The Sea Change

by Rossiter, Joanna

  Her husband crosses his arms. He looks far from happy.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask. ‘What did you offer him?’

  ‘Masala dosa and chapatti.’ She smiles.

  ‘Thank you. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You will send my wishes to your mother. You must tell her that her daughter is well.’ Her eyes soften for a moment, and sadness graces her face. She turns to her husband again and gestures at the log book on the table, the one he must use to record the bookings. He runs a finger along a line on the page, then goes to the booth to make a call.

  ‘Tomorrow, sister, at twelve,’ says the woman, after he has replaced the receiver. She ushers me out of the office. ‘It’s dark already. Will you stay with us?’

  ‘Thank you, but I have to keep searching.’

  ‘With no light?’

  I shrug my shoulders vaguely. Sleep seems such an impossibility that there doesn’t seem any point in trying to rest.

  ‘Okay. Twelve o’clock, my husband will be here to meet you.’

  Outside, the earth turns from the sun as if it were any other day. Night arrives in quick increments. In Wiltshire, the sunset was always shifting with the winters and summers, but here the light departs on cue: an inbuilt clock. The town, which would usually have glittered at night, is as dark as the sea. Noises seep disembodied from the hillside: a foot dislodging rubble or a rat scratching through a pipe. I try in vain to find my way back to the wreckage. The woman was right. I’ll have to wait until morning. Back outside the office, I try my best to sleep. But I think only of home – of Mum staring into the cavern of the bath as she wipes it clean. Over and over she would wipe it until she could see her own eyes blinking back at her. It was not so much the cleanliness that she enjoyed but the feel of the enamel sliding under the cloth. It was small tasks, like that one, which absorbed her; she never cleaned the entire house, only minor parts of it – afraid, perhaps, of leaving things incomplete.

  After reading her letter in Istanbul, I had visited the post office in Quetta to check for more post. But she had not written again. It puzzled me, that silence, and I found I thought of her more often. When we arrived in Lahore, James picked up an aerogramme, which had been there for more than a week.

  Dear Alice,

  I hope this finds you safe in Lahore. You would have been very proud of me: last week, I took a trip up to London on my own to the British Library to look at some paintings and photographs of Pakistan. I had to put in a request for the photographs before I arrived. I thought it would help me – to be able to picture where you are. I couldn’t quite imagine Pakistan before, let alone Lahore; it seemed to blur with India and Afghanistan in my mind. But now I can envisage perfectly that dusty red stone which they use in the buildings and the flatness of it all. The train was diverted awfully on the way back from the library. I was glad your father couldn’t see me; I have never been good with journeys, not in the way that he was.

  I often wonder if you ever think of him on your travels. I’m sure you do. You had plenty of questions when you were younger. But I couldn’t furnish you with many answers and I suppose that’s why you stopped asking. The truth is, there is so much that I should have told you. I know you will think I am writing out of desperation – inventing reasons to see you. But there are things I would like to tell you, Alice, if you will give me a chance.

  Your trip has been good for both of us. It has given me clarity – and I know now what should be done. I can only hope that all these miles you have put between us will help you see that, despite my failings – of which there are many – I do love you. Perhaps more than a mother should.

  She ran out of space at the bottom of the page, pushing the words into a concertina in order to fit them in. I didn’t give a moment’s thought to what she wanted to tell me, not until she wrote to me again in Delhi. I just assumed it was another memory that she mistakenly thought might compensate for Dad’s absence. I travelled, oblivious, from Lahore, feeling my stubbornness towards her thaw. In Delhi, everything changed – between her and me, between myself and James. I trailed my anger through Tamil Nadu until it settled into numb shock. She had held onto things that long since ought to have been mine.

  In my dreams, the debris evaporates with the night and the streets are as smooth as the enamel in my mother’s bath. But the heat soon bleeds into the morning and the smell – which pervaded even my sleep – returns more strongly than before. I wake up to find the ruins as real as ever.

  Outside the office, I have no way of telling the time, except to watch the sun arc up to the top of the sky. It reaches its summit but there is no sign of the husband or his wife.

  In my mind I run through the digits I will have to dial. Each number attaches itself to a body – the man at sea, the woman in the sari. Sometimes I wonder if a person can see too much – that if what they see outweighs what they say, something inside them will tip and sink irreversibly downwards.

  Twelve noon is seven thirty a.m. British time. There’s every chance that they’ll be at home when I ring. Even if Tim has gone to work early, Mum will be in. When has she ever been out? Now she and Tim are married she doesn’t have to work.

  If she doesn’t answer, I won’t have to give it words – this thing that I’ve seen. My step-dad will launch into a flurry of reassurance: he’ll plan for a million and one contingencies – ways of not really making things better. But Mum is the one whose voice I dread hearing on the end of the phone, and the one that I want to hear most.

