The Sea House Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gertrude that before the war there had been a pontoon ferry that could take anything across. There was a sign still there with the prices written on it, just legible if you peered close. For each sheep, lamb, goat, pig – 2d. But the residents of Steerborough, and those at Eastonknoll, were convinced the ferry might be useful to the Germans, and so it was taken down and dismantled in the first weeks of the war, and now just like in all the years of the last century, and the ones before it, a ferry man in a small wooden boat waited to row you across. He pushed out fast into the current to a point midway between each bank, and then with a guiding oar he let the river bring the boat back in. Alf licked his finger and trailed it once more over the page, to show, Max imagined, how the family had moved.
‘First you were on the riverbank?’ he suggested, and Alf nodded. ‘And then?’
In the dip of a hollow, in the last stretch of green before the sea, Alf made a tiny dot.
Max screwed up his eyes to see it. ‘You moved down here?’ The new family home was conveniently placed below the pub. If you wanted, you could stagger through the door and roll from there into your own house.
The door swung open and Alf’s mother came in with a stack of linen.
Guilty at his thoughts, Max turned to her. ‘Alf has just been showing me where you live.’
Mrs Wynwell looked surprised. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My Harry said we’d better move if we didn’t want to be washed away to sea, so we moved the house, bricks, beams and all, but then, well, he was taken anyway.’ The corners of her mouth turned down, and she pushed her chin up as if to tilt her tears back in. ‘A wave tipped up his boat.’ There was a silence in which they all stared through the walls. ‘And now’ – Mrs Wynwell shook her head – ‘Alf’s learning the piano.’
‘Yes.’ Max placed a hand on the boy’s head, and they stood like that until, with a sudden rush of energy, Mrs Wynwell began beating the curtains with a broom.
    Gertrude put the cake into the oven. The goulash had been simmering for over an hour and the liquid was starting to turn a thick and syrupy brown. The onion had melted into the stew and even the paprika, though rather old, was giving off a quite distinctive smell. Mrs Wynwell came in, wrinkling her nose. ‘So what are you stirring up for them, Mrs J?’ she asked, and when Gertrude described the cubed beef and the onion, the tablespoon of paprika stirred into the sauce, Mrs Wynwell’s face widened in alarm and her eyes seemed to swim out to the sides. ‘But they’re all Jews, they’re not going to want to eat meat!’
‘Why ever not?’ Gertrude felt herself flush with indignation. She went to the French windows and looked out. Max had set up a rough workbench with two chairs and a length of plywood, and he was stretching a canvas over a pale wood frame. He’d been cutting and banging and measuring all afternoon. So finally, she thought, he’ll be ready to begin.
‘Well…’ Mrs Wynwell sounded sure. ‘They’re not allowed to kill a living thing, not even a fly. It’s why they put no fight up… you know, in the war.’
‘No!’ Gertrude spun round. ‘That’s not it at all. Hindus, you’re thinking of, or Jains.’ She found that she was shouting. ‘And what could they have done? You went to the cinema. You saw the newsreel. Rows and rows of them, just skin and bone.’
‘Oh, Mrs J, I’m sorry. I thought I was being a help.’ And with a small affronted nod she went off to polish the glass in the front door.
Gertrude was trembling, the image of those striped figures etched in her mind, and she wondered if Hitler had consulted a psychologist, or if he had simply known that if you put a person in pyjamas you turned them into children and had them doubly in your power.

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    Dear Nick , Lily wrote, I’m afraid the only phone box in the village is broken . She bit her lip guiltily and turned the postcard over to gaze into the