

  ‘This here’s bear coun’ry,’ Freya says, looking out into the nothingness beyond the road. ‘We gonna make us a camp ’n’ cook us some bean stew.’ It’s another of her characters - this one’s based on Calamity Jane, Guy thinks, a gun-slinging force of nature. Freya saw the film last year.

  Guy plays along. ‘I ain’t never seen me a bear.’

  ‘Then you ain’t half as man as me,’ Freya says, then laughs at her own wit, and slightly hesitates as if working out just what she’s said. ‘I think,’ she adds in her normal voice.

  ‘Think we’ll see one?’ Guy asks.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘They don’t really exist. They’re just in fairy tales.’ Then she adds, more seriously, ‘Dad, thanks for everything.’

  ‘That’s kind of you to say.’

  ‘Are you jealous of Mum?’

  ‘Doing the recording?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ve had my share of it - over the years - she’s sung to me more than anyone else. I’ve always loved her singing.’

  ‘Right,’ she says, wistfully enough for him to glance at her. It’s a dangerous thing these women have: intuition. Sometimes they don’t even know it themselves, can’t access it when they want, but they look to the side and it’s there, like a second watchful face. He wants to know more.

  ‘How do you think she feels about it?’ he asks, casually.

  ‘She’s scared, Dad.’

  ‘Scared?’ It’s not a word he associates with Judy. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Of failing. I think it’s made her really scared.’

  ‘You’re a good observer,’ he says, encouragingly. ‘Has she said this to you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she says, with a hint of backtracking. She’s trying not to be disloyal. ‘I shouldn’t - you know . . .’ she says, trailing off.

  ‘You’re all right,’ he says. ‘You and I have always talked, haven’t we, I mean as equals. It’s important - and it’s important for your mum to know we love her - we’re there for her.’

  It’s too much. He’s lost Freya, lost her openness and he feels stupid for pushing it. Rashly, he continues in the same vein, asking her how she is, really. He gets nothing, but is left with the sense that something’s wrong - something’s wrong with his family - the invisible threads that hold it in one piece.

  The road keeps on curving upwards. Surely a crest must be reached, a watershed between those streams that end up in the Atlantic, and those going the other way, to the far off flatness of the Gulf of Mexico. All this rain falling, dividing at some point for very long and different journeys back to the ocean, the simplicity is beautiful.

  They nearly pass the sign for the Amicalola Falls state park. It appears, like in a film, caught in the headlamps and streaked with rain, and then vanishes as the car turns. Guy slows and steers into the park, passing grimly wet signs for camping and picnic areas, forks and bends in the road leading to parts of the park he must avoid. It’s quite complicated, and he doesn’t want to make a mistake so late at night. They keep on driving higher, till they suddenly see the long lights of a building, far away through the night. It’s appeared like an ocean liner, wrecked on the crest of a hill, with tall windows and rows of corridors in a landscape which is otherwise completely without light.

  The building keeps disappearing into black empty patches of the night as the hills get in the way, then abruptly, without warning, they are turning into a manicured car park. The slowing of the car wakes Judy, instinctively.

  ‘Heh. We here?’ she says.

  ‘Think so,’ Guy replies. ‘Freya’s been brilliant with the map.’

  ‘Yeah?’ she says, unimpressed. She lifts herself on to one elbow to look through the window. ‘Christ! Looks like the Overlook Hotel!’

  It does. The hotel is vast, built of wood and glass in a lodge style, with an airy atrium and an empty reception desk. They take their bags in and stand there, feeling a little small and washed up by the weather and the lateness of the night. Across the lobby are collections of comfy chairs and suede sofas, and there’s a drone of a floor polisher coming from a long way off.

  Judy takes it upon herself to find some staff somewhere, and she does it with remarkable efficiency - every inch the bank manager’s daughter - shepherding a tall greying man to the reception and making him find a room for them. He looks at them through glasses half-way down his nose, and smiles gently, apologizing for the dreadful weather. It doesn’t bother Guy. He loved the smell of the mountain air as he crossed the car park, full of the scent of pin oak and hickory. They make air fresheners of this kind of thing.

  His excitement continues as they walk the long corridors to their room, through a hotel which seems entirely devoid of life. No sound of TVs behind the doors, no sound, in fact, of anything. Their room is high up, and through the huge plate-glass window of their bedroom there is nothing but an emptiness, a black nothing across the hills and forest that he knows is outside.

  A few minutes later, miraculously, there’s a polite knock on the door, and a tray of burgers is brought in. Well done, Judy, you pulled that out of the hat.

  They sit round a low coffee table and scoff the food in a noisy silence, punctuated by their too rapid swallowing and licking of fingers. Their elbows jostle one another for the pile of communal fries on a plate in the centre. Freya’s very capable of matching him, fry for fry, that’s a recent development. It’s family at its most vulgar and without inhibition - the kind of thing he’s watched on a natural history programme, like those miserable hyenas, dragging and tearing at some poor rotten thing, their heads emerging wild-eyed with excitement. He dips the bun in the sauce, eats the wet garnish, licks the salt and animal grease from his fingers. Nothing like being hungry, he thinks, nothing like it at all - eating late and knowing you deserve it, it’s about the best thing life can deliver.

