by Julia Green
‘Are they your bees, Gramps?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Don’t you recognise them?’
I open my eyes. He’s grinning, teasing me.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Those stripy vests they’re wearing. I’d know them anywhere.’
When I sit up, Gramps and Evie are lying at an angle to each other. Evie rests her head on Gramps’ broad chest. They’re breathing deeply, rhythmically, as if they’re asleep. I wander back up to the stone, and the cairn just a bit further along the peaty path. I can see right over the island from here to Broad Sound beyond, the deep channel of water between here and Main Island. A small sailing dinghy’s tacking up the middle, leaving a faint trail on the surface of the sea. I watch it make its way up the Sound and out into the open sea till it’s just a white dot on the horizon. Sea and sky are almost the exact same blue. A faint line marks where sky meets water. The longer I look, the more they merge until it’s impossible to say which is which. It could be Joe, sailing out like that, into the blue, if things had been different. And suddenly, clear as the sound of the bees in the purple heather, I hear Joe’s voice.
‘It’s all right now.’
I spin round. No one’s there. I look, and strain to listen. My heart’s racing again. Wind blows through the low heather bushes. Further off, a gull squawks.
There’s really no one there. I must have imagined it, conjured the voice up from thinking so much about him. Even so . . .
‘Ready to go back, Freya?’ Evie calls from below. ‘Or you can stay a bit longer. Just keep an eye on the tide.’
I skid down the track to join them. ‘It’s OK. I’ll come now, with you.’
We push back down the hill through the bracken. The roots give off a sweet earthy scent where our feet bruise them.
That voice – Joe – has unnerved me. I have the peculiar feeling of being on some edge, in danger of slipping away altogether. I need to do something – say something – just to anchor me back to earth.
‘Isn’t that old well somewhere near here?’ I ask. ‘The Bronze Age one.’
‘It’s much further along, nearer Beady Pool,’ Evie says. ‘We can have a look for it if you like. It’s quite difficult to find among the long grass.’
Gramps used to tell us stories about the islanders long ago throwing gifts into the well – coins, jewellery – and making wishes. They’d wish for a ship to be sent on to the rocks, so they’d get all the pickings from the shipwreck. ‘Gruesome lot,’ Gramps would say. ‘But that’s island life for you. Needs must.’
We haven’t been here for a long time. We find it eventually, hidden by long grass and bracken near the cliff above Beady Pool. It smells peaty and damp. The air’s cold, as if the sun never reaches it.
‘Careful,’ Evie says. ‘It’s deep, you know.’
It’s too dark to see anything. I shuffle forward and grip on to the stone lip so I can look right down.
‘Please don’t,’ Evie says.
Gramps hands me a pebble from his pocket, to chuck in so we can hear how far down it goes before it hits water. We did it before, years ago, when Joe and I were little – made wishes of our own.
I lean over, let it drop. My head spins. I wait and wait.
‘It’s dried up,’ I say.
‘Or you just missed the splash,’ Evie says. ‘Come on, then.’
She and Gramps start walking. I fish in my pocket for something else to throw in: a tiny yellow cowrie shell, a safety pin, a five-pence coin. I slip them in, and with each I make a wish.
Let Mum and Dad be OK.
Let me be happy again.
Let me see Joe, one more time.
The darkness swallows them.
I run to catch up. Gramps is talking to Evie about setting the crab pots in the morning. ‘You can come with me, Freya,’ he says. ‘Unless you are otherwise engaged, that is.’
‘Of course she is,’ Evie says. ‘She won’t be wanting to go out in that old rowing boat, just to get a few smelly crabs with you. Will you, Freya?’
I don’t answer. I know the real reason why Evie doesn’t want me going out in the boat. But I’m not going to argue now. And we’re already back at the house, and there’s a scrap of paper sticking out of the letterbox, with a message for me.
Eleven
It’s scribbled in pink felt tip.
Hi Freya! We are all going down to the field later. Football then fire/barbecue on the beach. Please come. xx Izzy (+ Matt, Danny, Maddie, Lisa, Will, Ben, etc, etc)
Evie reads it over my shoulder. ‘Sounds fun.’
