By the Shore

by Galaxy Craze

  The waiter came and filled the wineglasses. Just as he was walking away my father said, “Excuse me?” The waiter turned to him. “You filled these too high,” he said, and pointed to where the wine came to in the glass.

  The waiter opened his eyes wide the way a child stares and looked down at the two glasses. “You think so?”

  “I know so,” my father said. “You should only fill the glass halfway. First of all, it’s a ton to lift,” he picked up the glass by the stem, his little finger floated out. “It should have a delicate feel.”

  The waiter’s face flushed a bright red from trying so hard, standing so straight, polishing his shoes every day before work, and now failing like this, two glasses of red wine filled too high.

  “If it’s white wine it’s even more important to only pour it yea high.” My father levelled his hand at the centre of the glass. “So it stays cold.” He whispered that part, like he was letting him in on a special secret.

  “Mine’s fine, I don’t mind how high it’s filled,” my mother told the waiter. She had almost finished her glass.

  “Mind you, if you buy it by the glass that’s a different story; then you want it filled higher. You want what you pay for. Right?” My father grinned at him, trying to make him laugh as though they were two old mates in a pub.

  The waiter nodded at my father, trying to smile, but it wavered.

  “You embarrassed that boy,” my mother said when he had gone. “Who cares where the wine comes to?”

  “If you’re a waiter in a posh restaurant, you should know the proper way to pour a glass of wine,” he said calmly, flatly, like nothing in the world could make this less important to him.

  I took little bites of the potato on top. It was cool now, but something in my stomach felt tight. I wanted my father to be the way he was before, with his funny accents and tricks. Now we were all serious, cutting and chewing our food. My mother drank her wine quickly. The only sound was the scraping of the knives and forks against our plates.

  When we were finished and the table was cleared, a man wheeled the dessert trolley over. It was a different waiter. He was older, taller, with dark black hair turning grey in places. He stood up straight and tall with his hands wrapped tightly around the handle of the trolley. He stared straight ahead and let us look. There were little white cards with the names of the cakes and puddings written on them, like place headings at a dinner party. There were round light pastries filled with whipped cream and covered in chocolate. A trifle in a glass bowl that you could see the layers through, thick and striped: the yellow of the custard, the white of the whipped cream, the sponge cake, and a sprinkle of red raspberries. On the top shelf, the cakes rose up like expensive decorated hats on silver dishes, some rounded, some flat. A purple one with crystallized petals around the edge, a chocolate cake with milk-white chocolate shavings on top, and, in crystal glasses, chocolate mousse with whipped cream on top.

  “Yummy, yummy,” my father said slowly, rubbing his hands together. “What would you like, my dear?” he asked, leaning towards me, smiling, as though he were offering me anything I wanted in the world.

  I couldn’t decide. It was too much, all brightly feathered, all perfect.

  My father ordered profiteroles and three spoons. The wine bottle was finished, and the waiter asked if we wanted anything else to drink. My father shook his head.

  “A Cointreau, please,” my mother said to the waiter.

  “You’re drinking a lot,” my father said, digging his spoon into one of the chocolate-covered cream puffs.

  I dragged my spoon across the top, gathering the chocolate by itself and tasting it: a tiny, slow bite. That was how I ate sweets, in slow doll-size bites, so they would last.

  “So what do think, Lucy? Sounds like a good idea to me if I do say so myself.” He was talking about the wine bar, Dandelions. I saw the name above the door in pale yellow script. Men in tight trousers and purple shoes walking in, fancy cars outside.

  “It does sound like a good idea,” she said, nodding. She finished her drink and put the glass down on the table. She was talking slower now. When the waiter went by she said, “Another Cointreau, please.

  “But I don’t have any money to invest.” Her face was still in the dark, under a shadow. I looked up to see what was covering her. The head and long neck of a deer hung from a plaque on the wall, its eyes wide open, shiny. I remembered when we studied Eskimos in school. Before they cooked their fish, they would draw their hands over its face, gently closing the fish’s eyes.

