Ingo (14 page)

“P
LEASE DON’T GO OFF
like that again without telling me where you’re going, Sapphire,” says Mum. “If Conor hadn’t said you were taking Sadie for a walk, I’d have been worried.”

“Sorry, Mum. It was so hot that I took Sadie to play in the stream.”

“I can see that. You’re soaked through. You’ve been gone hours.”

Only
hours
, I think. So Mer time and human time haven’t been so different from each other this time. If time is a fan, then for once it hasn’t opened wide enough to separate Mum’s time from mine. Clever Conor, to think of saying that I’d taken Sadie out. Mum wouldn’t doubt what he said, because Conor doesn’t lie.

But Conor’s just told a lie for my sake. Or maybe it was for Mum’s sake? Conor wouldn’t want Mum to be frightened.

I don’t always tell the truth, I must admit. When I was little, I used to scream and yell if people didn’t believe what I told them about fairies living in a cave I’d made for them under the rosemary bush. And I had an imaginary kitten which had to have milk every morning and only ate Whiskas, just like the cats I’d seen on TV. Dad bought a can of Whiskas for the kitten, but Mum got really annoyed and wouldn’t let me open it.

“Sapphy has a vivid imagination,” Dad said.

“Stop humoring her, Mathew. She’s got to learn the difference between what’s real and what’s not,” said Mum.

But sometimes real and not-real are hard to tell apart, and life is easier if you bend the truth just a little.

“Where’s Conor now, Mum?” I ask casually.

“He’s gone out in Roger’s boat. They were planning to take it right out, to test the new engine, and then Roger’s going to come in to take soundings by the Bawns. You know, he needs to prepare for diving there. Now, Sapphy, why don’t you go up and change and tidy your room while I finish this ironing? And then maybe you’d sort the washing for me. I need to put another load in the machine before the boys get back. The trouble with Sundays is that there’s always so much to do.”

The boys,
I think angrily. As if Roger is part of our
family. I go slowly upstairs, thinking hard. I know what
soundings
are. Roger’s trying to find out how deep the water is in different places and how difficult it will be to dive there. The Bawns are part of a reef about a mile offshore. Most of the reef is underwater, but the Bawn rocks show above the surface. The part of the rocks that you can see is black and jagged, but what you can’t see is the line of the Bawns that runs beneath the surface, like teeth. These hidden rocks are the most dangerous. In the old days, when shipping routes ran closer inshore than they do now, ships would lose their way in storms. The wind and tide would drive them onto the rocks. Sometimes, at night or in fog, a ship would break her back on the Bawns.

When the weather’s bad, the Bawns are lost in a white thunder of waves. Spray breaks and tosses high, as if the rocks themselves are spouting water, like whales. It makes me shiver to think of having to swim in those seas. Dad told me that a boy was found in our cove one morning after a wreck. He was thrown up onto the sand, still clinging to a piece of slimy wood. The people who climbed down to rescue him couldn’t get the wood out of his grasp at first.

The miracle was that the boy was still alive. They wrapped him in blankets and carried him up the cliff path and put him in front of a fire and poured brandy down him. He couldn’t speak a word that anybody understood. They never found where he came from or what language
he was speaking. They named him Paul, because St. Paul in the Bible was rescued after a shipwreck too. The Treveals took the boy in, and he grew up with their children. His grave is in the churchyard.

Shipwrecked Paul was my age. He was the only person who survived that wreck. No one ever knew where his ship came from or what cargo it was carrying. Even when he learned to speak English, he never talked about the wreck or what his life was like before he was found in the cove. On his gravestone it says that he died in 1852. He married Miriam Treveal, and they had eight children. And then maybe
those
eight children had eight children, and then those eight children had eight children, Dad said. So no doubt all of us around here have got a drop of that shipwrecked boy’s blood in us somewhere.

Dad won’t go near the Bawns, even on a calm day.

And don’t you ever go there, Sapphire, when you’re old enough to take the boat out by yourself. Those rocks are a powerful place, and they’ve got a bad appetite for boats and human flesh. To sail near them is like putting your head into a wolf ’s jaws.
After Dad said that, I could always see the shape of a wolf ’s head in the farthest of the Bawns. We never went in close, not even for fishing. But now Roger has taken Conor there. Conor must have agreed, even though he knows how bad the Bawns are.

