Becca at Sea Page 4

  But at that very moment, she heard a familiar voice.

  “Mac!” she said.

  “Becca! I didn’t know you were here for the holiday.”

  “It’s not a holiday, really, just planting Gran’s garden,” she said. “Are you working on your cabin?”

  “I just got here and tomorrow I’ll do just that,” Mac said. “How’s your gran? Any shipwrecks or drownings recently? Any displays of affection between you and the local marine life?”

  “No. We’ve just been digging and digging! But could you give me and my cousins a ride home?”

  Alicia was glaring at her, partly in admiration, but there was something else, too. She wanted Becca to borrow money. Becca pretended not to see her, even though she was starving.

  “Cousins!” exclaimed Mac. “So that’s who they are. Sure, I’ll give you a lift. Here — give your gran a call on my cell and I’ll be ready in a second.”

  That was how Mac rescued them, sort of — and even though they were a lot earlier than they would have been if they’d had to go home on foot, it was long past dinnertime when they walked into the cabin.

  There, with a terrible hunger burning and gnawing in their stomachs and the soles of their feet buzzing with weariness, they had to face Dad and Gran. Words such as “cockamamie,” “half baked” and “peril” sizzled in the air, along with “grounded” and “what would I tell your mum if you fell over the cliff?” After that even Alicia didn’t complain about the truly awful meal of scrambled eggs and cold stir-fried lamb’s-quarters, made of weeds Gran had harvested from the beach.

  “So many of your expeditions just seem to go on and on,” Becca heard Lucy say to Alicia as they burrowed into sleeping bags at last. “And then we end up without decent food and getting into trouble, too!”

  Becca looked down at the scrapes on her stomach and the places the rope had rubbed her skin raw. They were a sign that adventures were out there even if they didn’t always end gloriously.

  And she thought of something else. Lucy and Alicia were ornery, but they did make things happen.

  And if they could make things happen, she could, too.

  4. Blackberries

  Becca thought about adventures off and on as she finished up the school year, and Sports Day, and watched her mum get big. So big, in fact, that when it was time to head to Gran’s for the usual August visit, Mum and Dad didn’t dare come.

  “It’s a bit too close to the time,” Mum said. “But you can go. You’ll have a good time and Gran will love it.”

  “Gran will not love it,” said Becca. “She’ll argue about Scrabble and get me to do a lot of chores and tell me not to flush the toilet because it wastes water.”

  Two days later she left with Aunt Fifi, who was actually quite good at making things happen.

  “Look at all the jellyfish,” she said as they leaned over the rail of the ferry. “That usually means the water is cold.”

  Aunt Fifi loved cold water. She loved it more than Gran did, even.

  “First swim, then blackberries,” she told Becca. “I want to make jelly.”

  Aunt Fifi was always full of projects. Becca turned her face to the wind and watched the island come closer.

  * * *

  “Are the blackberries ripe?” Aunt Fifi asked after she’d bounded up the ferry ramp and hugged Gran.

  “Ripe, luscious and dropping from the bushes,” Gran answered. “If you care to risk your life for them. Becca, stop climbing on that rail.”

  “Risk her life?” Becca asked. “I’m fine on the rail.” Was Gran going to be all bossy again?

  “Girl in the red jacket, stop climbing on the guard rail,” boomed the ferry’s P.A. system. “It is against ferry regulations to climb on ferry property.”

  Becca leaped to the ground feeling as red as her jacket.

  “Hey! You could have told me,” she said to Gran.

  “I mean the blackberry bushes are like Sleeping Beauty’s hedge,” Gran replied. “I did tell you to get off the rail. Now, let me take a look at you... A little taller, a little frecklier, that’s what I like to see. How’s your mum?”

  “Huge,” Becca said, thinking of the bulge that was going to be a sister or brother.

  “It won’t be long now,” Gran said.

  * * *

  They ate bowls of Gran’s scary soup for dinner, sitting on the beach. Frank crouched at Becca’s feet and looked at her hopefully.

