The Summer Book (11 page)

When the family returned to the island, they had two boats in tow. Huge bales of real black inland soil were rolled ashore and lay around near the water like sleeping elephants. Cartons and bags and baskets of plants wrapped in black plastic were carried up to the veranda, along with shrubs and whole trees with their roots in sacks, and hundreds of small peat pots full of delicate sprouts that would have to live indoors at first.

Spring was late, and there was sleet and storm every single day. They fed the fire until the stove shook, and they hung blankets in front of all the windows. They piled the suitcases against the wall and made narrow paths among the plants that stood huddled on the floor to keep warm. Occasionally, Grandmother would lose her balance and sit down on some of them, but most of these straightened up again. They stacked firewood around the stove in rows to dry, and hung up their clothes from the rafters. And the poplar tree, the cement, and the shrubs were out on the veranda, under plastic. The storm continued, and by and by the sleet turned to rain.

Sophia’s father woke up every morning at six o’clock. He built up the fire and made sandwiches for everyone and then went out. He tore up the turf in huge sheets and picked the bedrock clean. He dug deep holes all over the island and filled the ragged scars with real black soil. He collected stones and built walls to protect these gardens from the wind, he put up trellises on buildings and trees for the climbing plants, and he dug up the marsh pond in order to put in a concrete dike.

Grandmother stood in the window and watched. “The marsh will rise eight inches,” she said. “The junipers won’t like that.”

“We’re going to have speckled pond lilies and red water lilies in there,” Sophia said. “Who cares what the junipers like?”

Her grandmother didn’t answer. But she decided that when the weather got better she would rescue the broken turf and turn it right side up, because she knew it was full of daisies.

In the evenings, Papa would light his pipe and brood over the chemical composition of the soil. Flower catalogues covered the table and the bed, and the pictures shone gaudily in the lamplight. Sophia and Grandmother learned all the names and tested each other. They printed each of them on a slip of paper.

“
Fritillaria imperialis
,” Sophia said. “
Forsythia spectabilis!
That’s a lot more elegant than ‘stepmother’.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Grandmother said. “For that matter, stepmother’s real name is
Viola tricolor
. Anyway, really elegant people don’t need nameplates.”

“Well,
we’ve
got a nameplate on our door in town,” Sophia said, and they went on with their printing.

One night the wind died down and the rain stopped. The silence woke Grandmother, and she thought: Now he’ll start planting.

The sunrise dazzled the house with light. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sea and the island steamed. Sophia’s father got dressed and went outside as quietly as he could. He took the plastic cover off the poplar and carried it down to its pit above the beach meadow. The poplar was twelve feet tall. Papa put soil around its roots and attached rope stays in every direction until it was very firmly braced. Then he carried the roses into the woods and laid them in the heather, and then he lit his pipe.

Once everything was in the earth, there was a long period of waiting. One still, warm day followed another. The Dutch bulbs opened their brown husks and grew straight up. Inside the dike, white root sprouts began moving in the slime, held in by a fine-meshed metal net that was anchored down with stones. New roots were seeking a foothold all over the island, and every stem and stalk was infused with life.

One morning, Sophia threw open the door and shouted, “Gudoshnik is coming up!”

Grandmother went out as fast as she could and put on her glasses. A slim, green spear was sticking up out of the earth, clearly and distinctly the beginning of a tulip. They studied it for a long time.

“It could be Dr. Plesman,” Grandmother said. (But in fact it was Mrs. John T. Scheepers.)

Spring rewarded Papa’s labours with great gentleness, and everything but the poplar began to grow. The buds swelled and burst into wrinkled, shiny leaves that quickly spread and enlarged. Only the poplar stood naked among its ropes and looked just the way it had when it arrived. The nice weather continued long into June, and there was no rain.

