by Simon Mason
Then Dad began to change. He decided he didn’t like being a cinematographer, and, even though he handled the best-known television programmes and knew all sorts of famous people, he gave it up, and stopped working altogether. At the same time, they left the big old house on the hill and moved down into the suburbs, to the small house near Grandma and Grandpa. It was less expensive, and more convenient. Only a few months later Dad had an argument with Grandma and Grandpa, and they stopped picking Martha and Tug up from school and coming to tea. Dad said it didn’t matter now that he was at home himself.
Then he started to behave strangely.
It was the little things they noticed first. He no longer found the time to make banana pancakes on Sunday morning, or read bedtime stories, and he was always too tired to play tennis. Before long he was too tired to take them to school in the mornings, and in the evenings he often forgot to make tea. He began to look strange too. Putting away all his smart suits and blazers, he wore nothing but old pairs of jeans and T-shirts. He went for days without shaving, and almost never brushed his hair. ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why it should bother you.’ Now even his voice sounded different, sometimes whispery, sometimes loud and sudden. He was no longer quiet, as he had been in the months after Mum died. He was often larky and excitable, even hilarious. He specialized in lavish surprises. In the summer he hired a pink stretch limousine to take them to the opening night of a new movie in town (though when they got there they found it was the wrong day). And at Christmas he bought a spectacular display of lights for the front of the house featuring three snowmen, six reindeer, a Santa Claus and thirty-two elves (but he must have put it up wrong because it fell off into the street and broke).
It was as if he had become a different person.
What should I do about Dad? Martha asked herself. What would Mum do?
I must do something, she thought. I must keep my head, and think. After all, I am eleven.
8
Doctor Zhivago is one of the world’s greatest movies, Marcus said. He kindly explained it to Tug.
‘Zhivago is a poet. Tonya is the daughter of a doctor. Lara is a dressmaker’s daughter. Pasha is a revolutionary. Komarovsky is a fat villain.’ Marcus paused for a moment. ‘How wonderful to be a dressmaker’s daughter,’ he said, with feeling.
He went on: ‘Zhivago marries Tonya. Komarovsky loves Lara. Lara marries Pasha. Then there’s the Russian Revolution.’
‘Why?’ Tug asked.
‘Because, little Tug, they’re in Russia.’
Tug thought about that. ‘What do they eat in Russia?’ he asked, after a moment.
‘I’m not sure. Bears, I think.’
‘How wonderful to eat bears,’ Tug said, with feeling.
Marcus went on: ‘It’s very snowy in Russia. Zhivago falls in love with Lara in the snow. Tonya lives alone in the snow. Zhivago goes back to Tonya.’
Tug nodded thoughtfully.
‘Because of the snow Pasha goes mad. Zhivago goes back to Lara. Lara leaves with Komarovsky. Zhivago dies. Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?’ He coughed modestly. ‘Martha?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is my hat ready?’
Martha produced an enormous fur object, and Marcus took it from her with delight. ‘Feel it,’ he said. ‘Feel how soft it is. You see, little Tug, it’s all to do with snow. Now, do you have any questions?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. You are an attentive and intelligent boy. What is your question?’
‘What do bears taste of?’
When they had finished recording for the afternoon, Martha asked Marcus for his advice.
‘Certainly. Is it to do with the film?’
‘No. It’s about something else.’ She felt nervous, and didn’t know quite what to say.
‘Another project?’
‘In a way.’
Marcus looked intrigued. ‘What sort of project?’
‘Actually, it’s to do with helping my dad.’
‘A project to do with helping your father? Interesting. What media are we talking about? Is it film, or mime, or art installation? Or is it live performance? What category would you put it into?’
Martha said, ‘The category of good deeds.’
Marcus looked dismayed. ‘This is a totally new field for me.’
At last Martha explained.
‘I see.’ Marcus thought deeply for a long time. ‘I think we should put it under “lifestyle”. The most important of all the categories. Sit here. Tell me about it.’
