Deep Water (22 page)

Her cheeks were flushed with the effort of hanging onto him, and Leo’s heart was hammering. ‘Stop fooling,’ he shouted, before darting away towards the house with her laughter in his ears.

Before his mother came home from her ‘
practising
’, which had started to sound horribly bogus, Leo had an idea which made him cheer out loud. The box could have been under the bed for months, and might have nothing at all to do with his mother. The house had been rented out for ages. What a fool not to think of this. So the fact that the dome thing hadn’t been in the box probably wasn’t important after all. Really, there was no reason to be suspicious. Unless, of course, he looked inside the box tomorrow and found the pessary had returned. But at present Leo was so relieved he couldn’t believe such a thing possible.

Downstairs again, he thought of all the rude things he’d said to the commander, and felt dreadfully embarrassed. Mike would be sure to tell Andrea, who would be furious. Leo knew he’d offended her enough already over Justin, and was depressed to reflect that he’d given her a whole new reason to be angry. In most ways though, Leo was glad that Mike’s arguments had made him doubt Justin’s story – just as his own failure to find love letters made him do. But Leo still detested Mike’s confident manner and dreaded having to apologise to him, as he supposed he would have to.

Just as Leo was allowing himself to become
miserable
over the prospect of grovelling to Mike, he suddenly realised what a prize fathead he was. The
one thing he wanted, above all others, was for his mother
not
to be involved with Mike, and for her to love his father again. And dad’s prospects looked a lot brighter than a few hours ago.

*

Andrea was running her fingers through the hairs on her lover’s chest and thinking how amazing it was that they had made love only minutes after meeting, when there had been so much she had wanted to ask him. But that must be what happens, she thought, when two people have spent days imagining their bodies entwined and have then been obliged to wait at the last moment. It was two in the morning and she and Mike were lying together on the cushions in the schoolroom. His eyes were closed and there was a smile on his lips.

‘I can’t imagine what you said to Leo,’ she
murmured
, ‘but he was really friendly this evening for the first time in a whole week.’

‘I gave him a new perspective on things.’

She snuggled up to him, and said in what he
imagined
was a Southern drawl, ‘Michael Harrington, did you lie to my sweet baby?’

‘Ma’am, I can’t deny it,’ he groaned, turning away from the light of the single candle they had allowed themselves.

‘Mike, I’m really glad you did,’ she whispered in her ordinary voice.

He rolled over to face her, with a martyred smile. ‘If the wages of sin are what they used to be, I’ll burn.’

‘For one white lie?’

‘That’s
all
it is?’ he asked weakly, running a hand down her stomach and letting it rest between her thighs. He sighed deeply. ‘At least I didn’t rape you. I expect you teach your girls to loathe the Lovelaces of literature.’

Andrea looked at him in amazement. ‘You think I’d study
Clarissa
with them? I want to keep my job.’

‘But the rapist paid with his life,’ he soothed. ‘What could be nicer than that?’

She moved her lips closer to his ear, ‘A happy ending, dear heart.’

Mike pulled away from her. ‘Dear God, Andrea, don’t
say
things like that.’

‘Oh, Mike.’ She hugged him tightly as if to protect his body against all dangers. ‘I’m awfully sorry.’

‘Things could be worse. In the Middle Ages, I’d be in church at this moment doing some eve of battle grovelling, instead of sinning some more with you.’

‘You don’t think of it like that, do you?’

‘Oh, Andrea,’ he soothed, ‘being with you is like taking great gulps of life, one hundred per cent proof. I’m totally intoxicated.’

She sat up so that she could see his whole face. ‘You still look awfully sad, my sweet.’

He stared into the pitch-darkness near the stove and said quietly, ‘It must have occurred to you that if I’d failed with Leo, you wouldn’t be here now.’

‘But you
didn’t
fail, and he’s fine.’

‘Till he finds out I lied to him.’

Andrea leaned across Mike so that her breasts
pressed down on his chest. ‘Can’t we forget him till then?’

‘Dearest Andrea,
you
were the one who didn’t want to do that.’