‘S’pose.’
‘She’s a lovely girl,’ Evie says.
‘Who is?’ Gramps tips sand out of his shoes in a fine shower on to the garden path.
‘Izzy. Isabelle. The girl helping Sally with the campsite this year.’
‘With hair like spun gold.’ Gramps grins.
Evie sighs. ‘You don’t miss a trick when it comes to pretty girls, do you? See that, Freya? Not so muddled now, is he?’
Upstairs, I study myself in the mirror. Hardly spun gold, my hair. Nor ebony or anything else you’d find in one of those stories on Evie’s shelves. I think of Mum, holding that mirror on the landing, the day before I left, how thin and faded she looked. It comes over me in a sudden rush, this overwhelming need to see her and talk to her, to make her see me. I almost pick up the phone, but I don’t. I’ve tried it before. She’ll be busy. She won’t have anything to say. She’ll start worrying. There’s no point.
In the bath, I rinse off the sand and salt still stuck to my skin. My limbs look pale and thin in the dim light of the downstairs bathroom. Wearing my wetsuit on the beach today means I still haven’t got that first flush of sunburn. I lie back in the water. Last summer, I could easily float in this bath but now I’m too long: my toes touch the end. I hold my breath and dip my head right under. Bubbles come out of my ears. My hair spreads out. I start counting the seconds. One, two, three . . .
What shall I wear for the beach party? We’ll be playing football first, so jeans. Izzy will be wearing some crazy hippy thing as usual. And Matt will be there . . .
I imagine describing him to Miranda, even though I’m not intending to tell her anything right now because she’ll just go on about it. Tall. Slim. Blonde hair that sticks up at the front, longer at the back. The bluest eyes. Wide smile . . .
I come up for air, spluttering. Someone’s banging at the door.
‘All right in there?’ says Gramps. ‘Not gone down the plughole or anything? Some of us lesser mortals need the lavatory once in a while, you know.’
‘Sorry, Gramps,’ I call back. When I stand up, water sloshes over the edge of the bath. I wipe it up with the mat. Start to towel myself dry.
How long was it that time? I lost count. I need a stopwatch.
I’ve got one, in actual fact. On the watch I use which was his, of course. The watch which has a compass and everything you need for navigation, and which he wasn’t wearing either, along with the wetsuit that would have kept him warm.
Izzy waves as I come round the edge of the field. The game’s already in full swing. I join her end of the pitch.
‘Good you’ve come,’ she says.
‘Thanks for the note.’
‘I looked for you earlier. Saw you’d all gone out. Nice time?’
‘OK. Swimming and that.’
‘Cool.’
‘You?’
‘Worked all day. Really busy. The campsite’s packed.’
‘Oi! Stop chatting!’ Matt puffs past us after the ball. ‘Come on! You’re on our side, Freya.’
My cheeks go hot. Izzy doesn’t notice. She chases after Matt and I’m left standing there like a loser, so I make myself run too. Danny waves to me from the other end of the field.
‘Freya!’ a voice calls.
The ball bounces past me and rolls into the gorse bushes at the edge of the field. I run after it. Matt gets there first and we almost collide.
‘Whoa!’ he
says. He puts his hand on my arm, and all the rest of the game I can feel the place, like a burn. I know it’s mad, but he’s so totally gorgeous. Then Danny comes over and I forget about Matt for a while. He’s caught a whole load of mackerel for the barbecue and he’s dead proud of himself. He’s OK, Danny. I like the way he gets enthusiastic about things. It’s so not how most boys are, back home.
Danny’s side win, but it doesn’t matter. We play until the sun’s gone down and it’s too dark to see the pitch. Izzy and Matt have left already to start a fire on the beach at Periglis.
Some of the younger kids go back to the campsite. The rest of us join Izzy and Matt on the beach. We gather round the fire in a rough sort of circle. Danny comes over to sit next to me. We watch the sparks spiralling into the sky each time someone adds another log to the fire.
After a while, Izzy stops people piling more wood on. ‘It needs to be white-hot for cooking, not flaming like this.’
