Helen Dunmore - The Tide Knot

“Where’s she gone?”

“There’s been no one in this room but our two selves, Sapphire. All I’m showing you is that time isn’t what you think it is.”

“But how can you be old and young at the same time?”

Granny Carne smiles. “Ask anyone with grey hair. Ask Mrs Eagle if she feels any different inside from how she felt when she was eighteen. There’s little difference.”

“Do you know Mrs Eagle?”

“I’ve known Temperance Eagle from a girl. Temperance Pascoe as she was then. Wild, she was,” goes on Granny Carne thoughtfully. “Her father used to scour St Pirans for her on a Saturday night, shouting that he’d take his belt to her when he found her. He was a strong Bible Christian.”

But I’m not going to be diverted by tales of Mrs Eagle’s youth. Mrs Eagle is most definitely one hundred per cent old now. Granny Carne’s old, too, yet she changed before my eyes into a woman like a young birch tree. I know that I didn’t imagine it. What Granny Carne did is something completely different from an old person feeling young inside.

“Mrs Eagle can’t do what you did,” I say as firmly as I dare, “and no one else talks about time the way you do, as if they can go back hundreds of years and see what was happening then.”

But suddenly I remember. Someone does. Faro talks about time in the same way as Granny Carne, as if history is still happening. As if he’d watched the Ballantine smash on to the rocks with his own eyes. And he made me watch it, too, when I saw into his mind.

Granny Carne sighs. She looks very old now. “You ask a lot of questions, Sapphire. They’re hard questions, too, and I can’t give you all the answers you want. Let me tell you this much. What you saw just now, not many would see.”

“Why did you let me see it?”

“It wasn’t me letting you. It was you that had the power to see the old and young standing in the same place. You think all your power lies in Ingo, Sapphire, but that’s because you choose to make it so.”

“But you said I had strong Mer blood, Granny Carne. You told me and Conor that last summer.”

“Yes, but there’s more to it than that. Your Mer blood may be strong, but your Earth blood is powerful too. Not as strong as your brother’s, but strong enough.”

“Is having Earth blood the same as living in the Air – being human, I mean?”

“No. Most people live out their human lives without choosing either Earth or Ingo. They don’t need to. They’re happy as they are. They live in the present time, and in one place. As far as they’re concerned, the past is rolled up like a carpet and no one can touch it. And the future, too. Perhaps they are the fortunate ones,” adds Granny Carne.

“I don’t see what’s fortunate about not being able to go to Ingo.”

“Ask your brother.”

Conor’s words echo in my head: I’ve got to try to belong where I am. Conor really wants to be part of St Pirans – surfing, playing guitar, hanging out with his friends, and yet all the time he’s secretly looking for Elvira. Maybe he wishes he’d never met her… maybe it would be easier for him if he hadn’t ever gone to Ingo… because he’d be able to belong.

“Time to sleep,” says Granny Carne abruptly. She gives me a candlestick, and lights my candle. “Sadie will sleep in my room tonight, Sapphire.”

“But—”

“No. She’s not strong yet. She needs to be with me. She needs the Earth to make her strong. Don’t you feel that? Sadie’s an Earth creature. She loves you, and that’s what complicates it for her. Tonight Sadie will go into a deep sleep, like the earth’s winter sleep. It will heal her. You know how a bulb lies dormant in the earth all winter, Sapphire, growing strong for spring.”

“Sadie’s not going to sleep all winter, is she?”

“No. She’ll go through her winter healing in one night.”

“You said Sadie loves me. I love her . I’ll look after her. I’d never let her be hurt.”

“Never?” The candle flame leaps and a shadow flies over Granny Carne’s face. Her eyes are hidden. “Never, Sapphire?”

I left Sadie tied up to a post, and went to Ingo. Sadie almost died… But I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want anything to happen to her, it was just that Ingo was so strong…

I don’t say any of these things, but Granny Carne knows them, I’m sure. She lays her hand on Sadie’s head, and Sadie doesn’t try to come to me. She looks at me with her soft brown eyes as if to say, “Try to understand. I can’t be with you tonight.”

The door closes on Granny Carne and Sadie. I wash quickly, and jump into bed. It’s cold. I wonder when someone last slept in this bed? Maybe it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I shiver.

I wish I had gone down to our cottage. Just to see it. Granny Carne says that Mum won’t mind my staying here overnight, but suddenly I feel terribly lonely, longing for Mum and Conor and home. The little slip bedroom faces the side of the hill. It’s dark and quiet and earthy. I can’t hear the sea. I can’t smell salt.

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