The Windsurf Boy, page 16
Anna looked down at the dry palm within her own, and wondered what she would hold when it was gone, as if to hold it were to reach, in a childish ring o’ roses, right back to her father. She panicked and spoke quickly. ‘Mummy, why don’t you come to London with me? You could live with us.’
‘No, dear, I couldn’t. Though it is kind and sweet of you.’
‘Why not? Tom would like it, and there’s the room. John isn’t there. It would be good for all of us – and right.’
Barbara looked closely at her. ‘Do you get lonely?’
Anna shook her head vehemently, then stopped as suddenly, and shrugged. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘How could it have all gone wrong?’ asked her mother with a sigh, I remember how your father used to hate doing divorce, and the way that people fight over the children …’
‘Well, at least that hasn’t happened with us,’ Anna said shortly. ‘A child around would cramp John’s style.’
‘Darling, that’s an awful thing to say!’
‘But it’s quite true.’
‘Do you think we ought to say what is true, all the time? Your father used to tell me that since he could never be sure whether his clients were telling the truth it was better to leave the idea of truth out of it altogether. Do you remember Percy Wright, that barrister Daddy was so friendly with?’Anna nodded. ‘He died last year, by the way … anyway, there was one evening, not long before your father died, when they both got quite tipsy and gloomy together. They finished off the whiskey! I remember Percy saying that he’d spent his life persuading juries that guilty people were innocent, and Daddy said that his professional life had convinced him that nobody tells the truth and that innocent people all carry a great burden of guilt. All of us – guilty.’
‘I can’t imagine Daddy talking like that.’
‘Can’t you? No, I suppose not.’
‘Mother, you haven’t answered my question, about coming to London.’
‘I think I should have a little rest now,’ Barbara said, pulling her hand back.
‘Are you really tired, or are you avoiding making a decision?’ Anna asked gently. ‘Promise me you’ll think about it when I’ve gone.’
‘I promise. It’s a nice idea, darling, and you’re … kind to me. We’ll talk next time. You’re not going back to London yet, are you?’ Her voice was anxious.
‘No, not for another two weeks. I insisted on having the full month because I thought Tom needed it. He’d been very upset over John, but since we arrived he’s hardly mentioned him. John phoned once, but I think he’s taken some girl on holiday now.’
‘I’m so sorry, dear.’
‘Oh Mummy, forget it. It’s not your fault, after all. Not anybody’s fault, really. Do you remember what Dad used to say when Hilda and I had boyfriend trouble? It’s all part of growing up!’
Chapter Seventeen
After she had gone Barbara pressed the bell. Five minutes passed before the door opened. Neither Sandra Massey nor neat Nurse Anderson stood there, but a young nurse Barbara had not seen before.
‘Did you want something?’
‘Oh, I … we haven’t met before.’
She felt panicky at the sight of the stranger, no friend and no familiar adversary, but someone who must needs take her at face value. In a voice that trembled she asked for Nurse Massey.
‘Oh she’s busy with another patient at the moment. What is it that you want?’
Barbara tried to rise, but her leg buckled beneath her and she fell back in the chair, gasping. The new nurse marched across the room, an expression of exasperated concern upon her face. ‘Now, come along, Mrs Lewis, where are you trying to go?’
‘I want … I need to go to the loo,’ Barbara whispered.
The nurse looked at her dubiously. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea at this moment. It looks to me as if your visitor has worn you out. You stay there, and I’ll go and get you a bedpan. Much more sensible.’
She turned on her heel and left the room. ‘No, I won’t. I won’t,’ Barbara said to herself, closing her eyes for a moment at the stab of pain in her chest, and biting her lip. ‘They won’t make me. Nobody is going to make me do anything, Will. You wouldn’t let them, and I won’t either. I won’t. I won’t.’
