Saskia's Journey

by Theresa Breslin

  ‘You could probably sell this stuff to a museum,’ said Saskia. She walked forward and touched one of the old herring barrels where a crown and some letters had been branded onto the wood. ‘What do the different symbols mean?’

  ‘It tells you what’s in them. The fish were graded, and the crown stamp means that it’s certified.’ Alessandra hesitated in the doorway. ‘I packed herring for a few years when I was a young girl, that’s how I know.’

  They went out, and Alessandra pulled the door over behind them.

  In the late morning Saskia walked on the beach.

  Looking towards the land from the shore she could appreciate the setting of the house, and how neatly it sat in its niche in the cliff. She couldn’t see her own bedroom window. It was on the same side of the house as the downstairs bathroom. Both faced north, away from the beach and the road. Saskia’s eyes looked along the tiny windows of the attic. She could see busy movement around the upper part of the house as birds sought suitable nesting spots on the cliff face.

  Saskia sat down on the shingle that ran in a narrow strand under the cliff. She took off her trainers and socks, placed them beside her and, with arms wrapped around her knees, gazed at the sea for a time. She did not care that it was not a holiday-brochure type beach or a sultry summer’s day. The sky was overcast and the water restless, its surface stippled white and grey, yet clear light came from the distant horizon and settled in her.

  Saskia screwed up her eyes and saw a trawler or two pass by out at sea and then the flat outline of a tanker. This morning Alessandra had told Saskia that she and her brother, Saskia’s grandfather, had stood together on the beach steps as children and watched the fishing fleet leave Fhindhaven at the start of the season – such a crush of boats that there was little space to see daylight between them. That had been in the days of the herring drifters. Now the boats used different methods and fished for white fish: cod, haddock and whiting. ‘The two world wars ended the main herring markets for us,’ said Alessandra, ‘and in more recent years the herring stocks failed. It was an industry which originally owed much to poverty and slavery. In the past herring was used as cheap food to feed Eastern Europe and the slaves in the Americas. We fed the world with herring but now our fishermen have to search for a different harvest.’

  Within the vastness of the ocean, Saskia knew, there were more species of marine life than ever had been, or would be, upon the land – more than the birds, amphibians, reptiles and all the mammals put together. When she was younger she had been a fact collector. One of those children (she smiled now to think of her former irritating self) who absorbed information like a sponge and squirted it back out at any opportunity, pestering grown-ups with her knowledge.

  ‘Do you know that there are over one million, million herring? That’s more than five times the human population on the planet.’

  ‘Who counted them?’ her father asks.

  ‘Do you know that some fish can actually talk to each other?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if you stopped talking occasionally?’ her mother says pointedly.

  ‘Do you know that a salmon can swim in the sea and in rivers?’

  Her mother sighs.

  ‘Do you know that parts of the ocean are deeper than Mount Everest is tall?’

  ‘Miss “Do-you-know?”,’ her father teases her. ‘Do you know it’s rude to show off?’

  The slight feeling of hurt stayed with her even now.

  But then, she had grown into the age where she began to regard her parents critically. She’d evolved a manner of boorishness to annoy them, gradually behaving more and more ungraciously whenever an occasion presented itself. But it hadn’t been a one-way dialogue of bad manners. Her mother was a master of the verbal putdown, smoothly despatching accurate barbs whose venom remained in the flesh long after the initial wounding; her father threatened uncontrolled rage, which was always to be avoided. Yet Saskia couldn’t really blame either of them for reacting badly to her own tantrums, screaming fits, three-day sulks, or absolute rudeness to their friends and guests. But, as she fully entered her teenage years and stretched out to fingertip-reach the extremities of behaviour, she became aware that she could hold the balance of their peace in her hands. Instead of uniting together to sustain themselves against her wilful conduct, they began to use it, and her, to score points off each other in their own continuous war of attrition. Their remarks interchangeable between them.

