‘I had a snail farm,’ she says. ‘I collected snails for a whole week or so – you know, those ugly grey-brown things that eat everything, and I let them crawl up my arm, and Mum took pictures and thought I was some sort of science genius, but I wasn’t.’ He notices a line of sweat-dots glistening on her upper lip. He would like to lick them off. She looks out of the open window.
‘Camel!’ she cries. ‘Did you see, Lucas? Oh, slow down, Mike!’ and she puts her hand out and touches his forearm. It tingles; the warmth of her fingers he feels down in the base of his penis. He cannot help his erection, and he slows the car down, stops on the hard shoulder of the highway, so she can hang out of the window with a camera, and he adjusts himself, and shifts in his seat. Lucas is asleep behind him, and the pot is sideways in his lap. Mike leans over and takes the yoghurt pot, puts it into the drinks holder at the front. He starts the car again.
‘You don’t have to be a tourist, Jen,’ he says.
‘Let’s not talk about it,’ she says.
‘Why? Why not?’
She does not say anything. He drives up the last hill, in a culvert cut through orange cliffs. He knows at the top there will be the first sight of the ocean, navy and straight, the dash of a child’s loaded brush across this white day. They are on their way back to Sur. They will soon be passing the Sur lagoon where young men play football at dusk. Sometimes, he plays football with the office crowd in a park in Muttrah, a rowdy, good-humoured game where often he finds himself floored by a handsome Omani who picks him up and slaps his back. Football is the language here – even in the desert, a Bedouin served them coffee in a Beckham shirt. He could teach Lucas, he thinks, and then smiles at his optimism.
‘Shall we stop for a drink?’ he asks, pointing to the hotel on the lagoon. Its door stands open invitingly. The tide is receding, and here the water is yellow with silt and glinting around the already stranded dhows lying on their sides.
‘Lucas is still asleep,’ she says.
‘We can leave him in the car. It’s safe here. We can sit over there, look,’ he says, pulling in through the gates. In England he is never so decisive. In England Jenny tells him where to park.
‘OK,’ she says.
They sit at the table, and he drinks a mango lassi, and she drinks lime juice through a delicate, opaque straw. Everything about her looks taut, as if about to break. They are Mike and Jenny, Jenny and Mike, who hold hands and drink in pubs by the river.
‘Please, Jenny?’ he says. And just this question brings it all pouring out, the misgivings, the resentment, the torture of being left by herself in England, the ‘I will never…’ that she has stored up for this occasion, the quiet reflection after the tears, the talk of divorce. And he hears it all, but it is as if it is something that can be dealt with in the morning, on a fresh day, like a bad Excel spreadsheet that has come in at 5.30. Tomorrow it will seem easier, and when she has finished her drink, and takes off her sunglasses to really look at him (a technique he is wise to), he only says, ‘Oh, my, you are lovely,’ and she smiles, she – smiles. At least, she smiles.
Just down the road, he can see the men pulling up in their cars, in shorts and vests and mirrored shades. They don’t wear shoes, but slip swiftly over the rocks on to the lagoon bed. Lucas’s scream, ‘My egg!’ he greets calmly, and Mike walks steadily to the car, takes his son from his seat and the yoghurt pot from the front, and they stay for another drink and watch the sunset game.
Jenny wakes up abruptly on the beach. She watches a bird fly out across the waves. It has come to her, the sudden idea. It does not make her lift her head from the towel. She lies there, still, and thinks – if he is to drown Lucas, he must do it soon. Now. I will give him this moment.
Just as suddenly as the idea has come, it becomes anathema, and she sits up, curling her legs beneath her. She feels the breath judder into her, her head twitching to the side. In the distance, Mike and Lucas walk along the sea edge, hand in hand, looking down at the water. They stop to silently watch an Omani family in the sea. A father struggles with a ball against the tide and two boys run in and out of the water. She hears the boys’ laughter, and she turns away.
On their last day, they stop in Muttrah. He has taken them to the Grand Mosque, and round the Sultan Qaboos University Campus, should she be tempted to take up the provisional teaching post he has begged for. He drove past the International School. He did not need to point it out. She saw it: he saw her head turn.
