Arcadia (20 page)

It soon becomes obvious, though, that today's not going to be a normal day.

The breakfast his mother's making is what gives it away. It's the porridge Libby taught them to make with milk and the half-wild oats. There's a whole saucepan of it on the stove, enough for six. She's standing there stirring large handfuls of dried apples and pear into it, so much sweetness he can smell it while he's still on the stairs.

“Who's that for?”

Her face is full of lines and her eyes are tired but she gives him a determined smile.

“You and me,” she says.

“All of it?”

“Every little bit.” She must have used the whole tin of milk. They only filled it yesterday.

“Shouldn't we share that with someone?”

“I don't feel like seeing anyone.”

“What about the Meeting?”

“Sod the Meeting,” she says, stirring. “Sod the lot of them. Come on, I think this is ready.”

She's used all the dried apple and all the dried pear. He can see the jar on the counter where they keep it and it's empty. At the end of a particularly long or particularly exhausting day they'd sometimes open that jar, take out one strip, tear it in half, and share the half, enough for two bites each.

He's beginning to feel worried.

“Shouldn't we be Eekonomical?” he says cautiously.

“You know what? I'm tired of economical. I've had enough of it. Don't you think?”

He doesn't know what to think. This isn't at all how he'd imagined the morning going. This isn't how he could imagine any morning going. She's breaking six different Rules at once.

“Eat,” she says, spooning it out.

It's good. It's painfully good. It goes on being good after the five or six mouthfuls, which are what meals are supposed to consist of. It gets better, if anything.

“What about . . .” He doesn't quite know how to put it. He has to be on his best behavior, he doesn't want to set her off, but he also wants to know what's going on. “What about everyone else?”

His mother puts her spoon down carefully. “Everyone else,” she says, emphasizing the words like Ol would do with a rude joke, “has decided I'm being selfish. Everyone else doesn't think I know what's best for my own family. I don't give a damn about everyone else. Actually.”

The sweetness in his mouth turns ashy.

“We're not leaving today,” he says, “are we?”

“The sooner the better.”

“But.” His stomach's turning. “It looks really windy.”

“We can manage a bit of rough weather.” She smiles at him, and suddenly he sees a sort of skin over her smile, and over her eyes, a glaze, a strange mask. “You're a good little sailor.”

For a start, this is nonsense. He's always hated rough sailing. Everyone knows that. Jake and Scarlet were the good little sailors. And Dad. She hates it too, she always has. She and Rory stayed home and watched telly when the others went out for a sail, that's how it worked. But as well as being nonsense there's a terrible threat in it.

“I don't like it when it's rough.” He's got to stay calm. Best behavior.

“Rory.” She reaches across to pat his hand. She's not getting angry. She's alarmingly calm herself. “There's nothing more to discuss. You and I are finished here.”

“But—”

“Eat up now, and we'll go and choose you some clothes.”

She leaves the saucepan on the stove, and the dirty spoon and bowls on the table. She doesn't even give anything a quick rinse.

  *  *  *  

She won't let go of his hand, all the way down the Lane. She acts like it's nice handholding, like she's not pulling him along, but she won't let go.

Gulls ride the breeze silently overhead. When they spread their wings wide they sail east, in the direction of Martin, and the Mainland.

“It's really windy,” he says.

She doesn't break her stride. She doesn't look or sound like she's going to lose her temper. She's frighteningly steady. “We're going, Rory,” she says in her normal voice. “Try and get used to it. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. As soon as I've got everything ready.”

A tremor of relief ripples through him. “So not today?

She smiles. “Why? Are you in a hurry?”

“No!”

“Maybe,” she says. “We'll see.”

“Not today,” he says. “Please.”

“I don't know,” she says, like it's a joke. “It looks like quite a nice day for a trip.”

“I bet it'll be calmer tomorrow.”