  * * *

  ‘She never learned that language from me.’

  ‘If you spent more time with your daughter then you’d be able to have a proper dialogue with her.’

  ‘Another instance of bad temper/selfishness (fill in any transgression) that I have to put up with from the other occupants of this household.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that’s exactly how you react to not having your own way.’

  Saskia had returned from school one day to find them sniping at each other. Her mother, catching sight of her before her father did, had immediately burst into tears. Saskia had reacted at once.

  ‘Daddy, don’t make Mummy cry!’ And she had run and flung her arms around her mother’s neck, and then caught the glance of triumph that her mother had given her father.

  As she grew older she had resolved to try not to be part of it.

  It had been made easier that several of her classmates had serious parent problems – or, more correctly, parents with problems, her friend Gideon had corrected her. Gideon’s parents had not spoken directly to each other for eighteen months and communicated through him.

  ‘Gideon, will you ask your father if he intends using the car this evening?’

  ‘Gideon, please inform your mother that I will not be present at dinner tonight.’

  Gideon was a natural clown and had entertained everyone in the sixth-form common room by relating the nightly ‘Duels of the Dinner Table’, as he called them. ‘They say that they are staying together for the benefit of the children -’ he had nodded gravely – ‘and I have to agree. We are indeed benefiting. My young sister, who always longed to be slim, has lost about a stone and a half over the last year or so, and as for myself . . . well, I intend to become a playwright. When I’m supposed to be doing homework I am in fact writing down every stricken word that they make me say in lieu of speaking to each other. It will save me the effort of having to actually make up the dialogue for my own play. My first script should be ready for television quite soon. It will be a cutting-edge drama. Rather than Room with a View it will be more like View with a Doom – a modern teenage perspective on cohabiting adults. Desmond Morris can do an introduction. I think I’ll call it Naked Idiots.’ Everyone had laughed and Gideon had looked very pleased with himself.

  But Saskia had seen him one morning getting out of his mother’s car. Eyes filling up with tears, he brushed past her and went along the school corridor swearing, and kicking his rucksack viciously in front of him.

  Her friend Persemone’s parents shouted and threw things. Persemone had asked Saskia if she might keep some of her more precious possessions in Saskia’s room for safekeeping. So Saskia fell heir to Persemone’s collection of glass animals and a chocolate pot her Greek grandmother had given her as a christening present.

  ‘These animals have more sense than our parents,’ Persemone had confided in Saskia one evening, as she arranged and rearranged her ornaments on Saskia’s windowsill.

  And then, when her father finally admitted to the affair he had long been accused of, Persemone had stormed round to Saskia’s house and taken the animals and broken their legs deliberately; systematically snapping the fragile limbs one by one, moving on to the slender necks of her Bambi fawn and the elegant glass giraffe, executing them, not in temper, but in cold hatred. Finally lifting the chocolate pot with its Mediterranean colours, hot orange, cool blue and white, she had raised it above her head, casting about for a suitably hard surface to throw it down.

  Saskia had leaped up and taken it from her fr
iend’s hand, replacing the lid and carefully setting it down on the windowsill. ‘No, Mona. Don’t destroy that. It came from your grandmother. A gift, to you, with love. It’s not to do with your parents. Try not to be affected by their fights. You’ve got to resist the poison that spreads all around.’

  ‘You have an antidote?’ asked Persemone, beginning to cry.

  ‘No,’ said Saskia, and the two of them had wept together.

  ‘We really do need to get a life,’ snuffled Persemone. ‘It’s ridiculous that their moods affect us so badly.’

  ‘We’re in bondage,’ said Saskia. ‘Emotional slavery.’

  Her mother had tutted when she had found out about the destruction in Saskia’s room, and later said smugly, ‘Continental blood, you see. Very little control over their emotions. Always have to go around screaming and smashing things.’

