In a Good Light

by Clare Chambers

  In the evening Mum would cook dinner on a two-ring primus stove, using whatever we had managed to buy that morning, along with our supplies of dried food from home. Some of these combinations were more successful than others: chicken with mushrooms and rice we liked; pork chops with spaghetti and marrow we didn’t. Plates had to be cleared either way, as there was no larder or fridge for raiding later. Dad would boil a kettle to wash the dishes in a bucket, and then we would sit around the table by the light of a whining gas-lamp and play non-competitive games until bedtime.

  One night, on our first visit there, I woke up to a darkness so complete I thought I’d gone blind. My screams must have been audible in Milford Haven, and caused pandemonium in the confined space of the caravan, as the other three blundered around, stubbing their toes and colliding as they hunted for the torch. After that episode I was never comfortable in a blackout again, and Mum had to leave a candle burning all night to placate me.

  Caravan life favoured those with a strong bladder. It was a half-mile hike to the chemiloo in the farmer’s spidery shed, which had no light and the bottom half of a stable door which didn’t shut. If you applied any pressure it was likely to come adrift from its one hinge altogether. For emergencies there was a bucket behind the caravan. I don’t remember washing: I think we went without.

  We seldom left our immediate surroundings, except on foot. That stony track was a powerful deterrent to unnecessary travel, particularly if we’d used the spare tyre on the way in. One glorious day, though, when the temperature was in the nineties, Mum and Dad contained their revulsion and took us to a seaside resort, where we dug fortifications against the incoming tide and threw our grubby little bodies off the collapsing ramparts into the surf. Mum changed into an ancient flowered swimsuit with an attached skirt and moulded cups like half coconuts, and showed off plucked-chicken skin to the sun. Dad, who was red-haired and likely to burn, stayed covered up and did the crossword. When Christian and I started to wrinkle from too much time in the water we scratched ourselves dry on thin, prickly towels and played tennis on a court drawn in the sand with the edge of a spade.

  In the afternoon we walked along the front and bought 99s from a fat man in a kiosk. The ice-cream swirled onto the cones, whiter than anything in nature, and tastier too.

  ‘Forty new pence!’ mum muttered, shaking her head as she handed over the cash. ‘That’s eight shillings.’ It nearly broke her heart to give that sort of money to someone who looked so well-fed.

  ‘Still, it’s only once a year, eh?’ Dad said, seeing the rapture on our faces as we licked the pointed white peaks into smooth hills.

  ‘You’re right, you’re right, I should just shut up and enjoy it,’ Mum sighed. ‘But what a price.’

  Lured by the flashing lights and the chink of coins, Christian and I hung back at the entrance to the amusement arcade, gazing at the slot machines, with their tempting overhang of copper pennies. Anyone could see that it would only take one more penny to bring the whole lot crashing down, but we knew better than to ask for something that didn’t grow on trees, especially after that ice-cream.

  There was a whoop from an old woman beside the door. The one-armed bandit had started to pump out silver: ker-chunk, ker-chunk, went the beating of its metal heart, as the woman scrabbled to collect her winnings. Christian’s eyes gleamed as she moved away. He could see one she’d missed – a ten pence piece winking in the corner of the tray. He waited until she had gone and then ducked inside to claim it.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Mother demanded, pouncing. She had been looking at postcards a few doors down and only just noticed we weren’t with her.

  ‘From in there. It was just lying there,’ he said defensively, his fingers closing round the coin. Up ahead I could see a man holding a box of flags and a collecting tin in the shape of a lifeboat. Christian saw him too. ‘Please can I keep it?’ he begged, knowing how Mum’s mind worked.

  ‘Well,’ she looked to Dad for a ruling, but he just shrugged. ‘All right,’ she relented. ‘But you’d better pray you’re never shipwrecked!’

  It was an exceptional day in every way. The early start meant we hadn’t had time to buy food for the evening meal, so on the way back to the caravan we stopped for fish and chips, which we ate out of paper with little wooden forks. Frizzled nuggets of golden batter, and soft, fat chips, stinging with salt and vinegar: nothing would ever taste as good again.

