Sea Change

by Francis Rowan

  Sea Change

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sea Change

  by

  Francis Rowan

  Copyright © 2011 Francis Rowan

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition License Notes:

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover design by Francis Rowan

  Chapter One

  Shadows moved, and a cat flowed from darkness into the narrow alleyway. It stepped in silence between the two rows of cottages, stopping only to sniff at a lobster basket propped up to dry.

  A dark shape something like a man, but not quite, came into the alleyway, and the shadows pressed in closer. The cat froze, one paw in the air, fur standing on end. Then it was gone, a blur of movement that did not stop as it reached a wall, just changed direction from along to up.

  The figure stood still for a long time, as if waiting for something to happen. Dawn began to paint the tiled roofs of the cottages red, but the light did not reach down into the alley. A mist grew around the figure, and dark shapes moved within the mist. It raised its head, and sniffed at the air, like a dog that has caught the scent of a rabbit. Then it spoke, the voice dry and papery and sounding as if it came from a long way away.

  “One is coming,” it said, and sniffed at the air again. “A boy.” The shapes in the mist moved restlessly.

  Then the shadows pressed in even closer around it, and when the dawn chased the last of the night from the alley there was nothing there other than an empty lobster basket set out to dry.

  Chapter Two

  The bus reached the top of the hill, the land to the left dropped away, and John pressed his face against the dirt-streaked window to look out. The bay curved round, and on the far side rose again into a towering cliff. Between the land and the sea a chaotic scattering of houses looked as if a giant's hand had picked them up and simply dropped them down the cliff side, letting them rest where they fell.

  This is the most beautiful place that I have seen, John thought. I didn't know that places like this really existed, not like my world of suburbs and parks, all neat and tidy. This place is different: this is smugglers and stormy nights when the sea crashes and roars outside your window like a wild animal, pacing around, waiting to get in. This is secret caves and hidden passages, gnarled fishermen and eccentric artists, this is where I am going to be spending the next three weeks, and already I love it. No-one knows me here other than my sister. Maybe I can lose myself here, forget about what happened at home, forget that I have to go back there when the summer term starts. Maybe, he thought. But John knew that what had happened at home, he had brought with him.

  The bus stopped at the top of the village and John scrambled his rucksack out of the door and onto the side of the road. A boy who looked a couple of years older than John sprawled across the bench next to the bus stop, chewing gum and staring at John with blank eyes.

  "Hi," John said.

  The boy said nothing, just stared for a moment or two longer. Then he looked away and spat his chewing gum into the grass at the side of the bench.

  Just like them, John thought. I can see it in his eyes. In the way he's sitting, the deliberately casual pose that sneers I own this place, I own you, and I can do whatever I want. He's just like them. John shrugged his rucksack onto his shoulders and set off to follow the directions that his sister had given him to her shop, not looking back.

  As the road dipped towards the sea the houses stopped being identikit modern boxes, and became a higgledy-piggledy squash of older houses and fishermen's cottages. Every building was different, and they all looked to John as if at any moment they would slide off down the hill and collect in a heap at the bottom. Many of the doors were painted in bright colours, sky blues and sea greens, a contrast to the flaking whitewashed walls.

  John passed a pub called The Porpoise, and heard voices and laughter from inside, caught the warm and beery mysterious pub smell. Every few metres, small alleyways or flights of steps squeezed their way in-between the houses and shops, but where they led to was hidden by the twists and turns of the stone, and by the shadows. You could get lost here, John thought. He felt as if he was being watched, and he turned around a couple of times but could not see anything other than the buildings and the dark gaps between them.

  The sun had slid down behind the cliffs, and dusk stole into the village. The temperature had dropped as well, and John shivered into his coat, still used to the fug of a day on over-heated trains and buses. He walked a little further and found the opening of the narrow alley that Laura had described. It was right next to a faded shop with bandy-legged tables outside, stacked with books in various stages of decay.

  John could not see the other end of the alley, and after a few steps he reached a point where he could not see the road that he had just left either. Another alley branched off to the side. John hesitated, trying to remember directions. The air felt cold, and he couldn't hear any other sound in the village. A thin mist crept up from the flagstones and wrapped itself around John’s legs.

  Which way, John thought, straight on or up here to the left? Come on, just make your mind up. Then his mind was made up for him, and he hurried straight on, walking so fast that he was almost running. For a moment he had thought that a voice had come from the side alley, a voice as dry as paper that whispered this way, this way. But as he came out onto a street of shops closed for the night, metal shutters down over their windows, he shook his head, embarrassed. You’d better get used to the sound of the sea, he thought, to the whisper of the waves, or you’ll be jumping at shadows all the time you’re here.