‘I guess you were more sensible.’ She kissed his shoulder. ‘Honey, please don’t spoil things.’

‘I won’t … unless my luck runs out.’ He moved as if to slip out from under her and she freed him at once. Then, as he groped around for his pants, she watched him lovingly in the flickering light.

‘Don’t go now.’ She held out her arms, distressed to see him leaving sooner than he needed to. ‘Please come back here.’ He paused a moment before sitting beside her again. ‘Mike, I admire you so much for setting Leo’s mind at rest. I didn’t thank you enough. Can you forgive me?’ She sat up and kissed his lips, at the same time gently drawing him down into a recumbent position. A little later, she murmured, ‘Maybe we could try again?’

‘Darling, I’d love to if I thought I could,’ he
murmured
, slipping down onto the cushions with her.

She closed her eyes and kissed Mike’s mouth very softly. Whatever happened she must never lose him. She mustn’t lose Leo either, but definitely not her lover: her dearest Mike, whom she adored for
himself
, and because she couldn’t help it; and because his looks were the answer to a prayer (his feet and wrists included), and because one day he would talk to her about literature – squashing Peter’s view of it as a by-product of man’s need to create illusions rather than face life as it was. With Mike, reality was fine.

She had been fondling and caressing for some time without any serious expectation of success when suddenly she felt a change.

‘God’s balls!’ gasped Mike. ‘Lazarus rises!’

*

Leo had not anticipated thinking about Justin after he had gone, but, being unable to decide what to do, he found himself wondering what Justin would have suggested. Probably he would have wanted to watch the sailors painting the trawlers. To do this, it would be necessary to get up several hours before dawn and cycle to the woods above the creek in order to reach the mud, and then get home again before Andrea and Rose had got up. Could he face it? Not the whole thing, but going to see if they were moored on the river would be an easy start.

It was a morning of gusting rain and fast moving clouds, with squalls whipping between the boats in Porthbeer harbour. Oblivious to the wind, a boy wearing a lopsided straw hat crammed down on his head was standing up in a rowing boat, propelling it with a single oar towards a moored fishing vessel. He was working this oar back and forth over the stern with wiggling movements like a fish might make with its tail. It struck Leo that this boy, who looked about his own age, already knew what he would do when grown up, and would probably never leave the village. God knows what I’ll be doing, or where I’ll be living even next year.

As Leo walked along the beach looking down at gulls’ feathers and bits of cork and driftwood, he realised he didn’t want to stay in Cornwall any
more. Maybe he would suggest leaving when he and his mother were having lunch. He had been trying not to think about her, because he knew he ought to look inside that cardboard box. It would still be empty, he was sure; but he still had to look.

He clambered onto the rocks where he and Justin had often stood. Neither of the navy’s trawlers was on its moorings. Because Mike was still around, the boats could not be in France. Leo was not
immediately
seized by the idea of scrambling through the woods to investigate, but when he imagined himself feet away from men doing the painting he found he was trembling. Imagine it! Being close enough to leave a note pinned to the hull – or better still below decks – ‘Leave her alone or else, Commander.’

Leo tried to imagine what would happen after the painting was done. The fishing boats would stay hidden in the creek – presumably guarded night and day – until their crews came to take them downriver to load them with ammunition. If the painters were still working today, the trawlers might possibly be ready to sail tonight, but more likely tomorrow. The temptation to go now, and peer through the trees at what was going on, was too much for him. He had over three hours till one o’clock.

Leo arrived back at the house exhausted, ten minutes before lunch was due. Rose was in the kitchen trimming fat off some cold meat, and Leo got her to pour him a glass of water. He gulped it deeply before asking where his mother was.

‘Don’ ask me ’zactly where she is, dearie. She says to tell ’ee she’ll be home directly.’