  “Can’t I give him some?” Becca asked. Whoever had told Gran that sea asparagus made good soup should be — actually, Becca didn’t know what a proper punishment might be, except maybe that they should have to eat it every day for a year. And not be allowed to floss.

  “Absolutely not,” said Gran. “Sit down, Fiona. You’re spilling soup all over creation.”

  But Aunt Fifi stood up to eat, gazing out to sea and pacing the sandstone in between bouts of picking sea asparagus fibers from between her teeth. She didn’t look as though she thought spilling her soup would be a great tragedy.

  “I’ll just run over and check on the blackberries myself,” she said suddenly. “If you’re right, we’ll go tomorrow. Right after breakfast.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Fiona,” said Gran. “I already told you they’re ripe. Can’t you sit still even for a minute?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Aunt Fifi. “Want to go swimming when I get back, Becca?”

  * * *

  In the morning Gran refused to go with them.

  “I’m waiting for the plumber to phone,” she said. “You know how that is. If I miss the call, I won’t get to speak to him for a week.”

  Gran had a complicated system of rainwater cisterns that fed into her indoor plumbing, and she had to consult frequently with a whole team of pipe and pump people.

  “My mother has an interesting relationship with the plumber,” Aunt Fifi told Becca.

  “He has big feet and holes in his jeans,” Becca said. That’s all she’d ever seen of him.

  “He very well may,” said Aunt Fifi. “All I know is that his opinions on English literature are absurd.”

  Last summer Becca had heard Aunt Fifi and the plumber have a terrible argument about one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The plumber had had his head under the house at the time, but Becca had seen his feet twitching violently, as if they were having the argument themselves. Gran had been upset when he left before he had finished the job. He’d had to come back another day when Aunt Fifi wasn’t there.

  “Are we taking the ladder?” Becca asked, changing the topic.

  “Yes,” said Aunt Fifi. “And you’d better change your clothes. Shorts and a T-shirt are no good for brambles. Gum boots, long sleeves and jeans are fit attire.”

  Fit attire, Becca thought. Sometimes it was like Aunt Fifi was teaching a university course no matter where she was.

  “It’s boiling hot out,” Becca said. “I’m not wearing jeans.”

  “You absolutely must!” Aunt Fifi insisted. “Look at me! And if it weren’t so hard to pick with gloves on I’d wear them, too. I’m an expert! You should take my advice.”

  “Bossing” was what Becca called it. But she saw that she’d have to give in a little.

  “Well, all right,” she said at last. “I’ll wear gum boots but I won’t wear jeans or long sleeves.”

  “You’ll be sorry!” Aunt Fifi predicted.

  * * *

  Becca and Aunt Fifi clanked off. The handle of the bucket bit into Becca’s arm and the end of the ladder dug into her fingers. Aunt Fifi rattled with buckets and plastic containers, all strung on what she called her special blackberry-picking stick.

  “You’ll need one, too,” she said. “To pull down the high branches.”

  “How many are we going to pick?” Becca asked.

  “Lots! Oceans of them. I want enough jel
ly to last for years.”

  “How far is it?” Becca asked.

  “Not too far,” Aunt Fifi told her. “You won’t even have time to get blisters.”

  Walking down the road wasn’t so bad, but it was a tight squeeze through the fence into the deserted farmstead.

  “The best berries grow here,” Aunt Fifi explained, pulling at the barbed wire until it creaked. “The fattest ones are along the fence on the other side,” she said, inspecting a barbed-wire tear in her shirt.

  “Aren’t you hot?” Becca asked. She was ready for a swim and they hadn’t even begun to pick yet. The field, overgrown with grass now dry and gone to seed, seemed vast. Grass seeds dropped into her boots and made her ankles itch.

  “A little,” said Aunt Fifi, “but at least I won’t get scratched to bits, like some people.”

  Blackberries drooped from the bushes in great clusters, just as luscious and plentiful as Gran had said. Becca stood in the shadow of the brambles and let berries fall into her hand, and then into the pot.

