Enchantment

by Monica Dickens

  ‘Oh, I – I thought I saw someone I knew. My brother, as a matter of fact.’ Tim could never resist the compulsion to complicate a neat, clean lie with an extra one for decoration.

  The white car was not following them.

  Julian was back for the holidays, and Helen had a bit of help at home, and could take him to a special day-centre two or three days a week.

  On a day off, when it was actually not raining, Tim hired a small motorboat and took them both on the river. Julian wore an orange lifejacket, and Helen kept a close watch on him, while Tim piloted the boat. At the lock, he had to manage the ropes as well, because Helen could not let go of Julian, but he and Zara had often been on the river, and he was glad to show off his competence.

  As they chugged slowly upstream, past the wet meadows and the dormant fishermen, Julian was fascinated by the movement of the water against the sides of the boat. Helen held on to the back of his lifejacket while he leaned over and watched the changing shape and flow of the ripples, and reached down to try and touch the glitter of the sun.

  It was a beautiful hot day. Helen did not wear shorts or a swimsuit like other women passing by in boats, which perhaps was just as well. She wore a flowered shirt, open to show the knobs where her ribs joined her breastbone, and a long, loose cotton skirt and flat sandals. She had twisted a scarf into a band to wear round her hair. She looked quite nice, like a peasant woman on a barge, calmly watching the life of the river go by.

  The dark masses of the trees crowded down the hilly banks to drop heavily leafed branches over the water’s edge. The blue sky and small clouds were as clean as the beginning of the world. Tim was peaceful, sitting at the wheel in a dark-blue top and white jeans and pale bare feet. He felt very relaxed and at ease after all last week’s disturbances and anxieties. Harold had no place here, and the whole saga of the police visit and the lorry driver seemed to be part of ancient history.

  When they tied up by the bank, Helen let Julian lean right over and put his hands in the water. He paddled them about for a long time and fought, with his adventurous tongue already out, to go further down and taste the river.

  Tim held him while Helen unpacked the lunch. She had brought a half-bottle of wine and cold sausages and tomatoes and fruit and sandwiches which Julian picked apart to eat the cheese inside. He threw a lot of food in the river. Soon ducks appeared alongside, and down on the stream, like the fairy queen’s barges, two swans sailed in to claim their rights.

  ‘Look, Helen, Julian – look! The mother’s carrying her babies.’

  Inside the curved shelter of the swan’s wings, two mouse-coloured cygnets rode on her broad downy back, heads peering this way and that through the feathers, smug in their occupation of the most comfortable place in all the world.

  ‘Look, Julian.’ Tim turned the boy’s head to make him look, and the boy shook it loose and bit his hand. The cygnets plopped off into the water, as the two swans began to bully and grab at the bread. When Julian waved his arms about, one of them hissed with its great orange beak and raised its powerful wings. Julian shrieked and jumped to the opposite seat, lost his footing, and would have gone over the side between the boat and the bank, if Helen had not grabbed him with the speed and precision of long practice.

  After lunch, Tim unmoored the boat and they cruised back downriver. Julian was jumpy, so Tim started to make up a story about the secret life of swans. There was no way of knowing whether Julian understood any of it, or even listened, but Tim enjoyed telling it. The boy, whose skin was a browner version of his golden hair in these early summer days, stared from the other side of the boat, but he could have been staring at the moving tow-path scene behind Tim’s shoulder.

  He licked the food taste on his hands, and then he moved across to sit behind Tim, hanging an arm over the side to trail his hand in the water.

  ‘The prince could see the beauty of the swan above the water, but under the surface, down in the muddy depths, the engine of the great webbed feet was a secret known only to the tadpoles and fishes. Like you, Julian. Beautiful outside. Inside, a secret we don’t know.’

  Julian had laid his head against Tim’s back.

  ‘He can feel the vibration of your voice,’ Helen said.

  The child stayed still for a while, fascinated with the movement of the water against his fingers, until he suddenly jerked up his hand and sloshed it across the back of Tim’s head.

