Deep Water (11 page)

‘This is spiffing,’ shrilled Leo, with a tremor in his voice.

‘Sweetheart,’ urged Andrea, ‘You
must
turn around now.’ Leo’s knees were shaking and not just, she guessed, with physical strain. He was clearly
desperate
to impress Justin.

‘We’ll just make it,’ boasted Leo.

Fifteen yards from the foaming bows of the trawler, with collision moments away, Andrea tried to wrench the tiller from Leo’s hand. But he clung on so tightly that she could not take it from him.

Summoning up all her classroom authority, she roared, ‘Do it now!’

Leo seemed incapable of action, gazing ahead as if mesmerised. Andrea reached again for the tiller just as the air was shaken by three peremptory blasts from the ship’s hooter. Within yards of the trawler’s overhanging bow, Leo lost his nerve and put the helm over without a word of warning. Justin was late clambering across and failed to free the jib sheets, which tripped Andrea, sending her sprawling across the centre-plate casing.

The boat lost the wind completely under the trawler’s side and lay wallowing next to her, sails flapping, as the larger vessel slipped by. As the dinghy cleared the trawler’s stern, a savage squall hit her. Totally unprepared, Leo clung to the mainsheet and watched in amazement as a wall of green water swept over the gunwale.

As the boat capsized, Andrea got a foot on the now horizontal mast and sprang onto the rising gunwale a split second before it plunged towards
the water. As if on a pivoting seesaw, she flung herself forward and grabbed at the planks of the hull. Climbing this ladder of ridges like a squirrel in a wheel, she was awed to see the centre-plate rise up in front of her, like Excalibur. As the boat settled, Andrea grasped the vertical plate and twisted round to see what had happened to the boys. Justin was in the water, swimming towards her, and Leo was nowhere to be seen. As she opened her mouth to scream, he bobbed up from under the sail. Though grateful to be pulled onto the hull, both boys were appalled that Andrea had kept dry. Shivering and gasping, they glanced at one another and then looked away, too embarrassed by their predicament to want to share it.

On the upturned hull, the three of them watched in silence as the trawler’s stern grew smaller. Andrea fancied she knew exactly what the boys were feeling. Because it would be humiliating to be rescued by the Royal Navy, they dreaded seeing the trawler turn back.

‘She’s slowing down,’ groaned Leo.

Seconds later a small motorboat was swung out from the trawler’s stern. Fighting an urge to look for make-up in her canvas bag, Andrea patted her windswept hair. At least her slacks were not clinging wetly to her hips and bottom.

‘Oh God,’ gasped Justin. ‘It’s
him
. What can I say? He’s going to kill me for coming so close.’

Recognising Lieutenant Commander Harrington at almost the same moment, Andrea soothed, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with him.’

‘Silly idiot,’ Justin hissed at Leo from between chattering teeth.

Harrington was accompanied by two ratings, one standing beside him in the stern steering the launch, another in the bow armed with a boathook with which he fished up the dinghy’s painter. When he had secured it, the other rating brought the side of the motorboat up against the stern of the dinghy so that Andrea and the two boys could crawl along the upturned hull to their rescuers’ craft without falling into the water again.

As Andrea stepped into the motorboat, Harrington bowed respectfully. ‘I do believe you’re dry as a bone, Mrs Pauling.’ He added
sotto
voce,
‘Plays the piano
and
walks on water.’

‘I’m sorry,’ blurted out Justin.

Harrington looked down at him gravely. ‘I can’t
keep
pulling you out of the drink, you know.’ He tossed him a blanket, and one of the sailors gave one to Leo.

‘It was my fault, sir,’ mouthed Leo, shivering so much that he was scarcely comprehensible. ‘I thought I could get across your bows.’

‘Well don’t be such a daft little beggar again.’ Harrington’s tone was severe enough to frighten Leo, but he was smiling kindly when he turned to Justin. ‘Have
you
tried helming?’

‘Nobody’s ever taught me.’

‘You couldn’t do any worse than your friend. I’ll try and find someone to teach you. Where are you staying?’

‘Prospect House, Trevean Barton,’ Justin told him.

‘But only till the twenty-fifth,’ put in Andrea.

‘I need lessons, too,’ murmured Leo.

