Читать книгу The Tide Knot - Helen Dunmore - Страница 9

When the old blue bus drives off into the distance, leaving me at the roadside with Sadie, the reality of what I’ve done hits me. This is the stop before Senara Churchtown, and the nearest stop to Granny Carne’s cottage. There are no houses here, only the road and the hills covered in bracken, furze and heather. There’s a wide black scar across the hills, from a gorse fire.

No one is about. The road is grey and empty. But that’s what I wanted, isn’t it? I didn’t want to see anyone I knew. If I walk along the road a little way, there’s a footpath that leads up to Granny Carne’s cottage.

“Come on, Sadie,” I say encouragingly. “It’s not far now.” But this time Sadie doesn’t respond to my voice. She slumps on the rough grass between the road and the ditch, drops her head on to her paws and closes her eyes.

“Sadie!”

Very slowly, with what looks like a great effort, Sadie opens her eyes. They stare at me dully, without recognition. After a few blank moments, her lids close again.

Terror runs through me like an electric shock. I think she’s dead. I throw myself down on the grass beside her and press my ear to her side. I can’t hear anything. She’s gone. It is so terrible that I can’t move or speak. And then, very slowly, her ribs move under her skin. There’s a rusty, tearing sound in her throat, as if she’s trying to breathe through barbed wire. But she’s breathing. She’s alive.

It’s all my fault. I should never have forced her up Geevor Hill. Now she can’t even walk. She can hardly breathe. What am I going to do? I look wildly up and down the road. No one’s in sight. A sparrow hops out of a furze bush, cocks its head at me, then hops away again. “Sadie!” I try to lift her into my lap. She’s heavy, limp and hard to move. But she’s warm. She’s alive. “Hold on, Sadie. I’ll get help for you. I promise. Please, please don’t die.”

But how can I get help? If only I had a mobile. But even if I had, it would be no good here. Everyone in Senara complains that they can’t get a signal. Phone box. There’s a phone box down by the church. How long would it take me to run there? Ten minutes maybe, and then I’d have to make the call, and then another ten minutes back. That’s too long.

If I leave her now, she’ll think I’ve abandoned her again, and she’ll give up.

“Oh, Sadie, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” I hug her tight, trying to pour life into her. She can’t die like this – for nothing. She wasn’t even ill yesterday. She was so full of life.

I put my hand gently on her head, and stroke her as reassuringly as I can. “Hold on. You’re going to be all right.” But for the first time ever, Sadie twists her head away from my hand. Feebly, she struggles to heave herself off my lap.

“Get up, Sapphire. Stand back from her. Give her air,” says a voice behind me.

“Granny Carne!” My words spill over each other in a rush of relief. Granny Carne will know what to do, better even than a vet. “Help me, please help me, I was coming to find you. Sadie’s so ill, I think she’s dying—”

“Don’t say that word in her hearing. You’ll frighten the spirit out of her. Stand back and let me see her.”

Reluctantly, I unwind my arms and settle Sadie gently back on the cold grass. Granny Carne stands very still, looking down at Sadie. She looks more like a tall tree than ever, with Sadie in her shelter. Her fierce eyes gleam. I can’t bear to see Sadie lying like that, so sick and so alone. I start to move—

“No, Sapphire, stand right back. You can’t help her.”

“I can’t stand here and let her die!”

“No one’s letting anyone die, my girl. But what Sadie needs now is Earth power. See the way she lies there, so close to the earth? You ever seen a mother put her baby against her skin when it’s sick, my girl?”

“No.”

“These days everyone learns so much at school that they end up knowing nothing. But Sadie knows.”

“I was going to bring her up to your cottage, but it was too far. She couldn’t walk any more.”

“Give her time. She’ll come round.”

For a long while it looks as if Granny Carne isn’t doing anything. She stands there, not moving, not taking her eyes off Sadie, watching every breath Sadie takes. Suddenly there’s a small, chirruping whistle. One of the sparrows in the furze, maybe. But the whistle comes again, more strongly and sweetly, and I know it’s not a sparrow. It’s Granny Carne. The sound is coming from her lips, and she’s whistling to Sadie. The whistling grows louder, louder. A shiver passes over Sadie’s supine body. And another. Big shivers that shake her whole body, as if she’s suddenly realised that she is freezing to death. Granny Carne’s whistling grows until my ears ring with it. Sadie shivers once more, from her nose to the tip of her tail. Her body looks different. She’s not slumped so much. One of her ears comes forward, as if she’s listening. Her tail thumps feebly against the grass. Slowly, with great difficulty, she opens her eyes again, and this time her eyes meet Granny Carne’s. They shine with recognition for a second before they close.