It was the first time Martha had talked about Dad to anybody apart from Tug; she found it hard to choose the right words. ‘Excitable’ was one word she used. Also ‘forgetful’, ‘careless’ and ‘moody’. She described how tired Dad was when he wasn’t larky, and listed his recent ailments, and mentioned that he had fallen off the front of the house. She did not say that he was strange. She did not know what ‘strange’ meant to Marcus.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘he’s very funny, and he makes us all laugh, and he thinks up wonderful treats like midnight picnics. But sometimes he’s sad. And lazy. And he doesn’t look well. He’s very white in a dirty sort of way. The truth is, I just don’t understand him any more.’
‘She doesn’t understand me either,’ Tug put in. ‘She doesn’t understand being hungry, Marcus.’
‘Dear, dear,’ Marcus said. ‘How long has your father been like this? Since your mother died?’
‘No. At first he was a bit quieter. He never ever talked about Mum, which was a bit weird, but basically he was the same as before. He started to change a few months ago, after we moved house. I don’t know why.’
Marcus became thoughtful. It was a side of him they didn’t often see. Usually he behaved as if he were acting – as if he were playing the role of himself in his own movie. But he had another side which he kept hidden, a kinder and slower side, and he had a certain look which went with it, puzzled and soft.
He turned his puzzled, soft face towards Martha.
‘I think you should encourage him to get a job,’ he said. ‘He’ll be happier if he’s busy. And it sounds like he should work on his fitness. Fitness will make him feel more energetic. Also, calmer.’
Martha was pleased with these ideas.
‘One more thing.’
‘What?’
‘Something I must suggest delicately.’
‘What is it?’
Marcus hesitated. ‘I think you should get him a girlfriend.’
‘A girlfriend!’ Martha was taken by surprise. The thought of welcoming a stranger into the family, even temporarily, made her anxious. She pointed her nose at Marcus, and said sharply, ‘Why does he have to have a girlfriend?’
Marcus put his hand on hers. ‘No one will ever replace your mother. A wonderful actress,’ he added, respectfully. ‘A girlfriend’s just a project, something to do. With a girlfriend, your father will have to make an effort, smarten himself up, behave himself, be less careless, less forgetful. I think a girlfriend would be very stimulating for him.’
Martha thought about it. She thought about Mum, and had the sudden, surprising feeling that Mum would agree with Marcus. Mum used to say, Always do what’s best, even if you don’t like it.
She calmed down.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s a good idea. Though he’s so white and dirty at the moment I don’t know that girlfriends will like him. He’s very nice,’ she added, ‘but it’s hard to see straight away.’
‘Remember fitness. Get him to a gym, Martha. Tone him. Buff him. Dude him up. It’s all to do with the project.’
Martha was impressed. ‘I didn’t expect you to be so practical, Marcus.’
‘I aim to be unexpected,’ he said modestly.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ His puzzled, soft expression disappeared. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I can’t have my leading costume designer unhappy. What would happen to my wardrobe?’
9
But it turned out that Dad did not like gyms.
‘Full of sinister equipment,’ he said.
‘What equipment?’ Tug asked.
‘Contraptions,’ Dad said, ‘for punishing people.’
They talked about jogging, which involved no equipment, but which Dad thought was bad for knees, and tennis, which Dad had decided some time ago was ‘boring’. Squash apparently brought on claustrophobia, and badminton was too slow. Golf was very expensive and, besides, it wasn’t really exercise. Tug thought Dad might like kick-boxing, but Dad didn’t.
‘What about walking?’ he said. ‘Round the garden, for instance. Or part of it.’
Eventually he agreed to go swimming.
It was Sunday morning; the swimming baths were crowded with families. Mothers sat with their babies in the baby pool, and trim elderly people did lengths in the big pool. Kids of all ages larked in the shallows with brightly-coloured floats. The noise of people dodging in and out of the sprinklers and jets, and plunging down the flumes into the splash pools, made echoes that banged about the ceiling. Everywhere was busy except for a section of the main pool reserved for group instruction, and the diving pool, which was closed for special training.
