The Drowning

by Valerie Mendes

  She pulled out a chair and sat down.

  She switched on a lamp.

  Its pool of creamy light glinted on the polished table top, filled the room with shadows.

  And lit another shape.

  Something in the corner opposite.

  Someone in a hat, a heavy coat and leather gloves sat motionless as a watchful spider in a web.

  “Hello, Jenna,” said Mum.

  On the Midnight Beach

  “Jesus Christ, you gave me a fright!”

  “I’m not surprised. You hardly expected me.”

  “You can say that again!”

  Mum turned on the lamp at her table. “There! That’s better. Now we can see each other properly . . . My, you’ve had your hair cut. Very grown up! Makeovers all round, I see. What about dear Elwyn? Does he look the same?”

  Jenna ignored the question. “How long have you been here?”

  Mum crossed her legs, pulled off her tight gloves, finger by finger. The scent of stale perfume wafted across the room. “Don’t know exactly . . . About an hour?”

  “And you’ve been sitting over there all that time?”

  “Admiring the new decor.”

  “In the dark?”

  “I rather like the dark these days . . . It’s kinder on the eyes.”

  “Does Tammy know you’re here?”

  “Your aunt is in New York again, on one of her glamorous jaunts.”

  “Why haven’t you told Dad you’re—”

  “From what I can hear, he’s entertaining a lady friend. Thought I’d wait for her to leave before I announced myself. I wouldn’t want to put him off his stride.” Mum gave a sarcastic gasp, flattened her mouth with her hand. “I assume she is going to leave? That she hasn’t taken my place in his bed?”

  “That’s a disgusting thing to say.”

  “I wouldn’t blame him. I have been absent for rather a long time.”

  “You sure have.”

  “Who is she, by the way, the lady friend?”

  Jenna said sulkily,“We’re very short-staffed. She comes in from time to time, to help us out.”

  Mum’s voice tightened. “Really? Not that girl who used to work here before I arrived on the scene? What’s her name again? Esther? Nessa?”

  “Hester.”

  “Right! Hester . . . I remember . . . Lovely chestnut hair . . .” She lifted a bulging handbag on to her table, took out a packet of cigarettes.

  “No smoking,” Jenna said quickly. “The new sign’s on the wall.”

  “I see . . .” Mum stuffed the cigarettes back into her bag. “You’re not making me feel particularly welcome, Jenna. You haven’t even offered me any tea.”

  “I wonder why!”

  “You haven’t touched yours either. Shall I make us both a fresh cup?” Mum heaved herself to her feet and strode into the kitchen.

  Jenna screwed up her face.

  Has she any idea how much Dad’s missed her,how hard we’ve worked?

  This being here unannounced, sitting in the dark, it’s a deliberate game. She wants to catch Dad unawares, so she’ll have something else to bully him about.

  Maybe I should warn him that she’s here.

  “There you go.” Her mother plonked two more cups of tea on Jenna’s table. “New crockery, very trendy.” She settled herself opposite Jenna. “Well, now, isn’t this nice? Quite like old times!”

  Jenna almost threw her cup of stone-cold tea into her mother’s face. “Don’t you even want to know how Dad and I have been since you left? It was August, remember? All these months, we’ve worked our fingers to the bone for you. Dad missed you so much . . .”

  “Did he now? Poor Elwyn.” She gave a meaningful look through to the living room. “Found it hard to manage on his own?”

  Right! That’s the final straw!

  Jenna leant across the table. “You’re nothing but a selfish, cold-hearted cow. Do you even care?”

  Mum took off her hat, stroked the fake fur, patted her hair into place. She gave Jenna a look which froze her to the core.

  “Not a lot,” she said.

  They drank their tea in silence.

  China clinked against china. The new clock ticked relentlessly on the wall. Outside the Cockleshell, gulls shrieked in the rain.

  In the living room, the television clicked off. Voices murmured faintly, then more clearly.

  “Good night, Elwyn.”

