A Summer of Drowning Read online

  I really did try not to spy on him, over those next couple of days – and I don’t know why I changed my mind and went down there, thinking I would just put my head around the door and say hello. That would have been the Thursday, a warm, still day as I remember, with only the faintest hint of a breeze off the Sound and the terns flickering over the water just a few yards out, fixed on what, for them, was a complex puzzle of light and movement, an endlessly shifting maze of grey and silver and salt-blue that they had to read, moment by moment, through the long white days and into the midnight gloaming. I’d read how they spent their whole lives like that, following the solstice from southern Argentina, in mid-December, to this scatter of islands in June and July, creatures of the white nights who needed perpetual sun to see their prey in the lit water. I loved them. They were the most beautiful birds on that stretch of coast, but that wasn’t what drew me. What I loved was that they were so perfectly focused, so far beyond distraction, seemingly tireless as they watched for the least thread of live silver in the shifting glitter of the tide. Then, when they saw what they were after, they plunged in recklessly, vanishing into the water so completely that it seemed they would never return, only to surface again and flicker away with the glittering, miraculous catch.

  I stopped for a moment to look out. The air was perfectly clear, the sky was a soft, hazy blue, and the birds were there, in their usual places, spaced out, each in its lit territory, up and down the beach. I looked around. I could never think of this place as belonging to someone else, even when the summer guests were here; it was too integral a part of my territory, too much a part of the inward map that I carried in my head. Someone had placed a deckchair in the middle of the lawn, and there was a plate of half-eaten croissants on the grass next to it, but the little garden seemed deserted and, at first, no doubt because my attention was drawn to the empty chair, I didn’t notice Martin Crosbie, sitting off to the side in a second deckchair by Kyrre’s old boathouse, watching me as I took it all in. I had been deceived by the odd, Marie Celeste feel that the place had taken on, an absurd and faintly sentimental sense of someone having been and gone, possibly never to return and, for some reason, the idea of that disappearance prompted an odd, yet not unfamiliar sensation in my throat and chest, a sensation that I cannot quite name, though it has something to do with justness, or perhaps a fulfilment, of sorts, like knowing a promise has been kept, against all the odds.

  That sensation lasted for no more than a second or two – and then I turned and saw him sitting by the boathouse, a few yards off to my right. He was sitting with his back to the boathouse door and, from the look of things, he had been reading a book when I appeared. It came as a surprise that I hadn’t noticed him there, but it was obvious that he had seen me right away, and I could tell that he had been watching me with interest – and, perhaps, some amusement – wondering how long it would be before I realised I wasn’t alone. And, now that I had, he appeared a little shamefaced, suddenly, as if I’d caught him spying on me. Only, it was a mock shamefacedness and, to demonstrate as much, he did a little theatrical turn that involved sitting back and taking a moment to consider something he already knew he was going to say, then speaking as if he were inviting me into a conversation he’d already begun in his own head. ‘It says here,’ he said, ‘that April is the cruellest month.’

  I glanced at the book in his hand. The cover wasn’t visible, but I knew the reference. I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  ‘It says here –’

  ‘January,’ I said, joining in the game without knowing why. I paused for a moment, pretending to think. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Definitely January.’

  He smiled. ‘Why’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Dark. Cold. Snowdrifts up to the windowsill,’ I said. I didn’t mind this game, if that was what it was. I thought it was innocent enough at the time – and maybe I wasn’t altogether wrong. But then, it’s surprising how innocent anyone can look, if you find them on the seashore, reading poetry.

  ‘Sounds beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘It is,’ I said. ‘Until you have to go somewhere.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘But does it breed lilacs out of the dead land?’

  I pretended to consider this, then I shook my head. ‘No lilacs,’ I said. ‘Not in January.’

  He laughed, rather sadly I thought. Though it was always hard to know, with Martin Crosbie, how real any of his supposed emotions were. He had worked long and hard on seeming innocent, I think, and sadness had probably served him even better than poetry. ‘And what about April?’ he said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Is April cruel?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘April is frozen. Like the five months that precede it. It doesn’t really thaw out till May.’

  ‘And then it’s – like this …’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Which is cruel in its own way, I suppose.’

  I frowned in spite of myself. ‘Cruel?’ I said.

  He studied my face, as if he thought I was holding back some secret knowledge that he needed in order to survive in his new abode. It was an odd look, soft, yet slightly accusing, or at least suspicious, and I was almost offended by it. Almost, but not quite. Though I didn’t know him at all, I had already guessed that Martin Crosbie wasn’t someone who ever gave offence; in fact, he had evolved quite a complicated system of gestures and tones of voice to avoid doing so and I could see that too, though it was a long time before I realised why. Finally he spoke. ‘It’s so white,’ he said, simply, as if that were sufficient explanation.

  I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s summer.’

