Every Seventh Wave E-Book

Tom Vowler

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 265

Beschreibung

Every Seventh Wave has strong echoes of Fiona Mozley's Elmet and Evie Wyld's All the Birds, Singing. Strongly lyrical, the novel also serves as a literary thriller, with a suspenseful pace that builds to its redemptive finale. People-trafficking, fraternal love and violence are the fulcrum the novel turns on, the latter rippling outwards, sparing no one. Every Seventh Wave is a literary tale of the fates we tether ourselves to, how seemingly benign encounters can provoke both hope and devastation.

Leseprobe

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EVERY SEVENTH WAVE

TOM VOWLER

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imo Felton William Vowler

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CONTENTS

Title PageDedicationEvery Seventh WaveAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorAlso by Tom VowlerCopyright

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EVERY SEVENTH WAVE

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1

He watched from an upstairs window as she entered the water. It was one of the few not boarded up, this side of the house defended from stone-throwers by a sheer drop to the rocks below. The room itself was empty these days, save an old rocking chair that had been his mother’s, where on occasion he’d observe the cycle of the Atlantic as it pitched and tossed, the wading birds that prospected the strandline. He’d vowed last year to make something of it, return it to the clutch of habitable rooms, but there was comfort found in sparsity, like a meditation.

He supposed it would have been one of the more expensive guest rooms, and he imagined his mother proudly opening the door for visitors, letting the panorama announce itself, the next landfall a barely conceived thing. This time of year, the hill to the west kept the setting sun from the room, right until it breached the horizon, when it would ignite the sky in a kind of performance.

He saw the woman had paused for a moment, glancing back to the shore, before continuing further into the sea and he had to work hard to see her in the dusk.

Like the birds he was not beyond searching the line of wrack himself, a ribbon of detritus, source of endless flotsam: wood for fuel or furniture; a pair of sunglasses he kept though didn’t wear. He had found shoes, hot water bottles, skulls of various mammals, all curated by the waves after their immense 2journeys. A tiny porcelain figurine, which he’d taken home and placed above the fire. Twice a day the sea bestowed him with gifts, objects cleansed and softened before being returned to the land.

And so many dolls. He never understood where all the dolls came from. Or who lost them. He imagined all the others that must be adrift, eddying eternally in orphaned buoyancy. There had been a singular doll’s head last week, poised on a heap of desiccating rope, its eyes blinking when he tilted it back and forth, giving it life. Where have you come from, he asked it.

Once a dead seal lay across the seaweed, half its head missing, flank corkscrewed open – a propeller most likely – and for days he watched the gulls and redshanks pick it clean. And last winter, half a mile or so along, there was that time the dog wouldn’t give up its find, a severed foot still in its shoe, the dog a primal thing in those moments, letting no one near it. Later the police told him how easily feet detached from a body after a month or more at sea. One of the fishermen lost a few months earlier, they reckoned, and he had imagined a family member summoned to identify the boot, for surely one foot looks much like another, especially after so long in the water. He didn’t recall hearing of any more found and wondered what someone did with just a foot.

The light was receding with speed now and he had to adjust his position at the window to follow the woman, could see that the water was up past her knees. She might still turn back, he said to himself. There was no need to do anything yet. 3

For three successive evenings she had arrived around twilight, looking out to sea, lost to thought, standing a few feet from the cliff edge until darkness claimed her. He’d taken the dog out a while later each time, but there’d been no sign of anyone. He didn’t recognise her as someone from the village, reckoned on her being mid-twenties or so, a holidaymaker perhaps, though it wasn’t the season. He only used a few rooms and in the absence of lights she would presume the house empty, its tumbledown façade and weather-worn roof, its proximity to the cliff that suggested the sea would one day claim it, which it would. He’d once regarded land as unassailable, the changes it endures too small to witness, giving an illusion of permanence. But he knew the sea’s furious power now, which he’d listen to at night as it dragged away a little more of the rock beneath him.

To live on the edge of things, he thought. The meeting of two worlds, a liminal frontier, from known to unknown as land gave way to leagues of nothing but sea and all it had laid claim to. His mother once told him the sea was God’s instrument of retribution, but some days you looked out at it and knew it was beyond even God’s will.

She was deeper now, the woman. Almost to her waist. The sea wasn’t at its coldest this time of year, but could still hit you like a shovel if you weren’t used to it. He looked to see if anyone else was present, a dog walker or a lover for whom this spectacle was intended, but if there was the gloom had displaced them. There would perhaps be someone set up fishing further along, but their focus would be narrow, outward looking.

