The Tide Knot (11 page)

  “Go on home now,” says Granny Carne. “Best you don’t stay here any longer. Hurry now—the bus’ll be at the corner at ten past nine, and if you miss it, there’s another two hours to wait.”   

  But I go straight past the bus stop on the road to the churchtown. I keep my head down, hoping that no one will recognize me, but of course people do. First the post van stops for a chat; then Alice Trewhidden is on her way up to catch the bus; then the vicar appears at the church gate just as I’m going by.

  “How you doing, Sapphire girl? How’s life down in St. Pirans?”

  “Your mum all right, then? She like it down there?”

  “Ah, Sapphire, good to see you! How are you all ? How is your mother?”

  “She’s all right.”

  The vicar’s face is smiling, but his eyes are sharp. He drops his voice, and suddenly it’s a person talking to me, not a vicar. “It’s hard,” he says. “Don’t think I don’t know that.” I don’t know what to say to this. “’S okay,” I mumble. The trouble is that whenever I see the vicar, my mind flashes back to Dad’s memorial service. I don’t want to think of it.

  “Give your mother my love,” he adds, and I don’t know what to say to that either. Mum always liked talking to the vicar. Dad never went to church, but Mum did sometimes, just on her own.

  By the time I get away, I wish I’d caught that bus. But I can’t go back to St. Pirans without seeing our cottage. It doesn’t matter if the people who are living there now see me. They won’t know who I am. When they came to look round, before they decided to rent it, I went out for a long walk. I didn’t want to meet them.

  I reach the top of the track that leads down to our cottage.

  Everything is so familiar yet slightly different. Even the baling twine tied round the gate is a different color: green now instead of orange. There is a jeep parked outside the cottage. It’s old and dusty, but it looks in good condition.

  Dad always wanted a jeep.

  Our front door is open. Radio music spil s out into the garden. To my surprise the vegetable patch has been completely dug over. The gooseberry bushes have been pruned, and the roses. The window frames are freshly painted.

  The curtains Mum made are no longer blowing at the kitchen window. Instead someone has put up smart new curtains, the color of cornflowers. I try not to like them, but I do.  

  Sadie sniffs eagerly around outside the gate. I walk very slowly, trying not to dawdle too obviously, trying to make it look as if I’m just having a relaxed walk with my dog. “Come on, Sadie girl,” I say loudly in case anyone inside is listening. But Sadie is more intelligent than to believe I really want her to move on.

  I drink in every detail of the cottage. It’s so nearly the same and yet completely different, because we don’t live there anymore. This must be what it’s like to die and come back to haunt a place you used to love.

  “Can I help you?” asks a voice. I jump violently and feel a blush start to spread over my face.

  “No, no, I’m fine, my dog’s just—”

  A woman swings out of the doorway. She’s on crutches, but she handles them easily, as if she’s been using crutches for a long time. She’s younger than Mum, wearing a long red skirt and a sweater. “Were you looking for something?” she asks. Her eyes are penetrating. Has she guessed who I am?

  “No, no, I’m going for a walk with my dog…down to the cove maybe—”

 
You idiot, Sapphire. Why did you mention the cove?
 

 
Maybe they haven’t discovered it yet.
 

  “The cove,” repeats the woman. “Do you know it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d really like to see it. I can get to most places, but I can’t do that climb down just now. The only way I’ll get there is if they swing me over the cliff in a basket. I’m on these crutches for the time being.”

  She smiles, a quick, warm smile that I can’t help responding to, even though I had no intention of liking the person who’s living in our cottage.

  “Do you live here on your own?” I ask her.

  “No. My husband works up in Exeter with the Met Office.

  He stays there during the week.”

  “It must be lonely,” I say, testing, probing. But she shakes her head.

  “Lonely’s in your head. I don’t find it so,” she says. “The neighbors are good. I wasn’t sure, coming down here.”

  “What’s the Met Office?”

  “Meteorology. Weather forecasting. Rob doesn’t do the day-to-day stuff, though. Long-term climate change is his thing, and the role of extreme weather occurrences.”

  “So he looks into the future,” I say, without knowing I’m going to say it.

  “Yeah, in a way he does. You interested in climate change?”

