saying she was going to make a picture) my mother said, in her ever-so-interested voice, ‘And how’s work, Samantha?’
I mumbled something about being at a waiting stage, and the conversation would have petered away (indeed, I saw Michael sitting up a bit straighter, waiting to leap gallantly into the silence he knew was coming), when my dad coughed formally and laid down his napkin. We all turned to him.
‘When I was a prisoner in Japan,’ he began, and my heart sank. I’d had this conversation before. ‘I saw lots of men die. They died like flies.’ He paused; we waited with the automatic respect of people who must bow their heads before a tragedy. ‘I saw more than any of you will ever see and more I’m sure than any of your precious patients see.’
I looked at Finn, but her head was bent and she was chasing a raisin around her plate with a fork.
‘I came back home and I just got on with things. I remember everything.’ He laid his hand over the tweed at his breast. ‘But I put it to one side. All this talking about trauma and stress and victims, it does no good, you know, it’s just opening up old wounds. Best to let things lie. I don’t doubt your motives, Samantha. But you young people think that you have a right to happiness. You have to endure. Trauma!’ He guffawed. ‘That’s just modern rubbish.’ He picked up his wine glass and took a mouthful of its contents, his eyes glaring over the rim. My mother looked anxious.
‘Well…’ began Michael in an understanding tone.
‘Dad…’ I started in a wail that I recognized belonged to my childhood.
But Finn’s voice cut through, soft and clear.
‘As far as I understand it, Mr Laschen, trauma is an over-used word. People use it when they often just mean grief or shock or bereavement. Real trauma is something different. People don’t just get over it. They need help.’ Her eyes flicked to mine for a moment, and I gave her a little smile. The room felt oddly quiet. ‘Some people who are traumatized find life is literally unbearable. They’re not weak cowards or fools; they’ve been injured and they need to be healed. Doctors heal the body’s wounds, but sometimes you can’t see the wounds. They are there, though. Just because you suffered and didn’t complain, do you think other people should suffer as well?’ No one spoke. ‘I think Sam helps people a lot. She saves people. It’s not about happiness, you see, it’s about being able to live.’
Michael leaned across and took the fork, which she was still pushing around her plate. He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him gratefully.
‘Finn and I are going to make everybody coffee,’ he said, and led her from the room.
My mother noisily clattered our pudding plates together.
‘Teenage girls are always very intense,’ she said understandingly.
I looked over at my father.
‘You know what the problem is?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Your door’s sticking. I’ll bet it’s the hinges. I’ll look it over later. Have you got any carbon paper?’
‘Carbon paper? Why would I have that?’
‘For spreading down the lintel, find where it’s rubbing. There’s nothing like carbon paper for that.’
Nineteen
Once, when I was about ten, we went on our summer holiday to Filey Bay up on the east coast. I’ve never been back, and all I remember about the place is sand-dunes and a fierce and dirty wind – how it swept along the sea front in the evenings, rattling the cans that had been left lying on the pavements, sending crisp packets into the air like small tatty kites. And I remember, as well, that my father took me out in a pedal-boat. My legs would hardly reach the pedals, and I had to sit forward on the seat while he sat back, his legs – skinny and shiny white in his unaccustomed shorts – skittered away. I looked down into the water and suddenly could no longer see the bottom, just a depthless grey-brown. As if it happened yesterday, I can feel the panic that flooded through me, leaking into all the compartments of my mind. I screamed and I screamed, clutching my bewildered father’s arm, so that my mother, waiting on the shore, thought something terrible had happened, though our little red boat still bobbed safely a few yards out. I don’t feel safe with water, and although I know how to swim I try to avoid doing so. When I take Elsie to the swimming pool I tend to stand knee-deep and watch her splash about. The sea, for me, is not a place to have fun; it’s not a giant leisure centre but a terrifying expanse that sucks up boats and bodies and radioactive waste and shit. Sometimes, especially in the evening when the layered grey of the sea blurs with the darkening grey of the sky, I stand and look out at the shining water and imagine the other, underwater world that lies hidden beneath it and it makes me feel dizzy.
So what did I think I was doing going sailing with Michael Daley? When he’d phoned me up to arrange it I’d replied, in my enthusiastic voice, that I would love to go out in his boat. I like people to think that I’m brave, dauntless. I haven’t screamed with fear since I was a little girl.
‘What shall I bring?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. I’ve got a wet suit that should fit you and a life-jacket, of course. Remember to wear gloves.’
‘Wet suit?’
‘You know, the kind of rubber suit divers wear – you’ll look good in one. If we capsized you’d freeze without it at this time of year.’
‘Capsize?’
‘Has this phone got an echo or is it just you?’
‘I can’t possibly fit into this.’
I was looking at something that resembled a series of black and lime-green inner tubes.
‘You have to take your clothes off first.’ We were in my living room. Danny had gone to Stamford to buy some paint, Finn had gone to the corner shop for milk and bread and Elsie was at school. Michael was already wearing his wet suit, under a yellow waterproof. He looked slim and long, but faintly absurd, like an astronaut without his spaceship, like a fish out of water.
‘Oh.’
‘Put a swimsuit on underneath.’
‘Right. I think that I’ll do this in my bedrom. Help yourself to coffee.’
Upstairs I stripped down, put on my swimming costume and started to push my legs into the thick black rubber. God, it was tight. It closed elastically around my thighs and I tugged it up over my hips. My skin felt as if it were suffocating. The worst bit was getting my arms into the sleeves; I felt as if my body was going to buckle under the pull of the rubber. The zip did up behind but I couldn’t reach it – indeed, I could hardly lift my arms higher than horizontal.
‘Are you all right?’ called Michael.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want any help?’
‘Yes.’
He came into the room and I saw us both in the mirror, long-legged moon-walkers.
‘I was right, it does suit you,’ he said and I pulled my stomach in self-consciously as he did up the zip, its cold metal and his warm fingers running up my knobbled spine. His breath blew against my hair.
‘Put your boots on’ – he handed me a pair of neat rubber shoes – ‘and then we can go.’
The wind blew in icy gusts up the pebbly beach, where Michael’s boat was pulled up in a line with other dinghies. His boat-house was apparently where he kept his windsurfers and spare tack; his dinghy lived outside in all weathers. A strange humming sound, a bit like forests on a fierce winter night, came from the denuded boats: all those cord-things (‘Shrouds,’ said Michael) which held the masts up were rattling. The small waves were