He considered for a moment if the scene was indeed real, 4and not a cruel re-enactment of a delusional mind, one still manacled to the past, one spent largely in isolation, his heavy drinking days behind him yet not without their legacy. But there was enough continuity for it to be trusted, he was sure, the dog joining him at the window, sensing the thing.

It was a test then, as everything these days was. Nothing stayed still, although more than anywhere he had found an order to things here, an equilibrium that the woman’s nightly presence had begun to threaten. He’d wondered if her evening ritual would become a thing of permanence, a harbinger visited upon him each sundown. But tonight, after an hour or so in stillness, she had climbed down a less sheer spot on the cliff, mislaying her footing a few times. At one point she seemed to lose her nerve, but ascending must have felt equally perilous, and a few minutes later she was on the beach, and even from up here he could sense the change in her. He’d watched as she crossed the shale, limping a little, the gloaming shape of her less distinct by the second, and had he not known of her existence she might have been just another shadow. She’d paused at the water’s edge, let the swash encircle her feet, and for a moment he thought the reality of the thing would dissuade her.

But now her stride had this purpose, like a switch was thrown, a decision made. Every few yards she fell, recovered and continued, like the sea was a stallion she couldn’t stay on for long. Further and further out, more of her below the water than above now.

And then she was gone.

5

He attempted to open the window, to get a clearer look, to call out, but it had long since sealed shut. He tried to calculate where the small ridge was, the sand falling away a couple of feet, how it caught out holidaymakers time and again, a riptide often forming a little beyond this. She would resurface, he was sure, and stagger back to shore, cold and rueful, a learning of sorts. But half a minute passed and the water remained unbroken.

There was anger in him now. This was what happened in the world, people forced their business on you, drew you into their lives whether you wanted it or not. Even here, where he’d cocooned himself from the world, fashioned a life of sorts.

He took the stairs three at a time, the dog getting under his feet, animated at the prospect of some event or other. Outside the wind voiced across the garden, in encouragement or torment he couldn’t tell, the briny spray like an ablution. He was halfway through the mob of weeds when he thought of the torch, but that would take another minute, which could be the difference. The dog was barking now, playing some game, trying to herd him, and he shouted it down, felt in himself this great swell of adrenaline.

There was enough light to see the shape of things if not the detail, and he kept a good pace, his body knowing by heart the path’s course to the clifftop and a less precipitous route to the beach. 6

He wondered if she was a good swimmer, whether she’d been drinking. Whether she’d taken a breath before going under. He tried to remember today’s high-tide time, calculate what force he would be up against.

His own passage to the beach was more plummet than calculated descent, the gorse-pocked scree slowing his fall only a little. He stood, sensed the injuries were superficial, got his bearings back. The dog had found its own way down and stood at his side, awaiting the next component of the game.

The sea was a hundred yards or so away, distinguished from the beach only by its fluctuating, by a thousand ever-shifting contours. There had been moonlight on previous evenings, but the cloud was dense and unbroken tonight.

The water was cold, even to him, each stride less productive than the last. The dog feigned to follow, and he sensed the conflict in the animal, each salvo ending back on the beach, fear trumping instinct.

His boots were soon small anchors, his jeans already twice their weight as he lunged forward in slow motion, and this image of running in cement not yet dried. Once up to his midriff he stopped, tried to becalm his breathing, knew this to be important. He realised he had no idea where she was, that she could be fifty feet or more away.

He heard the dog barking on the shore, called it to quieten so he could listen for splashes. Less than two minutes, he reckoned he’d been. Even if she’d been under all that time, the temperature might save her, force the blood to vital organs. Slow everything down.

The cold was deep in him now, his body sluggish as it tried to preserve itself. He removed his top, thinking he should have 7taken everything off on the beach, that the extra time would have been worth it.

He called out several times, felt the immense scale of the water around him, felt his impotence. The fear he once had of water returned, like a half-forgotten lover, and he forced it back down, refused to acknowledge it.

A wave broke on his back, was enough to unbalance him and he took in some water, lost the direction of things for a moment. He had tried, he said to himself. You couldn’t stop someone if they were determined. He’d acted with swiftness once he realised, there was no need to berate himself.

She burst through the surface a few yards from him, arms flaying, spluttering out the sea, taking big gulps of air before going under again. He pushed through the water until the seabed fell away and he had to swim, the fear rising again, like an old habit, all the unknown things beneath him.

Feeling down to his laces, he worked them loose, jemmied his boots free as he trod water. He swam for long seconds, but there was nothing when he got to the spot, and he felt with his hands and legs for something solid, his muscles claggy like they were in mud and he knew he’d be of no help soon.

