Helen Dunmore - The Crossing of Ingo

People say how amazing communications are these days, because you can feel as if you’re in the same room as someone in Australia. But you don’t really feel that way. You keep telling each other news about your lives, but it feels false. Conor is better at it than me. Sometimes I find myself wishing the call was over. At home we never sit down face to face for fifteen minutes with Mum and talk about everything we’ve done that day. We might wander into the kitchen and chat a bit. Often I prefer just being quiet with people.

Seeing Mum’s face on the flat, cold screen of a computer makes it seem as if she has already gone far, far away from us, much farther than the thousands of miles she has travelled physically. She looks different. Her skin is deep brown from being out in the open all day long instead of working in the pub as she does here, and her hair has light streaks in it. It’s late spring in Queensland, and Mum says it’s much warmer than a Cornish summer. Mum looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her. She and Roger are staying in a little beach house, which someone has lent to them. It’s very remote. Mum gets up with the sun and pretty much goes to bed when the sun goes down, except when they light a fire and sit round it. The stars are enormous, she says.

It makes me feel as if Mum isn’t the same as the Mum I know. She is meeting a lot of people out there. She knows all Roger’s colleagues in the diving project, and their friends. She says Australians are amazingly friendly, and they are always getting asked to parties and barbies. Mum and Roger have already got a whole new Australian life together. It feels very, very weird, as if she might suddenly announce that she likes it so much out there, she’s decided to stay for ever.

Get a grip, Sapphire. You chose to stay here. You could have gone with her.

“Don’t swim outside the cove,” says Conor.

“You sound just like Mum.”

“You know what I mean.”

I know what Conor really means. Stay where it’s safe. Don’t go to Ingo without me.

I sit back on my heels. Sadie’s warm, questioning brown eyes gaze into mine, wondering what I am planning. A long walk over the Downs, maybe? A rough scramble along the cliff path? Her mind buzzes with a map of a thousand smells – farmyards, rabbit holes, flat stone boulders where adders come out to sun themselves on the warmest autumn afternoons…

“Do snakes have a smell, Sadie?” Sadie barks.

“You can’t not take her out now, Saph. Look how excited she is,” says Conor.

“All right, Sadie, this is the deal. You and I will walk for one hour max, then you promise not to whine and scrabble at the door and look pathetic when I go to the cove and you can’t come.”

The way down to the cove is too steep for Sadie. Besides, she would hate it there. Our cove is a gateway. Most human beings wouldn’t guess it but dogs can sense what’s really going on. Sadie would know straightaway that the smell in her nostrils was the smell of Ingo.

Sadie gives me a wise, impenetrable look. I decide to believe that she’s agreeing with me. “Walk, then be good at home,” I repeat firmly.

I open the door, cross the garden, lift the latch of the gate and kick it where it sticks. Sadie bounds through. “Wait, girl.”

I look up at the sky. It’s a perfect October day. You would think it was still summer, except that the sun is lower in the sky and there’s a clear, tingling taste in the breeze. A few bronze leaves stir on the rowan tree by our door. I’ll swim without my wetsuit today. The sea still has most of the summer’s warmth in it.

At that moment there’s a slash in the air above my head. Something hurtles past me, raking my hair with its claws. I flinch and throw my hands up to protect my face. The gull squawks loudly as it soars back into the sky.

“Conor! One of those gulls went for me again.”

Conor comes to the door and squints up at the roof. A second gull sits squat by the chimney, watching us with its hard yellow eye. The first gull wheels round from its attack, glides back to the cottage roof with one powerful stroke and alights, folding its wings. I brace myself in case it dives again. It gives a mocking screech, but stays up on the roof.

“Every time we go out of the house, they’re waiting.”

“I know,” says Conor.

“I’m worried about Sadie. Mary Thomas’s cat had to have ten stitches in its back. It was the worst gash from a gull the vet had ever seen. Do you think a gull would attack a dog as big as Sadie?”

“They’re territorial,” says Conor.

“Only when they’re nesting. They can’t be still nesting at this time of year. It’s too late.”

The gulls shriek, as if they’re laughing at us. A third gull circles way above the roof, like a police helicopter over the scene of a crime.

“They never used to settle on the roof like this,” Conor says.

“No. It’s only since Mum and Roger left.” As soon as I’ve said the words, I want to call them back. The gulls frighten me. They watch the human world, and report back to Ingo. I remember how one of them slashed my hand down by the cove. I thought then that it was one of Ervys’s spies.

Conor flaps his arms and shouts at the gulls. “Go on, get out of it!” They squawk back in derision. Sadie barks furiously, but the gulls take no notice of her.

“I’ll get the ladder,” says Conor. “I’m going to check if there is a nest up there.”

“No, don’t, Conor!” If he’s up the ladder and the gulls attack him, he’ll have no chance. He’ll have to put up his hands to shield his face, and then the gulls will get him off balance. In my head I see Conor slowly toppling backwards. “Mum’ll kill me if you fall off the ladder.”

The gulls screech again, as if they’re imitating me. Slowly, in their own time, they take off from the roof. They wheel above us, mocking our Earth-bound anger with them, and then they take aim at the horizon and fly straight out to sea. They are as sleek as rockets homing in on a target.

“Imagine being able to do that,” I say, shading my eyes and squinting after them. “They can go from one world to another whenever they want.”

But Conor’s not listening. “Saph, look. They are building a nest. Look up there, by the chimney.”

“But it’s the wrong time of year.”

“They’re building it, all the same. I wonder why.”

“I don’t like them. They patrol that roof like prison guards. Every time we come out or go in, they’re watching.”

“That’s crazy, Saph. They’re just birds.”

“Sadie! Sadie! ” I shout. She’s gone into the ditch again. It’s always full of rich, smelly mud, even when there hasn’t been rain for weeks. She’s definitely going to need a bath now. “Sadie, you bad girl.”

But I’m glad really. Bathing Sadie will stop me thinking about the gulls. I fetch her zinc bath and lay it on the gravel. I fill saucepans with water and put them on the stove to warm while Conor unwinds the hose. Sadie stands watching, quivering with excitement. Sometimes she hates her bath, sometimes she loves it.

Today she’s decided to hate it. She keeps trying to escape and she sloshes water all over us. Conor helps to hold her while I wash her with special dog shampoo. She whines piteously, as if we’re torturing her.

“Sadie, if you keep on jumping into ditches you’ll keep on having to have baths.”

“Cause and effect, Sadie girl,” says Conor, passing her towel. I rub her hard all over. She likes this part. By the time she emerges from the towel, golden and gleaming, Sadie looks extremely pleased with herself.

“You know you’re beautiful, don’t you?” I ask her.

“Of course she does,” replies Conor.