The Windsurf Boy, page 17
Out on the river, little pinpoints of yellow light showed where people stayed on the boats, perhaps warming tomato soup in the narrow galleys, or savouring the smell of frying bacon in the evening air. Later they would wriggle down into their sleeping bags, softly whisper good-night to each other, and drift off to sleep to the sound of lapping water and the rigging beating out its gentle tattoo above their heads. Now and then a laugh would float across the water, or a fragment of conversation, as people sitting on the deck forgot how easily voices carried in that river-stillness. Sitting alone Anna thought of them all, and of the myriad shapes of pleasure, as you might think of the happiness of children at a circus – tenderly, although now there seems nothing funny in the cruelty of the clowns.
As she looked to where the pale shape of a crescent moon showed ghostly against the sky Anna realised that now – at this moment when all the people around her were conforming to a paradigm of holiday enjoyment, and elsewhere millions of other souls existed in their daily patterns – now she had far more in common with her mother than at any other time in their lives. It was as if a vast invisible cord stretched the six miles down river to where Barbara lay in her bed in the nursing home, uniting them, as they had only been united before the moment of Anna’s birth. ‘And even when I was actually a part of her I was moving towards a separation, like Tom from me, like all of us,’ Anna thought. ‘But we block up the chinks in our lives to keep that knowledge at bay, cramming the time, clinging to each other, stuffing our lives with sex in search of a second’s unity once more. But sometimes a glimpse of a solitary figure, walking across a yellow field in autumn, will remind us of the truth, the sadness that surrounds everything we do. Alone. It’s so hard to accept though …’ She wrinkled up her face as she thought. ‘Can I accept it? What is it? That I am alone as she is alone, but that in that aloneness she and I are closer together, and closer to the truth. Each of us is, in a different way, abandoned.’
She heard a click, and saw, with a little tremor of fear, the latch of the tall gates move. One gate swung inwards, and Matthew Paul walked into the garden. He closed the gate carefully behind him then turned, grinning at her expression. ‘Hello! Thought I’d surprise you. Mum and Dad have got some people in for a meal so I said I was going to bed and slipped out by the window. Nobody’ll notice. They’re all well pissed as usual so I thought I’d come and make a nuisance of myself with you here. I came down through Parsons’ field so I wouldn’t have to pass the shop.’
It did not occur to her to ask why he had taken such care; she knew her delight shone in her face, and felt foolish, dipping her head to sip her wine.
Silent in his gymshoes Matthew took the three steps at one bound and sat beside her on the wall, looking sideways cheekily. ‘Are you on your own?’
‘Yes – I always am. Look, your feet are wet.’
‘Tide’s high. I only just made it – there’s only about nine inches of beach outside your gates.’
‘Take them off.’
‘Oh, I can’t be bothered. You unlace them for me.’
He held each foot lazily towards her, and Anna unlaced the dirty plimsolls, letting them drop in turn to the ground.
‘Aren’t you going to give me a drink, then?’
‘You don’t drink wine at your age. Anyway …’
‘Aw, come on, Anna! It was you that bought me a beer the other day. Even Dad lets me have the odd glass of plonk nowadays. I’m nearly sixteen, not a kid.’
Saying nothing, she rose, went indoors, and returned with a second glass and the bottle. He had stretched himself full length on the little wall, arms folded across his chest, staring up at the sky and leaving no room for her. She stood for a second looking down at him, then smiled. ‘Help yourself. Since you’ve taken up all the wall I’ll have to get a chair.’
Settled in the folding chair, about two feet from Matthew’s head, Anna started to chatter. She commented that he had not poured himself any wine, asked what his last servant died of, splashed the drink into his glass, talked about the nightmare of dinner parties, reminded him that he had promised to teach her to sail, but had not – and praised, in quick succession, the warmth of the night, the colour of the sky and the atmosphere in the village pub.