  I think of the sea horses and sunfish that come into Cornish waters now, where they never used to come. The changes Faro has talked about and the dangers they bring.   

  “Yes.”

  “You must meet Rob. D’you live around here?”

  “Yes—I mean no, um, not very near.” The words stumble over one another just when I want them to be smooth.

  Suddenly she’s looking at me closely. Her face changes.

  Something comes into it that shouldn’t be there: recognition.

  “I know who you are. You’re the girl with the seaweed hair.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what I call you. Rob calls you the little mermaid.”

 
“What?”
 

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ve really messed this up, haven’t I? You didn’t want me to know who you were.

  It’s that picture of you, the one that’s set into the cabinet.”

  “Oh.
Oh.
”

  “You know the one.”

  I know the one. Dad took it about three years ago. It’s a color photo, and I’m wearing a sea green dress that I wore to a New Year’s party. My hair is loose and very long. I’m not smiling. Dad always loved that photo. He said I looked as if I came from another world. He had the photo made into a tile and set it into the kitchen cabinet. We couldn’t take the cabinet with us to St. Pirans because it was built into the wall .  

  I look down. I feel so stupid. She’ll think I came here spying on her. But her voice doesn’t sound angry. “It’s a beautiful picture; you should be proud of it,” she says. “Rob says you look like you came from another world.”

  “Oh! That’s exactly what Dad used to say.”

  “He took the picture?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. The real estate agent told me about the…accident.”

  She has found the kindest word she could, but I still have to clench my hands and dig my nails into my palms.

  “We should introduce ourselves. I’m Gloria Fortune.”

  “I’m Sapphire 
Trewhella
.”

  “Of course. I should have remembered. Mary Thomas told me your name.”

  I’m not sure I like this. Mary is
our
neighbor.

  “It must have been tough, leaving this place. Every day I wake up and look out of the window, I have to pinch myself, it’s so beautiful.”

  “It’s my home.” I’m not angry anymore. I don’t even want Gloria Fortune to leave our cottage. It’s just that coming back here has made me know for sure that no matter how long I live in St. Pirans, it will never be home.  

  “Then you’ll come back,” says Gloria, looking into my face.

  “Do you see into the future?”

  “No.” She smiles. “But I know a single-minded person because I’m one myself.”

  “I must go.”

  “You going down to the cove now?”

  I glance down at Sadie and gently stroke her head. No, Sadie doesn’t deserve that. As soon as my feet touch that hard white sand, I’ll look at the rocks at the mouth of the cove, and I’m sure I’ll see a figure there, and then I won’t be able to stop myself. The cove will be too powerful for Sadie.

  That’s where Conor and I first entered Ingo. The cove is a gateway, I am sure it is, and it’s another reason we’ve got to come home. Dad left the human world through the cove, so perhaps the cove is his way home.

  I’m not going to accept that Dad has changed forever. He still has human blood in him, just as I have. If a human being can change to become one of the Mer, then he must be able to change back again somehow. There
will
be a way.

  Somebody somewhere must know.

  Faro’s teacher! He’s supposed to be so wise. Perhaps he can help me. I won’t tell  him why I want to know. He’s Mer, so he’ll want Dad to stay in Ingo. But surely all the changes can’t be one-way?

  “Are you all right?”  

  “Oh…yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I was just—”

  “You were miles away,” says Gloria Fortune. “Penny for your thoughts?”

  “You wouldn’t want them,” I answer. “They’re just a mess.”

  “Okay, okay, I didn’t mean to pry. You go on down to the cove.”

  “Maybe not today.”

  “Come back another time then,” says Gloria. “You can help me with that basket and pulls ey.”

  “Um, you know, I think that could be quite dangerous.”

  “I wasn’t being entirely serious. I smashed the top of my thighbone, and things didn’t mend so well , so I’ve got to have a hip replacement. But I’m putting it off because I don’t like hospitals.”

  “I’ve never been in one.”

  “Not even to be born?”

  “No. I was born here, in Mum and Dad’s bedroom. It’s the one that faces away from the sea.”

  There’s a pause. Luckily Sadie creates a diversion by diving toward a hole in the garden wall , pretending she’s smell ed a rabbit. It’s a hole where I’ve seen adders sunning themselves in August, so I pulls her off sharply, even though any adders should be hibernating now.  