Matt and Lisa lay sausages and burgers on a grill balanced between two rocks over the glowing logs. Danny adds the fish, tail to head alternately. He sprinkles herbs on them.
‘Freshly picked?’ I say.
He grins. ‘’Course.’
A dog comes nosing along the beach. It’s Bonnie, from the farm, snuffling out the crisps and bread people have dropped. She can smell the meat cooking. She comes when I call her, and sits right close to me, leaning into my legs. I smooth her head and she wags her tail in circles. Her ears are warm and silky under my hand.
Everyone watches Izzy. Her hair is frizzy from sea-spray, from the heavy dew that fell those last minutes on the field after the sun went down. It’s spotlit by firelight, an orange glowing halo around her oval face. She’s stripped down to a thin sleeveless T-shirt. Each time she leans forward, I glimpse the curve of her body. I can’t help it. Matt sees too. Danny, Will, everyone. Joe too, if he was here. My skin prickles. I bend down and hug Bonnie.
Everyone helps themselves to food. Some of the older kids pass round cans. Some of them light up cigarettes. Danny and I go quiet, watching and listening. We’re the youngest people left, now. The lighthouse beam goes round: two sweeping beams every twelve seconds, lighting up the rocks, guiding ships to safety. As the night gets darker, the beam seems stronger and brighter.
Matt and Will are talking about this theory that humans evolved from apes who lived in water, not land, and that’s why we don’t have fur and why we can control our breathing when we dive, and need to eat fish, and walk upright and stuff. I listen. It makes a lot of sense.
‘It’s late,’ says Danny. ‘I’ve got to get back.’
‘Me too.’
Izzy gives us a little wave but no one else notices when we get up to leave. We walk single-file along the narrow footpath at the top of the beach, back to the campsite.
Danny peels off towards his tent. ‘See ya!’ he says. ‘Sweet dreams.’
Electric light from the washrooms floods the top field. I make my way through the gate. After that, the lane seems extra dark. A dog barks as I go past the farm. My Tilly?
It’s pitch-black, but not scary. The dark seems gentle and soft, folding round me. There’s no wind, and no moon. The first part of the lane is overshadowed by the hawthorns either side, but as it goes up the hill the hedge falls away, and suddenly I see the sky above me like a huge canopy, studded by a million stars.
Nearly there. I can see the house.
Something light and feathery brushes my arm. For a second I hold my breath. Joe? But it’s just a moth, flitting towards the light in the window. Evie never draws curtains. Who’s to look in, after all?
She must have heard me come in. She calls from the top of the stairs. ‘Everything OK? Did you have a good time, Freya?’
‘Yes. Fine.’
‘Night, night, then.’
I flick on the bedside lamp. Evie’s turned down the sheet ready for me. There’s a jug of flowers from the garden on the chest of drawers. Two pale rose petals have already dropped. A faint smell taints the room. Not the smell of stale water, something else. Different, but familiar, somehow.
A memory comes. Me and Joe, quite small, making rose petal perfume in the garden. We’re squashing the sweetly-scented petals into a jam jar, topping it up with water from the can in the greenhouse, stirring the pink mixture with a teaspoon. The next day the pink water has become sludge and is beginning to go brown, and each day it smells worse, stinky and foul and nothing like the scent of a rose.
Joe must be about eight. He’s already too old for the game. He sneers at me. ‘You didn’t really think we’d be making real rose scent, did you?’ He’d known all along it would go smelly and rotten. I’m furious. I cry.
I shut the memory out of my mind. I don’t want to think about my brother like that.
You can’t always do that so easily. Memories come back, pressing in on you, like ghost faces in the darkness pushing up against the glass, trying to get into the lit room. And sometimes the ghosts come in the night, in dreams, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
Twelve
Last summer
The girl who arrived that day, August 14th, is sixteen. She comes from somewhere near Birmingham. Her mother (Lorna) is divorced. Her little sister’s called Coral. Rosie makes friends with Coral.
Joe’s like a lost person. He’s fallen in love for the very first time.
‘Hook, line and sinker,’ Gramps says.
Gramps laughs when he hears what her name is. ‘Samphire! It’s a plant,’ he says.