  They go to sleep exhausted - he’s much more settled than he had been at the motel, the night before. This truly feels like an arrival and, outside, a sense that there is something huge and empty and full of wonder, the state park, Georgia, America, a journey, it’s tremendous.

  As he falls asleep, he thinks of the black bears out there, hundreds of them probably, crouching and shuffling in the forest, looking at the lights of the hotel on the crest above them, their fur as wet as carwash rollers. Unlucky bastards.

  He wakes in the morning to see Freya standing at the bedroom window, the curtain pulled to one side. The room is shadowy, but a bright clean light washes in from behind her, it feels like a flood of cold white water pouring into the still pond which has been their sleep. Freya notices him stirring, or had been waiting for him, because she whispers, ‘Come on, Dad, come and look.’ It’s good that she wants him rather than her mother; even after all these years he seeks the affirmation that he has a special connection with her.

  ‘You won’t believe it,’ she whispers.

  At the window he’s amazed to see a giant white void of cloud, moving fast, drifting in sharp coiling f
ogs around the hotel. Right below them a patch of grey grass leads out to bushes, but beyond that, where there should be one of the most impressive views of Georgia’s northern mountains, the miles of ridge and forest, the carpet of verdant green, there is nothing. It’s like they’re in the sky, rising through the clouds.

  ‘Wow,’ he says.

  ‘I’ve been up a whole hour,’ Freya says, proudly. ‘Sometimes you get these glimpses of a mountain up there,’ she points, ‘and over there,’ already an expert guide, it seems. ‘It’s amazing.’

  It’s mountain light, he thinks, blinding and white and full of ozone - as if the light they’re used to, back in England, has been stained by damp soil.

  While they look, a brief fringe of trees along a ridge begins to emerge, impossibly high up. Distantly the trees look like a rim of eyelashes, the cloud swirling and resealing in such a way that the ridge disappears in a downward motion, the curve of an eyelid closing.

  ‘Shame we can’t see them properly,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah. Although sometimes imagining views can be better.’

  He and Freya go down to breakfast before Judy. The restaurant’s a large wooden room off the reception, again with plate-glass windows looking out into the mist and fog. An elderly waitress moves immediately toward them, a bowl of black coffee held in her hand like a bowling ball. ‘Y’all have a good night?’ she says, sweetly, and follows it up with a ‘hmm, ah-ha’ before they’ve answered. ‘Y’all hungry?’ she says, ‘ ’cause we can do something about that, ah-ha,’ and begins to move off.

  Freya thinks that’s funny, and begins to imitate her the second the waitress is gone. Guy’s glad Freya’s so buoyant this morning. More and more his mood seems to be dictated by the enjoyment the others are having. That’s family, he thinks, as he sees Judy walking dreamily towards them, miles away, getting closer.

  He eats a huge breakfast of grits and biscuits, salted sausage, ham, cheese and juice. He has several cups of black coffee, enjoying making a spectacle of himself in front of his girls, neither of whom can truly compete with his appetite. Freya tries, repeatedly going off to the breakfast counter in that little bouncy clumsy walk of hers, a couple of hair bands tied round her wrist, as always, but she comes back with the things Guy’s not interested in - the figs, yoghurts and grapes. He stretches to prunes, but here, faced with serving bells full of meat, biscuits and gravy, he’s got bigger fish to fry.

  Judy sits curved into her chair, leaning on one arm, sipping her black coffee. She’s never been one for breakfast. To her, breakfast is black, bitter and liquid, while all the others make fools of themselves, and she’s looking disapprovingly at Freya, stuffing her face, filling out her clothes, being on the cusp of the largeness her body might be capable of.

  Guy’s missing this. He can pack so much food away he likes to leave the table aching. He loves this feeling that things are going well, that he’s had a good night’s sleep, that he’s reinvigorated and alive. This is what he’s travelling for, being the man he can never really afford to be back at home, free of routines, let off the leash with his appetite. A walk, a swim, reading a book, lying on the bed, all is permissible.

  ‘Thanks for doing all that driving,’ Judy says. ‘I was a total wash-out.’

  ‘I loved it. Didn’t we, Freya?’

  The waitress fills Judy’s cup again - Judy’s her best customer.

  ‘You two go and see the waterfall,’ Judy says, ‘I’m not bothered.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ Guy begins, ‘it’s a couple of minutes walk from the hotel, to the top of the thing. I mean, that’s why we came here.’ He’s not even convincing himself, let alone her. It’s raining outside.

  ‘Really,’ she says, ‘I’m not interested.’

  She drinks her coffee and gives him an amused, quick look. She’s waking up, and he suspects she’s woken up with all the answers, all the right sense of knowing what to do, and he’s just blundering his way forward, stuffing himself with cheap food, getting excited, being ridiculous. She’s just a very cool person, after all, too composed and clever for the likes of him, and she knows it.

  ‘Besides, I need to do some voice practice. I’ll just go to the room and do it there.’

