The Windsurf Boy, page 14
Did she want to be left alone? In a sense she did, Anna thought – despite her repugnance for Valerie’s complacency, her easy explanation of her own neglect. Barbara wanted no interference, in that she had set her course for death and needed only the emotional sustenance of quayside parting with her family. ‘And yet she’s wrong – so we have to do something about it,’ Anna thought, remembering how she had interfered after William’s death, meeting with Hilda and Richard, arranging the cremation, arguing about ‘Ahoy’ … and since then, nothing. When her mother had written that slightly coy, slightly questioning letter about her friend the Brigadier (whom none of them had met, deliberately), Anna’s reply had given information about John’s new job and the house they were going to buy, and finally (in a postscript) answered her mother’s delicate hints about the possibility of future companionship with the blunt and breezy observation that it was nice for her mother to have new friends, but of course no one could take the place of Daddy. That, Anna had decided at the time, was not interference; simply an expression of the obvious. Yes, she thought, I too told people that my mother loved being left alone to live her own life. Richard and Hilda agreed, during those odd quarrelsome Sunday lunches, when the gravy congealed upon our plates as we sat, drowsy with wine, and wondered why the accident of blood should draw us into unsatisfactory rites with these familiar strangers. So we left our mother alone, as Valerie leaves hers alone, and yet now I want to change her mind, to alter the course she has chosen.
Valerie was looking at her, asking for approbation, yet dreading (Anna could tell) that her guest would continue this uncomfortable conversation. ‘Perhaps they do want to be left alone,’ Anna said, ‘because they’ve had enough of us. But what if they grow desperate without their children, and wonder what was the point of having them, just as we will one day?’
‘Oh, I doubt that,’ said Valerie, with a tense smile and a toss of her head. ‘All I can say is, sometimes I can’t wait to have Matthew off my hands. Life’ll be much easier. Let’s face it, kids can be a terrible nuisance at times, can’t they?’
Again she looked hopeful, and suddenly Anna felt pity for this woman’s inability to shift outside the limits of her own language. Such clichés, she admitted to herself, formed the syntax of her communication with her own mother – so she above all must allow some charity towards the fear they hide, So she shrugged and said, ‘Oh sure they can,’ and saw the smile spread across Valerie’s face.
They ate their picnic when Adrian dropped anchor, about fifty feet away from the leafy bank, at a quiet bend in the river. Valerie peeled off her shorts and tee-shirt, and sprawled on a brightly-patterned ‘lounger’ in a lime-green bikini. Adrian removed his shirt, and Anna averted her eyes from the hairy stomach which swelled over the belt of his khaki shorts. ‘Thank God Matthew takes after his mother,’ she thought, watching as the boy leaned against the rail and smoothed his mother’s suntan oil over his arms and chest, rubbing it in slowly until his flesh shone in the sunlight. She felt hot and hemmed in by these bodies which offered themselves to the heat like chunks of meat under a grill. Shamed, almost.
‘Aren’t you hot, Anna?’ Valerie pointed at Anna’s arms, covered by the long-sleeved tee-shirt. ‘I’ve got a spare bikini in the cabin, if you want.’
Anna thought of her orange piebald body and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t feel the heat. I’ll stay modest today.’
Adrian opened his fourth beer. ‘Spoilsport! Eh, Matt?’
‘She can do what she likes,’ said the boy sullenly.
‘Can’t you take a joke?’ Adrian’s face reddened.
‘Don’t think much of your jokes. They’re embarrassing.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you two, don’t start squabbling! See what a hard time I have, Anna, keeping them apart?’ Valerie lit a cigarette and glared at her husband and son.
Embarrassed, Anna fussed over Tom, who had spilt lemonade on his bare legs. He had, with unusual lack of shyness, permitted her to strip him to his underpants, and now pinkened in the afternoon sun. When she looked up, Matthew was staring at her, but switched his gaze immediately to the river bank, where birds called harshly in the stillness. His nose was straight, the face in profile harsher, older-looking. Anna gazed at his face, noticing how his hair, damp with heat and oil, curled in tendrils over his ears, then dropped her eyes, seeing the oil gleam on the planes of his flat stomach, and observing how it flattened the hairs on his brown thighs. For a second there flashed across her mind an image of him naked, but the thought curled at the pit of her stomach, so that she looked away, feeling ashamed. Sweat trickled coldly from her armpit down her side.
