Mother’s Boy, page 10
‘Nobody’s going to steal your things,’ Joe added as Charles continued to dither.
It had never occurred to Charles that his discarded clothes and towel might not be safely left, but now Joe had added a whole extra burden of anxiety to the afternoon.
‘Go on, man. Don’t be such a maid.’
That clinched it. To be called a girl was the worst insult in Joe’s armoury and was often the precursor to a thump. Almost as much as he wanted to be left in peace to read, Charles longed for Joe to accept him. He set his towel on the sand several yards back from where the surf was reaching, tucked his glasses safely inside and folded his trousers and shirt on top of it.
To be fair Joe didn’t laugh at his baggy costume but merely called, ‘Good man,’ as Charles walked gingerly in to join him. ‘It’s coldest where it’s still shallow, because of the wind,’ Joe said, and led him into water deep enough to cover the shaming lower half of his costume.
It was thrilling to stand there and feel the swell lift you bodily off the sandy bottom and set you back down. He had never ventured into water so deep. When Mother was with him they did no more than paddle and jump over the smallest waves.
‘This is the life,’ Joe said, trying to sound older than he was. ‘We live too far from the sea. Imagine if you could come here every day.’ And all at once he dived down through an oncoming wave and was lost to view. The wave was large, and Charles felt a momentary thrill of terror as it lifted him and took longer than usual to set him down. It carried him out of his depth and he scrabbled frantically with his feet until they felt a rock and then sand again. He was just beginning to pace slowly back towards safety when a second, much bigger wave came in. All around him people were whooping and laughing in expectation as the water level sank then dramatically rose. But they were swimmers and surfers. All Charles could do was helplessly try to run for shore as a sudden current sucked his feet and the sand beneath him sharply backwards and what seemed like a wall of water rose behind him and then broke over his head. He lost all sense of up or down, back or forth. His nose and mouth filled with brine and he was tumbled like a piece of driftwood. Lashing out, his feet kicked somebody and then strong hands were on him and he fought against them. The water cleared briefly and as he gasped air he saw it was Joe and realised he had lured him out with a view to drowning him, so fought even harder.
‘Hey. Hey!’ Joe shouted, half-laughing, and again pulled him out of the water. ‘It’s all right. I’ve got you.’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘I can see that. You should’ve said.’
‘You should’ve asked.’
‘Here. I’ve got you.’
For a terrifying moment Joe seemed to drop him back into the deep water to swim away but then he caught him behind with an arm around his chest and tugged him high over another big wave and back into shallower water. Being held like that, suspended in water, powerless yet safe, was confusing. It felt so good yet was somehow also deeply shaming, making him the most maidenly of maids. He hated Joe for so exposing him but also didn’t want to let go of him once his feet were securely back on sand and his shoulders clear of the water. Joe adjusted a shoulder strap of his costume that Charles’s tugging had pulled away.
‘Can you not swim at all?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Charles said, adding in his defence, ‘I’ve never learned.’
‘It’s easy. Here. Take my ankles.’
‘What?’
Joe tipped himself on to his back in the water – floating seemed to come naturally to him – and thrust his feet in Charles’s face. ‘Take ’em, then.’
Charles grasped an ankle in either hand.
‘Now kick with your feet. Left right left right!’
As he spoke, Joe launched himself backwards, pulling Charles with him so that his feet left the bottom again. He kicked as he was told, fighting to keep his face out of the water. Joe laughed.
‘That’s it!’ he shouted, and swam with his arms so that, for one glorious minute, they moved through the water together. Then a young woman on a surfboard came between them and Charles had to let go. He wanted to try again; he liked holding Joe’s ankles and it felt safe being towed along and just splashing with his legs. But Joe said they had to change ends. He told Charles to paddle hard with his arms while Joe took hold of his feet, but that was an uncomfortable disaster as Charles simply sank head first, then panicked and kicked Joe on the chin.
He was getting cold now and wanted to get out and retrieve his clothes. To his surprise Joe didn’t want to carry on swimming or return to the group, where another game of rounders had started up.
‘Where are you walking to?’