  A narrow boat was going by upstream, with people eating and drinking in the stern well, and children on the roof, and a line of washing. Tim shook the water out of his hair, and Julian celebrated with his strange whoops and hoots. The people on the barge all turned to look. The children pointed.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to go on a barge trip,’ Helen said. ‘Without Julian.’

  ‘We went on a barge holiday in Holland,’ Tim lied, ‘when I was a child.’

  Their family holidays had been at Butlins, or on a caravan site, or in a Welsh cottage exposed to north-western gales. Never abroad, because Tim’s father did not trust it. When everyone started to go to one Costa or another, he mistrusted not only Spain, but those who went there.

  As suddenly as he did everything else, Julian fell heavily across Helen, and was asleep.

  ‘In Holland?’ Helen murmured.

  ‘No, actually.’ Tim backtracked, before she could ask him about windmills. ‘Here, on the river. My sister and I went up to Oxford for a day trip.’

  Helen said, with closed eyes, ‘This is more fun.’

  Just before the last lock, Tim nosed into the bank again, and Helen got out a cake and a thermos of tea. When Tim moved to jump on to the bank and tie up the boat, Julian started to come slowly awake. While Helen was looking for the sugar, he suddenly became completely awake, stood up on the seat and pitched forward over the stern of the boat, arms outspread, into the river.

  He surfaced, coughing and spitting, his curls plastered over his astonished eyes, already beginning to float away in his lifejacket on the current. Without a second’s thought, Tim jumped in to save him.

  Tim was not a good swimmer. He trod water, trying to get his bearings, and saw Julian swimming quite strongly against the stream back to the boat, where Helen bent over the side and hauled him on board.

  The gap between Tim and the boat was wider. Don’t panic. He swam, with a desperate breast stroke, keeping his face out of the water, and just managed to struggle back to the boat. Helen hauled him in too. She was very strong, for a small woman.

  ‘Julian has swimming lessons,’ she told Tim, and laughed. ‘Perhaps you should too.’

  She dried Julian off and dressed him in the spare clothes she had to take everywhere with him. In the lock, the lock-keeper and the people in the other boats and at the top of the wall could see that Tim was soaking wet, as he jumped off to loop the bow rope round a bollard.

  The man at the boatyard said, ‘Nice day for a dip, eh?’

  When Tim dropped Helen at her flat, she made him come upstairs to be dried off. He put a towel round his waist and sat by the electric fire, keeping an eye on Julian, while Helen took his clothes down to the tumble drier in the basement.

  Julian messed himself. While Helen had him in the bath, he began to get sleepy again.

  ‘You won’t need your pills tonight, will you, love?’ Helen said.

  Tim helped to dry him, loving his young, promising body, so cruelly kept from the fullness of life by the damaged brain. Helen put on a fearsome package of nappies and plastic pants, and Tim carried him, asleep, into his little bedroom which was bare of toys or pictures or anything to do damage with or destroy.

  Helen went downstairs to get Tim’s clothes out of the drier. When she came back with the bundle in her arms, Tim walked towards her and she dropped the bundle and they put their arms round each other and kissed. A proper kiss this time, with all the trimmings.

  Helen was very direct. ‘Come into the bedroom, if you like.’

  In bed, she was under the covers, so Tim
could not see what her body looked like, but it felt wonderful, like a woman, like Kathy, who was the only other woman with whom he had ever lain down naked.

  ‘Helen – is it all right if we –?’

  ‘If you want,’ she said, and, knowing that he was nervous, ‘don’t hurry. It’s all right, we’ll be all right.’

  Blch, give me power, Blch be here, ravisher of maidens, be with me.

  It was working out all right. He had rolled on top of Helen’s calm body when a thud and a piercing shriek came from the other bedroom. Tim rolled off and Helen rolled out and scrambled into Julian’s room.

  ‘He fell out of bed.’

  By the time she came back, Tim knew that it was not all right. Blch had retreated. Tim turned his head on the pillow and put an arm over his face.

  Helen sat on the bed in a dressing-gown that had seen better days.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Oh, I am sorry. After you gave us such a lovely day, and were such a hero, jumping in to rescue Julian.’

