The Sea Change

by Rossiter, Joanna

  My mother spun round from the sink. ‘Salisbury Plain – you’re training on Salisbury Plain?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sam frowned. I blinked down at the steam coming off the dish.

  ‘This village – have you been into it?’ asked my mother, with urgency.

  ‘Oh, yeah, hundreds of times. Nobody lives there now, though. It’s like a ghost town. Some folk left their groceries there, though, and the hymn books are still in the church. It’s like they all just vanished. Creepy, if you ask me.’

  ‘They let you inside the houses?’

  ‘Yeah, we pretend it’s a German village. Half of us invade, half of us defend. It’s kinda fun.’

  ‘Fun?’ cried my mother, eyes as full as inkwells. ‘Anyone would think you weren’t in a war!’ Mama flicked her hands free of tap water as she spoke, mopping the remaining damp vigorously on her apron. ‘You’re just playing soldiers … and playing in places that you’ve no right to be in!’

  After drying her hands, she left the room, the food still steaming in the space between Sam and me.

  ‘The village,’ I murmured to him, after a pause. ‘What is it called?’

  ‘I don’t think it has a name,’ he replied, frowning at the door through which my mother had just left. ‘If it does, I’ve never heard it spoken.’

  CHAPTER 19

  A single-limbed doll; a watch whose face has filled with water; one gold chain. A plastic urn, fluorescent green – the kind that would float; a number plate; two non-matching flip-flops; an empty suitcase. When I ask where the suitcase was found, the woman from the hill bends down to read the chalk letters in front of it. ‘In a car, sister.’

  We have walked to the marketplace together from the telephone booth. The line went dead after my call home. Mum wasn’t in. The one time I call. She’s always in first thing in the morning. I try hard to feel relieved but I’m craving her concern, her fear, even if it means breaching months of silence.

  A space has been cleared where the market stalls used to be. Unclaimed belongings are laid out in rows, like clues, replacing the mangoes, tomatoes and ladies’ fingers that were illuminated in green under sun-soaked tarpaulins before the wave came. The women who used to draw chalk flowers on their doorsteps now etch facts about each object into the dirt of the market square. A house name, a street, a stretch of beach; the place where each item was found. James dragged me to the market on our first day here so that I could copy the women’s drawings. But instead of the patterns on the doorsteps, I sketched the women themselves: the way they squatted for hours next to their work, gently teasing a new breed of geometry out of the stick of chalk in their hands. Once I had finished we bought food in the market from a man cooking sambar. He spooned the contents of the pan into see-through bags – our own portions of sunlight, hot and bright in our hands. I think of the pan upturned by the wave, the sambar painting the waters yellow.

  On the fringes of the ruined square, I can see the fruit from the stalls, pulped amid beams and bricks and roofs. Doorsteps are washed blank. The women, like their patterns, are gone.

  I bend to the suitcase on the ground in front of me and unzip the pocket on the back of the lid. Inside there is a pencil, a coin and a photograph. The photo is of an older woman with a bent spine and toothy grin, her purple sari folded around her impeccably. A sentence is scrawled on the back in Tamil. I show it to the woman. ‘It’s for her son Adesh,’ she tells me, pointing to the woman in the photo. ‘So he will remember her.’ I think of her searching for him, as I am searching for James.

  A bicycle – royal blue with no spokes; a fishing net. We were told on our first day here that each fisherman has a different way of making his net: some string long diamond-shaped holes together; others have trademark knots. This net’s owner will be identified by the weave of the thread. I wish James’s traits could be woven into a net like that of a fisherman. I might stand a chance, then, of having something left to hold.

  An orange dupatta; a kitchen knife; three glass bangles, blue and intact. It stripped the breath from hundreds of lungs, the roofs from so many homes, yet it leaves these glass rings untouched. A woman in front of me bends over them in silence. She takes them in her hands and lifts them to her cheeks, her lips. Were they a gift? She slips them over her wrists, where they clink and collide and mingle with one another, like old friends. Then she kneels, hands blossoming from fists to open palms, and sends up a prayer.

  Next in line is a rucksack: the shape and colour are unrecognizable under the silt. I unzip it, forcing myself to assume it’s not his, fingers oscillating. I rummage at first, and then, out of frustration, I tip the bag upside-down, the contents scattering and settling in the dust. My gaze falls on a dark blue cover: it is hunchbacked by the water. The gold crest on the front has lost its glint, mud gathering in the grooves where the colour has peeled away. Staring down at the other objects from the bag – five dosas, a few coins, a towel and a bottle of sun cream, I already know the face that I am going to find in the passport. I know, and yet I’m hesitating, scrambling around for a reason not to look. My fingers turn, before I’m ready, to the front pages. He’s paler in the photograph than in real life. His hair – a sandy mess in the mornings – has been tamed into place. I remember the way he took out the passport at each of the borders along the overland trail, pushing it wearily across the table towards the official. He always said that a border check was worse than a job interview: the number of questions, the hours of waiting.