Dad stood on the side in his old Speedos, looking doubtful. He seemed very pale. ‘Shall we go in the baby pool first?’ he said.
‘I’m not a baby,’ Tug said.
‘I wasn’t thinking of you, Tug. It’s warm and relaxing in the baby pool.’
Martha steered Dad to the fast lane in the big pool. ‘How many lengths do you think you can do?’ she asked.
Dad looked more doubtful than ever.
‘Start with twenty,’ she said.
‘All right. How many before I can have a rest?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Oh, I see.’
While Dad swam, Tug went to play in the sprinklers.
‘Aren’t you coming in, Martha?’ he called. ‘In a minute.’
She wanted to keep an eye on Dad. As she watched him, she thought again about what Marcus had said. She understood that getting Dad fit would make him healthier, and getting a job would make him busier, and that having a girlfriend might make him happier. But would these things make him quieter and more sensible, the way he used to be?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a girl who hobbled over and collapsed into the seat next to her. A heavy, red-faced girl.
She writhed in her seat, hissing. ‘Foot!’ she gasped.
‘Cramp?’
The girl nodded urgently. Her eyes bulged.
Martha took her foot and slowly bent it back, and after a moment the girl gave a sigh of relief. ‘I knew I was meant to do that – my mum’s a nurse – but somehow it’s hard to do on your own.’
They began to talk.
‘Do you like swimming?’ the red-faced girl asked. She had a blunt way of speaking which was very pleasant.
‘I don’t mind it.’
‘I hate it. Bloody water everywhere. Up the nose, in the ears. Are you here on your own?’
Martha pointed out Tug sitting under the sprinkler catching water in his cupped hands, and Dad, who had been moved by the lifeguard out of the fast lane into the slow one, where he was swimming with a stiff and upright breast-stroke.
The girl watched for a moment. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
Martha was taken aback. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, can he swim?’
‘Oh. Yes. He’s just not used to it. Are you here on your own?’
The girl said that she was with her mum.
‘She’s a good swimmer, I expect.’
‘She swims five times a week. I don’t know whether she’s killing time or trying to pick up men. Here she is.’
A handsome woman in a red swimsuit came up to them. ‘Are you OK, Laura? I saw you limping.’
‘Cramp. Gone now. She helped me.’
Laura’s mum smiled at Martha. ‘Would you like a drink? We were just going to the café.’
‘Thank you, but I have to watch my brother. And my dad.’
Laura’s mum smiled again. ‘Some dads definitely need watching.’
Martha wasn’t sure she understood that, but adults often said things that weren’t really meant to be understood. After Laura and her mum had gone to the café she turned her attention back to the slow lane.
A minute later she realized Dad was no longer in it. She went over to the sprinklers.
‘Where’s Dad, Tug?’
‘He went.’
‘Went where?’
‘He didn’t tell me. He just went.’
They began to search for him. He wasn’t anywhere in the big pool, and he wasn’t at the flumes either.
‘Where would you go if you were Dad, Tug?’
‘The café,’ Tug said promptly.
They went to the café.
Laura’s mum called out, ‘Have you lost him already?’
‘Yes,’ Martha said.
‘Try the baby pool. It’s very warm and relaxing.’
And as they walked towards it, they saw Dad slip out of the changing rooms with a furtive look on his face and sneak into the hot shallow water.
Martha told him off.
Dad explained that if the lengths he had done in the fast lane were added to the lengths he did in the slow lane, they totalled nearly twenty, or if not twenty then almost certainly more than half of twenty, or at least nearly half, though some of the lengths were admittedly not quite lengths, but most were half a length, perhaps.
Martha was still cross. ‘That’s rubbish,’ she said.
‘I know. I feel bad. But at least it’s a start. What do you think, Tug?’