  Was this why she had let him into her bed?

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She lifted his arm away from his face and ran her finger along the inside of it. Nothing. It felt like … like someone running a finger down the inside of your arm.

  ‘You can come back, you know, any time you like.’

  ‘Not when Julian’s here. How did you ever, sort of – do it with your husband?’

  ‘Hardly ever. Julian was only at Val’s play school, then, and not away at school. If he wasn’t sleepy at night, you couldn’t put him to bed, and in those days, I didn’t believe in sedatives. That was part of the problem.’

  Chapter Ten

  It was so awful, that Tim put it out of his head, which was what he did with things that were too painful. Helen rang up once. Tim was polite, but not encouraging, since she had obviously rung up only because she was sorry for him. If she was feeling superior because he was too young and too futile and flabby, she was welcome to feel that on her own, with no help from Tim.

  When she rang, she did not say anything for a moment, and Tim thought it was Harold, and almost rang off; but she said in her clipped way, ‘Is that Tim?’, and he said, ‘Hello, Helen,’ coolly, as if they had never lain in bed and whispered together.

  He wished he were still doing play-by-mail, or even role-playing games with Gareth and his moronic mates. It would be a good time to immerse himself in that old seductive world again. He bought another Willard Freeman book, Star Chasm, but now that ‘All the best, Bill’ was not a special hero any more, the discovery game seemed rather childish, and it was too much trouble to keep turning pages forward and back: ‘Turn to 122 … Got ya! You have slipped into an unfathomable black tunnel with a morass full of writhing hellgrammites at the bottom.’

  He put it in the drawer with Pocket Pickups, whose advice was based on the assumption that girls were longing for it, so don’t hold back. It did not tell you what to do if you had nothing to hold back.

  Tim still got a games-playing magazine, because he had taken out a subscription, so he read it out of habit and to keep his mind on ego-boosting topics. It was inevitable that his eye would be caught by the half-page advertisement:

  DISCOVER THE REAL YOU! Learn to live rough and fend for yourself. ENTERPRISE Ltd still has a few openings for our adventure training weekend courses that will teach YOU navigation, abseiling, caving, fire and shelter building in the forest.

  With no previous experience, YOU can learn to live at one with the Great Outdoors, and go home feeling great. APPLY NOW! The arts of survival could save your life – or someone else’s.

  This was for Tim. Here comes the great expert in river rescue. He cut out the advertisement and pinned it up over the sink.

  Harold had stayed away for three days, five days, a week. Perhaps he was getting tired of his imaginary grievances at last, and would give all his energies to hod carrying.

  At the theatre, Tim continued to watch Pygmalion almost every night, and to dream that he could be Craig’s understudy. Craig did not look all that well. Halfway through the season, he was tired and fed up with the long hours and hard work of repertory.

  ‘I’m sick of this stupid part,’ he said to Tim.

  I’ll have it, if you don’t want it.

  ‘Shaw put nothing into Freddy. He’s not supposed to have any character. You love the theatre, Tim, but I tell you, don’t ever dream about being on the stage.’

  Tim remembered when he had recited the murderer’s speech: ‘I loved her, do you understand?’ and Craig had said, ‘You should have done the part instead of me.’

  ‘But, Craig, I’ll never forget you said, ages ago when I first knew you, you said I ought to be an actor.’

  ‘Did I?’ Craig frowned. ‘I don’t think I did.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll never forget. You said.’

  The Enterprise advertisement over the sink drew Tim powerfully. He polished the taps while he read and re-read its promise of adventure and manhood. The cost for two days was not enormous. No room charge, because you slept under the stars. In a forest! Tim’s mind had pitched camp many times with Blch and his followers, telling tales round the fire where the plump urbok roasted, lying in the bracken, wrapped in his elven-spun cloak, listening to prowling monsters and the eerie night birds’ cries.

  One evening, he picked up the phone and called Enterprise. Courses were pretty booked up, a man called Steve said, but there were a few openings in three weeks’ time.