  Sometimes Saskia believed that she might prefer that way of arguing, instead of the bottled-up resentment of her mother, who claimed that by putting her career as an artist on hold in the early years of her marriage, she had given up a promising future. Saskia’s father openly scoffed at her, saying that no one had ever bought any of her paintings anyway, and that she enjoyed living a life of ease and not facing up to that fact. Her mother replied smartly that no doubt she had absorbed some of her partner’s behaviour patterns over years of living with him, as he evaded any responsibility, especially if he could blame someone else. And they would have started yet another session of trading complaints had not Saskia interrupted to try to turn the conversation.

  It came to Saskia then as she sat on the beach that perhaps this was a major factor in their deciding that she should attend university near home. She would be on hand as a buffer. Years earlier her father had advised her on subject choices for the university course he considered most suitable. At a parents’ evening her career adviser at school had said, ‘Why Saskia, I thought you’d choose something in the sciences. There is a whole range of courses in marine biology that might suit you.’

  Her father had interrupted smoothly, ‘I need my best girl doing accounts. It’s already been decided.’

  Her close relationship with her father survived the family squabbling. And he was so very, very good at getting his own way. He had bought her a pony that year as a reward for being mature and sensible. With the result that she felt mature and sensible, and had even offered to help him out with paperwork during her holidays. Although that had brought its own tensions. When she had tried to balance some columns of figures he had been evasive and finally had turned a cold look upon her and said, ‘I keep the order book. It is of no concern to anyone else.’

  She had trembled before his anger and decided that she did not want to be on the receiving end of his rage. When her mother, overhearing, had enquired if there was anything the matter, Saskia had said, ‘I don’t understand how income is registered. I can follow the expenses; for the outgoings there’s a clear paper trail. It’s how the ingoings are credited that’s a mystery to me.’

  Her mother had replied, ‘If you ever get your father to give a straight answer to a question do let me know. I’ll mark it on the calendar.’

  Her father had countered, ‘If your mother was allowed to dabble in anything to do with the business it would be financial ruin for us all.’

  Her one independent action had been her trip with her friends to Nepal after her last term at school. She had saved for it herself, using birthday and babysitting money, and her father had only found out about it when they had been deciding which part of the world to visit. By then it was too late for him to talk her out of changing her plans. She was going, she had promised herself. Once, just once, before she settled for study and then a life of account books and figures, she’d do something she wanted to. In the end he had become quite supportive. Buying geographical magazines, locating up-to-date maps of various countries, joining in the discussions as to what parts of the world were most interesting. On the night before she was due to leave he had even given her some extra spending money, and wished her ‘bon voyage’.

  ‘You have a great time.’ He had ruffled her hair and nuzzled her ear. ‘And I don’t really mind you skiving off for a bit now that you’ve given your promise that when you return you’ll do this degree in accounting and help me with the business.’

  She had tried to protest, one last feeble attempt. ‘Dad, you know I’m not sure that I’m the best person for your kind of work. I’m a bit woolly about the details involved in property development.’

  ‘You have a very practical mind so don’t worry about it. Anyway, who else would I leave the family fortune to? That’s our deal. Off you go and enjoy yourself and when you come back I’ll show you more of the ropes.’

  It was only now she saw that, in effect, he’d told her what she was going to do with her life. That she was bound to a promise that she had not made.

  Saskia rolled up the legs of her trousers and began to walk towards the sea. The thick soft yellow sand was warm between her toes. She stepped from the yellow to the paler cool sand, and then felt the firm hard wet sand under her feet, and saw the creamy purl of foam at the water’s edge. The wind moved in her hair and she untied the scrunchie that secured it in place. The sun came out and she tilted her head back and shook her hair down about her shoulders. She kept facing seawards as she walked along the beach away from the house, and, because this little bay jutted out into the North Sea, her whole field of vision was the sea and the limitless possibility of the unknown. Had Christopher Columbus felt like this, alone on the ocean while his sailors slept, standing on the deck of his small ship? She had a sudden need to find out. She decided at that moment that one day she was going to sail round the world, one day . . .

