The Sea Change

by Rossiter, Joanna

  Alice has grown so like Pete in recent years. I wish he was around to see it. Like him, she keeps her cards close to her chest – on good days, pretending not to care; on bad days, creating the pretence of love before pulling the rug from beneath your feet.

  When Tim and I first met, long after Pete had gone, she was a picture of indifference. I would ask what she thought of him and be met with an evasive shrug of the shoulders. ‘You do what you like, Mum. It’s your life.’

  I tried to explain that I wanted her to like him, really like him, that it was important to me. But she pushed air through her lips, flashed the whites of her eyes and, shortly afterwards, asked if she could go to her room.

  I found out after his proposal that it was Alice who had suggested going shopping for a ring, Alice who had shown him the White Horse at Westbury, and Alice to whom he broke the news first.

  She’ll be the same with James, if she sticks with him. She won’t ever tell him she loves him but it will escape from her sometimes, when she thinks he’s not looking. I often wonder whether he and I see the same things in her. Watching him there in the hospital bed, I want to ask him if she still sleeps with her arms folded and whether she has grown out of the sulks that she used to stage if I kept her indoors for too long. I am not afraid to acknowledge now that he is more familiar with her ways than I am.

  ‘James,’ I say, without quite intending to speak. He looks up from his ward bed and frowns, trying to place me for a moment. Then he stiffens with recognition.

  ‘You’ve come to tell me she’s dead, haven’t you?’ he murmurs tautly, fists pushed into the mattress.

  ‘No, she’s alive. At least, we had a telephone call from her. That was all. She’s still in Kanyakumari … as far as we know. She won’t leave until she’s found you.’

  ‘She’s … My God … Is she all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was such a short call. Tim – my husband – spoke to her.’

  ‘Does she know I’m here?’

  ‘No. I came straight from the airport. I saw your name in the newspaper.’

  I move over to the bed now and stand at the foot.

  ‘I should never have gone to get breakfast,’ he whispers, looking past me towards the bed opposite. ‘I should have stayed. Then we wouldn’t have been separated.’

  ‘The most important thing is that you’re both alive.’

  I sit down on the mattress and, unsure what to do next, I reach over and put a hand on his arm. The contact feels like a breach – for both of us. ‘She’ll be so relieved when she finds out that you’re all right.’

  He turns his head. ‘You’ve no idea how quickly it came. Masses and masses of it.’ He grips my hand out of instinct. ‘Everybody’s talking about the wave like there was just one … but the water just kept on coming. And it wasn’t even water … It felt like –’ He cuts himself off and pulls away from me. ‘I’m pretty sure I was underneath for … It seemed like minutes – but it can’t have been. I would have drowned.’

  ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘I … I don’t even know. It took me past a building. Something sharp went into my neck. The water was so black I didn’t even realize I was bleeding. There was a man who managed to get me on top of the building somehow … If the helicopter hadn’t come when it did, I would have bled to death. The doctor told me.’ He straightens his back and pauses. ‘You must find her, Violet. What if there’s another wave?’

  I open my mouth to dismiss the idea and then, seeing the earnestness in his uninjured eye and the fear married to it, I keep quiet. If you have been caught by one, it is only reasonable to fear that you may be caught by another.

  ‘Please. You’ve got to find her.’

  He doesn’t need to tell me to go. I ask him where I should look and to describe the places where she is likely to search for him.

  ‘They’ve told me about a lost-and-found board in the marketplace,’ he explains. ‘One of the rescue workers said they’d put up a missing note for me. He said survivors come and check it every day for new notes. She’s bound to go there. And try our guesthouse. The Saravo.’

  I stand up and turn to leave but he says there is something he must tell me before I go. She may not have had the chance to share the news on the phone but Alice and he are married.

  I stare at his hand and imagine a ring on hers – its meaning fixed. A closed circle.

  ‘It happened about a week ago.’

  Happened. He is talking about it as if it were a freak accident, like the wave. Married to a man I barely know. You may do as you wish, but do remember it’s for life. My mother’s words to Freda come cantering into my ears. She can be a stubborn, unthinking girl sometimes.

  ‘I sent a parcel … to Delhi. Did she –?’ I stop in an attempt to compose myself.

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  I glance at him only once to say, ‘I must find her,’ and then I turn and walk out of the ward.

  Even if, before the wave, they married on impulse, it will carry more weight now. I think of Pete and the war, Freda and the arrival of the wave. Things that perhaps would have drifted apart or never touched have been thrown inseparably together.

  CHAPTER 34

  I sit on my stone slab and wait for her to come and find me. There is nowhere left to search. I’m afraid that, if I move, I will become like a ship looking for its neighbour at night, passing yards from its target without even realizing it is there.

  Hour after hour has sunk before me and there is no sign of her in the crowd. It is so hot that I want to peel back my skin: sweat gathers and then settles on me. I find myself wishing for Imber’s breezes.