“Sadie!”

“She’ll do now,” says Granny Carne. “Give her time.”

“Is she better?”

“Not by a long way,” says Granny Carne gravely. “Her spirit went a long way from us, on a cold journey.”

“Where did she go?”

“Ingo put her in fear. The spirit in her shrank away from it. It was like putting water on a fire. This is no ordinary illness, Sapphire. I believe you know that. Ingo came too close to her. A creature of the Earth like Sadie can’t survive there.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m not blaming you, my girl. But look at yourself. You’ve got Ingo written all over you today. Don’t tell me you haven’t been there. Don’t tell me you haven’t got Ingo’s music in your ears again. And where you go, that dog’s bound to follow, since she’s yours.”

“But I didn’t take her with me, Granny Carne. I left her up at the top of the steps.”

“That’s no protection for a dog like Sadie. She followed you in her heart. She went in your footsteps until she could go no more. She near burst her heart with fear for you.”

Sadie is struggling to her feet. I rush to support her.

“No, let her stand. She’s best alone for now. Give her a few minutes and we’ll be able to walk her up to mine.”

I don’t ask any more questions. To tell the truth, I’m a little afraid of Granny Carne today. She knows too much. She makes me have thoughts I don’t want to have. I know everyone comes to her with their troubles, but maybe they don’t always like the answers they get from her. She won’t let me touch Sadie. Surely Granny Carne can’t believe I’d ever hurt Sadie?

“Yes, she’s been on a long journey,” repeats Granny Carne. “You ever seen a man near frozen after he comes out of the sea half drowned, when he’s been clinging to a piece of wreckage for hours? You don’t sit him by the fire. You let him warm gently, so his body can bear it. Sadie will find her way back to life, but she needs time. She needs the Earth around her, Sapphire. The breath of Ingo is too strong for her, in her present state.”

“How’s your Conor?” Granny Carne goes on as we set off walking slowly up the footpath. Sadie pads along cautiously, as if she’s not sure yet that her paws will hold her up.

“He’s fine.”

“Happy in St Pirans?”

“I don’t know. I think so. He wants to be happy there, anyway.”

“And you don’t?”

“It’s not so much that I don’t. It’s that I can’t. Granny Carne, I didn’t mean to hurt Sadie.”

“I know that. But it’s hard to see a way clear in all this. I don’t see it myself yet. Only that there’s a reason why you and Conor are as you are. It’s for a purpose. Could be that a time’s coming when there’ll be a purpose in the two of you having this double blood. There’ve been others. The first Mathew Trewhella was one – he that left the human world and went away with the Mer. Your own father was another. But I never knew any with the Mer blood and the human divided so equal as it is in you. Half and half, you are. It must be the way the inheritance has come down to you. It weakens in one generation, and grows strong in the next.”

“Do you mean that Conor and I are exactly half Mer and half human?”

“Only you, my girl. Only you. The Mer blood is not near as strong in Conor, and it never will be, for he fights it down every day.”

“I know.” Now I understand better what Conor meant when he said, If you really struggle, you can stop yourself taking the next step.

“Conor doesn’t want to be half and half, does he?” I ask. “He wants not to be Mer at all.”

“Maybe he does.”

Except for Elvira, I think.

“He fights it,” says Granny Carne. “Your father didn’t fight so hard. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“No.”

“You’re old enough to know now, my girl, that things don’t just happen to us. Somewhere in us we agree to them. We let things happen, though even those closest to us might think we’re still fighting.”

I feel cold and tired. I know what she’s saying. She’s telling me that my father wasn’t snatched away against his will. And I do know that, really, after all these months. It is seventeen months since he left us now, and his boat was found empty and upturned, wedged in the rocks. Everyone else thinks he drowned. Only Conor and I keep the faith.