  “Thanks for your help, Hester. Good night, dear. Mind how you go.”

  The front door opened and closed.

  The silence thickened.

  Dad started to sing John Masefield’s “Sea-Fever”, hopelessly out of tune.

  “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

  And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by . . .”

  He trotted across the courtyard and stopped. “Why are those lights still on?”

  He came through to the door of the Cockleshell. “What the . . . Lydia? . . . Good God! My darling Lydia . . . I can hardly believe my eyes . . . When did you . . . How wonderful to see you . . . I’d no idea you were here.”

  “Hello, Elwyn. Could you take my suitcase upstairs?”

  Jenna left them to it: her parents, sitting either side of the living room like strangers, Dad overwhelmed, wiping his spectacles on his sleeve, offering Mum some sherry. Mum sitting quiet, dour, holding the glass between finger and thumb, taking tiny sips with her heavily lipsticked mouth.

  Jenna crashed up to her room, lay on her bed fully dressed, listening.

  Voices droned on for an hour. A door opened. Mum’s footsteps climbed the stairs. Right up the stairs, to Benjie’s bedroom. The door clicked shut.

  Dad went to his room. There’d be no more singing tonight.

  Jenna switched off her bedside lamp.

  She lay staring into the dark.

  Listening . . .

  Something woke her: a tiny shuffling, like a hungry mouse in the wainscot, or a dove settling its feathers on the roof.

  She looked at the luminous hands of the bedside clock.

  Midnight.

  There it came again,the shuffling. A door clicked open. A floorboard creaked. Silence. It creaked again.

  Jenna sat up.

  What the hell is that?

  She opened her door an inch, then further . . . then further still.

  Benjie’s door stood slightly open.

  She tiptoed across the landing, pushed at the door with her toe.

  It swung open.

  Jenna whispered, “Mum?”

  She dashed back to her room, wrenched at the curtains, flattened her nose against the pane.

  Mum was walking briskly across the Digey as if she were on a shopping expedition to the supermarket. Across her shoulders flapped Dad’s pale grey raincoat.

  I must go after her . . . For Dad’s sake, if not for mine.

  Jenna hurled herself down the stairs.

  Outside Dad’s door she paused, heard his gently rumbling snore. She rushed down to the hall, pulled on her boots and coat. In minutes she had followed Mum: across the Digey, down to Porthmeor Beach and the roar of the pounding, tar-smelling sea.

  The tide had sucked itself out. The sand stretched wet and flat, littered with clumps of weed. Mum was nowhere to be seen.

  Where the hell has she gone?

  She looked like a ghost, dressed in Dad’s old clothes.

  If she isn’t on the beach, where else would she be at this time of night?

  Jenna turned and retraced her steps, back to the Cockleshell. Mum had crossed the road, but instead of dipping down the Digey to the beach, she could have followed Back Road West along to Porthmeor Road. It led straight on to the Island.

  Jenna caught her breath.

  Was her mother trying to find the spot where Benjie had drowned? Instead of walking along the beach, was she simply heading up to the hill? To stand above those rock pools which had swallowed his life? In order to do what?

/>   You stupid, selfish cow . . . In order to do what?

  Her heart beating into her mouth, Jenna started to run.

  Dim, sparsely placed streetlights hardly helped to clarify the swirls of Cornish stone, the darkness of lurking corners. Gates, paths, courtyards, walls, cottages – Crab Rock, the Bolt Hole, Neptune, Lower Deck, the Saltings – which in daytime she recognised like the back of her hand, loured at her, anonymous and forbidding, as if warning her off. The rain had stopped but the cobblestones felt slippery and treacherous. Moonless and starless, the sky hung low and threatening.

  At the bottom of Porthmeor Road, she stopped to catch her breath. Tiny pinpricks of light shone from houses along the Man’s Head ridge. Up on the Island, nothing beckoned but pitch dark.

  Jenna began to climb, her feet skidding on wet grass, her breath frothing white-stranded into the dank night air. Gulls screeched around her, their privacy disturbed. She stared out to the sea, noticed how its darkness faded into grey at the horizon.

