Helen Dunmore - The Complete Ingo Chronicles - Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept

Granny Carne’s called Granny , but she has no grandchildren. I don’t think she ever had children. She lives her wild life alone. She’s always lived in her cottage under the Downs. Sometimes people go there, when they need help. They go secretly. They don’t even tell their friends or their family. They knock on Granny Carne’s door and wait for her to answer. People say Granny Carne has the power to know the future, and sometimes she can look into your future for you. I don’t know how she does it, or what it’s like. It sounds scary to me.

Dad once told me most people round here have been up to Granny Carne’s at some time. When they had need of her.

“What kind of need, Dad?”

“To help you make a decision, maybe. To resolve a question that’s troubling you. To see beyond the present.”

“How can anyone see beyond the present?”

“They say she can,” said Dad. I had the feeling he was hiding something from me.

“Have you ever been to see her, Dad?”

“I’m always seeing her.”

“You know what I mean. To ask her about the future, like you said.”

“I did once.”

“What was it about, Dad?”

“Well, it was about that dummy you still had when you were nearly three years old, Sapphire. I wanted to know if you would ever give it up, or if you would be taking it to school with you along with your packed lunch.”

“ Dad !” It was so annoying. But he wouldn’t tell me any more, no matter how much I asked.

“Mathew knows this coast like the back of his hand,” says Granny Carne. “And the sea was flat that night he disappeared.”

She said, Mathew knows . Not Mathew knew . That means for Granny Carne, Dad is still in the present tense. Just as he is for me and Conor. And if you’re in the present tense, then that means you must be alive. If Granny Carne really can see into the future, maybe she knows he’s alive. Maybe she can see that Dad’s going to come back.

“So where is he, if he didn’t drown?” asks Conor.

“He’s away somewhere, I believe.”

“Away in Ingo,” I say immediately, without knowing that I was going to say it. Granny Carne’s amber eyes flash on me. I feel like a mouse or a vole when the eyes of a hunting owl light on it.

“Ingo,” she says. “In Ingo, you say? It’s strange you should say that, Sapphire, because when I saw you coming down the lane I thought you had a look of Ingo on your face. There’s a bit of it on Conor’s face too, but not as strong as on you.”

She knows , I thought. How can she know? How much does she know?

“What’s Ingo?” I ask her.

“I think you know that,” says Granny Carne. Now I feel like a vole when the owl’s rushing down towards it, talons spread. “Ingo’s a place that has many names,” says Granny Carne. “You can call it Mer, Mare or Meor. And it has its own Morveren name, but we don’t say that name, not while we’ve got our feet planted on the earth. Earth and Ingo don’t mix, even though we live side by side. Earth and Ingo aren’t always friends. Do you know the old name of Ingo, Sapphire? The old Morveren name?” Granny Carne asks the question casually, but now the owl is so close I can hear the rush of her wings. She really wants to know how much I know. But what would it mean, if I did know the Morveren name?

“No,” I say, reluctantly, because now I wish I did know it. I wish I was truly part of Ingo and knew everything about it.

“But you know who the Morveren are?”

“No. Not really.”

“Ah.”

I think she’s pleased that I don’t know. Suddenly her eyes lose their fierce, owl-like glitter, and she’s an old woman again. Granny Carne turns, pulls a bramble out of the hedge, and gives me a plump, shiny blackberry. Even from the look of it you can tell it’s warm and ripe. But surely it’s too early for blackberries to be ripe – it’s only the end of July. I walked up the lane yesterday and I didn’t see any.

“You have that one, Sapphire, and I’ll find another for Conor.” She searches the hedge and brings out another ripe berry. I hold my blackberry. I want to eat it, but at the same time I don’t.

“Eat it, Sapphire,” says Granny Carne. I put the blackberry into my mouth. It tastes of earth and sunshine and spicy fruit. It reminds me of fields, woods, the farm, the puppies, Mum cooking apple and blackberry pie, autumn, wood smoke, lighting the fire, kicking through fallen leaves with Conor when we were little…

“There’ll be plenty of fruit this year, with all the sun we’ve had,” says Granny Carne. “Now, Conor, tell me. Were you thinking of swimming today, down at the cove?”

“Maybe,” says Conor. It doesn’t sound rude. He smiles across at her and I think that Conor and Granny Carne look a bit alike. Both of them have strong brown skins that love the sun, and shiny dark eyes.

“I wouldn’t go today,” says Granny Carne. “There’s a strong current running. You might be able to swim against it, but not Sapphire. It would carry her away. She should keep inland today.”

“But I want to go,” I say.

“I know you do. Believe me, Sapphire, I know how much you want to go. I can feel it in you.” Granny Carne reaches forward and grasps my wrist. Her hand is strong and warm. “I can feel it running in you. But we lost the first Mathew – and then your father – and now who knows what’s going to happen? The story’s not ended yet. There’s a pattern, and it’s got to work itself out. Ingo’s growing strong. We’ll have fish from the sea swimming up the stream to my cottage next. But that’s not right. If Ingo breaks its bounds, then Earth will break its bounds. Ingo should stay in its place, and then I can stay in mine.”

She stands tall and stern. Her voice is a voice I have never heard from her before. Deep and powerful and not caring about anything but saying what it wants to say.

If Ingo breaks its bounds . I don’t understand what she means. The sea comes in to the high tide mark, but no farther. The cove fills with water, and then it empties again. That’s what has always happened, so how can it change?

Granny Carne is standing between me and the sea. She’s stopping me from getting to it. She’s planted in my way like a tree, or a rock. Suddenly I’m sure that if I can only get to the other side of Granny Carne, I’ll hear the sea singing again. Her body is blocking out the music of Ingo. I know it, and she knows it too. She’s standing there on purpose.

“You’ll have heard about the other Mathew Trewhella,” Granny Carne goes on. “The first one. He was a fine man. Handsome as a prince, and he sang in the church choir. People used to say that he had a voice like an angel. You know the nonsense people talk. One person says it and then they’re all repeating it. But it’s true that he had a fine voice. Your father’s voice is the only one I’ve known that ever matched the first Mathew Trewhella’s.”

I feel as if an electric current’s flowing through Granny Carne’s hand and into my wrist. It’s the same story, the story Dad told me when we were in the church, years ago. The mermaid, the wooden mermaid they slashed with a knife. Here she is again.

Granny Carne won’t let go of me. Her voice rises louder. “But of course the story got told wrong over the years,” she goes on. “Stories get mixed up as they’re passed from mouth to mouth, down the years. It wasn’t just one mermaid that enchanted Mathew Trewhella. He fell in love with Ingo. It was Ingo that captured him. Mer… Mare… Meor… Ingo… That’s what took Mathew from his friends and family. And he’s never returned in all this time.”

Why are you telling me all this ? I think fiercely, trying to resist the current of Granny Carne’s story. You’re trying to stop me from going to Ingo. You’re trying to frighten me .