Ingo by Helen Dunmore
“If I’ve really been gone twenty-four hours, then time must move more slowly in Ingo,” I say, thinking aloud.
“Ssh! Don’t talk about it here!” hisses Conor.
“Why not? There’s no one but us.”
Conor glances around, as if the grass might be listening. A herring gull swoops low, screaming over our heads. Everything sounds hollow and noisy, now that I’m back in the Air.
“You don’t know who might be listening,” he whispers.
“But Faro said that you were in Ingo too, at the same time as me. He said you and Elvira were talking to the sunfish.”
“I wasn’t talking to them. I don’t know how. Elvira was.”
“But that was only a little while ago. How could you have been there in Ingo and up here waiting for me on the cliff at the same time?”
Conor pulls a grass stem out of its sheath and nibbles the sweet end of it, thinking too.
“What Faro tells you,” he says at last, “I mean, the things that Faro says, they’re true in his mind. But they may not be true in yours.”
“Do you mean he’s lying?”
“It’s not like that in Ingo. Elvira’s just the same. There isn’t only one thing that’s true and everything else is a lie. And I think maybe time’s like that in Ingo too. It stretches out, then it presses itself together, like this—” and Conor squeezes his hands together, as if he’s crushing time.
“Who told you that? Elvira?” I ask jealously. “Were you there with Elvira, like Faro says, or not?”
“Yes, I was there…but I don’t know how long for. I think time in Ingo isn’t just different in how fast it goes but in the whole way it works. You said it was only a little while since I was in Ingo, but I’ve been back here for ages. Since yesterday. So maybe time there moves quite differently.”
“But did you see me? Did you and Elvira see me, and hear me calling, and then hide from me?”
It feels like the most important question I’ve ever asked Conor. I want him to kill the picture in my mind that shows him and Elvira slipping away together, maybe laughing, not wanting me to see them—
“You came to me,” says Conor slowly. “You came into my mind, Saph, but I didn’t see you. I was with the seals, and suddenly you were there in my mind. I thought something bad had happened to you. I told Elvira I had to go back and find you.”
“What do you mean, I was ‘in your mind’?”
“You know how it is in Ingo,” says Conor reluctantly. “Everything you usually think about—everything that’s up in the Air—it floats away and fades. It doesn’t seem real. Even people fade. Even you and Mum started to feel like dreams when I was in Ingo. But suddenly all that changed. You were really there, in my mind, solid. I stopped feeling easy and dreamy. I was scared. I thought you were in trouble, Saph, and I might not get to you in time.”
“But I was there, in Ingo, all the time. Close to you.”
“Yes.” Conor’s face closes in a frown. “But it didn’t feel like that. It felt as if you were far away—calling to me—and I was losing you. Like when a mobile phone breaks up and you keep losing someone’s voice. Elvira said—” He breaks off and frowns even more deeply.
“What did she say?”
“She told me not to call you. She said it could be dangerous. She wanted us to go on surfing the currents. There’s a group of islands she’s going to take me to, but I said I couldn’t go with her. I had to come back and find you. She wasn’t very—”
He shakes his head, as if trying to shake away the troubled feeling.
“Wasn’t very what?”
“She wasn’t very happy about it.”
Your precious Elvira didn’t care what happened to me, did she? I think, but I don’t say it.
“I don’t understand how it works,” says Conor.
“Me neither.”
Conor was there, in Ingo, and so was I, but we never met. Faro and Elvira kept us separate.
But they didn’t stop us when we said we wanted to come back.
No, I’m sure Faro doesn’t want to hurt me. He looked after me and made sure I was safe in Ingo.
“You look terrible,” says Conor. “Lucky Mum’s not back. She’d know straightaway something had happened.”
The KitKat wrapper glints in the sun. My mouth waters.
“Is there any of that KitKat left?”
“No, I ate it. It was a long night.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m so hungry. Starving. Hungry for food and hungry for sleep. “Can I sleep in your sleeping bag, Con?”
