by Julia Jones
“Not even their school?”
“In this case, no.”
“Can they swim?”
“We’re working on it. Flinthammock has an open air salt-water pool and we’ve been going there at least once each day.”
“Ok,” she said. “So let’s learn steering.”
Jonjo drove the RIB and towed each of them one at a time slowly to the end of the creek and into the Flete with Xanthe sitting with them in the dinghy, explaining how you pushed the tiller away from the direction you wanted to turn and how you could use your weight to help.
She left Siri until last and when she was as quick and as natural as Xanthe had guessed she would be, she called to Jonjo to cast them off. Then she got Siri pointing the dinghy into the wind while she ran up the mainsail. The little girl could obviously hear okay, whatever was the matter with her speech, and it was a matter of moments before she’d understood what was wanted and had the Pico reaching smoothly back up the creek in the kindly breeze.
Dominic Gold came out on the second RIB and prowled around them like a sheepdog on a motorbike. Xanthe did her best to ignore him. The tide had turned, the water in the creek was emptying fast and it was time for lunch.
Xanthe ate half a sandwich and a whole banana – then they spent the afternoon pushing little models of dinghies backwards and forwards while Jonjo sat near the gangplank, making out that he was reading the newspaper. They learned about ‘dinghy’ too. Martha had internet in her office and they discovered that the word had been borrowed from India about two hundred years ago.
“You’re saying that we borrowed it – and we didn’t never give it back?” Nelson looked serious.
“You said it, Mr Midshipman.”
“So…what is this mid-ship-man, teacher-lady?”
“What Nelson would have been when he first joined the Navy.”
“Who’s Nelson?”
Huh?
“Admiral Lord Nelson – Horatio Nelson – national hero, born in Norfolk, died at Trafalgar 1805 – turned his blind eye to the telescope and saved England from Napoleon. Hey, you’ve got his name!”
The skinny boy shook his head. “Nah, don’t think so. Maybe it was like borrowed from some other geezer.”
“You mean Nelson Mandela, maybe? Oh, okay – great man. Still a great name.”
“Or was it some boxer or someone? I dunno.”
“You’ll have to ask your mum and dad when you get home.”
It was, thought Xanthe, possibly the worst silence she’d ever not heard. (Except maybe for that day when she and the others had been tapping a half-sunk container where there was only a single person left alive.)
Nelson’s brown eyes filled. The rest of the crew stood like tombstones.
“You do understand,” said Xanthe, after a while, “that they’ve sent me here to teach you and I don’t know anything at all?”
“And we can’t tell you nothing, neither,” answered Kelly-Jane.
Chapter Five
Raising the Igraine
Sunday May 26, lw 0330 hw 0958 lw 1610 hw 2220
Mr and Mrs Farran were watching TV East when Xanthe came in. It was an early evening local news and country programme with an extended item about the anniversary of the World War Two evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk.
They didn’t look at Xanthe or invite her to sit down – she wasn’t certain that they’d seen her – but she stood in the doorway of the small dark sitting-room and she watched it anyway. Part of the arrangement her mother had made to allow Xanthe to have this month out of college was that she’d use her free time to research her IB extended essay. She’d chosen the title 1940: War on the East Coast of England and the evacuation from Dunkirk was obviously going to be a major section. It could even make the whole essay if she discovered enough.
She knew the time line. Tomorrow was Monday, May 27th, when the government had stepped up the collection of little ships back in 1940. The TV East programme was focusing on some local Essex and Suffolk boats which were making commemorative trips. Some of them had started early today, taking the morning flood across the estuary to gather at Ramsgate.
Mrs Oakenheart had told her there’d been several boats from Flinthammock. She wondered whether Mr or Mrs Farran would remember any of them. And whether there was any chance she could get them to tell her if they did.
She was assuming not.
Now the focus had changed and the interviewer was talking to someone about an event planned next week for the historic vessels’ return. It was a small black-and-white TV and the old people were both leaning forward so Xanthe couldn’t see the picture properly. It was the opening of something on the River Blackwater and they were going to tow an artificial harbour into position and any genuine Dunkirk Little Ships that moored overnight on their way home would have their fuel and all the expenses of their crossing paid and a bounty for every member of their crew. There was possibly a museum for local historic craft? Xanthe wondered whether she should maybe find out more details and take a look.
“We are offering the tribute of the Saxon Shore to commemorate the men who brought our people home. And there will be more! St Peter’s will become the greatest theme park devoted to national self-defence. We have repelled the invader for a thousand years of history. We shall not cease.”
The person being interviewed had a pompous, plummy voice and it got louder as he went on.
“Y’r fancy man.” Mr Farran growled to his wife. “Artie Fool’s Gold.”
“No…” Mrs Farran sounded tremulous, though not necessarily convincing. “Your brother.”
“No more he ain’t. I’ve had it with him and his big ideas and crooked ways. He’m yours – except I reckon I knows things that’d scuttle him.”
“NO, Eli!” Mrs Farran pushed herself to her feet on her ebony walking stick. “You wouldn’t dare! You know there would be consequences.”
