Under My Skin (13 page)

He stood on the ramp wearing a t-shirt over his Speedos. Sometimes he jumped up and down lightly on the diving board but he never got wet. His blond hair fell to his shoulders
and his Speedos were like a postage stamp at the top of his legs. I waded in, terrified and delighted that it was just me and him and the lake. Every night he stood on the ramp and gave orders. He swung his arms around as if getting warmed up for a race. He told me to stand two feet away from the bar and then throw myself towards it.

‘The water will carry you,’ he said. ‘You just have to let it.’ And he watched me doing that for a long time and then he told me to move back another foot and do it again. And that is how I learned to swim. Standing up to my waist night after night, the sun going down, shivering, sometimes freezing, hugging myself against the cool evening breeze, and always looking up at him.

‘Back another foot,’ he said, ‘and do it again.’

At the end of the first week I made my first proper stroke. And that night Juna made the flan. It had lots of mandarin orange slices and cream on it and I carried it down to him under an umbrella because it rained. I wore a new swimsuit with trainer straps and a heartbeat pattern across my chest. I let my hair loose and it got wet. ‘Relax,’ he said and this time he got into the water with me, and as it grew dark and with the water still warm from the sun of the day, he balanced me on his arms. He smelt like salt and suntan lotion and later I watched as he dived from the highest board and clapped when he surfaced again. We ate the entire flan inside the tent and listened to the rain on the canvas and he asked if he could kiss me then.

The boat is old. It is wooden with a flat bottom and dangerous in a lake like this. A lake called ‘Ghost Lake’ because it has no bottom. Imagine a lake without a bottom. A place that could
take you right down into the centre of the earth. There are no life jackets. We are not allowed to take it out. We have been told often enough. But Jack is here and everything is different. Sometimes Pappy rows out to the middle of the lake to fish. He takes us with him and we are not allowed to talk and we like the respect for the boat in the water. We like the sound of the oars when they first touch the surface and the rub of the oarlocks on the wood. The knocking of wood against wood. We are not supposed to take the boat out but Jack is here and we are all able to swim now.

The boys row out towards the first island and I stand watching. I envy them and their adventure and the cigarette is held between Jack’s teeth now as he rows. He messes it up too and one oar misses the water completely. I want to be there with them but I can’t go out that deep. Daniel takes over and Jack moves unsteadily to the stern. The lake is so calm and silent and in a little while I can’t hear their voices or the sound the oars make as they fall. I walk to the end of the ramp and sit and watch the boat. I hug my knees, my wet hair pulled into a ponytail. The air is growing colder. What happens? I don’t know. That is the truth. I grow tired of sitting here and turn and walk towards the shallow part. I am thinking of skipping stones. Of going home. Of hot tea. Of salad. Of Pappy painting in his studio. Of Juna’s nice kitchen. Of our red shop just on the edge of our town. Of hanging wet swimsuits on the line. Of falling into bed and sleeping in wet hair. Of the orange tent behind the trees.

Doc is waiting near the fire. It crackles and sends sparks into the air. He holds the flap back and without a word I creep inside. He begins kissing me and no one says a word. At one
point there is a voice. Somewhere far away. ‘Star,’ it calls and then ‘Star’ again. The boys. It is almost an hour later when I come back out and when I walk out on to the ramp I am dizzy and jelly-legged and carrying the empty flan plate.

The boat is upside down and there are hands and splashing near it. I almost laugh. I think I do and then the laugh is swallowed until it disappears back inside. There is one head. Dark hair. Who? Daniel or Jack? And then I know that this is different. That something has happened and I am running to the end of the ramp. I can hear Jack’s voice, ‘The buoy!’ and then ‘The buoy!!’ again. His voice breaks into a cry the second time. He is in the water and somehow crying now. My hands begin to shake when I untie it. I want to pee. My stomach feels as if it is suddenly opening up. My left arm aches badly. My limbs are heavy and from nowhere I am crying too. Whimpering. Crying because the flat-bottomed boat has turned over and because it will sink now and because it is my brother Daniel I cannot see.

The boat is too far away. It is too far to throw the buoy.

Too far. Too far. I would have to swim. The buoy is hollow, old. It won’t hold me. I will throw it. I won’t throw it. If I swim I will have to go out into the deep water. Deep green cold. The lake without a bottom. Water filling my lungs. Covering my face, my hair, my head. Going down. Down. Down. Goodbye, everyone. In the water Jack leaves the boat and disappears and now both boys are gone. There is a sudden silence and then the boat is going down too. Total silence that chills me to my bones. I begin to whimper and still I am frozen on the ramp. Why? Jumping up and down. Crying. Whimpering. Then I remember Doc. And I run, run away,
run away down the ramp. Bare feet smashing over stones. Into the trees over nettles. Grass. Tree stumps. Crying, screaming now. The tent is gone. His fire still smokes. A pale yellow rectangle on the grass but his bike is there, on its side, and when he appears I can only point. My speech is gone and my body gives up and I sink down into the grass. My left side agony now. My breath gone. Where is Daniel? Where is Daniel? Jack is back up again. I can see him. Hear him. Sobbing. Big girl cries. I can hear his crying from here.

It happens close to autumn. I will always remember the light, not really summer or autumn or winter, it is another season in another kind of day – and how there is no breeze at all here, the perfect stillness of it and the leaves that fall on the lake and how they move away slowly, in red, yellow and gold.

Jack knocks softly on the bedroom door. He stands awkwardly in my room with his bag in one hand.

We stand and face each other and as we watch our eyes begin to fill with tears.

‘I have to go now,’ he says and then he sits on my bed and begins to cry. They have taken Daniel away and there is just an empty house, filled with water and so cold. The guards came. Father Brady. Doc, who stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. Pappy took the news in silence and then got up and walked away. He drove straight into the town and put a note on the shop window and pulled the blinds down. I put my arms around Jack now and we are still strangers in a new and strange place. He puts his arms around me. We put our arms around each other, clinging for our lives, both knowing
that we have shared something together that we can never forget. We both saw his happy suntanned face on the shore.

‘Come on, Star.’

We heard his voice. We saw his face. We were the last to know it.

Daniel has left his name in every room. On the wall in my bedroom. In blue chalk half-way up the stairs. On the side of the dresser in the kitchen, on the back of the piano and inside the hall door. In his own room he has left it on the window, etched delicately into the glass. He used an old nail to do it. It is strangely breakable and flimsy-looking, with wispy white letters to remind me of him. And now when I read my books they mean nothing. The letters jump and rearrange themselves – and the words move around like mice on the page.

Zoo n. – 1. A park where live wild animals from different parts of the world are kept in cages. 2. (informal) A place characterized as being full of noisy obstreperous people creating confusion and disorder.

A picture of a light bulb means we have ‘Ideas’. A picture of a smiling face means ‘We love our work’. A picture of a blue sky means ‘There are no limits to our thinking’. Our ideas are like Montana, our brains are Big Sky. Jonathan says that growth here is organic, but there are no trees and no green leaves. Our receptionist is from Rwanda. She is like an ad for a holiday with her beautiful white teeth and coloured beads. There are emails about pitches and brainstorms and revised creative briefs. I have no idea who I am today or what I am supposed to be doing here. On Monday there is an early meeting in the boardroom. Everyone comes in and says a cheerful ‘Good morning’ to someone else. They talk about the weather at the weekend, the football match on Saturday, and after a little while they begin to talk about the work.