Astonishing Splashes of Colour

by Clare Morrall

  “Go away,” she says angrily. “Leave me alone.”

  “Shh.” I lower my voice and speak slowly, hoping that she’ll copy me. “You mustn’t play with matches, Megan.”

  “Go away,” she says again. “You’re stupid.”

  “Shh. You’ll wake up Mrs. Benedict.”

  “I don’t care. It’s horrible here anyway. I hate it.”

  “Matches are dangerous.”

  Megan doesn’t reply.

  “We can buy a torch tomorrow if you want one.”

  “You’re stupid and horrible.”

  I stare at her in bewilderment. I don’t understand why she was playing with matches or why she’s turned against me. The bubble of pleasure that we constructed together has inexplicably collapsed and I don’t know how to reconstruct it.

  There is a knock on the door. “Are you all right, Mrs. Wellington?”

  I close my eyes and try to breathe evenly. “Yes—yes. I’m sorry. Megan hasn’t been feeling well.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, really. We’re fine. I’m sorry we disturbed you.”

  “Well—as long as you don’t need anything …”

  If Megan starts shouting now, I shall gag her. “No, thank you. I think we’re all right now.”

  She goes back down the landing. The light switch clicks off and her door opens and shuts.

  I turn back to Megan. “We have to be very quiet,” I say. “Mrs. Benedict might be really annoyed if we disturb her again.”

  “So?”

  “Well—we should consider other people when we do things.”

  “You’re stupid.”

  She might be right. “Why were you playing with the matches?” I say.

  She doesn’t reply.

  “Where did you get them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you must know.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  I give up. At least I have the box of matches and we’ll all wake up alive in the morning. Then we can talk about it properly. “We’ll feel better when we’ve had a good night’s sleep,” I say, with no real faith in the truth of this.

  “I hate you,” she says as I climb back into bed. The pain of her rejection hits me like a fist coming out of nowhere.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. I want my mum.”

  I turn the light out with a trembling hand and lie sleepless in the dark. I can’t understand the change in her. We seemed to be getting on so well. I thought she wanted to run away from her mother. A sick and panicky feeling is creeping up from my stomach. I try to push it back. I need to think of something else. James. Where is he? I want him to come and find me. If I rang up tomorrow, would he come for me on the train? Would he walk in here, assess the situation, tell Megan to get dressed immediately and take us straight back to Birmingham? I think of him doing this, although I have no idea if he’s any good with children. He always leaves Emily and Rosie to me. I think of the emptiness of his flat, the calmness, the light and the space, and I begin to relax. His flat has become good for me. I can shut the door on my cluttered, muddled life and find an easy, untroubled world with James.

  I listen and realize that Megan must have gone to sleep. I can hear her slow regular breathing. She may be pretending, but if she keeps it up long enough, she’ll fall asleep anyway.

  I wake into the sunlit room and see from my watch that it’s 8:30. I sit up. The night seems to have taken a long time. I look at Megan, but she’s still asleep, so I get up and go to the bathroom.

  When I return, Megan is sitting up, looking confused.

  “Hello,” I say cheerfully. “Have you forgotten where we are?”

  She stares round her. “I like that,” she says, pointing to the plastic plants in the corner. They are arranged according to height, with several spectacular flowers that are not arranged according to colour.

  We go down to breakfast. Mrs. Benedict is cooking an enormous meal of sausages, bacon and tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs and fried bread.

  “Come and sit down,” she says and leads us into a back room opening out from the kitchen where she has set up a table for breakfast. A television is on in the corner. Two of the walls are decorated with bright yellow wallpaper, a profusion of sunflowers. The wallpaper on the other two walls is covered with half-metre images of the top part of a naked woman, barely covered with an elegantly draped, inadequate piece of material. She is repeated over and over again, like a series of negatives.