The TV programme was dissolving into patriotic music and aerial shots of the Essex coast, panning away from a view of the sea where the boats were tiny dots. Neither of the old people were watching. Xanthe stepped back. It was obvious they were about to have a row and she wasn’t certain whether she should walk in as if she’d just arrived or slip quietly upstairs to her bedroom.
“There’s nothing left, woman.” Mr Farran’s voice was as low and bitter as breakers retreating from an unseen shoal. “Nothing that I care about no more. You’ve had me home and me living and me pride and now you’ve brought a darkie through the doors of me parents’ house. I tell you there ain’t nothing left for me – except that I might choose to bring that cuckoo down.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” his wife repeated. She was angry but was there a note of doubt?
A darkie! Xanthe could hardly breathe.
Did the old man sense that he had made an impression on his wife? He sounded more cunning now. “I’m out o’ credit at the Plough and Sail. Or I might’ve chose to go and have a pint an’ leave my truth until another day.”
“Sot!”
“Milky-face!”
“Killer!”
“That I never were!”
The fluffy cat shot out of the room and Xanthe leapt backwards in to the hall. A blow and a cry and she was legging it up the stairs.
As soon as she had made it to her bedroom she began to think again. This was domestic violence. You couldn’t just ignore it. Whoever was right and whoever was wrong in the quarrel, the fact remained that Mrs Farran was small and shaky and Mr Farran was probably used to handling fisherman’s anchors or beam trawls, although he was old.
She had to go down again. She didn’t want to but she had to. She’d take her mobile phone with her and threaten to call the police. She was sure that she could get signal. Just because Rebow Cottage was time-warped it didn’t mean the rest of Flinthammock wasn’t living in the twenty-first ce
ntury.
She found her phone and switched it on but then she heard the front door open. Her bedroom window was directly above and she watched Mr Farran leave.
He stamped to the end of the short front path, with his fists in the pockets of his jacket. Then he turned and stood for a moment looking back. He had a craggy face with his eyes sunk deep beneath his bushy brows. It was a harsh face, fierce and wild.
He took his left hand from his pocket and laid it against his cheek. There was something profound about the gesture but Xanthe could not read it. He stood a few seconds more and then he turned away.
Xanthe started downstairs to check on his wife. He might have hurt her, left her unconscious – or worse. She was angry. She didn’t need any of this. She was only the lodger. The ‘darkie’ in his parents’ house.
She heard Mrs Farran as soon as she reached the hallway. The old lady was singing – ding dong bell, pussy’s in the well – and when Xanthe peeped quietly round the door, she saw that the cat had been recaptured. Mrs Farran was clutching it against her and stroking it vigorously, not as if she was upset at all. In fact she sounded triumphant.
Xanthe went back to her room feeling fantastically relieved. Maybe she’d misheard the whole thing.
The village shop had still been open on her way back from Godwyn and she’d bought herself some Lucozade, cheese, apples and Hobnob biscuits. Now she found she couldn’t eat them. Not here. Not in this house.
She couldn’t settle to reading so she uploaded the photos she had taken that morning onto her mother’s Macbook. There was no internet so she couldn’t share them. Instead she sat and stared and tried to work out what it was, exactly, that she’d seen.
The sailing smack was real enough. She must have been well out to sea – over the horizon most likely – but the image had been lifted and refracted and distorted by freak atmospheric conditions. It was hot air layered on cold – or was it the other way round? Or maybe it was connected with ducts and down-draughts? It was definitely some sort of mirage and there was a special name for it that she couldn’t remember. Anna would have known.
After a while there was a knock on her door. Mrs Farran had brought her a cup of cocoa and plain biscuits on a tray. She was hobbling and nervous and old again.
Xanthe’s stomach clenched. She thought she might be sick. She took the tray with unnecessary thanks and placed it on the small table by the window where she’d propped the Macbook.
“You’re welcome to sit down,” she said. “I’m not that
hungry though.”
The old lady glanced out of the window, as if to reassure herself. Then she sat on the single chair and Xanthe pulled out the stool from beside the wardrobe, removed her pile of clothes and sat on that.
Neither of them could think what to say.
“They didn’t tell us you were foreign,” the old lady whispered after a while. “I don’t know what food you like.”
“But I’m not…foreign. And that’s not why I’m not eating. That’s…something else. I hope I’ll be moving to the lightship soon.”
Mrs Farran stared at Xanthe with her faded blue eyes. She must need reassurance or to talk or something. Xanthe wished that she was Maggi or her mother. They’d have known what to say. All Xanthe knew was that she didn’t want to get into a conversation about what she might have heard downstairs.
“I took some amazing photos this morning,” she said, waking the Macbook, “You can see them really well on here.”
Xanthe ran the photos as a slideshow. The brown-sailed boat appeared clearly in the middle of the screen. It gyrated, sprouted bits, wafted along the cushioning cloud then turned and came straight towards them as if it would burst out into the third dimension. It was impressive every time.
Mrs Farran gripped the sides of her chair with her wrinkled hands. She leaned forward, peering.
