Lucas (3 page)

So, right or wrong, I just went along with it.

‘Cait?'

‘Yeah, who was that?'

‘What?'

‘I thought you were talking to someone.'

‘Nah, it's the telly. I was just turning it down. Anyway,
are you still all right for tomorrow?'

‘What time?'

‘I'll meet you at the bus stop at two—'

‘Why don't I come round to your place? We can walk over together.'

‘No, I have to go somewhere first. I'll meet you at two.'

‘The bus goes at ten to.'

‘All right, quarter to, then. What are you wearing?'

‘Wearing? I don't know, nothing special – why?'

‘No reason, I just thought it'd be fun to spice it up for a change.'

‘Spice it up?'

‘You know, skirt, heels, skinny top …'

I laughed. ‘We're only going to Moulton.'

‘Yeah, well … you look nice when you get dressed up. You should do it more often. You can't wear those worn-out shorts and a T-shirt
all
the time.'

‘I
don't
.'

‘Yes, you do. Shorts and a T-shirt in summer, jeans and a jumper in winter—'

‘What's wrong with that?'

‘Nothing – all I'm saying is, you've got to make an effort now and then. Show a bit of leg, bit of belly, slap a bit of lippy on, you know …'

‘We'll see. Maybe …'

‘Oh, go on, Cait. It'll be a laugh.'

‘I said maybe—'

‘You never know, we might bump into someone decent … what's Dom doing tomorrow? Bumpety bump—'

‘Look, Bill—'

‘Oops – gotta go. I think I heard Mum coming back and I've still got a ciggy going. I'll see you tomorrow at two—'

‘Quarter to— Bill?'

But she'd already hung up.

I put the phone down and went into the kitchen. The house was quiet. Faint sounds drifted in the silence – the soft tap-tapping of Dad's keyboard, the drone of an aeroplane high in the sky, the distant cry of a lone gull. Through the window I could see the container ship drifting round the Point, its vast grey hulk weighed down with a cargo of multicoloured metal crates. The sky above it was clouding over a little but the sun was still warm and bright, bathing the island in a gauze of pale pink.

I like this time of day. When the light glows softly and there's a sense of sleepiness to the air – it's as if the island is breathing out after a long hard day, getting ready for the night. During the summer I often sit in the kitchen for an hour or two, just watching the sky change colour as the sun goes down, but that evening I couldn't settle. I'm a worrier, just like Dad. I was worried about him. I was worried about Dominic, how he'd changed so much in the last year. And the boy on the Stand … it worried me why I couldn't stop thinking about him … and Bill … I wished I hadn't called her. I wished we weren't going into town tomorrow. I wished … I don't know. I wished I didn't have to grow up. The whole thing was just too depressing.

I called Deefer and headed off down the lane.

The thing about Dad is, he's got far too much sadness in his bones. You can see it in the way he walks, the way he looks at things, even in the way he sits. When I left the house that evening I looked over at his study window and saw him hunched at his desk, staring at his computer screen, smoking a cigarette and sipping Irish whiskey. He looked so sad I felt like crying. It was that unmasked look of sadness you rarely see, the look of someone who thinks
they're alone so they don't have to hide it any more.

It's Mum, of course. He's been alone with his sadness ever since she died.

It's not that he doesn't talk to me about her – he does. He tells me how wonderful she was, how pretty she was, how kind, how thoughtful, how funny she was – ‘God, Cait, when Kathleen laughed it made your heart sing.' He tells me how happy they were together. He shows me photographs, reads me her poems, tells me how much I remind him of her … he
tells
me how sad he is. But he won't take his own advice – he won't give his sadness some life.

I don't know why.

Sometimes I think it's because he
wants
the sadness to die inside him. That if it dies inside him, he's keeping it from me. But what he doesn't realise is that I don't
want
to be excluded from his sadness. I want some of it. I want to feel it, too. She was my mum. I hardly knew her, but the least he could do is let me share in her dying.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

I don't even know if it's true.

But it's what I was thinking.

