Sea Change

by Jeremy Page

  Phil and Judy walk up the road to go into the club, while Guy leads Freya the other way, feeling himself cast in an uncle’s role. Come on, he thinks to himself, you’re projecting this. Keep a lid on it.

  Soon he’s enjoying being alone with Freya. She’s had a good day - she’s already been round these streets - and is pointing out the shops and clubs she was shown earlier. Record stores, boot and hat outlets, it’s been an eye-opener for her. They peer into a shop and see hundreds of pale Stetsons hung along a wall - it looks not too dissimilar to a hunter’s trophy wall, he imagines all those cowboys shot in the fields and their hats hung for display, and he thinks I’m here, I’m really here in Nashville. It’s amazing.

  At the river they sit alone, watching its swift black ink flowing in strong muscular sinews. It looks unearthly and wild and silent in the dark.

  ‘How did you and Mum meet?’ she asks.

  He smiles. ‘In a record shop. It’s very corny. We both wanted the same CDs.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, they were half-price.’

  She smiles to herself. ‘Still, it’s sweet.’

  ‘Yeah. It was.’

  Guy’s often thought of that as one of the more perfect moments of his life. He doesn’t like to talk about it - he likes to keep it to himself. It had been romantic.

  ‘Does Phil have a crush on Mum?’ Freya asks, carefully picking her words, as she stares over the water. Guy feels a knot of alarm, inside, like he might only partially understand his situation. He decides to be straight with Freya. Her perceptiveness deserves it.

  ‘He’s always fancied your mother, even before she was your mother.’

  ‘Don’t you mind?’

  That amuses him. ‘Yes, of course I mind,’ he starts, wondering whether that’s the truth. ‘Judy has a presence about her - she attracts people - I’ve always known that. I mean I feel it, so why shouldn’t I know it? Every now and then someone has a crush on her, but that’s all it is, it happens. He’s a popinjay.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A special kind of fool.’

  ‘But doesn’t Phil have other girlfriends?’ Freya asks, getting a little upset. Children are so moral.

  ‘Yes. But he really admires your mother, I think that’s the difference.’ He thinks of some of the girls he’s seen hanging on Phil’s arm over the years. They’re a ragtag bunch, and they didn’t last.

  ‘But, Dad, he only has one leg!’ Freya blurts out.

  ‘Yep, I’ve noticed.’

  Freya stares at the water. Her profile looks sad. Her lips stick forward in a relaxed, unaware fashion, and they naturally look too full and upset.

  ‘Heh,’ he says softly, thinking she might be getting lost in an adult world which is refusing to make sense. He’s a little lost himself. She has a lifetime of her own rejections, attractions and disappointments ahead of her.

  ‘You know what we’re going to do when we get to Texas? We’re going to go to a rodeo,’ he says.

  She brightens at that, but says nothing.

  ‘That’s something to look forward to,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know what?’

  ‘Mum won’t like it.’

  ‘Yes she will,’ Guy says, but also thinking Freya’s probably right, imagining Judy gazing at the rodeo through the smoked barrier of her sunglasses.

  He puts his arm round Freya and strokes the smooth skin of her upper arm. All that arm’s done, he thinks, he remembers seeing that same right shoulder in the second prenatal scan, ten years earlier, grey and illuminated, on a monitor. All that arm will do, he had thought at the time, a first secret glimpse of a body, a potential, a future. It had made him cry at the time, at the sheer sense of newness and unknowability - his sense of being a creator and guardian of such a small life in all its beginnings. Judy had hugged him, but not cried herself. She hardly ever cried, in fact, when he thought about it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he says.

  Judy stands centre-stage, in the heart of the song, hardly moving. A middle to this sound which is pure and full, like a well. Still waters run deep, he thinks, marvelling at her posture, at her balance on stage, neither leaning in to the space before her, nor afraid of it. She is held there, in a kind tension between audience and band, a soft light falling on her, making her glow. The spot changes colour every eight bars or so, from orange to blue to crimson. She has a scarf in her hair as a headband, a bright red one he’s never seen before. It exposes more of her face than he’s used to seeing, giving her an innocent, slightly naïve look. It’s nice.