  “I love picking blackberries,” said Aunt Fifi from up the ladder. “It’s so peaceful.”

  It sure was peaceful, Becca thought. Boring, even. Plump, plump, plump. The berries dropped into the bucket. The only other sound was from bees in late blossoms, and the quiet noises of a calm sea.

  “What did you and the plumber argue about?” Becca asked.

  “Are you trying to stir things up?” demanded Aunt Fifi. “Ow. I scratched myself.”

  “I just wondered.” They had to talk about something. It was dull to pick without conversation.

  “If you must know, we argued about ‘bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,’” replied Aunt Fifi. “It’s from a poem by Shakespeare, a sonnet about old age.”

  “That’s what made his feet twitch?”

  Aunt Fifi was silent for a moment, and all Becca heard was the quiet sound of berries dropping.

  “Ow. I can’t get my sleeve free,” Aunt Fifi complained. There was a long tearing sound. “Don’t worry — it was just thorns coming out. The plumber thinks the sonnet is about baldness and losing your teeth. That ‘yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang’ refers to hair, or perhaps to old, discolored teeth, or teeth that have fallen out.”

  “You had a fight about rotten teeth?”

  “Not rotten, discolored. It’s an important issue,” said Aunt Fifi. “There, I’ve finished this spot. I’m just going to move the ladder over.”

  The brambles rustled and snapped noisily as Aunt Fifi removed the ladder, then put it up in another place.

  Becca reached into the bush again, and berries fell into her hands. With her boots she stamped down the stalks that threatened to snag her bare legs. She made a passage and burrowed into the middle of the blackberry vines. Under there it was cool and green. The berries had ripened among the dead branches of last year’s growth, and thorns picked at her arms when she reached for them.

  “This hurts!” she said. “And there’s an old barbed wire fence poking into me, too.”

  “I told you it was a painful business,” Aunt Fifi said cheerfully. “That’s why I always come dressed to the nines. Oh, look at these! There are thousands of them up here, right where the sun hits them best!”

  Becca heard her wrestle the ladder around and lean it up against the bushes.

  “This is incredible,” Aunt Fifi remarked. “I don’t think anyone’s picked here for years.”

  The ladder squeaked with each step and the brambles rustled noisily, as if they were talking among themselves.

  Aunt Fifi’s bucket clanged.

  “Whoops!” she said. “Last step. Wow, these berries are as big as — ”

  The ladder creaked.

  Aunt Fifi grunted strangely, sounding a bit like a hog.

  Then Becca heard a great, slow crackling. It began as a rustle, became the sound of breaking branches, and then, drawing all the other crackling, snapping and pulling noises with it, became the loud, scraping, tearing sound of a million thorns letting go.

  Aunt Fifi shrieked, and there was silence.

  * * *

  Becca backed out of her bramble burrow.

  “Aunt Fifi? Are you okay?”

  “Oh my.”

  Aunt Fifi’s voice came from the middle of the bramble thicket, and as soon as she spoke there were more rustlings and cracklings, more prickly tearing noises.

  “I can’t move,” she announced when the crackles had died down.

  “Where are you?”

  Becca waded through the dry grass at the edge of the bushes.

  “I’m over here.” Aunt Fifi sounded unusually quiet. “Keep walking. Ow.”

  Even talking seemed to make the brambles prickle and crack.

  If it hadn’t been for Aunt Fifi’s hat, which had stayed on top of the brambles while the rest of her had crashed through, Becca might not have found her at all.

  “I can see something blue,” Becca called. “Is that your shirt?”

  “Probably.” Aunt Fifi’s voice was very quiet.

  “Are you going to crawl out?” Becca asked.

  “No,” said Aunt Fifi. “I can’t move. And anyway because of the thorns I think I have to come out the way I went in, unless I want to turn into a bloody mess. I’m completely stuck here.” She was so still that it was as though the bramble patch itself were speaking. “Don’t worry, I’m not using bad language,” she added suddenly.