  ‘When I’m earning money,’ Christian whispered later, as we followed Dad’s swinging torch beam across the field to the chemiloo before bedtime, ‘I’m going to have fish and chips and white ice-cream every night. You wait and see.’

  I kept that little fork wrapped in a piece of tissue in my pocket until we were back home again, when I transferred it to the empty Germolene tin that held all my treasures.

  When it was time to leave and return to the Old Schoolhouse and what remained of the summer holidays, Mum told us we would be stopping in Bath for lunch with the owner of the caravan, whom we were to address as Aunty Barbara, though she was no relation. Although I’d never met her, I knew the name from birthday cards, which she sent several weeks late, if at all. These cards were sometimes accompanied by an inappropriate gift – indoor fireworks, for example, or a glassblowing kit. Her latest present to me had been a model of a silver Aston Martin, as driven by James Bond. On the bottom of the box was a label reading: To Donovan, love from Daddy.

  ‘Will I have to kiss her?’ asked Christian, who at twelve was starting not to enjoy being slobbered over by grown-ups.

  ‘No. Not if you don’t want to,’ Dad promised him.

  ‘If she gives us mash will I have to eat it?’

  ‘Of course. She’ll have gone to a lot of trouble to give us lunch.’

  ‘Will we have to sit and talk to her?’ Christian wanted to know. We were just turning up the hill to her house, one of a sand-coloured terrace, with black railings and steps leading up to the front door.

  ‘Do stop worrying,’ said Mum. ‘It’ll be perfectly fine. ‘She’s got a boy about your age. You can talk to him.’

  ‘Whose age?’ I said, brightening at the prospect of young company and strange new toys to play with.

  ‘Oh, in the middle, I think,’ Mum said vaguely, as we pulled up outside number twelve Clifton Villas. A terracotta plant pot containing some bruised petunias stood awkwardly on the third step, partly blocking the way. Dad bent to move it and then stood up sharply as a fat drop of water hit him on the back of the neck. We looked up to see a steady drip, drip, falling from the overflow pipe to land squarely in the flower pot. ‘Ah,’ said Dad, stepping round it to ring the doorbell.

  From within the house a voice called, ‘Get that, Donovan,’ and a few seconds later the door opened an inch or two and snagged against a chain. A boy bigger than me stood in the gap, frowning.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  Dad rocked nervously on his heels, holding out the box of Genuine Welsh Fudge he’d just bought at Aust Services. ‘Hello. We’ve come to see Mummy.’

  ‘Hang on,’ the boy said, slamming the door on us. We could hear his retreating footsteps and then a muffled exchange of ‘Who is it?’ ‘Some people to see you.’ ‘Find out what they want. Oh never mind, I’ll do it myself.’

  Mum and Dad rolled their eyes at each other, and then there was a clatter as someone fumbled the chain off and the door flew open. Although it was nearly lunchtime the woman standing before us was still in her dressing gown, which was pink satin and decorated with coffee-coloured stains. Her hair was half in and half out of a bird’s nest arrangement on top of her head, and her eyes were two squashed spiders of smudged mascara.

  ‘What the F—’, she began, and then as the moment of recognition dawned her face seemed to collapse with embarrassment. ‘Oh Christ. It’s never today already,’ she said, and shrank back behind the door, emitting a strange whimpering noise.

  ‘Look, why don’t you lot wait in the car,’ Dad said, taking c
ontrol. He handed Mum the keys and the fudge and we trooped back down the steps, while he slipped inside and closed the door.

  ‘What was wrong with her?’ Christian asked, when we were all safely inside the car.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I could see Mum’s face in the mirror, her eyes pinched shut. ‘She may have only just got out of bed. Clearly she’s not expecting us for lunch.’

  ‘I’m hungry!’ I wailed.

  ‘Here.’ Mum passed back the box of fudge, an uncharacteristic gesture which showed the full measure of her preoccupation. ‘You might as well have some of this. There’ll be nothing else for a while.’

