They had been able to swim in the lake, the ones closer to home weren’t safe. ‘Chemical soup,’ her father always said. ‘Strip you to the bone and melt your eyes.’ But here the water was clear and silky, achingly cold. As she struggled in, her feet slipping on the muddy stones, Marta felt the cold stun her feet and her calves. She stumbled and fell in, losing her breath at the shock of the icy wave on her back. The lake was filled by the melted ice from the mountains.
The chill water had set her father coughing and she’d had a sudden flight of fear. What if he collapsed? How would they get home? But he smiled at her, through the spasms, nodding his creased red face in reassurance.
Marta’s mother was careful not to get her hair wet, sticking her neck up like a swan and moving her arms gently without breaking the surface. She was the picture of elegance, scolding Marta if she came too close with her whooping and flailing about.
Afterwards, her fingers blue and her teeth chattering, Marta sat wrapped in a scratchy towel eating the last blintz while the adults argued about the government.
Later, she went for a walk with her father, along the lakeside. The air was rich with the sharp scent of pine, the trunks of the trees dotted with the honey-brown clusters of resin. She rolled a piece between her fingers, sticky and crunchy like melting sugar, and sniffed at it.
There was one point where the undergrowth was thicker and a couple of boulders offered a stopping place. Her father paused, leaning his hand on one of the rocks. He tested the air. ‘Smell that.’
Marta breathed in. A foul smell, like fly-blown meat. She felt her gorge rise.
‘Bear.’
Her eyes had widened and her nerves started. What if the bear heard her father coughing? She didn’t want to get eaten by a bear. Not on her name day of all things. Her father obviously agreed and they had made their way back to the women and told them there was a bear about.
Marta shivered in the chilly Manchester night. She listened again. No sound from the other rooms, or downstairs. Everyone asleep. What could she do? Nothing. Maybe Rosa had worked longer, got held up? She tried to settle herself with the explanation but knew it to be feeble. She turned the light off, closed her eyes and pulled the cover up over her head. Resorting to prayer, she rattled off a decade of the Holy Rosary, not because she particularly believed any longer but because the rhythm of the words brought some comfort, distracting her a little from her worries about Rosa.