  A woman approaches with a cup of water and puts a shawl over my head. The cool of her shadow releases me momentarily from the heat. She passes me the cup and I lift it to my lips. But the silk of the water in my throat awakens – rather than quenches – my thirst. I pour some on my face, which is dry again in moments. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper, but she’s already folded herself into the crowd.

  How many hours would James have waited before getting up and searching again? I can’t help thinking that I have given up before he would have. She met him at the festival on the Isle of Wight. They had barely known each other a few weeks but he wasted no time in introducing her to his family – all cordial and art-loving and as footloose as their son. They have had six homes since he was a child. Six. London, Jerusalem, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong. The names alone taste hot and green.

  Six homes, stints in Asia and a mother whom Alice thinks is just what she ought to be. When Pete moved towns, it broke my heart. And yet these people skip from country to country as if they were pieces on a Monopoly board.

  ‘I wonder what my dad would have thought of him,’ she remarked, on the first and only time she brought James home. She often talked of her father in that way, as if he were dead. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that he probably wouldn’t have taken the time to form an opinion about James. Loving Pete was like pouring water into a plugless bath; the thought of him storing up our affection, or of letting us wallow in his own, was unsustainable.

  Freda had always been quick to warn me about Pete. She saw him for what he was a long time before I did. And sometimes I wonder whether she made her mistake so that I wouldn’t have to.

  After her return to London in the wake of her falling-out with Mama, we wondered whether she would ever return to us. Granted, the war was over, but she had been so upset about Sam that we feared she would stay in London for good. Her telegram announcing her intention to move home came as a surprise to both of us.

  In the August after the war ended, she arrived in Wil
tshire with her silence and spread it throughout the house, just as she had done with Father’s books. The afternoon of her arrival clenched into evening and the three of us assembled around the kitchen table for dinner. Mama ladled stew onto three plates and, after a short grace, entreated us to start eating. Freda and I sat on one side of the table, my mother on the other. My sister did not eat hers; instead, she drew patterns in the gravy. We might have grown accustomed to this habit, just as we had done with her larder raids when Father died, but she had been away for so long that Mama could not help but appear perturbed.

  ‘Tell us your news, then, Freda,’ my mother began, looking down at the untouched vegetables on my sister’s plate. ‘You mentioned that you had something important to tell us in your telegram. A reason for coming home.’

  Freda swallowed air and glanced at me.

  ‘I’ve … given notice at the hospital.’

  This was not the news; it was simply the garnish. I could tell there was more to come.

  ‘And I’m engaged.’ She rushed through the words. There was no smile.

  ‘To whom?’ my mother enquired, lowering her fork.

  ‘To Pete,’ she answered.

  When I think back to her words and my reaction, I am overridden by one feeling only: a sense that I had known what was coming and had always known. Perhaps it is just the way I have remembered it: enhancing the tell-tale signs of their attachment to each other as a means of protecting myself from feeling that incision of pain all over again.

  ‘But how?’ my mother stuttered. ‘He’s in love with Violet!’

  ‘If he loved Violet, he would have proposed to her, not me.’ She kept her words flat and plain, as if the logic of what she had announced was as simple as solving a sum.

  ‘Freda, I cannot –’ Mama stood up from her chair and put a hand to her head. ‘You had such high notions … He’s a farmhand and one year your junior. I don’t understand.’

  ‘I was snobbish, Mama, that’s what.’

  ‘How could you do this? To your own sister?’ she choked out. ‘What would your father say?’

  A tremor invaded my fingers. I removed them from the table and dropped them onto my lap so that they could not be seen.

  ‘If you loved your sister, you would think twice about such spitefulness!’ She took a breath and hung her head. ‘The fact that you could be so unfeeling towards your own family … You can’t love him, Freda. I won’t believe it. It’s malice.’

  ‘Think what you like, Mama. It’s settled.’

  ‘Where will you live? What will you live on? For you shan’t receive a penny from me.’

  ‘We’re to move to Leconfield. Pete’s joined the RAF.’

  Mama threw up her hands vaguely and turned towards the sink. Finally, I felt capable of speech, the words emerging, lemon-sour, on my tongue.

  ‘Has he told you he loves you?’ I shifted in my chair and fixed my stare on her.

  She did not return it. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And do you love him?’

  She bowed her head in a vague nod.

  ‘Then you should marry. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of his happiness.’

  ‘Violet!’ exclaimed my mother. I stood up and tucked my chair under the table. Then I left the kitchen.

  ‘Well, if Violet won’t defend herself, I don’t stand a chance of dissuading you,’ hissed my mother, as I made my way towards the stairs. ‘You can marry him if you like, but do remember that it’s for life. Life, Freda. And that’s a very long time to hold a grudge.’

  Upstairs in the bedroom I longed for a lock and key. I tried to keep my composure. But I was unable to swallow my hopelessness any longer. It was all I could do to cry noiselessly into the back of the wardrobe, opening the doors to hide my face from anyone who might disturb me.

  I was not angry: I couldn’t make him love me any more than Mama could make Freda act judiciously. She was as stubborn as an ox at times. If she was truly bent on marrying Pete there would be no deterring her. I buried my swollen eyes among the hems of our dresses – hers mingling with mine on the rail.