  Christian and I fell on the box, clawing at the cellophane, before she could change her mind. On the front was a woman in fancy dress – a black and white checked skirt and a sawn-off witch’s hat with a frill, superimposed on a background of mountains and blue, blue sky. It wasn’t a scene we recognised from the mudflats of Milford Haven, but the fudge was everything we could have wished for: smooth and buttery and sweeter than sugar itself. We ate piece after piece, our heads lolling in ecstasy. Mum hunted in the bag at her feet and produced her knitting needles from which hung the beginnings of another square for the Universal Quilt. Her fingers began to work, quickly, rhythmically, the ball of wool jumping beside her.

  Half an hour passed. The woollen square was finished and cast off and another one begun. A pound of fudge sat heavily in our stomachs, the box lying empty on the seat between us, proclaiming our guilt, our greed, our lack of restraint. Any second now Mum would notice and we’d be in disgrace for the rest of the day.

  ‘What do you think he’s doing in there?’ Christian ventured to ask.

  Tick, tick, went the knitting needles. ‘I don’t know,’ Mum replied. ‘Just lending a hand.’

  ‘How much longer will he be?’

  ‘I’ve no more idea than you, darling. We shall just have to wait patiently.’

  As she said this, the front door opened and Dad emerged, holding a small suitcase. Behind him stood the boy whose frowning face we had glimpsed briefly. Dad gestured to me to move across onto the uncomfortable ridge between the two back seats. ‘This is Donovan,’ he said, ushering him in. ‘He’s coming to stay.’

  We exchanged quick, embarrassed smiles, sizing each other up, then Donovan turned back to stare at the blank windows of his house. His mother had not come out to wave him off. Mum raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  ‘She’s suffering from the . . . er . . . wrath of grapes,’ Dad replied in a whisper. ‘I’ve rung her best friend, Joan. She’s on her way over. It’s not the first time, apparently.’ And then at full volume: ‘Everyone comfortable in the back? Ha ha. Just say if it gets too breezy.’

  The small matter of lunch seemed to have been forgotten, but I could hardly raise it without reminding Mum about the fudge. In any case I was feeling slightly sick. I concentrated on stealing glances at Donovan’s profile. He had light brown hair, thick and close cut, like the pelt of a small mammal, so that it was all I could do to stop myself stroking the furry nape of his neck. His nose was straight and sprayed with freckles, and when he finally turned his head and caught me staring I could see that his eyes were pale green like the pebbles of glass that wash up on the beach after years and years at sea.

  ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ he asked, squinting. His confusion was understandable in the face of my unisex shorts and T-shirt, and androgynous haircut – a result of Mum’s ongoing war against nits and one-style-fits-all technique.

  ‘A boy,’ I replied, and he nodded, relieved.

  Christian gave a little snort from his corner, but didn’t give me away.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked. I could see he was some years older than me: his mouth was full of large, new teeth, while I still had gaps top and bottom.

  ‘Ten,’ he replied.

  ‘Ten,’ Dad sighed. ‘That’s a wonderful age.’

  Donovan looked unconvinced.

  ‘How long is he staying?’ I asked Mum, who was usually in charge of visitors. I didn’t want him vanishing without warning, like Cindy.

  ‘Oh, well, Donovan’s welcome to stay as long as he likes. Until his mummy’s better.’

  ‘Is she poorly?’

  ‘Yes. She just needs a little rest,’ Mum said lightly, though how she knew this I couldn’t imagine. She hadn’t even spoken to Aunty Barbara but had been in the car with us all the time. Sometimes it took your breath away what adults knew. Until that day I don’t think it had even occurred to me that grown-ups could be ill. I thought it was something to do with childhood, like having nightmares, or crying over nothing, that you grew out of. Mum and Dad certainly never complained of feeling unwell or took ‘little rests’.

  ‘I was sick in a bucket once,’ I confided to Donovan, who continued to stare out of the window.

  ‘My mum’s often sick in buckets,’ he said, without turning round.

  ‘Wh . . .’

  ‘Do you play cricket, Donovan?’ Dad cut in heartily.

  Donovan said he did, but that he couldn’t be in the school team because he didn’t have any whites. ‘I’m the third best batsman in my class,’ he said, with punctilious honesty.

  ‘Splendid. There you are, Christian. Now you’ve got someone to bowl at,’ Dad said.

  ‘He’s already got someone!’ I protested, a whole summer of wicket-keeping stretching before me.

  About a quarter of an hour into the journey, Donovan gave a gasp and said, ‘Chewy!’