  Every border check had gone smoothly until we reached the edge of Pakistan. All of us passed through to India unscathed, apart from Marc who was detained. Three hours became six and James was impatient. I thought him irrational at the time for suggesting what he did – and perhaps he was. But if he had followed his impulses, things would not have kicked off so terribly in Delhi, we would not have married so hastily, and I would not be here, in the wake, without him.

  ‘We should order Marc a driver and press on ahead.’ He sighed. ‘It’s not as if he’s paid his way.’

  ‘We can’t just leave him,’ protested Sue. The others in the back of the van agreed.

  ‘It’s been six hours. That’s practically a day of driving we’ve lost. What if he doesn’t make it through?’

  ‘They’ve got no valid reason for keeping him,’ I murmured. ‘They’ll get fed up soon enough.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ he asked, looking me straight in the eye.

  ‘We can’t leave him, James. You know we can’t. It wouldn’t be kind.’

  ‘Well, that’s just great, isn’t it?’ He threw up his hands and brought them down onto the steering-wheel. ‘A real vote of confidence.’

  ‘Don’t be –’

  He started the engine and was about to pull away when there was a rap on the window. ‘Sorry, mate, I thought I was going to be in there all night.’ Marc grinned. He threw open the door and stooped inside. James rolled his eyes. I felt a pang of relief, and swallowed it.

  ‘It’s spelt with a c not a k,’ he told me, when we finally reached Delhi. I wrote down ‘Marc Rawson’ in my address book, above his Auckland address. The c at the end of his name seemed incomplete somehow. A k would have been closed, finished, unquestionable.

  The van had failed us twenty miles from the city centre; the gearbox had eaten its fill of desert sand. James stayed with the van, hoping to flog it to a passing driver for a few thousand rupees. I wanted to stay with him and let the others go on ahead but he said he needed space.

  ‘I’m happy to sit with you,’ I offered.

  ‘Go on with the others. We said we’d get them to Delhi. I don’t want to leave the job undone.’

  ‘You’l
l be all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Our eyes met. I sensed distrust in his.

  The rest of us caught auto-rickshaws to the railway station and camped in the grounds of a nearby hotel. The girls stared enviously up at the balconies on the first floor, imagining fresh towels and boxes of tissues. It was our last night as a group. After four months together, we were to part ways in the morning. Marc was following Rob, Sue and Clara to Kathmandu. The others were making their own way to Thailand while I would wait for James in Delhi.

  The symmetry of the hotel gardens felt contrived, awkward even, after miles of unruly sand. The grass was ornamental – roped off, luridly green and prickly. A shock to the eyes after the sand-blurred roads of Iran and Pakistan.

  ‘And what’s your address?’ asked Marc, as we sat by the fountain. He handed me a notebook and gestured for me to write mine in return. Without thinking, I scribbled ‘Alice Fielding, 8 Magnolia Way, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England’. I could have put my London address but this was the one that came to mind. It was a strange ritual to go through, when we knew neither of us had any intention of keeping in touch. I flicked through the pages of his notebook after I had finished writing and dislodged a folded sheet, which had been pressed into the spine. It fell open on the paving – one of my drawings.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ I took a closer look. It was the one I had drawn of a collapsed arch in southern Turkey – the symmetry broken into two uneven columns.

  Marc didn’t answer immediately. He clasped his hands between his knees and tapped his foot up and down. It was the first time I had seen him visibly unsettled. ‘You threw it away … in Lyallpur.’

  ‘You should have asked before taking it.’ I tried to harden my voice but the words came out porous and pleading.

  ‘It was … I just … It was something to remember you by …’ Catching my frown, he added, ‘This whole trip, I mean.’

  I sighed and planted my hands on the hot paving behind me.

  He hung his head over his knees. ‘You must think I’m an idiot.’

  ‘I’m thinking we’ve all been shut up in that van for too long.’

  ‘Yeah, too right.’ He laughed.

  I thought of Mum and the Wiltshire address I had written in his notebook. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how journeys can make you feel things that you wouldn’t normally –’

  He looked up suddenly, as if I had given something away. ‘Alice …’

  He was leaning in. I should have backed off. It was a startling rush of attraction, one that caught you momentarily and then let go of you as quickly as it had arrived. I already knew it was madness.

  He put his lips to mine and I didn’t move away, not at first.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, eventually pulling back.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To James.’ I reached over and took the drawing from under his knees. Then I stood up, put it in my pocket, and walked away. He left in the morning. There was no need for a goodbye.

  Each time I think of that kiss, I can remember only the fringes: what came before and after. I have forgotten completely its texture, the swell of feeling that must have brought it about – as if, by forgetting it, I can pretend it never really occurred.

  James’s passport is still in my hand. I want it to tell me something more than I already know, give me a clue as to where I can find him. Even touching something he has touched makes me feel closer to knowing his fate, if only by a fragment. He could have left the rucksack behind in an effort to get away more quickly; or someone could have removed it from him, from his … and brought it here. I put the passport down and run my fingers around the inner seams of the rucksack, checking I haven’t missed anything.

