Free The Sea Change by Joanna Rossiter Page B

open mouth, a pelican swooping down to pick us up in its beak and fly us
back to the shore – that I can’t tell what’s real any more. But I’m
sure I can see something. ‘Wake up! Wake up! Quick!’ I shout at
Ravindra.
    He snaps out of his sleep and sits up so
suddenly that we have to freeze to make sure the roof stays stable. I jab at the shape
on the horizon. The more we look at it, the more I’m sure of it.
    ‘Start paddling!’ I cry, rolling
over onto my belly and digging my arm into the water. Ravindra mimics the movement he
taught me, lying on his stomach on the other side of the roof. We move forward at a
snail’s pace. Don’t go. Don’t let the shape go. Then he stands up, the
roof tipping like a set of scales beneath him. He waves his arms. Faster and faster he
waves them.
    ‘It’s coming!’ I yell.
‘It’s coming! It’s coming!’ I daren’t stand up in case the
weight of the two of us sinks the roof but I start to hear the engine, throbbing through
the water, cutting it into submission. ‘Help!’
    The ship is a large tanker. A floating
house. With a flat, solid deck that I want to spread myself out on and kiss. ‘Over
here! This way!’
    At first we think it hasn’t seen us.
Our arms grow limp from waving. But when I shut my eyes for a while, then open them, it
gets bigger. And bigger. Until the ship slides so close to us that its wake washes over
our roof, sinking it an inch under the water. Someone throws a rope with a life-belt
attached to it and shouts. Ravindra understands and calls back. He’s grinning: a
wide, unquenchable grin. He passes me the belt once he’s fished it out of the
water.
    ‘No, you go first,’ I tell him,
handing it back. He gives it to me again.
    ‘Alice,’ he insists.
‘Alice!’ He thrusts it at me when I don’t take it.
    I give in and slip it over me, clutching the
rope. Then they winch me up. I throw the belt to Ravindra as soon as I’ve set foot
on the deck. ‘Hold on!’
    After hours of moving with the moods of the
ocean, the surface of the tanker is deliciously solid beneath me. I flop down below the
walls of the deck so that the sea is out of sight. A man in a boiler suit stoops to give
me a cup of water; half the liquid misses my mouth.
    There is a commotion among the crew.
Ravindra is still in the water. He’s clinging resolutely to the roof and the men
on board are heckling and shouting in Tamil. He refuses to take the life-belt.
    ‘It’s his house,’ I try to
explain. ‘It’s the roof of his house.’
    A huddle of men deliberate on the deck. They
can’t leave him. But he’s staying on the water and won’t be persuaded.
I watch as three men are lowered in a dinghy onto the sea. He begins to flail and
struggle and splash when they take hold of him.
    ‘
Ithu yen veedu!
’ His
voice is pleading, almost a wail. He is inside the boat now, divorced from the roof.
Just as the dinghy is winched off the water, the sea swells, overwhelming the sheet of
metal. I wait, breath held, for it to reappear. But the water stays taciturn.
    Ravindra sinks to the floor of the boat. The
crew don’t understand: it is only a sheet of rusting iron. Once the dinghy is
level with the deck, I clamber inside and sit with him. He clasps my sleeve, like he did
the roof, still holding on for dear life.



CHAPTER 7
    Father’s call-up date arrived from
the War Office within the week, along with the name of his platoon. The letter sat
unopened on the kitchen table – an unwanted turn of events folded inside its
envelope.
    My mother and sister ate their breakfast
with it next to them and, putting to rest their knives and toast crusts, sat in silence
for almost an hour. It was as if the letter were a lingering guest whose presence
prevented them getting on with their day. I tried to distract them with talk of my
dinner at Mrs Shelton’s but it was no use. Not even the thought of pork could
distract Freda. I bragged half-heartedly about it in front of her but she