By the Shore

by Galaxy Craze

  Later, when I began to feel calm and watery, I went to the kitchen and ate some Weetabix with milk. I streamed honey over it and waited for it to get soggy. I ate it and then I really panicked.

  I was starting my new school in a week and I remembered how I wanted to look: straight hair in one plait down my back, flopping when I walked. A little careless, a little brazen: a girl from a safe home. I had thought about it all summer, every day. A plait down my back, tidy, with a hair elastic, not just a beige rubber band. Sometimes a ribbon. I would wake up early and do it myself, I was good with hair, but I would tell everyone my mum did it. “She makes me,” I would tell them.

  The first day at my new school I was standing at my cubbyhole, organizing my markers. A girl walked over and asked, “Are you a boy or a girl?”

  I was too embarrassed to tell my mother what the girl had said. The next day I wore a dress and sandals. “Why aren’t you wearing your boots?” my mother asked. “They’re ugly,” I said, my new word.

  “They’re cool,” she said. “All my friends love them.”

  …

  I wrung the water from my uniform and hung it in the kitchen where it was warm. My mother had taken Eden to school. Everything was still on the table, freezing into place. I wondered what I could do until my uniform dried. I still had my maths homework, but I didn’t want to do it; I would probably never do it. I picked up the plates, eggcups, teacups, and spoons from the table, put them in the sink, and washed them.

  …

  Her name was Patricia. “Patricia,” she said. “Not Patty.” She came to make sure everything was arranged and to look at the rooms. To make sure there were enough sockets for an extra lamp and the typewriter.

  “There’s no phone in the room,” Patricia told my mother.

  “No, everyone uses this one. There won’t be a queue now.”

  My mother pointed to the pay phone above the desk. We were standing in the front hall by the desk where the postman leaves the post. Patricia looked at the phone. Her eyes stayed on it for a moment, and she nodded slowly.

  “Is he writing a book?” my mother asked.

  “Yes. I’m helping with the research. I must find out what time the train leaves. I have to get back to the office.” She said the word “office” like it was a really important place.

  “Are you his wife?” my mother asked. I was wondering if my mother thought she was pretty.

  “Not yet,” she said quickly. She stuck her thumbnail in her mouth and stood for a moment looking at the ceiling.

  “Oh, there is one thing I wanted to ask you.”

  “What’s that?” My mother seemed worried. She thought Patricia was going to ask her to lower the price of the rooms.

  “Come here and I’ll show you.” She led us towards the back staircase. I thought she was going to take us to the rooms downstairs, but she turned into a narrow passage that led to the coatroom and to a tiny toilet that only flushed once a day. I thought, Why would she have come back here? She walked fast; she knew where she was going.

  “These!” she said loudly, and pointed. She looked like a child. “These! I just absolutely love them.” She was pointing at four charcoal drawings of horses hanging on the wall. We’ve had them forever; they were in my mother’s bedroom in London. “I have always loved horses,” she said, turning to my mother.

  “Do you have a horse?” I asked. I wanted her to pay attention to me.

  “Not a real one, but I had a collection of toy horses. My whole room was covered in posters of them.” She took a deep breath, as though she were trying to smell them, and stood quietly for a moment.

  Toy horses. Posters of horses. That type of girl, that type of woman.

  “And that’s why I thought it would be nice if I could move them into our room.” She was staring at them.

  “You mean move them into your bedroom?” my mother asked.

  I had never really noticed the drawings here in this thin, dim hall, but suddenly I wanted them in my room too.

  “They look good here,” I said loudly to my mother.

  “Since he’s staying for such a long time and those rooms are so bland. These would cheer it up a bit.”

  I looked at the drawings again. They were not cheery. In one, the horse looked like a growling dog.

  “We have some other pictures in the attic. The ones Granny sent of the pears and flowers.” My mother said the last part to me. She was getting nervous. A boy my mother had been friends with in school drew the horses. The thought of them in a stranger’s room bothered her.

