Read Online The Fish Ladder by Katharine Norbury - Free Book Online

wooden cabin bed for me, and a ladder up to the crog-loft for Evie. The chimney was restored and the stream, visible beneath the grilles at the sides of the house, regained its former clarity. The ‘foundation stone’ remains, where it was dropped, in the garden.
    I lit a fire. Even though it was June there was a chill to the stones. The house had been empty since Easter. Over lunch we discussed our project, our plan to find the well at the world’s end by following watercourses from the sea to their sources.
    ‘Can we count the Mersey?’ asked Evie.
    ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it has to be the same river that we follow, as long as we eventually get to an end.’ Evie thought about this, then nodded her agreement. We could count the trip to the Mersey Estuary as an exploration of ‘sea’. Evie wrote an account of the picnic in her journal. She drew a picture of the beach with the Antonys.
    ‘What should we do next?’ she asked.
    ‘I think we should follow the river that comes out at Cable Bay,’ I said. ‘We could go now, and see how far we get.’ Evie pressed her lips together. Having just arrived at the cottage she was loath to go out again, but after the two-hour drive from Mum’s I wanted, dearly, to stretch my legs, uncoil my spine. I put some chocolate and water and a couple of apples in a rucksack. The purple-and-white wrapper caught her eye.
    ‘Can we eat the chocolate now?’ she asked.
    ‘Let’s have it when we get there.’
    ‘Can we eat some on the way?’
    I glanced at her. ‘How about we open it when we get to the beach?’
    Evie slipped down from the table. ‘All right.’
    Cable Bay is the nickname given to a curved beach near our home. Its name in Welsh is Abergeirch, which means the mouth of the River Geirch. A rusted metal pipe runs down to the sea, alongside the Afon Geirch, supported on concrete blocks. All kinds of local stories account for the function of the pipe. One of them involves a telephone cable running under the sea to Ireland and it is this that has given the bay its nickname. The place nearest our home where the road meets the sea is called the Bwlch, so that was where we headed for.
    Bwlch means pass, or valley, and it is a natural cut through the sandy cliffs, a place where boats can be ferried from the beach on trailers tugged by tractors. The shelter it gives from the wind makes it a natural oasis and its banks were stacked with montbretia, the orange lilies dancing over pliant, strap-like leaves, racing along the paths like a Pentecost. Lanterns of green and blue hydrangea ballooned against red and purple tutus of fuchsia. Roses made a scaffold for the softer plants and gave them substance against the wind.
    The beach was the reason I had bought the cottage in the first place – or rather, Rupert had bought the cottage. It was his extraordinary wedding gift, funded by a film deal from one of his books, so I will know where to find you when you wander .
    I had first come to the beach when my father was dying. We had planned to come on a family holiday – everyone knew it would be the last – but at the last moment Dad felt he wasn’t well enough. Evie was still a baby, and she and I came anyway. My brother and his family had gone ahead, and Dad had waved us off. His eyes, that were sometimes the colour of slate, on that day shone blue.
    ‘Goodbye, my darlings!’ He had stood on one leg outside their house, and raised his walking stick in a yogic salute, Mum standing anxiously behind him, her hands hovering at each side of his body. As I turned the car onto the main road I could still see him in the rear-view mirror, wobbling, happy, laughing. His smile seemed to say, Go on, my darlings: anything is possible! Yet the reverse had felt true. I had pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose to cover my tears before glancing at Evie. Like Dad, she too was laughing, constricted by the baby seat, her blue anorak with pink roses rucked above the