His leg was stuck now, snagged on something, his instinct to kick out, to release himself, but he realised she’d grabbed his ankle, and so he reached down. He held his breath and allowed himself to submerge a little, trying to find something of substance, but if anything she was pulling him further down, further out. A siren, he thought, luring him here, something not of this world.

He managed to surface, could hear the yelp of the dog and he took some big gulps before plunging again, this time 8forcing his upper body over itself so he could swim down to her. Five, six feet perhaps. He found what he thought must be hair and looped an arm around the mass below it, knowing it was a final effort, that there would be only one go.

He’d read about drowning, of those caught in riptides, the swell and heave of the sea underestimated, the cold sapping all strength from even the strongest. Of boisterous waves that pounded down on you like a ton of gravel until you had nothing left. Fighting it was the mistake, the battering and winding all the worse for it. Soon you couldn’t tell up from down, the sea a womb, your senses betraying you. Panic became resignation, the breath held as long as possible but eventually the body disobeyed the mind and breathed for you, the lungs flooding in an instant. Some spoke of euphoria, a painless passing to unconsciousness, but he wondered if this was always the case. Once reconciled to your fate, was it better to inhale deeply, to hasten it all?

It was anger that leavened him, anger that she was drowning them both, and with effort he hadn’t summoned before he pulled her up until they were both afloat, their heads almost touching. A pair of buoys bobbing in the mercury water.

He fought the heave and grip of the tide, turning her a little, coiling a forearm around her neck to begin the ungainly swim towards the barking. Several times he felt progress cancelled out as great currents surged them back, and he knew to let them, to concede to its might and start again.

To calm himself he tried to focus on the sky’s vastness, let the sough of the breeze revive him. Of all the things to be the unmaking of him, he thought, like it had been scripted. Let go of her and it will be easy, and he wondered perhaps if this was his mother’s voice on the wind. 9

A final push, legs pedalling with all he had, power that was more memory than effort, the muscles all febrile. When finally he could stand, he held her in both arms like a corpse, the sea still reluctant to yield them. He rested her on the water’s surface, let himself recover a little.

His legs had no feeling now, his stride coming from some ancient instinct, one after another, each an event. The water receded and he had to take her weight on his own, finding the strength from somewhere, knowing that you could in bursts. Some of the heft of the sea fell from their clothes and as they collapsed on the shingle, the dog yelped and harried, confused at this gift he’d brought them.

Even in the half-light he could see her skin was grey, that the water had claimed its colour, perhaps her life. He fought the shivering and opened her mouth, pushed two fingers in, but it felt clear. He placed an ear to her lips, could hear nothing beyond waves or the dog. Pinching her nose shut he cupped his mouth to hers and blew hard, waited two seconds then blew again. He tried to see if her chest rose, if the instinct to survive was there, and when he couldn’t he felt her wrist for a pulse. Don’t let this be for nothing, he thought.

He considered shouting for help, knowing even had he the strength to it would be a waste.

He tried to formulate useful thoughts but the cold forbade it. The house was a shapeshifting presence on the cliff and he recalled how twenty minutes ago he had been settling into an unremarkable evening. Longed for it to be this way still.

Do something, he thought. That is better than nothing.

Cupping a fist with his other hand, he knew to press hard, a hundred or so compressions a minute, stopping at thirty to blow into her again, and this time he sensed her chest rise. 10When she convulsed it wasn’t to bring water up but to vomit, the smell a rank thing. Turning her on her side he again forced his fingers into her mouth, scooping the remaining sick out, not thinking about what he was doing, just doing it, and he was glad of the instinct.

The dog had ceased its barking now, the game something sinister, something to fear, and hoping he’d got all the sick out he turned the woman on her back once again. The cloud had parted a little and, her face burnished in moonlight, he got a first sense of what she looked like, saw a waterlogged beauty there.

He was angry again, but different to in the water. Hers was an age when it was all felt so keenly and there seemed no way to go on. An age of absolutes. Nothing is worth this, he wanted to say to her, knowing that sometimes a thing was.

She was completely still, and he could sense death gathering, its leverage almost enough. He leant in and forced more of his air into her, hoping some of it found a way, and then sat back, exhausted, the cold of her lips still on his, the tide behind them an indifferent pulse.

Life was there, he felt, vaporous and fragile but apparent. He wondered what this was based on, whether it was more than hope, more than the need for things to be different this time. He went to continue the resuscitation but spasms of salt water expelled from her lungs, burbling out of her like a blocked drain. She choked and he eased her on her side again, smoothed her back, and the dog resumed its barking.

He was colder than he’d ever been, knew all the effort was futile if he didn’t get them to the fire soon. He pictured his boots on the seabed, barrelling out on the tide, and he mourned their loss, as you might a loyal pet. Removing his 11shirt, he slopped it down, tried to contain the shaking.

