The Sea Change

by Rossiter, Joanna

‘Ravindra?’

  He’s so desperate to speak to the nurse that he barely notices me at first. He clasps her uniform and pleads with her.

  ‘Ravindra! It’s me, Alice.’

  The nurse moves on. He starts towards me, taking me by the arm and pulling me back inside the ward. I can’t understand what he’s saying. The woman who told me of the python frowns and gets up from her bed. I beckon her over and ask her what he means.

  ‘His wife. She is not well.’

  ‘She’s alive?’ I ask, following him to a bed by the wall. The colour has drained from her face and her pupils are unfocused, void of movement. Her lips have morphed from brown to blue. I can feel her coldness without even laying a hand on her. A nurse shouts something across the ward and Ravindra looks up, panicked. Two more nurses approach us and delve under the mattress on the bed. They lift his wife and carry her towards the double doors that lead into the courtyard. He clings weakly to the mattress.

  ‘But he doesn’t even realize,’ I murmur.

  ‘He knows,’ says the woman saved by the python. ‘He knows.’

  CHAPTER 25

  Freda sent word that she had been granted leave and was to come home for two weeks. My mother fussed terribly about the house, sweeping and dusting for days before my sister’s train was due to arrive. She kept pulling me over to fret about holes or patches of damp, which I knew had always been there but to her seemed new. No amount of scrubbing or shifting of furniture would hide them.

  On the afternoon of her arrival, Mama buttoned herself into her best dress. She painted her face and saw to her nails. But the more immaculate she made herself, the more it seemed as if we had something to hide. The dress I had borrowed from Annie for my trip to the tip with Pete was still hanging in the wardrobe. I decided Mama would look even more out of place if I did not put it on.

  We arrived at the station almost an hour before my sister’s train was due, just in case she came early. At twenty-nine minutes past five, a flurry of air pushed itself along the tracks. We took each other’s hands and Mama held her breath. I wanted to tell her that she did not need to worry that I would talk to Freda about Sam. Yet I was not entirely sure of what it was that I was vowing, however silently, to keep secret.

  Mama, I knew, would change the subject instantly if I reassured her about it directly; she would simply have denied that we had anything to hide. So I stayed silent, hoping that she would deduce where my loyalties lay from the affection that I had stowed in a fresh batch of tea, chopped firewood and a swept hearth. And it was just a visit – Freda had made that clear in her letter. How hard could it be to keep a secret for two weeks? She had no intention of returning to us for good and, besides, there was no home to return to.

  Father’s death had sent my sister off kilter in a way nobody could have imagined. I tried to reassure myself that, had she stayed, she too would have taken to Sam; she would have acted exactly as I had done. I kept scanning the house for any remnant of his presence; my mother, I discovered, had already seen to his note, hiding it under the lining of her chest of drawers. She could have found a better place for it or even taken a match to it; a simple search of the house had yielded it easily into my hands and I was worried that, should her suspicions be aroused, Freda might be rewarded equally readily. I took it from the drawer and hid it under the mattress.

  I checked myself. She had no reason to suspect that anything was amiss. She was too wrapped up in London, I surmised, to spare a thought for the changes that might have occurred in Wilton.

  Not a word passed between us as the train approached, only a tightening of the hands.

  ‘I’m so happy she’s coming home,’ Mama whispered, her voice conveying a different message from her muscles, which flexed and tensed, shifted and stiffened. It took us a while to pick out Freda from the other passengers, the steam and the porters’ bronze trolleys.

  ‘Mama! Vi!’ We heard a shout from the other end of the platform. There she was, still in her nurse’s uniform, walking towards us, bag in hand. She embraced us tightly and planted a kiss on my cheek as if no time had passed at all.

  ‘Oh, I have missed you both!’ she cried, taking my mother’s arm and handing me her bag when I offered to carry it for her.

  ‘Wait, Freda, we must see to the rest of your luggage.’ My mother cast an eye around the platform for a suitcase.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Mama. A weekend bag is all I need. I can’t stay long, you see. There’s so much to tell you about. I hardly know where to start!’

  I glanced at Mama, who looked away.

  Freda barely stopped to take a breath on the bus from the station. She told us about the dinner dances she had been to and the soldiers that she had treated on the ward – how brave they were, and charming. I thought of the jar of pickled onions she had devoured before leaving. She described the bomb scares and how everyone took shelter together in the Underground and what an atmosphere there was down there. She told us how dear the other nurses in the hospital were to her. She had made the best of friends – so many people to choose from in the city. ‘Not like Imber!’ I could almost hear her say.

  ‘And how is Wilton?’ she asked, after a while, the pace of her chatter slowing for a moment. I waited for my mother to answer but she stayed quiet.

  ‘It’s perfectly adequate. We have all that we need here, don’t we, Mama?’

  We stepped off the bus on North Street and completed the short walk back to the cottage. On the doorstep, Mama fished in her handbag for the front-door key. I watched as Freda glanced to the end of the street where some soldiers were making their way into the Pembroke Inn.

  ‘What are troops doing in Wilton?’ She frowned. ‘I thought you’d be out of the way here.’

