The Water Children

‘Oh Catherine, don’t be such a scaredy-cat. It’s perfectly safe,’ Rosalyn assured her with that breezy smile of hers.

‘Please, please,’ Catherine said, now unable to keep the pleading note from her voice. She reached a hand towards her cousin, trying to keep her balance despite stretching as far as she could.

‘You want me to help you?’ Rosalyn asked, head to one side, not able to comprehend this sudden plummet from bliss to fear.

‘Yes, yes, that’s right, to help me,’ Catherine shot back.

Rosalyn took three sliding steps. The sound when the ice cracked wasn’t very loud at all. It seemed to sink as if in weariness, giving a series of muffled pops. Rosalyn’s leading leg just disappeared into its craggy mouth in one smooth movement. As her trunk hit the ice, fissures appeared, the way they sometimes do on a glass just before it shatters. She scrabbled with the other leg, trying to regain her footing, but now the tension of the ice was weakened. She felt the previously solid surface dip under her, like a pie crust that has lost its support. Another chunk crumbled away from her so that a few inches of her hips sagged beneath the water.

‘Oh!’ she said, more in bewilderment than consternation.

‘Don’t move. Just keep very still. I’ll get you out.’ Catherine took two tentative steps towards her, with terror starting to claw at her reason, then felt her own feet break through the deceptively stable surface. She kept on steadily sinking, the ice pop-popping and creaking about her. Her hips were half submerged when she contacted something immovable. Tree roots? The sloping bank itself ? Perhaps the pool was relatively shallow.

‘Oh!’ Rosalyn said again. Freezing water was pooling around her bent leg as the ice dipped into a cracked water cradle.

‘Look, don’t worry. I can feel the bottom. I’ll get out and . . . and . . . and I’ll help you,’ Catherine finished lamely. Rosalyn was really not that far from her, five yards, no more. Perhaps if she managed to climb out she might be able to reach her with a stick, pull her to safety. Under the water Catherine tried to lift her feet, to take an experimental step towards the bank. But already she was icy cold, her boots were full of water, her feet were numbing fast. Beneath her trousers she could feel the blood pumping painfully through her legs. Again she attempted to lift them, to take an underwater stride. Her movements were performed in slow motion, her body unresponsive, her breathing constricted by the shock of the sudden severe chill. Her legs pedalled clumsily under her, making no progress at all.

‘I’m freezing,’ said Rosalyn, with a truthfulness rarely applied to the hyperbole. There still seemed to be a hint of faint amusement in her voice, as if their predicament was a practical joke. Her other leg had disappeared now, but the cot of fractured ice was still acting as a submerged raft, partially bearing it up. Ignoring Catherine’s advice, she panicked and struggled to heft herself out, but as her hands pressed down on the ice surrounding her she felt it shift.

‘No, I told you to keep still!’ Catherine ordered. She’d never used such a schoolmarmish tone to Rosalyn before. She would have preferred not to, but again she had an idea it was necessary if she was to hold her attention. ‘I will get you out, but you must listen to me.’ A moment passed that might have been five seconds or might have been two minutes, while Catherine tried and failed to crest the ice herself.

‘I’m very cold now,’ said Rosalyn. She was in up to her waist and with her red beret looked strangely comical, like a cartoon figure. ‘I can’t feel my legs any more. Catherine, I can’t feel my legs.’ She was supporting her torso from the waist up with gentle pressure from her spread, sodden, gloved fingers. It was just dawning on her how difficult it would be to maintain her precarious position, that too much pressure and the ice would shatter and give way, too little and she would sink slowly but surely beneath it. Teetering on that point of balance was like finding the biting point on a clutch, and attempting to hold it there forever with a foot fast losing feeling. It needed superhuman strength, the kind of strength the cold stripped you of in minutes.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Catherine again.

The lightest snow powder, like a dusting of talc, was starting to fall. The sky had deepened so that they were no longer peering up through a yellow-tinted lens, but a green one, oppressive and malignant. The closed feeling that had been intimate before, lending a clandestine atmosphere to the outing, had begun to transmute. Catherine felt as if they were being sealed up in an alabaster tomb. She saw a blackbird hopping on the bank, head cocked, gleaming eyes swivelling curiously at the two creatures floundering in the frozen pond.

The revelation when it came was not the kind accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets, or a fall of biblically blinding light through which the sonorous pronouncement of a god boomed. It came quietly, a small voice in Catherine’s ear, a tickle of prophetic truth. Rosalyn is going to die now. And so are you. You are both going to slip noiselessly under the ice, flail about for a moment, then die. It was as simple as that, she thought. One moment she was walking with her cousin in the snow and having a laugh, and it was the best Christmas ever, just as Rosalyn had ordered, and the next they were sliding under icy water readying themselves to drown.