They sit at a juice bar, opposite the bay, fanning themselves with menus, the heat swabbing them, getting between them. Will she launch into another tirade? Not yet. She sips. He hears the sigh.
‘You see, what I’m afraid of…’ she says. Here it comes. ‘You see me as some kind of catalogue bride. Bring me out here and I’ll facilitate for you. I’ll look after your fucked-up son…’ His fucked-up son is playing with an ugly black street cat under the next table.
‘…and be waiting at home with my sexed-up clothes under my hijab…’ And so she goes on. He waits silently for her to finish. She can see his jaw twitch in patient frustration. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more,’ she finishes.
‘Have you thought,’ he says suddenly, ‘that Lucas may benefit—’ But she does not let him carry on. Off again, the het-up, angry words, female and hot. He talks over them: ‘Maybe a new country… maybe it is not stepping backwards. Maybe a new culture… Maybe you’ll be free to be you…’ But Jenny does not see the new culture, the new life. She sees a turtle, in a hole, flapping its back flippers to bury its eggs, its head nodding this way and that in exhaustion. She sees the lady on the next table, her hijab-ed head nodding this way and that.
‘No, Mike. I can’t. I can’t be trapped… ’ but as she says it, she thinks of the turtle climbing out of her hole, walking down to the foam, swimming out to sea.
‘Oh, Jen. I hate to say it, but you have got to – shut up!’ He sees she is shocked. He has spoilt her, being so polite, so gentle. ‘I’m sorry, but you have to listen.’
She will not, and she stumbles up, he knows in tears, and takes Lucas’s hand roughly, so that as he stands, he glances his head against the corner of the table. He shouts, and begins to cry, but a painful, ordinary child’s cry.
‘Be quiet, Lucas,’ she says, in anger, and Lucas is quiet. She starts to march away, pulling at his wrist. Lucas drags back, and they tug at each other. Lucas says: ‘I want Daddy. I want to stay with Daddy.’ Mike takes three Omani Real from his wallet and tucks them under the ashtray. He picks up Lucas’s rucksack and takes Lucas’s hand. Lucas shakes Jenny away.
They walk back into the soukh, Jenny ahead of them. Around them, men offer pashminas, perfume. The smoke of frankincense carries them through.
‘You know you’re going on the aeroplane tonight, don’t you?’ Mike says.
‘Yes. Can you check my egg?’ It is a ritual now. Where is the egg? It is in the main pocket on the right side. It is in the dark, under your muslin. Mike opens the bag, makes a pantomime one-eyed probe, and Lucas giggles. Jenny has disappeared around a corner into the gold soukh. He saw which way she went, but he is in no hurry to find her.
‘Lucas. So you know you’re going home, don’t you?’ He wants to appeal to the logic in the child, make it easier, the way things were made easier when he was a child, by teachers at boarding school.
‘Yes,’ Lucas says. But unexpectedly, he says, ‘And when will you come for us?’
‘Come for you?’
‘Yes,’ Lucas says. ‘When?’ And he has learnt that use of a deep, direct look into Mike’s eyes.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ Mike says, and he looks away, towards Jenny.
At the airport, they are dreadfully alone. Mike has kissed Lucas again and again, and Lucas has kissed Mike tenderly and carefully. Jenny allows him to kiss her cheek. It is night, almost ten. Lucas is tired as Mike picks him up, holds his full length against him as if to memorise it. Lucas walks backwards through the security doors. Je
nny looks back once, sees Mike brush a tear away. She and Lucas have to become a team again. She pushes the trolley, and he carries his rucksack. She tries to check in, but they have not opened the desk yet, so she sits Lucas on the trolley and they wait, watching the men and women in their flowing robes. She is grateful for the air conditioning, the vacuum of the airport. An Omani manager is kind and beckons them to a different desk. The bags are on the conveyor belt when Lucas says, ‘My turtle.’ It is a low-pitched gurgle of a noise.
‘Did you pack these bags yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mummy,’ he whispers. ‘My turtle.’
‘Lucas,’ she says sharply. ‘Wait!’ She has learnt that his feelings are not always precious, and that he will not break.