  “No, no. I know just what you’re talking about. My mother has prints like that too. He wouldn’t like them, but he would like these, I know. And he should have something to look at. It must get boring just sitting over a desk all day, banging at the typewriter.” She held her hands out in front of her and wiggled her fingers as though she were typing.

  My mother stood staring at the pictures. Then she said, “How would we get a nail into those stone walls?”

  “I think they look good here,” I said again. I thought of the boy. He was ten when he drew them. My mother thought he was dead now.

  “I can figure it out,” Patricia said. “Just lend me a hammer.” But I could tell, by the way my mother crossed her arms, looking over at her with half closed eyes, that she would not let her have them.

  …

  I was still wondering if my mother thought she was pretty. I did. In London, sometimes, we had an all-girls night. My mother’s two best girlfriends, Annabel and Suzy, would come over; they’d open a bottle of wine and talk and cook. I would sit on the kitchen floor near the stove, where it was warm, and listen.

  “And what do you think of that new one he’s got?” my mother asked Suzy one time.

  “She’s such a bore. She came round the pub last Wednesday. All she did was smoke my fags and put her lipstick on and wipe it off and then put it on again. Three times she did it. I was counting. Three times, at the table, I promise you; I’m not joking.” She was rolling a joint.

  “Was he with her?” my mother asked.

  “He didn’t sit next to her.”

  “Well, is she pretty?” My mother was really listening. She had her spoon in the sauce but hadn’t stirred it once.

  “I think she’s boring, but the men probably like her, all they see is that bright hair and her little bottom. They have the simplest tastes. Be an angel and get me a glass of water, will you?” she asked me.

  “You know what she looks like?” Annabel had it figured out; we were all listening now. She poured herself some wine and said, “A shampoo model, she looks like a bloody shampoo model.” They thought this was the funniest thing they had ever heard. They said it all night about everyone, even the men. “Now he,” they said, bursting, “he looks like a shampoo model!” Then they’d start laughing again.

  I looked through a magazine to find the shampoo ads. Girls with waist-length hair, brown or blonde, a middle parting, walking though a field of daisies. Clean, neat, quiet noses, smelling like the magazine perfume. They were pretty. I didn’t see what was so funny. Patricia looked like one of them.

  Three

  Patricia phoned a taxi to collect her and take her to the station, back to London. It was noon and my uniform that I had hung up over the stove was dry. I ironed it on top of a towel on my bedroom floor. Then I dressed. When I came out, my mother was in the bathroom running a bath.

  “Aren’t you going to drive me?” I asked through the door.

  “My bath will get cold.”

  The drive winds between the bushes and the trees. It’s almost a mile long; we measured it once. With the sound of the wind and the waves, it’s hard to hear a car coming ahead or behind you. My mother thinks that sometimes I go deaf, so I keep safely to the side, half in the twigs and thorns, as close as a cat.

  …

  One night in our flat in London, my mother and I were making mashed potatoes when Annabel and Suzy dropped by.

  “I brought
us a little something,” Suzy said, as she walked into the kitchen. She pulled a small packet wrapped in tinfoil out of her bag and held it up in the air, wiggling it between two fingers. When I stood up to look, she closed it up in her hand. “Not for children,” she said, pointing her nose at me. I was the only child then; it was before Eden had been born.

  “You didn’t. Who did you get it from?” Annabel asked.

  “Gary, your hairdresser. It was a real bargain.”

  My mother walked out of the kitchen with the bowl of potatoes for me to peel.

  “Let’s get you set up out here, then.” She unfolded old newspapers on the floor and put the bowl down on them. This is the way we had dyed Easter eggs. “Just peel them onto the paper and put them in the bowl. And take out the eyes.”

