MORNING SERIAL

CHAPTER TWO

LAKE Plon, September 1958

How deep? Isolde Dahl wondered. The volatile water slapped at the foundations of the jetty; she crouched to watch its surface slide her image into elongating lozenges, focusing on nothing stable. The struts plunged to sandy depths; though one could not see the bottom, only a geometry of timbers, whose perspective held out until a nebulous greenness foiled the eye. It must be really deep. And because one’s view failed at a certain depth, it appeared that the rectangular jetty marking off three sides of the swimming area was like a raft riding the waves.

Isolde stood up and, with both hands resting on the wooden rail, smooth from a history of many hands, looked out into the haze of silver lake. The bordering forests were misted by the same pallor as the immense sheet of water. Over there, straight ahead, lay the Danish border, beyond lake, pines and hills more soft and slight than the beacons of Brecon. A hidden world of invisible plains and polders. She screwed up her eyes. A rowing boat made a tiny point of motion on the still trance of the lake, and she could just see miniature oars dip and rise, dip and rise, with the suggestion of a wake forking out behind the boat.

She was new and off balance. Had not bargained for the militariness of the school, the way its bright buildings stood to attention around the central quadrangle, over which a flagpole towered, in the shape of a mast. Quaint, she had thought, and then daft, for a squad of schoolboys was being marched out in full naval gear by a po-faced man to whom she would later be introduced as the head, Mr Patterson. A man in civvies, moving with stiff, straight legs beside his callow squad. She lugged her cases out of the main building. When she turned round, the cadets had been halted by a larger lad, appointed to bawl orders. And one was shimmying up the rigging.

Up he went and down. Then another. And another.

> The Element of Water by Stevie Davies is published by Parthian in the Library of Wales series www.parthianbooks.com

CONTINUES TOMORROW