‘Did anyone ask you to carry any packages for them?’
‘No,’ she says, talking to both of them. Lucas looks as if he needs the toilet. ‘Do you need to go?’
‘Yes,’ he says urgently. ‘Mummy, my turtle. It’s hatching. It is.’
The man at the desk smiles at Lucas.
‘It isn’t, Lucas,’ she says, chattily. She wants to get through this, get back to England, and the cold and dark, which make her safe. The taxi is booked to meet their flight. The old shuffling George who takes them to Lucas’s appointments will be there, white bristles on his cheeks; hair unkempt and the black anorak pervading smoke and Fisherman’s Friends. Lucas jumps from one foot to the other. He is going red.
‘He needs toilet?’ the man says.
‘I think so.’ She is embarrassed, the way she always is, in a matter-of-fact, my-child-is-special-needs way.
‘Go – go,’ he says with a smile, and points towards the lavatories across the hall. She takes Lucas’s hand roughly and they go through the double doors.
‘See?’ Lucas says, unzipping his rucksack. Inside, clambering over his muslin, his colouring pencils and his shells is a small black creature. It is comical, its head bobbing about, and it tries to climb up the black nylon interior. Its eyes look up at her, and Jenny yelps. Someone is coming in. Jenny pulls Lucas into the toilet and locks it.
‘Oh, God, what are we going to do?’
‘I want to take him home,’ Lucas says stoutly. He slides to the floor with the bag on his lap. Jenny looks at him and sees Mike. She thinks of Mike carrying the yoghurt pot through Oman, and it makes her cry, the suddenness of the turtle’s appearance. Oh, Mike, she thinks.
‘We have to take him home,’ Lucas whines. He is looking at Jenny, the way he looks at her when she is to say no, no, Lucas, we can’t.
‘Take him home? Where to?’ she asks him. She will not say no.
‘To the beach, of course,’ he says. She was sure he meant his little room, with its dinosaur mural and plastic animals on the floor.
‘Lucas! We’re just about to get on a plane! We’re going home!’
‘No! Jenny.’ He calls her Jenny in moments of crisis, like an old man, like a friend. ‘We need to take him to his beach.’
‘Lucas…’ As Lucas begins to shout, she realises she had never imagined a time when Mike was not part of her, when she was simply Jenny again.
She calls Mike from the desk, but he is not home. She cannot remember his mobile number in her fluster. She takes the bags off the conveyor belt, tells the man they are not going. They fight their way out of security, and all the while Lucas laughs, and is manic, allowing his rucksack to be held safely by his mother, while running up and down the concourse, skidding on his knees, getting in the way of busy men and tourists. It is nearly midnight. She should take a cab, but instead she goes to a desk and hires a car.
She asks the man for a map, pays by credit card, loads the bags in with no help from anyone, straps the rucksack into the seat next to Lucas. ‘You do not touch him, understand? You allow him air to breathe, but you do not touch him, OK?’
‘I won’t hurt him… ’
‘Lucas. I’m warning you… what did the man do when you saw the baby turtle?’
‘He guided him down the beach with his torch.’
‘Exactly. We will do the same.’
‘At Ras Al Jinz?’ Lucas’s eyes are wide, excited.
‘No. I don’t know,’ she says. ‘We’ll ask Daddy.’
They stand at Ras Al Haad, watching the sea. Lucas’s shoulders still heave from the crying, and the singing of the muezzin is unexpected and disturbs them. The sun will come up soon. Lucas holds Mike’s hand, and Jenny stands apart from them. It will take time, she thinks. And later, months and years later, when Lucas and her daughters are willowy and stand tall next to her, she thinks of this moment, on this beach, as the moment of knowledge. The moment she covered what was exposed. The moment she opened what was shut away.
Even Pretty Eyes Commit Crimes
M. J. Hyland
M. J. Hyland (b. 1968) is a British-born author who grew up in Australia. Her first short story was published when she was seventeen. She has written three novels, the second of which, Carry Me Down, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
My father was sitting on my doorstep. He was wearing khaki shorts, his bare head was exposed to the full bore of the sun, and he was holding a pineapple. I hadn’t a clue what he was doing there. He hadn’t given me any warning.