She could not understand where her bones had gone: it was as if her spine and her legs had turned to soft plasticine. Making an enormous effort she pulled herself up by resting all her weight upon the arm of the chair, which tipped perilously. The sudden pressure on her bladder made her desperate, and she forced herself to stand upright, swaying on weak legs, small waves of pain rippling up her back. Tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh God, please help me, please help me,’ she whispered, letting her head loll forward, ‘I must …’
When the nurse returned a minute later, carrying a bedpan under one arm, she paused in the centre of the room and made a tutting noise with her tongue. Barbara still stood there, her body half bent. There were tears on her cheeks; she was staring down at the pool of water which was spreading on the floor between her feet.
Anna walked into Elaine’s Boutique in Synemouth’s main shopping street, and riffled through the clothes that hung, shapeless, on red and green plastic hangers. Over the thudding bass of the monotonous disco music she heard two brightly made-up girls behind the counter laugh about the exploits of the previous evening.
‘… so by the time he’s come out I’m in the car and I leans out the window and shouts, “See you somewhen!”’
‘You are awful, Jean!’
‘Well, what about you with that Dave? Flirting with a married man …’
‘No, they ain’t together no more. Don’t reckon so. Anyway, who cares? I don’t wanna be involved …’
‘Hey, it were a good night, weren’t it?’
The blouses were cheap, synthetic, decorated with stiff frills or scraps of nylon lace. Summer dresses had threads of gold in the fabric, or floating ribbons in pastel colours, low-slung waists, and full skirts. It all seemed like fancy dress to Anna, or theatrical costumes destined to take their place upon a stage, before the curtains swish back to reveal, beyond the footlights, darkness and emptiness. She glanced at the mask-like faces of the two girls, who shivered rhythmically to the music and chatted about their lives: ‘He said … she didn’t … and so I thought … why should I … always try … he said … I said … no point in it all … no way …’ One of the girls tapped long nails varnished the colour of blackberries upon the counter; the other gazed for a moment at the street outside, blankly, as if she were staring through the crowd of people in their new holiday clothes and away beyond them, into a vision of perpetual boredom.
Skirts – some with frills around the hem, some tight with side splits and wide belt loops. Strange trousers, gathered and cropped at the knee, like the garments of the dwarf-fools who hover disconsolately at the corners of Spanish paintings. Skin-tight jeans, tee-shirts frosted with glitter … miserably Anna pulled at them all, loathing the limp garments empty of promise, and the fact that she was searching there for something to graft upon her person like a new skin. And she had gone first into a chemist’s to look at the face creams. ‘2nd Debut’ she had chosen, salmon pink in its tall, expensive bottle; muttering blackly to herself as she left the shop, ‘I’m promising myself a second debut when I haven’t even made my first.’
‘You can try anything on, anything you fancy.’ The tall girl, with nails like clots of blood, stood by her. Anna looked up, afraid.
‘No, er … there’s nothing I really like.’
‘Oh.’
With a shrug the girl turned on her spindly heels and walked back to her friend. Anna called out, ‘I’m sorry,’ and her voice was easily heard, now that the tape had changed, and the voice of a girl rasped out her sad complaint that ‘Love hurts’ – reminding Anna of all the nights she had spent, years ago, longing for this boy or that, enjoying her own melancholy in the conviction that it was all a prelude, that perfection lay ahead.
Both girls looked surprised at the apology. The tall one smiled, and it was as if a tight veneer suddenly cracked and peeled away, exposing the soft wood underneath. She was very young, just seventeen perhaps. ‘Don’t worry,’ she called cheerfully. ‘You just look. It don’t worry us. T’aint our shop or our money!’
‘I’ll have this.’ Anna handed over a pale blue sweatshirt, decorated on the front with a little yacht appliquéd in white satin, and the words I am sailing’ embroidered underneath.
‘That’s nice. That’ll suit you, that will,’ said the smaller girl, in a tone that was almost comforting, as she folded the garment and pushed it gently into a bag.