Because he knew that, when Rose said ‘directly’, it meant anything from a few seconds to twenty minutes or more, Leo decided to slip up to his mother’s room at once. On the stairs his heart began to thump so hard he found it hard to catch his breath. Once in the room, he rushed to the bed and thrust his hand under it, exactly where he had first discovered the box. Nothing. He moved his hand rapidly from side to side, but still found nothing. He lay down flat and looked under the bed properly. The box had vanished. Could his mother have thrown it away because it wasn’t hers? There was a bedside table with a marble top and several drawers beneath. He opened them rapidly, and, still not finding the box, searched the drawers in the dressing table, again without success. Recalling where she had hidden her jewel case, he dragged a chair across and stood on it to look behind the wooden rim above the wardrobe.

As he raised his face above the cornice, he saw the cardboard box just inches away. Without getting down from the chair, he reached out and opened it, trembling as he did so. A grey rubbery thing regarded him like a large blind eye. He pressed it down with a finger and raised his hand quickly since it felt slightly clammy. The thing resumed its shape at once. A little talcum powder was left adhering to Leo’s finger. Too shocked to know what to do or think, he shut the lid, replaced the box, and fled from the room as soon as he had jumped down from the chair.

*

After delaying lunch for almost an hour, Andrea
decided to eat without Leo. He had seemed
reassuringly
cheerful earlier in the day, so she was shaken that he should have quit without a word just before a meal. Rose said she had seen him in the house at ten minutes of one. So why had he dashed out again?

By two, she was alarmed as well as angry. On the principle that she usually felt better doing something, she went up to Leo’s room, just to be sure he wasn’t in there, sulking. The room was empty and no more untidy than usual. On entering her own bedroom moments later, she was shocked to see, beside the tall clothes closet, the chair which she normally used when making up her face at the dressing table. Could she have carelessly forgotten to replace it, after hiding her contraceptive cap? Very likely – unless Rose had been prying. But, if she had, would she have left behind such obvious evidence of her presence as a misplaced chair? No chance. So Leo might have come in. But why would he have been searching her room in the first place? Boys his age often stole from their mother’s bags, but hers was never hidden away. The only plausible explanation was that she herself had left the chair where she had found it. Before returning it to its usual place, she got up to check that the box was still in its place. To her relief, it was.

Downstairs in the living room, she decided to call Mike to ask his advice. She was pleasantly surprised to be put through immediately. Expecting him to come up with some soothing explanation for Leo’s strange behaviour, Andrea was alarmed to detect anxiety in his voice. Mike promised to come over
as soon as he could get away – within the hour, he hoped.

After a brief silence, he said, ‘Maybe you should ’phone the sailing club to see if his dinghy’s on the hard.’

‘But where might he have gone to?’

‘Probably nowhere at all. But let’s take no chances. If the boat’s gone, I’ll find it as soon as I can. Could be sensible to check whether he’s taken any money. Maybe he’s taken off to see his father.’

‘Don’t scare me, Mike.’

‘Look, he’ll probably come waltzing home in five minutes flat. But there’s no harm being a step ahead.’

Afterwards, Andrea did not feel strong enough to search Leo’s things. His father often gave him small extra sums in addition to the half-crown he received each fortnight. So, even supposing she found Leo’s purse or billfold, she would still have no idea how much he had with him. Nor had he ever kept a diary. She hated to think that when he had seemed happy earlier in the day he might instead have been desperate. That was certainly what Mike had implied. She realised how despairing she would be feeling if he hadn’t agreed to come right over. Just hearing his voice had calmed her. It was awful to be burdening him with her problems on the eve of his departure for France, but she didn’t seem able to help herself.

Leo’s disillusion was wild and tearful, yet with his misery came moments of relief, even of euphoria. He knew the worst about his mother, and couldn’t be hurt by anything else she did. His course was simple now: to take revenge on Mike Harrington. He
imagined
Mike’s face turning brick-red, as every officer in the briefing room learned what their admired commander had been doing to a wife and mother.

