Sea Music

Marta stands on the terrace steps, wary and a little frightened, like a small rabbit ready for flight. The boy puts his hands on his hips and, coming closer, looks down at her.

‘How old are you?’ he asks.

‘I am five,’ Marta says, trying to make herself tall.

The boy is pleased. ‘Well, I am older, I am eight. Mutti says I am going to be much taller than my father.’ There is a silence. Then he says in a bored voice, ‘Come, I am going to go and see the horses.’

He turns and marches away towards the stables. Marta follows him. She is afraid of horses, but she is not going to say so.

The horses are standing looking out of their stalls, shaking their great heads against the flies. They are groomed to a shiny perfection, their manes shimmer as they toss their heads.

The boy goes to a big stallion. ‘This is Tylicz, My favourite horse. When I am older I will ride him, but at the moment he is too big and strong.’ He takes an apple out of his pocket and turns to Marta. ‘Here, you may feed him if you like. Give this to Tylicz.’

He is watching her closely and he smiles suddenly. She is growing pale at the thought of approaching that huge mouth. He knows, he knows I am afraid, Marta thinks.

The boy places the apple in her hand and leads her towards Tylicz. Desperately, she tries to hang back, but the boy pulls her sharply forward, tells her there is nothing to be afraid of and lifts her clumsily towards the great head of the horse. Marta screams as his long yellow teeth reach out towards her. She drops the apple and jerks away. The boy loses his balance and lets Marta fall onto the hard stable floor.

He bursts out laughing; he can see she is not hurt and she looks so funny. Marta will not cry. She is angry. She picks herself off the floor, bends and takes the fallen apple, wipes it on the hem of her dress and breaks it into pieces with her teeth. She has remembered something Mama told her and she arranges the pieces on the flat of her hand.

She walks over to Tylicz and, trembling, stands on tiptoe and raises her hand up, up, towards the horse, keeping very still and balancing herself on the door of the stall with her other hand.

Tylicz looks down at her almost as if he is smiling and very slowly and gently he bends over the stable door, craning his neck down to her hand. He can only just reach the apple, only just brush her hand with his whiskery mouth. He tickles her open palm, his mouth velvety, as he scoops the apple up, and Marta laughs as he crunches it noisily.

She cannot stop laughing for the relief of not being bitten and the laughter lights up her face and fills her whole being. She is not afraid of this boy. She is not afraid of the horse.

When she turns round the boy is laughing too, and the look in his eyes is no longer scornful. Marta hears Mama calling and they turn together and run across the green lawn, back towards the house. Marta’s head is held high and her back is stiff with triumph.

The boy’s mother is standing with Mama outside the French windows. She reaches down and ruffles the thick blond hair of the boy. She is pretty, Marta thinks, and golden, but she does not smile. Next to her, Mama looks tiny and far more beautiful, with her shiny dark hair and smiling brown eyes.

The German doctor comes out into the garden with Papa, and bends to Marta. ‘Your father and I are old friends, Marta. We studied together. I hope you and my son will be friends also, because your papa has agreed to come and work with me. He is going to build you a house on that land over there that backs on to the forest. Then, you see, he can help me run my clinic.’

Behind the tall doctor, Marta is watching the boy. He is standing with his hands on his hips, feet apart, staring at her with those pale, intense, turquoise eyes. His mother reaches down and whispers something to him. He pulls away embarrassed, shrugs off her hand, and in a little lightning movement kicks out at a garden chair, which collapses with a clatter on top of a little dog, who gives a great yelp and dashes away.

The boy jumps. Marta does not think he knew the dog was there, but she is not sure. It is time to go. Her father takes her hand. She turns and looks over her shoulder. The boy is standing with his blond hair blowing in the wind, still watching her. He seems suddenly alone and strangely beautiful. Exciting. Marta shivers.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_c4c5ba85-3f79-5dfb-83f1-534444428d4e)

Lucy wakes early and pulls on a T-shirt and track-suit bottoms.

‘Sorry,’ she says to Homer, as she lets him out into the garden for a pee. ‘I’ll take you out later, but you can’t keep up with me when I’m running.’

Homer looks martyred and slinks back to his bed.

‘Come on, don’t be a drama queen.’ Lucy lifts his heavy old head and plants a kiss on it, but the dog is not to be mollified.

Lucy opens the front door and runs past the church and down the path towards the beach. The air feels warmer, expectant. Birds scuttle about in the undergrowth, flying low and gathering feathers and fluff, grass and twigs. She runs down the steps and jumps onto the sand. The tide has turned and she can just get round the point.

Lucy pushes herself, running steadily, jumping the waves that slide in and pool round her feet. She can feel herself beginning to relax. The beach is deserted, stretching long and colourless in early morning light.

Happiness flares suddenly, a joy in being alive. Lucy increases her speed, her hair flapping rhythmically as she gets into her stride. The lighter mornings always make her wake earlier, but it is not daylight that disturbs her sleep.