Anna watched, wondering why she had bought it, why she was in the shop at all. All the clothes, the cheap changing fashions, had nothing to do with her, and yet she desired them, like those women in their forties and fifties who cram themselves into pink dungarees or girlish dresses, craving youth. ‘Anyway, it’s no good trying to deceive myself,’ she thought, wryly handing over her money. She allowed her mind to loll into its daydreams about Matthew Paul, to escape from the memory of Barbara, and of William too. It made her happy, as it always did. Suddenly, passionately, Anna wanted to be new once more, like all these fresh and pretty clothes upon their hangers, waiting to be chosen.
Still feeling this odd euphoria Anna decided, on impulse, to call on Molly and Harry Black before returning to ‘Ahoy’. Their welcome reminded her of a childhood and visiting a grandmother, who offered sugary biscuits and asked all the details of her life. And yet, she reflected, her mother had cast doubt upon that fantasy too. Anna frowned, and Molly saw, thinking it was because of something she had just said.
‘You must have a really lovely holiday, and I know you mother won’t mind if you don’t pop in and see her quite so often. She told me that. And … I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but she told me all about … your difficult times with your husband, with John. You need a rest now, dear. You need to enjoy yourself.’
There was a pause; Anna nodded and smiled and said it was all right. Once it would have annoyed her to think she had been discussed. Now it gave her a different kind of pain – to think of the two old women sitting in that room together and giving her their compassion for John’s betrayal, not knowing that it did not matter any more.
Chapter Eighteen
George Treadle leant on the polished counter and did what he rarely dared to do; he disagreed with his wife. She was rearranging the deep-freeze cabinet and her hands were red and cold, making her irritable.
‘It just don’t seem right,’ she muttered, throwing down some lamb chops, which hit the sausages with a dull clunk.
‘None of our business, Mary.’
‘With all the years I’ve known Mrs Lewis I should think it is my business,’ she snapped.
‘Be fair, Mary, they’m on holiday.’
‘No reason to go on neglecting your poor sick mother, is it? An’ her with not long to go.’
‘Now, now, we don’t know that.’
‘Anyway, George, all I’m saying is that I’m disappointed with Anna, I am. You’d have thought she’d have been at that hospital every day, and be making up for lost time – but every time I do see her she’s walking round the village with that Matthew and giggling like a schoolgirl!’
‘No harm done, Mary,’ he said mildly, relieved that a man had walked into the shop to buy some cigarettes.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘I like hearing you talk about all those things.’
‘What things?’
‘You know – what we’ve been talking about.’
Anna was sitting with Tom in the attic bedroom, explaining how the three of them used to sleep up there if their parents had adult friends staying in the small back bedroom downstairs. Otherwise Anna and Hilda would always sleep downstairs, leaving Richard to lord it over the attic, unafraid – he said – of the ghosts.
There were two sets of bunks, and two folding beds stored against the wall, so that (she explained) they could have friends to stay as well.
‘It must have been fun,’ Tom said.
‘Oh, it was.’ She ran her hand over the old ticking mattress. In one corner stood a small cupboard, its paintwork chipped, and when Tom opened it a pile of broken toys spilled out upon the linoleum. There were Dinky toys with no wheels, a naked blonde doll with one arm missing, and countless odd bricks and jigsaw pieces, jumbled together with skipping ropes and dead batteries.
Tom looked at the pile of rubbish, and sighed.
‘Fun with lots of people. More fun.’
‘Than what?’
‘Nothing … well, there’s only you and me really, isn’t there, Mum.’
Anna tried to joke, looking around the room and saying, ‘Well, apart from a few broken dolls, yes,’ in her lightest voice.
‘No, I don’t mean that. You know what I mean. Sometimes I wish I had a brother or sister, like you did. Sometimes, when it’s only you and me, I think about Dad, and then I think about you getting old and dying, and I don’t want that because I don’t want to be on my own.’
‘Oh, Tom … don’t think about – things like that. Don’t, you funny little boy.’ Anna held out her arms to him, feeling a sharp pain in her chest.
‘I do – sometimes.’ He came to her.
‘We all do.’
‘Even you?’
‘Especially me … By the way, darling, Matthew hasn’t got any brothers or sisters either, and look at the fun he has. He doesn’t seem to mind, does he?’