‘Have some more food, Matt,’ said Valerie, holding out a plate to him. ‘You’ve hardly eaten a thing.’
‘Don’t want much,’ he muttered, but took a fat portion of chicken and squatted down at his mother’s feet, pulling and gnawing at the meat. His tongue slid out to lick his fingers. Soon there was a ring of grease around his mouth, and he wiped his hands carefully on his own skin, adding to its lustre.
‘Oh, why the hell can’t you use a serviette?’ snarled Adrian.
‘’Cos I don’t want to.’
‘Why don’t you go for a swim and clean yourself up a bit?’
‘I was going to anyway, Dad. Thought I’d give you all the honour of seeing me perform.’
Matthew hauled himself up the ladder to the top deck, and stood looking down at them, screwing up his eyes against the sun.
‘Don’t be so daft as to think you can dive from up there,’ Adrian called, ‘come down and go off the back.’
Valerie stared sleepily up at her son. ‘I must say, even though he’s mine, that he’s turning out a handsome kid. Don’t you think he’s beautiful, Anna?’
‘Course she does!’ said Adrian, with a wink at his wife, ‘Anna can’t take her eyes off him, can you Anna? All you women are the same!’ He threw back his head and laughed, so that his stomach shook. Valerie joined in. ‘Well,’ she screamed, ‘if you put any more weight on Ade, I tell you I’ll be inviting that new young milkman in for morning coffee.’
Tom looked puzzled, his head turning from one adult to another, trying to understand the incomprehensible laughter. Though loud, it was not infectious; it shut him out, and made his mother look pink and irritated, even though she forced a laugh as well.
‘Can I swim too, Mummy?’ he asked, sensing dimly that she needed him to help her. But she looked through him for a second and he saw a dreadful vacancy in her face, the faraway sad look that seemed to afflict her more and more. Though Tom did not understand he was afraid she might be going to cry, and so he jumped up and repeated his request.
‘It’ll have to be in your underpants,’ she said, shortly.
Matthew stood on the stern and plunged cleanly into the water, showing pink soles as he disappeared, a long shadow beneath the surface, before bobbing up some distance away, to shake the hair from his eyes with a wild toss. He struck out for the boat, his arms cleaving from the water, and glittering drops of spray cast upwards from his churning feet.
‘Matthew won’t want you to spoil his swim.’
‘Yes he will. I won’t spoil it anyway.’
Dubiously she helped Tom down the ladder into Matthew’s arms, and watched anxiously as the child doggy-paddled in a small circle,
‘Stay near to him, Matthew,’ she called.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after him. Hey Tommy, you’re quite a good swimmer.’
Adrian and Valerie lay flat, their eyes shaded by dark glasses, whilst the debris of their lunch grew shiny on the folding table, and half-finished wine warmed within the glasses. Few boats passed them; there was not wind enough to sail and only a single daytrip boat made Invader rock upon the chain, as rows of curious and envious faces peered at them from its decks.
Matthew tickled Tom and lifted him in the water, never leaving his side. He pretended to race the child, and Anna smiled to see him pace himself, absurdly containing his own strength, so that Tom pulled out ahead. Suddenly, it was as if something within her softened like the butter left on the side of their plates, and she rested her head upon her arms, tenderly. The hot sun burned her back, and, with eyelids half closed, Anna felt suspended, listening to the two voices from the water, remembering nothing but the sight and sound of the minute just gone, whose echoes still reverberated in her head. She smelt her own skin and liked the fragrance, one that she associated with Tom folded into his towel after an evening bath, with that totally unthreatening love. Matthew’s voice called, ‘Anna! Anna! Look at us. Tom’s beating me!’ and Anna opened her eyes a fraction, still with her head resting, to see Matthew smiling up at her, his teeth white and his face shiny with water, the smell of the salt river mingled with the fragrance of suntan oil and filling her nostrils and, it seemed, the air all around.
