The Windsurf Boy, page 22
In the little circle, where the ground hollowed beneath that tree and the close shrubs made a barrier against the world, Richard had made his pretend-camp, banning his sisters unless by special invitation. Once, though, he had lit a fire and invited them for a picnic, making them carry the battered black frying pan and the sausages. ‘We were so happy on that day,’ thought Anna, ‘just lying around here, not quarrelling for once, drinking from the bottle and feeling adult because our parents had left us alone … And yes! I’d had a terrible quarrel with Daddy, just before that. So it was a relief to be away from him. I … I hated him.’
Yet those things were forgotten; some filter in the memory had allowed her to remember only what was gilded, ideal, unreal. Until now. Matthew had led her to a truth, just as he had released her, that day in the boat when she had seen the cottage from a distance and known that it was empty. ‘Matthew,’ she hissed again, wanting to whoop with joy because she had found this place again and because he would be there. She knew. A rustling sound filled her ears, it was all around, and Anna imagined that it was the three of them, as children, echoing softly back in her mind like the dust drifting in pools of light, playing and laughing together. Or perhaps it was him, the boy, waiting there where they could be completely private, knowing that she would come.
She thought she heard his voice, ahead, in Richard’s den, and smiled, hurrying forward. He was there, in the sanctum. Reaching the little pile of stones, Anna was about to cry out, loudly this time, ‘Matthew!’ when she froze. There was indeed a sound, very close to her now, a rustling sound mixed with quiet laughter, and she heard his voice too, talking gently, talking to someone.
‘Oh, come on. Don’t...’
At that minute a trio of gulls whirred overhead, drowning whatever words followed.
Then Matthew’s voice again, clearly now and angry too, ‘What the hell are you on about? I don’t know what you’re on about!’
A girl’s voice tinkled, ‘Oh yes, Matthew Paul, everybody knows about you! You’re not really keen on me. You’re not really interested in girls at all, because you’ve already got a girlfriend.’
‘Oh yeah! And since I haven’t got the foggiest idea, why don’t you do me a favour and tell me who?’
Uncontrolled giggling. Anna listened, unable to move, wondering angrily why he stayed to be teased, and dreading what she might hear.
‘Go on, then,’ she heard him say.
‘It’s obvious,’ said the girl, through her laughter, ‘you’re always hanging around with her so you must fancy her. It’s that lady who lives in the cottage with the mast in the garden. So!’
There was a pause, then Anna heard Matthew’s voice, crisp and full of irritation. ‘God, I didn’t think girls could be so stupid! How can she be my girlfriend when she’s about the same age as my mum – hey?’
Anna did not move. She could imagine his face, with that lowering expression and the flash of scarlet in his cheek and his full lower lip thrust out.
She bent her head and looked down at her mud-spattered feet in their dirty sandals, planted upon the path like ugly, alien creatures she did not recognise. Then, as if beyond her control, they moved forward a step, and again, until Anna felt a part of her brain shrink with horror at the humiliation they were leading her to, whilst another part of her welcomed it. That slimy mud between her toes was real – as real as the glittering river which usually covered it.
‘I really do like you, you know.’
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Course I do.’ His voice was more gentle, and cajoling, than Anna had ever heard it.
‘Well … I like you too. But I wish … I do wish we didn’t have to go home.’
‘So do I.’
‘It doesn’t seem fair.’ Her voice sounded close to tears; and no audible words followed, only whispering and rustling that tantalised Anna, just out of reach in the corridor in her mind.
As if to run down that infinite passageway, and chase the unknown that she knew would hurt her – just as a swimmer plunges into an icy pool knowing that the shock will be worse than imagined, but inevitable – Anna found herself moving forward and reaching out to part the leaves before her. She saw them in the tiny clearing, Matthew and Jane, the girl from ‘Rose Cottage’, dappled in early evening sunlight, and leaning forward to kiss. There was something so clumsy and yet so innocent about their movement towards each other that Anna wanted to cry out with pain – envious of this discovery of tenderness, before real desire, before greed.