Down at the creek, Deefer had ambled onto the little wooden bridge and was staring at a family of swans – an adult pair and three large cygnets. One of the adults was making a show of defending its brood, approaching Deefer with spread wings, an arched neck, and a loud hiss. Deefer couldn't care less. He's seen it all before. He just stood there staring and gently wagging his tail. After a minute or two the swan gave up, shook its head, and paddled back to its family.

The creek lies in a sunken valley that runs parallel to
the beach, stretching all the way from the middle of the island right up to the mud flats across from the Point. Between the creek and the beach there's a broad spread of saltmarsh, a pale green carpet of glasswort and purslane dotted with countless muddy pools fringed with reeds and rushes. If you know your way around, which I do, there are tracks through the saltmarsh that cut across to the beach. Otherwise you have to follow the creek path all the way up to the west end of the beach where the marshes thin out and merge into the shore, or else cut through a maze of dunes and gorse to the east and follow it round to the shallow bay beside the mud flats.

I called Deef and we cut across the saltmarsh, emerging onto the beach by the old concrete pillbox. The sea breeze was strengthening as we made our way down towards the shoreline, scenting the air with a mixture of salt and sand and unknown things that only dogs can smell. While Deefer trotted along with his head in the air, sniffing out the stories of his world, I paused for a moment and listened to the sounds of the sea. The waves lapping gently on the shore, the wind in the air, the rustling sand, the seabirds … and beneath it all, or above it all, the faint bubbling of the mud flats beside the Point.

The Point is the easternmost end of the island, a slim finger of shingle bounded by the open sea on one side and mud flats on the other. When the tide is out you can see the remains of ancient boats that have been sucked down and lost in the depths. Like skeletons of long-dead beasts, their stripped and blackened frames emerge from the ooze, giving stark warning of the dangers that lurk in the mud. Beyond the mud flats, a tangle of stunted woodland darkens a rugged islet in the mouth of the estuary. The tiny island overlooks the shore with a haunting blend of beauty
and menace, the limbs of its wizened trees twisted by the wind and tide into strange grasping shapes, like misformed hands reaching out for help.

Even in the height of summer this part of the beach is usually deserted. Visitors to the island generally keep to the west side, the village side, where the sand is soft and there's space for parking, where there's a country park (a field with litter bins), cliff walks, kite-flying, ice cream vans, a bandstand – there are even plans to open a caravan park. But that's another world. Down here on the east of the island the only people you're likely to see are locals, fishermen, dog walkers, the occasional anorak with a metal-detector, and sometimes, late on a summer's night, illicit lovers in the dunes.

That evening, though, as the light was beginning to fade, the beach was empty. A raw breeze was blowing in from the sea and the temperature was starting to drop. It wouldn't be long before the chill of night closed in, and all I had on – as Bill had kindly pointed out – was a T-shirt and a pair of worn-out shorts. So, rubbing my arms, I called Deef again and got going, heading briskly along the beach towards the Point.

Without really meaning to, I started thinking about the boy on the Stand again, wondering who he was, where he was going, what he was doing here … making up stories in my mind. He was an islander's son, I imagined, he'd been away for a while, in the army perhaps, maybe even in prison, and now he was coming home. His father was a white-haired old man who lived alone in a tiny old fisherman's cottage. He would have spent all day cleaning the place up, getting something nice to eat, fixing up the spare room for his boy …

No, I thought. The boy's not old enough to have been
in the army. What is he? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen? I pictured his face again, and – damn it – my heart actually skipped a beat. Those pale blue eyes, that raggedy hair, that smile … I could see it all quite clearly. But the odd thing was, no matter how hard I studied the face in my mind, it was impossible to tell how old the boy was. One second he looked about thirteen; the next, he was a young man – eighteen, nineteen, twenty …

Very odd.

But anyway, I decided, he couldn't be an islander's son, he didn't look right. Islanders – and the offspring of islanders – have a particular look about them. They're short and dark, with lidded eyes and wiry hair to combat the wind, and even if they're not short and dark, with lidded eyes and wiry hair, they look as if they should be. The Boy – I was thinking of him now as the Boy – the Boy wasn't an islander. The face in my mind wasn't worn by the wind. The face in my mind was the face of a boy from nowhere.