I rush downstairs. “Mum! Did you tell Roger not to take Conor close to the Bawns?”

“Roger’s a very experienced diver, Sapphy. He knows all about risk assessment.”

“Oh, Mum! He doesn’t know this coast like we do. It’s dangerous by the Bawns.”

A shadow of fear crosses Mum’s face, but she makes a big effort and answers cheerfully. “Conor’s safe with Roger. And look how calm it is today. Now, have you sorted the washing? I want the whites first.”

“Mum, it’s the Bawns; they shouldn’t go there—” But Mum’s closed her ears. I can’t believe that this is Mum, who hates the sea and fears for everyone who goes on it. And now, the one time she should be frightened, she isn’t. Mum, who used to issue storm warnings every time Dad took me out. I can remember when I was little the way Mum used to pick me up and hug me tight after I’d come back from fishing or taking photos with Dad. She would squeeze the breath out of me with relief.

Mum even chose the back bedroom for herself and Dad, because it faced inland.

Now she lets Conor go off in Roger’s boat, even though he’s almost a stranger, and he doesn’t know a zillionth of what Dad knew about the coast and the currents here. Dad knew the sea almost as well as the Mer.

I mustn’t think about it now. I mustn’t let Mum guess about the Mer, or Ingo, or any of it. She wouldn’t understand, and it would only make her more afraid of the sea than ever.

“How long have they been gone, Mum?”

“For heaven’s sake, Sapphy, stop fussing! Conor will be fine with Roger. Roger’s got full safety equipment and his mobile phone.”

“There’s no reception out there.”

“All they’re doing is testing the engine, taking the boat near the Bawns, doing some soundings, and coming back. And then we’ll all have tea.”

I can’t believe it. Mum’s making it sound like an Enid Blyton story: have a nice adventure and then home for tea. But Ingo isn’t like that.
They weren’t anywhere near the Bawns when I saw Roger,
I want to say.
They were much farther out than that. Testing the engine, eh?
But never in a million years can I tell Mum about lying in the sunwater, far out to sea, and feeling the shadow of Roger’s boat come over me.

“There they are now!” says Mum, going to the door. She can’t stop herself from sounding relieved. She heard the sound of footsteps and voices before I did. Roger’s deep voice says something muffled, and Conor answers. Mum flushes slightly. A little smile grows at the corners of her mouth, and I know she’s happy because Roger and Conor are getting on well. But that’s what Conor is like. He’s the easy one, who makes friends everywhere he goes.

Conor and Roger take off their shoes outside the door. I stay inside.

“Is Saph back yet?” calls Conor. I can hear the anxiety
in his voice, and I wonder if Mum can.

“Yes, she’s in the kitchen,” says Mum casually, going out to meet them.

“When did she get back?”

“Oh, just a little while ago. You were right; she was out walking Sadie. You two sound as if you’ve had a good time.”

“We have,” says Roger heartily. “Or at least
I
have. It was a pleasure to have you along, Conor.”

What a creep. But then I hear Conor. “Yes, it was good. Can we go out again next time you’re down?”

“No problem,” agrees Roger. “I’m grateful for the local knowledge. I’d have scraped when we came off the mooring, Jennie, but for Conor.”

Conor protests that Roger would have done fine without him, and they all laugh. And now they come in through the dark doorway, blinking as people do when they’ve been out on the bright sea for hours. My eyes are already used to the indoors, and so I see Roger’s face clearly. He startles when he sees me, just a little. He wants to hide it, but he can’t. He comes farther into the room, trying to look as if he isn’t staring at me. But he is. He’s measuring my face against something in his mind. He’s trying to tell himself that what he thinks he’s seen out on the deep water can’t possibly be true.

“Hi, Roger,” I say cheerfully. Mum gives me a pleased look, because I’m being friendly at last and forgetting all
that nonsense about not liking Roger.

“Let’s all have some tea,” she says. “I’ve made a coffee-and-walnut cake.”

“Wow, coffee and walnut, my favorite,” says Roger enthusiastically. But he is still staring at me, and a frown knits on his forehead. Maybe he isn’t going to enjoy the coffee-and-walnut cake quite as much as Mum hopes.

Roger’s not the only one who is watching me. Conor sends me a meaningful look.
“Upstairs,”
he mouths silently. Aloud, he says, “Be down in just a minute, Mum. Got to change my jeans—there was water in the bottom of the boat.”