For a long time I could convince myself that some mysterious force was preventing Dad from communicating with us, but I can’t make myself believe this any more. If Dad wanted to speak to me, he would.

“Nearly there,” says Granny Carne. “She did well.”

“Brave girl,” I say. “Brave girl, Sadie,” and I make my voice warm and full of praise, because she deserves it, even if my heart is cold and tired. Granny Carne has been walking between Sadie and me, but now she steps aside. Sadie presses up to me, the way she always does. I stroke her warm golden back. Minute by minute, Sadie’s coming back to herself. Already her fur feels sleek and her eyes are brighter. She turns her head and looks at me as if to say, “It’s all right, I’m not going to leave you.” Why are dogs so forgiving? My eyes are prickly, but I‘m not going to cry. Sadie hates it when I cry.

Here’s the grey stone cottage that looks like part of the granite hill. Granny Carne pushes open the door and we go inside. There’s just one large room downstairs, painted white, with a stove to heat it and a few splashes of brilliant colour from the tablecloth and cushions. The room is very simple, but not bare. Everything looks worn smooth by years and years of use. I remember the last time I came here, with Conor, that hot summer day when Granny Carne first told us about our Mer inheritance. It was the day when Conor talked to the bees. That seems a long time ago.

“I’ll bring down an old blanket for Sadie,” says Granny Carne. “She’ll need to sleep the night here, to get her strength back.”

Granny Carne disappears upstairs before I can protest. Sadie can’t stay here overnight. We’ve got to get back before Mum realises I didn’t go to school today.

“You’ll be staying over too, Sapphire,” says Granny Carne, returning with a folded blanket. It doesn’t look like an old blanket. It’s made of thick, creamy wool and it looks as if it came off Granny Carne’s own bed. She lays it down by the stove for Sadie.

“I can‘t stay, Granny Carne. I’ve got to get back before it’s dark. Mum thinks I’m at school—”

“Sadie needs you here.”

“But Mum—”

“I’ll get a message to her. Soon as you’re settled, I’ll walk down to the churchtown and speak to Mary Thomas. She’s got a telephone.” Granny Carne says this as if telephones are something rare and undesirable. “Your mother will know you’re safe enough with me.”

Granny Carne has two bedrooms upstairs: a large one, and a smaller room which she calls the slip room. That’s where I’m going to sleep. I’m resigned to it now: I can’t leave Sadie. There’s a china washstand with a jug of water that Granny Carne has brought in from the trough where the spring rises. There’s no bathroom. When Granny Carne wants a bath, she heats water on the stove and fills an enamel bathtub, which hangs from a hook on the wall. It’s quite small with a shelf inside to sit on. Granny Carne calls it a hip bath. Try it yourself, my girl, she says, but I say that a wash will do me fine. There’s no toilet in the house either. The outside toilet, which Granny Carne calls the privy, is so cold that I hope I don’t have to go at night. She hasn’t even got any toilet paper, only cut-up squares of the Cornishman stuck on a nail.

It gets dark early. Sadie doesn’t want to eat, but she drinks some water. Granny Carne has gone down to the churchtown, so Sadie and I are alone in the cottage. I wonder what Mary Thomas will think when Granny Carne tells her we are staying here? As far as I know, nobody has ever stayed overnight at Granny Carne’s cottage. People respect Granny Carne, but they’re also afraid of her because of all that she knows. There are a lot of stories about the way she can see into the future, and heal wounds that ordinary medicine can’t cure. I don’t mean sicknesses like cancer; I mean sicknesses that are inside people’s minds. Granny Carne has a power with those.

I still don’t know whether or not I really believe that Granny Carne can see into the future. I’m sure that she can see and understand things which ordinary people can’t. She has gifts that come from the Earth. Years ago she might have been caught and burned as a witch, because she knows too much. That’s what Dad always said.

I follow Granny Carne in my mind as she goes down the path to the churchtown, and then as she takes the road round to the track which leads down to our cottage and Mary’s. Our cottage will have lights on in the windows by now. It gets darks early in November. Granny Carne knows her way in the dark. I’m glad that I don’t have to walk past there and see other people living in my home. I wonder if the curtains are the same? Those red checked curtains that Mum made when we were little. They always looked so welcoming with the light shining through them when we came home from school on winter afternoons.

