Swimming Lessons(68)

“If you row over the spot where a person drowned, the cock will crow,” Gil said.

“What?” Flora turned back to him.

“Or maybe it’s where their body is, under the water. I’ve forgotten exactly.” Gil’s eyes were closed as if he was concentrating, and his hand again gripped the side of the skiff, his knuckles white.

“Is that what this is all about? You think Mum drowned? But you saw her in Hadleigh.”

“I saw something. Who knows what it was. Something my imagination served up for me.”

The cockerel was louder now, and Flora saw people on the beach stop to stare out at them.

“Do you think it’s all right?” Gil craned his neck to look around her. “Maybe it’s seasick.”

Flora rolled her eyes. “Your imagination?” she asked.

Gil ignored her. “Perhaps we should let it out, and then it might crow.” The cockerel’s noise was hideous, and it tried to flap its wings but the cage was too small.

“I can’t row all over this patch of sea,” Flora said, picking up the oars. “We’re not even up as far as the nudist beach. I think we should go.” When she looked at the land, they were drifting back the way they had come, around Dead End Point.

“Open the cage just for a moment,” Gil said. “Then at least it might be less distressed.”

Flora shifted to manoeuvre her legs over her seat. The boat listed and cold seawater slopped over the edge. The bird’s cage tilted and the terrified creature grew even louder. Contorting her body, Flora reached to unhook the catch. The bird jumped, battering itself against the top.

“Careful,” Gil said.

“I am being careful!” Flora shouted over her shoulder, but he didn’t mean the cockerel. When she turned with the wailing, flapping bird in her hands, one of the oars was overboard and bobbing beside the boat.

“I can get it,” Gil said, leaning awkwardly.

“No, Daddy!” Flora shouted above the cockerel’s shrieks. It jabbed with its head, aiming for her face, and she let it go. The bird perched on the side of the boat and glared at them and the strange wet land they had brought it to.

“There,” Gil said, pointing at the oar, which Flora could plainly see. “Get it.”

Using the remaining oar as a paddle, she tried to move the skiff forwards as the floating oar travelled ahead of them in the current. The boat jerked and bumped, and there was a scraping as they hit the underwater rocks at the Point.

“Push us off! Push us off!” Gil said, and Flora jabbed at the rocks with the oar so that the skiff bumped again and Gil held on tighter. With each bump the bird bounced and then resettled on the edge, until Flora pushed with all her strength and with an ungainly flapping flight the bird took off, landing a couple of metres away on a seaweedy rock which poked up out of the waves. And then they were clear of Dead End Point and being returned to the beach, with Flora paddling to keep them angled towards the sand, the waves washing them back in.

Richard and Martin were waiting, and beside them was a furious-looking Nan. Flora twisted to get a glimpse of the cockerel, and Gil watched it too as it puffed out its chest, tipped up its head, and crowed. Gil wheezed out a laugh, and Flora began to laugh, too. Richard waded out a little way and took the rope tied to the bow to pull them in.

“Bloody hell, Gil,” Martin said. “How am I going to catch that effing bird now?”

Nan’s face was white with anger.

They made a bedraggled procession as they walked up the chine, Richard carrying a wet Gil in his arms.

“He could have drowned,” Nan hissed at Flora. And Flora wondered, for a moment, if that was what he had wanted after all.





Chapter 38


THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 28TH JUNE 1992, 4:45 AM


Gil,

Yesterday the three of us caught the bus into Hadleigh. I thought it’d be fun—we would have fish and chips on the beach and I’d buy us some clothes, even though you’re late again with the money. We went to the shop that calls itself a department store because it sells everything in one room, and Nan and I combed through the racks of clothes. Flora sulked. She didn’t want to be there, wasn’t going to wear anything from that “shitty place,” she was going to catch a “bloody bus to London or anywhere else but here.” I cajoled and reasoned, ignored and bribed, but after five minutes Flora walked out and Nan and I ran after her, just in time to see her turning the corner onto the promenade and disappearing into the amusement arcade. We gave her ten minutes and then I sent Nan in after her.

“She won’t come,” Nan said when she returned.

I went into that jangling, eye-jarring place, which was murky with smoke. Tiny aluminium ashtrays overloaded with cigarette butts shuddered on top of every machine.

I found her at the back of the room. “Flora, we need to go now.”

“Five more minutes,” she said.

“Now.” She walked off, scanning the bottom trays for stray coins. I followed her. “Nan’s waiting. We need to go now.”

“I’m not ready,” she said.

“We’re going, whether you like it or not.”

“OK.” She moved to another machine.

“And you have to come too.”

“Why?” Flora didn’t look at me.