  One shop’s windows were still glowing warm with light, and as he approached he saw the hand painted sign, Crystals and Candles. Before he reached it, the door opened, and a woman with long dark hair looked anxiously out into the street.

  "Laura!"

  "John!"

  His sister ran out of the shop, caught him in the middle of the street, and gave him a hug that took all the breath away from him. She smelt of spices and candle wax.

  "I was getting worried about you. It's coming in dark now and I was thinking oh, he's missed the bus or something, why didn't I go and meet him, poor thing is probably lost and mum and dad will go spare—"

  "No worries," John said. "I'm fine. And I’ve got my mobile, you know. I would have called if there’d been any problems. If you were worried, you should have given me a ring." He didn't want Laura fussing, because fussing destroyed the fantasy that he was a grown-up, able to cope with anything, and that no-one would think of him as a child who had to be looked after. That was one thing that he had come here to get away from.

  "Mobiles?” Laura made a face. “Bad for your brain, John. All that radiation, I don’t want to be the one responsible for boiling your brains. After all, it’s not like you’ve got muc
h to spare. But look at you. You've—"

  "Grown. I know," John said, laughing.

  "Sorry," Laura grinned and ruffled his hair. "Now I'm acting like Auntie Val, aren't I? I'll be knitting you balaclavas next. My little brother, all grown up. I remember changing your nappy and—"

  "Don't start that again. You look well Laura, you really do." Except she didn't. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and a dullness in her eyes instead of the sparkle that John remembered. She'd lost weight too, and she hadn't needed to. When Steve had left her, he had taken part of her away with him.

  "Let me just switch the lights off and lock up, we'll get down to the cottage and I'll make you a nice cup of tea and something to eat," she said. “You must be tired? Hungry?"

  "I'm all right," said John. "Not that hungry right now, to be honest. Had a sandwich on the train, some crisps. And a Mars Bar."

  "Fine, we can eat later. I'll get some fish and chips or something. Fish and chips sound good?"

  "More than good. Perfect."

  Laura darted back inside the shop, and the windows went black. She came back out, jangling keys, and locked the door.

  "Not far, we’re just around the corner. To be honest, I could have had the flat above the shop but it was just too small."

  When John saw the house, he realised that the flat above the shop must have been very, very small. Laura stopped and pulled a long key from her bag. She rattled it into the lock, twisted and turned a couple of times, and then the door creaked open. "This is it," she said. "Home for the next few weeks."

  John followed Laura in, and thought he'd just stepped into a crooked house in a fun fair. Mum and Dad's tidy semi was hardly big, but compared to Laura's cottage it was a mansion. A narrow hall opened out on one side into a tiny living room, and on the other to a kitchen with a small table in the middle, and just about enough room for a chair at either end.

  "Kitchen there," Laura said. "Front room, telly's in here." John saw the television. It looked as if it had not been switched on since it was used to watch the moon landings. There was no Sky or cable box in sight, but that was no real surprise. Laura had never really approved of watching TV. Or mobile phones. Or computers. I'm just glad she'll put up with electric light, John thought. She took him through the front room and out of a door in the far side.

  "Bathroom, toilet, in there," she said, waving at a small door to the left that John had thought was a cupboard. "And our rooms are up here."

  In front of them a set of wooden stairs spiralled upwards. "Mind your head." John ducked as he walked up the stairs, sticking to the widest part of the treads. "This is yours," Laura said, opening a wooden door at the top of the stairs, "'fraid I have to come to and fro through it to get to mine."

  John looked around. There was a bed on one side, next to the window, and an elderly wardrobe. John couldn't tell if it was the wardrobe which tilted to one side, or the floor. A window was set in the far wall, over the bed. John climbed on to his bed and leaned on the windowsill to look out.

  "Wow."

  "View all right for you?" Laura asked.

  "You never mentioned this."

  She smiled. "Thought that it would be a nice surprise."

  John watched the white lines of waves racing towards the breakwater, the calmer water inside the harbour. A man in orange oilskins stood up in his little fishing boat as the engine belched black smoke and the boat rocked its way out of the harbour.

  "It is," John said. "It is."

  Laura ran out for fish and chips while John unpacked and they sat at the kitchen table and ate it straight from the paper. Laura talked about their mum and dad, about the house, about people she hadn't seen for some time, about her shop, about everything except Steve, or about what had happened to John. School was never mentioned, school was left untouched.

  John thought, once or twice, that he might mention it, but every time that he did his stomach turned to ice, and he felt as if he were back there in that narrow corridor with the slam, slam, slam of locker doors and the copper taste of fear and humiliation. Laura would be sweet about it, he knew, kind and sympathetic and protective. But that didn't make it any better, not one bit. So he didn't bring up what had happened to her, and she didn't bring up what had happened to him, as if by a mutual agreement that they didn't want to spoil the pleasures of the present with the sadness of the past.

