“Why don’t you look where you’re going,” she shouted, adding in a quieter aside, “Oh, it’s you,” from which Ned could tell, even from this undignified position, that she was not utterly displeased to see him again.
“You had your eyes closed,” she continued. “I watched you coming down. I thought, surely he’ll see me, surely he’ll open his eyes.”
“I was going swimming,” he said, as if this was going to excuse him.
She turned in her saddle and looked down towards the bay. “The tide’s out.” She paused, weighing the propriety of her next remark. “Is it safe out there? I ought to try for a swim some day.”
Ned, who knew of the circumstance of her mother’s death, stood up awkwardly before her.
“She was one of those people who thought life would never harm her,” she said. She glanced down at his legs. “Are you a good swimmer?”
“Fair. Canoeing’s my speciality.”
“Canoeing?”
“Yes. In a canoe.”
“Can you, you know, do that thing where you roll under?”
“That’s easy. The thing is to keep calm. Not be afraid.”
“I was never afraid of the sea, until now. Would you take me swimming one day? I could hire a bike.”
They had met two days later. Ned had bought a new pair of swimming trunks, to replace the ones he had worn since he was fifteen, woollen things a mother would buy, woollen things a mother had bought, and though he had never seen cause to replace them before, he saw he was a fully fledged man now, and would have to appear as such before her. He had gone down to the Pollet and the men’s clothing store. Mr Underwood’s stock was narrow, a choice of three; red, black or red with a daring white stripe down the side.
“I don’t see what the fuss is about,” the proprietor had argued, as Ned held each one up to the light. “No one’s going to see them once you’re in the water.”
He chose the striped pair and put them on underneath his trousers to minimize the embarrassment of changing in front of her. She turned up in a pair of loose cord trousers and a hacking jacket, London-bought, or from one of the classier shops over in St Heller. Acutely aware of their differing circumstance, he threw off his collarless shirt and worn flannels before she’d even crossed the beach. While she undressed he stood by the water’s edge, skimming stones with an exaggerated intensity until she skipped past and walked in up to her waist. Her costume was blue. Her legs were white.
“Don’t let me go out of my depth,” she called out, gasping as she settled in and Ned called out that she was not to worry, that it was shallow for a good long distance, and that the sea was still and the tide weak and that he was beside her, which in a moment he was, looking at her strong shoulders and her auburn hair, noting that she was not a swimmer of Veronica Vaudin’s capability, but a competent one. He led her out slowly, feeling the pull of the waves as they washed in. Looking back he saw the wide expanse of sand and the steep wooded hill behind, and at the top, in front of the long green lawn that hung over the lip of the hill like a green tongue, the Villa Pascal.
“That my aunt’s house, isn’t it?” she asked, following his gaze. “I’ve never seen it from this angle before.”
He waved his arm.
“See that man up there, pushing a barrow. That’d be my uncle. Worked for them twenty years now.”
“Your uncle!” She turned in the water. “Marvellous!”
They were a long way out now and the water was cool and glittered a still light blue.
“Daddy doesn’t know I’m doing this,” she called out, floating on her back, “and when I get back I shall have to take a bath and wash my hair to keep it from him. He wouldn’t like it if he found out.”
“Why? You’re not doing anything wrong,” Ned said.
“Oh, but I am. I’m in the sea for one thing, and I’m with you for another,”
“Well, I won’t tell. And you’re much too smart to get caught, I’ll be bound.”
“He’s a watchful man,” she replied. “He notices things without you realizing it. He is a surveyor, after all.” She kicked her legs in a plume of water.
“Try standing,” he said, and, realizing what he had done, feeling nothing but a current of cold water puiling at her feet, she struck out for the beach, arms flailing, eyes tight. Once near the shore she walked out quickly, shaking the water from her hair. Ned followed. They towelled in silence.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “It’s not like getting back after falling off a horse. She drowned.”
She gestured to him with her hand and he turned to face the sea, which had brought them together and now, like the immutable tide, was puiling them apart. He listened to the hurried sounds she made as she changed, the squeak of her costume as she pulled it down, her quick, strong breath as she rubbed herself dry, the noise of the sand as she lifted her feet into her clothes. He wrapped his towel around him and wriggled out of his trunks, conscious of drying himself between his legs.
“You can turn round now,” he heard her say. Her hair was wet and fuzzy and the dark hairs on her arms stood out.
“What about tomorrow?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t let it happen again,” he promised.
“You’d better not,” she replied and together they walked back up the steep hill in silence.
“In the afternoon, then,” he said when they reached the top. “When the tide’s coming in.”
“Perhaps. As long as Daddy doesn’t catch me out.”
But catch her out he did, a week later, her hair stifffrom the salt water, a damp bathing towel tied to the rack above the rear mudguard and the architect of her treachery riding alongside. Her father stepped out from behind the gate and pulled her off, his dark eyebrows and dark moustache joined together by lines of anticipated anger. He held her by the arm, squeezing it hard. His voice was agitated and clipped, with a curious self-questioning cadence to it.
“You’ve no sense, girl. Isn’t your mother’s grave enough that you should want to follow in her footsteps? And where did you get this?” He picked up the bike up from the road.
“I borrowed it.”
“Borrowed it, you say? One horse is not enough for you, then? Never mind what it costs to feed and house a horse and have its feet shorn. You have to have a bicycle as well.”
“No, Daddy, it was just…”
“And where did you keep it all the while? Did you hide it from me? Hide it from your own father. Your only parent.”
“No, Daddy, I…”
“Borrowed it. Yes, I heard. Borrowed it. Well, well.” He turned on Ned. “And for every borrower there has to be a lender, does there not, a lender prepared to lend. I presume I have you to thank for lending my daughter this, this, bicycle.” He turned the handle-bars to and fro, as if testing the steering.
“Daddy, this is—”
“No matter that the brake pads are defective and it quite lacks a rear reflector. No matter that these lanes are steep and narrow and riddled with ruts and potholes, such that cause bicycles to buckle and riders to fall, and that unlike the rare times when she chooses to sit upon her horse, here she lacks any protective headgear at all, you thought—”
“It’s not his fault, Daddy.” Isobel broke in again. “I asked for his help, that’s all.”