  Finally the woman from the hill arrives with her husband. Inside the office, he picks up the receiver and frowns at the tone of the line. He tilts his hand in the air at me: it isn’t good but at least it’s working. He passes me the phone and stands next to his wife. I dial the operator, wishing they’d leave me to it, but they watch me closely from the opposite side of the desk. Finger pausing for a moment, I hold my breath, release the dial and wait to be connected. I’m answered, and give the number in Wiltshire. There are faint voices at each telephone exchange – I am transferred to three separate operators. The final ring is long and low, a single tone followed by a dragging silence. Then a click.

  ‘Hello, Tim Richards speaking,’ says my step-dad. His answer is so well worn that he almost sings it each time he picks up the phone. ‘Alice, is that you?’

  I can’t reply, but I know he can hear my breathing – heavy and irregular. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Please … get Mum. I’m in Kanyakumari,’ is all I can manage.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The wave …’

  ‘But – you can’t be.’ Tim’s voice becomes muffled for a moment. He is calling Mum’s name. There is a clunk as he rests the receiver on the table. Then I hear him thumping urgently across the house. She can’t be out. Please don’t let her be out.

  ‘Alice,’ he cuts in, as he picks up the receiver again, ‘I can’t find her. Are you hurt?’

  ‘I – But … James is missing … Has he telephoned or got in touch? Maybe he left a message …’ I feel my face relaxing into tears for the first time since it happened. ‘It took him.’

  ‘Don’t panic – don’t, whatever you do, panic. We’ll find a way to get you home.’

  ‘I can’t leave without him.’ The line splits our voices into echoes.

  ‘Everything will be all right, Alice. I’m sure he’s all right.’ His voice roughens and trails off.

  ‘You’re talking as if –’

  There’s another click, the slow moan of a dead line, then silence.

  CHAPTER 18

  As soon as the raid was over, I ran back with my mother
and Sam to the factory. I stopped at the gate to see it completely intact, the girls emerging one by one from the shelter. The supervisor came striding up to us, stooping as she walked to brush the dirt from her skirt.

  ‘I’ll have you know that you can’t just run away at the whiff of a siren! This is important work.’ She stabbed her finger in the direction of the factory behind her.

  ‘She didn’t have a choice.’ Sam stepped forward. ‘I made her come with me.’

  ‘A Yank, of all people.’ The supervisor looked him up and down. He was twice as broad as her and at least a foot taller. ‘You should know better than anyone how vital it is for us to keep on top of our quotas.’ She stopped short of prodding him in the chest.

  ‘You can’t just coop them up like chickens while there’s an air raid going on,’ he retorted.

  ‘You try telling that to the War Office.’ She turned on her heels and strode towards the girls, who had lined up in order of their workbenches, ready to file back into the factory.

  ‘It’s a miracle you weren’t hit,’ I whispered to Sally, taking my place in the line.

  ‘He must care about you and your ma an awful lot, Vi, to come and rescue you like that.’ She nodded across to where my mother and Sam were standing.

  ‘Not really,’ I murmured, seeing the flower again in my father’s mouth.

  It was Pete, not Sam, who had rescued us that day, albeit unwittingly. Earlier that morning, soon after he had started milking the cows, he was met by a private in uniform who took him to some buildings at the far end of the farm.

  ‘You’re to stand guard here,’ the soldier said, pointing at the barns.

  ‘Why? What’s inside?’

  ‘It’s better if you don’t ask questions. If you see them flying over, the Luftwaffe, I mean, I want you to light these and throw them into the nearest barn.’ The soldier pointed to a pile of hand-made torches – sticks with rags at the ends that reeked of meths.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ve doused the entire place in petroleum. She should get going in no time at all.’

  ‘Good,’ nodded Pete – never one to admit when he didn’t know what was going on.

  ‘One more thing,’ said the soldier, matter-of-factly. ‘It would be advisable to get away as quickly as you can as soon as the barn is lit. We’ve built a shelter to the west, two fields away – that should be far enough.’

  On the evening of the raid, Pete had heard engines approaching and dutifully set light to the barns. From the safety of his shelter, he had watched as the Luftwaffe peppered the barn with bombs, stoking the fire to a monstrous height until it looked as if a whole town had been set alight.

  ‘It was a decoy!’ he exclaimed, after I explained about the suspected raid on the factory. ‘I made the Jerries think the farm was the factory!’ Then he started to brag to others about his involvement in the great decoy, as if he had known about the plot all along and played his part valiantly.

  I was in two minds about whether to tell Pete about Sam. In the end, the decision was not mine to make. Towards the end of April, when the Americans had been with us for nearly three months, he met me after my Thursday shift and I walked with him back to the farm at Coombe. Our strolls had allowed me to steal time with him between his work and mine without being seen to be too keen. There wasn’t anywhere to go other than the dances at Salisbury and Warminster and I wasn’t about to show my face with him there any time soon. Not after Freda.

  This regular jaunt of ours had petered out of late; Sam was almost guaranteed to be our guest at dinner on a Thursday and so, week after week, I had made my excuses to Pete and went home to help Mama prepare the meal.