  “Come again,” Gloria repeats. “But maybe you wouldn’t like to come inside the cottage, with us living here.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gloria nods thoughtful y. There’s something about her face—I don’t know what it is. A look that is strange yet familiar. It’s elusive, but it’s there, like a ripple of water moving over her features.
Water!
Yes, that’s what it is. Salt water. Ingo. Ingo has touched her face and left its look there.

  It sounds like a wild, crazy guess, but it’s not. I
know
, deep inside me, because it’s the look I see on my own face sometimes in the mirror. And on Conor and Faro and Elvira…and on my own father.

  I open my mouth to speak but then say nothing. It’s too much of a risk. If she doesn’t know, is it safe to tell  her? I have the feeling that if she were to go down to the cove, Gloria too would see a figure sitting on the rocks. A figure that looks like a surfer in a wet suit from a distance, but when you come close, it looks like a boy, and then like a seal, and then like a boy again. But Gloria’s leg is injured, so she can’t climb down the cliff path. Maybe that’s just as well .

  “Were you born by the sea?” I ask abruptly.

  She stares at me. “Why do you ask that?”

  “I just had a feeling.”

  “That is weird. You’re right. I grew up in London, but I was born on Skye, up in Scotland. Our cottage was down by the shore.”

  “You don’t sound Scottish.”

  “No, I’m a Londoner, really, like my dad. He came over from Jamaica when he was two months old. But my mother was Scottish. She came from Skye, and we lived there until I was six. We had to move down to London then because my father got a job there. Maybe that’s why I love this place so much. It reminds me of when I was little. Skye is so beautiful.

  I remember the seals. I used to think I could talk to them, and they’d talk back to me. The place we lived was so remote that I conversed with the seals more than I did with other children.”

  Her face is soft with remembering. That strange yet familiar look is growing stronger. I was right. She really has a look of Ingo on her. Maybe she doesn’t yet know what it means.

  I’m burning with excitement. I can’t wait to tell  Conor.

  There are others, not just us. We are not freaks. We are part of something much larger than we knew. Maybe there are other gateways, other people going through the skin of the sea and into Ingo, all over the world….

  I bend down over Sadie, pretending to adjust her col ar, and whistle, very low, a few bars of “O Peggy Gordon.”
I wish I was away in Ingo
 

 
Far across the briny sea,
 

 
Sailing over deepest waters…

  I glance up cautiously. Gloria’s expression is far away, and she’s listening intently. “What tune is that you’re whistling?”

  “It’s a song called ‘O Peggy Gordon.’”

  “Is it a Scottish song?”

  “I don’t know. It could be. My father knew a lot of Scottish songs.”

  “I’m sure I know it. My mother used to sing me a lot of songs. Do you know the words?”

  I shake my head. It’s too risky. It was the song that began it all , that Midsummer Night before Dad disappeared. He was singing “O Peggy Gordon” then, and he was listening, listening, but I didn’t know then what he was listening for.

  I mustn’t tell  Gloria the words or speak the name of Ingo to her. Not here. Not now. What if Ingo starts to call her when she’s alone? It might tempt her as far as the cliffs. She can’t climb down them on crutches, but I know how powerful the pulls of Ingo can be. Gloria might try. She might fall . It’s safer for her if she doesn’t know too much. Not yet.

  “I’ve got to go now,” I say aloud, “but I’d like to—I’d really like to come again and bring my brother, Conor, to meet you.”

  She nods. “That’d be good.” Does she recognize a look on my face, too? Does she have that feeling we’re not really strangers but more like distant cousins from a family that’s been scattered for generations?  

 
Get a grip, Sapphire. If you say anything like that, this
woman will think you are completely crazy. She’ll keep the
door locked next time you come.
 

  I want to come again. Not now, maybe not for a while. But deep inside me I’m sure that I’ll see Gloria Fortune again.

  Somewhere in the future, where only Granny Carne can see it, our lives are linked.

  “Good-bye, then,” says Gloria, smiling. “I’ll tell  Rob I’ve met the little mermaid. He’ll be sorry he missed you. You look exactly like your picture.”