A Very Big House in the Country

by Claire Sandy

  ‘How much did you drink last night?’ Evie was intrigued; to work up a hangover of this calibre, she’d need a wedding reception.

  ‘All of it,’ whimpered Mike, inching towards her. ‘All the drink in the world.’ Sandpapered eyes lifted to hers. ‘But I’m not too hungover to talk, love.’ His radar beeped and jumped. Evie mocked his early-warning system, reminding him that 99 per cent of the calamities he prophesied never came to pass. But that nasty 1 per cent had a way of over-shadowing everything.

  Plimsolls squeaked to a halt on the tiles, as Mike and Evie regarded each other, both unwilling to fire the starting pistol on the conversation. Dan threw himself between them, red-faced, barely able to enunciate what he was trying to say.

  ‘Slow down, love.’ Evie crouched, her face near to Dan’s. ‘Breathe.’

  ‘I know I shouldn’t be watching. But they’re trapped.’ Dan gulped a lungful of air. ‘I know I was bad.’

  ‘Trapped?’ Mike’s hangover dissolved. He said, clearly, dad-ishly, ‘Dan, who’s trapped and where?’

  ‘Scarlett. It’s cos of the snogging. I couldn’t help watching.’ Dan started to cry. ‘It was disgusting, but I wanted to see. They kiss all the time in the treehouse.’

  Evie shook Dan, a little more roughly than she meant to. ‘Where is she? Speak slowly, darling.’

  ‘In the cave. She went in there to kiss and she didn’t know I was there, and then Zane saw me and shouted, “Go away, you little creep” and now the tide’s coming in and Scarlett’s screaming and it’ll fill up and Scarlett will—’

  ‘She won’t, Son.’ Mike put a hand on Dan’s shoulder. ‘I promise. Find The Eights and take them to Paula. Tell her we’ve gone out and she’s to look after you until we get back.’ As Dan dashed away, glad of a job, Mike cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, ‘Shen! Clive! NOW!’

  Instructed by Dan to head for a tree ‘all bent over, like it’s dropped its lunch money’, the rescue party (for that is what Evie, Mike, Shen and Clive had reluctantly become) left Wellcome Manor’s polite gardens and raced over the scrubby terrain.

  Under strict instructions from Paula to send Tillie back, Evie envied such small-scale anxiety. ‘Tillie!’ she called as they neared the tree, with Shen, of course, in the lead, Evie plodding in everybody’s wake. Why haven’t I been out here before? The landscape was unkempt and exciting, an obvious lure for youngsters; she should have checked it out. Scarlett, at seventeen, was old enough to have sex or get married, yet it felt too young to be arsing about in caves. In Evie’s mind’s eye, Scarlett was small and vulnerable in the face of nature’s indifference, like an ant on Everest.

  ‘I knew something like this would happen.’ Mike’s words kept rhythm with his steps, as he ran. ‘I should’ve put my foot down about Scarlett and that boy.’

  Clive stopped, and Mike stopped too. ‘My boy, you mean.’

  ‘She didn’t want to go. This was Zane’s idea.’

  Clive squared up to Mike. ‘Your kids are no angels, Herrera.’

  Shen, now well ahead, called back, ‘Guys, I’ve got an idea! Why not have a punch-up? Instead of, say, rescuing the children?’

  Rescuing shocked a whimper out of Evie. She endeavoured to think of it as making everything all right. She’d always made everything all right for Scarlett, from a dropped lolly to a tangled ponytail. This would be no different.

  Catching up with Shen, Evie peered over the edge. The wind snatched her extravagant curse and bore it away.

  During a pleasant ramble the cliff would be a medium-rise, rugged corner of England crumbling into the Channel. To Evie, in these circumstances, it was high enough to qualify as heart-stopping, and its pockmarked face was brutal.

  Clive puffed to a halt. ‘Tide’s right in.’

  The bay was a wobbly U, narrow at the top, with a small gap for the sea to rush through. The tide had already reduced the pebbly beach strewn around the foot of the cliff to a pale, shallow margin against the dishwater sea.

  ‘Where’s the . . . ?’ As she said it, Evie spotted the cave and pointed. ‘They’re in there.’

  The cave was shaped like an eye, blind and dark, the sea already encroaching upon it.

  ‘Look!’ They all followed Shen’s pointing finger, and Evie’s stomach fell down a lift shaft as she saw the blue-and-white blanket borne up and down by the waves, a pretty rag mimicking a drowned body.