In church they talked about the still small voice of calm. It was just like that, what she heard. Catherine found herself wondering if it sounded inside everyone’s head the moment before the darkness came, before the light died. She could accept her own death. It was not that she wanted to die. Oh, no; life, however problematic, was still preferable to death, Catherine realized. But that Rosalyn, her cousin, who was a beacon of life force, who drew you into her circumference and let you bask in the glow of her, who had never, not once, made Catherine feel she should be grateful that she was bothering with her – that she was about to die was unthinkable. It might have been the extreme cold – her teeth were chattering uncontrollably now – or fear unhinging her imagination, but that was the moment she saw the hooded man hunched on the far bank. She was going to call out to him, but when he looked up there was a blank where his face should be. In the same instant she saw Rosalyn’s body being winched, stiff as a plank, from the gelid water. Her dripping hair clung to her face, her mouth was wide in a scream of terror, her blue eyes were those of a dead fish, glassy and lifeless, the whites bulging and bloodshot. The beret, heavy with water, sagged under her head. She thought about burying Rosalyn, the physical act of lowering her in a coffin into the hard winter earth. She wondered if her parents would want her grave to be in England or America.

‘Catherine, I really am very cold now and sleepy too. Terribly sleepy. I want to close my eyes and just drift off. Only . . . only a minute but I . . . I must shut my eyes,’ came the querulous voice from the ice maiden who was slowly being claimed by the pond. Then, dreadfully, as if she had been reading Catherine’s thoughts, ‘Am I going to die now?’

Catherine closed her eyes. There was a skewering pain in her head. No, she thought. She opened them. ‘No,’ she said. Her voice rattled out of her. ‘Now pay attention, Rosalyn.’ The school-marmish timbre was back, if a little ragged. ‘I am going to call for help.’ The red beret bobbed a nod. Then Catherine started to shout. She didn’t shout anything particularly original. ‘Help! Over here! Help us, please! We’re stuck in the ice! Help!’ But the extraordinary thing was how enormous her voice had become, as if it was magnified many times over, a great manly bellow that came from the base of her. At the outset Catherine was hopeful. Each time she paused to draw in another breath, she half expected to hear someone shout back, ‘It’s all right. We’re coming.’ But all that answered was a cathedral of silence. She had fooled Rosalyn, made her believe just for a moment that she could fix this, that she could outface death. With each cry, though, the light faded in her cousin’s blue eyes, to be replaced with a terrible resignation.

‘You might as well stop,’ Rosalyn whispered the next time she gulped in air. ‘There’s no one out there. We’re all alone.’

Catherine tried to rekindle her fight, but found herself suppressing dry, involuntary sobs. And she, too, was tired, so tired that defeat seemed almost welcome. So that when, a minute later, a small round face reared up from the side of the pond, her immediate thought was that it wasn’t real. Her mind was playing tricks. Her eyesight could not be trusted. Then the head tipped to a quizzical angle. And a voice came from it.

‘What are you doing in there?’ it said.

Now she knew the ginger-haired boy was real, and that there was not a moment to waste. Although at the sound, Rosalyn had glanced up, she was sinking fast. ‘We’re stuck, stuck in the ice. We fell through. You need to run for help. Quickly! Go quickly! There’s no time to waste!’ The boy hesitated. ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ Catherine screamed. And then he was off, streaking away like a snow hare. The instant he had gone a plague of doubts descended on her. What if he forgot or was distracted? What if he didn’t understand how serious it was? What if he wasn’t real after all, that she had dreamt the strange encounter in this bleached wonderland? Rosalyn’s head lolled on her shoulders, so that all that was visible of her was the red beret, like a red full stop punctuating the ice. Please, Catherine prayed in her head, please. Without her having to say anything, she could feel Rosalyn’s will sapping away. She had to keep her going until help came, she had to do that much.

‘I can’t feel my hands either. I think they’re slipping,’ sighed Rosalyn drowsily.

‘No they’re not!’ snapped Catherine. ‘Nonsense! Stop thinking about it! They’re going to come and get us out, any second they’ll be here.’

‘I’m not sure I can—’

‘Oh yes you can!’ Catherine interrupted her. She took a shaky breath. The cold no longer hurt. It was a bad sign. ‘I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s very important that you listen to it, to all of it. You’re always telling me stories, so it’s only fair that you should listen to mine now.’

‘All . . . all right,’ Rosalyn said uncertainly, her own teeth clacking together. ‘But I’m so tired.’