  And make some calls, he thinks, feel a bit glamorous, rather than be with this family holiday with its dumb trips to waterfalls.

  ‘Y’all finished?’ the elderly waitress says, her face lined and kind and made up like a young woman, her job done, another family fed and filled.

  When it comes down to it, even Freya doesn’t bother to come to the waterfall. She decides to read in one of the comfy suede couches they’d seen in the reception, while Guy, committed to going outside, suspecting he too doesn’t really want to see the damn waterfall, trudges down a cement path, getting soaked within the first couple of minutes, till he reaches a small insignificant stream running through the trees. The air’s still dense with mist, and the rain is spitting out of it in fast stinging needle points, and everywhere there’s an overwhelming rushing sound of water, and he realizes it’s coming from the stream itself, as it tips casually over the wide lip of a flat rock, beginning its explosive transformation into the highest waterfall this side of the Mississippi. A small brown stream, suddenly so white, full of action and noise, crashing on the rocks as it falls, rising in veils of steam and mist, and the others, they’re all missing it. Freya’s on the comfy sofa with a magazine open on her lap, and Judy’s upstairs making phone calls. They might as well be a thousand miles away - while he’s out here on a slippery path of rocks, getting soaked, and he climbs down while the forest rises around on the steep cliffs like something magical and primeval, covered in vines and smelling so fresh and earthy, and it’s so overwhelmingly wet, so overwhelmingly alive, all these black bears out here, somewhere, driven mad by the sound of water constantly rushing through the hills, watching him now from behind the trunks, and he feels very little, very little indeed.

  Position: Anchorage in Deben estuary. About midnight.

  After all that writing, Guy still can’t sleep. Instead he sits in the wheelhouse, with the lights off, looking out across the estuary. Although it’s late, a curious glow seems to be shining off the water, as if it’s made of a strangely metalled substance.

  He sees something move on the Falls of Lora, and realizes someone is standing on deck. It’s Rhona, standing alone, and even at this distance he can see she’s very drunk. She’s guiding herself across the top of the cabin, reaching for the cables and ties like she’s climbing through some impenetrable thicket. Half-turning, swinging her way forward, hampered by the blanket she’s wrapped herself up in and a bottle in one hand, until she’s standing at the bow. Guy smiles. She’s a troubled one, he thinks. All that beauty and dangerous glances, and still she’s drinking herself through the nights.

  He observes her, making out her slender figure beneath the blanket, as she takes a long emptying drink from the bottle. She looks down into the water and reaches for a cable behind her and as the boat tips gently with her weight he sees her drop the bottle off the side. It disappears without a splash, and as he watches her, standing so ghostly still above it, she seems to shrink, sliding strangely through her own blanket and suddenly vanishing too, into the water.

  Guy can’t believe what he’s just seen, can’t believe what is happening, it’s too surreal, and even while he’s flinging open the door of the wheelhouse he’s already anticipating the mad leap he will make off the side of his boat, already experiencing that strange feeling of weightlessness followed by the sudden overwhelming flood of cold black water.

  He runs the length of the boat and throws himself, barefoot, into the estuary. When he hits the water he is plunged below it and he feels one foot go into the soft silky mud before he surfaces, disorientated, smelling the salt and the mud and seeing the Falls of Lora from a different angle, further away than it had appeared in the wheelhouse. He feels the drag of his clothes as he swims as fast as he can, splashing too much and
trying to call out and it seems to take an age for him to reach the other boat and he still hasn’t seen Rhona.

  He dives, and surfaces, and dives again and briefly, he feels something that isn’t water. A dress, a part of a dress, he tugs it and reaches further and grabs something else, an arm or leg and he pulls her towards him - both of them breaking the surface now and she coughs loudly in his face and half chokes and she clings to his shoulder as he tries to bring her along the side of the yacht.

  As they reach the stern he realizes he’s able to stand on the riverbed, on some bank of stones down there, and as he looks up he sees Marta above him, drenched to the waist where she’s been groping for them in the darkness. She’s shouting and crying and trying to reach out to Rhona where, together, they can haul her up on to the step near the transom.

  When at last they have her safe on the boat, Rhona starts to giggle and cough some more and she tries to push them both away. It’s the first time she’s spoken. ‘I fell,’ she says, ‘I just fell off this stupid boat.’

  And Marta laughs quickly, nervously, brushing her daughter’s hair to one side and asking, ‘Did you? Did you fall?’ over and over again and she looks at Guy, searchingly, and in the look she gives him she is full of questions.

  ‘She fell,’ he manages to say. ‘I was sitting in the wheelhouse - I saw her. I think she slipped.’

  And Marta nods, wanting to believe it, totally, and wanting to show how much she has to thank Guy for.

  Position: Same, anchorage in Deben estuary. 9:30am

  He wakes in the morning, suddenly, filled with the images of last night. How he’d jumped into the estuary, the dreamlike motion of his swimming stroke that didn’t seem to bring him closer to their boat, the feel of Rhona’s dress, underwater, and the softness of her leg when he managed to touch her. How, before she went in, she had stood at the bow, so much like a ghost, staring down into the water.