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LOUISE DOUGHTY

(Louise Doughty’s first novel, Crazy Paving, is published in January 1995.)

Judges

THE 1994 IAN ST JAMES AWARDS

RODNEY BURBECK

Book Trade Journalist

LOUISE DOUGHTY

Novelist

ALAN DUNN

Novelist

MAGGIE NOACH

Literary Agent

IAN ST JAMES

Novelist

NICK SAYERS

Publisher

JOHN TRENHAILE

Novelist

THE SECRET OF THE LAKE
Jackie Kohnstamm

Jackie Kohnstamm has always lived in London, apart from student years spent at the University of East Anglia and in France. She has worked as a lecturer, translator and secretary and has been writing for ages – mainly fiction and radio drama. In 1991, the BBC broadcast her first radio play, The House at Number 9 Rue Fleurie. This is her first published story.

THE SECRET OF THE LAKE

You could call it a triumph. No more hospital. We’re managing at home. It’s a relief to know there’s nothing more they want to do to you.

Now you have grown weaker, your bed is downstairs. You look straight into the garden, but do you see it? The May tree, roses, the pink busy Lizzie grown into a bush outside the window? Or do you expend so much energy breathing that you see nothing at all? Air has become such an elusive element.

Shall I take you beyond your breathing? Will you come with me to a place you used to know and where you felt happy and safe? ‘Listen. Are you listening?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m going to take you on a journey.’

‘Where?’

‘In a story. About a young girl. What shall we call her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Try. Think of a name.’

‘Rosemary.’

‘Good. Close your eyes, then.’

‘I want to look at you.’

‘But you’ll see everything more clearly if you don’t look. And my voice will be with you all the way. That’s better. Are you lying comfortably?’

‘Very.’

‘Then we’ll begin.’

Rosemary lived with her parents and older sister and brother in a large flat on the third floor in the heart of the city. When springtime came, the big plane tree outside her bedroom burst into bright green leaf. However, as the city grew hotter, and Rosemary watched dust settle on the broad leaves, she longed to make them shiny again. One early summer’s day she could bear it no longer. She fetched a damp cloth from the bathroom, opened the French windows, clambered onto the edge of the balcony, leaned out and wiped as many leaves as she could reach.

‘Are you trying to kill yourself, child?’ Mother shouted and pulled her away. ‘I can’t bear to see such a thing!’

‘Then don’t look,’ said Rosemary. ‘Why do we have to live in town, anyway?’

‘Because your father’s work is here, and if he didn’t work, you’d have no food on the table.’

But, thought Rosemary, if we lived in the country, then I could gather berries, wild mushrooms and herbs and Father needn’t work so hard to feed us all. She announced her idea that night at supper.

‘Yes, child, now eat what’s on your plate,’ said Mother.

For all the world as if I were five, not fifteen, thought Rosemary. Well, fourteen. Almost.

‘The country!’ scoffed Bella. ‘Whoever heard of the latest fashion coming from Little-Wart-on-the-Bum? The country’s full of half-wits and everyone’s grandparents who didn’t manage to get away.’

‘And no culture,’ yawned Henry, who had just got up. At twenty-five he still lived at home and modelled himself on those great painters who drank late into the night and slept during the day.

‘What about you, Father?’ asked Rosemary. ‘Wouldn’t you like to live out of town in a house with a garden? Especially when it gets so hot and the roads melt?’

Father wiped his mouth, freeing crumbs from his moustache and beard. He was a fastidious man. ‘It’s funny you should say that, Rosemary,’ he said at last, ‘because I’ve been thinking along similar lines myself.’

‘Father!’ Three jaws dropped open. A lock of Henry’s long, wavy hair fell forward into his soup spoon. Bella’s bangles jangled. Mother set her elbows on the table and forgot to admonish herself. Only one pair of hands clapped with glee.

The house stood on the shore of a lake. Father had rented it for three months from a family spending the summer abroad.

‘By the time we return to the city,’ he told Rosemary, ‘the leaves on the plane tree will be turning yellow, so will not require washing.’

They arrived at dusk when a cool wind was blowing. Rosemary ran round the wooden porch, down steps into the garden, along the crazy paving path beside shadowy clumps of flowers and shrubs to the edge of the lake. A small rowing boat was pulled up onto their tiny beach. The wind stirred up wavelets which slapped against the hull. Rosemary kicked off her sandals and let the water run over her toes and suck at the mud beneath them.

She looked back at the house, at lights going on and off in the different rooms, at the silhouettes of her parents, brother and sister against the windows. Only one remained dark. It was beneath the eaves, an attic window on a level with the treetops. Time to investigate.

‘My room’s the biggest!’ Bella was standing in the doorway, arms crossed.

‘Mine has windows on two sides,’ said Henry, moving his easel around the room. ‘And where are you off to?’ he asked as Rosemary made for the ladder which led up to the roof.

Rosemary instantly felt at home in her room. She loved the sloping ceilings and dormer window against which the branches of a tree gently tapped. And she loved what lay beyond, the great expanse of shimmering, silver lake.

Late that night she opened the shutters and dragged her bed over to the window. She lay for a long time staring at the dancing shadows cast on the walls by the moon. Strange shapes, ever changing. Eventually she fell asleep. Or did she?

Rosemary’s limbs felt lighter. She began to float upwards. Her bedclothes fell from her as she rose in the air and drifted through the window. She brushed past the trees and soared out over the lake. She swooped and skimmed the surface, then, supported by a current of air, rose up and up, higher than the house. She could see all the rooms where her parents, brother and sister slept. She could see her own attic window. Through it were visible the bed and a figure sleeping in it. That’s me, she thought. There I am!

How relaxed you look! Each breath is long and even now. Surely you’ve fallen asleep. But no. Your eyes open. You are looking straight at me. Expectantly. ‘Very calming,’ you say, ‘like a dream.’

‘Shall I go on?’

‘If you have the strength.’

You are the one with little strength. But it helps you to make out that I am as you are, and so push away what is.

Rosemary woke to find that the sun had taken the moon’s place. It splashed yellow patches on her wardrobe, chair and table. She jumped out of bed and leaned out of the window. The lake glittered bright blue, the trees hardly stirred. The house was also still. She looked at her watch – only six o’clock. At least the birds were awake. She decided to join them outside.