‘I’m not!’ I said, so loudly I convinced myself. ‘I was making sure you didn’t fall.’
We reached the street level and crossed over to the seafront side. Clara touched the railing and looked out at the masts rattling on the boats in the harbour. ‘I did fall,’ she said quietly. ‘The last time I was here. It’s how I lost the baby. I was a silly fool. I should have been more careful.’
I leaned on the railing beside her. ‘Accidents happen,’ I said quietly, remembering Alec’s cruel words earlier.
‘They do. They do.’ Her eyes were dark shadows in her face. ‘How wise you are for someone so young.’
I was sure she was mocking me. ‘We’re not so far apart in age, I’m sure,’ I said stiffly.
‘Oh, but I’m married. It ages one considerably. Don’t you do it, not for years.’
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘I’ve sort of – well, it seems I’ve promised Dr Feathers that I’ll propose to Lizzie. After university, that is.’
‘Oh dear.’ She laughed. ‘What a pickle you’ve got into.’
I frowned. ‘Maybe I want to marry Lizzie.’
‘Maybe you do.’ She leaned back, holding on to the rail for support. ‘But she won’t be peaches and cream for ever, you know.’
‘When you’re in love,’ I said loftily, ‘that doesn’t matter.’
‘Exactly.’ She spoke with a sigh. ‘Exactly.’
We stood beside each other in silence, looking at the fat
moon bulging through the gaps in the masts. The night still held the heat of the day, and I kept my jacket tucked under one arm, the sweat from the club gently cooling away.
After a while Clara said quietly, ‘I wonder if Alec will want a divorce.’
My heart quickened, but, attempting nonchalance, I said, ‘On what grounds?’
‘He can trump something up. Get himself photographed with some floozy; it won’t hurt him too much.’ I heard her fingers tapping the rail; her wedding ring clinked on the iron bar. ‘It’s only the truth, anyhow. Love, honour and obey? I don’t think he waited until we’d stepped on to the honeymoon train before he was at it with the dining-car stewardess.’
‘I thought you didn’t mind?’ I said carefully.
She turned her beautiful face towards me. ‘One puts up with things,’ she says. ‘But sleeping with the servants; that really was the last straw.’
I leaped into a realization. ‘It was Sally, wasn’t it? The girl who disappeared.’
‘Left a note under my door on the night she high-tailed it to whatever hole she’d crawled out of. Told me they were in love!’ She laughed scornfully. ‘Said he was going to leave me and marry her. I mean, I never liked the little strumpet, but I didn’t think she’d be that stupid.’
‘Is that why she left?’ I watched Clara straighten with a slight pulling-together of herself, and I knew that when we went back to the house we would never speak like this. I wanted this moment to pause for ever, the two of us suspended in time.
‘I presume so. I expect she’s still waiting for him now to ride up and sweep her off her feet.’ She shook her head. ‘That was the night I went out dancing. I was so angry. I couldn’t speak to him about it; I still haven’t. And then I lost the baby and he blamed me. Me, if you please! If only he’d bothered to keep his trousers fastened, I might still be carrying his precious goods.’
‘Lord.’ I looked away from her. I was still sure there was not a malicious bone in Alec’s body, but that did not mean there was no harm in it. I murmured, ‘You were right. He is a child.’
‘And here I am, boring you again with my woes.’ She laughed.
‘Not at all,’ I said lightly. ‘Although, of course, you’re forcing me to take sides here.’
‘Well,’ she said with a mischievous curl to her mouth, ‘I’m quite sure Alec has put his case across also. It’s only fair I should have the chance to do the same.’
I turned to walk back along the promenade. ‘I’m surprised you care what I think.’
She came alongside me and took my arm. ‘We’re chums, aren’t we? You and me.’
‘We are?’ I asked, genuinely surprised, and overwhelmed by her small hand inside the crook of my arm.
She laughed, but said nothing. After we’d walked a few paces she said, dreamily, ‘Do you know what I really want to do right now, Robert?’
‘What’s that?’
She chuckled. ‘Go for a swim.’
‘Oh. Well, I’m sure that would be terribly dangerous.’
‘Mmm.’ She paused. ‘Let’s go.’
‘What?’
But she was already moving past me, down the steps and on to the beach. I hurried after her, catching up as she was bending down to unbuckle her shoes. She kicked them off and hooked her fingers into their open mouths.