The wind hummed in the spokes of Leo’s bicycle wheels and buffeted him as he swept out from between tall hedgerows onto the coast road above Porthbeer. He was an arrow of fate aimed at Harrington’s hard heart, so he lowered his head over the handlebars to make himself more arrow-like. The sailors on duty in the entrance hall would try to stop him, but he would dart past into the room where Mike was spouting. But here there was a problem. How would he know which room to head for? If he guessed wrong, he would be caught and thrown out. But if he snooped outside, he would certainly be spotted.

Leo had been pedalling ferociously, but now slowed down and even freewheeled for a while. Perhaps he ought to hide in bushes near the gate and spring out when Mike was leaving. Yet this might not be for hours, and Mike might leave alone – and then there would be no chance of shaming him.

By the time Leo reached the bridge at the head of Porthbeer Creek, his confidence was draining away. A worse problem had occurred to him. If Mike simply laughed, and said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous’, what could he shout back? ‘My mum shoves a rubber thing in her hole before she sees you’?

But even then the great pig might deny it all. ‘Watch it, laddie. You can’t go spreading lies, you know.’

And people might believe Mike. Leo braked sharply just after the bridge. They might even think some other man was stuffing his thing in her. Dipping his wick, Justin had called it once.

Sitting in the grass by the roadside, Leo suddenly felt sick. It was bad enough thinking of her in bed with dad, but it was hugely worse imagining her doing it with other men. In fact it made Leo’s cheeks burn though no one was looking. With his head right down in the grass he saw a black beetle blundering from blade to blade like an explorer in a tropical jungle. It was incredibly black and shiny, with iridescent patches on its lacquered wing cases. Maybe he should take encouragement from seeing this heroic insect battling on regardless, though often tumbling down – like Robert the Bruce having his spirits lifted by the spider. But in his case, not even
an army of plucky insects would be able to get him back on his bike to go after Mike Harrington.

Leo closed his eyes and saw the redness in his lids as he faced the sky. If there was that much blood in those flaps of skin, imagine crashing his bike – there’d be gallons of gore on the road. Oh God, if only he could forget everything, for a while, and doze in the grass like he sometimes did while waiting to go in to bat. At school his ability to do this made people think him a cool customer.

Shrill voices distracted him. They seemed to be coming closer. Leo clambered onto the parapet of the bridge and saw some boys running along the bank. One of them was holding something under his jacket. The river was narrow and fast-flowing between the piers of the bridge, its brown and peaty water flecked with foam. As the boy opened his jacket, a marmalade cat poked out its head and miaowed. The moment the animal was held up, Leo screamed. Several boys looked around uneasily. But the moment they realised it was just another boy, they took no further notice. Without more ado, the cat was flung out from the bank, high above the stream. With a terrified yowl, it hit the water. Leo screamed again as its head bobbed up several times, before disappearing.

One of the boys shouted up at Leo, ‘Wanna go in too, do ’ee?’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ cried Leo.

Laughter greeted his words, leaving him gasping, as if he’d been hit low while boxing.

‘Should’ve knawed better ’n that, should we?’ The tone of this larger boy was heavily sarcastic.

‘I say, you chaps, let’s drag the river,’ mocked another.

Leo did not realise a stick had been hurled in his direction until he heard it clatter down on the road behind him. Several of the yobs were clambering up the slope just below the bridge. Convinced they really meant to throw him in the water, Leo ran towards his bike. Ashamed to be running away, he began pedalling uphill towards the Polwherne Hotel. If he couldn’t save a cat from some village oiks, how was he going to get the better of a man like Harrington?

He was passing fields and hedgerows again. Cows stared at him over a gate and he screamed at them, ‘I’m going to show him. I bloody am.’ But it was bosh, and even the Guernseys seemed to know it. The only thing that kept him pedalling was his memory of his father’s stupid niceness to Mike. It made Leo want to cry and punch the air at the same time.

Some distance from the crown of the hill, Leo had to get off and push. Some sort of bird of prey was peering down at him from the top of a telegraph pole, but he never managed a second look to identify it. At that moment he heard a motorbike and the bird took wing.