But when she saw the boy’s hand move across and gently touch the girl’s small breast, outside her white tee-shirt, Anna was reminded of him touching her too, on the new sweatshirt with its pretty, miniature sail – and she started to blunder backwards, blinded. A large twig cracked under her foot. The two of them jumped apart, and Matthew looked through the branches at her.
‘For Christ’s sake, Anna, what...?’
‘I’m sorry, I was … er … I mean, I’m looking for Tom.’
‘Well he’s not here, is he?’ said the boy savagely, his face scarlet.
‘I had to know.’
‘Well, can’t you see he’s not here?’ he shouted, ignoring the girl beside him, who stared at the intruder with blank hostility.
‘I had to know. I’m sorry,’ said Anna, flatly, and turned on her heel to walk away.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘Sandra, Sandra,’ Barbara called, not knowing where she was, and forgetting the bell that hung twelve inches from her head ‘Sandra! Why don’t you come? Why doesn’t anybody come? Sandra! Anna! Please …’
Waking into full consciousness she heard a rattling all around her, and it was a few seconds before she realised that the bed was shaking because she was shaking, her whole body racked by great shudders. ‘Now, come on,’ she said to herself, ‘just control yourself. You can control yourself, so stop it.’ Gritting her teeth she told her body to be still, but at every shake it was as if a million tiny wounds opened up inside her, and tears of panic filled her eyes.
She remembered her dream, and the existence of the bell, at the same time, and groped in the darkness until her finger located the button that would bring somebody running. ‘Please,’ she whispered into the darkness, her shivers subsiding now, though her nightdress was plastered to her body by sweat.
The opening and shutting of the door, tender crooning noises of concern, gentle hands patting the pillow and switching on the dull red light over the bed … and Barbara looked up at the nurse, whispering, ‘I’m so glad it’s you on tonight, Sandra. I think I had … a dream.’
‘Looks to me as if you’ve had a temperature too,’ said Sandra Massey, reaching for the thermometer and making as if to put it in Barbara’s mouth. But she turned her head to one side, shaking it slowly, and saying, ‘No, no, not yet, Sandra. I’m trying to remember …’
‘What is it, Mrs Lewis? Have you forgotten something?’
‘I had a dream, but I can’t think what happened. I woke and I was trembling, Sandra, trembling all over but I don’t know why. I was hot. I thought ‘I was walking along a beach and going into a house, but I don’t know why it was hot...’
She sounded confused and near to tears; Nurse Massey made the clucking noises in her throat and murmured, ‘Don’t worry about your dream, it was nothing. You’ve had a little temperature, that’s all. That’s all.’ She was taken aback when Barbara suddenly reached for her hand and grasped it tightly.
‘I remember, now,’ she said, with a sigh that was almost a moan. I was walking on and on, and I didn’t know where I was going, until I saw a little house in the distance. It was like my house in London, only it wasn’t; smaller, squatter, somehow, like a bungalow. And when I saw it I knew that was where I had been heading all along, only I hadn’t known why, and still didn’t know why. But I felt happy, to see it there.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Sandra said, disturbed by the brightness in her patient’s eyes.
‘I had a funny feeling as I hurried along the beach towards it that everything I had ever wanted was inside that house, just waiting for me; but then I found it hard to walk, my feet kept slipping on the stones, and so it always seemed the same distance away. It was an awful feeling, and I started to get hot with the effort of it, because it was summer and the sun was in the sky overhead, beating down on me. No shelter, and anyway I wanted to get there because I knew it would be cool inside. You know how you know things, in dreams?’ Sandra nodded, stroking Barbara’s head, ‘It did get nearer, or rather, I drew nearer to it, with all my hurrying, and I thought I saw someone at the window waving to me, just a shadow, but real, just the same. I waved back, and I started to run, Sandra. I was running in the hot sun, and sweating, but it didn’t matter because I was getting nearer and nearer all the time, and waving because I saw him at the window. It was him, just as I had hoped. It really was, and I began to laugh aloud for the joy of it, knowing that something wonderful was just inside that little door, waiting for me, as it had always been waiting.’