As I crossed the street, I raised my hand, but his eyes were closed, and he didn’t see me until I was standing right in front of him.
‘Dad. What are you doing here so early?’
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’
I looked at my watch. It wasn’t yet eight-thirty and I wasn’t in the mood for him. I’d walked home to save on bus fares after working a ten-hour night shift and I needed a shower and sleep.
‘Did you knock?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t knock. I didn’t want to wake anybody. I was just going to leave the pineapple on your doorstep, but then I sat down to rest for a minute and you turned up.’
The neighbour’s dogs were barking. My father frowned at the pampas grass that grew wild along the length of the broken fence.
‘Your neighbours need to train those bloody kelpies to stop barking.’
I held out my hand.
‘Here, Dad. Grab hold.’
‘I’m alright,’ he said. ‘No need.’
I’d had twenty-nine years to get used to Australia; its boiling summers, long days with no distinct parts – hot in the morning, noon and night – but I still couldn’t stomach the heat or the glare that came off every footpath and every parked car. My father was the opposite. He was made better by the sun; it made him buoyant and though he was sixty-five, on that morning, I was much more beaten and tired than he’d ever been.
‘Do you want to come into the flat for a minute,’ I said.
‘If that’s alright.’
‘We’d best be quiet, though. Janice won’t be out of bed yet.’
But Janice wasn’t home. As soon as we were inside the hall I saw she’d left the bedroom door open and it was clear the bed hadn’t been slept in. I’d made the bed and it was just as I’d left it. We’d had an argument about money before I left for work and when I was walking out the door she said, ‘You’re boring now, Paul.’
She said this in the cool and expert way my mother used to say things about couples who sit in cafés reading the newspaper and not talking to each other. ‘They’re boring each other,’ she used to say. ‘They’re probably only days away from divorce.’
My father looked into the bedroom, just as I had done. He suspected Janice of straying, just as he’d suspected my mother.
‘Janice must be out,’ I said.
I straightened my shoulders and tried to hide my worry and fatigue. I was at the end of a long run of night shifts, and I wasn’t in the mood for the grilling he’d give me if he knew about my marriage troubles.
‘Where’s your uniform?’ he asked.
‘In my locker. I don’t like walking home wearing it. I get changed first.’
‘So, you have a clean one for tomorrow’s shift?’
‘Yes, Dad. I have a few.’
He looked into the bedroom again. ‘Where do you think she is?’
‘Keep your hat on, Dad. She’s probably just popped out to do some shopping.’
I owed my father some money, and mentioning shops was a mistake. He was well-off and enjoyed his riches, but he didn’t like giving money away, not without arrangements for its ‘fair return’.
When I was eighteen my father asked me to have a drink with him. It was the first time he’d asked to meet me in a pub and he picked the day and time of the meeting months in advance.
‘It’s time we had a proper man-to-man chat,’ he said.
It was a perfect spring day, a gentle day, and we sat in the corner of the dark pub under a TV screen, in a suburb miles from his surgery, and even further away from my university digs.
‘It’s time I told you a few home-truths,’ he said.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Well, for starters, I knew your mother was up to no good years before she left us.’
As far as I was concerned, she hadn’t left us when I was ten years old, she’d left him. She’d got sick of him and found somebody else. I was only ten, but I wasn’t stupid. I’d heard her say, ‘Men shouldn’t talk as much as you do, Richard.’
My father sipped his beer slowly and looked at the TV screen above my head.
‘She was a very good liar, your mother,’ he said.
I was too angry to speak. What he’d said got me in the gut, a weird kind of wetness low in my stomach. I’d have got blind drunk that day if I’d had some spare money of my own but I had to listen to him curse my mother with nothing but a warm glass of beer froth in front of me.
When he came back to the table after ordering another round, he put the drinks down on our corner table and sat close and, after a moment, as though he was a different person, he put his hand on my knee.
‘I’ll tell you something now,’ he said. ‘Even pretty eyes commit crimes. You should bear that in mind when you start making lady friends.’
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 44