Rook (12 page)

The length of elastic attached to the balding tennis ball twists and curls back on itself like an overstretched rubber band, disintegrating when Ada picks with a fingernail at the tangles.

The print on the box is very small and the words pompous.
Assemble tubes as per the illustration. Please try to avoid leaving the set erected in bright sunlight for any length of time as this is inclined to perish the elastic
.

Layers of cardboard separate where the corners of the box are split despite one of Brian’s repair attempts. The aged Sellotape flakes off. The repair brings Brian and his near-sighted stoop over a desk or table to mind, the edges and corners of his books and papers aligned with precision. Cogs, wheels and springs from the inside of clocks arranged in lines. A meticulous man – Ada brushes ash from the silk scarf draped at her neck – tidy and careful in both mind and manner, a characteristic which she put down to his middle-class upbringing, a difference between them. His mother was an insufferable snob, yet she hung nets at her windows and referred to napkins as serviettes.        

Ada takes out two sections of metal tubing and fits them together. She wants them back, those summer afternoons: the thwack of the ball, the girls shrieking and fighting over the tennis comeback. The fiery tennis player with his antics on the tennis court – Ilie Nastase, he’s the one. A passionate man – oh, what she would have given! Tied herself down far too young, thinking Brian would provide her escape from the confines of village life, imagined herself accompanying him abroad, a damsel dressed in white muslin to protect her skin from the heat: the Archaeologist’s Wife. She had been naive – although they did travel together, at first, even for a few years after Felicity was born. How she loved the heat, the filmy mesh of mosquito nets, whirring fans; the chink of ice stirred in a drink. When Nora arrived everything changed. Brian began to talk about giving their two girls stability, a ‘settled’ home.

The elastic is specially extruded from high quality latex rubber but by the nature of the game will, of course, only have a limited life.

Ada clicks her tongue and tries to replace the lid as best she can. The guy-rope, net and other sections of tube are a tangled mass, but still perfectly good. Perhaps Harry could fix the comeback. Felicity will have a thing or two to say about this, for certain, since all the items Nora has boxed for charity and stuffed into bin bags are also a part of Felicity’s childhood.

From the creek comes the clap of canvas filling with wind as the boom swings across and the sail catches the wind’s force. The sailing boat going about gives Ada an idea for a diversion. Nora is a perfectly adequate rower; she can take them both in the skiff down to Itchenor Hard. A trip. Ridiculous to pay for one of the scheduled boats with one of their own pulled up on the shore at the bottom of the garden.

Ada steps closer to the garage to suggest this afternoon for their trip when she sees, set down amongst the damp grass cuttings by the path’s edge, the picnic case. The cherry-red of the case’s covering has faded to pink. Inside, leather straps once fastened the gay floral plates and saucers to the underside of the lid; two tartan Thermos flasks nestled beside a screw-top glass jar filled with jam, the salt and pepper. Ada cannot bear to open the case and find it empty. She takes hold of the handle and carries the case inside.

13

At first, when she sees the flash of blue lights, Nora thinks there must have been an accident. A fire engine has parked at an angle, blocking the narrow lane. A black 4×4 at the tail end of the queue of cars swerves off the road and the door is flung open. A man uncurls his long frame from the driver’s seat and braces his shoulders, rotating each as if limbering up, resting a hand on the joint to test the roll of muscle and bone. Nora follows his gaze down towards the water and notices Giovanni’s ice-cream van parked a long way from his favoured position on the foreshore, right up near the craft centre. He only parks there if the tide is higher than usual.

Wind roars through the trees. Nora gathers up her hair, fixing it in a loose knot with a pencil from her pocket. With this fierce south westerly, if it is a spring tide, the village is at risk of serious flooding. She hopes either Eve or Stavros is at home, because their house, perched on the sea wall, is vulnerable.

The man climbs back into his car and now reverses, fast, two wheels on the pavement, towards her. It’s then Nora sees, on the back window-shelf, a coat folded with the red lining outermost and a broad-brimmed hat. She stops in her tracks.

He slams the car door, throws his keys in the air and catches them. It is not Isaac, she sees instantly, though he waves as if they know each other and strides towards her with a slight catch to his step. Wind blows his loose white shirt against his body. He is taller than Nora, much taller than Isaac, with the slight lean to the neck and shoulders of a man accustomed to standing a head or so higher than those around him.

He straightens, pushing dark hair from his eyes in a gesture of impatience. ‘Jonny,’ he says, and clasps her hand in both of his. ‘What’s going on?’

His voice is what Ada would describe as ‘rich brown’. So too are his eyes, which search her face. Heat rolls upward through her body. She steps back, slipping her hand out of his to take hold of the straps of her cello case, lifting them to ease the rubbed place on her collar-bone. This, then, is the man she’s seen around and mistaken for Isaac, yet his build is different, as is the buoyancy in his easy smile. The similarity is in the way he moves, a languid assurance combined with the impression of suppressed energy, something like a big cat, caged. She is probably smiling too much.

‘I was afraid I’d missed you again.’

‘Missed me?’ She has forgotten some meeting, with a parent of a pupil. Someone at school has neglected to pass on a message. Please let it be something else.