Matthew said little. Every so often he raised himself on one elbow to sip his wine, grunting agreement with her words. When her own voice died away Anna was aware of the silence between them – which had never before been allowed to grow, since Tom was usually there, and the bright daylight was filled with noise. In this mauve light, lying still, Matthew reminded her of a youthful knight on an old tomb, hands crossed on his breast, retaining his chiselled beauty for ever in stone. She wanted to put out a hand and touch him, but did not.
‘You know why Mum and Dad didn’t ask you tonight?’ he asked suddenly. ‘They talked about it, but they think you’re too clever for them. They like you, but you make them nervous.’
Anna was incredulous. ‘Me? That’s rubbish, Matthew, I don’t believe it. Anyway, you shouldn’t be listening to them talking, and you shouldn’t be telling me.’
‘Why not, if it’s true? Mum knows you work in a publisher’s – that right? – and she’s never read a book in her life! She can just about manage a cookery book but that’s a strain. You’re different – to her.’ When she said nothing he swung his legs around so that he was squatting on the low wall, looking directly at her. ‘Don’t you want to know why I say you’re different?’
She laughed. ‘Well, I think you’re going to tell me whether I want to know or not!’
He was grinning broadly, showing his even white teeth. ‘Right! You’re not like them, or most of their awful friends, because you like me. You talk to me – I mean proper talking, not just larking about or treating me like a kid, or a dumb waiter. Nobody else talks to me like you do.’
Anna felt embarrassed. ‘But surely,’ she protested, with no conviction, ‘surely Adrian and Valerie talk to you.’
‘Oh yeah,’ he said making a gesture of disgust, ‘they go on and on about my marks and nag me to do better and bore on about my prospects, whatever they are. I can’t talk to them about what I really like doing. They don’t wanna know.’
‘You mean your windsurfing?’
‘All that. I’ve told you, and you understand a bit, don’t you? As for school – yuk!’
He sounded like a very young boy again, like Tom discussing school meals. Anna felt tender towards this overgrown child in front of her. ‘What do you want to be, Matthew, later, when you’ve left school?’
He sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to be a windsurfer. Go out to Hawaii, where they have the races and you can do wave jumps. I’ve got a book about it, and you should see the pictures! You can get custom-built boards, and really fly! I’d like to do some distance freesailing too – you wear a harness for long trips. It would be hot all the time and I’d be fantastically brown and sexy, can you imagine that?’ She looked at him quickly, but he was continuing like an excited child. ‘You could come and see me out there. Better than cold old England.’
He paused and sipped his wine, and the light suddenly died from his face, ‘I don’t like thinking about the future, really. Growing up, and all that. I hate the thought of changing, getting old and not wanting things. Know what I mean?’ She nodded. ‘You see, I have all these dreams of being a champion windsurfer, or swimming for England in the Olympics, but I’ll probably end up as a dentist or an estate agent or something equally boring.’
‘Oh, don’t say that.’
‘Mind you,’ he said gulping back his drink so that he held out an empty glass to be refilled, ‘as long as I can make some good money it won’t be so bad. Dad makes a lot of dough. All those people who spend a fortune having their teeth crowned and done up. Because they’re so worried about their beauty, we can have Invader and I can have my windsurfer. Can’t be bad. But I don’t fancy staring into people’s mouths all day.’
He hesitated then looked at her with open flirtatiousness. ‘Mind you, it’d be all right looking into your mouth.’
Surprised, she turned her face away, and there was a silence again. To break it she said lightly, ‘I must say, I’d like my teeth capped.’
He looked at her with that directness she had noticed the first night at ‘Hacienda’, a look that bore no trace of the archness she had just heard. ‘You don’t need to. You’ve got nice teeth. In fact … I’m going to tell you something. I think you’re much prettier than Mum. I mean, she’s very glam and all that, but you look – nice. I’d rather have girls who look like you than the ones who plaster themselves in make-up.’