The story Catherine told made no sense at all. She had no talent for making things up the way Rosalyn could. The rambling plot and motley band of characters were fuelled by sheer panic. Suddenly she could feel Rosalyn letting go, as if she was inside her body, as if they were connected. And that was when she screamed at her, when she stoked up a fire of rage.

‘If you don’t listen to the end I’ll never forgive you, Rosalyn Hoyle! Not ever! I made it up, out of my head. Out of my head! Do you understand what I’m saying? You might find that easy but I don’t, so there. And you may not think it’s very good at the moment, but I promise you it’s got the most fantastic end. And I’ll hate you if you don’t listen to it. I’ll hate you! I will! I really will! Not just now but forever! You have no idea how much I’ll hate you!’ She was shrieking the way her mother did at her father sometimes after they went to bed, shrieking so loudly that her throat hurt.

‘Okay, I’ll try,’ Rosalyn quavered. ‘I’ll try my hardest.’

When Catherine saw Stephen’s face appear as he thrashed through the thicket, her father and Uncle Christopher on his heels, she could have fainted for sheer elation. At the sight of her own father, Rosalyn rallied a bit. Instantly Uncle Christopher took control. He’d brought a rope. Of course he had. He was a pilot. He was prepared for every eventuality. Hurriedly he fashioned a lasso with it, talking all the while in that soothing tone of command, the one Catherine expected he used when they en countered a bit of turbulence in his aeroplane. Nothing at all to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. Just stay in your seats and fasten your safety belts. We’ll be through this in no time.

‘Well, what on earth have you two girls been up to? Surely it’s a bit cold for a dip, Rosalyn, even for you?’ Rosalyn managed a suggestion of a smile from her paralysed blue lips. ‘I know you’re a school champion but this can’t be much fun. Now, I’m just going to toss this rope over to you. What I want you to do is use one hand to slip it over your head and shoulders, then ease it down to your waist, and at the last minute pull your other hand through.’ It took two goes and progress was painfully slow. Rosalyn’s hands and arms had locked in the bitter chill. But her father’s encouragement never wavered, his pace upbeat, almost jovial. The instant he saw that the rope was safely under both arms he sprang into action, though. Legs apart, knees bent, he put his back into it and began to heave.

Meanwhile, a short way from him, Stephen, his own legs gripped by his father in possibly the most intimate contact they had ever had in their lives, snaked over the ice, grasped Catherine’s arms and pulled. He didn’t say much but his eyes looked more animated than Catherine had ever seen them before. It was tricky man oeuvring her stiff body onto unbroken ice but he succeeded in jerks, levering her out in a side-to-side movement. Once she was lying on her stomach, no longer impeded by the lip of ice, it was comparatively easy to drag her to the safety of the bank. With Stephen, her gawky brother, folding his lanky limbs round her, Catherine raised her head to see Rosalyn being drawn steadily over the iced pond. She resembled a seal in her drenched clothes, a seal being slowly but surely reeled in by her father, the red beret still perched waggishly on her head.

After that Catherine seemed scarcely aware of her coat being pulled off, of her body being hoisted up into Stephen’s arms, of the march back to where the car was parked in the lane. Rosalyn was also being carried by her father. Catherine caught a flash of his face, the expression no longer seemingly blithe, but one of entrenched concern. Her own father appeared occasionally at the edges of her field of vision, his arms full of their wet clothes. He looked absurdly like a photograph of a Sherpa she had seen when they were studying the Himalayas in geography at school. Also, he had the air, Catherine thought, of a non-relative, a man who didn’t quite belong to their party, who had just tagged along, a hanger on, somehow unconnected to the tragic events.

The cousins were propped side by side on the back seat of the car, and staring down, Catherine found herself worrying in case the water that seemed to be leaking from them stained the upholstery. They were back at ‘Wood End’ within minutes, which seemed odd to both girls. Only moments earlier they had been on the brink of death. Now they were being set down in a steamy kitchen where saucepans bubbled on the stove, and where a discussion was blaring from the radio about Kenya and somebody they called the Burning Spear. And in this increasingly surreal world, Catherine’s mother swung round and berated her for being so daft, before they were whisked away by Rosalyn’s mother to have a bath.

Catherine was on the verge of protesting that she wasn’t dirty, but it was clear from the set of her face that Aunt Amy would brook no argument. Modesty too seemed to have been abandoned in this curious dimension. Her aunt and her uncle were both in the crowded bathroom, and oblivious of proprieties, were jointly unbuttoning, unzipping and tugging off the girls’ dripping clothes. Catherine stared at Rosalyn, who stared back. Their bodies looked very white, deathly white, their flesh was tinged with blue here and there. Still more outlandish, the water, which Aunt Amy insisted was tepid, scalded Catherine the way she imagined having a kettle of boiling water poured over her nakedness might.

