The Water Children

ANNE BERRY

The Water Children

For Bez, my dear father-in-law, who never swam in the sea but chose to rest upon the changing tides.

1911 – 2010

‘Give your will over to the flow of me. And let me take you with me to my mother, the sea. For there a bed has been made ready.’

The Water Children, Anne Berry

No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old said that everything on earth had its double in the water; and you may see that that is, if not quite true, still quite as true as most other theories which you are likely to hear for many a day. There are land-babies then why not water-babies? Are there not water-rats, water-flies, water-crickets, water-crabs, water-tortoises, water-scorpions, water-tigers and water-hogs, water-cats and water-dogs, sea-lions and sea-bears, sea-horses and sea-elephants, sea-mice and sea-urchins, sea-razors and sea-pens, sea-combs and sea-fans; and of plants, are there not water-grass, and water-crowfoot, water-milfoil, and so on, without end?

The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Epilogue

Legend of Lake Vagli

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Anne Berry

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

1961

It is the recipe for a perfect day. The sun beats down from a cloudless blue sky. The air fizzes with heat and salt. The sea glitters and shifts and curls and breaks along the three-mile stretch of pale, gold, Devonshire sand – Saunton Sands. It somersaults over mossy rocks and tangled tresses of tide wrack. It sends the beach into a nervous, excited jitter. The sea-sawing cry of gulls rises to a crescendo with their swoops and nose-dives, then quiets as the curved beaks snap at darting fish. Apart from a few surfers riding the breakers, and sporadic clusters of people guiltily enjoying their mid-week leisure break, this coastal paradise is deserted. But then it is still early morning.

Like the day itself, the Abingdon family have all the right ingredients to be perfect. It only remains to see what happens when you blend them all together. They are stepping onto the beach now, arms full, trudging determinedly through the un resisting sand. There is the mother, Ruth, tall and willowy in build, and the father, Bill, prematurely balding, a couple of inches shorter than his wife and broad-chested as a weight-lifter. And then come the two children, a tousled, fair-haired, leggy boy of eight, Owen, pulling a sturdy little girl who is almost five after him, Sarah. Sarah is protesting, her plaintive whines muffled by her scrap of a comfort blanket, once pink, now greyed, frayed and faded with constant mouthing.

‘Tell Sarah to walk properly,’ Owen calls after his parents. Neither of them pause. This expedition to find the right spot, the precise one in this unfamiliar desert terrain, is a serious business. ‘She’s dragging her feet!’ He gives his sister’s tiny hand a shake, and pulls his brow down before rounding on her in his frustration. The sun is in his eyes so that he cannot see her face clearly. ‘I can’t carry you and the bag, now can I?’ Sarah, who clearly doesn’t see the logic of her brother’s words, or chooses not to, sits down with a thump on the sand. Sighing with an exaggerated heave then slump of his slight shoulders, the way he has seen his mother do, Owen lets go of her hand.

‘Mum, Sarah’s being really naughty!’ he cries out, but not very loudly, not nearly as loudly as he can, certainly not loudly enough to summon back his mother.

He pauses to see if his sister, fearing a reprimand, will rise to her feet, then make an effort to keep up. His life would be so much easier if only she would co-operate. But Sarah only grinds her little bottom deeper into the sand, and mutinously thrusts a thumb in her mouth. ‘Do you have to be such a big baby?’ Owen sets down his bag and drops to his knees. Hooding his eyes with a bent elbow, he can see that his sister’s, a lighter shade of blue than his own, a radiant blue, and big and round, are wet-lashed, that her bottom lip is quivering. She reaches her needy arms up to him. Instantly he feels the tightness in his chest loosen, the irritation with this sister of his, this annoying millstone, fall away as if it never was. With one hand he strokes her loose curls, so pale they are almost white, so soft they feel like dust.