She was panting now, and clawing at the nurse’s hand, ‘I went in through the gate – it was like a fairytale house, you know, with a little wicket gate, like in those pictures we had when we were little – and I could see the door ahead of me, and I thought I heard him calling me. So I pushed the door open, but – Sandra! It was all dark, Sandra, and I walked forward into blackness, as if there were no windows in that house, and no doors, no way in and no way out, just the cold and clammy darkness all around me like a black mist … There was nothing, Sandra! Nothing!’
Barbara buried her face in the nurse’s hand and sobbed, her body shaking again, her hair matted and wet where it brushed Sandra’s arm. Confused, but full of pity, Sandra Massey looked down, still stroking that head with her free hand, and murmuring, ‘Sssh, sssh,’ as she used to do when her children cried in the night. ‘There, there, Mrs Lewis, dear, there, there. It’s all over now. All gone. It’s all right. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.’
The sobs subsided. For a long moment Barbara looked up into the nurse’s eyes, and then she whispered, ‘I’m so afraid.’
‘But there’s nothing to be afraid of now. I’m here, and I’ll see if I can’t go and get you something to send you back to sleep.’
‘Oh yes, but that’s so easy, Sandra, making it all go away as if it had never been there.’
‘Well, Mrs Lewis,’ the nurse said softly, ‘you know I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with finding peace the best way you can, is there?’
‘No, I suppose not. I’ll take whatever you like.’
‘Good; that’s the spirit, Mrs Lewis. Now I’ll just pop down the corridor to the drug cupboard and fetch your usual, then come back and change your nightie, and take your temperature, and generally fix you up. All right now?’
Her voice was gentle, as if relieved to rest upon familiar words, and Barbara nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ she thought, as Sandra walked across the room, leaving the door ajar behind her, ‘I’ll do as you suggest, because you’re kind, and I know that it is me you see in front of you, not just a patient. Dear Sandra, so kind …’ She sighed, reached up, and switched off the dull light that irritated her eyes.
Lying alone in the darkness, with just a faint light from the corridor slanting into the room, Barbara thought of her dream and shuddered at the horror of it, the nameless dread that clutched her mind like a hand. ‘All gone,’ Sandra had said, ‘all gone,’ as if to console, to offer comfort in the face of chaos, with words that were themselves the substance of the void. All gone. ‘Dear Lord,’ she murmured, closing her eyes, ‘please help me to learn … teach me how … Dear Lord, I want to pray to you, but I can’t, there are no words, God, for me to talk to you with. Not any more. All gone.’
She heard the nurse’s footsteps, quick and light, along the corridor, and opened her eyes wide, gazing into the gloom. She tried again, but the words stuck somewhere inside her making her feel that she would choke with the effort, the pain of trying to speak – as it was necessary that she should speak. ‘I must. I must. I must be able to,’ she thought in desperation, for Sandra’s ministrations would make her drowsy once more, and then it would be too late.
Again and again she tried to whisper the name of God. Instead the words, ‘Dear William, my dearest Will,’ slipped from her lips. When Sandra arrived at the bedside she noticed that the old woman’s eyes were closed peacefully, but that the gnarled fingers pulled and kneaded at the bedclothes compulsively. Barbara lay quietly, concentrating upon her litany, on the inward repetition of the one name she was sure of.
And as she lay in bed, restless, Anna stared dry-eyed at her ceiling too, listening to the faint splashes from outside and the pinging of the halyards. ‘This is the last night I shall ever hear that sound again in this place,’ she thought, and then said it aloud to see if the words would mean more then. But she found it impossible to weep at the thought, because like all sea-changes it would only have meaning much later on in time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The last morning was windy; high fluffy clouds feathered across the sky, making the sun appear then disappear. It was a perfect day for sailing, and soon the boats appeared, though fewer of them now. The trees on the far bank gave the truth away. Their dense green already had that heavy dead look, as if a touch of black had been added to the palette, breaking Impressionist rules. In two or three weeks that green would lighten into russet and yellow, as the leaves had one last fling of beauty before falling to the ground for ever.