  ‘Wilton House is the army’s Southern Command,’ explained my mother. ‘Although nobody is supposed to know, of course.’

  ‘And we make equipment for the troops in the factory,’ I added, ‘tarpaulin and camouflage mainly.’

  Freda tutted. ‘Mama, that kind of work is for labourers’ daughters, not for girls like Vi. How could you let her do it? She should have come to London and become a nurse with me.’

  ‘Not all of us have the privilege of waltzing off to the capital at the first sniff of a war,’ responded my mother. Freda fell silent.

  Having found the key, Mama fumbled with the lock. She frowned at the door as if it were new to her and we were just moving in. Sensing Freda’s eyes on her, she could not steady her fingers enough to match the key to the lock. When the door finally swung back to reveal the damp on the walls and the cracks in the ceiling, Freda could only offer a sharp intake of breath. We showed her upstairs and deposited her bag in the one watertight bedroom, where my mother and I usually slept.

  ‘You’ll have to share the bed with Violet, I’m afraid. Unless you want to wake up with rain on your face.’

  ‘Or worse.’ I laughed. ‘There are pigeons in the roof.’

  My sister did not look amused. ‘But where will you sleep, Mama?’ she asked, running a hand over the flaking paint on the doorframe.

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I sleep lightly these days as it is. I’ll be comfortable enough in the living room.’

  Mama made potato floddies for dinner. Freda was full of questions about the evacuation and the factory and, worse, my mother’s work at Wilton House. I scraped my fork around my plate to try to cover up our lack of answers. By the time we reached pudding – stewed apple – she had given up.

  ‘Whatever became of that Pete fellow?’ she asked, in an attempt to make one of us talk. It was a poor choice of subject. I felt my face whiten.

  ‘He’s working on a farm near C
oombe,’ replied my mother – resolute in volunteering no more information than was required of her.

  ‘Do you see much of him?’ Freda directed this question towards Mama but I knew for whom it was meant.

  ‘Violet and he go walking sometimes …’

  I felt exposed suddenly, and wished Mama had not spoken.

  Freda let out a sigh. ‘You can do far better than a farm boy, Vi. You’re eighteen, you have a good figure. You should be out and about with an officer.’

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘They aren’t exactly in short supply here.’

  ‘That’s quite enough,’ exclaimed my mother. ‘Not at the dinner table. Anyone would think you’d left your manners behind in London, Freda.’

  ‘I shan’t waste niceties on Violet, Mama. She needs to be told. Otherwise she’ll end up old and alone.’

  ‘Better old and alone than a good-for-nothing busybody,’ I muttered.

  ‘I’m going to fetch some firewood from the shed,’ Mama began, ignoring this last exchange and picking up her empty bowl. ‘When you two have grown up enough to join me in the living room, I would welcome the company.’ Then she scraped her chair across the tiles, deposited her cutlery in the sink and left the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t tell me you actually care for him?’ Freda leant across the table.

  I looked up from my bowl. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. I cared for him as far back as that daft dance you made him take you to. And I care for him now. More than ever.’

  I watched as Freda’s features became unsettled. She rearranged them, seconds later, into a picture of calm.

  ‘You’re not still upset about all that, are you? It was years ago, Violet!’

  ‘I didn’t say I was upset.’

  ‘Look, Imber was such a small place. I wasn’t exactly spoilt for choice back then. London has taught me to be more … what’s the word? Discerning.’

  ‘Listen to yourself! What would Father think?’

  Her gaze flitted away from mine and found it had nowhere to go. Eventually it settled on the kitchen floor. ‘He’d warn you not to repeat your sister’s mistakes, that’s what he’d do,’ she said quietly. ‘To keep your heart safe for someone worthy of it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t mind who I loved, Freda, you know that. As long as they had a good character. He wouldn’t care if they were a Whistler or an Archam, landed or penniless.’

  She frowned into her bowl. ‘You do know he’ll never marry you.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘He’s a drifter,’ continued Freda. My hand tensed around the handle of my spoon. ‘You knew that from the start. He won’t settle, Vi, least of all with you – you belong back in Imber.’

  ‘How do you know? You haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s been like. You’ve been away.’ I could feel myself reddening and, in spite of my resolve, my eyes filled. She crossed to the other side of the table and slipped her arms around my neck. I tried to push her away but she leant into my ear and made the same ssshing sound she used to make to her dolls when putting them to bed in the parsonage.

  ‘I wish I’d been here,’ she mused. ‘But I can’t very well undo it now, can I?’

  Later, in bed, she rolled over and whispered, ‘The parsonage, Vi-vi. What’s become of it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I muttered, keeping my back to her. ‘Don’t pretend to care. You didn’t even write.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t miss it.’

  I pulled the eiderdown further over my shoulders.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll keep everything in order, Violet. The Major wouldn’t let anything happen.’

  ‘The Whistlers left too. Everybody did.’

  ‘But what about Imber Court?’

  ‘They boarded it up.’

  Freda’s breath became weightier.

  ‘We’re not allowed on the Plain any more,’ I continued, ‘but I went to one of the beaches they’ve taken in Dorset. You should have seen it. It was all cut up with wire and cartridges and concrete. I hate to think what they’ve done to the valley.’