  ‘Summer?’ It sounded like a new concept to him. ‘I suppose it is. But it’s more than that. I feel different. I feel – strange …’ He pondered this for a long moment, then he looked at me, as if he were explaining some scientific observation he had made, one that was potentially significant in some way. ‘I feel strange to myself,’ he said. ‘My hands feel different. I sound different.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh, which appeared to surprise him as much as it did me. ‘I sound different when I talk. When I move about. Everything is strange here. I can’t quite get my bearings.’

  Now it was my turn to study him – and for the first time, I noticed the black around his eyes. ‘Ah, yes.’ I felt a sudden, utterly involuntary pang of sympathy for him – sympathy I immediately suspected this whole charade had been calculated to win. ‘And I imagine you can’t sleep either.’

  He nodded, squinting slightly, but he didn’t say anything. He did seem tired, but it wasn’t just insomnia that was bothering him and, for a moment, I thought I could detect a faint whiff of alcohol. I remembered the bottles he had carried in from his car, and I reminded myself that he wouldn’t be the first of our summer guests to hit the booze, hoping for a few hours of sleep – and who could blame him? Everyone who lives on these islands has suffered from insomnia at one time or another. Everyone knows the tricks a sleepless mind can play on itself. All of us here have tasted panic at the back of our throats, whether we admit it or not. In all honesty, I wouldn’t trust someone who hadn’t.

  And yet, even though he was acting a little strangely, Martin Crosbie didn’t seem drunk. It was just that he was elsewhere, in another world, or another time – and I can see, looking back, that he was managing to put a brave face on it that day, because he probably was quite close to panic when I turned up. He’d been trying to distract himself with the book, and maybe he had taken a drink or two, but the panic was forming, somewhere at the back of his head – panic about space, panic about time. Panic about time most of all. The way it starts to move differently when you sit a while, and everything slows, till it feels like it could stop at any moment. The way it pools and stalls in the middle of a summer’s morning, or in the white gloaming, so you want to go and stare at a clock, just to watch the second hand turning. The way that ancient panic builds behind your eyes – and then, when somebody comes along, just as everyt
hing is about to come to a standstill, the absurd gratitude you feel, a gratitude that you try desperately to hide, so you don’t look foolish, or needy. Well, that day, I was the interruption, and for a moment I knew it, just as I knew that Martin Crosbie had forgotten for a matter of seconds that I was even there. It wasn’t till he put aside the book, face down to keep his place, that he seemed to notice me again – and he smiled then, a soft, damp-seeming smile, like the smiles we reserve for babies and eccentric pets. The book, I noticed, wasn’t by T. S. Eliot at all. It was an English translation of Ibsen: An Enemy of the People and Other Plays. Pulling himself up in the chair, he said something, as much to himself as to me, and I couldn’t make it out. I don’t know why. He had a slight accent, maybe Yorkshire, or Scottish – Mother would have known – but that wasn’t the problem, and it wasn’t that I ever had any difficulty understanding English, under normal circumstances. No. It wasn’t what he said that made him difficult to understand so much as how he said it. It was as if he was unconvinced by his own words, as if he wanted to delete what he was saying even as he spoke, that he wished there was some other way of expressing the thoughts that were in his mind. His voice was quiet and, at the same time, strangely inexact, like someone speaking on a badly tuned radio, the words seeming to come from far away, or through some dense, staticky medium, through water, say, or a dividing wall.

  ‘Well,’ I said. I didn’t really mean to say it – I didn’t mean to say anything at all, and I was a little irritated by the cheap trick with the book. It was just a reflex, to gloss over the fact that I hadn’t heard what he’d said. ‘You’re not alone. Everyone feels it, from time to time. Ryvold says this first summer light claims something from us –’

  ‘Ryvold?’ Because of the book, he had probably imagined that I was referring to a famous Norwegian writer and not our local philosopher.

  ‘Siegfried Ryvold,’ I said. I smiled politely to cover my annoyance. Why had he pretended he was reading The Waste Land? What had that been about? Just another symptom of the panic, a silly attempt to play, and so trick himself into thinking he was fine? ‘He’s a neighbour of ours.’

  ‘Ah.’ He studied me for a moment, but not so long, this time, that it seemed impolite. ‘A neighbour,’ he said, when the moment had passed. He looked up across the meadows towards our house, then he looked right and left, almost theatrically searching for other signs of habitation. From the hytte, though, ours is the only house that can be seen. ‘And you?’ he said, looking back to me with a smile. ‘Are you a neighbour too?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ he said. ‘Are you –’ He searched for a word, then found it, though when he spoke he didn’t seem wholly convinced. ‘Are you – local?’