She has covered a great length of the beach fast; now she slows down as she feels her legs tiring, measuring the point she wants to reach. She pushes the thought of that small odd birth certificate firmly out of her mind. She will think of Tristan instead. She heads up the beach and collapses near the rocks, sweating and panting. In the distance fishing boats are coming out of the harbour, battling over the bar with the wind against them.

Lucy considers what it will be like to live away from the sea again – not just in London, but wherever it is that Tristan could be posted after Kosovo. She is unsure she can live for too long away from the coast. Worse, if they marry, what if he has another single posting and she is left on her own in some army quarter?

She squints up at the sky. She can hear skylarks in the dunes behind her. She and Tristan have never really discussed marriage; it is an understood thing. Tristan may be a lapsed Catholic, but his parents certainly are not.

Tristan and Lucy are firmly given separate bedrooms when they stay, despite his mother being quite aware that they sleep together. It is not done primly or critically and Tristan’s mother had gently explained that she could not have double standards. Laura, Tristan’s youngest sister, still lives at home and there was no way they could countenance her bringing a boy home and sleeping with him.

Lucy grins. Separate bedrooms were funny. Tristan, bringing her tea in the mornings, borrowed his father’s silk dressing gown and cravat, inked a curly moustache with her eye liner and did appalling Noël Coward impersonations, which sounded more like David Suchet playing Poirot.

Lucy wraps her arms round herself as she cools.

‘Do I end up with a baby every year and a waist the size of a block of flats?’ she asked him.

‘Certainly you do,’ Tristan replied. ‘I have a weakness for waistless women.’ Then, hastily, in case she took fright, ‘Has my mother got fifteen children? Of course not. We will just use the rhythm method. Coitus interruptus.’ Seeing her face, he burst out laughing. ‘Idiot! I’m teasing.’ He picked her up and twirled her round. ‘Anyway, you might throw me over for a fisherman and settle for ever in the place you love most, at the end of the world.’

He was smiling, but his eyes were serious. Tris. She cannot imagine life without him. All this, all she has here, would mean so much less if he was not there.

She gets up and stretches, jumps up and down, loosening her limbs. She starts to run back, slower this time. The outgoing tide has left a line of foamy scum on the wet sand.

Tristan has made her grow up. He does not always say what she wants to hear, but she listens, especially about Anna. Her heart gives that anxious lurch again. Like the moment you wake and know something is wrong. She closes her eyes tight, banishing unease.

Anna sent her a little note in a card, congratulating Lucy on getting the teaching job. It is not the sort of thing Anna usually does. Lucy suspects that Alice, Anna’s clerk, bought it, or Rudi. After the congratulations, Anna wrote, ‘About time you rejoined the civilised world. I think you will find it stimulating. Love, Mum.’

Lucy tossed the card aside crossly, but when she told Tristan, he said carefully, ‘I think you are a bit hard on Anna, Lu. She sent you a card because she was proud of you. It doesn’t matter who bought it.’

‘I’m not hard on her! Anna can never do or say anything that does not have a hidden barb. Not to me, anyway.’

‘Is it possible that she cannot do or say anything that you don’t feel defensive about?’

Lucy was stung. ‘You don’t understand. If I am defensive, it is because all my life she has been critical –’

‘Lu, this is a circular conversation. We are not going to have an argument about the dragon in a wig. You’re right, I don’t know what it feels like to be her daughter. I don’t know what it feels like to have had a working or ambitious mother. I think you are just very different people and it’s a shame you don’t get on. I am sure she is as proud of you under her fiery nostrils as you must be of her.’

Lucy reaches the steps and stops again, the sweat pouring down her face. The bloody thing is she is proud of Anna. She remembers her coming to her school to give a talk on careers, just after Lucy had taken her GCSEs. Anna arrived looking stunning, immaculate. When she started talking you could have heard a pin drop in the hall. Lucy was fascinated. It was like watching someone she did not know. Anna the barrister in full stimulating flow, encouraging debate, challenging assumptions. Anna alive, doing what she was best at. For two hours she had forty girls and thirty boys from a neighbouring school riveted.

Lucy pulls herself up the steps, panting. It was the same day that she told Lucy she was going to marry the German banker. In bed that night in the silent dormitory, Lucy thought: that is why she looked so beautiful, why she was so sparkling. Anna is in love.

Lucy had already decided she wanted to leave school and take her A levels at a sixth-form college. There was no way she was going to go back and stay in a small flat with Anna and her new husband. The thought was gross.

Barnaby was back from Northern Ireland and was staying in the cottage on leave. Lucy rang him and asked if she could go down and live in the cottage and take her A levels in Cornwall.

Barnaby thought she was too young to live in the cottage on her own, and her grandparents were too old to have a seventeen-year-old living with them permanently. Lucy argued that she had been staying in the cottage every holiday of her life and that it was ten steps to Fred and Martha’s front door.

Both her grandparents thought it a wonderful idea. It was the first time Lucy saw Barnaby sad. He was leaving the army and seemed distracted. He took off on his own, went travelling. Lucy thought maybe he wanted to stop being a priest.

When Lucy was about to leave for university he came home. He had applied for a parish in Cornwall to be near Martha and Fred. Martha was not very well, but no one knew what it was then.