  Cold with sweat and desperation, still further and upwards she climbed.

  A pale raincoat flapped in the wind.

  “Mum!”

  Her mother stood at the top of the Island, her legs planted wide, like a scarecrow, looking straight ahead at the sea. She turned her face in Jenna’s direction, stared as Jenna ran, panting, up to her.

  “What are you doing here?” Jenna was so furious she could hardly speak.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Are you completely mad?”

  Mum’s eyes were blank. “Why have you followed me?”

  Sweat poured down Jenna’s back. “Why do you think, you stupid, selfish—”

  “I can’t talk to you, Jenna. Have the decency to leave me alone.”

  “Do you want me to ring the police?”

  Mum laughed, a dour murmur of mirth that sent shivers of panic down Jenna’s spine. “Where from? The Cockleshell? Go right ahead. By the time they get here, it’ll be much too late!”

  “For what? What on earth are you going to—”

  “Join my own little Benjie, of course. Why else would I have come back? Didn’t you guess?”

  “No, of course I didn’t! For God’s sake, Mum! How can you even think of—”

  Mum shrugged. “I can’t face life without Benjie. Now get away from me and let me die.”

  She moved closer to the edges of the rocks.

  Jenna grabbed at her sleeve. “I won’t let you do it.”

  “Why not?” Mum had started to shake. “You go home and I’ll jump. I can’t even swim. You didn’t know that, did you? The sea’s so cold I’ll be dead in minutes. What could be simpler than that?”

  The wind ballooned into the raincoat. It seemed to rip at Mum’s body. She escaped Jenna’s grasp, leaving the coat behind. She toppled backwards, lay there for a fraction of a second, then slid clumsily over the edge.

  Jenna darted forward. She screamed, “Don’t do it, Mum . . . Don’t fall any further.” She knelt on the rocks. “Quick, hold on to my hand . . . There’s something I must tell you . . . I know how Benjie died.”

  Mum clawed at the rocks, the tufts of grass. She raised her face. “What?”

  “Please, Mum, hold on to me.”

  Mum flung an arm at Jenna’s hand. Jenna grasped it with both of hers. “Find a foothold . . . Give me your other hand.”

  “I can’t . . . It’s wet . . . I’m slipping. . .”

  “Give me your other hand . . . Right . . . Use your feet . . .”

  “I haven’t got the strength . . .”

  “Push yourself up . . .”

  “It’s useless . . . I can’t do it. . .”

  “I won’t let you go, Mum . . .”

  “I can’t manage it . . .”

  “I refuse to let you go.”

  “I’m trying . . . Hold on to me, Jenna . . .”

  “I’ve got you . . .”

  “Please, hold on. . .”

  Inch by painful inch, Jenna dragged Mum’s heavy body back to the firm wet earth.

  Mum lay there, racked with sobs.

  She raised her face, her lips trembling and white. “This isn’t just a trick to get me home?”

  Jenna pulled her mother close, cradled her in her arms. “This isn’t a trick.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “You weren’t bloody well here to be told.” Jenna pulled Dad’s raincoat across Mum’s shoulders. “Here . . . Put this on properly before you freeze to death.”

  She pushed her mother’s arms through the protective sleeves, wanting suddenly to hug the body that knelt beside her, to welcome her back to life.

  “What happened to Benjie?” Lydia shook with cold. “How did—”

  “Can we go home now? I’ll tell you on the way.”

  They walked slowly back in the wind, down the wet, slippery hill, through the dark, deserted streets, Mum limping, Jenna supporting her, talking as they went, telling for the final time the story of Benjie’s last few months on earth. And his last moments.

  The words were easier to say in the dark.

  Back in the kitchen they dried their hair and faces, climbed into pyjamas and bathrobes, sat at the table, their hands clutching mugs of hot soup. The colour returned to Mum’s face, the trembling stopped, the look of death and desperation softened in her eyes, as if she were amazed and, after all, even relieved to be alive.