If it were light, she thought, he would see that her face was crimson. She felt extraordinarily, but simply, happy. But she ducked her head so that her hair covered her expression. ‘Compliments, compliments,’ she muttered.
He laughed, and patted her head, as if she were the child. ‘There, there. Don’t get all shy on me.’
The sky was much darker now. One or two stars already studded the luminous blue, like sparks of light aboard boats moored in the universe. The river glowed purple, streaked with ultramarine and black, and the masts glistened like the trunks of silver birches. There was a smell of salt mingled with the scent of night flowers, earth and water mingling in the air, so that Anna, breathing in the fragrance that had permeated their cottage as she slept, each night, through all the summers, felt that time had lost its boundaries.
She stood and walked down the steps and across the grass to the big wall, and stood leaning on it, gazing at the river in a trance. Matthew followed, leaning his elbows on the wall close beside her, and talked desultorily about the boats they could see, which he liked, who owned which one, which was expensive, which fast. ‘But you can’t see Invader from here,’ he complained.
‘Will you always come here?’ she asked.
‘Oh yeah – we love it, even Mum. Next year though, I think I’ll bring a friend. Only trouble is, windsurfing is something only one can do. Except – some people take girls, and do sort of acrobatics on the water. Don’t fancy that.’
‘Why – because you don’t like girls?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Anna! As it happens most girls my age are too … well young, for me. Giggly; get crushes on you. All that. But what I meant was, I like to keep my windsurfing to myself.’
Anna nodded, as if she knew. After a short silence he looked sideways at her, and asked, ‘Will you two be here next year?’
The question was irrelevant, but Anna shrugged and said that she supposed so, yes. A sudden picture of summer after summer, and Matthew getting older, flashed into her mind, so that she turned to him with a brilliant happy smile and repeated, ‘Yes, I think we’ll come. It’s nice – for Tom.’
‘But … what about your mother?’
It was like a douche of water. Irritated, she snapped, ‘What about her?’
‘Sorry, I put my foot in it. But … will you come here if she’s dead? Will she be dead?’
‘Yes, I think she will. But’, she said, injecting a heartiness into her voice, ‘we’ll go on using this place. Things don’t come to an end.’
He was gazing at her, his nose wrinkled up in a mixture of embarrassment and sympathy. ‘I can’t imagine anybody I know dying. Not being there any more, ever again. Sometimes when I have rows with Dad I go into my room and wish I could kill him, or that he’d have a crash in the car, and be dead. Do you think that’s awful?’
She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not awful. Everybody thinks things like that at some time in their lives, only most people don’t admit it. Sometimes when you love somebody very much you want them dead, and you feel guilty about that, because it alters the way you love them.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Do you feel like that, about your mother?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know what I feel about anything or anybody.’ She could not keep the despair out of her voice.
Matthew had turned, so that his back was to the view, and he stood leaning nonchalantly, his elbows on the wall, bearing his weight. In his denim shirt and jeans he was hardly visible in the darkness; only his eyes, teeth and skin gleamed, full of health. Anna could smell his sweat, not stale, but a clean, sharp natural smell.
‘Don’t be sad,’ he said in a gruff voice, ‘I’m sorry I asked about your mother.’ She said that it was all right.
‘Anna?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you like me?’
She forced a laugh. ‘Oh, typical, you’d rather switch the conversation to you!’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ He sounded disappointed, I just meant … er … well I like coming round here because I like being with you, see. But I don’t know whether you think I’m a stupid kid, or not. That’s all. And I wanted to know.’
For a second Anna was tempted to escape, to insult him gaily, to let him down. But she took a breath and said, ‘Yes, Matthew, I like you very much,’ feeling her own words flit into the darkness, like tangible things.
He shuffled his feet. She looked down at her own arms, that rested upon the wall. They shone pale blue in the gloom; she was wearing the sweatshirt she had bought in Synemouth, and her fingers kneaded the fabric of each opposite sleeve, as if she were cold.