Looking up at the house, he thought it possible. She wouldn’t be so heavy, even with wet clothes, and after another minute he hoisted her over his shoulder and trudged across the shingle.

12

The whisky seared, its warmth emanating out from the core of him. He worked out the order of things, decided she was OK while he put on dry clothes and saw to the fire. Even if he walked to the village soon, to the phone box, she needed caring for now. He placed a blanket over her, but the wet clothes needed to come off, it was just a fact.

Her breathing was at least regular now, broken only by a steady cough, and he felt sure all the water had come up. When he’d first placed her on the sofa, she was still unconscious and for a minute it seemed he’d lost her after all, her skin sickly blue, the hope he’d had on the beach diminished. What would he do then, he’d thought. But then she’d spluttered some more.

He tried to recall the signs of hypothermia, knew you could recover then relapse. Pneumonia was possible too. Brain damage. Alive is better than dead, though, he told himself.

He removed the blanket and began taking off her jumper, pulling each arm down over her hands, working the thing up over her head as he tilted her towards him. The shirt next, its buttons slipping easily through their holes, its removal revealing a constellation of burn marks on one arm, some healed, others fresh.

Her right flank was adorned with a birthmark, a swarthy terrain, like someone had begun colouring her in but had lost interest. For a moment he was mesmerised, followed it up 13and down with his eyes, resisting the urge to trace its form with a finger.

She seemed to rouse a little and he thought to stop the undressing, to explain what he was doing, but she drifted away again, between worlds. The shoes were harder, their laces tightly knotted by the water, his fingers too thick, nails bitten too short to get any purchase. He tried to remove a shoe as it was, but these too had contracted, had become part of her. He fetched a small knife and cut each lace below the knot, eased the shoes from her feet, her socks, once removed, like a pair of rats on the floor. He thought he might have to cut the jeans as well, but after initial resistance, they slid down.

He stood back, took in this unfamiliar sight the universe had delivered. Like flotsam. A quick calculation was all it took to recall the last time he’d seen a woman this unclothed. More than a decade, and he tried to remember what intimacy felt like but couldn’t. It was as if the body forgot, more than the mind: the brain knew the choreography, its specifics, but not how it felt. She was, he saw now, probably barely twenty, the age his daughter would be.

He told himself to stop thinking, to stay with the order of things.

The fire hadn’t caught properly, so he worked on it until the flames bickered and he was sure it would sustain itself. He sidled the sofa nearer the heat, then started to remove her underwear. If she came around he would stop and apologise, hope she remembered what had occurred. That he was helping her.

The order of things, he said to himself.

The pants were skimpy, a vivid pink, and they rolled down her legs until they were just a wet cord, a figure of eight. There 14was a glimpse of hair, more a tuft, and he stole his gaze from it, distracted himself with the birthmark.

The bra was a deep red, her breasts pushed unnaturally inwards by it. Rather than turn or lift her again, he felt behind her and unclasped it, waiting for her to stir at the embrace but she didn’t. Their faces so close, he could smell the whisky on his breath and he was glad he’d got a handle on the drinking. He adjusted each arm in turn and removed the bra, lowered her back down. And then she was naked and something in him did remember an aspect of it all, how it felt.

He sensed her scrawniness was impermanent, like a thing that weighed less than it should, and he wanted to feed her up, remembered the dog when it first arrived, all ribbed and skin-stretched.

Her nakedness was unsettling now, made her somehow more a corpse than a person, and he replaced the blanket. He thought again how life took these turns, how it went from one state to another just when you thought it was stable.

He saw that her left ankle was swollen, probably sprained on the cliff, or turned over in the water. He would put some ice on it soon, bring down the puffiness. Some of the colour had returned to her face and he hoped she was beyond the worst danger. He fetched a towel, patted sections of her hair dry, before propping her head up with a cushion, and there being a sense of accomplishment: perhaps he had saved her, rendered death into life.

The dog watched as he gathered her clothes and crossed the room to arrange them around the fire. Her shoes too. He thought there were some spare laces somewhere and told himself to look later.

He poured another whisky and drank this one slower, 15following in his mind the balm as it spread within him, telling himself two was fine. A tonic of sorts. He reckoned on it being around eight o’clock, perhaps a little later, and he tried to remember what plans there had been for the evening, what jobs he’d been minded to attend before all this.

The fire was up now. The wood could last the night if he was careful with it. He’d fetch more when it got light. Turning the armchair out a little, so he could see both the fire and the girl, he let himself fall into it, thinking that if she didn’t need checking on, he could happily sleep there until morning.