  Clive bent down. ‘Plenty of footholds. Quite an easy climb.’ He straightened up. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘Clive, don’t,’ said Shen, as he got to his knees. ‘You haven’t done anything like this for years.’

  The horizon was tranquil, a vicar’s tea party compared to the thrash-metal mosh pit of the water within the bay. Something about the angle at the neck of the inlet angered the water and set it churning. Persistent thoughts of Scarlett’s fear of deep water reared up at Evie. I need to think efficiently. She must gather up her scattered self. ‘There’s no point climbing down.’ She cast around her wildly for what she needed. ‘There’s no solid ground between the cave and the scrap of beach that’s left. We need a boat.’

  ‘But there’s no boat,’ said Mike.

  As he was speaking, Shen called, ‘There!’ and shot off, Evie hard on her heels.

  Both of them had spotted the sign – Trips around the bay in real Devon fishing boat £15 – and the steps carved into the rock-face.

  Why, oh why, am I in flip-flops? Evie’s feet slipped as she strained to keep up with Shen, who flew, inches from the edge, in trainers. At the top of the steps Evie hesitated. Shen was speedily tiptoeing down, but Evie’s senses were assailed by the height of the cliff, the narrowness of the steps and the booming of the sea. With Mike and Clive right behind her, she only had a second to suppress her vertigo and grope her way down the steps as fast as she could, which was not as fast as she would like, but was better than lying down, which was what her body wanted to do.

  ‘There’s Tillie!’ Shen stopped, halfway down the steps, and pointed to a smudge partway up the cliff, jaunty chiffon scarf flapping like a pennant. ‘She’s stuck. Clive,’ she called back up to her husband. ‘You’ll have to help her. You said you could do it.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Leave Zane to me.’

  Irresolute for a moment, Clive snorted and turned back. As the others carried on down to the sea, he called, ‘Tillie! I’m coming!’

  A hut, held together by salt and hope, stood on a ridge that, apparently, was never swallowed, even by this greedy sea. Upturned boats rutted in a mass of nets and oars. One small wooden vessel bobbed maniacally in the water, tethered by a stout rope.

  ‘In!’ ordered Shen, and Evie did as she was told, leaping over the frothing water to land and slide on the slick floor, her bottom meeting – a touch too smartly – the wooden slat fixed across the width of the boat.

  ‘We can’t just steal it!’ Mike held back as Shen leapt in.

  Evie tried to estimate how many yards of unfriendly water lay between her and her daughter, but gave up, leaving it at a dismal lots and lots. ‘Scarlett!’ she hollered, her words whipped away. If only Scarlett would come to the mouth of the cave, show herself. ‘Mike!’ she snapped. ‘For God’s sake, get in!’

  ‘We should leave some money.’ Mike was scrabbling in his pockets, unfolding tenners.

  Baring her teeth with the effort of untying the thick rope, Shen shouted, ‘Evie, can you see life jackets?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh well.’

  ‘Mike,’ said Evie, leaning over to help with the rope, which had claimed Maureen’s manicure. ‘Get in!’

  ‘Really, though,’ said Mike, ‘we should leave the bloke a phone number.’

  ‘Mike, your daughter’s over there!’ Evie pointed to the dark, disappearing cave.

  Snapping out of it, Mike threw a shower of ten-pound notes into the sea. ‘We need oars.’ Ransacking the pile, he cursed. ‘They’re all different sizes.’

  A cry of ‘Help!’
rose above the clamour of the sea.

  Both Evie and Shen stiffened. Shen threw back a square of dirty tarpaulin to reveal an outboard motor. Just as Mike brandished two oars in triumph, she pulled on the greasy lead and the boat bucked like a bronco and took off.

  The boat’s nose rose in the air, tipping Shen and Evie backwards, slamming Evie’s head hard against the side.

  ‘You OK?’ called Shen. She crouched by the motor, taming the boat. It obeyed her, and after another false start they carved a clean line through the water, making straight for the cave. Behind on the little stone jetty, Mike shrank.

  As the cave grew more distinct, they saw the water already slopping into its belly.

  ‘Evie!’ Shen’s voice was a sliver of noise above the tinny brouhaha of the engine, ‘we’ll get them.’ When Evie nodded, Shen shouted her name again and Evie turned to look at her, to look properly at the dark teardrop eyes squinting against the spray and at the salt crusted on the flat bridge of Shen’s nose. ‘I said, we’ll get them.’

