The Sea Horse Door

by Gina Rossi

  “By starting now. By starting over. Now. Do it for Alice if you can’t do it for yourself.” Okay, I’ve said my piece and I’m going to shut up.

  His eyes don’t soften. He stares me down. “Would you like to come camping with me and Alice?”

  “I’m sure you and Alice would really enjoy some time alone together.”

  “Is that a no?”

  “Yes. Thanks for inviting me, but no, thanks.” It’s not going to happen. Me and camping do not go together and that’s never going to change.

  He puts his head on one side, eyes shrewd now. “Why? Are you afraid of something?”

  “Everything. The dark, the bugs, the bears, the cold, the dirt, the rain, the salient fact there’s no hot shower or proper loo.”

  His face breaks into a grin, an instant transformation, like switching on a spotlight in a pitch-dark room. I am so dazzled I’d have fallen over if I hadn’t been in bed. “The salient fact there’s no hot showah or propah looh.” He mimics my accent to a T, all prim.

  I blush. “Stop it, Lucas. Don’t tease. It’s not funny.”

  He comes toward me, bends to level his eyes on mine. “If you don’t face your fears, they’ll hold you back your whole life.” He raises his eyebrows. “New beginnings Lara Jasmine. New beginnings.” He straightens up and goes to the door.

  “No, Lucas, I’m not going—”

  “I already told Alice you’re coming. She’s real excited.”

  “Well, you’ll have to tell her different. I’m not—”

  “Do it for Alice, if you can’t do it for yourself.”

  I sit up, wrench a pillow from underneath me and hurl it at him with both hands and all my strength. “No. Stop it.”

  He bats it back, and it hits me on the head. “We’ll leave mid-afternoon. Pack warm stuff.” That grin again. He leaves the room. “Bring along the Hoovah if it makes you comfortable.”

  I pull the duvet over my head, but I can still hear him chuckling all the way down the gallery.

  I. Am. NOT. Camping. Seriously, I’d rather stick needles in my eyes.

  ****

  Although forgiveness is in the world’s best interests, Lucas will not be forgiven any time soon for dragging me out to this here lake. However—and this is the confusing part—Angie’s right. Phantom Creek has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the world, and if I wasn’t camping, I’d be missing Mother Nature, showing off in all her glory, sending the sun westward, taking the sparkle out of the water and leaving behind the softest shade of violet, like smooth, pale amethyst silk.

  While I’m admiring the breathtaking vista of lake, hills and sky, Lucas swiftly pitches two tents, about twenty feet apart, on the shaggy, wild grass of the flat bank above the pebbly shore. This done, he lights a fire. Alice, tummy full of early supper, wiped out by over-excitement, is drowsily waiting on the moon.

  “There’s no moon tonight, sweetheart,” Lucas tells her, over and over. “You go lie in your tent and I’ll wake you if it comes, okay?”

  In she goes and all is quiet. When I check ten minutes later, she’s fast asleep, blue polka dot sleeping bag pulled up around her ears, buried in a pile of favourite teddies. I report back to Lucas, asking what I can do to help.

  He flicks open a camp chair. “Sit here and keep an eye on the fire.”

  I sit. He goes to the truck, parked some way up the rough track, behind the tents and comes back with a fishing rod. Moving quietly, like a cat—although not one like Buster, who stomps—he goes down to the shore and onto some rocks. He casts a line. The lure drifts against the sky and lands light, shooting delicate golden ripples across the water. I hope he doesn’t catch anything. On the way here, Alice was so upset at the sight of a dead duck on the road that I would hate to have to explain the ethics of fish killing. Fingers crossed nothing’s biting.

  The daylight slides out of the sky; the rocks, trees and Lucas turn black against the purple water. Seconds later, it’s dark, and there’s no moon to keep me company in this small circle of firelight. Why am I sitting alone in the flickering dark in a place called Phantom Creek? I stand up quickly, ignoring the cold prickle on the nape of my neck, and go over to Alice’s tent. There’s a hurricane lamp and a highly effective bug trap hanging on a branch at a safe distance. I peep in. Nothing’s changed. All is peaceful. I’m not alone, not with Alice right here, even if Lucas has been swallowed by the night. I pull my head out of the tent and look around. Here he is now, coming up the beach, empty-handed, to my relief.

