Читать книгу The Complete Ingo Chronicles: Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept - Helen Dunmore - Страница 26

All through tea I’m on edge in case Roger says something about seeing me underwater. I can’t eat more than half my slice of cake, even though it’s one of Mum’s best, and Mum is trying to feed me up. After Roger’s eaten two fat slices, Mum asks if he’d like a fresh pot of tea.

“You sit down,” he says, “I’ll make it, Jennie. You deserve a rest.” Then he turns to me and Conor. “Your mother is an amazing woman,” he announces, sounding like a character in a TV sitcom. “The best waitress in town, best cook I know – finest coffee and walnut I’ve ever tasted, Jennie.”

“Is that all I’m good for? Baking cakes and running around the restaurant?” asks Mum, but she doesn’t sound cross at all. Her voice is full of teasing laughter.

“I think you know that’s not the case,” says Roger, and they laugh together.

For several reasons this conversation makes me prickle. We know that Mum is a good cook. We know how hard she works. Isn’t that why we try all we can to help her? We don’t need Roger to tell us. It’s our life, not his – none of it is Roger’s business at all – and yet the way he laughs with Mum makes me feel as if I’m the one who is left out. I try to catch Conor’s eye to see what he thinks, but he’s on his way out already.

“Got to fetch the milk, Mum. See you in a bit.”

“I’ll make that tea,” says Roger, dragging his eyes away from Mum.

“Sapphire’ll help you, won’t you, Sapphy,” says Mum, settling herself luxuriously in her chair and closing her eyes. “Now this is heaven. All the meals cooked, nothing to do for the rest of the evening… Sapphy, love, show Roger where things are in the kitchen.”

Roger and I traipse into the kitchen. As soon as I’m alone with him, I suddenly realise how big he is. Not heavy, but broad and strong and tall. He has to duck his head to go through the kitchen doorway.

I don’t like being alone with him. I’m scared of what he might ask, so I start to gabble to fill up the silence. “We keep the tea bags in this tin up here, and the kettle’s over here. It doesn’t switch itself off, because the switch is broken. Mum’s going to buy another kettle when she’s been paid. If you fill it up to five there’ll be enough for a pot.”

“I have seen a kettle before,” says Roger mildly. He is watching me. He’s going to say something – ask me something. I must get away—

But I only get as far as the fridge before he asks casually, “Sapphire, how far can you swim?”

“I don’t know, quite a long way, I mean, not all that far, depends how flat the sea is—”

“Your mother tells me that you and Conor aren’t allowed to swim outside the cove.”

“No, because of the rip. Only if we’re out in a boat with… with someone. Sometimes we swim off the boat.”

“Have you been out in a boat with… someone… lately? In the last day or two?”

“No,” I say firmly, and I look Roger in the face because I can prove this isn’t a lie. “I haven’t been out in a boat since… since…” But I can’t say it. Not to Roger.

“Since what?” he insists. Anger springs up in me. Roger’s trying to act like my father, as if he has a right to question me.

“Since Dad took me out in Peggy Gordon,” I say. I feel my face burning, but I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to let Roger see me crying.

“Oh. I see.” Roger is quiet for a while, then he says, quite formally as if I’m an adult like him. “I’m sorry, Sapphire. I didn’t mean to distress you.”

His face is troubled. For a moment I can’t help believing that he really is sorry. But I don’t want to believe it, or I might start having to – well, to tolerate Roger.

“S’OK,” I say grudgingly.

“No, it’s not OK,” says Roger slowly. “None of this is OK, I know that. Your dad dies, a year later I come along… It’s not easy for anyone. Have you thought about how hard it is for your mother?”

“Dad is not dead,” I flash out furiously. Roger stares at me.

“He is not dead,” I repeat, more quietly, but with all the force I can find. If only Roger would believe me, how much trouble it would save.

“You’re a complicated young lady,” he says slowly. ‘And I wish – I wish I could see inside that head of yours.”

“Well, you can’t. We’re human. We don’t share our thoughts. The kettle’s boiling. I’ll wash the mugs while you make the tea.”

I’m not sure if I’ll get away with this, but I do. Roger and I finish making the tea in silence. But just before we take it in to Mum, Roger asks, “Sadie. The dog you were walking. She’s one of the neighbour’s dogs, right?”

“Yes.”

“What breed is she?”

“Golden Labrador.”

“Nice breed.”

“Yes, she’s—” Suddenly Sadie is so clear in my mind that I can almost feel her warm golden body, her soft tongue licking my hand, her quivering excitement when she knows she’s going for a walk.

“You like her. You ever had a dog of your own, Sapphire?”

“No. Mum says it’s too much work.”

“Well, that’s true, a dog is a lot of work. I had one as a boy myself, and I found out the hard way that my dad meant what he said when he told me: If you get a dog, then it’s you that’s got that dog as long as it lives. But Rufie was the best thing in my life, after we came back from Australia and I found myself stuck in Dagenham. You and Conor could take care of a dog between you, I reckon.”

“Except when we’re at school.”

“There’s no one in the neighbourhood who’d keep an eye?”

I have never thought of this. Never thought beyond pushing against Mum’s prohibition by telling her over and over again that me and Conor will do everything.

“I don’t know…”

“Worth thinking about, it seems to me,” says Roger. “Your mother would feel easier that way.”

“What kind of dog was Rufie?”