“The Igraine…” she sort of breathed.
“You recognise her?”
“Show me again. I must be sure.”
Xanthe ran the slideshow a second time. And once more. And again.
Mrs Farran stretched out an arthritic finger and touched the screen as if she thought it might dissolve. Her face was transformed as if she’d seen a vision.
After about the seventh showing Xanthe had had enough. She switched off the Macbook and began to describe the appearance of the Project safety boat and how she’d been towed back to Godwyn for breakfast.
She was hoping it would help her to say it aloud. If she was going to carry on working for Dominic Gold she had to try to see this morning’s events from his point of view. He must have thought he was right in some way– though she knew she’d never find a justification for his ban on her using any of the dinghies to go sailing in her own time.
She might as well have been talking to the cat. Mrs Farran wasn’t even pretending to listen. She was shaking her head and muttering to herself.
“How did you do that?” she asked at last. “How could you know?”
“Do what? Know what?”
“You have raised the Igraine. You showed me on your magic book.”
“No, Mrs Farran – it’s a Macbook, not a magic book. It’s just a new sort of computer.” Xanthe felt like some sort of missionary explaining modern consumer goods to a forgotten tribe. “I went sailing very early this morning. I didn’t want to disturb you – or Mr Farran. Then it got hot and I saw this mirage and my mother had lent me her camera so I took some photos. I think they’ve come out really well – but it was only a mirage. You see them sometimes over the water. It’s to do with air at different temperatures.”
“She has returned to take him. Soon, very soon, I will be free!”
Mrs Farran’s breathing was starting to sound fast and shallow. Xanthe didn’t like it.
“I’m sorry Mrs Farran. I don’t know what you’re talking about but I think you might be tired. Should I help you to bed? I’ll clear up the tray and everything.”
The cocoa had skimmed over. It was greyish and wrinkled. Her stomach heaved. She had to get Mrs Farran out of her room.
“And would you lock the house?”
“Yeah, sure, anything.” She was certain she was about to be sick. “But what about your husband?”
“He’s gone out. We had…words.”
Mrs Farran raised her hand to her face, touched her own cheek and cowered slightly. There was something about Mrs Farran that didn’t ring true – it was more like she was a child, acting out.
But Xanthe’s nausea wouldn’t let her think.
“Won’t he lock up when he comes home?” she asked.
“This house is locked at nine. Those are the rules. He knows the rules.”
Xanthe checked her watch. She forced the sickness down.
“It’s only half past seven.”
“But I’ve waited for so long!”
Mrs Farran tottered and Xanthe lunged to catch her before she fell. She put her arm round the old lady’s thin chest and half-carried her into the room next door.
“Look here’s your bed,” She did her best to sound reassuring as she eased her onto it. One side of the floral bedspread was already turned down. “Do you take pills at night or anything?”
“Nothing. Unless you can give me peace.”
Xanthe took off the old lady’s slippers and pulled the bed covers up. Should she have offered to undress her?
No, she couldn’t. Totally no way.
“Do you want me to call a doctor?” she asked.
“Of course not.” Mrs Farran’s voice was suddenly sharp. “It was a shock. To experience your sorcery. That was all. You can fetch me my hot water bottle now. They’re in the kitchen cupboard.”
Xanthe went to her room first and got rid of that revolting cocoa by flushing it down the toilet. Then she hurried downstairs and threw away the smooth, beige biscui
ts. She didn’t care that she was being wasteful; she began to feel better as soon as they were gone.
She washed her hands and drank some cold water and splashed her face lavishly under the tap.
By the time Xanthe had found the hot water bottle, filled it and carried it upstairs, the old lady was in her nightdress. She had brushed her white curls and looked up at Xanthe with a face full of sweetness.
“It must be our secret that you have raised the Igraine. Mr Farran mustn’t know.”
“Okay. No worries. I can keep the photos to myself.”
“Girl! Girl!”
Xanthe put down her book. The old woman was calling from her bedroom. She was never going to learn her name. Xanthe had spelled it out for her, she’d written it down; she had explained that it was Greek, not African. That it meant daughter of the sea god, or an Amazon, both of which were good. It also meant blonde-haired which had been her parents’ idea of irony or something.
“Yes?” she answered wearily, getting up and crossing the landing.
“I’m frightened, girl. I need to know you’ve locked the doors.”
“But your husband’s still out.”
“If he comes home tonight, he’ll be drunk. I’m frightened of him coming home. You must lock the doors and attach the chains. It’s after nine o’clock.”
“Is there somewhere else that he can sleep?” she asked. “Does he have friends who’ll put him up?”
“He can sleep in the boot-room with all his dirt. He has a truckle.”
Boot-room? Truckle?
“He knows the rules,” Mrs Farran said again.
“Oh okay, I’ll lock up if you want me to. But you ought to talk to someone official if you’re frightened. A policemen or a social worker or…a vicar. You could have a panic button.”
“You have raised the Igraine. It must be time.”
The old lady was off her trolley.
“Okay, okay. But if the Igraine doesn’t sort things out, do you promise you’ll get yourself some help?”