  “You could always take a out a second mortgage or sell and move back to London. That way I could see May more. Money makes money. It’s true, it really does.” He said it like he knew, like he was the god of money.

  “I don’t want to move back to London,” she said slowly, following my eyes up to where I stared at the deer’s head.

  Then he looked up. “That’s great-looking, majestic,” he said, admiring it as though it were alive.

  When the bill came, he tossed a credit card down on the table. He didn’t even look at it.

  Then the older waiter came back, holding the card in the palm of his hand and placing it softly on the table.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but the card was denied.”

  “Oh,” my father said, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and pulling out a thin brown card-size wallet. He took another one out and tossed it down. That’s how men do it, they just toss it down.

  “Thank you, Dad,” I said. He was leaning back, his head against the wall, his arm reaching over, onto my mother’s lap. She’d finished her drink and her eyes were closing.

  “Pleasure, darling.”

  I was afraid of the drive home.

  …

  When we returned, Annabel and Patricia were in the sitting room. They sat facing each other on the sofa with their feet curled up beneath them. The television was on low, but they weren’t watching it. Patricia hugged a cushion to her chest. They looked like two girls who had been up all night, talking about boys, telling each other ghost stories.

  Eden was asleep on the floor, under a red tartan blanket with a fringe on the edge.

  “Lucy. You’ll never believe who Patricia had an affair with,” Annabel said excitedly, as we walked in: my mother, my father, and I.

  “Just a fling, really,” Patricia said. “And I was twenty-one.” She giggled.

  There was a half-eaten Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut bar, a teapot and two teacups, a glass of Ribena, and a packet of crisps on the table, cigarettes, an ashtray, and the December Tatler.

  “Charlie Watts!” Annabel said, banging her hand down on her thigh like a quick clap, a tiny firework. I knew who he was; Charlie Watts was one of the Rolling Stones. In London, Annabel, Suzy, and my mother would sit cross-legged on the floor, all the Rolling Stones’ records spread out in front of them, and talk about which one was the sexiest. My mother always said Bill Wyman, Annabel said Mick Jagger, and Suzy liked Keith Richards. They’d talk about them as if they were their best friends. Once Suzy flew in, out of breath, a long striped scarf around her neck. “I just bumped into Mick walking down the Kings Road!” she told us. “Mick and Keith,” that’s what they called them.

  “Oh.” My mother nodded, sitting down on the floor, taking off her high-heeled shoes.

  My father sat down on the butterfly chair and began to roll a joint.

  “Lucy always thought Bill was the sexiest of them all,” Annabel said.

  “No, I didn’t, I couldn’t stand him,” my mother said, looking at her sharply. This is how we save ourselves, flinging the knife.

  She stood up and began to walk out of the room.

  “Where are you going?” Annabel asked.

  “I have to pee,” she said, walking slowly, her arms floating up at her sides as though she were walking on a line, trying not to fall.

  “Simon, dearest,” Annabel said, leaning towards him with a tight, thin smile on her face. “You didn’t bring us a little somethin
g, did you?” She gestured with her finger under her nose and a little sniff. He was sitting back in the chair lighting the long joint, one gold cufflink showing.

  “I might have done,” he said. Puffs of smoke came out in each word. His face looked grey.

  “Here.” It sounded like “ear” when he said it. He handed her the joint. He stood up, pulled his shoulders back, and walked out of the room. I watched him, his walk, moving forward from the hips, his head up high, looking around.

  I sat next to Annabel on the sofa, looking at the telly, at the table, chewing on my fingernail.

  “Did you have a nice supper?” Patricia asked me.

  I nodded.

  My father came back in the room carrying a little plate, a toast plate, and set it down carefully on the table. Patricia cleared a spot, pushing things out of the way with the back of her hand. It was a dark blue plate with tiny white leaves around the edge. In the middle was a pile, a thimbleful, of white powder. Like salt, like sugar.