Although Andrea normally thought that headgear, worn tipped back, looked silly, she was puzzled to find herself thinking that Harrington’s officer’s hat was elegantly raffish worn that way. Even in a grubby white sweater and a blue jacket without any badges of rank, his appearance struck her as workmanlike and attractive. While he steered the boat very slowly ahead, the two sailors moved to the bows where they raised the sailing boat’s mast from the water. Having righted the dinghy, they began baling with a couple of buckets until one of them was able to get aboard and lower the sails.

‘You can empty her properly on the sailing club’s slip,’ Harrington told Leo. ‘We’re only taking out enough to be able to tow her.’

‘Aren’t we going aboard the big boat?’ asked Justin plaintively.

‘Ask me that again, and I’ll think you capsized just to get taken on board.’

With the two sailors back aboard the motorboat, Harrington opened the throttle. He was standing looking straight ahead with the tiller in his hand. And because she was sitting nearby, Andrea could not help looking up in order to speak to him.

‘I feel very bad about what I said to you that time.’

‘Sorry?’ He raised a hand to his ear.

The engine was making so much noise that she had to move very close to him in order to be heard without shouting. ‘I feel bad because I disparaged your work.’

‘Join the club.’

‘My husband’s been working in the naval
dockyard
.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Designing a …’

He threw up his hands before clasping the tiller again. ‘You mustn’t tell me.’ He was smiling, but she knew he was serious. His face was very brown and she noticed a network of fine lines around his eyes as if they were often screwed up staring into the distance – as he was doing now.

‘Someone mentioned what your work was.’

‘Who did?’

‘A man in the dockyard.’

‘Your husband reported this person, I hope?’

‘I’ll ask him. Commander, will you please accept my apologies for what I said.’

‘Best forget it.’

His attitude stung Andrea. ‘You’re rejecting my apology?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ He kept looking ahead. ‘Of course I accept.’

‘Thank you.’

After that he remained silent. Remembering Sally’s warning about security, Andrea feared he was
worrying
about the indiscreet dockyard worker she had invented. But as they approached the slipway, he cut the throttle right back and said, ‘I liked the way you stood up for Justin the other day.’

When one of the sailors had untied the dinghy’s painter and grounded her on the hard, the other rating helped Andrea and the boys ashore.

‘Keep out of trouble,’ Harrington shouted above the noise of the engine.

As the launch surged seawards he waved and the boys waved back. An arrowhead of foam fanned from the bows, spreading lace-ribbons far astern. Out on the river, Andrea saw the trawler slowly approaching her buoy. There were now as many ships at the anchorage as there had been four days ago, yet Andrea did not experience the sense of relief she had expected. Within a week or two these ships would sail and the hateful waiting would begin again.

On the first morning after his return, Peter enjoyed having breakfast in bed, while Leo sprawled across the quilt at his feet and Andrea chatted to them from the window seat. The past few days had been extraordinarily tense for Peter but the modifications to the bridge had finally been successful, and now he could think of nothing more enjoyable than relaxing with his wife and entertaining the boys. When he suggested another coastal walk to Andrea, and she declined to accompany him, Peter assumed that she must still think him partly to blame for his recent absence. Otherwise she would not be denying him the pleasure of winning back the leisure activity they had enjoyed most before his illness. But though it was unfair of her, Peter had no intention of sulking. In any case what could he say that he hadn’t said before? The work in Falmouth had been urgent and unavoidable, and for him to apologise for it would be absurd. He had hated going and had made this clear at the time. To remind Andrea now would be
to treat her like a child. As Peter came downstairs, his wife took herself off to another room, so he assumed she would prefer him to devote the morning to the boys.

There was a stream at the far end of the garden and he led them there first. Peering from the
dining
room window, Andrea could see her husband, with his two Wellington-booted acolytes at his side, splashing along in the streambed looking important, as men often did when engaged in some joint
venture
involving planning. When they returned to the house, Leo and Justin busied themselves with fret saws, cutting out two large circles of plywood from opposite sides of a tea chest which Peter had found in the garage. He also produced a rusty bicycle wheel and a number of empty cocoa tins, and then tantalised the boys by not explaining exactly how they would fit together. Although Andrea knew just how marvellous he was with children – setting them guessing and then sharing their excitement as their deductions brought them closer to his intentions – today, because he hadn’t said anything to show that he regretted having been away, she could not enjoy watching him with the boys. His suggestion of a walk had also amazed her. How could he have imagined that she would want to repeat the experience of their abortive attempt to reach the headland?