“Oh? Do you?” They come down to the Pub and turn along the back of the Beach. Looking down the Channel, under the rust-colored ferns on the two hills of Sansen, the Gap's crisscrossed with whitecaps, sparkling in brilliant sun. “Little weather forecaster, are you?”

“Look how windy it is in the Gap.”

“All right then, how about tomorrow? Shall we agree on tomorrow? Mister weather forecaster?”

He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't think she's listening anyway.

“I'll need today to get loaded up anyway,” she says. She's working it out aloud to herself. “I did the fuel yesterday, that was the really tricky bit. The rest's just bits and pieces. I'll bring the boat round to the quay here when the tide's up. That's the easiest way, isn't it? We'll do it like that.”

When they get to the Club she turns off and goes down the side road to the row of tall weathered wooden houses overlooking the Channel.

“Are we going to the Stash?”

“Of course,” she says.

These houses were built by the Club for posh holidaymakers. They're too cold to live in with their big windows and high ceilings and being right by the water, but they're solid and dry inside, so this is where the Stash is. Kate's been talking about moving it to a place they can lock—the keys to these houses are long lost—but that's a job for later, when they can spare the labor.

All the household things they've salvaged from all over the island are piled up here. Coats, shoes, sheets, towels, cotton bags, blinds, strips of carpet, dishcloths, all kinds of clothes. The bulkier things are downstairs. She picks out a couple of suitcases and hands one to him.

“Let's fill one each,” she says.

You don't just go in the Stash and take stuff. That's not how it works. It's unthinkable. “Did they say it's OK?”

“Never mind that,” she says. “We've got as much right as anyone.”

The clothes are upstairs, in what used to be the main bedroom. The stairs are carpeted, thick with dried dirt but still fascinatingly soft, so Rory and his mother don't make a sound as they go up. The curtains across the big window facing the Channel and Briar are drawn. His mother pulls them back, revealing green streaks of lichen on the glass. Dust dances in the sunlight.

“Right,” she says, putting her hands on her hips and examining the neatly sorted piles. “Warm things are what we need. Good boots first. Let's try those ones on you.”

“I knew it was you,” Fi's voice says. Rory and his mother both flinch.

Fi's leaning in the doorway. Her bare feet made no noise at all. She must have been in one of the little bedrooms at the back. She looks glum.

“Obvious all along, really,” she says, folding her arms. They're big strong arms. She's broad-shouldered, built for garden work. She's blocking the doorway.

His mother tries to draw herself up straight but she's been caught red-handed and all three of them know it. “We're taking what we need,” she says. “Same as anyone would.”

“That's rubbish, Connie, and you know it.”

“Oh, so you and Kate own all this now, do you?”

Fi shakes her head. “You know, if you'd only asked, everyone would have been happy to let you have whatever.”

His mother looks like she's trying to think of a response before giving up. She turns back to Rory, holding up a pair of brown walking boots. “Try these,” she says. “They look about right.”

Rory's face is burning. He can't look at Fi, but he can't pretend she's not there either.

“Maybe you could at least try to think about how much you need,” Fi says. “I have to say, I thought you'd be finished by now.”

“What are you saying?” His mother's sorting through trousers now.

“You know what I'm talking about.”

His mother drops the suitcase she's holding abruptly, and for the first time that morning Rory can hear her beginning to crack. “No, Fi, I actually don't know what you're talking about. Actually, I'm a bit tired of being told what I'm thinking. Who made you the island police? Why don't you leave us alone?”

“Well, that's an easy one.” Fi's accent gets more Scottish when she gets riled up. “Because someone's got to make sure you don't clean out the whole Stash.”

“Two bags!” His mother's gone very shrill. “That's too much to ask, is it?”

“Two bags today,” Fi says.

There's a pause. His mother is breathing too fast, too noisily.

“What does that mean?” she says.

“You think no one noticed what's gone missing the last couple of days? Why do you think I slept here overnight?”

Another pause. Rory can't stop himself thinking at once of the piles of clothes in the mysteriously firelit room deep in the ruins of the Hotel. He fumbles at the laces of the boots.