  ‘Whatever you think of me,’ I heard Freda’s voice at the door, ‘I didn’t accept him to spite you.’

  I shut the wardrobe as if I had been looking for something inside it. I did not turn to face her.

  ‘If I thought you could be happy with him,’ she continued, ‘if I thought there was even a chance of it … then I promise you I would have refused him, no matter what.’

  ‘I should be the judge of my own happiness, Freda, not you,’ I murmured, into the oak face of the cupboard. Hearing her approaching steps, I backed away to the window.

  ‘There are things he hasn’t told you.’

  I felt suddenly as absent as her reflection in the glass. Please leave. I don’t want to hear any more.

  ‘What things?’ I asked, before I knew where the words had come from.

  ‘Violet … I’m having a baby.’ The words were barely audible. ‘Please don’t tell Mama.’

  I looked up to the window and saw my sister’s wet face reflected in the glass. She seemed spectral, as if she were disappearing.

  ‘Why else do you think I’d marry him?’ She muffled her tears in her sleeve. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s not possible –’ I turned to face her. ‘You’ve been in London … all this time.’

  I stared at her belly, still flat. The news, if true, must be fresh even to her.

  ‘I wish it were impossible. I wish none of it had happened.’ She put her head into her hands.

  ‘Freda –’

  ‘Don’t pity me … whatever you do. It’s my own fault.’

  ‘Tell me what happened. Please?’

  She paused, drew breath, as if to begin explaining, then sank into a fresh silence. Finally, after some time, she spoke.

  ‘He came to London to see his mother. You won’t know about her because he’s never spoken of her to anyone. Months ago, unbeknown to you or any of us, she wrote, asking to see him. He’d wanted to meet her for so long that he accepted at the drop of a hat and travelled to the city.’ When she had finished explaining about the other child, she looked at me with pleading eyes as if expecting me to respond, but I had so many questions there was nothing useful to say. ‘Violet, you have to understand that he was hurt and alone in a place he didn’t know and the only person he could think to contact was me. And so he made enquiries at the hospital …’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t he tell me about her?’ I blurted, finally.

  ‘I don’t know, Vi. Maybe he was embarrassed. We had everything – you and I – two parents who loved us dearly.’

  I frowned. ‘But what happened? What does his mother have to do with –’ My eyes settled for a second time on her stomach.

  Freda turned away from me. ‘He asked to meet me after my shift … We only meant to have dinner together. But then it was announced that the war had ended in Europe for good. The whole city was alive with celebrations. There was dancing, which I thought would take his mind off his mother … I missed you and Mama terribly and he reminded me so much of home …’

  The window-sill pressed into my back. I imagined what it would feel like to push backwards through the glass and fall down into the garden. There seemed nothing to exist for now. Just a hollow future, which loomed like an impossible drop. ‘You could have had anyone, Freda. Any boy you liked. You know you could.’

  ‘Please believe me. I never wanted it to happen … not with him. Violet, I promise you it was an accident. It was a lapse … a momentary lapse. He told me about the American on the night we won the war, you see … and, fo
r a split second, I hated you for letting Mama forget Father. For looking on while she took off with that Yank.’ Her voice dimmed until it was barely more than a rasp. ‘But, most of all, I couldn’t bear the thought that you had moved on without me … When I left, I thought everything would stay the same, that time would simply stop until I came back. It’s madness, I know. But the evacuation and then the American – it was too much. I realized you were living your lives without me. Without Father. I was as dead to you as he was. It broke my heart to think of it … Pete was there, and I knew you loved him. I knew, and still I danced with him and took his hand and … I felt as if everything had been taken from me. It was my way of taking something back. Just for a night.’

  I pushed my palms into the window-sill and tried to steady myself.

  Freda caught her breath, eyes full, lips pressed into white. ‘I know how much you love him, Vi. But it would have been a miserable existence. You belong here. Near Imber. With Father and Mama. Can you really imagine yourself trailing around the country after him while he takes to the skies in a plane?’

  ‘He never gave me the chance.’

  ‘It would be intolerable.’

  ‘Please, stop speaking for me.’ I raised my eyes and glared at her. The movement was so sudden and my stare so direct that she recoiled.

  Freda began to flounder. ‘Pete says you’re like a limpet – you’ll never let go of Imber. He couldn’t understand your loyalty. It’s so unflinching … but I understand. I know you better than he does –’

  ‘Isn’t it enough that you have him?’ I interrupted, giving in to the quiver in my voice and turning back to the window. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  My sister walked to the door without speaking another word. Through the glass, I could trace the shadow of the bell on the lawn – the place where I had stood and watched her cry only a few months ago. The rust had encased its shape so thickly of late that it now resembled a rock more than a bell. I imagined its inner skin – the untouched metal inside it, hidden from the rain and wind. I saw it for a moment, impossible, at the top of Imber’s tower: gleaming and pealing, as if new.