“Black Labrador. Beautiful breed. They get problems with their hips as they grow older, that’s the only thing.”

I nod. I already know that, and that Labradors don’t live as long as some other dogs.

“But for good temper and loyalty there isn’t a breed to touch them. Beautiful breed,” says Roger thoughtfully, and he opens the door for us to carry in the tea.

It’s late at night now. I’m in bed, and everyone else is asleep. Roger’s gone back to St Pirans, and Mum went to bed early because she’s doing the breakfast shift at the restaurant tomorrow. There’s no sound from Conor’s loft. I heard his light click out a long time ago.

I feel like the last person left awake in the world. If I had my own house, I’d let my dog sleep in my bedroom. Dogs wake up the instant you stir. If Sadie was here she’d know I was awake and I could talk to her.

I’m not going to think about Roger any more. It’s all been going over and over in my head for hours. Mum, Roger, Dad. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a child, and then I could be like them and make my own decisions and my family would just have to live with them.

I’m going to think about Ingo. Dolphin language and sunwater, basking sharks and grey seals, sea anemones, shrimps and cowries and shoals of jellyfish, wrecks and reefs and the Great Currents taking you halfway around the world. Ingo. Ingo. Once you’re through the skin of the water, it doesn’t hurt any more. You dive down and there’s a whole world waiting for you. Blue whales and Right whales and Minke whales, schools of porpoises leaping in perfect formation as if each one knows what the others are thinking. Maybe they do.

Thong weed and cut weed and sugar kelp, all the names Dad taught me and all the creatures we’ve ever seen. By-the-wind sailors, shore crabs and hermit crabs, bass and wrasse and dogfish and squat lobsters, rips and currents and tides. I wish I was away in Ingo, I wish I was away in Ingo… and as I’m saying these words, I fall into sleep.

I wake with a start out of deep dreams. Something’s woken me. I push the duvet off me and sit up, listening, but now everything’s quiet. I’m certain I heard something. My skin prickles with fear as I climb out of bed, cross to the window, pull back my curtain and see the moon, strong and riding high.

“Ssssssapphire!”

I open the window to hear better. The voice is as soft as a breath, as if it’s travelled a long way to get to me. As soon as I hear it, I know it’s the voice that woke me. It’s not Conor’s voice, or Mum’s. It’s eerie and full of mystery. My skin prickles again and I shiver all over. I don’t think it’s a human voice at all. It’s like the voice the sea would have, if the sea could talk.

How I wish I could speak full Mer. Can the sea really talk? Can it tell you all its secrets? I’m sure the sea is trying to tell me something now.

No sound comes from Mum’s room, or from upstairs where Conor’s sleeping. Nobody else has woken.

“Ssssapphire!” The voice is urgent now. It wants to get close to me but it can’t. The sea can’t reach you on land. It can only come as far as the high-water mark. Granny Carne said that Ingo is strong, but I’m sure it isn’t strong enough for the sea to come to me, washing up the cliff and across the fields and flooding our garden so that waves break below my window.

“SSSapphire… SSSSapphire…”

It sounds like waves breaking. All at once I’m completely sure that I’m hearing the sea’s own voice. I can hear salt in it, and surging water, and the roll of the tide. It’s sea magic, talking to me.

Granny Carne stopped me going to Ingo, but that was in daytime. Sea magic might be stronger than earth magic, when the time’s ripe. I stand still, bracing my feet on the floorboards. What’s the time in Ingo? My watch shines on my wrist. The hands point to five past seven, the time I first walked into the water.

From the other side of the room my dressing-table mirror gleams back at me. Moonlight picks out the pattern of a starfish in the mirror’s shattered glass. Even though the mirror is broken I can still see my reflection. It looks like me, and yet not like me. My hair is tangled like weed, my face shines like water.

“Sssssssapphire!”

I can’t keep silent. I have got to answer. But just as I turn back to the window and open my mouth to speak, two things happen.

An owl swoops past my window. Its wings are spread wide, and as it passes the owl turns and stares straight into my room. Its fierce amber gaze burns into my mind, and then is gone. At the same moment a volley of barks bursts across the night. It’s Sadie! I know it’s her. I’d recognise her voice anywhere. It’s Sadie, barking wildly, as if she’s heard an intruder and is desperate to wake the whole house. Oh Sadie, I wish you weren’t so far away! I wish I was where you are, then I’d know what’s wrong.

Sadie barks even more wildly, as if she’s answering me. I have the strangest feeling that Sadie is barking because of me. She wants me to hear her. She wants to warn me – protect me…

“It’s all right, Sadie girl,” I say, even though my voice can’t possibly reach her. “It’s all right, there’s nothing wrong, nobody’s hurting me.”

But Sadie just carries on barking, telling the whole night to watch out. I bet Jack’s dad has already stumbled downstairs in his pyjamas to see if there’s a burglar, or a fox after the chickens. Sadie keeps on barking out her message, and I find myself smiling. It’s almost as if she were in my room, thumping her tail on the floor, telling me she’s here, it’s all right, she’s not going to let anything hurt me.

Suddenly I’m very tired. What’s my window doing open? I close it, fasten the catch, and tumble into bed.

“Goodnight, Sadie,” I say. “It’s all right now, I’m safe in bed, you can stop barking. But thank you anyway…” As if Sadie really can hear me, the barking dies away. I snuggle deep under the duvet, and fall into a dreamless sleep.