God, you were so lucky,” says Roger at last, shaking his head again. He believes us! He has to believe us. He has no choice. How else could we have reached the boat?
Now Roger’s foil-blanket robes crackle around him as he looks from one of us to the other. “My God, you two have no idea how lucky you were. What a crazy thing to do. All that way – and in that cold water. You weren’t even wearing wetsuits. The currents round this coast are lethal. You should never have tried to swim. What if you’d been swept away? You should have been swept away. Your guardian angels must have been working overtime.”
We know, Roger, we know, I think, keeping my face innocent. You don’t need to tell us that this is a dangerous coast. Much more dangerous than you realise.
“Conor and I know where the rip is,” I continue. I put on a serious expression, as if I understand just how risky it was, and I want Roger to know we were as careful as we could be. “We kept well clear of the rip. And we were lucky that it was such a calm day. The sea was flat. I know we shouldn’t’ve risked it, but we thought there’d been an accident and we had to get to you. We’re strong swimmers, aren’t we, Con?”
Conor gives me a look that means, Don’t push it, Saph.
And when we got out to the boat, we saw you both clinging on to the ladder. Even though you were nearly unconscious, you were holding on. We didn’t know what had happened, but it looked like there’d been a bad accident. So Conor pushed and I pulled until we got you into the boat. Then we got the foil blankets and checked your pulse and stuff.”
“Jesus. You guys must be pretty strong,” says Gray in his twanging Australian voice, looking from me to Con and back again. “Hauling two grown men up a ladder after swimming that distance. You deserve a medal.”
I check to see if he’s being sarcastic, but he isn’t. Like Roger, he’s got to believe the incredible, because there is no alternative.
“It was pretty tough,” I say modestly. “But we sort of knew we had to keep going, didn’t we, Con?”
“Yeah,” Conor agrees reluctantly. He was hating this parade of lies, especially because it was making us look like heroes when we weren’t.
“I’d give a lot to know what happened during that dive,” says Gray. “I feel like a kangaroo’s been jumping up and down on my belly.”
“We were lucky,” says Roger. “But all the same, never, ever take such a risk again, kids. Your mother would hang, draw and quarter me if she knew.”
If she knew? Does this mean – can this possibly mean that Roger isn’t going to tell Mum?
“Call the coastguard if you ever think something’s gone wrong. Don’t risk your own lives,” goes on Roger, sounding like one of those safety posters on the beaches in St Pirans. I can’t stop a little smile curling round my lips. Big mistake. Roger looks at me sharply.
“By the way, what happened to the binoculars?”
“Binoculars?”
“Yes. Your father’s binoculars. The ones you were looking through when you saw us dive.”
“Oh. Oh, those binoculars. We—”
“We left them there,” interrupts Conor.
“On the rocks?”
“We put them up above the tide line for safety. We’ll be able to find them again.”
“Good,” says Roger.
“But I’m too tired to look for them today,” I say quickly, in case he suggests that we pick up the binoculars when we bring the boat in. “We’ll come down for them at low tide tomorrow, won’t we, Conor?”
“You do that,” says Roger.
Roger and Gray finally make up their minds not to tell Mum about me and Conor swimming out to their boat. They’re reluctant to discuss this decision with us, in case we think they’re cheating Mum in some way. But we both agree that it would be crazy to tell her. What use would it be for Mum to know about the danger, now that it’s all over? She’d only have nightmares for months, because of what happened to Dad. She would never feel safe about us being near the sea again.
Roger doesn’t want Mum to be frightened because of him. He knows Mum well enough to sense that her fear of the sea is a real thing, alive and active. He doesn’t want her to start worrying every time he takes his boat out, the way she did with Dad.
“Your mum’s had enough to bear,” he says quietly. “And nothing so terrible happened this time. We’re all safe. A bit bruised and battered, but it could have been so much worse.”
So much worse than you know, I thought.
“And whatever happened out there – and we’ll probably never know – it’s thanks to you two that it turned out no worse,” says Roger. “Not that I want you to think I’m encouraging you to take that sort of risk again.”
“Don’t thank us,” says Conor abruptly. Roger glances at him, but asks no questions, and they both busy themselves with bringing the boat in.
Maybe somewhere in Gray and Roger’s minds, in some buried place, they knew how much worse it could have been. They don’t consciously remember the seals’ attack, but it must have left a mark on their minds as well as their bodies. Just thinking about it makes me shudder. Maybe that’s another reason they want to keep the events of today from Mum. They’d like to wipe away the memory, as if it never happened.
But I don’t think you can do that. I think that everything that happens to you stays in you, even if it stays in a part of your mind where you can’t find it. That’s why you should never try to forget when people urge you to.
People want me to forget Dad. They don’t say it as straight as that, but it’s what they want, all the same.
“You must try to move on, Saph. You’ve got your life to live. You mustn’t be trapped in the past. You’ve got to think of the future now.”
How I hate those words. Move on. Dad isn’t the past, and I’m not trapped. He’s alive, I know it. I will never stop thinking about him and trying to find him. I believe Dad knows that. He knows that I would never forget him, or stop searching for him.
While we’re heading the boat back towards our cove, Roger keeps glancing back at the Bawns. Each time he sees those black jagged rocks sticking out of the water, he frowns. Gray doesn’t look back at all.
A tiny film keeps running over and over again through my mind. The black, stick-like figures of Roger and Gray sprawl through the water again, turning over and over in slow motion. They sink down to the sea bed and rest there, until the currents cover them with sand.
No. It didn’t happen. Gray and Roger didn’t die. Roger is safe beside me, and now he’s going to come back to our cottage and play cards with Mum and tell her what a great cook she is and generally irritate me until I want to scream.
But maybe he doesn’t irritate me all the time. Sometimes I quite like talking to Roger.
I