‘Don’t cry, Sarah, don’t cry. It’s all right. We’ll go more slowly I promise.’ He wants to hug her, to draw the stubborn pillow of her body close to his, but he feels a bit awkward out here in the open. At home cuddling her is fine, nice really, but maybe not in public. his parents never hug outdoors, or indoors either now he thinks of it, definitely not in front of him anyway. Compromising, he moves to tickle her armpit. She gives a squeak of a giggle and rewards him with her special smile, the one warm enough to melt steel. He takes up his bag and they stand together, clasp hands, and move clumsily onwards, as if their legs are tied together in an obstacle race.

But ahead of him his mother has stopped. She is looking back at them and his father is striding towards him, so perhaps aid is on its way after all.

‘Daddy!’ exclaims Sarah in delight, and Owen’s father moves straight past him to scoop his daughter right out of his son’s grasp.

His father, Owen observes, as he watches him twirling Sarah about in his arms, is not dressed for the beach. Owen is wearing a white cotton shirt and tan shorts, his mother, a summer halter-neck dress with a pattern of daisies on a turquoise background. Sarah is wearing a green and yellow skirt and a cotton blouse with frilly short sleeves. They all have their swimming costumes on underneath their clothes. They changed into them at the guesthouse, house before they left. But his father is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a blazer and trousers, all grey, and his shoes are polished to the gleam of a conker. On his head sits a straw boater. He looks so silly, so absurdly formal that Owen wants to burst out laughing. It is as if he has gone to lots of trouble to dress up for the beach, when most people are dressing down. He shakes his head when Owen asks if he will look after Sarah.

‘Can’t be done,’ he says, setting Sarah down gently and planting a swift kiss on her head. ‘On an important mission, son. Off to fetch some rocks to secure the beach mat. Got my orders and have to jump to it. You know the drill, old chap. Your mother’s setting up camp,’ he adds with a grin, gesturing in the direction of his wife. His Welsh accent is very faint. But Owen wishes even the trace of it would vanish. To him it sounds silly, vaguely comic, as if his father is a buffoon off a television comedy. Now Owen follows the direction of his stiff military hand, and sees that his mother is indeed setting up camp, that she seems to be unpacking so much they might be going to stay here for a week. ‘Still, not much further to go now. Sarah, you be good for your big brother. Chin up, Owen. Forward ho, eh?’

And then he is gone, head down, marching determinedly, his arms moving like pistons. Owen sighs. He and his sister are wearing leather sandals. Following his father’s gleaming shoes digging into the sand, the spray flying up behind him, Owen ponders that he would have taken a fair load on board by now, that each step must be uncomfortable. He grazes the corner of his mouth with his upper teeth, grasps Sarah’s pudgy hand once more, and sets off after his mother. By the time he reaches her he is feeling hot and cross again, and rather wishing they had not come on this outing at all. It is supposed to be a treat, but it is beginning to feel more like torture.

He can see that his mother is itching to unpack, to unroll the beach mat and declare ownership of their plot. The breeze keeps freeing wisps from her pony tail, and he can tell by that slight nervous tick in her cheek that she, too, is irritated. She satisfies herself by unrolling the windbreak, and with her son’s assistance driving the wooden sticks into the sand. Sarah is sitting down on the bright beach towel their Mother has opened out for her, and babbling to herself in a musical baby talk that she alone understands. She fills her chubby fists with sand and drops it all very deliberately in the lap of her skirt, marvelling at how the material dips, at how heavy the slippery yellow stuff is.

Ruth looks at her dimpled daughter, plump as a dumpling, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and the sight of her lifts her heavy heart and fills it with light. She scolds her, but her tone is at odds with her words, and her lips twitch upwards. She takes off Sarah’s blouse and skirt and shakes the sand from them. Then she makes an arch of her hands over her brow, and scans the beach in search of her returning husband. But there is no sign of him. She clucks impatiently and starts to talk under her breath. Perhaps she thinks that Owen cannot hear her when she speaks like this, but he can. Sometimes he thinks that he is especially sensitive to these mutterings, as if he is tuned into their hissing sound waves, much like a wireless set.

‘That’d be right. Just like your father. He can’t pick up any old rocks. Oh no! He has to make a performance of choosing them, selecting them, hefting them over and over in his hands. How heavy are they? How smooth? How suitable for the task? As if anybody cares. As if anyone gives a damn. They’re just rocks for goodness’ sake, rocks to hold down the blessed mat, not the supporting columns of the Acropolis!’