But Conor’s jeans are dry. Another lie for Conor. I follow him upstairs. If he keeps on lying like this, how long will it be before people stop always believing him?

“What are you playing at?”
whispers Conor angrily as soon as we get to the top of the stairs. He grabs my arms so I have to turn and face him.

“What d’you mean? Shut up, Conor, they’ll hear! You’re hurting my arms.”

“No, I’m not,” says Conor. “I never hurt you. Saph, you must be crazy. First of all you go to Ingo again, and on your own. How many times do I have to warn you?”

“It was all right, Con. Their time was nearly the same as ours today.”

“Today, maybe,” says Conor grimly. “You were lucky. I had a feeling it would be okay, though, I don’t know why.
I wasn’t as frightened as I was the time before. So I made up some stuff for Mum about Jack calling to ask if you’d walk Sadie because he was going surfing.”

“Conor, you’re such a bad liar. The sea’s flat.”

“Yes, but Mum didn’t think of that. You got away with it this time. Or at least you nearly did.
Roger saw you.
Now he’s trying to convince himself it was some weird refraction of your image. You know, like a mirror image of you got beamed up into the air and reflected underwater, because of freak weather conditions.”

“He can’t believe that. It’s impossible.”

“Not as impossible as looking over the side of the boat and seeing you relaxing underwater with a big smile on your face. And seeing that you didn’t need to breathe. And you were miles out as well.”

“Did you see me too?”

“No. He didn’t say anything straightaway. I guessed something was wrong because of the way he went all still and tense, but I don’t know him well enough to ask. Then after a while he turned round and said he’d seen something that couldn’t possibly be there. A girl underwater. Not a drowned girl, but a real girl looking up at him. And then he said: ‘You’re not going to believe this, Conor, but she looked exactly like your sister. She could have been her twin.’ And then he started saying that stuff about light rays bending and images refracting. But I knew he didn’t really believe it; he was just trying to convince himself. So
I said that there have always been mermaids around here, and maybe you had a mermaid double. That made him laugh.”

“He laughed at the Mer?”

“Sapphire,
please
. I was
trying
to make him laugh. I wanted him to think it was all crazy and impossible and so he couldn’t have seen anything. He said, ‘Well, one thing I know for sure is that your sister isn’t a mermaid. I’ve seen her walking, and she definitely has two feet.’

I can’t stop myself. I glance down at my legs to make sure, and yes, there are my feet, safely inside my shoes. Relax, Sapphire, relax. Conor is on your side. He’s only trying to cover up for you and make Roger believe that he can’t have seen you down there in the sunwater.

“I’m sorry, Con,” I say. “I know you still do.”

“Still do what?” asks Conor blankly.

“Still care about Dad. Still want him to come back.”

“Of course I do,” says Conor impatiently, as if he’s forgotten all about our argument. “But, Saph, listen—”

“What?”

“You don’t need to be so against Roger. He’s all right.”

“He is not all right! He’s a diver. He’s the enemy of the Mer.”

Conor doesn’t answer for a little while. He watches my face very carefully, and then he says, in a cautious voice, “But Sapphire,
you’re
not Mer, are you? You belong to the Air. You’re human. Like me and Mum and Roger.”

“I’m
not
like Roger!” I spit out, before I know what I’m going to say.

“But you are like me, aren’t you?” Conor goes on, still in that careful voice, as if he’s not quite sure what I might do or say next. “We’re brother and sister. Same genes.
Human
genes, Saph.”

“Yes,” I say uncertainly. Of course I belong with Conor, my brother. But I’m remembering what I said to the dolphins.
I belong in Ingo too.
Even though Faro is right, and what I know about Ingo is as small as a grain of sand, I don’t feel like a stranger there. I feel different when I’m in Ingo. More alive. More—more
myself
.

“Conor. Tell me truthfully. Do you truly believe that we’re all Air and not Mer at all? You and me, I mean?”

“But Saph, what else could we be but human? We’ve got a human mother and a human father. That makes us a hundred percent human. Why do you want to believe anything different?”

“I don’t know.” Suddenly I feel tired all over. Conor is standing right next to me, but he’s far away. “I don’t know why I believe it, but I can’t help it. I
feel
it, Conor. When I’m in Ingo, I’m free. I can go anywhere, wherever I want.”