‘You’re not going to swim now?’
She turned to me, her eyes flashing. ‘But don’t you feel all hot and uncomfortable after Eli’s club? This is the perfect remedy.’
‘They say never to swim in the sea at night.’ I was anxious now, running along beside her. I wondered how I could prevent her. ‘The tides are unpredictable.’
‘Oh, Robert,’ she sighed. ‘Have you never wanted to do anything unpredictable?’
Yes
, I called silently,
Yes, Yes, Yes
. Aloud, I answered, ‘Of course I have, but when one’s an adult, one can’t continually act upon desire.’
She stopped, slightly ahead of me, her shoes dangling from one hand, her bare toes curling on the boards that led to the beach huts. ‘Well, if you don’t now,’ she said, ‘you never will.’
An excitement clutched at my heart, a yearning chasm of feeling; and just now, tonight, I felt as if all things were possible, that Clara Bray was standing here in front of me, wanting me to swim in the sea with her, and that she was right, that if I did not do it now, then I never would.
Still, I was unable to express this to her. ‘I haven’t a costume.’
She smiled at me, and there was a world of mystery in that smile. ‘Alec has,’ she said. ‘In the beach hut. I know you’re taller, but I’m sure you can squeeze in.’
I followed her around the corner to the line of huts. She took a key from her bag and fiddled with the padlock on the door. ‘I expect this will be the first thing to go,’ she said breezily as the lock gave and she pulled open the door. ‘Once the new regime kicks in.’
I watched her climb the step and shut herself inside. I took a few paces back, watching the moonlight wash in over the sea. Nobody was on the beach; even as I turned towards the prom, I saw nobody about on the seafront road. I thought of Alec and wished him far away.
Clara emerged in a navy swimsuit with white piping that accentuated her waist and hips. I took in the curve of her thighs, the soft swell of her knees, all in a second’s glance, as she said, as if seeing her almost naked was an everyday occurrence, ‘I laid Alec’s out for you. It might be a little snug.’
I went into the hut and closed the door, shutting out all light except for slivers that crept in round the edges. It was very snug in here too; in fact I worked out that I had approximately three feet of space to manoeuvre myself in. Towels, draped on a line suspended from the ceiling, flapped round my head as I groped about and felt the straw lines of the wicker chairs Alec and Bump had reclined on, stacked one above the other with, on top, a woolly mesh of material I took to be Alec’s swimsuit.
There was also a narrow dresser upon which paints and brushes had been thrown carelessly, Clara’s underclothes flung provocatively on top of it and my aunt Viviane’s gold locket placed carefully to the side. I risked picking her garments up and holding them to my face, inhaling as much of her scent as I could, before I worried that I had
taken far too long already, and hurriedly pulled off my clothes, bundling them beside hers in place of my own body.
Alec’s costume was tight, and I had to stretch the material considerably to pull the straps over my shoulders. I thought I probably looked an idiot, but when I emerged from the hut Clara was already by the shoreline, her toes touching the waves. When I joined her she was lost in a world of her own, but jumped back into a smile when she saw me.
‘Ready?’ she said.
‘We mustn’t go far out,’ I warned. ‘Besides, I’m not a strong swimmer.’
‘And your health. I know, I know.’ She held out her hand. ‘We’ll go together.’
I took her hand, and although I had felt her hand more than a few times tonight, there was something intimate in this holding, facing the wash of the sea and its wildness together.
It was colder than I’d expected. Clara gasped, and I squeezed her hand.
‘We should run,’ she squeaked. ‘It’s better if you run.’
‘I’m not …’ I began, but she was pulling away from me, and in order to keep up I quickened my pace. The water splashed over my calves, my thighs, and then I heard Clara scream gently as it lapped her stomach.
‘After three,’ she said. ‘One, two, thr—’
The end of her word was lost as her hand left mine and she launched herself into the sea, thrashing her arms, swearing at the cold. I took a breath and joined her.
The shock of it on my chest, my groin, my lungs and
stomach took my breath away. I remembered strokes from Briggs, the teacher at Whitemere Baths and pounded on, cutting into the rolling waves and kicking hard until finally the cold released and I drifted on a tide of the warm licks of the sea.
Clara joined me, her face wide with delight. ‘Tell me this wasn’t the most brilliant idea,’ she said, bobbing in the water.