  I sat cross-legged on the floor and counted the potatoes. There were seven. The kitchen door was open a crack and I could hear them whispering, I sat quietly, listening to see if it was me they were whispering about. I held a potato in my hand, each peel a small tug. The streetlamp shone in through the window like a gold shell. They forgot to whisper, and soon I could hear every word they said in the kitchen; they were talking loud and fast and not about me. It became a race. They could hardly wait for one to finish a sentence before the next would jump on the end of the last word and take off like a relay runner.

  They were talking about men. My mother was going on about her date with Paul. He picked her up in the convertible he had borrowed from his manager. She wore her old jeans, that she had to lie down to do up, and all night the zipper stuck into her stomach like a little nail. He hadn’t tried to spend the night, so she wasn’t sure if he liked her.

  Annabel poked her head out the door. “All right?”

  I had only peeled one potato, I had mud on my hands. “What happens if you eat a potato eye?” I asked, pretending to be concentrating. I didn’t want them to think I was interested in them.

  “I can’t remember,” she said, and went back in the kitchen. There was more talking. Then the phone rang. It was him, Paul. There was a party tonight. “Well, we’re sort of in for the evening,” I heard my mother say. “Maybe I’ll pop by later. Give me the address, just in case.” She hung up the phone and turned the stove off; I heard the click.

  “We have to hurry, he might leave soon,” my mother said, her voice high and sparkling.

  “What about the food?” Annabel asked.

  “Just leave it. Come on, let’s go; it’s in Shepherd’s Bush.”

  My mother walked out of the kitchen, straight and fast. “Come on, you two, hurry up.”

  Annabel and Suzy followed behind in a pair.

  “Look at me, I look like Mrs Mop.” Suzy was staring at herself in the hall mirror.

  “We’ll just look like we don’t really care; you know, like we just stopped by on our walk.” She could do this, my mother, make everything seem casual.

  “Our walk where?” Annabel said, putting on her coat. It was white plastic and belted at the waist. “You haven’t even got a dog.”

  “Okay, how do I look?” my mother asked me.

  She was wearing a tiny tight brown leather jacket with a huge boa of yellow fur and feathers around the collar and wrists.

  “Like an Eskimo.”

  “Oh, very nice. An Eskimo! Thanks a lot, darling.” She searched in her coat pockets. “Have I got everything? Don’t turn the oven on, May, and if anyone phones me write it down on a piece of paper.”

  Suzy’s coat looked like a patchwork quilt. She was standing in front of the hall mirror back-combing her hair.

  “Don’t eat all the sweets and make yourself sick again, and don’t play with matches,” Annabel said, as she put on shimmery pink lipstick. I already knew this. It is something I had always known: to be careful.

  My mother came over to where I was sitting with the potatoes and kissed me on the top of my head. “Mr Brompton’s next door if you need anything.”

  “You didn’t leave an iron on, did you?” Annabel asked.

  They gathered in front of the door like three little dogs waiting to be let out.

  “Okay. Keys, money, fags?” my mother said, and the three of them felt in their pockets.

  Everything was fine and they were ready to leave. My mother locked the door behind her, I heard the click.

  I was alone in the house with the half-cooked food. I walked around looking for a clock; I wanted to know what time it was. I looked out of the window and saw the three of them go down the street. My mother was in front, walking fast, hurrying them along, rushing to see a boy. It was a cold night, a quiet street. A teenage boy and girl sat across the street on some steps sharing a cigarette. I saw my mother look back once as she walked ahead. When they turned the corner, I closed the window. Inside, my face stung from the cold in the heat.

  I wanted to boil the potatoes and eat them with butter and salt. I was hungry but afraid of the stove. I didn’t understand fire, that it had to cling to burn; I thought it could just leap through the air.

  I went to find a clock in my mother’s room. It was half past nine. Above her bed on the yellow wall were the horse pictures, watching me while I looked through her drawers for chocolate.

  My bedroom in London was behind a Victorian paste screen, in a corner of the sitting room. I had a box under my bed. In it were two dolls, dolls’ clothes, five grey toy mice, and some doll’s house furniture: a red sofa with yellow spots, a wooden table, and a packet of knives and forks. Tiny ones. Too small for the dolls, but the right size for the mice.