  He watched television for an hour or so after tea, but the journey had tired him out and he had to concentrate to stop his eyelids drooping shut. John stumbled up the stairs and into his room. When he was ready for bed he peered out of his window one last time. The moonlight made the tops of the waves sparkle. He was about to let the curtain drop when he saw movement down in the street, a sliding shadow. After a moment he realised that it was just a black dog padding along, sticking close to the wall on the far side of the street, on its way out to some nocturnal canine adventure. He let the curtain fall, and snuggled down into the soft warmth of his duvet, and tried to think of everything apart from the past, but just like every night he failed, and lay there instead probing away at his memories like at a sore tooth.

  Looking back, it seemed to John that what had happened was a natural thing, as inevitable as the sun rising, something that could no more be avoided than you could stop the earth turning. At the time though, it was just another day to get through, head down, eyes downcast, looking for no trouble. But always finding some.

  The morning had passed without incident, and John had managed to spend the lunchtime in a quiet corner of an empty classroom, reading. He had long persuaded his mum to allow him to have packed lunches rather than school dinners; it meant that he could eat anywhere, and wasn't forced into a daily routine of confrontation in the dinner hall, thick dirty fingers stuffed into his lunch, his chair pulled from under him, worse. He often spent break times with two or three others, Ben and Paul and sometimes Alex. They weren't really friends, but had become united by their common enemy. It was a strange relationship. They offered each other support, but at the same time felt a resentment towards each other that was borne out of shame.

  John knew that they all thought the same thing: if I were stronger, I wouldn't be in here with you. If I weren’t afraid, I wouldn't be in here with you. I look at you, and I don't like what I see, because I see me. But they didn't say any of this, and there were many times that they were glad of each other's company, even if sometimes this was just because it lessened their chances that they would be the one.

  Alex was the odd one out of the group of odd ones out. John and Ben and Paul were just too bookish, or too slightly built, or like Ben stammered when nervous. They weren't disliked by the rest of the school, just generally ignored. Alex though was different. He had a habit of talking to himself, quiet mumbling that made no sense to anyone else, and even in class he would twist and fidget the whole time, a boy in perpetual motion, shrugging and finger clicking and sniffing and drumming his feet. Then there was his stare. Alex would look at you for too long, too intensely, as if he had access to some secret knowledge about you. It annoyed everyone, and regularly prompted violence against Alex, but he would not stop. Everyone agreed that he could not stop. Alex was too distant, too strange, to be liked, but John felt sorry for him, and ashamed too. Ashamed that he and Alex had something in common.

  It was getting near the start of afternoon classes, and he realised that he didn't have the book that he needed for English that afternoon. He wandered down to the long narrow corridor behind the classrooms that was lined with battered metal lockers, from the wooden swing doors at one end to the locked external door at the other.

  John took the book from his locker, and was about to close the door when someone closed it for him, with enough force to make it slam shut and then bounce open in his face. John stood very still, not looking round. He didn't have to look round. He knew who it was.

  Then sleep came, and took the memory from him.

  He woke once in the night, his heart thumping. He had
dreamed of a voice, old and quiet, whispering close to his ear, and John fumbled for the light switch in panic, thinking that he could still hear the voice even though he was awake. But then a dog barked somewhere out in the streets of the village, and John found the switch, and there was nothing but the distant sound of the seas.

  Chapter Three

  John didn't wake when Laura crept through his bedroom on her way downstairs, but the smell of frying bacon stole into his sleep and he woke up hungry and lost. He stared in confusion at the sloping ceiling for a few seconds, and then remembered where he was. He sat up in bed and pulled back the curtains, but a low fog had rolled in over the village and he could not see the sea.

  After breakfast Laura suggested that he spend the morning exploring the village. "Get to know the place," she said. "It's not that big, but there's so many twists and turns I don't think even I've seen half of it. I'd come with you, but the shop..." She tailed off, embarrassed. There always would be the shop, but John didn't mind, he knew that before he came. She couldn't shut her business down to spend time with him. He'd heard mum and dad's muttered conversations about how she was still struggling to get out of the debts that Steve had left her with. "I close half day on Mondays, and don't open on a Sunday outside of the main season, so we'll have time then, and in the evenings." He could hear the worry in her voice.

  "No problem," he said. "Really it's not.”

  "I've got a good friend here, Alan, he runs the bookshop you passed on the way down here—well, the bookshop's his dad's, really, but Charles's got too old to run it, too unwell. Alan might look after the shop for me, let us have a day out. "

  "Stop worrying about me," John said. "Seriously, stop it. I'm fine."

  Laura looked at him across the table. "I do worry though,” she said. “You know, after everything that happened. Mum and Dad..."