The Ocean at the End of the Lane(42)

Time passed. I waited for the night to begin to talk to me again, for people to come, for all the ghosts and monsters of my imagination to stand beyond the circle and call me out, but nothing more happened. Not then. I simply waited.

The moon rose higher. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I sang, under my breath, mouthing the words over and over.

You’re a regular wreck with a crick in your neck

and no wonder you snore for your head’s on the floor

and you’ve needles and pins from your sole to your shins

and your flesh is a-creep for your left leg’s asleep

and you’ve cramp in your toes

and a fly on your nose

you’ve got fluff in your lung and a feverish tongue

and a thirst that’s intense and a general sense that you

haven’t been sleeping in clover …

I sang it to myself, the whole song, all the way through, two or three times, and I was relieved that I remembered the words, even if I did not always understand them.





When Lettie arrived, the real Lettie, this time, she was carrying a bucket of water. It must have been heavy judging from the way she carried it. She stepped over where the edge of the ring in the grass must have been and she came straight to me.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That took a lot longer than I expected. It didn’t want to cooperate, neither, and in the end it took me and Gran to do it, and she did most of the heavy lifting. It wasn’t going to argue with her, but it didn’t help, and it’s not easy …’

‘What?’ I asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

She put the metal bucket down on the grass beside me without spilling a drop. ‘The ocean,’ she said. ‘It didn’t want to go. It gave Gran such a struggle that she said she was going to have to go and have a lie-down afterwards. But we still got it into the bucket in the end.’

The water in the bucket was glowing, emitting a greenish-blue light. I could see Lettie’s face by it. I could see the waves and ripples on the surface of the water, watch them crest and splash against the side of the bucket.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I couldn’t get you to the ocean,’ she said. ‘But there was nothing stopping me bringing the ocean to you.’

I said, ‘I’m hungry, Lettie. And I don’t like this.’

‘Mum’s made dinner. But you’re going to have to stay hungry for a little bit longer. Were you scared, up here on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they try and get you out of the circle?’

‘Yes.’

She took my hands in hers, then, and squeezed them. ‘But you stayed where you were meant to be, and you didn’t listen to them. Well done. That’s quality, that is,’ and she sounded proud. In that moment I forgot my hunger and I forgot my fear.

‘What do I do now?’ I asked her.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘you step into the bucket. You don’t have to take your shoes off or anything. Just step in.’

It did not even seem a strange request. She let go of one of my hands, kept hold of the other. I thought, I will never let go of your hand, not unless you tell me to. I put one foot into the glimmering water, raising the water level almost to the edge. My foot rested on the tin floor of the bucket. The water was cool on my foot, not cold. I put the other foot into the water and I went down with it, down like a marble statue, and the waves of Lettie Hempstock’s ocean closed over my head.

I felt the same shock you would feel if you had stepped backwards, without looking, and had fallen into a swimming pool. I closed my eyes at the water’s sting and kept them tightly shut, so tightly.

I could not swim. I did not know where I was, or what was happening, but even under the water I could feel that Lettie was still holding my hand.

I was holding my breath.

I held it until I could hold it no longer, and then I gulped a breath in, expecting to choke, to splutter, to die.

I did not choke. I felt the coldness of the water – if it was water – pour into my nose and my throat, felt it fill my lungs, but that was all it did. It did not hurt me.

I thought, this is the kind of water you can breathe. I thought, perhaps there is just a secret to breathing water, something simple that everyone could do, if only they knew. That was what I thought.

That was the first thing I thought.

The second thing I thought was that I knew everything. Lettie Hempstock’s ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe, from Egg to Rose. I knew that. I knew what Egg was – where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void – and I knew where Rose was – the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind.

I knew that Old Mrs Hempstock would be here for that one, as she had been for the last.

I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger. I saw the world from above and below. I saw that there were patterns and gates and paths beyond the real. I saw all these things and understood them and they filled me, just as the waters of the ocean filled me.