As she speaks she unrolls a small portion of the mat, sets Sarah upon it, lifts and shakes out the towel and tucks it away again. She pulls a white sailor’s hat from a bag, tugs it over her daughter’s breeze-rumpled curls and slips off her sandals. And then she instructs Owen to sit with his sister.

‘I’m going to find your father,’ she says, swatting back the flying wisps of her own hair with a few slaps of her hand. ‘You are to stay here with Sarah till I get back.’ Owen is only half-listening. He is eyeing up the new beach ball they have brought with them. It is the blow-up kind, red and white, and he can just see it peeping out of the largest holdall between the clutter of buckets and spades. ‘Do pay attention, Owen. You’re to look after Sarah while I’m gone.’ Owen gazes skywards. He envies the seagulls, he really does, screeching and flapping about any old how. At least they are free – not always being asked to mind pesky little sisters prone to getting into trouble. Sometimes he wishes that he has a brother in her place, a rough-and-tumble boy who adores him and trails obediently after him, like a puppy, doing everything Owen tells him to – and not a contrary, disobedient girl. Girls are trouble. They are so independent, such a handful. He will never manage to train Sarah.

‘Owen, are you listening to me?’ his mother says now.

‘Yes, I heard,’ he replies sulkily. He rolls his eyes. And when his mother gives him that look of hers, the one where she raises her eyebrows, tightens her mouth, and puts her head on one side, he speaks again. ‘I’ll watch her. I promise.’ They are always worrying about Sarah, he thinks dully. Never about him. Always Sarah, Sarah, Sarah! Oh, he doesn’t mind really, it’s only that sometimes he would like them to be interested in him, perhaps even a bit concerned if he grazes a knee or something. I mean, he isn’t a cry baby like Sarah is, but it would be nice if they told him he was brave. Yes, that would be really nice.

His mother nods curtly, hesitates for a moment, then with another of those looks walks off in the direction that his father went. After a minute they can’t even see her, not with the wind-break in the way.

‘You’re a brave boy, Owen!’ He tries the words out for size and finds they fit very well. ‘You’re a brave boy, Owen!’ he repeats, and the sentence feels as catchy as an advertising slogan. Sarah, by his side, glances up.

‘Bwave boy,’ she says.

She can’t pronounce her ‘Rs’ yet, but he supposes it’s quite cute really, and besides, she’ll probably grow out of it eventually. He clambers onto his knees and walks forward on them. Still on the mat, he can just reach the deflated ball. He stretches out a hand and retrieves it. Now for a bit of magic that will really impress his sister. ‘Watch this, Sarah,’ he says, bringing the clear plastic nozzle to his lips. He blows and blows and slowly at first, then more rapidly, the ball swells, its glossy plastic skin growing taut. Sarah is delighted with the trick and claps her hands. ‘See, see how clever your older brother is.’

‘Owen, it’s so lovely,’ she gasps.

In one of those sudden impetuous moves of hers, Sarah throws her little arms around him. He took off his shirt while his mother was undressing his sister, and now he feels the ligature of her limbs tightening on his bare skin, her face rubbing against his chest. It is one of those mysterious moments when everything seems much larger. He can feel her hair, like water, and the un believable softness of her lips, and even her eyelashes moving. They are like a butterfly’s wings fluttering against him. The wind seems to be getting up a bit now, and although they can’t feel it because of the windbreak, they can see how it is battering the canvas and making the segments billow like sails.

He closes his eyes and concentrates on the squeeze of Sarah, so light he can push her away with one shrug, and yet so strong it brings a blocked-up feeling to his throat. And this feeling, the way he imagines a corked, fizzy drink must feel, wanting to burst out but not being able to, well . . . it’s gigantic. It’s so gigantic, in fact, that there seems to be nothing more to him, just the squeeze of Sarah and the bursting feeling.