  Mrs. Benedict sees me looking and giggles. “Aren’t they lovely, my young ladies?” she says. “You can’t buy them any more, so I am looking after them very carefully.” She’s wearing black trousers, held down with foot straps, and she looks different in daylight. Her hair is fluffed into a challenging white bush round her face and she’s wearing makeup. Very blue eyeshadow and very red lipstick.

  She brings our plates to the table. “I have to leave early—my son’s picking me up. We’re taking part in a car rally. So if I leave you a key, could you lock up when you leave and pop the key through the door?”

  “Of course.” I start eating. The television is telling us about a bomb in Jerusalem. Mrs. Benedict hovers, but I don’t know why, so I wait for her to say something else. Megan is looking at her plate with an expression of disgust.

  “I’ll be going shortly,” Mrs. Benedict says.

  I nod.

  “Only, I didn’t tell you how much—”

  I put a hand to my mouth in embarrassment. “Yes, yes, of course. I’ll go and fetch my bag.”

  I rush upstairs. I’ve never done this sort of thing before. James has always taken charge. I’m missing him and we’ve only been gone for a day and a night. I find her at the bottom of the stairs and count out the money in cash. “Thank you for taking us so late,” I say. “I’m very grateful.”

  She beams, a wide, cracked, lipsticked smile. “It’s a pleasure.” She lowers her voice. “Is the little one all right?”

  I am confused for a minute. “Oh, yes, of course. She’s fine now.”

  “Only I couldn’t help noticing—”

  I look at her, not at all sure what she is going to say. Does she know Megan doesn’t belong to me?

  “She doesn’t look well. Shouldn’t she be in school?”

  I nearly panic. I hadn’t thought about school. I grope for some explanation, any explanation. “She’s ill, you see—leukemia. I wanted one last holiday with her.”

  Mrs. Benedict covers her face with her hands in a truly dramatic gesture. I wonder if this is spontaneous or if she’s seen it so many times on the television that she knows the appropriate response. “Poor little thing. No wonder she looks so thin and pale.”

  She’s right, I think, suddenly shocked. Perhaps Megan really does have leukemia.

  Mrs. Benedict picks up the money and hands it back. “I don’t need this. Go and spend it on something nice for the little one. Give her whatever she wants while she has the chance.”

  I’m embarrassed. I try to give it back to her, but she’s insistent and it’s clear that she’s gaining considerable pleasure from her sacrifice. I don’t know how to refuse her, so I take it and decide to leave it on the table when we go. I return to Megan, hot and uncomfortable.

  Megan isn’t eating. She’s wandered into the kitchen and is standing looking at the cooker. I think again of her matches in the night and have a cold sense that everything is slipping away from me. She hasn’t touched her breakfast.

  “Come and eat something,” I say.

  She looks up at me and her eyes are a darker blue and even bigger than I remember. “I’m not hungry,” she says.

  “You’ll have to eat something if we go to the beach.”

  “I don’t have to eat if I don’t want to.”

  I decide not to press it. If I sit and eat something myself, she might join me. But the food has cooled down. It looks like Granny and Grandpa’s congealed breakfast and I have to force myself to cut up
a piece of sausage and put it in my mouth. I feel very sick and want to spit it back out again, but continue chewing to set Megan an example.

  “Disgusting,” says Megan as she watches me. “Why aren’t there any Coco Pops?”

  “She might have some.”

  “No, there aren’t. I’ve looked.”

  I swallow the sausage with difficulty. “How old are you, Megan?”

  She stands still, but turns her head away from me. “Guess,” she says.

  “I don’t know.” If I guess too low, she will be offended, and if I guess too high, she might be tempted to exaggerate. “Eleven,” I say eventually, hoping this will flatter her.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Well, I can’t guess then. You tell me.”

  She hesitates. “Thirteen,” she says.

  I decide not to respond. I wonder if this could possibly be true and the more I think of it, the more uncertain I become. She could be absolutely any age. I attempt a piece of bacon. On the television, a man in a windswept Washington is analysing the implications of a law limiting handguns.

