Maggie Gee - The Ice People

‘Can I muck about on the sand?’ asked Luke, excited. ‘If I keep my jumpers on. And boots —’ He was always anticipating Sarah’s worries, and of course when he was little there’d been reason to worry, but now he seemed fit enough to me. If — somehow soft, for a boy of his age.

Then I thought, how often has he been to the sea? We’d taken him to Euro and the USA, but the British seaside was considered unhealthy. There had been too much food poisoning and dysentery and sunburn, and swimmers dying from the faeces in the sea, and nineteenth and twentiethcentury hotels collapsing … My mother and father always took us to the sea, with her brother there it was convenient, but now it was a place for the very poor, with great camps of Wanderers on the beaches in summer.

At that moment it occurred to me. Luke had not been to a Learning Centre for four or five years, ever since Sarah started taking him to the Commune. Those were the years, between eight and thirteen, when you saw the files of shouting, laughing children gangling through the streets to the Learning Pools. All Insider children were taught to swim. But thinking back, when he was five or six, I’d suggested to Sarah that we took Luke swimming, but she worried about his asthma, and bugs in the pool, she worried that the exercise might overexcite him or hurt his voice or whatever damn thing …

The lights of shore, faint trails of white, were shrinking, blurring slowly to nothing. The distant copters were tiny red matchheads, then a single pinhead, then they were gone. The wind was getting up, razor-sharp, steelcold, driving into my eyes, nose, mouth, making it a battle to keep my lips closed, and glancing up at the top of the bare mast I saw the windgauge rotating wildly. There was a sudden vibration from the stern and then the angry whine of the engine over-revving. I realised the whole stern of the boat was lifting bodily out of the water — the propeller was beating on thin air. We were pitching forward, headfirst, headlong, sliding down into the abyss — at the last moment, we recovered.

‘Luke,’ I said, trying to sound calm, ‘you can swim, can’t you? You have been taught?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Did you think I could?’

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I just — wondered.’

‘We shan’t sink, shall we? We’re not going to drown?’

‘Of course not.’ I cursed myself for worrying him.

And now we could feel the swell again, even through our speed, even through the engine, like a gentle nudging from a giant beast that was just beginning to get moving, a fluid, easy, enormous something that balanced our littleness on its shoulder, too vast to notice we were there, beginning to stretch out into a lazy gallop, sliding us slowly across its muscles, breathing a great wind into our faces, backs of our necks, ankles, wrists, finding each little nakedness, for the wind had become a steady gale, and we were all at once so small, and the danger wasn’t from the copters, the danger wasn’t from the coastguards, the danger was an absolute dizziness, the danger was of falling through the world, the danger was of bringing my beloved son into the middle of the ocean, and he could not swim, and I was the father, and could not protect him…

Had not taught him, or thought about him.

‘Briony,’ I called. They were huddled together at the forward end of the cockpit, their two black shapes like a mother and child, high in the sky, then plunging, plunging, then up again, and someone was shouting — I think it was Luke — with excitement, not terror, but Briony had her arm round him — I couldn’t help wishing that it were Sarah: if we had to die, we should all be together — I saw Briony’s profile briefly outlined, against the glow that still hung along the skyline, a bar of gold below the indigo, and the sea had turned black, silky, oily, and now it was trying a new little trick, rolling us lightly from side to side even as it pitched us from head to foot, while the whole damn ship, as it pitched and tossed, was rising and falling like a heavy yoyo, and before her face sank into the blind darkness, I saw her small nose, her high forehead, she wasn’t as tough, as hard as Sarah — ‘Maybe you and Luke should go below.’

‘Lukey, go in the cabin,’ she said. ‘Lukey!’ She gave him a little push. And then, as he scrambled noisily through, she called to me, ‘I can’t go below. I’m going — going to be —’

And then she was sick, with a profound, tearing, retching movement that brought her suddenly to her knees, clutching the side, again, and again, as we surged up and down like a horse at a fair, a merrygoround going round for ever. I couldn’t leave the helm to go to her. We had only been out at sea for an hour. Could she stand another four hours of this?

I missed the lights of shore very badly. I should have felt great, for we hadn’t been followed, we hadn’t been sunk, we had made our escape, we were free of Wicca, and of Manguard too, of the endless men with their shiny heads and sweat and perfume and corded muscles, and free of my silly, homophobic anxiety for Luke, aged thirteen, and beautiful — instead I felt cold and lost and empty, for ahead there were miles of howling darkness.

In those days, none of us were used to it, because, in London, it was never dark.

I had a brainwave. ‘Luke, switch Dora on.’

‘What for?’ He never wanted to.

‘Because she’ll give you some light. And warmth. We’re safe from the copters now. Go on.’

It was good to see her familiar eyes at the foot of the companionway ladder, glowing orange in the night, and to feel her squat friendly presence again. ‘Why don’t you curl up next to Dora and try to get some sleep?’ I shouted to the back of Luke’s blonde head, illuminated in the cabin before me.

‘I’m worried about Briony.’

‘She’s all right … she’ll be down in a minute.’

‘She’s claustrophobic,’ he said.

‘What?’ He didn’t usually use words like that.

‘You know. She doesn’t like being shut in. She can have one of my jumpers if she likes.’

He suddenly sounded so grownup. I realised that he was not a child, not just someone I had to look after. And he wasn’t scared. I could hear that too.

‘You’re a good kid,’ I yelled. ‘Keep that lifejacket on. I know it’s uncomfortable, but keep it on.’

‘You don’t have to worry,’ he replied. ‘I’ll come and help you sail the ship,’ but as he said it, I lost concentration and let the wind take control away from me, pushing the bow round as we hung on the top of yet another wall of water. Sideways, sideways, we were slipping sideways … what did Uncle call it? Something deadly, broaching, mygod, we were definitely broaching … Clutching the tiller with one desperate hand I grabbed for Briony with the other. She was vomiting in that strange attitude of prayer, ‘Hang on!’ I yelled to Luke, ‘Hang on!’ There was a sickening sense of time stopping as we plunged down, down, we would never come up, down, down, I started praying please no further, and then in an instant the whole cockpit was filling with water, we were going under, oh, pleasegod, I’d forgotten the washboards, if the cabin filled –

All of a sudden we were shooting up like a flea on the back of an enormous dolphin, then slowing towards that horrible pause, that queasy second or two of stillness — but somehow, before we plunged again, I managed to wrestle her round head to wind, and the danger was over, for the moment.

I looked for Luke, and was instantly afraid. He was face down on the floor of the cabin, twitching — he had had convulsions when he was a child — then I realised he was actually laughing with pleasure, and Briony was shaking herself like a dog, trying to get the water out of her clothes, till she slipped on the wet floor and fell over.