The whole island was covered with a system of plastic hoses that had already sunk halfway into the moss. The hoses were joined with brass couplings, and they all came together at a little pump that stood under a box beside the largest of the island’s natural rainwater basins. There was a huge plastic cover over the basin to keep the water from evaporating. Everything had been worked out very cleverly. Twice a week, Papa started the pump, and the warm brown water ran through the hoses and sprinklers and splashed out over the ground in a fine spray or a thick stream, depending on the type of plant and its particular needs. Some were watered only one minute, others for three minutes, or five minutes, until Papa’s egg timer rang and he turned off the precious supply.

Obviously, he could not spare any water for the rest of the island, and it slowly turned brown. The island’s own turf dried out and turned up its edges like slices of old sausage, several spruces died, and every morning the weather was just as relentlessly beautiful. In along the coast, thunderstorms ranged back and forth one after the other, with torrents of rain, but they never made it out to sea. The water in the big basin sank lower and lower.

Sophia prayed to God, but it didn’t help. And then one evening while Papa was doing the watering, the pump made a dreadful gurgling noise and the hose went slack. The basin was completely empty, and the plastic cover stuck to the bottom in a million wrinkled folds.

Sophia’s father walked around thinking for one whole day. He made calculations and drew plans and took the boat in to the shop to use the phone. A great heatwave settled over the island, which looked more and more exhausted every day. Papa went in to the shop to use the phone again. Finally he took the bus into town, and Sophia and Grandmother understood that the situation had become catastrophic.

When Papa came back, he brought the enormous plastic sausage with him. It was the colour of old oranges, and its heavy folds filled half the boat. It was specially constructed. There was clearly no time to be lost, so the pump and the hoses were loaded aboard and they set off immediately.

The sea lay glossy and listless in a shroud of heat, and over the coast towered the usual wall of deceitful clouds. The gulls barely lifted as they drove by. It was a very important expedition. By the time they reached Bog Skerry, the boat was so hot the tar was running, and the plastic sausage stank horribly. Papa carried the pump up to the bog, which was large and deep and full of sedge and cotton grass. He screwed the hoses together, heaved the sausage into shallow water, and started the pump. The hose filled and straightened out across the rock, and very, very slowly the plastic sausage began to grow. Everything went according to plan and expectation, but no one dared tempt fate by talking. It grew into a colossal, shiny balloon, an orange raincloud, ready to burst with the thousands of litres of water in its belly.

“Dear God, don’t let it burst,” Sophia prayed.

And it didn’t. Papa turned off the pump and carried it down to the boat. He stowed away the hoses. He moored the sausage firmly to the stern and placed the family on the middle seat. Finally, he started the motor. The lines drew taut and the motor pulled, but the sausage didn’t move.

Papa went ashore and tried to push, but nothing happened.

“Dear God who loves little children,” Sophia whispered, “please make it come loose.”

Papa tried again and nothing happened. Then he took a run and threw himself at the plastic sausage and they both began to glide across the slippery sea grass and right on into the water in one long, gulping flow. And Sophia started to scream.

“Now don’t blame God,” said Grandmother, who was very interested in the whole procedure.

Sophia’s father climbed into the boat and started the motor with a jerk. The boat took a leap forward, pulling Sophia and Grandmother off their seat, and the enormous plastic sausage sank slowly down into the water, straining at its lines. Papa hung over the stern and tried to see what it was doing. It crept through the seaweed, and where the bay deepened it disappeared completely and pulled the motor down into the water until it spit. The family shifted their weight quickly forwards: there was less than four inches from the gunwales to the water.

“I’m not going to pray to Him again,” said Sophia.

“He knows, anyway,” said Grandmother, who was lying on her back in the bow. The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you’ve made an effort on your own.

The plastic sausage glided slowly along in the green depths where the shadow of the sea begins, a great bubble of living water. Everyone knows that rain water is lighter than salt water, but in this case, the pump had sucked in a lot of mud and sand. It was very hot in the boat, and there was a smell of petrol. The motor was working like mad. Grandmother fell asleep. The sea was as glossy as ever, and the banks of clouds had piled up high above the coast. The enormous plastic sausage rose leisurely over a reef and bounced down on the other side. The motor raced and the boat sped up and then jerked back again and took in water over the stern. And then it moved on again, but very slowly. Grandmother started snoring. A hard, dry clap of thunder rolled out between the islands, and black breezes sprang out across the water and then vanished.