  The song has such a quiet opening, he’s always liked how it asserted its own calmness, whatever the occasion. It’s a brave song too; one which can leave the voice above the music, adrift for a cruel second or two, before surrounding it once more. The guitar is Judy’s closet ally here. Of all the instruments it’s the only one which seems likely to follow her, the one most reluctant to leave her stranded. He hates to admit it, but Phil plays his new instrument well. His notes follow hers, a loving echo of her melody, occasionally they push forward, taking a lead, suggesting a new path. Phil watches her, then glances at his fingering on the fret board he adores. He appears honest in this light, a buffoon in so many others, but here on stage he is at last part of something he truly believes in.

  Judy looks at the new guitar, anticipating the chord changes on it. Guy reluctantly notices how his wife and Phil understand each other, as they explore the breaks - the tiny rhythmical stresses that stretch between them. That’s where the music lies all right, that’s where heart and soul come from, and Guy knows it, knows that this is a language which has developed between them over ten years.

  For a second Judy looks up from the mic and gazes at Guy. He sees a friendly look in her eyes, a recognition, but beyond that a confusion, as if she’s slightly intoxicated. It makes him feel kind towards her. It’s a courageous thing she’s doing, laying out her soul up there, so far from home, and he wants to offer his support. But her eyes close as she rises up through the melody, and he feels shut out, again. It’s like she’s coming in and out of consciousness - little moments of intimacy and familiarity surrounded by a situation which doesn’t belong to either of them. It was like that at Freya’s birth. He remembers holding Judy as the waves of her labour hit, the look in her eyes as something dark and impenetrable hardened within her, in expectation, in preparation, holding her while the pain struck, making her wince, then draining away and she was returning, bewildered but returning, looking into his eyes again. That small glimpse of Judy, disorientated, he’s never quite managed to forget that experience in all its vividness, and as a result he’s a little haunted by it, as if he’s been allowed to see a truth he shouldn’t have witnessed. She had seemed mysterious and full of an inner sense of strength and survival which had left him frightened, and a little bit in awe, always. Frightened even now, because he knows that’s in her, below the surface, an immeasurable well.

  When she’s on stage he sees remnants of this independence, and is reminded that Judy is only part of him because their lives have coincided over the last fifteen years, and part of him because they have shared Freya. Freya is where they have met - the space between them which was given life - but they are still as separate as they ever were.

  Freya’s sitting awkwardly on a barstool, holding a glass of Coke with both hands, drinking it with two straws. He looks at the hair bands tied round her wrist. They must comfort her. She’s in a pair of jeans with a pink trim running down the length of the leg, a touch of flamboyance, but here she looks shy and nervous, reluctant to move, not wanting to draw attention to herself. Guy moves to her and puts his arm round her - he’s still a bit unnerved by their conversation on the riverbank.

  ‘That’s your mother on stage,’ he says.

  ‘I know,’ she says, the straws still in her mouth. She can’t take her eyes off Judy. ‘Do you think she’ll be famous?’

  ‘Don’t know,’
Guy replies, automatically. He’s never really considered it, never really considered how it would affect them all. ‘Probably not,’ he adds, wishing not, and thinking about the track she recorded today, already held in some digital memory across town, waiting to be heard by people who might offer her more, take her away, like it’s a letter which is dropped in a post-box, and nothing can stop it being delivered now.

  Judy waits while the guitar plays out the sweet remains of the song, nodding her head in calm rhythm, and about twenty or thirty people in the bar start to clap. They’re an appreciative bunch, used to the hundreds of bands doing brief sets up and down these streets each year. There are a few tourists, just listening to whatever turns up, but Guy’s most impressed by the bar staff, who seem genuinely touched by Judy and her song. Maybe it’s her Englishness they like - her blend of folk and more familiar sounds like the pedal steel guitar she has in the group tonight. Or maybe it’s that new B-bender Tele they like. One of the barmaids is beaming at Judy - it’s not quite country, and she’s loving it.

