Louisa and the Sea

LOUISA AND THE SEA

The Beginning

 

“Mrs Tremaine, where do we go?”

“Why Louisa, we’re going to Tamatave. Richard, did you not tell her where we were going?”

“Of course I told her—I explained the trip in its entirety weeks ago! Nothing’s real to these people until it’s actually happening. This bloody rain!”

“Tamatave will be an adventure, Louisa. It’s very different from Ambato Haranana: the town is filled with colours, with shops and boats and crowded markets.”

The girl nodded. “Tbamdsina.”

“No Louisa, Tama-tave,” corrected Richard.

“I see.” She paused. “We call it Tbamdsina.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Louisa let her gaze slip out the window, at the foliage blurring by. “It is also called Toamasina. It means It is salty.”

“We’re going to the seaside!” yelped Ian.

Dorothy turned carefully in her seat to face the boy. “That’s right, my darling. You’re going to see the ocean for the first time! Louisa, have you seen much of Madagascar?”

The girl spoke with solemnity, rain-shadows pouring down her cheeks. “I have not travelled far from Ambato Haranana. I have not been farther than these zebus.”

The van slowed as they passed the grey, stolid beasts of burden. The zebus trudged heavily through mud, heads bowed low. They never looked up.

The Tremaines had been travelling for fifteen minutes.

 

“How long have we been driving now?”

“Ian, shh—Mummy’s trying to sleep! About two hours.”

“It’s been raining for ever. Are we almost there?”

“The powers of the deux cheveux are great but finite,” Richard pronounced. “We’ll stop halfway for the night—if we even make it that far in this weather. We should arrive late tomorrow morning.”

“We’re staying for two nights, aren’t we?” When his father did not respond, the boy turned to Louisa. “Daddy has special work to do in the consulate. Special work—isn’t that right?”

“Ian—I said quiet!”

“It’s alright. I’m awake.” Dorothy winced as she pulled herself upright. “We both have special work to do, Ian. You and Louisa shall have plenty of time to explore Tamatave. But no funny business!”

“No funny business!” The boy giggled. “Daddy, are we nearly halfway now?”

“There’s a way to go.”

“How long is it in miles? Will it be raining there?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Richard muttered under his breath. “Louisa, can you—?”

“Ian, come over here and let us look out of the window. Do you see the banana trees, all green and shiny in the rain? They fly by us—whoosh! I will tell you a story about the banana trees.

“When the first man and the first woman breathed, God gave them the opportunity to choose their own ending. God said to them, ‘When you die, do you want to die like the moon or the banana tree?’”

“What does that mean? How does the moon die?”

“A good question. And the very first man on earth, he asked that exact same question. God told him that the moon dies each month, but the next month it begins again, little by little. You know when the moon is very small?”

“Like a fingernail.”

“That’s right. It starts as a fingernail, grows big and round, and then becomes thin and weak again. When the moon dies, it always comes back. But the banana tree, it does not come back.”

“It dies forever?”

“That is right. But the banana tree has something different than the moon. While it is alive, it grows green shoots, and it feeds them with its own strength. When the banana tree dies, those green shoots, they do not die. They go on, into big trees, and grow shoots of their own. This was the choice facing the first man and the first woman: they could choose to come back again and again—like the moon—or they could have children, who would live after them.”

“What did they choose?”

“They thought about it for a long time. Living forever would be wonderful, but they would never be more than two people, for all time. There would be no-one else to laugh with, or to teach, or to help to grow up. The man and woman chose the death of the banana tree.”

“So they died?”

“They had a big family, and their children grew into strong, good people. And when the first man and the first woman died, their bodies withered like a banana tree. But their love and their laughter lived—”

“Can you pull up that damned window fully!” exploded Richard. “That bloody rattle!”

“Yes, sir,” Louisa murmured.

“Such a racket—it’s all I can do to keep the car on the road in this weather.” Richard hunched over the steering wheel and clawed at the windscreen pointlessly. The deux cheveux continued along the dirt road in silence.

 

The Middle

 

“Dorothy, there you are—we’re all unpacked. The medicines are on the dresser.”

“You should see the two of them, Richard, playing with the taps. They were impressed with the cold water, but now they’ve discovered hot water, they’re amazed!”

“Yes, well,” he strapped the suitcase closed. “If we went home we’d have taps a-plenty.”

“We are home.”