‘We mustn’t go too far out,’ I said. ‘Make sure we can still touch the seabed.’
She gave me an exasperated look. ‘Robert …’
I gave in. I smiled. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was the most brilliant idea.’
She laughed delightedly and flung herself on to her back, arcing her arms left and right over her head. She was a strong swimmer, much stronger than me, and I allowed myself to gently float, watching her swim away from and towards me, just as we’d danced in the night club a few hours earlier, and I knew I would never forget this, that perhaps this, here, was the pinnacle of my life, of the reason for my having stayed alive throughout the attacks, the air gasped for and found, all to watch Clara Bray swim in a moonlit sea.
Her voice was sudden in my ear; I had not even noticed she was beside me. ‘The first time I ever saw Castaway House,’ she said, dancing in the water, her eyes bright, ‘I knew it was meant to be mine.’
I kicked my toes and turned to look where she was pointing, towards the ghost of the pier, a dark grey against the black night.
‘Dad had taken me and Billy on to the pier,’ she continued,
in a voice changed by the darkness into something grainier, huskier, rawer, ‘to get us out from under Mum’s feet – because she was dying, you know. I saw the tip of it, all buttermilk yellow, and I asked him who lived there. He said, “Viviane Devereau,” and I thought that was the most beautiful name I’d ever heard. Then he told me she was Mrs Bray now, with a husband and a son, and do you know what I thought, Robert? I thought to myself,
One day, Clare my girl, that house is going to be yours
.’
I shivered suddenly and swam a few strokes back and forth to warm up. ‘So you had ambition.’
‘I was a little mercenary, is what I was.’ She spread her arms wide in the water.
‘You were only a child,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Just listen.’
And I listened, as we drifted on the spangled sea, to the tale of her mother dying, and then Billy, and her dad out all the time drinking. She told me how she’d find herself walking up the hill just to look at Castaway House and imagine the lives going on within it. How she’d finally spotted Viviane Devereau and thought the woman matched the name, with her lined velvet coats, her fur wraps, her laced boots.
Clare Tutt, on the other hand, was barely brought up at all: she took herself to school when she felt like it, ate tea at the neighbours in rotation, let the house turn nasty with filth. Occasionally her father would come home and cling to her, telling her he loved her, say he was going to look out for her, that good times were just round the corner. In the meantime, she hatched a plan to get to know Viviane
Devereau. She never called her Mrs Bray, her real name. For Clare, she existed without husband and son, floating in her own sea of perfection.
The house was a holiday home, used at weekends and in the summer, and so Clare learned the family’s rhythm to perfection. She waited until Viviane came down alone one weekend, and followed her on the Saturday as she went into town; lurked in her shadow across all the floors of Bradley’s and then, on the route to her home, raced along the back streets, emerging at the head of the cliff to collapse on the road, just a few yards from the house, claiming to be faint from hunger.
Most women on that street would have sidestepped the little girl and carried on, but Viviane was kind and got one of the male servants to take her down to the kitchen and feed her on leftovers from lunch. She then asked for the little girl to be sent up to the drawing room to see her benefactress.
Clare, who everyone knew as a foul-mouthed, slummy tearaway, who ruled the kids of Princes Street with a sharp tongue and a hobnailed boot, transformed herself that day. She became a poor little motherless child, a wide-eyed girl who loved school but was unable to go, beaten by her inebriate father, scorned by her neighbours. Viviane drank it all in like a mother’s milk, and in return talked to Clare, told her of her husband with his important City job she did not quite understand, and her naughty son whom they were hoping school would straighten out.
She invited Clare to visit again another day, and Clare, who had secreted a silver teaspoon in her pinafore pocket before she left, nodded shyly and said that that would be
wonderful. When she got home, she squirrelled the teaspoon away in her private box of treasures and vowed that she would be a better fake daughter to Viviane Devereau than her real son had ever been.
Over the next two years she made a habit of Castaway. She would start in the basement, where the servants would feed her, and she charmed them with her wit and innocence, and the breath of outside air she brought into the dark space. She would then go up for tea with Viviane, and they would discuss the book Viviane had lent her the week before, or Clare would show a bruise she had received fighting with the Princes Street boys and tell her it was from her father’s fist, and Viviane would press a coin into her hand and tell her to buy meat or some other wholesome comestible.