‘Well, there’s Ivy and Rose and Lily and all manner of flower names,’ Evie says. ‘The old names are coming back.’
‘It’s in Shakespeare, too,’ Gramps says then. ‘King Lear.’
‘No,’ Evie says. ‘You’re getting muddled up now. That’s Cordelia. The favourite daughter.’
‘Samphire’s in there too,’ Gramps says. ‘But as a plant, not a person. For picking and eating.’
They carry on like that for a bit, amusing themselves, but Joe doesn’t think it’s funny. He slams out of the back door, and goes to find Samphire (he starts calling her Sam, after that) for another walk, or whatever it is they do.
The first day after she turned up Joe showed her round the island, since she hasn’t been here before. He wouldn’t let me come, though. That’s another thing that’s new: before, all us kids just mucked in together.
I hear little bits and pieces about Sam. Scraps that start making a picture. Like the fact she doesn’t like camping – never done it before. She’s brought a different outfit for each day, but nothing warm enough, so Joe lends her his fleece. She starts using the bathroom at our place, because she doesn’t like the showers at the campsite. She and Joe spend ages in his room.
That’s where they are now. I’m lying on my bed in the room next door to them, writing in my notebook. I wonder what Sam makes of the pictures on the wall next to Joe’s bed: boats and lighthouses and fish and stuff. The map of shipwrecks, with the names and dates of the thousands of boats that have gone down around this archipelago (that’s one of my favourite words at the moment). It’s one of the most dangerous in the world, which is why Gramps has taught Joe about currents and navigation and sea-charts. He bought him a special watch with a compass and everything.
When I listen up against the wall, I can’t hear a thing. No voices, or music, even.
Gramps clumps noisily up the stairs, whistling. He stops outside my door.
‘Coming for an evening walk, Freya?’ he calls. ‘We’ll stop at the pub.’
He knocks on Joe’s door. ‘Joe? Coming? Bring your friend, too.’
He’s either forgotten her name, or he can’t quite bring himself to say it. Samphire.
There’s the sound of something scraping along the floor – furniture, or something heavy, before Joe opens his door a crack. ‘Join you later,’ he says, and he shuts the door again.
Through my open door I see Gramps just standing there, as if he’s not sure what to d
o.
‘I’ll come,’ I say. We go downstairs together.
In the kitchen, Evie purses her lips. She looks worried. ‘What would Martin and Helen do?’ she says. Helen is Mum, Martin is Dad, their son.
‘About what?’ I ask.
‘Joe and that girl in his room all that time.’
I shrug. ‘Nothing, I guess. She’s just a friend.’
Evie and Gramps give each other funny looks.
‘Sam is friends with everyone,’ I say. ‘It’s fine.’
I think about this at the pub while Evie’s ordering our drinks and Gramps is chatting to people outside. It’s true that Samphire is friends with Joe and Huw, but not really with anyone else. She hardly speaks to me or the other girls, not even Lisa and Maddie. She doesn’t join in the games on the field in the evenings with everyone else. She watches from the sidelines, looking bored. Sometimes I see her with Coral, washing up at the campsite sinks outside the stone barn, but mostly Coral plays with Rosie.
I know Evie and Gramps are worried, so for some reason that makes me want to reassure them. I take Joe’s side every time, even though I am cross with him for spending so much time with his new friend. Now, sitting at the table outside the pub, I chat away so they don’t keep wondering where Joe’s got to.
He doesn’t turn up, of course. At closing time we walk back in the soft dark, over the field and along the top of Periglis.
‘Watch out for shooting stars,’ I say. You always get them in August, when it’s clear like this, if you look for long enough. Then you can make a wish.
I wish for the puppy. Please let Mum and Dad say yes.
Later, lying in the bath, I hear raised voices. My heart beats faster: it’s so rare to hear Evie and Gramps arguing for real.
A door slams. I turn off the hot tap so I can hear better, but someone turns the radio on in the kitchen; classical music. I sink back into the water. I’m practising holding my breath. I want to be as good as Joe. Better. He can do nearly two minutes, he says.