Under her breath, her stomach folding as it does when an old lift starts its descent, Anna said, ‘I love you.’ She leaned forward to help Tom up the ladder, and said aloud, ‘Love you,’ thinking it did not matter, after all, if she was as unspecific as the sun, especially as the wine was making her drowsier and drowsier and the movement of the boat upon its anchor was gentle, soporific. Matthew was good; he had been patient with Tom, when he must have longed to swim alone, and now he was reaching up to her from the water, holding out his hand to her and smiling, pleading in mock helplessness to be pulled up the ladder. Happily Anna held out her hand, which he grasped tightly, pulling himself over the top and scattering drops of water in her face, so that she shivered slightly at the sudden coolness.
She wrapped Tom in the towel, and whispered, ‘Isn’t this perfect, my love? It’s completely perfect.’ Then they both watched silently as Matthew stepped over his sleeping father and climbed quickly up the ladder to the top deck. He stepped carefully over the chromium rail, balanced for a moment on the edge of the wheelhouse roof so that he was silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, and then made his exquisite, forbidden dive into the river.
Chapter Sixteen
Anna was dreaming. There was a lane, warm and fragrant with wild flowers, and the tall hedges each side were like walls, so tangled that they allowed no chink of blue sky through the leaves. Birds sang; there were minute rustlings within the hedgerows, and every now and then a cabbage white flitted heavily from one side of the narrow lane to the other.
She was walking along, slowly and at peace, just as she used to do when she was a child, but now she was no child but an adult. Bending to gather red campion, Anna saw the shiny beetles scuttling through the waving grasses, and felt such a deep sense of happiness, and love for the lane and its inhabitants, that she grew dizzy, intoxicated by the smell of wild honeysuckle and dog rose. As she straightened her back and walked on she felt that, slowly and imperceptibly, she was shrinking, like Alice in Wonderland, into one who could walk through the tiny door, into an enamelled rose garden where her parents would suddenly loom large, stooping to pick her up as she bent to gather the flowers.
Down and down the lane wound, so that she could not see around the bend, where the trees behind the hedge each side mingled their branches overhead, making a shadowy tunnel. Anna walked on, down the lane, into the tunnel, and suddenly it was as if she had not shrunk, but the lane itself had, so that gradually it was enclosing her with its reddish darkness. Fearing nothing, but trusting that somewhere at the end of this journey William would be waiting, holding out his hand to encourage his child, Anna felt no need to hurry.
She heard her own footsteps. With no reason, the birds had stopped their singing, and in that second she noticed that the rustlings and buzzing too had ceased, as if all nature was poised, waiting. Anna listened too. In the distance she heard the drone of an engine, a noise that gathered speed and intensity, as she stopped and glanced back along the lane, seeing nothing but how silent, dark and claustrophobic it had become. She walked on. The noise grew louder, and louder. Looking back again, up along a straight stretch, she saw a car turn the corner in the distance, gathering speed. She waved, thinking it might slow down, but instead it went faster, filling the lane, bearing down on her.
In that dull light she could not see the driver’s face, but waved again, begging the car to slow down. Dark red and streaked with dirt it picked up still more speed, brushing back the hedge each side of the tunnel, and bowling down the hill towards her.
Anna screamed, and ran in terror like a fox, on and on, down and down, hoping that there would be a gateway on one side or the other, somewhere she could press herself into and let the thing go by, but no such passing place occurred, no doorway small or large. On and on she fled, not daring to glance back, but feeling from the sound, the urgency, the car drawing closer and closer with every second, with no possible escape.
Then it was as if, dreaming, she transcended her own dream self, so that she was simultaneously inside that terrified body, its heart and blood pounding, and outside it, above and looking down. Run, run, that Anna called to the fleeing animal, who still looked over her shoulder, panting, yet still believing that the car would stop. She turned a bend in the lane, and saw in front of her the River Syne, silvery and placid in the sunlight. But back in the darkness and heat of the lane the car still gathered speed; and now, looking back at it, Anna saw, for the first time, the face behind the wheel. It was John, her husband, and his face was full of malicious happiness.
