The Water Children

by Anne Berry

  Chapter 19

  Tuesday, 10 August

  The market screams with fool’s gold. From every aisle, from every stall, from every corner, a thousand brilliant lances joust with each other. Neon purple scintilla ignite in Owen’s vision, making his eyes throb. Fool’s gold, iron pyrites, worthless. It is trash. That’s what his life has become, just so much trash. That he could ever have been fooled by it! Naomi has been withdrawn since their return from Italy. Her sleep-walking has become a nightly ritual, and the things she speaks of while in this trance-like state eat into him. The sick baby whose crying must be stopped, the man called Walt who has to be punished, the priest who has opened her up to find her black soul stained with coal dust, the purging of her sins in the cold of the sea. He tells himself that they are bad dreams, dark fantasies, that there is no substance to any of it. Nevertheless her eccentric behaviour troubles him.

  As if in empathy, there is a recurrence of his own nightmares, so that he makes super-human efforts to stay awake. Now he feels wired with lack of sleep, only the thought that Sean will be back on Thursday keeping him going. Punters file past while the music stamps through his aching head. He is dizzy and dirty, subjugated by the unremitting heat. And always there are more, more tourists, more whores, more of the disappointed, the dejected, all on a pilgrimage to put a sparkle into their lives, all believing that the glitter will rub off on them, that down here they can be rich as royalty. Fool’s gold. All of it. A vault of fool’s gold. And if you peel back the lid of this tin catacomb and let the sunshine flood in, set the real gold to work, in a wink you will see it for what it is. The cheap gilt will tarnish before you reach the top stair, before you set foot on the pavement.

  The flat is empty when he lets himself in at six-thirty. He takes a shower, makes a sandwich and turns on the television. But he soon turns it off again when his mind starts drifting. However, in place of reminiscing destructively about the day Sarah drowned, he is whisked back to the year before the accident, to a fine summer’s afternoon spent in their back garden. Mother has filled up the paddling pool and Sarah is sitting in it surrounded by assorted plastic toys, a green miniature watering can, a tiny blue bucket, a family of yellow ducks, a red tugboat. They are all bobbing round her, like planets round the sun. She is wearing bikini pants, tied at the sides, a shell print on periwinkle-blue fabric. His mother is sitting in a deck chair in a floppy straw sunhat and cotton dress, reading a book. She has pulled the skirt above her knees and is sunning her legs. His father is in the shed planting up cuttings. Although Owen is wearing trunks, he has no interest in playing in the pool. It feels babyish to him. Instead he has made a den by draping a gingham tablecloth over the lower branches of a pine tree. He has filled a proper metal bucket with water, and hidden away here he is making mud pies in earthenware flowerpots. He is enjoying himself so much that it feels shameful. There is an art in getting the right consistency, not too wet and sloppy or they will not set, not too dry and crumbly or they will fall apart. Suddenly the cloth is pulled back and sunlight chases out the cool shadows.

  ‘Can I play?’ demands Sarah. The rounds of her shoulders are pinked with the sun, and so are her knees.

  He holds his arms over his feast of precious pies and frowns. ‘You’ve got the paddling pool. Can’t you play there?’

  ‘But I want to play here,’ she insists, standing her ground. She is dripping into his den. And when she sits down pine needles adhere to her arms and legs, making a woodland creature of her.

  ‘Oh, all right. You have to be my water-bearer though,’ he tells her.

  ‘What does a water-beawer do?’ she says, sounding ‘w’s’ for ‘r’s’. Her blonde hair is damp, hugging her face, and her cheeks are all rosy-pink with the heat.

  ‘You fetch buckets of water for me from the paddling pool.’

  She considers this for a moment. Then, ‘Why?’

  Proudly he opens out his arms and reveals his culinary masterpieces, all three of them, lined up and tastefully decorated with leaves and twigs. ‘For me to make pies,’ he says in a hushed tone. She gasps in wonder at his magnificent creations. ‘I have a bowl and spoon for mixing, see.’

  The tiny mouth sets in the familiar stubborn line. ‘I want to make the pies. You get the water.’

  He sighs. ‘Getting the water is a very important job. That’s why I’m asking you to do it,’ he persuades with cunning.

  She mulls this over for a second, head to one side, sucking on a strand of wet hair. ‘I want to mix the pies,’ she insists infuriatingly.

