by Tim Binding
“Why don’t you look where you’re going,” she shouted, adding in a quieter aside, “Oh, it’s you,” from which Ned could tell, even from this undignified position, that she was not utterly displeased to see him again.
“You had your eyes closed,” she continued. “I watched you coming down. I thought, surely he’ll see me, surely he’ll open his eyes.”
“I was going swimming,” he said, as if this was going to excuse him.
She turned in her saddle and looked down towards the bay. “The tide’s out.” She paused, weighing the propriety of her next remark. “Is it safe out there? I ought to try for a swim some day.”
Ned, who knew of the circumstance of her mother’s death, stood up awkwardly before her.
“She was one of those people who thought life would never harm her,” she said. She glanced down at his legs. “Are you a good swimmer?”
“Fair. Canoeing’s my speciality.”
“Canoeing?”
“Yes. In a canoe.”
“Can you, you know, do that thing where you roll under?”
“That’s easy. The thing is to keep calm. Not be afraid.”
“I was never afraid of the sea, until now. Would you take me swimming one day? I could hire a bike.”
They had met two days later. Ned had bought a new pair of swimming trunks, to replace the ones he had worn since he was fifteen, woollen things a mother would buy, woollen things a mother had bought, and though he had never seen cause to replace them before, he saw he was a fully fledged man now, and would have to appear as such before her. He had gone down to the Pollet and the men’s clothing store. Mr Underwood’s stock was narrow, a choice of three; red, black or red with a daring white stripe down the side.
“I don’t see what the fuss is about,” the proprietor had argued, as Ned held each one up to the light. “No one’s going to see them once you’re in the water.”
He chose the striped pair and put them on underneath his trousers to minimize the embarrassment of changing in front of her. She turned up in a pair of loose cord trousers and a hacking jacket, London-bought, or from one of the classier shops over in St Heller. Acutely aware of their differing circumstance, he threw off his collarless shirt and worn flannels before she’d even crossed the beach. While she undressed he stood by the water’s edge, skimming stones with an exaggerated intensity until she skipped past and walked in up to her waist. Her costume was blue. Her legs were white.
“Don’t let me go out of my depth,” she called out, gasping as she settled in and Ned called out that she was not to worry, that it was shallow for a good long distance, and that the sea was still and the tide weak and that he was beside her, which in a moment he was, looking at her strong shoulders and her auburn hair, noting that she was not a swimmer of Veronica Vaudin’s capability, but a competent one. He led her out slowly, feeling the pull of the waves as they washed in. Looking back he saw the wide expanse of sand and the steep wooded hill behind, and at the top, in front of the long green lawn that hung over the lip of the hill like a green tongue, the Villa Pascal.
“That my aunt’s house, isn’t it?” she asked, following his gaze. “I’ve never seen it from this angle before.”
He waved his arm.
“See that man up there, pushing a barrow. That’d be my uncle. Worked for them twenty years now.”
“Your uncle!” She turned in the water. “Marvellous!”
They were a long way out now and the water was cool and glittered a still light blue.
“Daddy doesn’t know I’m doing this,” she called out, floating on her back, “and when I get back I shall have to take a bath and wash my hair to keep it from him. He wouldn’t like it if he found out.”
“Why? You’re not doing anything wrong,” Ned said.
“Oh, but I am. I’m in the sea for one thing, and I’m with you for another,”
“Well, I won’t tell. And you’re much too smart to get caught, I’ll be bound.”
“He’s a watchful man,” she replied. “He notices things without you realizing it. He is a surveyor, after all.” She kicked her legs in a plume of water.
“Try standing,” he said, and, realizing what he had done, feeling nothing but a current of cold water puiling at her feet, she struck out for the beach, arms flailing, eyes tight. Once near the shore she walked out quickly, shaking the water from her hair. Ned followed. They towelled in silence.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “It’s not like getting back after falling off a horse. She drowned.”
She gestured to him with her hand and he turned to face the sea, which had brought them together and now, like the immutable tide, was puiling them apart. He listened to the hurried sounds she made as she changed, the squeak of her costume as she pulled it down, her quick, strong breath as she rubbed herself dry, the noise of the sand as she lifted her feet into her clothes. He wrapped his towel around him and wriggled out of his trunks, conscious of drying himself between his legs.
“You can turn round now,” he heard her say. Her hair was wet and fuzzy and the dark hairs on her arms stood out.
“What about tomorrow?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t let it happen again,” he promised.
“You’d better not,” she replied and together they walked back up the steep hill in silence.
“In the afternoon, then,” he said when they reached the top. “When the tide’s coming in.”
“Perhaps. As long as Daddy doesn’t catch me out.”
