Anne Berry - The Water Children

In church they talked about the still small voice of calm. It was just like that, what she heard. Catherine found herself wondering if it sounded inside everyone’s head the moment before the darkness came, before the light died. She could accept her own death. It was not that she wanted to die. Oh, no; life, however problematic, was still preferable to death, Catherine realized. But that Rosalyn, her cousin, who was a beacon of life force, who drew you into her circumference and let you bask in the glow of her, who had never, not once, made Catherine feel she should be grateful that she was bothering with her – that she was about to die was unthinkable. It might have been the extreme cold – her teeth were chattering uncontrollably now – or fear unhinging her imagination, but that was the moment she saw the hooded man hunched on the far bank. She was going to call out to him, but when he looked up there was a blank where his face should be. In the same instant she saw Rosalyn’s body being winched, stiff as a plank, from the gelid water. Her dripping hair clung to her face, her mouth was wide in a scream of terror, her blue eyes were those of a dead fish, glassy and lifeless, the whites bulging and bloodshot. The beret, heavy with water, sagged under her head. She thought about burying Rosalyn, the physical act of lowering her in a coffin into the hard winter earth. She wondered if her parents would want her grave to be in England or America.

‘Catherine, I really am very cold now and sleepy too. Terribly sleepy. I want to close my eyes and just drift off. Only . . . only a minute but I . . . I must shut my eyes,’ came the querulous voice from the ice maiden who was slowly being claimed by the pond. Then, dreadfully, as if she had been reading Catherine’s thoughts, ‘Am I going to die now?’

Catherine closed her eyes. There was a skewering pain in her head. No, she thought. She opened them. ‘No,’ she said. Her voice rattled out of her. ‘Now pay attention, Rosalyn.’ The school-marmish timbre was back, if a little ragged. ‘I am going to call for help.’ The red beret bobbed a nod. Then Catherine started to shout. She didn’t shout anything particularly original. ‘Help! Over here! Help us, please! We’re stuck in the ice! Help!’ But the extraordinary thing was how enormous her voice had become, as if it was magnified many times over, a great manly bellow that came from the base of her. At the outset Catherine was hopeful. Each time she paused to draw in another breath, she half expected to hear someone shout back, ‘It’s all right. We’re coming.’ But all that answered was a cathedral of silence. She had fooled Rosalyn, made her believe just for a moment that she could fix this, that she could outface death. With each cry, though, the light faded in her cousin’s blue eyes, to be replaced with a terrible resignation.

‘You might as well stop,’ Rosalyn whispered the next time she gulped in air. ‘There’s no one out there. We’re all alone.’

Catherine tried to rekindle her fight, but found herself suppressing dry, involuntary sobs. And she, too, was tired, so tired that defeat seemed almost welcome. So that when, a minute later, a small round face reared up from the side of the pond, her immediate thought was that it wasn’t real. Her mind was playing tricks. Her eyesight could not be trusted. Then the head tipped to a quizzical angle. And a voice came from it.

‘What are you doing in there?’ it said.

Now she knew the ginger-haired boy was real, and that there was not a moment to waste. Although at the sound, Rosalyn had glanced up, she was sinking fast. ‘We’re stuck, stuck in the ice. We fell through. You need to run for help. Quickly! Go quickly! There’s no time to waste!’ The boy hesitated. ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ Catherine screamed. And then he was off, streaking away like a snow hare. The instant he had gone a plague of doubts descended on her. What if he forgot or was distracted? What if he didn’t understand how serious it was? What if he wasn’t real after all, that she had dreamt the strange encounter in this bleached wonderland? Rosalyn’s head lolled on her shoulders, so that all that was visible of her was the red beret, like a red full stop punctuating the ice. Please , Catherine prayed in her head, please . Without her having to say anything, she could feel Rosalyn’s will sapping away. She had to keep her going until help came, she had to do that much.

‘I can’t feel my hands either. I think they’re slipping,’ sighed Rosalyn drowsily.

‘No they’re not!’ snapped Catherine. ‘Nonsense! Stop thinking about it! They’re going to come and get us out, any second they’ll be here.’

‘I’m not sure I can—’

‘Oh yes you can!’ Catherine interrupted her. She took a shaky breath. The cold no longer hurt. It was a bad sign. ‘I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s very important that you listen to it, to all of it. You’re always telling me stories, so it’s only fair that you should listen to mine now.’

‘All . . . all right,’ Rosalyn said uncertainly, her own teeth clacking together. ‘But I’m so tired.’

The story Catherine told made no sense at all. She had no talent for making things up the way Rosalyn could. The rambling plot and motley band of characters were fuelled by sheer panic. Suddenly she could feel Rosalyn letting go, as if she was inside her body, as if they were connected. And that was when she screamed at her, when she stoked up a fire of rage.

‘If you don’t listen to the end I’ll never forgive you, Rosalyn Hoyle! Not ever! I made it up, out of my head. Out of my head! Do you understand what I’m saying? You might find that easy but I don’t, so there. And you may not think it’s very good at the moment, but I promise you it’s got the most fantastic end. And I’ll hate you if you don’t listen to it. I’ll hate you! I will! I really will! Not just now but forever! You have no idea how much I’ll hate you!’ She was shrieking the way her mother did at her father sometimes after they went to bed, shrieking so loudly that her throat hurt.

‘Okay, I’ll try,’ Rosalyn quavered. ‘I’ll try my hardest.’

When Catherine saw Stephen’s face appear as he thrashed through the thicket, her father and Uncle Christopher on his heels, she could have fainted for sheer elation. At the sight of her own father, Rosalyn rallied a bit. Instantly Uncle Christopher took control. He’d brought a rope. Of course he had. He was a pilot. He was prepared for every eventuality. Hurriedly he fashioned a lasso with it, talking all the while in that soothing tone of command, the one Catherine expected he used when they en countered a bit of turbulence in his aeroplane. Nothing at all to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. Just stay in your seats and fasten your safety belts. We’ll be through this in no time.

‘Well, what on earth have you two girls been up to? Surely it’s a bit cold for a dip, Rosalyn, even for you?’ Rosalyn managed a suggestion of a smile from her paralysed blue lips. ‘I know you’re a school champion but this can’t be much fun. Now, I’m just going to toss this rope over to you. What I want you to do is use one hand to slip it over your head and shoulders, then ease it down to your waist, and at the last minute pull your other hand through.’ It took two goes and progress was painfully slow. Rosalyn’s hands and arms had locked in the bitter chill. But her father’s encouragement never wavered, his pace upbeat, almost jovial. The instant he saw that the rope was safely under both arms he sprang into action, though. Legs apart, knees bent, he put his back into it and began to heave.

Meanwhile, a short way from him, Stephen, his own legs gripped by his father in possibly the most intimate contact they had ever had in their lives, snaked over the ice, grasped Catherine’s arms and pulled. He didn’t say much but his eyes looked more animated than Catherine had ever seen them before. It was tricky man oeuvring her stiff body onto unbroken ice but he succeeded in jerks, levering her out in a side-to-side movement. Once she was lying on her stomach, no longer impeded by the lip of ice, it was comparatively easy to drag her to the safety of the bank. With Stephen, her gawky brother, folding his lanky limbs round her, Catherine raised her head to see Rosalyn being drawn steadily over the iced pond. She resembled a seal in her drenched clothes, a seal being slowly but surely reeled in by her father, the red beret still perched waggishly on her head.