  He is trying his best to keep calm. If he raises his voice, his mother will look up from her book and ask what the matter is. And when Sarah tells her that her brother won’t let her mix the mud pies, she will scold him for being mean to his little sister. ‘Look, you can collect leaves and twigs for decoration,’ he bribes.

  The lower lip is wavering now. ‘But I want to mix the pies,’ she wails.

  ‘Oh very well, you mix the stupid pies!’ he bursts out in frustration, earning him the reprimand from his mother that he anticipated. He stomps off, bucket in hand, to fetch more water. When he comes back, Sarah has made a hat of his finest pie and is squashing it into her hair. Her other hand is punching into the dome of another. ‘No, no, what are you doing?’ he yells, snatching the pies back and working rapidly to repair them. But even as he does so, he knows the game is over, spoilt. Sarah will not follow his instructions. The mud pies will be ruined, the pleasure of perfecting them, gone. For some absurd reason tears rush to his eyes. He climbs to his feet, but his posture is stooped because one of the branches of the tree cuts through his hideout. It is only a bit of fun, mud pies after all, he tells himself. She has not broken one of his model aeroplanes, or scribbled over his school work, or hidden his Dandy book. But for some baffling reason this seems to have upset him more than all three put together.

  That same evening his mother makes meringues. Owen is her rapt audience of one. He often watches, sits at the kitchen table quietly as his mother transforms into a sorceress. She unscrews the tops of jars, and spoons out flour and sugar and rice, she breaks eggs, she carves up bricks of butter, she chops vegetables and meat, she adjusts the heat of the gas flame, she stirs and thickens and sprinkles. Sometimes she follows recipes. She mouths the spells printed on the pages of a book lying on the kitchen worktop, her gold-framed reading glasses propped halfway down the bridge of her nose. Other days everything she does seems to be instinctive, a pinch of this, a dash of that. And like a conjurer, she completes the trick with a flourish of tea towels and oven gloves, setting down tasty savoury dishes, indulging his sweet tooth with cakes and biscuits, custards and pies, trifles and jellies.

  He loves the wizardry of the meringues more than anything. It is like observing a scientific experiment, breaking the eggshell and keeping the golden yolk in a fragment of it, while the clear white falls elastically into the bowl. Then seeing her whip it frenziedly with the egg-beater, the tiny handle spinning like a miniature Ferris wheel. And to start with it is no more that a bubbly milky-yellow froth. There is a moment each time when he is convinced that the trick won’t work, that it will fail. He holds his breath tonight and as he does so, it happens. In a trice it changes from a watery goo into stiff white peaks, like Alpine ranges, he thinks to himself.

  Sometimes he asks questions. Mostly they start with ‘why’. His mother answers every one patiently. He even has ideas about adding things, though he doesn’t say. Now she volunteers a rule. Some of his friends collect stamps. Well, he collects ‘the rules’ with a passion, what you must do and what you must never do. He has started writing them down in a private exercise book he bought from the newsagents.

  ‘You mustn’t get any shell into the whites, Owen. If you do, however tiny, no matter how long you beat them they won’t whip up.’

  Sarah does not seem very interested in cooking, though she likes licking the raw cake-mix from the bowl, sucking it from the spoon and from her fingertips. She sits
colouring, or playing with dolls, while Mother cooks. What Owen realizes on the mud pie day, is that he cannot care for the garden the way his father does. He is far keener on making the earth into pies than growing vegetables in it. But he is curious about preparing them, all the different recipes there are, all the spells. And he suspects there are a great deal more that his mother doesn’t know about. In geography at school he got to thinking the other day, that just as all the countries in the world are different, so must their food be.

  Now he says a touch thickly, ‘I love seeing you cook. When I grow up I should like to be a cook like you, Mother.’

  His mother is not really listening. ‘Would you, dear?’ she says vaguely. ‘That’s nice.’

  But his father is. He has come in from the garden and is putting down the basket of vegetables he has collected. ‘Boys don’t grow up to be cooks. Girls do the cooking.’ As he says this last, he crouches down and touches the tip of an index finger to Sarah’s nose. Her face breaks into one huge smile and she lifts her arms out to him. Owen is devastated. His cheeks are scorched with shame. He bites his tongue and wishes that he hadn’t told. He makes up his mind there and then to tear up his stupid book of rules. But then his mother speaks, unexpectedly, in his defence, in her son’s defence.