‘St Noddy,’ Charles told him. ‘It’s a little church that was buried in the sand for hundreds of years.’
‘Can I come?’
‘Of course.’
Joe didn’t change out of his wet swimming things so Charles didn’t feel he should change out of his, although the wet wool was saggy and itchy and feeling rather cold now they were out of the water. He slavishly copied Joe, however, who took off his stripy top half and wrung it out before putting it back on.
‘Soon dry in this breeze,’ Joe said. ‘Which way?’
So, clothes furled in his towel, from which he’d retrieved his spectacles, Charles led the way over the rocks to a footpath on Tristram Cliff and around the headland, past where a very few bungalows had been built.
‘Imagine living in one of those,’ Joe said, and Charles was startled to find himself picturing Joe mowing the lawn while he pegged out their washing in a stiff seaside breeze.
One house was still being built and, seeing nobody was about, Joe led them over to peer inside. Though only on one level it was a palace compared to Charles’s home. There was a big hall that was just that: a hall to connect the other rooms. There was parquet floor being laid everywhere, which Joe said was expensive as the wood blocks came all the way from India or Africa. The kitchen was just a kitchen, not a kitchen where people also lived and ate. There were two inside lavatories and, most impressive of all, a proper bathroom with tiles up the walls and the bath plumbed in.
When Charles exclaimed over this Joe asked didn’t he have one, and Charles remembered that the Lukes lived in a house all of their own on a street in the better part of town and not over their shop. He admitted he and Mother had a tin tub and that it took a while to fill and was heavy to empty. He didn’t tell Joe that Mother always bathed in his water when he had finished with it, because it took fuel to heat water and money didn’t grow on trees.
They hurried on because a woman was coming with a big dog and soon the lovely beach at Daymer Bay came into view. They didn’t come there on Sunday school trips because it was a long walk from where the charabanc would have to drop them and because people liked big waves. Charles preferred this side. Opening on to the Camel estuary rather than the Atlantic meant the beach had only gently lapping waves rather than breakers, and there was a lovely view of the hills and fields on the western side of the Camel.
Pointing out Padstow in the distance, he told Joe the story of the Doom Bar, the sand bar raised as a curse to Padstow’s sailors by a mermaid a fisherman had humiliated.
‘How did he humiliate her, then?’ Joe asked.
‘He showed her off in the market with the lobsters and the crab,’ Charles said, and went on to point out the little crooked spire of St Enodoc, which had been all but buried in shifting sand dunes but whose vicars had still claimed their money by climbing through the roof on a ladder once in a while to take a service by lanternlight.
‘How do you know all this stuff?’ Joe asked as though he might be about to call Charles a maid again.
‘I dunno,’ Charles said. ‘I read a lot. I like reading and the library is just up the road from us.’
‘Is that why you need glasses?’
‘I’d need them anyway, I think. But I couldn’t read without them.’
Joe admitted that he liked reading but was rarely given time. ‘I have to help get the shop ready before school and help out there straight after. And Saturday’s a full day and on Sunday it can only be Sunday books.’
Charles pulled a face and admitted that Sunday books were the worst.
The trick with Sundays, Joe said, was to go to bed in good time as Sunday reading in bed didn’t seem to be covered by the same rules.
‘If you could be anything when you grow up, what would you be?’ Charles asked him.
‘Not a butcher, that’s for sure. I mean, it’s a good business. It does well and people will always want meat, and I know I’m very lucky but . . .’
He fell quiet. Charles thought he was going to say nothing further but then glanced over as they walked and saw Joe was frowning in thought. Maybe this was something he had never told anyone?
‘Sometimes it’s like being in a corridor with no doors or windows. Fishermen and farmers’ sons probably say that too, and they’re facing real danger whereas I’m just facing, you know, something completely unsurprising. And working in the same room as my parents and sister until they retire or die.’ He had picked up a stick of furze wood and now used it to lash out at some nettles. It was fragile, and snapped immediately, which gave him no satisfaction. He threw the stump of the stick hard out over the edge of the low cliff. ‘You’re so lucky,’ he said.