Unable to see over the rise ahead, Leo couldn’t be sure it was
him,
but already his heart was racing. The engine noise was louder now, though muffled by the rushing of his blood. Who else, down here, owned a powerful motorbike? Leo stopped pushing his bike, and stood still, eyes fixed on the square of blue between the hedgerows.

As machine and rider burst upwards into the empty space, they seemed to hang in the air, so fast were they travelling. But Leo hadn’t a moment’s doubt – the flying jacket, the make of motorbike, the absence of a helmet – it was
him
for sure. Fury made his legs tremble. He swore but made no sound. Suddenly his whole body responded with pent-up violence. Though his cycle was between his legs and facing uphill, he managed to wrench the handlebars sideways and literally flung himself into Mike’s path. Tyres screamed and smoked and a chalky face blurred past him like a shooting star. The Velocette ripped into the verge, missing Leo by inches, tearing up clods and hurtling on downhill in a careering skid. Mike regained control, a split second too late to avoid clipping the bank. He spun round so fast, Leo wasn’t sure if he hit the gate, going backwards or sideways, or even whether he was upright at the time.

The splintering crash of timber, the bellowing of cattle, and the eery absence of engine noise a second later left Leo standing frozen, as if his joints had fused. His mouth was dry and he retched without being sick.

I’ve killed him. Jesus Christ! Someone may drive past at any minute. His own position and the
twisting
skid mark on the road would tell them
everything
. Knowing he should rush to offer first aid, Leo couldn’t even look in that direction. In a moment of blind rage he’d wanted to kill his enemy. Not any more. Now all he wanted was to avoid detection. Even as he pushed his bike over the brow of the hill
and pedalled away, Leo was telling himself he would go back when he felt calmer. He’d meant Mike no harm. Really he hadn’t.

He imagined his mother weeping at the funeral. She would pretend she was grieving for an ordinary friend, and dad would be fooled. ‘Why the hell did you stop in a place like that, Leo? Slap in the middle of the road. You
must
have heard his engine.’

Leo pictured his mother. At this moment she’d probably be reading a book or chatting with Rose – a day like any other. In the Polwherne Hotel the naval bods would be carrying on as usual, too.

By now, Leo was cycling past the woods which he and Justin had stumbled through on their way to the river. Dismounting, he wheeled his bicycle between the trees. He would wait here among the oaks and hollies for an hour or two – long enough for a passer-by to see the smashed gate and enter the field. The cows would have strayed onto the road and the farmer would be called. If Mike was dead, or badly injured, he would be found and taken away. Leo couldn’t decide how soon to go home. In case Mike had survived, it might be safer to return at once and tell mum it had all been Mike’s fault. ‘He was going so fast I could hardly see him. Damned near killed me.’

Even if Mike gave his version later, mum wouldn’t know which was true. So why go back to the field at all? To see if it looked as if Mike had bought it. If the Velocette was a blood-stained heap of scrap, Leo reckoned he’d be better off saying nothing to his mother. But how could he be sure he was a goner,
even if the bike was a write-off? Sometimes people survived really dreadful accidents. Around him, the earth was carpeted with bluebells, but he was too jittery to notice. Suddenly he knew he didn’t want Mike to be dead. What made him want to vomit was not knowing if he was. A new thought tormented him. If Mike had continued straight on, instead of veering, he would have hit the cycle’s front wheel and brushed it aside without harming himself. Instinct made him swerve like that. It wasn’t to save me. Pure instinct. He didn’t give me a thought. But what if the opposite was true? Alone among the bluebells, Leo started to scream.

Leo was cycling again, as fast as he knew how, scraping his legs as the grocer’s van whizzed by, forcing him into the hedgerow. But now he
had
to know Mike’s fate. He imagined him lying bleeding and couldn’t bear it another minute. Thank God the van driver had come past that broken gate. If a body had been lying there, he would have stopped for sure. Yet by the time Leo approached the field, he didn’t know what to expect. Mike’s body could have been flung behind the bank.