But catch her out he did, a week later, her hair stifffrom the salt water, a damp bathing towel tied to the rack above the rear mudguard and the architect of her treachery riding alongside. Her father stepped out from behind the gate and pulled her off, his dark eyebrows and dark moustache joined together by lines of anticipated anger. He held her by the arm, squeezing it hard. His voice was agitated and clipped, with a curious self-questioning cadence to it.
“You’ve no sense, girl. Isn’t your mother’s grave enough that you should want to follow in her footsteps? And where did you get this?” He picked up the bike up from the road.
“I borrowed it.”
“Borrowed it, you say? One horse is not enough for you, then? Never mind what it costs to feed and house a horse and have its feet shorn. You have to have a bicycle as well.”
“No, Daddy, it was just…”
“And where did you keep it all the while? Did you hide it from me? Hide it from your own father. Your only parent.”
“No, Daddy, I…”
“Borrowed it. Yes, I heard. Borrowed it. Well, well.” He turned on Ned. “And for every borrower there has to be a lender, does there not, a lender prepared to lend. I presume I have you to thank for lending my daughter this, this, bicycle.” He turned the handle-bars to and fro, as if testing the steering.
“Daddy, this is—”
“No matter that the brake pads are defective and it quite lacks a rear reflector. No matter that these lanes are steep and narrow and riddled with ruts and potholes, such that cause bicycles to buckle and riders to fall, and that unlike the rare times when she chooses to sit upon her horse, here she lacks any protective headgear at all, you thought—”
“It’s not his fault, Daddy.” Isobel broke in again. “I asked for his help, that’s all.”
“Asked his help! You might as well have asked him for a broken neck and had done with it.”
Ned stepped off his bike. “She’s been safe with me, I can promise you, Mr van Dielen.” He held out his hand. “Ned Luscombe, sir.”
Van Dielen gave him a long look. “Luscombe. I had a man who worked for me once with that name.”
Ned felt relieved. “My father, sir. He was one of the chippies working here. Laid the floor, I believe. He’s not working much now. Lung trouble.”
Van Dielen nodded. “I thought I recognized the name. Well, Mr Luscombe, let me inform you that from now on your family’s name is of only interest
to me in that I never want to hear of it again. Particularly when it has the misfortune to have the Christian name Ned placed in front of it. Do I make myself clear? If I catch you near my daughter again I’ll put the police on you and have you arrested.”
Tempted though he was, Ned did not confront him with the obvious retort. Isobel put her hand to her mouth, as she had on the boat coming over, and flashing him a quick look of guarded humour, turned away. Ned busied himself with the discarded bicycle to prevent himself from further stoking the man’s ire. Two days later she sent him the first of those hurried notes of exhortation, dropped through the letter box, instructing him that he was to be on the beach at six thirty the next day, and because of what had passed they broke into laughter the moment they met and then almost immediately fell silent, because she was where her father had forbidden her to be, with the man he had forbidden her to see, the sound of the swimming sea reminding them of their former conspiracy. They moved towards each other quickly and kissed, and with time running out became lovers without hesitation and without caution, on the soft belly of a damp cave.
“Your father does not like me,” he said, shaking the sand from his clothes.
“He doesn’t like anyone much,” she told him lightly, as if it were a small idiosyncrasy, like not eating meat or fearing mice. “We don’t do as we’re told.”
“We?”
“Humans. We don’t always run to plan.”
“Neither do roads and bridges all the time, I suppose.”
“Yes, but you can mend a road, pull down a bridge. He can work it all out on paper beforehand. We don’t obey such laws. We’re not predictable that way.”
“Oh, no?” Ned said and pulled her close again.
“Well, some things are,” she agreed. “Why do you think I wrote you the note? Just to go swimming again?”
For the remainder of his leave the notes came whenever the opportunity to meet arose. There was no real need for them. It made their affair more their own, more fun, that was all. They would meet down by the water lanes or in the abandoned semaphore station where watchers once stood, expecting Napoleon’s army, and occasionally, when she was at her most defiant, her most wilful, her most erotic, she would instruct him to present himself at the house, where he would be charged to seek and find her, in the soft clearing in the broad-leaved wild of the back garden, idly flicking through fashion magazines halfway up the stairs, or waiting in her own room, where to his constant agitation they would challenge the restless noise of the blinds with a restless rhythm of their own.
He tried to keep the romance quiet, but it was hard on an island Guernsey’s size. Though his dad thought it was simply holiday skirt he was chasing, Mum knew better. She could tell by the manner in which he parted his hair and walked out of the front door with a clean handkerchief in his pocket every morning that this wasn’t a two-week excursion, that this could be for all seasons. She kept quiet, ironing his shirts, brushing down his only jacket with a damp sponge, watching him set off down the lane through the kitchen window, hoping that his heart wouldn’t break, hoping that she was worth it. Uncle Albert was the only one who found out. He came across the two of them early one evening. They had their arms locked around each other, hardly able to take one step forward without the propulsion of another blind embrace. Albert was carrying an unwieldy bunch of delphiniums, destined for his wife’s grave, and was masked from view until it was too late to hide.