He turned from her and put the luggage away on the top shelf of the wardrobe. “We should make an early start in the morning, allow for something to go wrong. Get you there in plenty of time.” He straightened the already straight shirts hanging in the wardrobe. “I expect you’re tired.”

“Not too bad. We said we’d show Ian the ocean. I can take a nap before dinner.”

“Right, yes. I’ll go down and make a reservation.” He closed the wardrobe door on his shirts, casting them into darkness. “Seven o’clock do the trick?”

 

“Ian, Louisa!” Dorothy pulled on her floppy straw hat. “Everybody ready? I hope everyone’s wearing shoes—the sand will be hot!”

Ian and Louisa ran clumsily across the beach. Every few paces, they stopped to pick up sea-debris, waggling seaweed and shells and driftwood at each other before flinging it from them and plunging on through the sand.

“Not too far ahead, Ian,” warned Richard. “The boy’s so excited.” They walked in silence for a while. He reached over and took Dorothy’s hand. “Reminds me of when we first met.”

“Budleigh Salterton felt exotic, that summer,” she murmured. “We might have been standing on the edge of the Indian Ocean.” She laughed softly, “Funny, the way things work out”.

Richard’s brow furrowed, and he pressed his lips together, thin with effort. He scanned the beach. “They’ve gone quiet all of a sudden.”

Louisa and Ian had reached the shore. The pair stood holding hands, motionless before the swirling turquoises and blues and whites of the Indian Ocean.

“Impressed?” Richard called out, and there was rare pleasure in his voice.

Ian did not respond or move.

“Something’s not right,” said Dorothy. She quickened her pace, then broke into a sluggish run.

At the shore edge, Ian was fixed on Louisa, his face lined with worry.

“Louisa? Are you alright?” asked Dorothy.

The girl stared before her, her face fixed in the flaccid expression of one drugged or catatonic. She blinked slowly and lazily, as though her eyelids were heavy with sleep. Then Louisa dropped Ian’s hand, and with great deliberateness, she turned her back on the expanse of ocean.

Ian followed suit, reaching up to take her hand again.

“Come on, my boy,” urged Richard. “Ian, it’s just the sea. Turn around, for goodness sake!”

Dorothy touched him lightly. “Perhaps we should go back to the hotel.”

“I’ve never seen such nonsense!”

Louisa processed before them, high and stately. Ian did his best to follow suit.

 

“How are you feeling, Dotty?”

“A bit better.” She uncurled slowly and stretched. “Are they settled?”

“Back playing with the taps, making a mess. As though nothing had happened.”

“I was thinking,” Dorothy pulled herself up on her small bed, “the island’s name in Malagasy means Everything above the watery waste…”

“Anivon’ny riaka. They’re obsessed with the ground—claim it holds the ancestors, the guardians of the living. The dirt is practically worshipped!”

“…to actually come face to face with the watery waste—”

A strangled cough broke from Dorothy, capturing her breath. She struggled to swallow it, her body racked with contortions. In silence, Richard poured a glass of water for her, and placed his hand on her back as her throat finally released and then heaved in air, out and in, until her feeble breath stabilised.

Another sound echoed deep inside her.

“It reminds me of Ian’s rattle, when he was a baby.” She sipped at the water.

Richard removed his hand from her back and put it deep in his pocket.

“I said I’d meet up with Randall at the consulate, get the lie of the land.”

“Yes, of course. Well, we’ll see you at dinner then.”

“Table’s reserved for 7pm.”

 

“Are you two having fun?”

“It is wonderful!” Louisa was at the bathroom sink. She filled a water glass to the very brim, and balancing carefully, she brought it over the bath. As she poured it out slowly, she smiled wide at the splosh-splash of water falling on water from a height. Ian was tipped halfway into the bath, scooping water up in a cup and hurling it towards the sink. Both were laughing, growing steadily sodden.

“Mummy, look at the pipes coming down the wall—they bring the water all the way into the taps!”

Dorothy sat down on the bath edge. Ian pulled himself up and turned his small wet palms face-up, presenting them to her for inspection.

“I see. This trip has been filled with water, hasn’t it? Rain water, and tap water, and ocean water…”

The sound of play quietened. Both water-bearers attended to their duties in silence, moving with the heavy inevitability of forced labour.

“Louisa, what is the Malagasy word for sea?”

“We say ranomasina.”

“The same word as holy water?”

“It is the same word—the same word for both.” Louisa turned off her tap. “Nobody told me it was alive. I see it and it is moving, like a great animal.”