At that moment Matthew noticed it. ‘Hey,’ he said, as if relieved, ‘You’re wearing something new. Let’s see it.’ He reached out, took her by the shoulders and turned her towards him. Anna felt limp, like a doll pulled into position by its owner. Still holding her shoulders he stared down at the sweatshirt, his head on one side, and it seemed a long time before he muttered, ‘Yes, that’s nice. I like it.’
Anna saw him smiling at her, his face indistinct so that she could not quite trace the origin of that smile. For a second she thought he might be mocking her; then she heard his breathing and knew that he was not. Still staring at her Matthew released one shoulder, and lightly placed his hand upon her breast, covering the little appliquéd satin yacht. That looks like me, windsurfing,’ he said.
She stepped back quickly and turned her head away, feeling tears prick her eyes and wanting to cry aloud at her need and the hopelessness. Her impulse was to reach out, to stretch her arms so that he would have to hold her, just as he had in all those dreams and fantasies she had dismissed, stroking her, tenderly fusing with her flesh, and in that act of generosity transferring to her all his freedom, his beauty. And yet, what if it were not so? In novels and French films such moments are full of aching sensuality. In real life, Anna knew, the gulf is much harder to cross, and the awkward bones unite with custom to resist, to conquer fantasy.
So she turned away, still feeling his hand on her chest, and strode across the grass, calling over her shoulder that it was time for him to go. He followed, protesting that he wanted another drink, that nobody would notice he was not at home. Anna ran up the steps and stood framed in the doorway, snapping on the hall light behind so that the night outside seemed blacker, and less beautiful. Matthew’s face was impossible to see. Then he stepped forward into the pool of light from the door, and a moth flitted into his hair. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked, beating at it with one hand, puzzled and offended by the rejection he sensed but did not understand.
‘Matthew, you must go. Your parents might well go and look for you, and they’ll be worried. Can’t you understand that? Soon it’ll be too dark for you to see anything. You must be sensible. Go now, but come to see us tomorrow. Come and see Tom and me tomorrow – will you?’
He stood for a second, looking up at her. Then he spread his arms in a clownish shrug. ‘Good-night Anna!’ he called, as he turned and ran off silently round the house and up the hill through the orchard, where small hard apples studded the trees, promising a good crop.
Chapter Nineteen
Susan Anderson closed the door behind her, none too gently, and paused for a second outside the door looking at her watch. It did not worry her that she had been even brisker than usual with her patient; in five minutes’ time, she knew, Dr Elkins took a break for coffee in the case-study room, and there would be time to slip into the staff lavatory and mend her make-up before she happened to return some notes at just the moment he sat down. Nurse Anderson folded her arms across her bib in satisfaction, and walked stiffly along the corridor.
Anna, reaching the top of the elegant staircase, noticed that the nurse had emerged from her mother’s room, so stopped her. ‘Excuse me, I’m Mrs Lewis’s daughter. Can you tell me how my mother is today?’ There was a slight tutting sound, just controlled, and the nurse’s hand flew to the watch that was pinned to her chest, playing with it as she spoke.
‘Ah yes. Mrs Lewis is doing very well, considering. She went to the hospital for her treatment this morning, and she didn’t want her lunch when she got back. But she’s had a sleep and she looks fine now. I told her – I keep telling her – that she’s not doing herself any good, you know!’
Nurse Anderson shook her head and waved a finger, as if admonishing Anna, then tucked both hands comfortably within the pouch behind her bib, under her breasts. She was about twenty-five, Anna guessed, and had the look of someone who has few doubts about her own ability to cope with life, and death. ‘Pretty, though,’ thought Anna sourly, ‘so pretty that she hardly needs to have imagination.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We always tell our patients that the best treatment they can have is the one they can give themselves. Mrs Lewis should be at home. She’s quite capable of looking after herself, if she really tried. I said to her today, we’ve got to try. We can go to the hospital for treatment, but at least we’ll keep our independence.’