The tide is coming in and the waves seem to be getting bigger, not folding on the shore any more but smashing against it. Owen decides he will be a surfer one day, that he will ride the rollers in like a cowboy on a water horse. The dark shapes balancing on their boards look like hitherto unknown sea creatures, sweeping towards the shore. And when at last they tumble off and clutch the dripping surfboards in their arms, it’s as if they are pushing giant sharks before them into the shallows, the upright boards, their fins. He bets it’s fun, more fun than driving a car even.

‘Do you want to watch me kick the ball?’ he asks, glancing down at the white-gold curls and disproportionally large hump of head. ‘Do you want me to show you how good I am at football?’

He feels Sarah nod rather than hears her. ‘Right then,’ he says, pleased to be doing something. Disentangling himself from her, he springs up clutching the ball. ‘Watch this.’

The mat lifts a bit when he gets off it, but he can see that Sarah’s weight is still sufficient to partially anchor it down. He starts kicking the ball, just small taps at first, then running a few yards and kicking it back, as though there are two of him and not one. Sarah claps gratifyingly.

‘Again,’ she cries enraptured. ‘Again, Owen.’

She isn’t telling him he is brave, but . . . well, it is near enough. For a while he knees it. Then a sudden gust of wind grabs it and runs with it towards the sea, so that he has to give chase. Behind him he hears Sarah call.

‘Owen! Owen! Owen, don’t go!’

‘I’m only getting the ball. I won’t be a second,’ he throws back over his shoulder.

‘Don’t leave me, Owen.’

When he catches up with it, he glances back, just to make sure that Sarah has stayed put. But he need not have worried, she is sitting exactly where he left her, prattling to herself, counting on her fingers, and staring around her, wide eyed. They are not beach dwellers. In fact he can only remember going to the seaside a couple of times before. No, this is definitely a holiday outing, and an unusual one at that. Home is Wantage in Oxfordshire. His parents seem much happier hiring a caravan or camping and sitting in a field of green grass, than coming into close proximity with the sea. Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that his father is a gardener, or that his mother doesn’t like the sand. She complains that it gets into everything – clothes, food, even your hair. She’ll start complaining today, he’s sure of it.

Owen hasn’t learnt to swim yet. There has been talk at his school of taking the older classes to a pool, and giving them proper lessons. But nothing has come of it so far. His parents are always promising to teach him, but how can they if they are nowhere near the sea? He keeps pleading with his father to take him to the local swimming pool, so that he can learn there. Actually he has thought about this quite a lot. Having all that time alone with his father, with him showing Owen what to do, even touching him, putting his arms and legs into the right positions. He is looking forward to this more than he can say, because his father doesn’t seem to like to touch him very much. He prefers to slap Owen on the back or shake his hand as if they are not related, as if Owen is an adult too. And even this physical contact makes him go all red and embarrassed. He knows what his father thinks, that embracing him is unmanly, that hugging your son is a soppy way to behave. So in those intimate moments he clears his throat, or starts talking about a new plant or taking cuttings or something. Though he isn’t at all embarrassed about hugging Sarah, Owen notes. Of course his mother does put her arms around him and give him a peck on the cheek, pretty well every night. But it is sort of automatic, as if she isn’t thinking about it. Whereas with Sarah all his mother’s hugs, his father’s too, really, are kind of whooshes, like the sudden flaring up of a flame.

In any case, his father always seems too busy to go to the swimming pool. They have been once or twice but he just seemed restless and bored, and when Owen didn’t take to the water the way a duckling would, he was impatient to go home again. And that impatience, that sense that his father knew he was going to fail, made it come true. It was like being cursed, him looking at the big clock-face on the wall and folding his arms. And the next thing Owen knew was that he was spluttering and choking, and feeling a belt of panic tightening about his belly, so that he really believed he might drown, right then and there, with his father watching. They hadn’t got as far as learning the swimming strokes so there wasn’t very much touching – well, hardly any at all, if Owen is truthful.