Maybe he's looking for work? I thought. Or looking for someone? A girl, a sweetheart – or an enemy, perhaps? Someone who's wronged him. Someone who's offended his honour. He's travelled the length and breadth of the country in search of …

I stopped, suddenly aware of what I was thinking. My
God
, Caitlin, I thought. What the hell are you
doing?
Sweethearts? Enemies? Honour? It's Mills & Boon stuff. It's embarrassing. Look at yourself. You're acting like a dumb little girl swooning at some dopey-looking pop star in a magazine. For goodness sake, girl, get a grip. Grow up. Grow up, grow up, grow up …

I shook my head and started walking again.

It's hard to think about growing up when you're right
in the middle of it. It's hard to know what you want. Sometimes there are so many voices in your head it's difficult to know which of them is yours. You want this; you want that. You think you want this; but then you want that. You think you ought to want this; but everyone says you're supposed to want that.

It's not easy.

I remember one time, when I was about ten or eleven, I came home from school crying my eyes out because the other kids had been calling me a baby. After Dad had comforted me and waited patiently for the tears to dry up, he sat me down and gave me some advice. ‘Listen, Cait,' he said. ‘You'll spend half your childhood wishing you were grown up, and then, when you
are
grown up, you'll spend half your time wishing you were a child again. So don't go worrying too much about what's right or wrong for your age – just do whatever you want.'

That got me thinking about Dad again, about his loneliness, his writing, his drinking … and then an unexpected movement caught my eye and all my thoughts disappeared. There was someone swimming in the sea, just off the Point, heading towards the beach. And I was suddenly aware that it was getting dark, and I was cold, and I didn't know where Deefer was.

‘Deefer!' I shouted, looking around. ‘Here, boy! Come here, Deef!'

I waited, listening out for the jangle of his collar, then I whistled and called out again, but there was no answer. Out in the sea the swimmer had nearly reached the beach. I shielded my eyes to get a better look. It was a young, fairhaired man wearing dark swimming goggles. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but the light was unclear and I couldn't make out a face. Whoever it was,
though, he was a good swimmer. As he moved closer to the shore I could hear the steady slap of his hands slicing through the water. Slap … slap … slap … a strangely eerie sound.

I looked around and called out for Deefer again. No reply. I looked everywhere – back along the beach, along the fringes of the saltmarsh, over at the mud flats. Nothing. No black dog, no sign of life at all. Just me and a slightly unnerving figure in dark goggles, who at that moment was wading out of the sea and crunching up the shingle towards me. Tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered, wearing a pair of tight trunks, a fancy black watch, and nothing else. A thin-lipped, mocking grin creased his mouth, and as he got closer I noticed that his skin was smeared with some kind of oil, or clear grease. Water rolled from his skin, pearled with tiny rainbows.

‘Well, if it isn't little Caity McCann,' he said, removing his goggles and smiling at me. ‘What a
pleasant
surprise.'

‘Oh – Jamie,' I said hesitantly. ‘What are you doing here?'

As he carried on towards me, adjusting his trunks and grinning his grin, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Jamie Tait – son of Ivan Tait, local landowner, wealthy businessman, and Member of Parliament for Moulton East – was the closest thing to a celebrity the island has ever produced. Captain of the County Schools Junior Rugby XV, national swimming champion at sixteen, and now a rising star in his second year at Oxford University.

Jamie Tait was a Bright Young Thing.

Or, as Dad would have it, the biggest little shite on the island.

He'd stopped about a metre away from me and was flicking his goggles against his leg, breathing heavily and
looking me up and down.

‘So, what do you think, Cait?' he said. ‘Have I still got it?'

‘Got what?'

He flicked wet hair from his eyes. ‘The style, the stuff … I saw you watching me.'

‘I wasn't
watching
you, I was looking for my dog.'