As they rounded the long point, there came a second thunderclap, just as the plastic sausage slid over another reef. Grandmother woke up. She saw a short, glassy wave pour in over the stern, and she realised she was wet. The air had cooled off a little. Confused puffs of clouds were racing across the sky, and the water in the boat felt warm and pleasant. The landscape had grown darker, the shallows glowed bright yellow, and it smelled of rain. They drove slowly in towards the island while the storm laid its shadow over the sea, and all three of them sat silent and breathless in that state of uncertainty that so rarely seems exciting at the time. It was shallower here, and every time the plastic sausage struck bottom, the water level rose in the boat, until finally the sea was pouring in steadily over the railing. And just then came another clap of thunder.

Papa undid the sputtering motor and waded ashore, and Sophia followed him with the hose. Very carefully, Grandmother rolled over the side and started to wade, occasionally swimming a couple of strokes just to remember what it felt like. Then she sat down on the rock and poured the water out of her shoes. The bay was full of small, angry waves, and the plastic sausage glowed beneath the surface like an apricot from Paradise. Papa dragged and hauled, and very slowly it lifted its bright orange stomach and its brass navel towards the sky. He connected the hoses and started the pump, and a big clump of mud and sand flew straight up into the air. And after that, a stream of water slammed against the rock and sent the moss flying.

“Water! Water!” Sophia screamed, soaking wet and a little hysterical. She clasped the pulsing hose to her chest and felt it pumping water for Clematis, Nelly Moser, Freesia, Fritillaria, Othello, and Madame Droutschki, for Rhododendron and
Forsythia spectabilis
. She saw the powerful stream of water arch in over the island and down into the dry basin. “Water!” Sophia roared, and she ran to the poplar and saw what she had expected to see – a green root sprout. And in the same instant, the rain came, warm and tumultuous, and the island was doubly blessed.

Grandmother had had to be frugal all her life, and so she had a weakness for extravagance. She watched the basin and the barrels and every crevice in the granite fill with water and overflow. She looked at the mattresses out being aired and the dishes that were washing themselves. She sighed contentedly and, absorbed in thought, she filled a coffee cup with precious drinking water and poured it over a daisy.

The Crooks

O
NE STILL, WARM
A
UGUST NIGHT
there came a ringing trumpet blast from out at sea – like Gabriel blowing his horn. A double row of lights came gliding in towards the island in a slow curve. It was a huge yacht, purring as only very expensive and very fast boats can purr, and carrying lights of every colour from dark blue and blood-red to white. Around it, the whole ocean seemed to be holding its breath.

Sophia and her grandmother stood out on the granite in their nightgowns and watched. The strange boat slid closer and closer, with its motor throttled down and its lights reflecting in the water like dancing snakes of fire. Then it disappeared behind the island. Sophia’s father had put on his trousers, and he ran out to meet it. For a long time there was perfect silence, and then faint music floated towards them from across the island.

“They’re having a party,” Sophia whispered. “Let’s go, too. Let’s get dressed and go over right now!”

But Grandmother said, “Wait a bit. Wait till he comes to get us.”

They lay down in their beds while they waited, and pretty soon they fell asleep. And the next morning the boat was gone. It had sailed away.

Sophia threw herself down on the rock and wept. “He could have come to get us!” she wailed. “He let us sleep and they were having a party; I’ll never forgive him!”

“He behaved very badly,” said Grandmother sternly. “And I’ll tell him so when he wakes up.”

The image of the mysterious boat returned to overwhelm Sophia and she screamed with grief.

“Blow your nose,” her grandmother said. “It was a dreadful disappointment, but blow your nose anyway. You look awful.” She waited a moment and said, “I’ll bet they were very unpleasant people. They only inherited the boat. They don’t know a thing about boats. But,” she added vindictively, “they did do the interior decorating themselves, and the colours are awful.”