  There’s an old-fashioned sideboard on the other side of the room. It has an enormous gilt-edged mirror with carvings of cherubs down the side. I can’t decide if it’s hideous or magnificent. Megan starts opening the drawers and inspecting the contents.

  “Megan,” I say, shocked. “You mustn’t do that. It’s private.”

  She ignores me and pokes around in each drawer, but doesn’t find anything of interest. “I’m going upstairs,” she says, and I nod with relief. I give up on the breakfast and sip the cup of coffee, which feels warm and comforting, while I watch the television. There’s been a meeting of the heads of Europe, a scandal in the cabinet and a missing child. I switch it off. It’s too depressing.

  I look at our two plates on the table. Between us, we have eaten almost nothing. I can’t leave them like this. Mrs. Benedict will be so offended. I look around the room for inspiration and spot a pile of empty carrier bags stuffed between the sideboard and the wall. I grab one and scrape the contents of both plates into the bag. Then I pile the plates together and carry them into the kitchen.

  “Bye,” Mrs. Benedict calls from the hall and I jump, nearly dropping the plates.

  “Bye,” I call out as casually as I can, and remain motionless until the front door bangs. Then I put the plates down and go upstairs with the bag of food.

  Megan is sitting with the soft toys and arranging them in rows, talking as she moves them around, giving them names. I sigh with relief. At least she is doing something normal for a girl of somewhere between eight and thirteen. She can’t possibly be thirteen. She wouldn’t be playing like this if she were, although I don’t exactly know what thirteen-year-old girls do. I only know Rosie and Emily and they play with fluffy toys in exactly the same way as Megan is playing now. Is she ill? I try to see her objectively. Lots of children are pale and thin. I see them all the time, neglected by the mothers who are supposed to care for them.

  A sudden hoot from outside makes me go and look out of the window. A gleaming old car has pulled into the drive. It’s cream and silver, with highly polished chrome edges and a long running-board along each side, like a car from the old films. It makes me think of Cary Grant, James Stewart, Al Capone. I know nothing about cars, but I can see that this is something special, cared for and loved.

  A man, presumably Mrs. Benedict’s son, is sitting at the wheel, with a pair of goggles pushed up on to his forehead. Mrs. Benedict is climbing in, over the top, without opening the door. It’s a good thing she’s wearing trousers.

  “Look, Megan,” I say, but she won’t come to the window.

  Mrs. Benedict ties a bright yellow and red headscarf over her head and under her chin, then puts on her own goggles. She looks up, sees me in the window and waves her arm vigorously. Then they roar up the road and disappear.

  I turn back to the room and see that the bag containing our breakfast is leaking. A small damp patch of fat is seeping into the carpet.

  THE TRAIN TO EXMOUTH is a toy-like, two-carriage train which chugs along very slowly, squealing as it brakes, creaking as it starts again, unwilling to admit that it can get us to where we are going. Megan and I sit in a cramped double seat and look out of the window. The sky is sapphire blue, but there’s a savage wind and banks of heavy clouds are building up on the horizon. In the protected warmth of the train, I try to tell myself it’s a perfect day for the beach. But then I see the tops of trees swaying wildly. At each stop, a handful of people leave the train, stepping into a whirlwind, struggling to keep their balance. A tiny black poodle is caught by a sudden gust and swept off its feet, but a man in a pinstriped suit grabs it just in time. The poodle is wearing a tartan jacket edged with white fur and it looks too small to be real. A middle-aged woman struggles to hold down her skirt, Marilyn Monroe style, but she doesn’t look like Marilyn Monroe: she has greying hair and is wearing black, knee-length socks under her skirt.

  Megan is interested in what she can see out of the window. Because we are travelling so slowly, the surrounding world is closer than yesterday, as if we’re somehow involved in the passing dramas of people’s lives. There’s a smallness about it all that leads to a superficial intimacy. It’s like watching television, seeing people’s lives without making any impression on them.