  “Did the big one get away?”

  “Sure did.” He goes down on his haunches to prod the fire with a stout stick.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I ask, thinking about supper.

  He bestows a sudden smile. “Relax. You must be exhausted after digging in your heels so hard.”

  I glare, but he doesn’t notice.

  He sets up a little folding table and fiddles about with some plastic containers. Now he’s got meat out, succulent entrecote steaks, dripping marinade. As they go onto the fire, the liquid sizzles into the flames and sends up a rich, delicious blast of herbs and oil. There’s Indian corn on the cob, enormous jacket potatoes crammed with butter and a salad made of everything in the world: slow roasted tomatoes, spring onions, pine nuts, parsley, peas, semi-soft cheese, and tender leaves.

  I am starving.

  Oh, and now he’s clearing the second table, where Alice sat for her supper earlier. Tablecloth, napkins, plates, knives and forks and wine glasses—wine glasses—come forth along with a mini lantern doing duty as a candle.

  “Let me—”

  “Sit.” He waves the barbecue tongs at me. “I’ve got this.”

  I sit again, well out of the smoke, and gaze into the fire, across the vast black pool of the lake, and up to the first stars pricking the blackness. All set to not enjoy myself, I somehow am. This part is okay; it’s fun. Also, it’s a real treat not to have to cook. I feel spoilt.

  During dinner, we talk loads about Alice—how much her vocabulary’s increased, how much she loves books, how she’s shooting up, all general stuff. After that, he tells me about the food; how much he loves to cook outdoors, how he’s been camping out ever since he was Alice’s age. The fire dies, he makes me coffee and we discuss the stars. He points out some of the constellations, Ursa Minor and Ursa Major, and Pegasus, over in the east.

  “We never see those in England,” I say. “It’s always overcast.” It is, a lot of the time, but somehow I haven’t found time to search the heavens for stars. Perhaps you need a special person to help you find them.

  I brush my teeth, wash my face with extremely cold water, and head for my tent.

  “Are you joining me?” Lucas asks.

  “What?”

  “That’s my tent. Yours is over there.” He points.

  “I thought I was sleeping with Alice.”

  “I am. That’s your tent opposite. I thought you could use a little privacy.” He hands me a spade and torch and points to where the “toilet” is. The fun stops here. Through the dark bushes, into the night, in Phantom Creek? I’m not going. I’ll hold it in until morning.

  In my private, tiny tent, torch balanced upright in one of my shoes, I scramble out of my clothing, and dig around in my bag for a pair of winter pyjamas. Sitting—because that’s all I can do—I put these on, plus some thick socks, and find a bulky long-sleeved tee-shirt to pull on over the lot. The night is cool—not freezing, but by no means warm. I fold my clothes, place them on my bag and slither into the sleeping bag. It’s brand new. Did Lucas buy it especially for me? I’m touched if that’s the case. I even have a mattress and pillow—something I wouldn’t associate with camping, had I ever given it a moment’s thought. I switch off the torch and listen to the silence come roaring in.

  Maine—the way life should be: you know, I’m starting to believe that. I turn over. I’ll never sleep, in spite of the comfort of my bed, I’ll never sleep, I’ll never…

  I do
, because I wake up, in pain. My left leg’s trapped, the one closest to the outside of the tent. In an instant, I’m wide awake. What’s going on?

  What’s happened?

  Chapter Seventeen

  The possibilities are few. Is it a boulder that’s rolled off the mountain and come to rest on top of me? But what mountain? There are some low, forested hills behind us, through which a boulder could not roll. I shift, and pull, and then kick.

  “Lucas!” I yell. The boulder, which is very hot, I might add (is it volcanic?) moves, I swear. I freeze, and listen. There are noises: loud squidgy, bubbly sounds like a tummy rumbling. A huge tummy.

  A huge tummy? A huge tummy of a giant, warm, moving thing?

  What…?

  No. Oh. My. God. Ohmygod! OHMYGOD.

  It’s a bear.

  I should not have shouted! I’ve disturbed it, but at least it’s moved and my leg is free. I move away, all the way—a full twelve inches—to the other side of the tent.

  Startled, sleepy—I hope—grunt from the bear.