  He hitched his trousers up before sitting down and took out a ten-pound note and a credit card. Once, in London, someone had left a note on the table. I found it in the morning, a five-pound note. I unrolled it, then I flattened it out under two heavy books.

  My mother came back in, holding four wineglasses and a bottle of wine. Her hair had come undone and fell over her shoulders, the clip loose in the back.

  “Why isn’t Eden in his bed?” she asked Annabel.

  “He fell asleep and we didn’t want to wake him,” Annabel said. They were passing the plate and the rolled-up note around.

  My mother sat down on the chair facing the sofa. Sometimes she looked so young, not like a girl or a teenager, but just after. Like her children should still be babies.

  “May, I think it’s your bedtime,” she said to me.

  “After the adverts,” I said, looking at the telly. She knew I wasn’t watching, but it was Saturday night and my father was here.

  “Where’s Rufus? Maybe he would like a glass of wine.” That was my mother; it came out in a rush. Then she looked down, fingering the edge of Eden’s blanket.

  “Oh, Rufus has been working so hard. He goes to the library, then comes home and does more work,” Patricia said, a patch of white powder on the tip of her nose.

  “You must inspire him,” Annabel said, and when she looked at Patricia, it was all wonder.

  “He calls me his muse,” Patricia said, stretching out the words like a high song.

  There was a look on my mother’s face, something hard between her eyes.

  “He wants to hurry up and finish so we can go back to London.”

  “You live in London?” my father asked, passing her the joint.

  “Yes.” She inhaled lightly, her lips around it like a baby kiss.

  “When are you two leaving?” my mother asked.

  “I’m not sure, in a day or two.”

  “Oh, good,” my mother said, her hand holding the glass, her eyes on the wall.

  Then everything stopped. The plate my father held out to Patricia froze in the air, his wrist stiff and long. It was like watching the seconds on a clock and nothing else. They looked at my mother, then away from her.

  “What part of London do you live in?” my father asked, when she took the plate from him.

  “South Kensington,” Patricia said slowly, moving around the card on the plate, taking a long time in order to have something to do.

  “Come on, May, let’s go to bed,” my mother said, standing up and holding out her hand to me. I didn’t take it. I pushed myself up.

  “You’ll have to give me your address so I can invite you to the opening of my new restaurant,” my father said to Patricia.

  “A restaurant! I’d love to come.” She jumped up a little, her hands on her knees, smiling at my father.

  “Goodnight,” I said, standing up, waving.

  “Are you feeling all right, Lucy? You look a little pale,” Annabel said, her mouth in a frown.

  “I’m fine,” my mother said. Then she walked out of the room.

  I stood there for a minute with my hands on the back of the butterfly chair.

  “What kind of food?” Annabel asked.

  “I thought we’d have lots of little tasties, really delicious things: a Moroccan dish, a French dish, good old jolly old, maybe an Indian, some Tapas.”

  “Okay, good night,” I said again, waiting for my father to give me a kiss. But he didn’t; he just looked up at me and everyone said goodnight at the same time, like a birthday song.

  I left quickly, as though I hadn’t been waiting for anything, never expecting anything. I could hear them as I walked down the hallway to my room.

  “Tapas? I absolutely love Tapas.”

  “So do I,” Annabel said.

  I knew what would happen next. They would keep passing that plate around and talk about boring things for a long time. And Eden, asleep on the floor under the red tartan blanket, wouldn’t miss a thing.

  Sixteen

  When I woke up the next morning I felt like I was pushing myself through water. It was Sunday. Outside, each cloud was a different grey. There was a tight feeling in my hands, and I remembered my father was here. I had to look, watching, to make my fingers open.

  I walked to the kitchen to make tea with milk and honey, but before I got there I turned around and went back to my room, closing the door behind me. I didn’t want him, my father, to see me like this, in my too-short nightgown and with tangled hair. I stood in front of the oval mirror on my chest of drawers and brushed my hair. The chest was made of a pale wood with tiny painted poppies on it. My grandmother gave it to me; she called it my baby furniture. We used to have a whole set, but some got lost or left behind in London. Barbara’s invitation sat right in the middle; it was soon, her party.