  ‘Oh – thanks. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Better book now, to be sure of places.’

  Do it, Tim, do it. ‘All right.’ He gave his name and address.

  ‘Are you a pair, or a group?’

  Panic. Obviously no one went alone. ‘I’m coming with a friend.’ Tim’s mind was working rapidly. Craig wasn’t in the play that week. He had slaved so hard, surely he could get the weekend off. They would share a tent, and talk far into the night in the rustling forest. They would work side by side. It would be much more fun with Craig.

  He gave Craig’s name, and sent off the fees.

  In his lunch hour, he took the advertisement down to the theatre, where they were rehearsing next week’s play. Craig was at the back of the theatre, studying his part. Tim sat down next to him.

  ‘Here, look at this.’

  ‘Sounds fun.’ Craig read the advertisement. ‘Why have people got this craze for survival all of a sudden?’

  ‘You got me there,’ Tim said. He had not thought about it. ‘To be ready for the nuclear holocaust?’

  ‘Everybody dead but you?’

  ‘I’ll be king.’

  Craig laughed silently. The theatre was so small, they were quite near the stage, and had to talk in whispers.

  ‘I’m going to have a go,’ Tim said. ‘Three weeks from Saturday. Look – er, look, it’s Stranger in the Dark that week. You’re not in that. Come with me. Ask them for the weekend off.’

  ‘This management? You must be joking. No, count me out. Too rugged for me anyway.’

  *

  But not for Tim. He began to set his radio alarm early, and crossed the road to go jogging in the park. Brian and Jack made jokes about it, but he jogged with them some mornings, keeping a few paces behind so that they would not hear him puffing. If he had a heart attack, would they notice, and turn back?

  ‘Getting in training to climb a mountain with us?’ Jack wanted to know. ‘We’re doing the Cuillins if the clear weather holds.’

  ‘I’m into survival,’ Tim said.

  ‘Just what you need in Webster’s. Thought any more about the management course?’

  ‘No, I mean a proper survival course. Abseiling down rocks, and caves and that.’

  ‘Good boy, good for you.’ When Brian smiled, his teeth looked out of his beard like a row of little creatures in the forest undergrowth.

  One morning, Tim spotted Harold ahead of them, in his Superhod boots and baggy cords tied at the ankles, walking with his hands in his
pockets along a path at the end of the park.

  ‘Isn’t that your friend with the clumsy feet?’ Brian asked over his shoulder.

  ‘No.’ Tim dropped to a walk, not wanting to get any closer to Harold. ‘Got to turn back now. See – see you!’ But they had run on in front, already out of hearing.

  Tim put off ringing Enterprise, as he put off all difficult phone calls. He left it to the last moment to tell Steve, ‘My friend can’t come. Illness in the family.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ The country voice was strong and steady as befitted ‘Staff with natural leadership qualities’.

  ‘So, if you could re-pay his fee …’

  ‘Well, that’s a bit awkward, you see, because it’s too late to fill his place.’

  ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Tim Kendall, millionaire. He could not make a fuss about the money, and arrive there on Saturday morning with them already hating him. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I wonder if … look, I don’t know you yet, but you want to do survival, so you. must be OK. I wonder what you’d think about giving the place to a very worthwhile young lad who desperately wants to do the basic course, but can’t afford it?’

  Sod that, was Tim’s first instinct. If he’s poor, he probably gets more than I do, from the government. But here was a golden chance to show up for a weekend with a built-in fantastic image that would offset any of the horrible mistakes he would probably make on the course.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. Norm will be thrilled. Norman Driver. I know him through a school where I’ve been teaching PE. That’s marvellous of you.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  That’s right, Tim. Chuck your money away. He disliked Norman Driver already.

  He disliked him even more when he saw him.

  In the car park at the top of the hill where they all met, Norman stuck out like a loose thread from the assortment of young men in their twenties and teens, some of them pretty rough-looking, with dirty hair and spooky clothes, who joked and smoked and pushed each other about, and made Tim feel, as he often felt, like an insecure outsider.