  “Do you want to know the truth?” She looked across at Jenna, her eyes suddenly vulnerable. “Guess I owe you an explanation.”

  Jenna suddenly felt that she was seeing her mother for the first time, seeing behind the polished, organised shell to the woman beneath. “Only if—”

  “What happened was very simple. You arrived too soon – and Benjie just in time.”

  “How d’you mean, too soon?” The soup burnt Jenna’s mouth.

  “Dad’s told you how we met . . . But he doesn’t know the whole story.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “But I want to, Jenna. Just now, you . . . I nearly . . . Hear me out.”

  Jenna sat in silence, her eyes on Mum’s face.

  “I’d been dumped by a boyfriend in London. I was thirty-four and I felt utterly humiliated. I took the train to Cornwall, to recuperate, to try to forget about him. One afternoon I came to the Cockleshell, met Elwyn, helped him to clear up at closing time.

  “Dear, reliable Elwyn: always so adoring.” Mum looked away. “We had a summer fling, a holiday romance. But I knew he wanted more. When the time came to go home, and I realised I was pregnant with you, he couldn’t wait to marry me.”

  Jenna burst out, “Did you ever love him?”

  “Ah, Jenna, there are so many different kinds of love: companionship, security, affection. I’m fond of him. If Benjie had lived, I guess I’d have soldiered on.”

  “You said Benjie arrived just in time. What do you mean?”

  “Elwyn and I had been going through a rocky patch. I was bored and restless. I’d seen a hotel for sale on Trelyon Avenue. I wanted us to buy it, make enough money during the season to take the winter off, travel, have some fun.

  “Elwyn said he needed time to think. By the time he’d stopped dithering, someone else had bought the place. I was furious. I decided to go back to London, on my own. And then I realised I was pregnant again.” Mum’s voice dropped, her eyes misty with memories. “When Benjie arrived, he became my brave new world.”

  Abruptly, Jenna pushed back her chair and stood up. “There’s something I think you ought to have. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to you.”

  She climbed the stairs, opened her desk, walked slowly back to the kitchen.

  She put the small, red, battered notebook into her mother’s hands.

  She watched as the tears fell.

  Then she turned and crept up to bed.

  Beyond the Waves

  Mum did not come down to the Cockleshell until midday.

  “She was exhausted last nig
ht.” Dad tied on his apron. “We must let her sleep.”

  “Yes, Dad.” Jenna piled crockery on to a tray.

  Tell me the old, old story . . .

  “She’ll be recovering from the journey, getting her bearings, unpacking.” He trotted into the kitchen. “It’s so wonderful to have my Lydia home.”

  “I need to talk to Jenna.” Mum hovered in the doorway to the kitchen as if she’d never set foot in it before. “On her own, Elwyn. Not for very long, but on her own.”

  “No problem.” Dad closed the oven door, flushed and radiant. “When were you—”

  “Could you spare her for an hour after the lunch-time rush?”

  Startled, filled with foreboding, Jenna looked questioningly at her mother.

  “Of course,” Dad said happily. “Anything in the world for my two girls.”

  They shut the front door.

  “Had to get out of there before I started to scream,” Mum said. “Wouldn’t want to scare off your devoted regulars!”

  She took Jenna’s arm. Jenna flinched. She could not remember her mother ever doing that before.

  “The twins, the bullying, the diary, Benjie’s death . . . Can’t talk about any of it, Jenna. Never again. We know what happened. Let that be an end to it.”

  “Sure. I understand.”

  So what’s this special expedition all about?

  “God, I’d forgotten what the Cornish wind can be like!” Mum held on to her hat. “Shall we have a cup of coffee on the harbour? Get a bit of fresh air on the way?”

  They sat opposite each other at the Café Pasta, at a corner table away from the window, safe from prying eyes.

  They ordered coffee. Mum lit a cigarette.

  “Thank you for last night, Jenna. And for not saying anything to Dad.”