He thought again about a phone call, at least to report it, but the fire and the whisky were anvils on his shoulders, and it was all he could do just to watch her. There had been a telephone line into the house for the first few years, disconnected when he didn’t pay the bill, his parents’ old Bakelite handset a thing without purpose now. He should get a mobile. It perhaps cost him work, not having one, but he managed. He would walk to the village first thing, tell someone.

The dog curled at his feet and he envied the animal’s easy acceptance of circumstance. A hunger made itself known and he saw it off with the last of the whisky.

It was close to dark in the room when he woke, the fire aglow but silent. Out to sea the lambent sweep from the lighthouse crossed the sky in cadenced relief. There had been a terrible cold in him and he wondered why he wasn’t in bed. He half-remembered and looked to the sofa, saw the shape of her, this selkie of the sea, and he replayed it all in his mind.

She was groaning, delirious perhaps, and the noise had been something unfathomable in his dream, sound and images 16that took him back to adolescence. In the dream he thought he had said: I am done with you.

Still not trusting the scene in front of him, he remained as still as the dog at his feet, waiting until he knew what to do. He felt that despite warming a little, the sea was still in him, its cold grip a diabolical thing. And then he remembered she had been in twice as long as him, had none of his protective fat. The dog the only thing smart enough to stay dry.

He tried to figure out the time from the sky, an hour before dawn perhaps. The hardest part of the day to be awake. He shifted in the chair, the dog grumbling some refrain. He remembered he hadn’t got the ice for her ankle, and it took all he had to rise to his feet, his legs protesting. The dog, sensing it wasn’t a proper rising, shifted to what was left of the fire.

He put a lamp on and felt her forehead, which was warm but not hot, his touch seeming to quieten her. When he came back from the kitchen she was awake.

17

He held out the ice, which he’d put in a towel.

Your ankle, he said.

She looked confused but not afraid and he relaxed a little.

You were in the water, he said.

He could see she was thinking about his words, like they were a riddle to be solved, and there was embarrassment in him now, for knowing her intention, for reminding her. She scanned the room and then herself, lifting the blanket a little.

I had to take them off, he said. They were wet. He pointed to where her clothes were drying, neatly arranged and tiny, he thought, like a child’s, especially the underwear.

She seemed to accept this, though it was hard to know; he had never been able to tell a woman’s thoughts. She pulled the blanket up to her chin, but without panic, looked down at the dog and he hoped the animal was a comfort.

I’ll get the fire going in a minute, he said. Are you still cold?

Where am I? she said.

Her accent had a trace of something hard on it, Russian perhaps. He spoke a little slower, a little louder.

In the house on the cliff, he said, along from where you climbed down.

She turned on to her side and winced, touching her ankle while trying to keep the blanket in place.

I don’t think it’s broken, he said. Sprained, most likely. I 18have some painkillers. And this. He held out the towel again.

Kneeling at the end of the sofa he asked if she minded and she shook her head. He pushed the blanket back a little. The swelling was no worse than before and he held the ice there gently while she watched.

Can I have some water? she said, her voice faltering, an approximation.

He gestured that the ice was more important.

I can hold it in place with my other leg, she said.

He left and came back with a filled glass and she drank hungrily.

Try to sip it, he said.

He put the box of pills where she could reach them, realised the folly of this, and eased two out from a strip. For the pain, he said.

He wondered again what time it was, how long he’d been in the chair.

Are you hungry? he asked.

She shook her head but then appeared to think about it some more.

A little.

There’s some stew.

In the kitchen he saw it was 6 a.m. The tide was back up and he could hear its rhythmic roar, the crash each wave made as it lost stability, the guttural growl when it turned back on itself, raking the shingle. He remembered his boots, how well they fitted, the years they had left in them.

It had been so long since someone else had been in the house, and then not at night, and he didn’t know what to make of it. It seemed both unsettling and a kind of relief.

He hadn’t felt hungry until he smelt the food, the 19microwave turning the portion he’d left for himself last night. He tore some bread off, took it in to her, the dog eyeing him.

Passing her the food, he saw that it didn’t work, the mechanics of it, how the towel would fall.

Have you some clothes I can borrow? she said. So I can sit up.

He left the bowl on the coffee table and went up to the bedroom, found the smallest shirt and jumper he had, some socks. He’d wondered what he should bring her to wear on her bottom half, but could think of nothing, so brought down a bigger towel for her to wrap around. After handing them to her, he turned her wet clothes around, moved them closer to the fire, and left her alone. He took some cheese from the fridge, put it on the last of the bread and sat down by the window, the first of the gulls starting up for the day.