  He feels in love with her all over again. Judy looks back at him, and he gives her an enormous grin - she’s made it - she’s come all this way over the ocean and has actually performed her best. She’s magnificent.

  Judy starts a new song - this is one of Phil’s tunes. It’s an upbeat sound full of borrowed country references, with a lot of guitar. Too interested in himself, that Phil. Guy watches Phil step forward on his artificial leg which is still covered up in his jeans and new boot, swinging that new sunburst Nashville Tele, grinning wide-mouthed at the bar, and Judy bends to take a sip of water. At his cue she joins in with a melody which simply follows the guitar up and down. Phil’s going for it with his expensive new toy - he’s pushing down on the strap to bend the notes and going behind the nut to do some country licks. Quite impressive in its own way, but a monkey that can do tricks is still a monkey, after all. And the song’s nothing like the last one. Still, it has a beat, and a couple of people in the bar step forward and start to dance in front of the stage. Phil loves that. Stupid Cupid.

  Guy doesn’t dance, certainly not to another man’s tune, and has a slight fear that Freya might ask to dance with him, but luckily she’s dug into her barstool now and seems to be there for the evening - a touch of her father in that kind of solidity. Around them, the talk in the bar increases - it confirms Guy’s suspicions - that the last song had captivated them, and that this song is louder, more showy, but is just a background. He must tell Judy this - well, tell her without being too critical of Phil - he’s made that kind of mistake before.

  Guy closes the diary and leaves the saloon to stand on deck. It’s gone dark. The water shines up at him, flattened with a mirror-calm sheen. The fisherman’s still at the back of his cuddy, looking at the tip of his rod. Across the river he looks at the Rushcutter’s Arms, a view of golden light shining through its windows like photographs in an album, a fond time remembered. Either side of it the shore is a blank depth of trees and, as he looks towards the sea, there is nothing, just a velvety black void. The scent of the brine rises up in soft warm lumpy air. Maybe another thunderstorm will come.

  There are sounds, of cables stretching along aluminium masts, of boats settling in the high tide and, closer by, the rhythmic stroke of oars being rowed through the dark. Someone returning to their boat no doubt, and he searches for it, sees a glimmer of light briefly curl along a rail of polished wood, then the beads of water shining in the ripples of a wake, emerging in a smooth pattern from a point which heads towards his boat, coming right at him now and he sees a figure lifting out from the darkness and turning to steer the dinghy alongside the Flood.

  He kneels down at the gunwale and reaches out to take Marta’s hand.

  Position: In the saloon. 10pm

  She’s wearing a dark Icelandic sweater with a bright yoke design across the shoulders, a long skirt, and is drinking her second glass of amaretto, sitting in the same easy chair he used this morning when he wrote about the recording studio.

  ‘Ro has a headache - a really terrible one,’ Marta explains, in a whisper, as if even here she has to be quiet. ‘She gets them, you know. Migraines.’

  Drinking the syrupy liquid has brought out a subdued calmness in her. She wants to talk about last night. She tells Guy that she can’t believe Rhona could fall in like that, she wants to know exactly what Guy saw.

  ‘It was dark, Marta. I’ve been over it several times - I just saw her slip, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. She slipped.’ But she keeps looking down at her hands, holding the thin-glassed tumbler of soft brown liquid, and occasionally she swirls the glass.

  ‘She drinks too much. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re doing everything you can.’

  ‘Yes, I am, aren’t I? But I wasn’t there to save her, was I? When it came down to it, I wasn’t there.’ She looks at him. ‘You were,’ she says. ‘I want to thank you.’

  ‘You don’t need to.’

  ‘You were a hero,’ she says, trying to lighten her tone.

  ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ he says.

  ‘OK. But thanks, again. Really.’ She pauses. ‘We’ve given up now. We’re going to go back to Cambridge.’

  Guy sits in a chair near her. Again he is struck by how sad she looks, when she’s not trying to smile.