It is while he is thinking about this, while he is dribbling the ball and picturing his father holding him up in the water and saying encouraging things like, ‘Well done, terrific, you’re going to make a racing swimmer one day, my boy’, that he notices his mother. She is a long way off up the beach, running towards him shouting something. But he cannot decipher it because the wind is making a whirring sound in his ears, and besides, she is too far away. Still, there is something about the untidy way she is moving that makes him stiffen, and feel a bit empty and sick inside. It is a sort of headlong fall, nearly tripping up in her haste every few steps, and even though she must be out of breath, shouting in sharp bursts, rather like the screeches of the seagulls.

And then a flint arrow lances his beating heart and turns it to ice. He remembers. Sarah. He spins round. The stripy windbreak seems miles away, and as small as a postage stamp. How can it be that he has come so far? What was he dreaming about? But then he knows that, doesn’t he? And he can see the beach mat blowing away beyond it, bumping the sand and flapping, like a wounded bird. Surely, surely, oh please let it be true, Sarah is tucked up safe behind that buffeted stamp of canvas. Of course she is; she is sitting behind the windbreak happy as can be, precisely where he left her. Where he left her. The words clang in his head. Where he left her. ‘Don’t leave me, Owen.’ Even though he is barely a few years older than his sister, he knows in some kind of dreadful, intuitive, grown-up way, that her plea will never leave him. He is as good as branded with it. ‘Don’t leave me, Owen.’ This is the sinister dread that takes hold as he sprints. And because he is lighter and not sinking into the sand, he is much faster than his mother.

He is good at running. He even won the twenty-five yard sprint at his last school’s sports day. He recalls how proud he felt, his chest heaving with it, as he neared that ribbon. Then breaking through it, and turning round breathlessly to look for his father in the crowd of parents. And the disappointment, like a paperweight sinking in his stomach. His father had wandered off to talk to the school caretaker. He could see him by the trees at the edge of the field leaning over a bush tweaking the leaves. He had missed it. He had missed Owen’s victory.

But this is a different kind of race, a horrible race, one that you aren’t sure whether you want to win or not. He can hear his mother’s shrieks now, big ugly sounds, like the ones he hears in his head when the witches and monsters speak in stories. And he can hear the name too, screamed again and again.

‘Sarah! Aargh! Aargh! Sarah! Sarah!’

And then he is rounding the windbreak and screaming her name too. But she isn’t there, only the sailor’s white hat without her in it. There is a small pile of sand, and he thinks he can detect the lines where Sarah has drawn in it with her stubby fingers. And her scrap of pink blanket is peeping out from under it too, that horrid smelly thing that seems to be impregnated with an incredible power, sending his sister into a serene trance each time she rubs it rhythmically over her lips. But though he peers hard at it, she doesn’t appear. He keeps barking her name, as if in all likelihood she will suddenly rise up from under the sand. She will be like the sand creature in a book he has read, Five Children and It. And any moment she will spring up and shimmy the glittering grains off her, giggling at the great game.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees his mother streak past and hurtle down to the sea, and then straight into it with the waves breaking over her, and her behaving as if she cannot feel them. He rushes after her, rushes into the water, as far as he dares to go, knowing he is unable to swim. Then he runs up and down, the way he has seen dogs do sometimes when they are nervous of getting wet. And his mother keeps bobbing up like a seal, gasping out words as though a saw is grinding on her throat.

‘Sarah! Sarah! I can’t . . . can’t find Sarah!’ And Owen thinks stupidly, as salt spume strikes his eyes, making him wince, why is she searching for her there in the wide ocean, why is she trying to fish for Sarah? Then under again and up, a gulp of breath, another dive. A long beat and she explodes from the water, fixing Owen for a second, her brown eyes slitting with the salt bite, or is it something else? ‘You stupid boy! You stupid, stupid boy!’ Then down again, and for the longest time, it seems to Owen, the stupid boy, darting to right and left as if blocking a goal. And up to spit out once more, ‘I told you to watch her. I told you to stay with her. I told you, I told you, I told you, you idiot!’ And her face all ghastly and coming apart like a mirror breaking, and her ribbon undone and the wet hair streaming over her eyes, and stuffed in her mouth.