Look out, look out, the other Anna sang above her, but it was not for a few seconds more that her first self saw the reason for that cry. Numb with horror and panic she ran on, seeing the river ahead, and assuming that there would be some way of escape – a sliver of beach which no car could pass. And then she saw that this lane ended as no lane in real life ends, by leading into the river itself – the tunnelled trees ceasing suddenly, and the dusty lane toppling over a tiny ledge into the cold and flowing stream.
One part of her rejoiced that this blunt red car in pursuit would meet its own destruction, unless it stopped; and soon, with the momentum of all things, it would be too late to stop. And yet the self that ran, still ran towards that ending, could see no way of escape ahead, no promise of safety, only the horrible arrogance of the water’s relentless movement over whatever stones and broken shells and slithery creatures lay upon its bed.
Jump, jump, jump now, she called to herself, and she paused fatally upon the edge of that lane, staring at the water, more afraid of what was in front than of the thing that came from behind …
Anna woke, calling, ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ and her nightdress was soaked with her sweat. She was panting, and lay for a second in the darkness, limp. Then she got out of bed, pulled the nightdress off, and noticed with distaste that the sheet was wet too, and must be changed. She was shivering, with cold and remembered horror, so she pulled on her dressing gown and wrapped herself in the duvet as if it were a sleeping bag, huddling upon the bed.
It was hard to get warm, and she did not want to go to sleep in case she should be betrayed again. Yet she could not prevent herself from thinking of that dream. As she relaxed, feeling her own warmth spread, Anna began, with deliberate defiance, to construct an ending. It would have been all right, she thought, had Matthew been coming along, not on his windsurf board, but in the dinghy, so that she could have leapt aboard at that second and been carried to safety. Then they might have put ashore somewhere, in a field studded with buttercups, and slowly the boy would have stroked her, calming her, and telling her that she was beautiful. Anna closed her eyes, feeling herself loosening, as she fantasised the moment when, naked to naked, Matthew Paul would enter her flesh, but gently, and in innocence.
Barbara was not in her room. The door was ajar as Anna approached and she hesitated before entering, afraid of the bed and of Barbara herself. She had not been to ‘The Park’ for four days, the pattern of her visits broken. On the telephone she explained to her mother that she simply had to concentrate on ‘giving Tom more of a holiday’. Barbara had agreed and asked what they would do, satisfied by Anna’s vague talk of picnics and days out. She did not know that Matthew Paul would invariably accompany them on these odd, unsatisfying journeys through traffic jams, to fishing villages they did not particularly want to see, or to crowded beaches. But had Barbara known she would have approved of the idea of ‘company for Tom’, as Anna justified the boy’s inclusion to herself and to the Pauls, when she telephoned yet again and asked if they could ‘borrow Matthew for the day’.
Halfway through their holiday she had felt stifled by the continued visits to the nursing home, and grew to hate the carpeted corridors, and even the way Barbara would smile as they came through the door, apologetically, as if her life were a nuisance. For his part, Tom tolerated the visits to his grandmother, but such was his obsession with Matthew, and the possibility that they might see him, that now his face would screw itself into a grimace when Anna announced that it was time to leave for Synemouth. She had taken to bribing him: the trip to the town came to mean an ice-cream, or a small cheap toy, or a round trip on the car ferry, and only incidentally the tense three-quarters-of-an-hour in Barbara’s room.
But how cruel we are, Anna thought one night, as she leaned on the wall in the gathering darkness and looked at the river, to resent even such a fraction of time from our own lives – one boy of seven united with a woman of thirty-five in an unconscious but universal rejection of the old. Or is it that we are subtly infected by the arrogance of someone else: Matthew with his easy beauty and muscled health, and way of accepting all gifts calmly – and by his acceptance giving enough?