  I sat down with my box in front of me and made the mice and the dolls a house. One of the dolls was an ice-skater; the other one, with long brown hair, was a horse rider. The mice lived beneath them, the way mice do.

  At some point I must have left my room and walked around the flat, gathering things.

  I was back on the floor when my mother walked in.

  “You’re awake.” She stood in her coat, holding the front door keys in her hand. “Why didn’t you answer the phone? I let it ring thirty times, at least thirty times. Why didn’t you pick it up?”

  I had been sitting on my heels with my back bent, looking at the floor. When I tried to move my feet, they were numb.

  “What?” I looked up at her.

  “Why didn’t you answer the phone?” She was staring down at me.

  “I never heard the phone.”

  “You never heard the phone. I only rang three times. I know what you were doing. I know. You just sat here and listened and wanted me to worry, didn’t you?”

  I was sure I hadn’t heard the phone ring. I was sure. It was something I would have done—sit and let it ring—but I had never thought of it.

  “It didn’t ring,” I said.

  She turned and left, walking heavily into the sitting room, where she picked up the phone, listened, put it down; picked it up, dialled the operator, asked her to phone back. It rang.

  “See, it works,” she said, back in my room standing over me, hands on her hips. Her lipstick had worn off except at the corners of her mouth, and there were smears of black mascara under her eyes, where her lashes touched the skin.

  “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know, May. You had me really worried.” She took her eyes off me and stood silent for a moment as she looked around the room.

  “What?” I asked, getting up. She stood completely still.

  “What is this? All these little pieces of rubbish on the floor. Why do you play with little bits and pieces? This looks like a German flea market.”

  The floor was covered except for the spot where I had been sitting. Tea bags, chopsticks, cotton balls, folded-up pieces of loo paper, a large shell filled with water. I could not tell what it was now, but it had been something—a whole town, a whole house, a bathroom; the shell was the tub. It had order. It had been lived in. It had really been something. But now, standing up next to her, looking down like birds, it was only a mess.

  “You must be
deaf.” She was looking at me again. “Are you deaf?”

  “No.” What if I was? That would be something. An illness, a doctor, a special school. “She was very clever, considering ...” my teachers would say.

  “Well, obviously you are. First thing in the morning we’re going to the doctor.”

  A man entered from the other side of the screen. He had straight thick brown hair that hung around his face like a shawl.

  “There you are,” my mother said. “This is my friend Paul.” She was speaking softer now. Her friend Paul. “This is May.”

  He looked at me, nodded, then raised his hand slowly, as though he were pulling it up from a puddle of glue. It quickly fell back down, and he stood with his long arms hanging forward for a moment. Suddenly his head jerked up and he looked around, surprised. “I think I should get some water.”

  “That man is drunk,” I told my mother, in a low voice that reminded me of my grandmother.

  “No, he’s not drunk.” She said the word “drunk” as though it were falling from a high board. “No one gets drunk any more. Anyway, he happens to be a rock star.”

  …

  The school here sat behind the chapel, near a hedge, like an old tomb. The sky was thick and grey above me. Engraved above the two tall heavy wooden doorways, like the names of heroes, were BOYS and GIRLS. But now, since the village had grown, it was an all-girls’ school.

  I walked along the stone path, past the chapel, towards the school. There was no one around, and I sat down on a wooden bench by the front gates. It was lunchtime; everyone was in the dining hall, and the smell of pudding was in the chapel garden. I thought about my mother’s friend, the boy who drew those horse pictures.

  When my mother was nine she moved to a new town. The other girls in her form had all been together since they were six and would not let go of each other’s hands to let her in their circle, so she became friends with a boy who was a year older. They met at the shop on her way home from school, where she bought honey and cream ice lollies and he bought a bag of crisps, because cold things hurt his teeth.