My legs feel like jelly. I can’t walk another step. All I want is to dive into Conor’s sleeping bag and sleep until tomorrow, or even the next day—
“No, Saph,” says Conor urgently as my legs begin to fold. “We’ve got to get home. You can sleep in your own bed once we’re there.”
“Can’t I even rest for a bit?”
“No, Saph, not here. It’s not—” Conor breaks off what he’s saying and glances around again. A black-headed gull sits quietly on a rock nearby, his head cocked. If he wasn’t a gull, you’d think he was listening to us. Conor whispers, “It’s too close here.”
“Close to what?”
“To Ingo. The tide will be high again soon.”
I remember what happens at high tide. The waves come right in, under the cliffs. There are gullies that the sea has been carving for centuries and blowholes where the water spouts up with a hiss of foam. When it’s rough, you can hear the sea roaring like a lion beneath you and feel the thump of the waves through the granite.
Conor’s right. Air and Ingo are close here. This shore is where they touch. Conor and I are standing on the border, between the two countries. I look out to the shining water and think of Ingo. All the color and creatures and life of Ingo are there, so close I could still touch them, if I just reached out—
Before I know it, I’ve moved forward, closer to the edge of the cliff.
“Saph!”
The gull opens his beak in a hideous squawk as Conor grabs my arm again and pulls me back.
“Come on, Saph! We’ve got to go home!”
CHAPTER TEN
I WAKE UP SLOWLY. I’M IN MY own room, lying in bed. Sleep doesn’t want to let go of me, and my head is fuzzy with dreams. Strange dreams that seem more real than the daylight. I dreamed of a huge cavern deep, deep under the cliffs, where I slept on a bed of silky sea moss while a warm current fanned my face. The dream was so real that I can still feel the touch of moss, like feathers against my skin.
But I’m lying under my old blue duvet cover. From the look of the light, it’s late morning. I can hear Mum downstairs, talking. I prop myself up on my elbow to listen, but I can’t hear another voice answering her. She must be on the phone. I can’t hear what she’s saying either, but suddenly I guess who she’s talking to. It’s that diver, Roger. The man who’s coming here on Sunday. Mum’s voice murmurs on and on, as if she’s already known Roger for years and has a million things to tell him. Sometimes she laughs.
Roger the diver. Mum likes him; you can tell that from her voice. But Faro hates divers. What did he say about them? Air People with air on their backs, bringing Air into Ingo, spying on Ingo. That’s what he thinks they are: spies.
I’m glad Faro hates them. Now that Mum’s told me about Roger, the diver coming on Sunday, I don’t like divers either. I think they should keep out of the way and not come where they aren’t wanted.
Mum thinks I should stop waiting and hoping for Dad to return. She says I’ve got my life to live. I know she’s only trying to help me, but it isn’t helping. I’m afraid it means that she’s stopped waiting for Dad. She doesn’t think he’s coming back, and she’s trying to make a life without him.
She can’t do that. I won’t let her. I’ve got to make Mum believe that Dad’s not dead or disappeared off to somewhere like Australia. I know that’s what some people think. They whisper things about Dad, and when Conor or I come close enough to hear, they stop
I roll over in bed and thump my pillow angrily. Josie Sancreed didn’t even bother to whisper. She turned round to me in the playground and said out loud, “Everyone thinks your dad drowned, and they feel really sorry for you, but my mum says most likely he’s gone off with another woman.”
Gone off with another woman. I couldn’t believe Josie had said that. The words scraped me like gravel when you fall off your bike. Gone off. He’s gone off because he’s found someone better. That’s what’s happened to Mathew Trewhella. Everybody knows; it’s only his family that doesn’t believe it.
I wanted to run away, right out of the playground and all the way home, but I didn’t. No one was going to make me run away. Josie stared at me with a stupid little smile, but I could tell she was also a bit scared at what she’d done. Loads of people had heard, so she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t said it. Katie said, “Shut up, Josie,” but the rest of the girls just stared at me too. I think maybe they were embarrassed, or they didn’t know what to do, but at the time I thought they were on Josie’s side.