  I shook my head, which was odd, because I was as local as it was possible to be. Though, of course, I didn’t think of myself as a local at all. Nobody does. It’s other people who are locals. ‘I’m from the grey house,’ I said. ‘Just above –’ I almost turned and pointed, but I didn’t. I remembered him standing at our gate, looking up at the landing window and something about that image made me uncomfortable, as if I were the one playing foolish games, now.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Of course you are.’ He laughed softly, to himself mostly, and I thought again that he was drunk, or drugged. ‘For a moment I imagined you’d risen from the waves, like Botticelli’s Venus.’

  I smiled – though I wasn’t entirely sure he was joking. He’d surprised me, and I was a little embarrassed, too. And, of course, I should have known, then, that he was – what? Flirting with me? Making the first moves in a game whose only outcome, with me or with any other player, had long since been decided? If I had known what he was like, I wouldn’t have said anything else, but I was still playing the game, a game that struck me as both rather squalid and perversely interesting, because I didn’t quite know how to stop. I was, in other words, exactly the innocent I was pretending so hard not to be. I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve been here all along.’

  He sat watching me then – regarding me, again, for just a moment too long, as if I really was a picture in a museum. Then he gave a slight, mock-apologetic smile, to show that he knew he was being odd, even rude, but he wanted me to know that he meant no harm by it and that, whatever impression he might be making, he was, at the very least, sincere. ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘It was just …’ He studied me for a moment, then he stood up. ‘Would you like some tea?’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t stay,’ I said – though I had nowhere else to be, and we both knew it. ‘I have to get back.’

  He nodded. He didn’t believe me, but he’d picked up on my discomfort, and it was obvious that he didn’t want to seem pushy. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance.’ He gave me an odd, questioning look, then he stood up suddenly and held out his hand. ‘I’m Martin,’ he said. ‘Martin Crosbie.’

  I didn’t want to shake hands – it felt ridiculous – but I did. His fingers were cold and dry, like frozen paper. I didn’t introduce myself, though. I didn’t know how.

  He smiled at my silence. He didn’t think me rude, and the smile was to let me know that he wasn’t offended, though he knew that this fleeting physical contact had made me uncomfortable and, for just one moment, I suspected that there was some part of him that enjoyed that discomfort. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’d better get busy.’ He made a face. ‘Lots to do.’

  I nodded. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ I said. I didn’t mean it, but it was something to say.

  Martin Crosbie smiled and his hand went up, as if he were about to wave. ‘You too,’ he said. He watched carefully as I started to leave and then, just as I turned, I caught a fleeting look of concern in his face, as if he thought something might suddenly go wrong at the last minute, some everyday accident or inconvenience that could be averted if he were sufficiently attentive. I was five or six yards away when he spoke again. ‘Come to tea, though,’ he said. ‘Some day when you have a moment.’

  I looked round. He was still watching me with that odd, concerned look on his face. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  His hand moved again and, for a second, I really did think he would wave. ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘I’m here all summer. You know where to find me.’

  I nodded. I had no intention of popping by, but I didn’t want to be impolite. I remember him, as he was then, through the haze of what came after, and I have to remind myself that I didn’t dislike him that day. That didn’t come until later. Still, while I didn’t want to spend my afternoons taking tea with Martin Crosbie, I think I guessed, even at that first encounter, that our lives would run parallel over the weeks that followed – parallel, but never touching; never touching, but cruelly intertwined.

  I don’t like intertwined. I like intact. There is too much contact in the world. Too much intertwined. Maybe it is true that we all depend on one another, that everything in the world depends on everything else – but we also depend on the spaces in between. We need the spaces, because the spaces are where the order lies. That’s why I like maps, because they recognise the gaps between one thing and another. They stand in mute opposition to those who think that the connections are all that matter. People who reach out to others, just to touch them, even when they don’t want to be touched. People who write unexpected letters to complete strangers, because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do.

  I can’t remember exactly when the first of those letters came, but I do know that it was around the time Martin Crosbie arrived. The two events happened so close together, in fact, that now they are linked in my mind, as if one had caused the other, though of course, there was no connection at all. I know I didn’t see Martin again for several days – I learned afterwards that he had gone to bed that evening and slept solidly for thirty-six hours, and that was probably the last time he had a good night’s sleep, ever – and, looking back, I can imagine that what happened to him later ha
d a good deal to do with the insomnia that set in during that first week of his visit. He became suggestible. We all did. That’s what happens here, from time to time. As for the letter, what I am sure of is that it arrived at about the same time, or maybe just after our first proper conversation, which must have been towards the end of that first week of true summer, and it was enough of a shock – enough of a shock and enough of a distraction – to keep me occupied for several days. All of a sudden, I didn’t want to spy any more, because it felt like someone was spying on me – and though I have to admit that it was something of an overreaction, at the time I couldn’t shake the creeping fear that she intended to spy on me for the rest of my life. To spy – and, perhaps, to interfere. People like to interfere. They always think they should be doing something.