Gravenhunger Moss

I had never been to stay at my grandfather's house - not that I
could remember, anyway. Once, when I asked my mother, she said in her
small tired voice that, yes, we had been there before, ten years ago or
so, and as far as she was concerned, she would never go there again.
But that cold autumn, I think my mother was so sick of her life that
she gave in, and we went again to stay at Gravenhunger Moss. It was old
and grey, like Grandfather himself, and it stood on a high, lonely,
hill overlooking the lake.

"Don't go out," my mother said, when we accidentally met at breakfast
that first morning. "It's raining, and you know that your raincoat is
too small for you." She was right, it was. I'd told her that I needed
another one last winter, but I hadn't expected her to remember.

Still, I did as she said, and spent my first few days inside,
wandering through the house, getting lost, and then finding myself
inexplicably back where I had started. But there wasn't much to
interest a thirteen year old - I wasn't a bookish child - and the next
morning I borrowed Grandfather's great big wax cotton jacket and
stepped outside.

It had stopped raining, but the wind was still high, and it whipped my
pale brown hair about my face and tugged possessively at my scarf. Just
in front of the house there was a small neat lawn, and then a field
laid to pasture, sloping abruptly downwards to the lake. Spreading my
arms like aeroplane wings, I began to run down to the water's
edge.

The grey water of the lake was turbulent. The wind blew small droplets
of spray into the air, and onto my face. Wiping my face with my sleeve,
I started off along the lakeside path. I think that I was starting to
pretend to be an explorer - discovering the lake for the first time,
but it isn't important. Because after only a few hundred yards, I saw
it. I stopped, and drew breath. At last, something I remembered. It was
an old wooden jetty, T-shaped, leading out into the lake. Through the
spray I could just make out the shapes of a couple of small rowing
boats made fast to the end of the jetty. Half way along the it, a door,
marked "KEEP OUT" in angry letters and festooned with barbed wire,
barred the way.

I placed my left foot onto the jetty's wooden boards, and then
stopped. Though I wanted to go on, wanted to try the door, I couldn't.
I was suddenly scared; my heart-beat pounded in my temples. I turned
and ran, like a child, back up the hill to the house.

That night at dinner, in the big old oak-panelled dining room with its
smell of cough mixture, I told my mother that I'd been outside. "That's
nice," she murmured, not remembering, or caring enough, to be
angry.

The next day the wind had dropped. An unnatural stillness hung about
Gravenhunger Moss and I was glad to escape the house, and make my way
to the lake again. As I reached the lakeside path, I knew which way I
would turn. But when I reached the jetty, someone else was there before
me. A man, in an overcoat and old-fashioned hat, stood at the very end
of it, looking out away from me over the lake. A few feet away, a small
girl in a bright red coat was pulling at the rope to one of the
dinghies. "Look, Daddy!" she cried "Look!" She grabbed the side of the
boat, presumably to climb in, but she must have slipped, or her arms
were too weak, and she fell into the water by the boat, without a
noise.

I gasped, and then tried to shout to her father, to tell him his
daughter was in danger. But my words caught in my throat and I couldn't
force my legs to move. It was like being in the worst kind of dream. At
long last, the man turned, but slowly, so slowly. Then he saw that his
daughter was gone, and he ran quickly to the place where she'd been,
threw off his coat and jumped into the cold grey water.

Suddenly I could move. I ran down the jetty, past where the door
should have been. What happened next is rather a blur. I got to the end
of the jetty, then ran to the boat. I saw a patch of scarlet beneath
the grey water, jumped into the lake, dived and pulled the girl up and
onto the jetty. I dived in again, but my breath burst in my lungs
before I found her father. I broke the surface, gasped for air, and
dived again. This time I found him, trapped beneth the surface, his
clothes caught on some debris. I grabbed his jumper and pulled and
pulled. I came up again, dived again, pulled again. At last he came
free, but it was too late. I had to leave his body in the lake - it was
too heavy for me to pull it out.

I sat on the jetty, shivering. The small girl sat beside me, sobbing.
Her face was strange yet familiar - like one's own, seen in an
unexpected mirror. She looked through me as if I wasn't there, back
towards the house. "Mummy!" she cried. "Daddy's in the water!"

I turned around. A woman in 50's clothing was running down the hill -
a young woman, but still my mother. She didn't see me, or the child.
She reached the end of the jetty, and stood there for an age, silent,
while her husband's lifeless body floated on the lake at her feet.
Then, at last, she looked down at the dripping child beside her.

"You killed him," she said, turning back towards the house. "You
killed him, and I'll never forgive you, as long as I live."

"But I didn't!" I cried, running after her. "It wasn't my fault, it
was an accident."

But she couldn't hear me - and she never would.