I couldn’t bear it. I grabbed Josie by the shoulders and shoved her as hard as I could against the playground wall. She fell and started crying really loudly so all the girls gathered round her and helped her up. “It’s my hand; she’s hurt my hand,” Josie wailed, and suddenly everything was my fault, not Josie’s.
What was worse was that Mrs. Tehidy saw me push Josie into the wall. She started clucking round Josie, and she put her arm around her and took her into the office to have her hand seen to.
“I’ll talk to you later, Sapphire,” she said over her shoulder.
Mrs. Tehidy hadn’t heard what Josie said about Dad. I didn’t ever, ever want to hear those words again, so I didn’t tell. Katie was going to, but I wouldn’t let her. So I was sent to Mr. Carthew, and he said, “I’m disappointed in you, Sapphire. Violence doesn’t solve anything.”
Oh, doesn’t it? I thought. As soon as I got out of Mr. Carthew’s office, I went to find Josie. Mrs. Tehidy had finished washing Josie’s hand, and she’d put a big bandage on it. Josie was in the girls’ toilets telling everyone what I’d done to her. I walked in, and they all stopped talking.
“If you open your mouth about my dad again,” I said, “I’ll push you into the ditch that’s full of nettles, behind the hall.”
Josie knew I meant it, and so did everyone else. Some people were on my side because they’d heard what Josie said to me, but Esther put her arm round Josie and said, “Stop bullying Josie, Sapphire.”
“She’s the bully,” said Katie angrily.
I never get into fights normally, but it’s funny—once you start, it seems easier. And when Josie looked at me in that scared way, I felt good. Maybe violence doesn’t solve anything, but Josie never said another word about Dad. I didn’t tell Conor. He’d only get into a fight with Josie’s brother Michael. And besides, I didn’t feel so good later on, once the hot, angry feeling inside me had died down. I went and sat on a tree stump by the school gate. I kept thinking about what Dad would have thought if he’d seen me grabbing hold of Josie like that. And maybe Josie really did hurt her hand. It was quite a big bandage.
Don’t think about that now. Think about something else. But the only thoughts that crowd into my head are thoughts I don’t want.
Roger. I turn around and thump the pillow again. I don’t want Roger, the diver, at our table, eating our food. Maybe even sitting where Dad used to sit.
Suddenly another thought curls over in my mind like a fresh new wave, washing all the tangle of worries away. It’s all right. I don’t even have to be there when Roger comes.
It’s true. I can go off somewhere else, somewhere far away. It won’t matter how much Mum calls me, I won’t be able to hear her. And she’ll never be able to find me. The thought of it makes me smile. I’ve got somewhere to go now, a place of my own where no one can find me. Ingo.
I can hear the sea. Even though I’m lying in bed, the sound of the waves is as close as if I were lying on the beach. I can hear each one break on the beach, then the long hushhhh as it goes out again. My window’s shut, but the sea sounds as if it’s inside my room—
“Sapphire!” Conor’s voice makes me jump. He’s climbed down the ladder from his loft room without me noticing. And the strange thing is that suddenly I realize I’m not lying on my bed anymore. I’m standing beside my window, which isn’t shut at all; it’s wide open. But I don’t know how I got there or who opened the window. Was it me? My hand is on the windowsill, and the noise of the sea is louder than ever. A huge wave topples over and crashes onto the sand in a rush and swirl of foam—
“What are you doing?” asks Conor sharply.
“What?”
“Saph, shut that window. Now. I’ve got to talk to you.”
Slowly, reluctantly, I push the window shut. But the air pushes back, hard. The window wants to be open, wide open, so the noise of the sea can come in—
“Shut it, can’t you?”
The snap in Conor’s voice makes me push hard enough to close the window and fasten the catch.