His eyes fixed on Louisa, Ian enfolded himself in his mother’s arms, pressing against her thin frame.

“It is wide, and strong; so wide and strong. And I feel… I do not have the words.”

“I think we would say ‘overwhelmed’.”

“I feel that the ocean is coming inside me and over me. I feel that I am being swallowed. So that I cannot breathe anymore.” The young woman looked at herself in the fading mirror. “Ranomasina is not the land of my ancestors,” she pronounced. “There is no strength for me there.”

Dorothy nodded slowly. “I wanted to thank you, Louisa. You’ve been so good with Ian—and me. You’ve taken such good care of both of us.”

Louisa met Dorothy’s eyes in the mirror. Her nod was almost imperceptible.

“And,” Dorothy paused to catch her breath, holding her son close, “and afterwards…”

“Yes, Mrs Tremaine. I understand.”

 

 

Another Beginning

 

“But he said he could do without me here!” Richard’s voice grew shrill.

Soundless, Dorothy stretched out her arms to him.

“And the bishop would easily find me somewhere to serve. We might even be able to go back to Harrow.”

Dorothy drew back her empty arms and let them fall to her side. “Our lives are here now.”

“Then we’ll stay in the city for treatment. Doctors, what do they know? For God’s sake, we’ve put a man on the moon! If we can do that—”

“I can’t. I can’t do any more, Richard. Not in a hospital.”

“We’ll get you home quickly. You’ll feel better there”.

“Richard,” she shook her head slowly, smiling. When she reached out to take his hand, he fell back from her. “I’m going to check on that girl. She’s been an age down there. Bloody cheek, keeping us waiting. Yesterday she’s terrified of the place—there’s only strength in the land, she says—and now this. It’s a nonsense. I don’t know what I’ll do!”

The door closed, leaving Dorothy standing alone, shafts of dusty sunlight cutting through the bedroom. She rested one hand on her hip, pressing her palm against the bone, fingers probing at her stomach, at the textures beneath her skin. Then she took a glass of water and sat slowly down on the bed, nestling the glass in her lap as though it was a candle. “You always took care of me, Richard. I always felt… encompassed.”

The sorrow in her voice seemed to unsteady her. Dorothy lifted her hand and laid it over her eyes, feeling the hot tears slip in between her closed fingers.

“Treasure it. Every second. Let the weeks pass, and let the moment come. And then let your heart break. Let it break utterly. Feel every inch of the pain, because that was our love. It was our love, Richard!”

 

Richard stumbled away from the hotel room door, furious and impotent. Blinded by the sunlight’s white glare, he squinted to discern the familiar figures down at the water’s edge. As he drew near, he saw the two hunched over, surrounded by glass containers: jars and bottles and phials of all shapes and sizes.

Behind them moved the turbulent sea, its waters dark and clouded. Great waves surged and rolled and crashed across the shore, rushing as far as Louisa’s small feet before they were sucked back with the retreating waters, gathering strength for another assault.

Louisa’s voice carried high over the wind: “This one will be for Noah. And this for Solofo—he will be so surprised! He will laugh and he will marvel.” She looked up, shading her eyes to make out the approaching shadow.

“To take home. To show everyone,” she explained, tightening the cork on a coca-cola bottle and wriggling it down into the wet sand. Within the glass, small flecks of green swirled in the clear water.

“I’m helping too—” chimed Ian.

“You are helping me very much. You are a very good boy.”

“—I’m putting on the tops. Without spilling any!”

“I will show them the sea.” Louisa took a fat jam jar and turned, reaching out to the thundering waves. She laughed as the waters came over her feet and ankles, scooping the jar neatly through the foamy wave. “This one is for Mrs Batiot, who makes such beautiful music with the valiha. I will take this home to her. I will say it all—in its entirety—and they will hear me, and they will see it. They will see the sea. We will share it together.” She looked up, smiling, her eyes blinking against the sun. “Do I have time, Mr Tremaine?”

Richard’s brow furrowed, and he pressed his lips together, thin with effort. It seemed that he beheld the girl for a long time in the shimmering heat, until his eyes watered, until her words sank deep and then surged, flooding over and within and through.

A helpless smile broke across his face. “Yes, Louisa. You have time. You take your time.”

The young woman returned to filling Mrs Batiot’s jam jar with the sea.

Richard turned towards the hotel.