He turns to the queue of cars. His black hair, long over his collar, has the same sheen as Isaac’s but he is years younger, younger even than Isaac when she first met him.

‘It’s vanished, the entire road.’ He finds the unexpected turn of events exciting, which tells her he isn’t local. She must find her tongue and reply properly.

‘A spring tide,’ she begins.

‘My camera.’ He dives into the car and flings various items around, hunting for something on the back seat. ‘I’m here because of your father,’ she thinks he says, but his voice is muffled from inside the car.

She freezes. She can’t have heard him right. He turns and holds up a camera bag. ‘Perfect, I can’t tell you, just perfect.’

‘Why did you say you are here?’

‘I’ll fill you in. Shall we walk and talk?’

Jonny runs a small film company which makes television documentaries. Nora is captivated by the way his arms beat the air for emphasis as he talks, the energetic gestures of his hands like a conductor’s, and only half-listens when he lists a variety of programmes he’s made, quotes audience-viewing figures. She doesn’t watch much television.

‘You’ll watch this one,’ he turns to her, ‘because I’m here about Canute, to uncover the story of his drowned daughter.’ His face is suddenly serious. ‘Nora, your bone structure, it’s startlingly photogenic, you know.’ She looks at her feet.

They head down towards the water. Jonny walks fast; she doesn’t have to slow her pace for him. He sees her notice the slight hesitation in his stride.

‘Knee job,’ he says, and rubs at his hair with both hands. He looks rueful. ‘Too bloody old for rugby!’

The water is choppy. They step back as scum and froth creep centimetre by centimetre up the tarmac. Jonny seems to know nothing about the sea or tides and asks a lot of questions. Spring tides, Nora tells him, occur just after every full and new moon when the sun, moon and earth are in alignment. She has to shout above the noise of the fire-engine pump as it starts up again.

At low tide, the clutch of buildings which makes up Old Bosham – a terrace of fisherman’s cottages with painted front doors, the quaint old pub, the church with its Saxon bell tower – as well as the larger houses on the other side of the inlet at Bosham Hoe, look out over salt marsh and mudflats. With each high tide, incoming sea water raises the water level so significantly that Shore Road, which curves around the inlet, is completely under water. This flooding of the road excites the tourists, who leave their cars parked on the foreshore and, despite the warning signs, go off to the pub or to visit the ancient church or for a wander along the creek path, and return hours later to find a car half-filled with sea water. Villagers, who have lived with flooding for centuries, have prepared for extreme high tides by building low flood walls across paths, gateways and doorways in an attempt to protect their homes. Supplies of sandbags are kept in sheds and garages, beside log piles.        

Jonny is exuberant as a child. He takes a lot of photographs: firemen with their hoses, a pair of mallards swimming up the middle of the road, Eric the Swan-man wading in his thigh-high rubbers, seaweed accumulating on the tarmac at the water’s edge. Most of the front doors of the houses on both sides of the road are open, already barricaded high with sandbags. Inside, people are busy rolling up rugs, moving books, piling belongings up on to tables. Nora is relieved to see Eve stacking sandbags on to the top of her concrete flood wall to keep out sea water which has turned the lane past her house into a river.

At the far side of the flooded part of the lane people have emerged from the Anchor Bleu with their trousers rolled up. Two small boys paddle in the water. More arrive, congregating behind Jonny and Nora, people from parts of the village further inland, ready to help if necessary. When Ted pulls up with his Land Rover trailer loaded with extra sandbags, Nora rolls up her jeans to help and Jonny follows suit.

14

The tide is retreating at last. Nora pushes through the heavy bulk-head door at the back of the bar at the Anchor Bleu and climbs the steps to the high terrace overlooking the inlet towards Bosham Hoe. Waves slap against the brick and flint of the sea wall, the road below still under water. In the summer the tiny terrace is often jammed with people and tables and chairs but today they have it to themselves. Sun appears briefly between fast-moving clouds. Nora puts her feet up on the wall and leans back, lifting her face to search for the sun’s warmth.

They borrowed wellies from Mariner’s, who keep a supply for customers at the café to borrow on such occasions. With sandbags piled on both shoulders, Jonny sang sea shanties. People joined in. Once it was clear no houses were going to be flooded and the emergency was over, the crowds began to disperse. Jonny, with a hand jammed in his hair to keep it from blowing over his face in the wind, offered to buy her lunch. Nora tries not to think about Rook and Ada, who will both have been expecting her home a long time ago. Another half an hour won’t hurt.

‘Amazing! Like being at the prow of a boat!’ Jonny pulls up a chair. He grins and takes a swig of his Guinness, lifting his eyebrows at her over the rim of his glass. She can’t help smiling back.

‘Total serendipity, this happening today. Know why, Nora?’ He leans forward, close to her, forearms on his thighs. His voice is low. ‘Ten centuries after Canute, and still we fail to turn back the waves. Only wish I’d had the film crew with me!’

Nora hesitates, twisting the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. ‘Canute didn’t
fail
, though, did he?’

‘No?’

‘He knew he couldn’t turn back the waves. That was the point.’