‘Me? Mother’s a laundress. I’m not doing—’
‘No, stupid. I mean you can do anything. You’re clever. Everyone can see that. You’ll work hard, do well, go to Horwell’s, then to university and make something of yourself. You’re not held to being the same as your dad.’
Charles had given no thought to grammar school, much less anything beyond, although recently he had thought it might be nice to be a librarian. But perhaps only slightly fierce ladies could do that? He had certainly never thought of himself as lucky to have no father, or as especially clever. It was as though Joe had thoughtlessly flung wide a window in what Charles had taken for a blank wall and left him feeling a bit dizzy. As did having a popular, bigger boy confide in him.
They started down the sandy path on to the beach. There were people picnicking and swimming here too, but far fewer of them, and Charles saw a woman on a smart tartan rug stare at them challengingly over her sunglasses, as though they had strayed into somewhere they were not welcome.
‘Do you want to swim again,’ Charles asked, ‘instead of walking to the church?’
‘Of course. Do you want another go at holding my ankles?’
‘Yes, please.’
Joe scoffed. ‘You’re so polite, Maid.’
‘Sorry.’
The water felt warmer, perhaps because it was shallower and coming in over warm sand. The waves, too, were negligible, which made it less daunting to wade in. Charles was slightly embarrassed by the presence of a lot of very small children and their mothers – this was evidently regarded as the nursery beach compared to Polzeath. Joe dived in ahead of him and swam some way off then stopped on a sand bar, turned round and beckoned, calling out, ‘Come on, Charlie. It’s great!’ and grinning.
Charles waded out to him, even making a couple of attempts at doggy paddle, shamed by the game efforts of smaller boys. Then Joe lay down in the water, offered him his ankles again and soon was towing him along once more. Again, he suggested they try reversing roles and again Charles sank.
‘Why don’t you float?’ Joe asked, irritated. ‘Just breathe normally and you’ll float. I think you’re sinking because you pant like a dog. Here. Try this. I’ll hold you.’ He persuaded Charles to lie back while he supported his back and bottom on his hands. ‘Now breathe.’
All Charles could see was the blue sky and Joe right beside him. He breathed. He filled his lungs properly as though about to sing. And he floated. Or sort of floated.
‘Open your arms and legs out like a star,’ Joe said.
The sensation, just rocked by the sea rather than knocked flying, was so new and so delicious that it took him a moment to realise Joe was no longer supporting him. Then Joe floated too and soon they were playing a game where they touched their feet, sole to sole, and each tried to push the other. Other boys played games like this all the time, pushed each other around, wrestled, chased balls or chickens or dogs or one another. When not obliged to sit still in class and listen to a teacher they seemed to spend their days like so many puppies, tumbling over each other, testing their strength, establishing who was leader. The simple, playful sensation of Joe’s bigger feet pressed against his acted on Charles like a stolen teaspoon of Mother’s liver salts, and brought on a kind of fizzing in him.
This unfamiliar sensation, he realised, was friendship, a thing he had witnessed and read about. Joe might come round to his house after work sometimes now, or on Sundays. He would involve Joe in his historical exploration of the town’s ruins and churchyards. Joe would teach him to catch. He would shield Charles in the playground. Just when Mother and Miss Bracewell were about to make him fit in even less, with the admittedly bewitching prospects of piano lessons and singing in the choir, fate had intervened so that Joe could help make him like everyone else.
Tiring, becoming cold too, they thrashed their way back to the shore where Charles offered Joe his towel before using it himself.
‘Thanks,’ Joe said, and rubbed his hair and top half with it before suddenly, shockingly stripping bare to step into the sandy clothes he had dropped any old how. Red faced on his behalf, Charles became more flustered still in the complicated dance of removing his sagging trunks and pulling on his shorts while fighting to preserve decency under a towel. Joe watched him with a surly sort of grin, though, which made it all right.
‘We can go back by the lane,’ Charles called out as Joe started to leave the beach. ‘It’s quicker.’
