The Facts of Life and Death

37

THE NEXT DAY, the sun came out. Having spent the summer wasting its warmth on the backs of the clouds, there wasn’t much left to scatter on Limeburn, but as soon as Ruby got home from school, she picked up her little orange fishing net and ran down the slope to make the most of it.

Not for the first time, she stopped on the cobbles and tried the doors and the boot of the car.

Locked. Locked. Locked. Always locked now. Daddy never used to lock it; he had always lived in hope that one day someone would steal it and they could get the insurance money and buy a better car.

The gun was in there. She just knew it.

She sighed and went on down to the slipway and looked across the beach to where she could see Daddy in his camping chair, fishing in the Gut.

‘Ruby!’

It was Maggie, crossing the square towards her with Em trailing behind her. Maggie wasn’t allowed to take Em on the beach any more – not since a rogue wave had knocked her off her feet so hard that it had washed the shit right out of her nappy. It had been so funny, but Maggie had got a good thumping when they’d got home, and now they were only allowed to play on the cliff.

So Ruby went down the slipway. She didn’t have to run fast to leave them behind. She wanted to be with Daddy. Wanted to remind him that she was a cowboy, and cowboys stuck together.

It took her ten careful minutes to cross the beach to the Gut, testing each pebble for wobbliness before trusting her weight to it.

‘Hi, Daddy,’ she said.

Daddy looked round at her with a Strongbow in his fist.

‘I’m going to go fishing too,’ she declared, holding up her net.

He grunted.

She’d have to be good and not wind him up.

There was a big rockpool close by, and Ruby took off her daps and rolled up her jeans and paddled about in it for a while. There were dozens of snails and deep maroon anemones that clenched their fingers and turned to soft rubber fists when you touched them. There were limpets dotted around like cats’ eyes, and a whole wall of sharp purple mussels, draped over the rock and into the pool – making that end of it impassable to bare feet.

Ruby sneaked up on a limpet, banged it off the rock with a pebble and gave it to Daddy for bait, but he took it without thanks.

She went back to the pool and poked about until she disturbed a tiny fish – sending it darting under an overhang.

‘There’s a fish in here,’ she said.

‘I’m going to the Gore,’ he said.

Ruby was disappointed. She’d only just got here, and Daddy knew she hated the Gore, jagged and sticking so far into the sea that the water around it was deep and dangerous.

But she wanted to stick together with Daddy. It was the only way she’d ever get to see the gun. And so when Daddy had reeled in and picked up his catch bucket and cider, and tucked his chair under his arm, she carried his bait box and followed him across the pebbles and down the long, thin spit of black rock, all the way out into the waves to the big rock at the end, where the Devil had finally abandoned his plans.

The blood leaking from Mummy’s old stocking worked its magic and, just as the tide turned back towards them, the fish started to bite. Ruby put down her net and just watched Daddy haul in catch after catch. At first he put them in the big white bucket and it was her job to keep scooping out old water and putting in new, so the fish didn’t die. But when there were four in there, Daddy caught a nice dogfish, so he threw all the other fish back, to make room for it.

‘Wow!’ said Ruby, staring into the bucket at the sinuous, shark-finned beast. ‘Let’s take him home!’

‘Not leaving while they’re biting,’ said Daddy, so Ruby kept a good supply of fresh water trickling into the bucket, using an empty Strongbow can and going gingerly back and forth to the water’s edge.

Daddy hooked an eel then, but lost it on the rocks and swore so hard that Ruby said nothing at all, not even sorry. She just kept on, to and fro with the can of seawater.

Slowly it dawned on her that she wasn’t walking so far each time. Now she was only taking a few careful paces to the edge of the Gore.

For the first time in an hour, Ruby stopped her work and looked around her.

She felt as if a big black pebble the size of her head had dropped into her tummy.

‘Daddy!’

‘What?’ He turned in his chair.

The tide was coming in fast. A lot of the sea was already behind them and, in places, the Gore itself had narrowed to mere inches. Bigger waves covered it completely, and in those places the black, slime-covered rock was only visible in the troughs.

‘What are we going to do?’ cried Ruby.

‘We’re going to hurry,’ said Daddy. He started to reel in his line, but halfway through, he stopped and took a knife from his tackle box and cut it instead, then he grabbed the rod, tackle box and fish bucket and started back down the long spit.

‘Bring the bait,’ he shouted.

Ruby dithered. ‘What about your chair?’

‘Leave it. Bollocks.’

Ruby snatched up the bait box and her net and went after him. The path back to the beach was always treacherous with rough rocks and wobbling pebbles – all with a lethal frill of algae and weed – but nothing like this. Now it was also narrowing fast and – washed by the sea – sometimes it was even invisible. What Ruby had carefully picked her way across before, she now had to negotiate at speed, and with the tide tugging at her ankles. Every few strides a bigger wave broke right over the Gore and she was knee-deep in water. More than once she slipped and nearly fell, only the thin bamboo shaft of her little fishing net keeping her upright.

She looked up and saw that Daddy was twenty yards ahead of her now, and between them there was more water than Gore.

She froze. ‘Daddy!’

He turned at her cry.

‘Come on, Ruby! Don’t just stand there!’ he shouted.

But she couldn’t move. Not even if she’d wanted to. That day of the dog in the forest, her legs had decided to run all by themselves. It had been terrifying, and the fear had only got worse and worse and worse, all the way to the blind terror of the Bear Den.

This time her legs decided not to run. This time her legs downed tools and told her to stay right there.

A swell pushed her sideways and she almost fell over. Only a quick hand on a sharp rock stopped her, and when she staggered upright again, her palm was bleeding, her jeans were wet right up to her crotch, the bait box was gone and her net was floating away from her – out of reach.

‘Daddy!’

She looked up through the spray and saw Daddy – rod and tackle box in one hand, bucket in the other, looking at her with a strange expression on his face.

Not panic. Not worry. Not fear.

Just.

Looking.

He was going to leave her there. Ruby just knew it.

Her chest went tight with terror as the dirty green ocean tried to knock her down and swallow her whole.

‘Daddy! Help me!’ she shrieked.

He did.

Of course he did. He was her Daddy. He wouldn’t leave her to drown. He took a few uneven strides towards her and then swore soundlessly and discarded the bucket. Ruby saw the dogfish spill back into the waves and wriggle away.

Daddy splashed towards her. She stretched out her arms, as if he might pick her up and carry her – the way Granpa had lifted her on to the kitchen counter – but he just grabbed her wrist and pulled her along behind him. She still stumbled; she still fell; the waves still knocked her sideways and threatened to wash her off the spit and into the hungry sea.

But now Daddy was there to take care of her.

When they were only ankle-deep, they stopped and looked back. Ruby’s teeth chattered with cold and fright. She couldn’t believe how close they had been to not making it. The sea had swallowed the Gore – all but the highest rock right at the end, where Daddy’s chair still perched. As they watched, a large, dark wave slapped it down and dragged it off.

And then there was just the sea and the foam and the gulls laughing overhead.

‘Fuck,’ said Daddy. ‘That was a twenty-quid fish.’

Then he squeezed her hand and said, ‘Don’t tell Mummy.’

Ruby nodded, shivering and blue in the lips, even though she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to not tell Mummy about – the lost dogfish, or the fuck.

Or the way she’d nearly drowned on the Gore.