  “It’s better on this train, isn’t it?” she says.

  I smile, relieved by her ordinariness. “That’s because it’s daylight and we can see properly.”

  “I know that.”

  Halfway through the journey, just after Topsham, the train line takes us along the side of the Exe estuary. The tide is coming in and the water’s brown and angry as it advances towards the patches of stony beach alongside the railway track. Water swallows up the mud flats and brings to life the little boats which are anchored into the mud. The sky is full of seagulls and my mood lightens at the sight of them.

  “Is this the seaside?” says Megan.

  “Not really. There’s sand where we’re going.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Wait and see.”

  I’ve always wanted to take children to the seaside. It’s like waiting for them outside school. I’m aware of a latent excitement swirling around inside me. My blood is travelling faster than usual, coursing through my body, whizzing up the arteries, racing along the brain cells.

  When we step on to the platform in Exmouth, I can already smell the salt in the air. “Shall we get something to eat?” I say, worried by our lack of breakfast. The eggs, bacon and fried bread are now sitting in an Exeter rubbish bin, waiting to give a homeless person a lucky day. I wonder if they have homeless people in Exeter.

  Megan hesitates. “What?”

  “You mean, what shall we eat?”

  She nods.

  “What would you like?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “Just chocolate? No fish and chips, or a McDonald’s, or—?” I stop. What might she like to eat? Rosie and Emily eat all sorts of healthy things, but that is probably because their mother is Lesley, who doesn’t stand for any nonsense. I don’t want to be like Lesley.

  “Yes. Chocolate.”

  “Right. Let’s go and find some.”

  We wander round the shops until we find a Woolworths, which is full of chocolate. We buy a very large slab and find some seats in the middle of a small shopping centre where we’re sheltered from the wind. I break chunks off and we eat our way through it, slowly at first, savouring the taste, then more greedily, chewing faster, swallowing it quickly, ready for the next chunk while there’s still some left.

  “I’m thirsty,” says Megan, so we go to find a café.

  We sit at a table and I order a cup of coffee for me and Coca-Cola for Megan.

  Megan seems to have woken up properly and is showing more curiosity. She was like this yesterday, when we were shopping in Birmingham.

  “Where do you live?” she says.

  I smile. “Bi
rmingham, of course.”

  “Why have you come here then?”

  “I thought you’d like to come to the seaside.”

  She blows down her straw and watches the bubbles rise in the glass.

  “Megan!” I say, but I’m too late and some of the liquid fizzes over the top and spills on to the table cloth.

  She grins. “My mum won’t let me do that.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I say, finding a tissue and trying to mop it up. I look nervously around me, but the girls who are serving behind the counter in their red and white gingham overalls are busy selling bread and putting doughnuts into bags.

  I know the two elderly ladies on the table next to us saw the drink spilling. I noticed them when we came in, sitting in front of giant cream cakes, eating polite bite-size pieces from silver forks, apparently too familiar with each other to have anything to say. They eat and drink their coffee in silence, watching the people around them as if we’re on a stage and they’re the audience. I can feel their eyes on us and I know they’re thinking, Shouldn’t the child be in school? I want to turn to them and say, Look, she’s ill. Can’t you see? She doesn’t have long to live.

  “Where did the baby come from?” says Megan.

  I’m appalled. Surely every child knows about babies nowadays. She reads Just Seventeen. She must know. “Well …” I say. “You need a mummy and daddy—” I stop, afraid that she doesn’t know this. She thinks she doesn’t have a daddy.

  She looks at me scornfully. “I meant, where did yesterday’s baby come from?”

  I don’t know what to say. I’ve had all this time to think up an explanation and I haven’t even thought about it. “I found her,” I say. “She wasn’t my baby.”

  “Where did you find her?”

  I take a sip of coffee, but still can’t think of anything. “In a cot.”

  Megan nods and seems to accept this. “Most babies are in cots or prams.”