Because it was Saturday, the village school would be empty so Andrea decided to use her borrowed keys for the first time. She would play the school piano until lunch.

She had feared it might be depressing to enter the school when it was silent and empty, but when she actually unlocked the mock Gothic door and went in the children’s paintings immediately cheered her. Mercifully, the joys of fiddling around with cogwheels and copper wire had not yet claimed them.

Andrea unlocked the piano and started to play. The need to think of anything except the music slipped from her shoulders like an unwanted coat.

*

While he and Justin were cutting the cocoa tins in half and bolting them together with Meccano, Leo felt hurt that his friend seemed so uninvolved in what they were doing. He had often been distant and secretive at school but this was little comfort. Earlier in the morning, Justin had announced, out of the blue, that when he had climbed aboard the naval trawler he had found fishing nets and floats.

‘Why would stuff like that be on a warship?’ he had asked Leo, unaware that it had been unfriendly of him to keep this information to himself for a week.

‘Maybe the navy found the nets in the sea. Fishing boats lose them in storms sometimes.’

‘That’s possible,’ Justin conceded, making it clear to Leo that he thought Harrington’s people had bought the nets for their own purposes.

‘Why do
you
think they have nets, Justin?’

‘I dunno yet.’

And that had been all he had been prepared to say. The worst thing about having Justin to stay,
thought Leo, was being obliged to admit that part of the reason for being his friend had been because other boys had been impressed.

As soon as his father had made a drawing of the half cocoa tins bolted together in a circle and mounted on the bicycle axle between the plywood circles, Leo wanted to cheer. It was easy to imagine the wheel turning the moment a regular flow of water began filling each cocoa tin in turn.

‘Of course we’ll have to dam the stream,’ said Peter, ‘or this will be useless.’ He waved his drawing at the boys and limped away to look for some bricks to form the base of a dam.

Justin was frowning. ‘Isn’t he taking a lot of trouble to make a waterwheel? What will it
do,
anyway?’

‘Turn, of course.’

‘I realised
that
.’

Suddenly, Leo was close to tears. ‘We’re bloody lucky my dad wants to do this with us.’

‘I never said we weren’t.’

Remembering how pleased Justin had been when Harrington had been nice to him, Leo felt angrier. Just because he wore a uniform and ordered sailors about, it didn’t make him important. One inventor could do more to win the war than shiploads of naval nobodies. Leo decided to join his father in the stream.

‘Is your leg okay?’ the boy asked anxiously, as Peter struggled to empty a barrow full of earth in front of a row of bricks. He had got mud on his tweed jacket and on his face, too. As the contents
of his barrow splashed into the water, his trousers were soaked.

‘My leg’s fine. How’s the wheel coming along?’

‘Justin’s moaning about it.’

Peter chuckled to himself. ‘We’ll surprise him yet.’

‘Will we surprise mum, too?’

‘God knows.’ Peter looked more closely at Leo. ‘Anything wrong, old chap?’

Leo shook his head and promptly started to sniffle. ‘I missed you, dad.’

‘I missed you too, old man.’

Pressing his cheek against his father’s chest, Leo felt sad that his mother was not around to see how their project was progressing. Since the car had gone, she must have gone off somewhere on her own.

‘Will you be able to stay a week now?’ Leo knew he sounded pathetic.

‘Let’s hope so.’ Peter drew Leo closer. ‘You know I’d stay longer if I could.’

‘Why can’t someone else do your work for a week?’

‘They just can’t, I’m afraid. But I’ve got something exciting to tell you. I think we’ll be able to come back here for the summer holidays.’ Peter frowned. ‘Better keep it under your hat till I’ve told your mother.’

‘Mum’s the word.’

*

After leaving the school, Andrea drove into Porthbeer for lunch and ate a crab sandwich at the Fisherman’s Rest. She had not been back there since dropping
in with Sally on the way to Elspeth’s. Then, with her friend beside her, she had not felt self-conscious about sitting among so many men. Today she was struck by the strong smell of fish on their clothes, and by the raw redness of their skin. Sitting only feet away, she could scarcely understand a word they said. Afterwards, she walked along the shingle and listened to the sigh of each withdrawing wave and the clatter of submerged stones. She stopped before reaching the rocks and felt pleased with herself for being able to resist her desire to walk on and count the ships.

When she returned to the house, Peter was
standing
in the middle of the lawn, holding up two lengths of electrical wire. She moved a little closer, remaining partially hidden under a canopy of apple blossom.