  ‘That’s not true, Bill. Some of the most famous chefs in the world are men. I think if Owen wants to be a chef, then that’s wonderful.’

  Owen does not know who she is referring to but it isn’t import ant. He is blushing, but not with humiliation – with pride. And as his father begins to say something else, his mother butts in, something she seldom does. ‘Don’t you dare crush his enthusiasm, Bill.’ Later she stands behind Owen, kisses him on the top of his head, and holds a warm meringue out for him to bite into. He brings his teeth slowly together. And sweetness, light as air, crumbles and explodes and melts over his taste buds, so that he feels as if he is eating love itself.

  This is the surprising memory that comes tumbling out of the cupboard on this hot summer’s evening in 1976. Nothing came of it, because it wasn’t long after that the clocks stopped, Sarah drowned and it all went horribly wrong. Yet now the oddest little flame of defiance lights within him. Why shouldn’t he cook? Why shouldn’t he at least learn more about it, see if it was a bit of childish nonsense, or if he did have a penchant, a talent, a gift for cookery? He liked the idea of proving his father wrong. But much more than this, he liked the idea of proving his mother right. After this was over, and it soon would be, after he left London, why not see if he could get work in some restaurants, not only in England, but on the Continent where the Mediterranean food was supposed to be so fresh and flavoursome.

  He is preoccupied with this when Naomi pushes her way through the bead curtain. Glancing at his watch, to his surprise he sees that it is after 9 p.m. ‘Where have you been?’ He tries to sound casual, but his tone is edgy, suspicious.

  ‘For a walk, that’s all, Owen. What’s the matter with you?’ She shrugs, pushing back her mussed hair with her free hand.

  In the other hand she is holding a carrier bag, he sees. For a moment he levels his eyes inquisitively at her. He gets up, stretches and then peers into it. He is surprised by its contents, and shoots her a quizzical look. A cushion, one of the settee cushions. He watches as she nonchalantly pulls it out and tosses it down. She enacts this as if it is a normal part of every homecoming.

  ‘Naomi, what are you doing with the cushion?’

  She slips past him into the kitchen, making a grab for the kettle, turning the tap at the sink on full and starting to fill it through the spout. Water sprays into her face, up her nose and over the draining board. She giggles, blinks her eyes and pinches her nostrils. She is wearing leggings and a blue, peach and brown flowered smock dress. The ensemble is so markedly out of character that she is unrecognizable. The clothes he is accustomed to seeing her in are all fitted, jeans that hug her slim hips and thighs, T-shirts stretched snugly over her small breasts, short dresses with low-cut bodices. She likes the sort of garments that exaggerate her trim figure, not the blousy, voluminous creation that falls in pleats about her now.

  ‘What on earth are you wearing, Naomi?’ He speaks up before considering the rudeness of such a remark. Quickly he adds, ‘It’s very nice . . . just not your usual style.’

  ‘It was time for a change,’ she responds evenly.

  She turns the tap off, brings the kettle up and gives it a little shake. The water sloshes about inside. ‘Cup of tea?’ she suggests.

  They sit side by side on the settee sipping from their mugs, Naomi leisurely smoking a cigarette, while beyond the windows the London night closes in. After a bit she puts on a record. The Beatles song, ‘Penny Lane’, trills from the record player. She sings along with it. He mentions the men who keep showing up at the stall, Blue and his thugs. ‘They’re rough sorts. Doesn’t Sean realize the risk he’s taking getting mixed up with them?’

  She moulds her lips into a disdainful moue. ‘That’s up to him. Shall I make us something to eat?’ she proposes when the song has finished. She is on her feet and reaching for his empty mug.

  ‘No thanks.’ He eyes the vexing cushion, tramlines scored deep between his eyebrows. ‘Why did you take the cushion with you when you went out?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh, you know.’ Her reply is offhand, drifting to him as she opens kitchen cupboards and then slams them shut again. ‘Maybe we should eat out, mm? What do you think, Owen? Treat ourselves?’

  ‘No, no, I’d rather not. What were you doing outside with a cushion?’ he reiterates stubbornly.