  ‘What did you say, dear?’ Mum asked.

  ‘We’ve forgotten Chewy, my hamster. Mum won’t remember to feed him.’

  The car slowed down fractionally. ‘I’m sure she will.’

  ‘She won’t,’ Donovan said vehemently, his green eyes growing wide with alarm. He looked as if he might cry.

  ‘We’ll turn round. It’s no problem,’ Dad said, and at the next exit we swung off and headed back towards Bath. ‘I can check that this Joan has turned up,’ he said in a whispered aside to Mum.

  Twenty minutes later we restarted our journey with an extra passenger: a fist-sized furball who stayed wedged in a plastic tunnel at the bottom of his cage all the way home and refused to wake up and entertain us or show any gratitude for his rescue from certain starvation.

  On our arrival at the old Schoolhouse we found that in our absence a jay had fallen down the chimney into the dining room. Sooty streaks and smudges on the walls and ceiling were evidence of its suicidal panic to be free. A row of beheaded stalks was all that remained of a dried flower arrangement on the mantelpiece, and a pair of china figurines lay shattered on the tiled hearth.

  ‘Good-ee. Shan’t have to dust those again,’ Mum said – as if she ever did!

  The jay itself was discovered in a dishevelled state, patrolling the top of the Welsh dresser. Dad threw open the French windows and it took off like a rocket into the garden, almost scalping him.

  ‘Well!’ said Mum, as the five of us stood there surveying the debris. ‘Who’d have thought a thing that size could do so much damage?’

  7

  ‘YOU’RE A GIRL!’ Donovan said, watching me change into my nightdress. Mum had put him in Cindy’s old room, but as soon as she’d gone we dragged the mattress up to my room in the attic.

  ‘So?’ I laughed, pleased to have got the better of him.

  We had spent what was left of the daylight showing him over every inch of the house and garden, enjoying his evident admiration. ‘Is it all yours?’ he asked, taking in our overgrown acre with a sweep of his arm. ‘Lucky you,’ he muttered when we assured him it was. He was up the top of the rope swing in an instant, and swarming to the outermost branches of the oak. When he finally slid down the rope, scorching the palms of his hands, Christian treated him to an ‘up and round’ – a terrifying ride in which the tyre traced a dizzying elliptical path, passing inches from the tree trunk. His shrieks of laughter, or possibly fear, brought Mum to the window. ‘Don’t break Donovan’s neck the minute he arriv
es,’ she reproved mildly.

  After supper – shepherd’s pie containing generous amounts of carrot and swede but only traces of mince – we unpacked Donovan’s suitcase and inspected its contents. One toothbrush, one flannel, soap, Whale Adventure by Willard Price, clothes, a deck of cards, a compass, a wallet, a book of matches from a French hotel, bearing the enticing message Bienvenu `a Biarritz, and a brown felt sausage dog which leaked chopped tights from a hole in its belly. He stuffed the dog under his pillow, embarrassed, but we weren’t going to laugh anyway. Christian still had an old teddy somewhere in his room and took items of sports equipment to bed with him, so was in no position to mock.

  ‘What’s the compass for?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘In case I get lost,’ Donovan explained. ‘I’ll know where I am.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Christian, who at twelve was turning into something of a pedant. ‘You’ll just know which way you’re facing.’

  The most exciting discovery in Donovan’s case, from our point of view, was the wallet containing two five pound notes. The last time I had seen a fiver it had slipped out of a birthday card from Grandpa Percy. Mum had swiped it and put it in a special one-way bank account, which I couldn’t touch until I was eighteen and had learned, somehow, without any practice, the Value of Money.

  ‘Wow,’ said Christian, holding them up to the light to marvel at the watermarks. ‘Ten quid. Where did you get it from?’

  ‘My dad sends me pocket money sometimes. If he hasn’t seen me for a while I get more. Or if I do something good at school, like when I passed my piano exam, and I write and tell him, he sends me money then.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Christian, full of envy and indignation. ‘I do loads of things at school and I never get money for it. All the other boys in my class got bikes and stuff, just for getting into Turton’s, and I got a scholarship and Mum and Dad didn’t give me a penny.’