  ‘Do you know what you’ll do, when you get home?’ she asks.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I mean, the very first thing. I’ve been trying to work out what I’ll do, and I can’t picture it. I can only think that I’ll stand by the stove and make a pot of tea.’

  ‘That sounds perfect.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I think I’ll collect my dog.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Yeah. His name’s Banjo. He’s scruffy.’

  ‘Even better.’

  ‘I left him with the woman who runs the B&B at the pub - it wasn’t fair to take him out to sea, just in case. If you want to know what I’ll do - I’ll take him on this walk of ours, up into the woods. Yeah. It’s beautiful - it reminds me of my mother - we used to go walking in the woods when I was a kid.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks, in the same quiet manner. ‘You didn’t come here to see the estuary, did you?’

  ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘It’s a miserable place. It’s like an open wound.’

  ‘It can be.’

  ‘You’re just as stuck as we are, I expect?’

  Guy feels he can hide little from this woman, with that direct pale-eyed gaze of hers. ‘I wasn’t going to come here at all.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I was going to go out into the North Sea. Like, a long way.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t quite know, yet.’

  ‘Well, that’s enigmatic.’ Marta looks up at him, shyly. She’s caught the sun, and her face seems a little raw, it gives her a vulnerable look. ‘You don’t have to be enigmatic, you know.’

  ‘The North Sea’s a big place. It made me think, being out there.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, sucking her breath in as she says the word. It’s a foreign intonation. ‘I’ve been doing some of that myself.’ She looks at him with a watchful expression. ‘The sea meant something special to my husband.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘He loved sailing - actually, he was quite boring about it. We were always going to sail round Britain - we never had a honeymoon because Ro came along, so we were always going to do that one day.’ She takes a breath. ‘My husband died three-and-a-half months ago. His name was Howard and he had a stroke, and he was a very lovely man.’

  Marta gathers herself. ‘See my hair,’ she says, ‘where the henna’s grown out? That’s how long he’s been gone. They thought they could save him but they couldn’t. He was fifty-three. ’

  She looks at Guy, resolutely. ‘They thought it might have been a stroke, right from the outset. Howard was sailing in
the Solent and they had to winch him from the boat. I’ve imagined him in that harness, with his eyes screwed shut and his hair being blown crazy. You see, Guy, all that drama, all that noise and action and urgency - at the precise moment when he was being hoisted up in the winch and flown to the hospital, I was at the supermarket, looking for the cheese he liked. It’s Caerphilly. I was looking after him, but I wasn’t there for him either, when it came down to it.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself. That’s not right.’

  ‘But you see I do. Sailing was his thing, and I always disappointed him about that, because I like to stay at home. I probably disappointed him for years - he was full of such spirit. I’ve only become a worrier.’

  Marta pauses, troubled. ‘Ro’s like him - she has his restless energy. I won’t be able to hold on to her. Everybody leaves, Guy - sometimes, they leave in the middle of the night and sometimes, like Howard, they get hoisted up by paramedics into a Sea King, like an angel has come to take them to heaven. When they took Howard it was like he was being lifted out of this world. And behind there’s this little space that’s left that you have to fill.’

  Guy looks down into his drink. There’s never been an answer in there. He strokes Marta’s arm.

  ‘And now Rhona’s dropped out of art school and she’s drinking every night and that stunt she pulled last night - I just don’t know . . . I don’t know whether I can continue. It’s all messed up. That’s why I’m with a strange man late at night miles from anywhere at all.’ She glances at him, anxiously. ‘Please don’t take that the wrong way.’

  ‘Marta,’ Guy says, ‘cry as much as you want to.’

  ‘Cheers,’ she says, brightly, then begins to cry more.

  ‘Three days ago, Marta - my first morning out at sea - it was that amazing dead calm we had. I looked at where I was on the maritime map over there, and it had nothing written on it, just a blank space - it should have said “wilderness”, you know, like they used to put on the maps. It was that really fantastically sunny morning. I went for a swim - as soon as I went in the water it kind of took my breath away. You mind me telling you this?’