‘No. But I’m a bit fed up with him, Mum. He doesn’t play with me so much.’
Her voice grew sharp. ‘What do you expect, when you’re so much younger?’
‘Oh, let’s go downstairs now, Mum. Let’s take some toys down.’
She did not want to leave the room. How nervous she had been, even at thirteen; awed by the thick silence and dreading that something might lurk behind the little door into the eaves, where the cistern gurgled. At night they would keep each other awake, listening to the sighing wind, until gradually the replies grew fainter as Hilda drifted into sleep, leaving Anna alone. But below, if she listened carefully, she could hear the little sounds that reminded her that their parents were still awake – a kettle being filled, music on the radio, footsteps across the hall, the lavatory chain being pulled, Barbara’s laugh – fragments of sound, meaningless in isolation, that united to tell a well-loved tale, of which Anna was sure that she knew the beginning, the middle and the end.
Tom looked disconcerted. He picked up a plastic lorry and ran it to and fro on the bench between them.
‘Mum, when are we going home?’
‘Oh not yet, Tom, don’t worry.’
‘I wasn’t worrying.’
‘Do you want to go home? Is that it?’
He nodded, then looked up anxiously. ‘I don’t mean that I’m not having a nice time, but...’
‘But what?’
‘Well … I’d like to see Dad. He told me on the phone he’d be back near the end of August. Is it that yet?’
‘Not yet – no.’
‘Oh.’ He looked sad. Anna’s stomach pitched.
‘Never mind. All this’ll be over soon enough, and you’ll be back. I expect he’ll have bought you a present, as usual.’
It was easily done. Tom’s face lightened; he turned with new animation to gaze out of the dusty window.
‘Look, there’s Matthew, on the river! Can we open the window and shout to him?’
‘He wouldn’t hear. He’s too far off.’
Anna stared at the now-familiar figure on the windsurf board. Each time she saw Matthew out on the river her throat contracted with the beauty of that movement, the simple communion between wind, water and flesh. ‘My windsurf boy,’ said the voice inside her mind.
‘He looks so free,’ she said aloud.
‘Of course he’s free, Mummy. He doesn’t have to pay. It’s his own windsurf board.’
She laughed, ‘I didn’t mean that sort of free. I mean … well, free means that you can do as you like. You’re not in prison. Or – there’s no rules for you.’
‘But he had to learn all the rules of how to put that thing together, like he showed us. It’s very hard.’
She could not drag her eyes from the boy on the river, ‘I know,’ she said, half to herself, ‘but once he’s out there he can do anything he likes. Nobody can reach him.’
Tom understood. ‘His mum can’t tell him to have a wash,’ he said enviously.
‘Yes,’ she went on, dreamily now, as if the child was no longer with her, ‘and you feel when you watch him that he’ll be like that for ever and ever, beautiful, and never change, never go to hospital, never get old, like the rest of us. And he doesn’t need to know … anything …’
‘Oh, I expect he’ll get married, Mum.’ Tom’s voice was practical, and, with a curious infusion of spite, he added, I bet he’ll get fat too.’
‘Oh no,’ Anna said, still staring out at the river.
The sun had gone, leaving the evening sky flushed pink and purple; a bright silver light still shone on the water. It was high tide; the river brimming almost to the wall of ‘Ahoy’. Tom was in bed, and already asleep, bored and tired by the warmth of the day and by their aimless wandering around the village. They had seen nothing of Matthew, after that glimpse from the window, and Anna allowed herself to brood about him – ashamed, all the while, when she looked down and saw that Tom was waiting for her to notice him, to speak.
She poured herself a glass of white wine and walked through the front door to sit on the low wall around the terrace. It was still warm; the air had dissolved into a mothy indistinctness Anna associated with … what? … romantic love stories, she supposed. In the distance, from the direction of the pub, she could hear laughter and a faint sound of music. She knew that the bar would be crowded and smoky, as people told jokes and swapped sailing and fishing stories and the holiday makers said that home could never be like this. They would eat pasties hot from the microwave oven and order another round.