  His wallet isn’t here. He must have taken it with him when he ran. Surely. Out of instinct. Did he get away in time? I gather up the objects. They carry the same dank, out-of-date smell as the rest of this place. Any smell that he might have left has been superseded by the water. I try to recall it but it is covered by burnt rubber mixed with trapped sewage and rot. There is no escaping it in the heat. It follows you everywhere, permeating your clothing and then your skin, until you, too, are its carrier.

  Before the wave, the town was filled with smells that reminded us of being somewhere other than home. Tamarind and turmeric lingered on the shirt cuffs of store owners. And pollen – thicker than you’ve ever smelt it – dangled blearily in the air around the market. Sometimes the air was so pregnant with scent that it tasted overripe. Even before the wave, it felt as if something were about to burst.

  A place like this would frighten Mum. The heat would make her giddy. The food would not sit still inside her. Everybody is busy and yet nothing is done, she would say, in the exasperated voice she puts on when she knows she is out of her depth.

  When I made the mistake of bringing James home to meet her, she was in a state about Tim wanting to sell the house. He’d got a job for the electricity board in Didcot, or something like that. The agent called round to put a sign up in the garden without checking first with Mum. Tim must have known that she would be reluctant to move. But we had only been there for the six years since they’d married and she’d never really liked the house anyway. To her it was just walls; it was Wiltshire she couldn’t leave.

  She tried her best to ignore the for-sale sign while James was there, storing the thought of it under a pursed lip. But I saw her glance out of the window at it every time we entered the kitchen. She couldn’t help but linger on its shadow, as dark as a ghost on the front lawn.

  When I was a child, I used to beg her to take me to London, not knowing how the thought of it alone made her fearful. She gave in when I was eleven and we took the train together to Paddington. By the end of the day, I was wishing I had never made her come. I felt responsible, as if I’d taken her on a rollercoaster and made her sick. The city dizzied her with its blur of trains and buses and glass-fronted towers. She couldn’t seem to feed off its frenzy in the way I did. I watched in horror as she stuttered on the sides of roads, waiting until I picked the gaps that were big enough to allow us to cross. Instead of persevering through the crowds on the pavements, she would retreat periodically into shops, only to find herself shoulder to shoulder with thicker, noisier crowds.

  We caught the tube to St Paul’s from Paddington; it was the only name she recognized on the map. I was disappointed, hoping she’d choose Piccadilly Circus or Elephant & Castle or Angel, any of the stops that sounded as if they might unleash an adventure. The heat in the Underground made her skin sticky and her breath heavy, and she winced as a man in a black coat stood close enough for her to breathe the breath that he had just exhaled. We whizzed through the tube’s concrete veins and emerged at the other side, climbing the steps to the cathedral and hiding ourselves in the quiet of its nave. Away from the pulse of the traffic, the muscles in her face relaxed and she loosened her grip on my hand. Finally, I was allowed to roam, albeit in silence. Meeting again in the dome, we looked up. She seemed transfixed for a moment by its shape.

  ‘Did you know, Alice …’ she began, trailing off as a string of tourists clustered nearby briefly, then departed.

  ‘What, Mummy?’ I asked, tugging on her hand, pleased to hear her speaking.

  ‘When they bombed London … when London was bombed in the Blitz … this dome here managed to survive. Everything around it was destroyed. But this,’ she gestured up to the light-filled arches above us, ‘this lived on.’

  ‘Can we go somewhere else now?’ I asked, swinging her arm with my hand. For a moment I thought that the day might be saved, that she might even bring me to the city again.

  But, as we walked outside and made our way
around the perimeter of the cathedral, I felt her hand tighten on mine. In front of us was another church. Only, this one was ruined. In place of the nave there was an overgrown garden, which had been allowed to roam over the remaining stone. It was as if, a long time ago, in a fairytale, a wave like mine had passed over it, taking with it the walls and windows and bells and doors, leaving only ruins.

  CHAPTER 20

  In April, Mama stopped reading my father’s books. I returned home from the factory one evening to find the boxes taped up and the shells I had placed on the window-sills back inside their crate. The ship was nowhere to be seen. She seemed to avoid the front room completely now, as if the books could spy on her from their boxes.

  Undoing the tape, I fished around for a volume of Eliot’s Four Quartets, one of her favourites, and placed it carefully on her pillow upstairs.

  In my beginning is my end. In succession

  Houses rise and fall, crumble …

  … in their place

  Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

  … old timber to new fires,

  Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth …

  I found the ship tossed into a box on top of Father’s dictionaries – a small fissure had appeared on the bottle’s neck. I thought about the sails inside the glass, filling with air for the first time.

  Returning from the canteen, she came and joined me in bed. She picked the book up from her pillow before lying down and stared, bewildered, at its cover.

  ‘I thought you might like to read it.’

  She held it out to me. ‘Put it back where you found it.’

  ‘Mama …’ I paused, leaving the book loitering in her hand.

  ‘It doesn’t belong here any more. It never did.’ She thrust it towards me again, and when I still didn’t take it, she left the bed and carried it downstairs herself.