‘I agree with you,’ Tug said. ‘It is warm.’
They lay together in the warmth, looking at the people around them and gazing beyond to the main pool, and up at the boards of the diving pool high above them. Dad didn’t look as if he felt bad. He looked surprisingly perky. His eyes were shining.
‘What were you doing in the changing rooms?’ Martha asked.
He didn’t seem to hear her. Continuing to gaze up at the diving boards, he grinned. ‘Diving’s exciting. Much more exciting than swimming. I could handle diving.’
‘I like diving too,’ Martha said. ‘Those boards are too high though.’
Dad disagreed. ‘It’s actually easier to dive off high boards. More time to get yourself straight on the way down.’
‘Can you get yourself straight on the way down, Dad?’ Tug asked.
‘I expect so. If I can fall off a roof into a hawthorn tree, I reckon I can dive into some water.’
Martha looked doubtful.
‘It’s a pity the diving pool isn’t open, or I’d show you.’
Even Tug looked doubtful.
‘You two are terrible. Don’t you believe me?’
‘It’s just that you’ve only just got over falling off the roof,’ Martha said kindly.
Dad became excitable. ‘You think I can’t do anything!’ His eyes shone even brighter. ‘Right.’ He pulled himself out of the water. ‘I’ll ask the attendants if they’ll open the pool for me.’
‘Don’t, Dad!’ Martha cried.
But he ignored her and they watched him walk away. He walked with a sort of swagger. Occasionally he slipped, and laughed at himself.
‘Listen,’ Tug said. ‘He’s singing.’
They listened, and, through the clatter and echoes of the swimming baths, they heard the words, faint but jaunty: ‘The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain …’
10
A memory came back to her.
After Mum died, when she was nine, Martha had been ill. For a week or more she was feverish and frequently sick. Her whole body ached and she seemed to live in her dreams, confused and exhausted. Dad looked after her. Taking time off work, he stayed at home all day, reading stories to her, cooling her forehead with a flannel, feeding her spoonfuls of soup. He was always wi
th her; when she had nightmares he calmed her and when she was sick he comforted her. Every day he bathed her. And later, when she was stronger, he took her to the swimming baths. In the baby pool, where she was standing now with Tug, he had supported her in his arms to let the warm water soothe her, and sung to her softly, careless of other people listening around them. The words had seemed to be a sort of spell, making her better, ‘The bear went over the mountain … to see what he could see.’
That’s what she remembered. Dad’s mouth close to her ear. The magic words. His soothing voice.
That was when Dad was safe. The words of the song sounded very different now. They had a mocking air, and the bear seemed foolish, and Martha knew for certain that there was nothing on the other side of the mountain but more mountain. It made her cross.
Dad turned, laughing, waved at them and walked on.
Tug pulled her arm. ‘Is he going to do it, Martha?’
‘No, Tug. The diving pool’s closed. Why would they open it?’
‘Martha?’ Tug said.
‘Yes?’
‘He’s being strange again, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘He was all right until just a minute ago. Now he’s all excitable. I’m not sure Marcus’s plan is going to work.’ She frowned. ‘Do you think it would help if we got him a girlfriend?’
‘Where do you get girlfriends for dads?’
‘I don’t know.’
She sighed and pulled herself out of the baby pool. ‘I’d better go and make sure he doesn’t do anything silly,’ she said to Tug. ‘Wait here.’
*
By the time she was halfway there, Dad was already talking to the attendants at the diving pool. There was a chain across the entrance and a sign: DIVING POOL CLOSED. Martha could see Dad nodding and smiling as he talked to the two women.
She heard him say, ‘Not too early, am I?’
He was being jokey.
The attendants were looking at him.
One of them said, ‘Are you here to train?’
And Dad said, with a grin, ‘Absolutely.’
Martha speeded up. But she was too late. The attendant got up out of her seat and removed the chain from across the entrance and, before Martha could reach him, Dad was inside the diving pool area and the chain was back across the entrance.