‘Oh, oh, oh. It stings. It really stings!’ she whimpered, trying to get out but being prevented by her uncle.

‘It will, after the freezing temperatures you’ve endured. But it shouldn’t last too long,’ he insisted.

If Rosalyn was suffering, she was more stoical than Catherine was, allowing herself to be manhandled, to have her limbs rubbed vigorously by her father’s big hands. Aunt Amy ministered to Catherine in much the same manner, cooing soothingly all the time. Then the bath that had nothing to do with soap was over, and they were being briskly towel dried, put into pyjamas still comfortingly warm from the airing cupboard, and bundled into blankets with hot-water bottles cunningly concealed in their folds. Once again they were borne aloft to the sitting-room and given mugs of warm, sweet cocoa, while Catherine’s father banked up the fire. This was when the discomfort that she had thought was over, returned with a vengeance. Her entire body seemed to be tingling painfully now, as if it was gradually coming back to life, as if she was defrosting like something her mother took out of the freezer.

Intuitively she knew everything had changed. The atmosphere in ‘Wood End’ had grown unaccountably funereal, though neither of them had died. The radio was turned down, everyone talked in low voices as if they were in a doctor’s waiting room, and Aunt Amy hardly spoke at all, which was completely out of character for her sociable nature. Catherine noticed that her eyes darted warily all about her, alert, on guard, as though possible threats lurked everywhere. Permission for walks were denied the pair of them, and even a suggested game in the garden and a quarter of an hour in the tree house had to be strictly supervised. But as Rosalyn didn’t seem very keen on any activity at all, preferring to curl up on the settee or in their den, it didn’t much matter that their antics were being rigidly curtailed.

When Catherine awoke the next day and the day after that, there was no hump that was Rosalyn on the other side of the bed, no black curls spread on the pillow. Seeing her emerge from her parents’ bedroom on both occasions when she ventured downstairs, Catherine concluded that she had stolen into their bed some time during the night. Whether inside or out, Simon now shadowed Rosalyn protectively all day long, so that the privacy previously afforded them that Catherine had so relished, was entirely lost. She felt uncomfortable speaking to Rosalyn within his hearing, so their conversations lapsed into an uneasy silence.

Then Stephen took off on his motorbike, claiming he had to get back to work, that cars needed to be repaired and ready for their owners by the first week of January. Coupled with this unscheduled departure, Catherine’s mother was more than usually irritable with her. And her voice began to ascend into that piercing register of hers that normally she reserved for behind their closed front door. Suddenly they were going too, packing the suitcase and bags and loading up the car. They had planned to stay for New Year’s Eve, to see the New Year in, her mother had enigmatically said, as if the New Year was a person you let into the house in the middle of the night. But now it seemed her father had been summoned back to London.

‘I’m so sorry, Amy, but he’s required urgently. That was what that telephone call he had to make was all about. He was checking up on some problem he thought had been solved. But apparently things have worsened. And now there’s another crisis. Very hush-hush, so I can’t really say much more. Such a disappointment! So, darling, I’m afraid you mustn’t try to stop us.’

Aunt Amy didn’t. In fact she hurried away to cut sandwiches for their journey, and then assisted them with an alacrity Catherine read as eagerness, in ferrying their baggage out to the car. So there it was. They were going home. Although Aunt Amy had promised that Rosalyn was coming out to say goodbye, she did not appear, could not even be glimpsed in the hall through the front door which stood open like a shocked mouth.

‘It can’t be helped,’ said her mother laconically, only just succeeding in keeping her tone level, and holding the car door open for Catherine to climb in.

But it could be helped, so Catherine dashed back into the house and galloped up the stairs to their attic room, where she found Rosalyn lying on the den floor sucking her thumb. She pulled it out the moment Catherine tore breathlessly into the room, and sat up as her cousin kneeled down.

‘I was just coming to say goodbye. I’m sorry, I must have—’

But Catherine interrupted her. ‘You’ll always remember me as the cousin you almost drowned with. That’s how you’ll think of me now. The feeling will be all black and bad.’ She hadn’t realized but she was crying, her cheeks were wet and her pitch was warlike. From downstairs she heard her mother’s impatient call.

‘Catherine, do come! We’re all waiting for you.’

‘Oh no, no, no!’ appeased Rosalyn. She took Catherine by the shoulders and held her gaze for a long moment. Dinah Hoyle’s imperious voice rose to them again.