  I wait, terrified, ears straining, as quiet as the dead person I might soon be. The bear settles again, rolling inward. Very slowly, I reach for the flap that covers the little window in the front of the tent, and lift it. I see black. Lucas doused the fire when we went to bed, and he doused it well, but its remains are somewhere to the left. His tent is opposite mine, I’m sure, not more than twenty feet away. How do I warn him? How do we get away? Dare I switch on the torch? The bear snorts, shooting my heartbeat right off the scale. Can it hear my heart beating? Can it smell me? What do I know about bears that will help me survive this situation? Over the years I’ve seen loads of American movies starring bears, yet I only know two things about them: one, they all look the same, and two, they are always, but always, pissed off.

  Right. Make a plan or die. My plan is this: to silently unzip my tent, flash a beam of torchlight toward Lucas’s tent, run for it, wake him, and listen to instructions. On my knees now, I pick up the torch with difficulty, my hands are shaking that much. Nose to the ground I find the zip. Holding my breath, I ease it up a few inches and push the torch out.

  The bear farts. Imagine—when you’re seconds away from a heart attack anyway—a short, sharp burst of ten trumpets in a cupboard under the stairs, only…trumpets don’t stink. I know what’s coming, but I can’t hold my breath any longer. The stench almost knocks me out. Is this even normal? What is wrong with this bear? He settles, spreading himself, squashing me, tipping the tent, bending the frame. I have to get out. I hope to hell I can run fast enough. The torch is on and I’m out of there like a Usain Bolt of lightning, only twice as fast.

  I duck behind Lucas’s tent, heart thundering. “Lucas!” I hiss, “Lucas, Lucas, wake up!”

  “Wha—” Startled, sleepy grunt from Lucas. Too loud.

  “Shhhh.”

  “Who’s that?” he asks in a low voice, wide awake.

  “It’s Lara. There’s a bear.”

  A second later, he’s upright in front of me, Alice in his arms. “In the car. Quick. Don’t make a noise.”

  Luckily he’s wearing white shorts. I follow those at speed, up the track, silent, because our lives depend on it.

  Lucas opens the Jeep, slides Alice onto the backseat and pushes me into the driver’s seat. “Strap her in,” he says. “If there’s trouble, go for help.” He switches on the ignition, halfway, so the lights come on.

  “I’m not going anywhere without—”

  “You’ll get a mobile signal on the main road, a mile or so past the turnoff to Little Harbor.”

  Is that so? “Get in the car, Lucas.”

  “Relax.”

  Relax? I grab his arm. “Please can we leave? Let’s go. Who cares about a bit of camping equipment?”

  “It’s not a bear. No one’s seen a bear around here for a long, long time. They were shot to oblivion over a hundred years ago.”

  That’s too bad, but right now I don’t feel sorry for bears. The less the merrier, as I see it. “Lucas—”

  He’s gone. I lean forward over the steering wheel, eyes popping to see beyond the beam of the headlights where he’s stepped into the dark. I wait, tensed solid, expecting the bear to emerge any second, dangling Lucas’s blood-stained head in his claws. Wait, I hear something! I lean out of the car window.

  “Shoo. Shoo. Off you go now. Good boy.” Followed by some gentle hand clapping.

  What the hell is that about? Is Lucas a bear-whisperer?

  He comes back to the Jeep, smiling. “Take it easy,” he tells me. “That’s no bear, it’s a moose.”

  “A moose?”

  “Yeah.” He grins. “He’s a beaut. One of the biggest I’ve seen around here.”

  I think of the antlers mounted in the hallway back at Blue Rocks. “Are they dangerous?”

  “Not really.”

  Not being a total idiot, I’d choose survival over death any day, but somehow I feel stupid having been lain on by a non-dangerous animal. “He was bloody heavy!”

  Lucas’s face is over-straight. “Sure.”

  “Why would he want to lie on me?”

  “Something attracted him.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugs. “Perhaps he was lonely, looking for company or warmth. Perhaps he liked your smell.”

  I smell like a lady moose? This is not something I’d add to my online dating profile, if I had one—unless I stay in Maine. Also, the way Lucas is standing there, looking at me through the window of the Jeep, mouth curved up, amusement kindling in his eyes, he might as well be laughing out loud in my face. There’s no difference.