I wonder if the people who are living in our cottage ever go down to our cove? I wonder if they will ever catch sight of Faro or Elvira sitting on the rocks by the mouth of the cove, where Conor and I first met them? I hope they don’t. I’m not just being selfish in hoping that. If they see the Mer, their lives won’t ever be the same again.

But Granny Carne’s cottage is at least two miles from the sea. I don’t know how far inland the power of Ingo can reach, but Granny Carne’s cottage definitely belongs to the Earth. Maybe that’s why Sadie is sleeping so peacefully by the stove. I don’t feel peaceful, though. I’m going to stay because of Sadie, but I wish I didn’t have to. I’m not at home here.

It takes a long time to get ready for the night at Granny Carne’s. I help her to carry in more wood from the stack in her woodshed, and fill the scuttle full of coal. The stove’s got to be kept going through the night. Before Granny Carne goes to bed, she riddles it out with an iron poker with a hook on its end. By the time Granny Carne finishes, the hook glows red. I help to shovel out the hot ash into the ash pan. Granny Carne says ash is good for the earth, and she’ll spread it on her vegetable patch tomorrow, when the ash is cold. She stokes up the stove with logs and a thick layer of fine coal, and closes the damper on the front.

Suddenly I remember something. “We had a stove like this when I was little, before Mum got storage heaters.”

“That was the way everywhere, before the electric came.” Granny Carne talks as if electricity has only just been invented. “They’ll never bring the electric all the way up here, but I don’t miss it,” Granny Carne continues. She has lit the paraffin lamps. I like the light they give. It’s soft and yellow and it gives warm colour to the white walls. She uses paraffin lamps downstairs and candles upstairs. “You don’t need a lot of light to sleep by,” she says.

The cottage smells of candles and wood smoke, paraffin and stone. There are big shadows in the corners of the room. It’s not a frightening place exactly, but it has too much power to be comfortable. I’m glad Sadie’s here. If I wake up in the night I’ll hear her breathing, and if I say her name she’ll wake up at once.

Granny Carne gets slowly to her feet from where she’s been kneeling by the stove. She mutters something, too quietly for me to hear.

“Now he’ll sleep through the night,” she says. “Praise fire and he’ll serve you well.”

“Does your fire ever go out?”

“He’s been alive as long as I have, my girl. Sometimes he’s burned low, but he’s never died.”

“Granny Carne? I ask hesitantly. “How long have you – I mean – how many years—”

She looks at me with her arms folded. Her fierce owl eyes are bright with amusement. She knows exactly what I want to know, because it’s what everybody in Senara has asked themselves, one time or another. How old is Granny Carne? How many years has she been living up there in her cottage, with people from the village coming up to see her privately when they have troubles to which they can’t find an answer? Years… decades… or even centuries?

“I’m as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth, Sapphire,” she says. “Does that answer your question?”

“No,” I say boldly.

“You want more?”

“Yes.”

“You ask a lot of me, Sapphire.” Her voice has grown harsher. Her tone changes. She is no longer an old woman, and I’m no longer a child. I stare into her eyes. People’s eyes don’t change.

But everything else is changing. As I watch, the wrinkled brown skin around Granny Carne’s eyes grows smooth and soft. Colour steals into her grey hair, which breaks loose from its knot and ripples lustrously over her shoulders. Long, dark brown hair, the colour of the darkest earth, and with red lights in it like fire. Her lips are red and full. Her body grows straight and slender as a young birch tree.

“Granny Carne,” I whisper. But there’s no Granny Carne in the room. The young woman’s lips part in a smile, and then she lays a finger on her lips to silence me. This is Earth magic, and it’s too potent for me. I shut my eyes. When I open them again, the woman like a birch tree has disappeared, and Granny Carne is standing there.

“Where’s she gone?”

“There’s been no one in this room but our two selves, Sapphire. All I’m showing you is that time isn’t what you think it is.”

“But how can you be old and young at the same time?”

Granny Carne smiles. “Ask anyone with grey hair. Ask Mrs Eagle if she feels any different inside from how she felt when she was eighteen. There’s little difference.”

