Anne Berry - The Water Children

‘Cold?’ Rosalyn asked.

‘No . . . no,’ she answered a trifle hesitantly, because now they had stopped walking she did feel cold tentacles worming their way through her layers of clothing.

‘Oh, come on. Last one on the ice is a rotten pig,’ teased Rosalyn.

And then she was pushing off from the bank, rising to her feet until she was standing tall on the frozen platform. She slid forwards once again, flapped her boots against the ice to check that it was solid. Satisfied, she slid a few more steps. Now Catherine was on her feet too. Copying her cousin, she traced her silvery snail trails on the ice with her boots. Rosalyn was gaining in confidence, her feet arcing out as if she was on a real rink. She was putting all her weight on one foot as well, the other foot flicking up behind her. Catherine was nowhere near as adept as her cousin was. Rosalyn had actually skated on several rinks in America, she called over her shoulder. There was nothing to it. Of course, it would be much better if they had proper skates, but then they had their own rink, so they really couldn’t complain. Catherine slid forward gingerly, but either the soles of her boots were not the slippery kind or she was plain hopeless; she suspected the latter.

Rosalyn was heading for the centre of the large pond, her progress as fluid as a boat bug. Catherine, who had only narrowly avoided falling over by flexing her knees just in time, and propping herself up, hands flat on the ice, arms braced, had just succeeded in standing up again. She was concentrating hard, but glimpsing up, saw how far Rosalyn had gone, that she was nearing the middle of the pond. She herself was still only a couple of yards from the bank. The red beret swooped before her eyes.

‘So I’ve had a go with my hands behind my back. Now I’m going to imagine I’ve got a big, fur muff, bring my hands to the front and burrow inside it. I’m like one of those Victorian girls skating in a fur-trimmed coat.’

‘Perhaps you’d better come back now, Rosalyn. You don’t know if the ice is the same thickness everywhere,’ Catherine cautioned, not liking to dash her exuberance, but feeling impelled to.

Rosalyn spun round to face her, one leg out, like a professional skater. She had a look of mild surprise on her face. ‘You’ve hardly come any distance at all, Catherine. What’s the matter? Do you want me to come and help you? We could skate in tandem if you like?’

‘I’d like you to come back, that’s what I’d like ,’ Catherine said a little tremulously.

‘Oh Catherine, don’t be such a scaredy-cat. It’s perfectly safe,’ Rosalyn assured her with that breezy smile of hers.

‘Please, please,’ Catherine said, now unable to keep the pleading note from her voice. She reached a hand towards her cousin, trying to keep her balance despite stretching as far as she could.

‘You want me to help you?’ Rosalyn asked, head to one side, not able to comprehend this sudden plummet from bliss to fear.

‘Yes, yes, that’s right, to help me,’ Catherine shot back.

Rosalyn took three sliding steps. The sound when the ice cracked wasn’t very loud at all. It seemed to sink as if in weariness, giving a series of muffled pops. Rosalyn’s leading leg just disappeared into its craggy mouth in one smooth movement. As her trunk hit the ice, fissures appeared, the way they sometimes do on a glass just before it shatters. She scrabbled with the other leg, trying to regain her footing, but now the tension of the ice was weakened. She felt the previously solid surface dip under her, like a pie crust that has lost its support. Another chunk crumbled away from her so that a few inches of her hips sagged beneath the water.

‘Oh!’ she said, more in bewilderment than consternation.

‘Don’t move. Just keep very still. I’ll get you out.’ Catherine took two tentative steps towards her, with terror starting to claw at her reason, then felt her own feet break through the deceptively stable surface. She kept on steadily sinking, the ice pop-popping and creaking about her. Her hips were half submerged when she contacted something immovable. Tree roots? The sloping bank itself ? Perhaps the pool was relatively shallow.

‘Oh!’ Rosalyn said again. Freezing water was pooling around her bent leg as the ice dipped into a cracked water cradle.

‘Look, don’t worry. I can feel the bottom. I’ll get out and . . . and . . . and I’ll help you,’ Catherine finished lamely. Rosalyn was really not that far from her, five yards, no more. Perhaps if she managed to climb out she might be able to reach her with a stick, pull her to safety. Under the water Catherine tried to lift her feet, to take an experimental step towards the bank. But already she was icy cold, her boots were full of water, her feet were numbing fast. Beneath her trousers she could feel the blood pumping painfully through her legs. Again she attempted to lift them, to take an underwater stride. Her movements were performed in slow motion, her body unresponsive, her breathing constricted by the shock of the sudden severe chill. Her legs pedalled clumsily under her, making no progress at all.

‘I’m freezing,’ said Rosalyn, with a truthfulness rarely applied to the hyperbole. There still seemed to be a hint of faint amusement in her voice, as if their predicament was a practical joke. Her other leg had disappeared now, but the cot of fractured ice was still acting as a submerged raft, partially bearing it up. Ignoring Catherine’s advice, she panicked and struggled to heft herself out, but as her hands pressed down on the ice surrounding her she felt it shift.

‘No, I told you to keep still!’ Catherine ordered. She’d never used such a schoolmarmish tone to Rosalyn before. She would have preferred not to, but again she had an idea it was necessary if she was to hold her attention. ‘I will get you out, but you must listen to me.’ A moment passed that might have been five seconds or might have been two minutes, while Catherine tried and failed to crest the ice herself.

‘I’m very cold now,’ said Rosalyn. She was in up to her waist and with her red beret looked strangely comical, like a cartoon figure. ‘I can’t feel my legs any more. Catherine, I can’t feel my legs.’ She was supporting her torso from the waist up with gentle pressure from her spread, sodden, gloved fingers. It was just dawning on her how difficult it would be to maintain her precarious position, that too much pressure and the ice would shatter and give way, too little and she would sink slowly but surely beneath it. Teetering on that point of balance was like finding the biting point on a clutch, and attempting to hold it there forever with a foot fast losing feeling. It needed superhuman strength, the kind of strength the cold stripped you of in minutes.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Catherine again.

The lightest snow powder, like a dusting of talc, was starting to fall. The sky had deepened so that they were no longer peering up through a yellow-tinted lens, but a green one, oppressive and malignant. The closed feeling that had been intimate before, lending a clandestine atmosphere to the outing, had begun to transmute. Catherine felt as if they were being sealed up in an alabaster tomb. She saw a blackbird hopping on the bank, head cocked, gleaming eyes swivelling curiously at the two creatures floundering in the frozen pond.

The revelation when it came was not the kind accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets, or a fall of biblically blinding light through which the sonorous pronouncement of a god boomed. It came quietly, a small voice in Catherine’s ear, a tickle of prophetic truth. Rosalyn is going to die now. And so are you. You are both going to slip noiselessly under the ice, flail about for a moment, then die. It was as simple as that, she thought. One moment she was walking with her cousin in the snow and having a laugh, and it was the best Christmas ever, just as Rosalyn had ordered, and the next they were sliding under icy water readying themselves to drown.