“Are you accusing me of stealing?” his mother says.

“Actually, I'm standing here watching you steal with my own two eyes.”

His mother takes a couple of hasty steps towards Fi, who doesn't flinch, of course.

“Rory and I are taking things we might need.” She's trembling with weak defiance. “For whatever we'll find. Because we're not going to sit on this godforsaken miserable island until he dies. It's one bag for each of us, and if you and Miss High and Mighty Kate think that's too much you can go and fuck yourselves. For a change, instead of fucking each other.”

Rory just wants to run downstairs and away and out into the fresh air where things like this don't happen. He can't though, he's stuck watching it. Some part of him is imagining what it's going to be like tomorrow when his mother finds out she can't leave the island after all. He has an overwhelming suspicion that there'll be no family anymore, he's going to have to go and live in the Abbey, with Kate and Fi and the others who are in the right, who are Eekonomical, who Can Cope.

“So where are the other bags, then?” Fi's just leaning in the doorway, tapping her fingers on her arms. “Already on your boat? Which, by the way, other people gave to you, out of kindness.”

“There are no other bags. If other stuff's missing then someone else sto— Someone else took it. Someone else might not be a perfect saint.”

“Have you got Asha's keys?”

Asha is Missus Shark's proper name.

“Rory was in the garden when she lost them.” Fi's still looking at his mother. “She says she only put them down for a few seconds. And there's food missing too, from the cold stores. Which were locked.”

The silence is horribly cold.

“No, of course we bloody don't.” His mother comes to stand beside him. She hugs his shoulders. Her hands are trembly. “Of course you're not a thief, Rory,” she says, much too loudly. “I can't imagine what sort of person would think—”

“Just,” Fi says, very sharply, and with the unmistakable fervor that means she's close to blowing her top. “Just give the keys back before you go. If that's not too much trouble. You could leave them somewhere we'll find them, if you want to go on pretending you don't have them. On the dock, maybe.” She turns away. Rory and his mother listen as Fi goes down the stairs and outside. She closes the door quietly behind her.

His mother slumps on the floor and starts crying.

After a little bit Rory sits down and tries on a different pair of boots.

  *  *  *  

When they're finished they haul the suitcases downstairs and outside. His mother's hardly spoken and Rory doesn't dare say a word, not even to ask where they're going next. Although he knows Fi was wrong to accuse her of stealing the keys and the food and the other clothes—Lino did all that, of course—he also knows that in some more important way Fi was right. Fi and Kate may be irritatingly bossy but he doesn't have to think about it to know that the way they do things is the right way, the proper and just way. He's never seen before what happens when someone smashes the Rules.

“We should have done this months ago,” his mother says, as they wheel the suitcases back to the road.

He thinks she's gone properly mad. Everyone knows that every single person who sailed away from the islands has never been heard from again. He's gripped with the abrupt fear that there's a flaw in his brilliant plan somewhere, that it's going to go wrong and she really is going to end up forcing him out to sea to die cold and terrified and helpless. He can't let it happen. He's got to get away from her. Just for a little bit, surely that's all he'll need.

She turns back towards the Beach.

“Where are we going, Mum?”

“We'll leave these on the quay. Or maybe we should take them up to Parson's and lock them in there, that bitch might come back and go through them. No. She wouldn't.” She's muttering to herself. He's not sure she really knows he's there. “We'll put them on the quay. Then tools. I'll do the Toolshed next. Keep up!” She's pulling her suitcase faster than he can manage. “We'd better get a move on.” They follow the curve of the Beach around to the Harbor quay. The tide's coming up. Already there's water between the wrecked ferry and the end of the quay. Whether it's deep enough yet to bring a sailing boat he's not sure. The boat's down at the south end of the island and you can't sail anything more than a dinghy up the Channel until at least half-tide. There must still be time to figure something out. He just needs to keep an eye—