“You sure you can manage that?” Ned called out, embarrassed that his uncle should have caught him out, and Albert, recognizing his employer’s niece, wiped his hand on the side of his trousers and gave him a look which asked the same question.
“This is my uncle Albert,” Ned warned her, moving her forward, “the one I told you about.”
She took his hand.
“It’s you who I have to thank for my tummy troubles, I believe,” she admonished, and when Albert looked nonplussed, added, “The loganberries! Up at the Villa!”
Albert smiled. “And I thought it was them pesky birds,” he said.
“No. Just me. Ned here will have to arrest me,” and she took hold of Ned’s arm and hugged herself against him.
“Looks like it’s you who’s got him under lock and key!” Albert told her. Ned blushed.
“I have that,” she boasted, adding, “You won’t tell them, will you?”
“Them, miss?”
“Our elders and betters.”
“Nothing to do with me, miss, what you do.”
“Then I shall call you Uncle Albert too,” she promised him, and picking out one long stem for herself, kissed him on the cheek.
“He’s a great man,” he told her, as they watched him walk slowly away. “We used to go rabbit bombing together.”
“Rabbit bombing, what’s that?”
“You never do that? Bit of old pipe, a cup of sugar, some weedkiller, shove it down the hole, and boom!”
She put her hand to her mouth. “That’s horrible! The poor rabbits.”
Her horror was genuine. Ned changed the subject. He had told her too much.
His leave was soon over. After he returned to the cramped CID office in Southampton the letters came first from St Peter Port and later from Zurich, where she went for the winter. A week before Christmas they arranged to meet in London, she on her way back home, he on his day off. He waited for her by Eros in clothes bought, like the swimsuit before, especially for the occasion, but the moment he saw her stepping out of a cab, he wished he had not come. His suit was cheap and awkward while her clothes feil about her as free and as light as a summer rain. They were neither sure enough in their affection nor experienced enough as lovers to take themselves to a London hotel and order up a room, but instead repaired to a tea house and sat with their love affair lying broken on the table before them. Theirs had been a holiday romance, nothing more, he the native, she the tourist, despite her claim to the contrary, and it was foolish to pretend or hope otherwise. To hide her discomfort she talked of how she’d just learnt to ski, what fun it was and how he must try it. He wondered whether she knew the gulf she was digging between them. They parted, promising to meet again in St Peter Port for the New Year, but December ended and the old year was washed out and they did not join hands to watch the new one surge in. He went over to Pleinmont with Bernie, and she? why, thanks to Mrs Hallivand’s introductions she had made something of a hit that winter, sprinkling her elusive charm over the season’s parties like a rare flurry of Guernsey snow.
Coming back from their celebrations, he and Bernie decided to take a New Year dip and hurried down to the bay. It was one of those frozen nights, clear and utterly still, and though they stood on the jetty and dived in, it was all they could do to turn and strike out for the shore before the cold seized their limbs and dragged them down into its liquid heart. As they rubbed themselves down, Bernie pulled out a half-pint of plum brandy and took a swig before passing it over. Up above were the lights of the Villa Pascal, as keen as any lighthouse. At that moment the doors were flung open and they could see, racing along the sloping lawn, four figures with flaming torches in their hands, running round the garden in crazy circles. Three men and a girl whooping and laughing, the men calling her name, imploring her to dance, to kiss them each in turn. “Come on, Isobel,” Ned heard. “Forfelt! Forfelt!” and laughing she broke free and ran back in. The men followed, the windows shut. The shrieks and laughter were banished in an instant.
“Someone’s looking to have a good New Year,” he said bitterly, and Bernie, watching for a moment, clapped him on the back.
“Us too, Ned. Us too,” and together they walked back to Bernie’s house. Ned left the island three days later thinking that he would probably never see her again, that she would marry soon and settle in London or wherever her husband’s profession took her, while her father remained a lonely and broken man. Six months later his dad had died. “Four days. That’s all I need,” he had told his superiors, and on the boat over, a small kit
bag on his shoulder, he had directed a pair of unprepared holidaymakers to Bernie’s mother’s guest house. They and he were there still.
Ned put up the envelope in his pocket and picked up another handful.
“Well, now,” he said, speaking out loud. “Let’s see what other malicieus rumours are abroad this bright and lovely day.”
Three
Captain Zepernick balanced the 78 on his head while Molly reached up and placed the bottle in the centre of the record. With his infectious grin and carefree manner no one would have taken him for the head of Guernsey’s Secret Police.
“Shall we dance?” Molly said and held out her arms. Zep put his hands on her tasselled waist and starting to dance, called out, “Der Wein ist stiss, nein?”