  ‘I know we will.’ Evie held out her freezing hand and Shen grasped it with her free one. Thank God, thought Evie, for my Shen.

  Up on the side of the cliff, Clive reached his huddled target. Down below, the boat neared the cave.

  ‘Slow down, Shen,’ warned Evie.

  Shen tinkered with the motor. Evie felt her willing the boat to conform.

  Two pale, stooped figures hung back in the gloom.

  ‘Shit!’ blurted Shen as the boat convulsed, dashing itself against the treacherous, half-visible rocks. To a chorus of screams from within the cave, the vessel tipped, flinging Shen the length of it.

  Hooking her legs under the bench seat, Evie braced herself and caught Shen around the waist. ‘Got you,’ she breathed, as the boat righted itself.

  As the two women battled to steady the boat, it rose and fell in tune with the steady, disgusting slurp of the sea water that was steadily claiming the cave. It was an ancient place, pitiless and dark, and Scarlett was in there, only a few feet away, but out of reach.

  ‘We’re here!’ called Evie, her face numb with spray.

  ‘Mum!’ Relief; fear; a deep need for the endless comfort the title conveys – it was all there in Scarlett’s desperate shout.

  The heavy rope in her cold hands, the boards slippery beneath her flip-flops, Evie leaned over the side of the boat, searching for something to lasso. If we ever get back to dry land, she vowed, I’ll never leave it. Not even to go upstairs.

  A column of rock, sticking straight up, flipped Evie the finger. She aimed the rope at it, but it slithered off as the boat reared like a roller coaster.

  Looking helplessly behind her, she saw Shen chivvy the rudder. ‘Try again!’ she yelled, as the tide slapped them against the cave and snatched them away again, as if enjoying itself, as if sarcastic.

  From the cave, the lovers hoarsely yelled encouragement.

  It worked. The skin on her fingers raw, Evie hung on, looping the rope around the blasphemous finger of rock and managing to make a scrappy, unreliable knot.

  ‘I’ll keep us as steady as I can.’ Shen glowered with concentration, her hair flat against her head. ‘You reach out to Scarlett and Zane.’

  ‘Come on, guys!’ Evie braced herself to lean right out. She had to. So she did. ‘Now!’ There was a perfect moment when the wave swelled and held the boat level with the cave, when the rope was taut, when the stern was tucked in neatly, bringing them parallel with the rock. Arms out, Evie felt a surge of strength. The last time life had demanded such physical resilience was during childbirth; now she carried out a labour in reverse, pulling her daughter towards her, landing her like a fish, so that Scarlett sprawled, gasping, drenched, alive, in the belly of the boat.

  Despite its current state of emergency, Evie’s body hadn’t let her down.

  ‘Zane!’ she hollered as the boat shuddered and dropped. She knew when the next window of opportunity would open; she didn’t know how many they had left. ‘When I say “Jump” . . .’

  As the wave swelled, as the boat rose, Evie saw a figure shape up, taller than Scarlett as it waded through the swampy cave.

  The gap between boat and cave widened and closed. ‘Now!’ Evie stretched out her arms – and Tillie fell into them, both of them falling backwards, a cold tangle of limbs and hair.

  ‘Where’s Zane?’ Eyes wild, Shen shoved Scarlett’s shoulder. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘That must be him.’ Evie pointed to the top of the cliff. Two figures were outlined against the sky, as the scarf that Zane had earlier stolen from Tillie fluttered free and soared out over the sea.

  ‘Can we go home?’ asked Scarlett, coiled up and shivering.

  ‘You bet,’ said Shen, as Evie untethered the boat. She turned them around, navigating as if born to it.

  Wet, and in dire need of as much tea as Devon could muster, Evie prescribed showers for – well, pretty much everybody apart from the smaller children, who were already re-enacting the rescue with the pressganged, uninterested dogs.

  I wonder, she thought, if Mike has realized?

  Ungallantly first in the attic-floor shower, a clean and warm Zane emerged and sought out his father.

  ‘Dad.’ Like a vampire who can’t enter without permission, Zane wavered in the doorway of the master suite. This room was not his territory. It smelled of aftershave, of milk, of his stepmother.

  Clive jumped, then waved his son into the room. ‘Any shock symptoms yet? Shen keeps checking my pulse and asking if I need the toilet. Charming!’