‘Over here you two,’ Peter was shouting. The boys approached eagerly from the direction of the garage. Andrea moved closer and heard Peter say, ‘Justin, I’d like you to join these up for me.’ Justin then did something to the wires, while Leo watched. Suddenly, her son looked up and saw her. Andrea waved and crossed the lawn. Peter was smiling happily. ‘Darling, what perfect timing. We’re just about to follow the wire up to Justin’s room.’

‘I can come, too?’ She sounded surprised to be admitted to this male mystery.

‘Be our guest,’ replied Peter.

In fact he remained in the hall while everyone else climbed the stairs. On the table by Justin’s bed was a small light bulb mounted on a piece of wood.
The light it cast, though flickering, was continuous. Justin looked at Leo in astonishment and then back at the bulb.

‘Is it being lit the way I think it is?’ He sounded dazed and strangely humble.

‘Sure it is,’ cried Leo, cavorting round him.

Justin let out his breath with a whooshing noise. ‘Your dad’s damned clever, you know that.’

Downstairs, Peter clapped a hand on both boys’ shoulders. ‘Pretty impressive, eh? Better come and see the electric generator your waterwheel’s
working
. Had to keep it under wraps or I’d have given the game away.’

So they trooped over to the stream to gaze on their triumph, with Andrea following. And there it was, the clumsy looking wheel they had constructed turning freely on the bicycle axle – the cocoa tins being filled, one after the other, by a steady trickle from the overflow channel of a crudely made dam. Five hours of purposeful messing about and Peter was as happy as both the boys.

Basking in everyone’s good opinion, Peter took Andrea’s arm as they walked back to the house. ‘I think I’ll soon be working on a project that’ll bring me back to Falmouth in the summer.’

Andrea asked quietly, ‘Have you told Leo?’

‘Yes, but nothing definite.’

‘You shouldn’t have told him before me. Don’t you see that, Peter? It’s so disrespectful. Maybe I wouldn’t have minded coming back for the summer holidays, but I should have had the chance to discuss it with you first.’

His crestfallen face made her think of a
misunderstood
child. Knowing she would lose her temper if asked to spell out why the holiday hadn’t been perfect for her, she hurried into the house. As she entered the hall, Rose emerged from the kitchen and handed her an envelope.

‘Letter for ’ee.’

‘Who brought it, Rose?’

‘A sailor; not one of them officers.’

Andrea went into the sitting room and read her
letter
. Lieutenant Commander Harrington had written saying he had failed to find anyone suitable to give the boys sailing lessons, so he himself would teach them, provided they didn’t mind falling in with last minute arrangements. ‘Can we leave it that I will telephone them on any morning when I have an hour or two? I’m sure it won’t always suit them, but sometimes they won’t have made other plans.’

As she finished reading, Andrea thought how absurd it was that she’d ever thought him
insensitive
. His generosity with his free time was most unusual. At least she would be able to ask him to lunch after he had taken them on the water. Only when she recalled the explanation she had given him for knowing his real duties did her depression return. She was going to have to confess to Peter that she had said that
he
had passed on to her a dockyard worker’s indiscretion about Harrington’s work. Otherwise Peter would be in for one hell of a shock if Harrington asked him to his face whether all the workmen in the dockyard were blabberers.

They were going to bed when she eventually told
Peter that Harrington had offered the boys
sailing
lessons. Then she made her confession. Her timing was poor, since Peter was tired. He was also breathless, having just taken off his trousers – a troublesome procedure involving balancing on one foot while trying to shake the garment off his unbending leg.

As Andrea finished speaking, Peter sank back onto the bed and said despondently, ‘I still can’t understand why you couldn’t have told him that the doctor’s wife was your source.’

‘She asked me not to.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘But my dear Andrea, by attributing the leak to me and some nameless dockyard fitter, you’ve given him the impression that there’s virtually no security down there. If Harrington insists on an investigation, he’d be a hundred per cent right.’

While conceding that Peter had good reason to be annoyed, Andrea found his ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ tone needlessly humiliating. ‘Okay, I guess I’ve made a big mistake,’ she admitted breezily. ‘So I’ll see him and fix things.’

Later, when Peter moved towards her in bed, making clear what he wanted, Andrea didn’t feel able to refuse him. To give him another opportunity to look misunderstood and long-suffering was
absolutely
out of the question.