“Do you know Mrs Eagle?”

“I’ve known Temperance Eagle from a girl. Temperance Pascoe as she was then. Wild, she was,” goes on Granny Carne thoughtfully. “Her father used to scour St Pirans for her on a Saturday night, shouting that he’d take his belt to her when he found her. He was a strong Bible Christian.”

But I’m not going to be diverted by tales of Mrs Eagle’s youth. Mrs Eagle is most definitely one hundred per cent old now. Granny Carne’s old, too, yet she changed before my eyes into a woman like a young birch tree. I know that I didn’t imagine it. What Granny Carne did is something completely different from an old person feeling young inside.

“Mrs Eagle can’t do what you did,” I say as firmly as I dare, “and no one else talks about time the way you do, as if they can go back hundreds of years and see what was happening then.”

But suddenly I remember. Someone does. Faro talks about time in the same way as Granny Carne, as if history is still happening. As if he’d watched the Ballantine smash on to the rocks with his own eyes. And he made me watch it, too, when I saw into his mind.

Granny Carne sighs. She looks very old now. “You ask a lot of questions, Sapphire. They’re hard questions, too, and I can’t give you all the answers you want. Let me tell you this much. What you saw just now, not many would see.”

“Why did you let me see it?”

“It wasn’t me letting you. It was you that had the power to see the old and young standing in the same place. You think all your power lies in Ingo, Sapphire, but that’s because you choose to make it so.”

“But you said I had strong Mer blood, Granny Carne. You told me and Conor that last summer.”

“Yes, but there’s more to it than that. Your Mer blood may be strong, but your Earth blood is powerful too. Not as strong as your brother’s, but strong enough.”

“Is having Earth blood the same as living in the Air – being human, I mean?”

“No. Most people live out their human lives without choosing either Earth or Ingo. They don’t need to. They’re happy as they are. They live in the present time, and in one place. As far as they’re concerned, the past is rolled up like a carpet and no one can touch it. And the future, too. Perhaps they are the fortunate ones,” adds Granny Carne.

“I don’t see what’s fortunate about not being able to go to Ingo.”

“Ask your brother.”

Conor’s words echo in my head: I’ve got to try to belong where I am. Conor really wants to be part of St Pirans – surfing, playing guitar, hanging out with his friends, and yet all the time he’s secretly looking for Elvira. Maybe he wishes he’d never met her… maybe it would be easier for him if he hadn’t ever gone to Ingo… because he’d be able to belong.

“Time to sleep,” says Granny Carne abruptly. She gives me a candlestick, and lights my candle. “Sadie will sleep in my room tonight, Sapphire.”

“But—”

“No. She’s not strong yet. She needs to be with me. She needs the Earth to make her strong. Don’t you feel that? Sadie’s an Earth creature. She loves you, and that’s what complicates it for her. Tonight Sadie will go into a deep sleep, like the earth’s winter sleep. It will heal her. You know how a bulb lies dormant in the earth all winter, Sapphire, growing strong for spring.”

“Sadie’s not going to sleep all winter, is she?”

“No. She’ll go through her winter healing in one night.”

“You said Sadie loves me. I love her. I’ll look after her. I’d never let her be hurt.”

“Never?” The candle flame leaps and a shadow flies over Granny Carne’s face. Her eyes are hidden. “Never, Sapphire?”

I left Sadie tied up to a post, and went to Ingo. Sadie almost died… But I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want anything to happen to her, it was just that Ingo was so strong…

I don’t say any of these things, but Granny Carne knows them, I’m sure. She lays her hand on Sadie’s head, and Sadie doesn’t try to come to me. She looks at me with her soft brown eyes as if to say, “Try to understand. I can’t be with you tonight.”

The door closes on Granny Carne and Sadie. I wash quickly, and jump into bed. It’s cold. I wonder when someone last slept in this bed? Maybe it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I shiver.

I wish I had gone down to our cottage. Just to see it. Granny Carne says that Mum won’t mind my staying here overnight, but suddenly I feel terribly lonely, longing for Mum and Conor and home. The little slip bedroom faces the side of the hill. It’s dark and quiet and earthy. I can’t hear the sea. I can’t smell salt.