  ‘You won’t tell everyone, will you?’ Zane, bare-chested, felt small beside his lion of a father, a man who procreated each time he sneezed.

  ‘Tell everyone what?’ Clive had picked up a cigar and was looking at it with longing, as a man in a strip-club stares at boobs he can never touch.

  ‘Well, not that I was stuck.’ Zane scowled at the damp sketch that his feet had made on the floor. ‘They know that already.’

  ‘Help me out here, boy. Who am I not telling, and what am I not telling them?’

  Zane twisted a towel between his fingers. ‘Don’t say I was too scared to move.’

  Clive shrugged. ‘Fine.’ He turned away, then turned back. Zane wasn’t finished.

  ‘I feel so stupid. Having my dad rescue me, and everything. I was the one going for help. We’d sat on the beach for ages. Then the tide came in, and the beach was disappearing and the steps were underwater. The girls were in the cave, and I said I’d go and get help. I was meant to be the knight in shining armour, but I ended up getting saved myself.’

  ‘Son, you’re in the wrong family if you want to be a macho-man. Some girls just don’t need saving. My little wife has bigger balls than the average grizzly.’

  ‘Dad, please.’

  ‘Fine, fine – your secret’s safe with me, you little pillock. I’ll say it was a tricky climb, and I only managed it because of the adrenaline. Something like that.’

  They both stood, then moved at the same time, away from each other. Some moments scream hug, but this father and son were deaf.

  Zane padded down the hall.

  Clive remembered looking over the edge, to see his child sobbing against the rock-face. Whatever fear Zane had been going through, it was nothing compared to the terror that rocketed through Clive. Zane’s fear of falling had paralysed him; Clive’s fear of loss had galvanized him.

  ‘Zane!’ shouted Clive.

  He was out of earshot.

  Another calm after another storm.

  Evie was glad to see the light disappearing down the plughole of the day. She needed peace.

  Out in the lavender dusk, Zane wandered, headphones on. Evie waved to him as she tidied the kitchen, wiping the worktop, putting tops back on bottles. She was self-soothing; the house at home was only truly tidy when she was in need of comfort.

  ‘Should we,’ she asked Mike, his back to her at the sink, ‘talk to the girls? We should, shouldn’t we?’

&nbs
p; ‘Are you freaked out by it?’ asked Mike, giving up all pretence of cleaning the sink and throwing down the sponge. ‘I mean, I don’t want to be dinosaur dad – the only one freaking out.’

  ‘Then don’t. Freak out, I mean.’

  ‘But I have to. I mean, don’t I?’

  ‘Tell her how you feel. That’s all you can do.’ As she pulled back the great glass door, she laid a hand on his arm. ‘How you feel, Mike, not how you think you should feel.’

  ‘I didn’t realize,’ said Mike, ‘that you actually have a degree in armchair psychology.’

  Like two pieces of a jigsaw, Scarlett and Tillie curled around each other on a wide sun-lounger. They’d lain like that many times during the holiday, but now Evie saw it differently and wondered how she’d missed it before.

  ‘So, girls . . .’ began Evie, dragging over a lounger for herself and Mike to perch on.

  Scarlett looked apprehensive. Tillie’s face was strenuously impassive. ‘We’re in love,’ said Scarlett, a little too loudly.

  ‘This’ll make you laugh. Me and Dad,’ said Evie, with a wry what-are-we-like? look, ‘we thought Scarlett and Zane were the ones falling for each other.’

  Scarlett spluttered so fruitily she practically blew a raspberry. ‘What? Me and Zane? I mean, he’s lovely and everything, but come on!’

  ‘Guy’s a joke,’ said Tillie.

  ‘But we like him, don’t we?’ Evie waited for Tillie’s nod. ‘It’s just that, while you’re chatting to him, you realize he’s looking at himself in the nearest mirror.’ She pulled in her shoulders, wincing. ‘I’m not being mean or anything.’

  All through her school days, during all the petty friendship wars, Scarlett had lived in fear of the terrible sin of ‘being mean’.

  ‘I am being mean,’ said Tillie. ‘No way is Zane good enough for you.’

  ‘You would say that, though. I shouldn’t diss him. If I’m honest, I did have a crush. A crush-ish. A tiny crushette. I mean, he’s gorge, for God’s sake. But Tillie really interested me. I wanted to know what she thought about everything. Didn’t I?’ She nudged Tillie. ‘But, Mum, you and I talked about Tillie. About a week ago. You said it was written all over me.’