Anna worked hard. The cupboard beneath the kitchen sink stank, the floorcloth was solid, but once Tom had returned from the Treadles’ shop with fresh supplies, she did not allow herself to rest. The curling notice on the pantry door joined the whole contents of the pantry in the dustbin, and the greasy stove shone. Anna dusted every cheap ornament, every picture frame in the little sitting-room, hauled the old vacuum cleaner out to pick up the accumulated dirt of their stay, and even polished the absurd little coffee table until it shone. Glancing around the room, she noticed the mantelpiece clock, silent as ever. The winder was stiff, but after a few seconds a loud tick filled the room, and Anna threw open all the windows with satisfaction.
She looked sadly at the window seat, sagging in the middle where the wood had splintered. They had made it with so much laughter, that first summer, with William asserting that the pile of orange boxes would hold if they were wedged tightly enough so that all the pressure came from the sides. It had worked, and for twenty-five years the seat, covered in foam and repp by Barbara’s skilful hands, had borne the burden of all who lounged on it to stare out at the Syne – until the day when Matthew Paul had lounged there, with Anna watching him. It could not be mended now.
By mid-morning all the cleaning was finished: the bathroom, the lavatory, and even the old linoleum in the hall shone. Anna breathed a new smell in the house. All the windows were open, and she had even taken the mattresses from the bunks in the attic-dormitory, beaten them a little with the old broken doll, and replaced them the other way up. She carried the broken toys down to the dustbin, wiped out their cupboard, and closed the door. Only the old teddy bear in the back room escaped their fate. Anna had found Tom crying two nights earlier, because the teddy would be left alone again. She had promised they would take it back to London. ‘Will Aunt Hilda mind?’ he had asked.
‘She won’t mind.’
‘Will she be glad I’ve rescued her teddy?’
‘Yes, she’ll be glad,’ she had said.
As they walked slowly along the pontoon Tom said, ‘I think Matthew’s getting fed up with his windsurfer.’ She asked why he said that. ‘He isn’t using it today and there’s a good wind. I wonder why people get fed up with things?’
Anna shrugged. ‘Shall we walk through the village? We could call in at the shop and at “Hacienda”, to tell them we’re leaving today.’
He nodded. ‘You know something, Mum? Half of me is glad we’re going home, but half of me wants to stay here. Isn’t it funny that you can feel two things at once?’
Mary Treadle opened her shop on a Sunday morning for the convenience, as she was always telling the village, of the village not herself. She stood behind the counter, and George ducked through from their sitting-room when they entered, both the old people making an effort to greet Anna as they used to do. Only a certain angle of their faces showed the strain. George avoided her eyes, as if he were ashamed of his outburst. ‘But I don’t care,’ Anna thought. ‘There is no point in caring what these people think of me, because I shall never see them again.’
They chatted for a while, then George asked, ‘Will you be down again next year, then, Anna?’ as Mary chose a large bar of chocolate from her stock and handed it to Tom.
‘I expect so, George.’
‘We’ll miss the little lad, won’t we, mother?’ he said, glancing across at his wife, whose face softened.
‘Aye, we will,’ she said.
‘I’ll write you a postcard from London,’ said Tom.
There was a silence, then Anna and Mary said, ‘Well...’ at the same instant, and smiled. ‘We’ll see you next year then, Anna. You take care of him, now!’ George said, and she nodded, shaking their hands.
There was no reply at ‘Hacienda’. ‘It’s odd that they should go out on a Sunday morning,’ said Anna, noticing that the bronze Granada was not under its car port. For a few minutes they stood looking at the varnished door, then Tom kicked at the gravel and asked what they should do. He sounded disconsolate. ‘Let’s walk around a bit. Maybe they’ve gone to get newspapers or something, and they’ll be back soon. Of course, we could always leave it,’ she added hopefully, feeling a sudden nervousness at the thought of meeting one or other of the Pauls. But with the indignant air of an old lady who knows the proprieties he protested that they must say goodbye.