  “I can see the ladder,” Becca said. It lay cock-eyed to the ground, tilted over where Aunt Fifi’s falling weight had pulled it.

  She started to climb along it, slowly and carefully, stopping with each step to wait for the brambles to settle under her.

  There was Aunt Fifi’s plaid shirt, her jeans, and finally her face, gazing up at Becca from the midst of the brambles.

  “I can see you,” Becca said.

  “I didn’t fall all the way to the ground,” said Aunt Fifi. “I’m stuck in old brambles and stalks.”

  “I could get a log,” Becca said. “I could roll it up from the beach and... ”

  But she knew it was impossible.

  “‘Consum’d with that which it was nourished by,’” Aunt Fifi said.

  “What?” Becca wondered if Aunt Fifi’s mind had started to wander. She’d heard about that sort of thing, that sometimes when terrible things happened to people, suddenly they started acting strange and saying odd things.

  “It’s a line in the poem the plumber and I argued about,” Aunt Fifi said calmly. “Here I am, stuck in the very bushes that bore the berries that made such a good pie for me last summer. A pie, I have to add, that I was intending to share with the plumber until he showed himself to be such an oaf.”

  Becca thought Aunt Fifi was being silly, under the circumstances.

  “Good thing you wore all those clothes,” she said, trying to make Aunt Fifi feel better. “Think how scratched you’d be if you were dressed like me!”

  “Dressed as I am,” corrected Aunt Fifi.

  “Well, anyway, there’s a sort of skinny tree here that I could hold on to, to help pull you out. And there’s a log I can stand on to pull you up. Then you could step back on to the ladder and crawl backwards, maybe, if it doesn’t sink any more.”

  “If. Maybe.” Aunt Fifi seemed to have become very philosophical. “My whole life is flashing before my eyes. But I’ll try it. I have a feeling it’s going to be excruciating. I didn’t just fall into the blackberry bushes, you know. I’m right in the middle of the old barbed wire fence. Still, I can’t stay here for the rest of my life and we can but try.”

  But when Aunt Fifi tried to sit up, the whole blackberry bush shuddered and crackled.

  “I can’t put my weight down,” she told Becca. “It just makes me sink further.”

  Becca inched her way off t
he ladder and on to the log. It lay smothered in brambles, but still solid and steady under her feet. Out of the end of it grew a sapling — not thick enough for a person to climb but solid enough for Becca to hang on to while she gave Aunt Fifi a hoist.

  “Can you reach me?” Becca asked. With one arm hugging the sapling, she stretched out the other until she could feel a hand under her fingertips.

  “Got it!” Aunt Fifi cried. “Now I’m going to try to get up. Are you ready?”

  Becca thought she was as ready as she could be. Either Aunt Fifi would pull her into the brambles, or Becca would pull Aunt Fifi out. It was as simple as that — as simple as falling off a log.

  “Ready.”

  Becca tugged. Thorns tore. Stalks bent and crackled.

  “Ow! Ouch!” cried Aunt Fifi. Slowly she came upright, even though she was still down there in the bushes.

  “Well, that’s some improvement,” she said. “But my legs are stuck. They’re stuck... ”

  Becca peered down.

  “They’re stuck in the barbed wire,” Becca finished for her.

  “The barbs have gone completely through my jeans,” Aunt Fifi told her. “I can’t even bend down to pull them out.”

  She tried to lift first one leg, then the other.

  “It’s no use,” she said. “They’re stuck in the brambles, too. There are thorns all through them.”

  Becca felt the whole expedition had become much too sweaty and uncomfortable, and they didn’t even have their buckets full of berries. They had hardly started!

  “Well, if you can’t pull your legs out in your jeans, pull your legs out of your jeans. And I don’t want to hear any more Shakespeare,” she said.

  “Pull my legs out of my jeans?” exclaimed Aunt Fifi. “But what about my boots? And Shakespeare didn’t write about jeans, just about boots. ‘Trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries’ — ”

  “We’ll get your boots once you get up here,” Becca interrupted her. “We can nab them with your blackberry stick.”