“Mum’s cooking sausages,” says Conor. “She’s making a late breakfast for you, Saph. Listen, this is what I told Mum about what happened, so you’d better say the same thing. I said you woke up in the night. You had a nightmare, and you couldn’t get back to sleep for ages, so that’s why you’re still in bed now. Mum’s really worried about you, Saph. She thinks you’re ill. She kept creeping up to look at you while you were asleep, and she says you don’t look right.”
“I feel fine.”
“You don’t look fine. Look in the mirror.”
I go over to the dressing table Mum bought for me at an auction in Penzance. On top of the dressing table there’s a mirror on a wooden stand. Mum bought it for me after Dad left. She bought some stencils, and we painted the stand white and then stenciled shells over it and painted them sea blue. I painted tiny shells around the frame of the mirror too.
You have to bend down to peer into the mirror because of the way the ceiling slopes at the side of my room.
I bend down and stare into the mirror. The glass is old, and when you look into it, it’s like looking into another world. The mirror is spotted and tarnished, and its light is green, like underwater. My face in the mirror is pale, and my hair hangs over my shoulders like seaweed. The color of my eyes is swallowed up in huge black pupils. Do I really look like that?
“Mum says you look washed out,” says Conor.
But I don’t take any notice. His voice sounds distant, as if he’s not really in the room with me. I’m watching watery ripples of light pass over my reflection, like waves rippling over sand. They move across the glass in their dreamlike rhythm, and I count them as they go. One, two, three, four, five…and now there’s the sound of the sea again, soft and sweet this time, like a breath in my ear…closer and closer.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Those are pearls that were his eyes….
But who’s singing? Why are their voices so clear and strong? I’ve got to see them. I lean closer, closer—
“Sapphire, stop it! Don’t look in the mirror!”
But I can’t look away. The singing of the sea is so sweet that I want to go on listening to it forever. It’s pulling me into the mirror, farther in, farther in, into the green underwater depths—
There’s a crash. I jump back, and the singing stops. The enchantment shatters. My mirror is just an old secondhand mirror again, lying on the floor, smashed, facedown. What happened? And why’s my duvet on the floor?
It was Conor. He threw my duvet over the mirror to stop me from looking at it. But the weight of the duvet knocked the mirror to the floor. The glass has broken.
“What’s going on up there?” shouts Mum from downstairs.
&nbs
“Nothing!”
“What was that crash?”
“Saph fell off the bed.”
“Stop messing about, the pair of you. These sausages’ll be done in five minutes.”
I kneel down, gently lift my mirror, and turn it over. The glass has cracked all over into the shape of a starfish.
“Why did you do that?” I whisper furiously at Conor. “You’ve broken my mirror, and you’ve broken the—”
“Broken the what?”
“The—the song. They were singing to me.”
“Saph, how many times do I have to tell you? It’s dangerous. It’s too powerful. It’s stronger than we are.”
“You were in Ingo too, Con! You’re such a hypocrite. You just don’t want me to share it. You want to keep it all for yourself, so you’ll be the only one who knows about Ingo. You and Elvira.”
But to my surprise, Conor refuses to get angry. He kneels down beside me and starts carefully picking up the shards of glass. He’s bending over, and his face is hidden as he says, “It’s not like that, Saph.”
“Well, what is it like then? What am I going to tell Mum about my mirror? She’ll kill me.”
“I’ll tell her I was mucking about and I broke it. Listen, Saph. I’m scared.”
He lifts his face, and I stare at him. Conor, scared? But Conor is never frightened. I’m the one who gets spooked on wild nights when the wind howls around our cottage walls. I’m the one who lies straining her ears for the sound of Mum’s car coming home, because I’m convinced she’s had an accident on her way back from work. Conor is the sensible one, who knows what can happen in real life and what can’t.
He’s only pretending to be scared. But when I look at him, I know that’s not true. His face is pale and tense.
“You were gone too long,” says Conor, fumbling for the right words. “The first time I was there—in Ingo—their time was almost the same as our time. Maybe, when I got home, it was a little bit later than I thought it would be. You wouldn’t really notice it. But each time I go there, time in Ingo eats up more of our time. It’s like—it’s like Ingo time is more powerful than our human time.