  She stopped.

  She had quoted her mother.

  ‘One day, I am going to. I am going to . . . going to. One day.’

  Saskia gave her head a shake to rid herself of the thought. Was it inevitable? They said that you became like your parents whether you wanted to or not.

  She bent to pick up an object on the shoreline. A little piece of green glass. It was as smooth as a pebble and must have come from a bottle many years ago. Saskia squinted through it at the light.

  This is how a fish must view its world, she thought, blinking and looking around, with her eye still covered by the green glass. She remembered reading a description of the body of a fish, how some had a lateral line running along the centre of either side. A tube filled with fluid which reacted immediately to all sensations: heat and light and movement, changes in temperature and water pressure, registering the tiniest vibration in the waters surrounding it.

  In the oceans of the world the shoals moved as one, responding to hidden signals, a sharp tug flipping the colours from vermilion and ochre to scarlet and yellow, from turquoise to jet. Colours more intense, more alive than anything her mother could conjure from tubes of paint.

  Saskia imagined herself as a creature of the sea. Wind and waves streamed through her hair and she floated in the deep; legs, arms suspended, body buoyed up by the waters. With a twist, a quick flick of her mermaid’s tail, she spiralled down and myriad tiny fish followed her. The colours shone on her skin.

  Saskia walked on along the beach, drunk with the imagery, the assault on her senses, the vista of the sea and sky. And as she walked her feeling of exhilarating freedom merged with other similar ones from when she was very small, and she recognized them. But it was not just being part of the physical external landscape that she knew once again, her internal landscape too, was reawakenng with experiences that echoed the frequency of her own spirit.

  She was now approaching the rocks at the far end. Dark, oddly shaped boulders, not, it seemed to her, fallen from above, but looking more as if piled up by some careless giant in a clumsy attempt to build a wall. These were the rocks that her great-aunt had asked her to avoid. Black basalt, volcanic; residual leavings from the earth’s groaning birth. The rocks at the near end of the bea
ch close to the house were a less formidable barrier, curving gently round the northern headland to Fhindhaven. On this south side they plunged down into the sea, great jagged lumps of cliff, creating swift uncertain currents as the water rose and fell between them.

  And as Saskia gazed at them, the solid outline changed and altered.

  She stared. For a moment it seemed to her as if the rock itself had actually moved. Her eyes, adjusting from light to dark, took a second or two to focus. Saskia frowned and looked again. She was not mistaken. The rock had moved, or rather something on one of the rocks had moved and now lay still.

  The figure moved again, flopping from side to side as though in pain. Saskia squinted at the outline, grey against a grey sky.

  ‘Do you need help?’ she called out.

  There was no reply. Saskia moved closer, and then she saw that it was a seal. A large grey seal. She was now near enough to hear that it was wheezing horribly. It lay with its head lolling, a rasping noise coming from its throat. Saskia stopped and then walked slowly towards the animal. Had it been caught in fishing lines, or wounded in some other way? She would have to climb onto the rocks a little bit if she wanted to see more clearly.

  Saskia glanced guiltily at the house, and then tutted at herself in irritation. She felt that her great-aunt still regarded her as the small child she had played with many years ago, not the young adult she now was. Later Saskia would tell her how she had trekked through the high passes in the Nepalese hills, but for the moment she determined to climb up onto the nearest rock to have a look at the injured animal. As she did, the seal flopped over onto one side in alarm, and then tried to right itself, flippers waving hopelessly. It seemed to her to be very sick, every breath an effort, fluid dribbling from its mouth and nose, but she could see no obvious signs of injury. Saskia crouched down on the rock. Her being so close to the animal was making it agitated, and anyway, what could she do by staying beside it? There must be some sort of animal help organization nearby that she could contact. She decided she needed to return to her great-aunt’s house and find out.