  She hesitates. ‘Well . . . it . . . it was—’ Abruptly, mid-sentence, she jars to a stop. ‘This is terrible. We have no food. I’m starving. Well, we’ll just have to go out.’ She folds her arms. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘The cushion?’ he tries again.

  She lifts her eyes and sighs heavily. Then her gaze slides back to the record player. ‘It always jumps in this bit,’ she complains to him as the music stutters in the background. She moves to stand by the windows, peering into a murk festooned with blinking lights. ‘It is so pretty, the night, like opening a jewellery box.’ A pause, then, ‘I’m very hungry.’ She snatches up her bag from the dining-table and heads out of the flat.

  Chapter 20

  Wednesday, 11 August

  Brighton Beach. Sean is sitting on a bench on the promenade, looking south, out to a sea paved with gold. His face is ruddy and wind-kissed, his nose reddened with sunburn and drink. Despite the baking heat he keeps his jacket on. In the inside pocket is a fat envelope stuffed with money. It crackles a bit as he shifts on the seat. He has taken off his tie and undone the top two buttons of his shirt, but this is his only surrender to the soaring temperatures. Around him the British Riviera is in full swing. The pebbled beach has been invaded by leisure seekers, all wanting relief from the scorching sun. The grey-green swell teems with people of all ages, all shapes, all sizes. Bodies spill out of bright swimwear. They paddle, play with beach balls, loll on colourful lilos, duck and dive in the breaking waves. They take on the English Channel, furrowing through it with the crawl, the breaststroke, the side-stroke, the doggy paddle. Families stake their claims with rectangles of bright beach towels, windbreaks, picnic baskets, deck chairs. Dogs bark and run at the elusive surf. The promenade is busy with folk taking their ease, stretching their legs, walking arm in arm, sucking on ice cream cones and lollies.

  To his right is the West Pier, the white elephant, the pavilions looking deceptively grand. Sean has strolled past it, seen that it is closed and dilapidated, that it is slowly crumbling away. To the east is the Palace Pier, Mecca of tat, of slot machines and bingo halls, where cheap cuddly toys are displayed in tiers according to their prize-winning status. Sean feels at home there. The sea sighs, the pebbles tumble, the sun-worshippers burn to turkey-red, and laugh and chatter. And the gulls screech and flap. An old couple sit down beside him. They rifle in a bag, then munch contentedly on tongue
sandwiches, and swig ginger beer. The woman tears off the crust of one of hers and tosses it towards a gull. There is a brief ugly skirmish, cawing and posturing, during which it is pilfered by a pug dog trotting by on a lead.

  Sean does not like gulls. They are scavengers. He recalls flocks of them descending on the fields back home, feasting on the newly planted seeds, jeopardizing the crop. He does not want to spend his life scavenging, scratching a living in the grudging dirt. The sweat is pouring out of him under his showy jacket. His skin prickles. His rash is a source of constant irritation. But today he throws his head back and closes his eyes against the glare. The insides of his eyelids glow like dying embers. There is cash, a wad of cash, cool and crisp, next to his heart. And what had he had to do for it? Little more than take a train ride, book into a hotel, and meet a man on the pier. Who knows where it comes from, the money. Drugs? Prostitution? Extortion? He’s smart and doesn’t ask. Catherine would say it was dirty money, but to Sean money is the one pure thing, the thing that cannot be sullied. It is in violate. He has sniffed it and it smells of possibilities. Tomorrow he will pass it on to Blue, and then? Then take his wage, and wait for his turn to come round again. He puts a hand on his chest, over his heart, and presses. A low crackle, making him think of the crackle of new straw as you settle into it.

  The crackle races like an electric current through his brain, jostling memory cells. It lights up a scene from his past. A boy alighting on fresh straw, straw that smells sweetly of meadow flowers riffled by river breezes, by the sandy-silt breath of the Shannon. He burrows into it, and curls up in the sty, his back to the great belly of the pig. It vibrates with every grunting snore. He draws the blanket of heat it gives off about him, and lets its muddy shit smell fill his lungs. He has grown fond of this big black pig, whose hair is coarse as wire, whose snuffling snout runs shiny with mucus, the way his brother Emmet’s does. He likes the lazy manner of it, how it flicks the flies off with a twitch of its rump, or a flip-flap-swivel of its veined lop-ears. He likes its beady intelligent eyes.