  ‘Oh, don’t.’ She sighed. ‘How awful.’ I felt myself getting angry at this outburst of concern for a place she had been so ready to discard. ‘And to think Father’s buried there.’ She paused. ‘Where are his things, Violet? They weren’t downstairs when I looked.’

  Throat tightening, I turned away and feigned tiredness.

  ‘They must be somewhere …’

  ‘It’s late – you’re exhausted from your journey.’

  ‘Violet, you didn’t leave them behind, did you?’

  ‘No … Never.’

  ‘Then where are they?’

  ‘Mama put them in the cellar … for safe-keeping.’ I gripped the edge of the quilt.

  ‘The cellar?’ she exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. ‘Haven’t you seen the damp?’ She clambered out of bed and pulled on a dressing-gown. Taking a candle from the chest of drawers, she swept towards the stairs. I had no choice but to follow.

  ‘How could you let her?’ she cried, as she descended the cellar steps and held her light over the boxes of books. Thrusting the flame at me, she bent down and tore open the cardboard, picking up a slim volume of Gerard Manley Hopkins from the top layer. Its blue cover had been defaced by a watermark that ran like a wave from corner to corner and darkened the binding of the spine. The pages inside rippled up from their neighbours instead of lying flat – backbones crooked from the constant cycle of damp and dry air.

  I couldn’t answer her. Instead I turned and left the cellar for bed. Upon reaching the landing, I felt the inside of me sink down towards the boxes. It was worse than I had feared; the absence of light. In bed, I shut my eyes but did not sleep; I thought only of Mama and Sam, lifting the boxes and carting them down the cellar steps – with me, a shadow, watching in the hallway, unable to say a word.

  Freda did not come back to bed that night. I awoke to find her side of the mattress empty. I dressed quickly and went downstairs to make the tea, hoping that I would find her in the kitchen. As I descended the stairs, my hand came to rest not on the banister but on a book: its cover and spine were splayed like a seesaw across the wooden rail. There were more following it. Downstairs, the window-sills, the crown of the grandfather clock, the sofas and the backs of the chairs were all covered with open books. It felt as if a bomb had been detonated in the cellar, causing the contents of the boxes to sparrow up into the body of the house and come to rest on every spare surface they could find. A fire had been lit, although it was only eight o’clock in the morning, and the books basked in the heat.

  I tried to gather them together quickly from their drying places but already I could hear movement above me. Mama’s footsteps sounded on the landing.

  ‘Violet?’ She put a hand on the banister to steady herself, knocking two books from their perch. ‘What in the name of –’

  ‘I’m drying them,’ Freda interrupted curtly, from the kitchen doorway. ‘You’re fortunate. Most of them can be salvaged.’

  ‘Put them away this instant!’ shouted Mama. ‘Do you hear me?’

  ‘But they’re Father’s –’

  ‘I said put them away!’ she cried, tears journeying down her cheeks.

  Freda stooped in practised obedience towards one of the books on the hall floor. Then she paused. ‘No.’ She retracted her arm. ‘They’re not going back in the cellar. Not on my watch.’ She stood up again, empty-handed, and shot me a glance.

  ‘You insolent girl!’ shrieked Mama. I had never seen her in such a state. My mother picked up the book nearest to her – a slim French dictionary that had f
allen from the banister onto the stairs – and hurled it towards Freda. She tried to duck but it struck her clean on the temple. She put a hand to her head and stared up at Mama with incredulity. Mama sank onto the step beneath her and let her head drop into her hands. As I hurried to the stairs to comfort her, I heard the front door open and close with the smallest of clicks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ breathed Mama. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll see to the books.’

  I spent the rest of the morning ferrying armfuls of my father’s library down to the cellar again, savouring the feel of their fire-warm covers on my fingers. The heat they had gained from the house quickly dissipated in the cool of the cellar and it took several journeys before the final pile of books was laid to rest. I kept back The Secret Garden, which Freda had read over and over as a girl. I put it under her pillow, like Mary’s key behind its brick.

  Later that day, Freda came to meet me at the end of my shift. I emerged from the factory to see her standing next to the gate. Even from a distance, she did not look herself. Her shoulders were hunched and her head drooped. She had always been lanky, but the years had taught her to wear her height well and with grace. Today it seemed that her limbs had grown too cumbersome and heavy for her; she held herself in a way that suggested she wanted, just for an hour, to consume less space.

  As I began my approach, I saw Pete rounding the corner of the road outside. I thought about carrying on. Of meeting them there – of suffering his awkwardness and her disdain. And afterwards I thought about what might have happened had I joined them sooner. But, feeling my face burn at the sight of them, I slipped behind a wall and watched him draw near to the gate.

  He stopped short of Freda and nodded a stiff greeting. When she looked up, something strange happened. All her fancy ways vanished for a moment and she seemed lost, suddenly, like a child. Pete drew closer. He raised a hand to her temple – the place where the book had struck. I flinched against the wall, heart knocking at my ribs, as if asking to be let out. When I stole another look at the gate, they were talking normally again – an indifferent distance installed once more between them. I wondered for a moment whether I had imagined his touch.