  “Not funny,” I warn, but smiling because I can’t help myself. Besides, I’ve made him laugh and that’s lovely to see.

  “No,” he says, and, unable to control himself, bursts out laughing, properly, moving away from the car so he doesn’t wake Alice. I open the door and tumble out of the driver’s seat, laughing with him.

  “Shhh! Shhh!” we urge one another between outbursts, which makes everything funnier. I laugh until I’m weak. Weak and brave, because I desperately need the loo. I fetch the torch and the spade and go up the path a little way from the camp. Along with the retreat of adrenaline, the relief is exquisite.

  That done, I find my way back to Lucas, who’s surveying the remains of my tent without much hope in his attitude. He thinks a moment, goes down on his haunches and gathers my bedding.

  “I’ll stick it in the back of the Jeep,” he tells me. “You can sleep there.”

  “Um…” There’s no cover on the back of the Jeep. Lucas took off the roof thingy, to load up back home, and then covered everything with a neat tarpaulin, which is now folded away in the darkness somewhere.

  He strides off, chucks my stuff over the side of the truck, and points a thumb in the general direction. “In you get.”

  I obey. What must I do now? The obvious. I pull my bedding straight, separating mattress from sleeping bag from pillow, and rearrange everything into a bed. Cold, not thinking at all about what lies beyond the headlights this time—correction, what lies beyond the darkness because Lucas has switched off the headlights—I snuggle down quickly and shut my eyes: it’s lighter and brighter that way. Pray God the one hundred year bear absence continues because I feel like the last sardine laid out on a tapas tray. Imagining—or is it dreaming?—a bear at a cocktail party, with red lipstick and bright red nail varnish, paw hovering over the salmon blinis, the sudden jolt nearly shoots me over the side.

  I die of fright, scream, use the F-word, sit bolt upright all at the same time. It’s Lucas, chucking his stuff into the truck and jumping in after it. Alice stirs—hardly surprising—inside the cab and he reaches through the back window to soothe her.

  Lying back, eyes shocked wide open, I stare at the sky—black velvet encrusted with diamonds—while my poor heart hammers its way down the scale of terror, to normal, not for the first time this evening.

  Lucas, with much fidgetin
g, sorts out his bed, making it up, getting in, getting out, getting in again, while I pretend to be asleep. The truck rocks on its advanced, multi-something suspension and I roll from side to side in my snug cocoon. Eventually he settles, like a dog that’s turned around and around on a chosen spot. All is absolute silence, and darkness.

  “Hey?” he whispers.

  Hey what? More rustling, and—my but he’s deft!—he slides down the zip of my sleeping bag and takes my hand, clasping it in his, fingers laced. Right. After much accidental touching, and that silly goodbye kiss Alice forced on us, we are deliberately touching. A touch for touch’s sake, rather than the long way around to something else.

  Well.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Mm.” Fake sleepy, but wider-awake than daytime itself. To be honest, it’s nice having a large, strong mountain man sleeping by my side. I’m no camper. That’s it. That’s all.

  “You’re a born camper,” he says.

  “Am not,” I whisper, after a suitable interval.

  “You did everything right. Even when you fully believed there was a bear lying on you, you didn’t flinch.”

  The American meaning of flinch is possibly different to ours.

  “You remained calm and followed instructions. You’re a born survivor.”

  He’s just being nice, but I like the smile in his voice. “Even the light show was perfect,” he says.

  “What’s a light show?”

  How sexy is that soft laugh, coming at me through the blackness? “It’s what happens if you go into a tent, switch on a flashlight and take off all your clothes.”

  That explanation takes a moment or two to sink in.

  “And,” he goes on, “when picking a spot for ablutions, go behind a really thick bush and switch off the flashlight.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I see.”

  And so did he, obviously.

  “Hmh,” he murmurs, and that’s it. His hand goes slack and his breathing deepens and steadies.

  I stare into the dark, confused. As a romantic, first-kiss venue, this location has advantages: delicious meal, wine, handsome brave man, stars; and disadvantages: back of truck, toddler sleeping eighteen inches from my head, no actual kiss. Why am I thinking about this? The cocktail-party bear would be a safer train of thought. Anyway…