Leo tiptoed through the space where the gate had been. Bits of broken wood were scattered in front of him. On the far side of the meadow, a farmer and his dog were driving fawn-coloured cows into another field. Nearer to hand, Leo saw a beast lying motionless on its side. One of its legs was twisted oddly. On coming closer, he noticed a bleeding hole in its head as if it had been shot. The Velocette was propped against the bank near the shattered gate.
Apart from a torn front tyre, not a lot seemed wrong with it – nothing obvious anyway, except for a few dents and scratches. He knelt to take a better look. No blood anywhere. Maybe the front wheel was a little bent, but it was hard to be sure without getting it to turn. But Mike was going to be all right. Leo’s chest swelled. He wanted to pray to God, which he hardly ever did. In fact he didn’t do it now either, because already Mike could be walking into Trevean Barton, or have reached the telephone box in Porthbeer.

Must tell it my way first, thought Leo, running to his bike. Now he was sure Mike was alive, he no longer felt bad about planning to tell lies to get the better of him. Mike had lied, too.

*

At first overjoyed to see her son, Andrea was soon regarding him with bafflement. Leo had just told her, stammering with rage, that Mike’s motorbike had missed him by inches and had sped on by.

‘But, sweetheart, he couldn’t have seen you.’

‘Yes, he did, mother.’

‘Though he was driving so fast?’

‘He saw me.’

Dazed by his anger, Andrea murmured, ‘I guess he stopped someplace along the lane?’

‘I didn’t hang around to look.’

‘Why was that?’

‘He could have been mad at me.’

Andrea shook her head as if to clear it. ‘After driving too fast,
he
would be mad at
you
?’
From the beginning she had suspected that events might
not have been as Leo had described them and now she felt certain.

As if sensing her doubts, Leo muttered grudgingly, ‘I may have been a few feet out from the side of the road.’

‘But he was still driving too fast?’

‘Lots too fast. He must have had a hell of a shock when he saw me trying to scram.’

‘But I’m sure he was relieved.’

Leo hung his head. ‘I think I moved the wrong way, mum. I didn’t have time to think.’

Fear clawed at the pit of her stomach. ‘He wasn’t hurt, was he? Look at me, Leo. He didn’t fall off?’

His eyes would not meet hers. ‘No.’

‘How do you know if you didn’t hang around?’ She knew her voice had risen sharply but could not help it.

‘I saw he’d made it round the corner.’ Oh God, thought Andrea, Mike would have been on his way to see me when this happened. To her amazement Leo cried angrily, ‘I got a worse shock than him. He shouldn’t zoom along country lanes at ninety mph scaring the daylights out of people.’

‘All right, darling,’ she mumured, feeling too sick and anxious to continue the conversation. The only important thing now was to get to the telephone before him when Mike called.

*

They met on the headland at the mouth of the
estuary
, Mike having arrived in the automobile in which she had first kissed him – the one with RN painted on the hood in chipped white letters. It was late
afternoon but the sun had not quite lost its warmth. Across the wind-flattened grass, banks of rose-pink thrift fluttered bravely. The headland was known locally as the Beacon after one of the many bonfires, warning of the Spanish Armada’s approach, which had been lit there – another interesting local fact that Andrea had never managed to share with the boys.

They had left their automobiles on a farm track and walked down, hand in hand, onto the
flat-topped
bluff. Mike’s left hand was bandaged. Not a deep cut, he’d told her on the telephone. There were dark circles under his eyes and he was tense and
restless
. She wanted to hold him but knew he was angry.

‘He’s a lying little toad,’ had been Mike’s first reaction when she’d relayed what Leo had said. But Andrea had found it impossible to believe that the boy had deliberately pushed himself into Mike’s path. She still couldn’t accept it.

Mike turned to her with a tight little smile. ‘Funny to think I’d be dead now if I’d hit a gatepost instead of a nice fat cow.’ As if his back was hurting, Mike eased himself onto the grass. ‘Let’s hope I’ve not used up all my luck for the month.’

‘Maybe you won’t need any for a while.’

He lay back and gazed up at the sky. ‘I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, and I could have sworn I wasn’t there. I’d left hours ago.’