  I thought, This is how you become a teenager and then a woman, brushing your hair first thing in the morning, an invitation to a party on your desk. Pulling on your jeans and a tight sweater, looking at yourself sideways in the mirror, flattening your hand over your belly, sighing, holding it in, then looking again. Better.

  Eden sat on the floor of the sitting room, the blanket wrapped around him. His thin blond hair was pushed up at the back from where he’d slept on it. I wore my jeans, my Levi’s, because I knew my father liked American things. His favourite car was a Cadillac.

  The cartoons were on. It was almost eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, ten days before Christmas.

  I stood next to Eden, watching the cartoon. It was the one about the carousel ponies who come alive at night and talk, and the only person who knows is this one little boy.

  Eden sipped a mug of Ribena through a Crazy Straw. You could watch the purple come up slowly and wind around upside down like a roller coaster; then you tasted it, the blackberry sweetness on your tongue. He must have spent the whole night here, on the floor.

  “Did you sleep here all night, Eden?”

  He nodded, staring at the telly.

  “I went out to supper with my father last night,” I said. I held my hands together in front of me. When he turned to look at me, his eyes were the same bright blue as his pyjama top and his face was round and puffy from just waking up.

  “I already know that,” he said to me, very slowly, and turned his face back to the telly. Eden hardly ever asked about his father; he didn’t care about him. He was a boy with both hands wrapped around one candle.

  It was warm in the room. The song from the cartoon played softly. Eden sipped his drink, making loud sucking and bubbling noises with the straw.

  “My name comes from an old word that means bear cub,” Eden said, when the advert came on.

  “Who told you that?” I sat down on my knees with my feet under me. Everything from last night was still on the table except the rolled-up note; someone else had taken it.

  “Rufus told me. And in Hebrew it means paradise.” His voice cracked in parts. It was one of the first things he had said today. “Last night
, when I stayed here with Nanny Annabel...” This made him start laughing, a squeaky sound, his whole head and shoulders bopping up and down.

  “Stop laughing!” I said, and flung my hand down on his knee. He looked at it, at the spot I hit, surprised. There was something sharp in the middle of my chest, like a splinter.

  “Then Annabel and that other woman went to the pub to buy cigarettes, and they got me a licorice and sherbet.” Each word he said was a wooden block on top of wooden blocks. “And when they were gone I stayed downstairs with Rufus and we did my Velveteen Rabbit puzzle.”

  “There are pieces missing,” I said.

  “Only three.” This is how he pronounced three: fwee. “He told me what my name means in other languages too. He’s going to write it all down and give it to me.”

  Eden said this like it was a secret, something special to be saved, a bag of jam doughnuts behind his back.

  “He thinks I’m smart, he told me that.” Eden really believed it. I could see it in his face, in the way he didn’t answer me right away, and in the way he didn’t want to know what I did last night. He was a little more sure this morning, a little more on his own.

  “Actually, he thinks you’re annoying.”

  Eden tilted his head to one side, looking at me.

  “Why do you think he’s leaving early? He can’t finish his book because he says we are always bothering him.” I told Eden this, keeping my face very still and serious, just moving my mouth so the words came out in one straight line.

  “But he wanted to do the puzzle. I wasn’t bothering him.”

  Something clear passed over his face, like a wave. His cheeks turned red.

  “Well, that’s what I heard.” I was imitating a voice that I had heard somewhere, a thin-faced woman in a tweed suit and skin-coloured stockings, rolling a pen like a seesaw between two fingers. And it was the truth, I had really heard that, sitting in the hallway with my fingers wrapped around my toes in the dark. No one checked to see if I was in bed asleep, no one poked their head out of the kitchen door to make sure I wasn’t listening. So Eden should be allowed to hear it too.