Neither of them wore a watch. Charles had inherited his father’s, which was special because it had been to war and back, but he wasn’t allowed to wear it yet, only to look at it and keep it wound, but Launceston was full of clocks, its air alive with bells and whistles from dawn to curfew, summonses to school or factory, church or chapel, as well as simple markers of the passing hours. So Charles had a strong sense always of what time it was, and he worried now that they might be late. A charabanc would wait for them but the disgrace of keeping people waiting would be terrible.
Joe seemed oblivious, however, and strolled up the narrow lane to Trebetherick beside him, thwacking at stinging nettles and foxglove stalks with his striped costume and, once or twice, thwacking the back of Charles’s legs with it. Charles lacked the confidence to thwack him playfully back with his towel, so walked a little faster, which then became a not terribly pleasant game as Joe chased him up the hill.
‘What are the baths like?’ Charles asked him, panting, as they reached the top and could see Polzeath stretched out below them. ‘They’re so close but I’ve never been.’
‘They’re great,’ Joe said. ‘Bit green sometimes. But better for learning to swim in than the sea. You should go. They’re best just before closing time. The water’s a bit warmer then and they’re not too busy.’
‘Is there somewhere to change?’
‘You worried about walking through town in your saggies?’
Charles nudged him. Joe nudged him back harder but it felt good.
‘There’s a changing shed,’ Joe said. ‘Men’s and ladies’. And privies.’
‘Could we, maybe . . .?’ Charles wondered how best to say it. ‘Could we go there together?’
Joe stopped walking a moment and looked at him with a scorn that felt worse than the fiercest slap.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘I mean, look at you. Four-eyed maid!’ And he ran ahead down the hill to where Charles could see their group was clustering around the two charabancs.
He decided not to run too, to do nothing to betray that he and Joe had just spent two precious hours together. He took off his glasses, which his damp clothes and the climb were steaming up, and rubbed them clear on his handkerchief. He had a fresh handkerchief every day on dressing. Today’s was as yet untouched, still ironed into a tight, soft square. It was like holding Mother in his hand, or a part of her. Clear. Fragrant. Tidy.
He put his glasses back on and walked on, naming plants to himself as he passed them: lady’s bedstraw . . . tree mallow . . . betony . . . He glanced up and saw Mother had seen him. He carried on spotting and naming plants; better she should think him dreamy and absent-minded than the boy other boys shunned. Navelwort, he told himself. Policemen’s buttons . . .
STAINS – 1928
The church’s laundry bundle was where it always was, in the vestry of St Thomas’s. As always, though, having once been falsely challenged over a missing lace bodice, Laura untied the bundle and went through it, carefully itemising everything in a dated entry in a notebook she carried for the purpose. Altar cloths, just like tablecloths, had to be ironed carefully and then folded in a certain way and never pressed in those folds so that their appearance would be smooth when opened out again, but the moment they had been used they were bundled up for her, wine stains, crumbs and all, as though they had no significance. After noting everything down, Laura refolded them with something more like reverence, then buckled them into her hamper, slung it on to her back and let herself out.
Her next call, as always on a Monday, was at Treloar’s. Aggie Treloar, like the church, had her busiest time at weekends and always a pile of dirty linen come Monday. Aggie ran a rough little boarding house a few doors up the hill from Laura, between the library and the dosshouse.
They had known each other since school. Even then, Aggie had a reputation for boldness and for treating boys like so many farm animals. The girls’ privies in the far corner of the playground were directly uphill from the boys’ ones and shared an open drain – little more than a glazed terracotta gutter sunk into the earth – which ran between the two. Boys could shout saucy messages to the girls, the sound passing through the narrow opening at the bottom of the wall where the shared drain flowed. Livelier girls had been known to sail paper boats the other way, sometimes with messages scrawled on their sails, listening for the guffaws on the other side when they were scooped out of the piss and read. Out in the yard or in the classroom, fraternising between the sexes was at once frowned upon and stifled by the dread of gossip, but the frank necessities of the privy arrangement and the inability of one side to see the others’ faces encouraged boldness. Sometimes things got out of hand in there and a member of staff would burst in, flinching at the smell and quivering with embarrassment. When boys were caned, it happened in their half of the privies and girls would secretly cluster on their own side of the wall to listen and flinch, excited when a boy proved his manliness by not crying out.