  As we skirted the edge of the American barracks at Fugglestone, he seemed aloof, displeased with me, somehow, walking two steps ahead of me no matter how much I picked up my pace. The air was full of those dark, pregnant clouds typical of April. To begin with, it felt acceptable to leave the unremarkable weather unremarked upon. But as our walk went on, I feared he was imposing his silence on me, withholding words so that I would feel their absence. On previous strolls – usually to take our mind off the rain or the cold – we had told stories: mine from the factory, his from the farm. I had exaggerated the injuries some of the girls had incurred, multiplying the volume of blood and the strictness of the supervisor. He had done the same with the farm, laughing at the ineptitude of the land girls under his watch. I would try to contradict him, telling him that I had met the girls and felt their hardened hands in my own. I’d seen them fell trees and shear sheep single-handedly, and knew what they were capable of. But he would always find another way of discrediting them – broken eggs, sloppy hedge work, a cow that had been left to wander more than two miles from its field. Today there were no stories to tell. He did not speak a word to me until we reached the final stile before the farm.

  On the other side of the fence, he stopped me walking on and turned to face me. ‘Violet, there’s something I have to tell you, but you won’t like it. Not a bit.’

  I kept quiet, thinking through the possibilities of what it might be: another girl, farm work in a different county. I tried to prepare myself for either.

  ‘It’s about your ma,’ he explained.

  I frowned at him.

  ‘I know it’s tough for you to hear – what with your father … Only, I’ve seen her … with someone.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Mama would never deliberately hurt Sam, I thought. Then I worried that I had thought of Sam before Father.

  ‘He’s an American based at Fugglestone. Big stocky fellow. I saw them walking together by the Nadder.’

  I caught Pete’s eye.

  ‘You know about him?’

  ‘He’s a friend. He’s been very good to us.’

  ‘It didn’t look like that to me,’ he replied.

  I asked curtly what he meant by ‘it’.

  ‘I saw how they were walking together –’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I interrupted. ‘And why is it your business anyway?’

  ‘You can’t pretend he’s just a friend of your ma’s.’

  ‘He’s looking after us. Doing his duty. I don’t understand why it bothers you so much.’

  ‘’Cause the town’s talking. Your pa’s not been gone that long, Violet –’

  ‘I’ll not have you speak of him in that way!’

  ‘The Yank or your pa?’

  I paused, chest tightening. ‘My mother doesn’t need a lesson in what’s proper – least of all from you.’

  ‘I only thought you should know that people are talking.’

  I came to a standstill by the riverbank and watched the water draw patterns in the silt. It couldn’t stop. It had to keep going, following its course from source to sea.

  ‘What will happen after the war, Violet?’ began Pete again. ‘D’you think the American will come back to Imber with you, live in the parsonage and preach sermons like your pa in St Giles?’

  ‘Stop it!’ I marched back in the direction from which we’d come.

  ‘Fine!’ he shouted, behind me. ‘But you’ll want to go back after the war. I know it. And Imber’s not a life that a Yank can share. He can’t ever be your pa.’

  ‘What do you take me for?’ I turned towards him. ‘He’s dead and buried. I can’t change that any more than I can wish us home again.’

  Pete sighed and walked towards the farm, leaving me faltering on the path behind him. You’ll want to go back after the war. I should have known that, even if we were allowed back, Pete would not come with us. I had lost all hope of life resuming its original course – so much so that I was prepared to sit and
watch while my mother, the wife of a parson whose fresh grave went untended at home, fell in love with another man.

  I caught up with Pete just before the gate into the farmyard, out of breath, crimson-faced. ‘What should I do?’ I asked, planting myself between him and the farm.

  He pushed past me and clamped the gate shut behind him, his eyes entreating me not to follow. ‘Speak to your ma, not me.’

  Ever since the bombing raid, Mama had been shy around Sam and, at times, even short with him. She rebuked him when he offered to peel the vegetables and cut himself with the knife; she asked him to leave the house one evening when he suggested that the Allies couldn’t win the war without the Yanks. Yet he continued to come to the cottage. If anything, he approached my mother with renewed confidence since he had broached the subject of my father’s death. My mother could no longer hide his attentions from me or herself. She relented, slowly, with the unease of someone who knew what she had held and how difficult it would be to make room for something more. We should have hated Sam for muscling in on our home, for touching my mother’s hair, for stirring up her feelings when he didn’t understand how much she had lost.

  He arrived late for dinner one evening, brimming with stories of his latest exercise. He pulled back a chair from the table. The hind legs jittered over the tiles. By the time he sat down, he was already in full flow.

  ‘Violet, you would have loved this place! So quaint and English.’

  I took the pot out of the oven and smiled weakly at him, not properly hearing his words.

  ‘It’s a darn shame they let us train there, really. We try to be careful with the ammo – the genuine stuff, I mean – but you can barely see it. It’s tucked up in a valley. And the fog’s so thick in the mornings that we can’t even see the church tower.’

  The pot in my hands thudded onto the table.