I change the subject. “Does your mum work?”
“What do you mean?” she says, looking confused.
“Does she go out to work—you know, to earn money?”
Her face clears. “She’s got money. She gets it from the post office.”
“And what about your dad?”
Her face closes. “Haven’t got a dad.”
I wonder why she is so resistant to having a father. “Do you have a different daddy? A stepfather?”
She looks away, and I know I’ve guessed correctly. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “He doesn’t count.”
“You need to expand your vocabulary,” I say. “Stupid is becoming boring.”
“I thought we were going to the seaside,” she says.
When we go outside, the bright morning sunshine has clouded over and it’s still windy. The dark clouds which seemed so distant when we were in the train are nearly overhead. I shiver in the sharp gust of wind that catches us as we step out of the café. I look at Megan anxiously, but she doesn’t seem to feel it in her new jacket. She has a hood, so if it rains, she’ll be protected. I look at my own lightweight coat. I am wearing a skirt, tights, everything unsuitable for a walk on the beach.
“Which way?” says Megan.
“I don’t know.”
“How are we going to get there, then?”
I look around uncertainly. “Let’s go and ask,” I say and go back into the café.
As we walk to the seafront together, Megan slips her hand into mine and I feel a sudden stab of happiness. This is enough for me. I could stay like this forever. A thought jumps fully formed into my mind. Maybe Margaret was never a good mother. All this time, I’ve had an image in my mind of my mother, warm and caring, but I assumed this mother was Margaret and I was wrong. I know nothing about Margaret. I never met her.
A new pattern asserts itself in my mind. Perhaps Dinah was rebellious because her mother didn’t understand her. Perhaps my father was right and we were all better off without her.
“Are we nearly there?” says Megan.
The sea is visible just beyond a low wall at the end of the road. “Yes,” I say.
We cross the road, and the seaside is in front of us. A few people are sitting on the beach, behind carefully positioned screens, but it’s too chilly for swimming. Seagulls hover in the wind, swoop down and up again. I stop for a second and watch them. Something in their piercing cries reaches inside me, penetrating the hole that has expanded inside me ever since Henry died. I am empty. I have nothing left to create a baby, just a hollow place where there should be new life.
Megan looks around. “Is this it?” she says, sounding disappointed.
I look at the sea. “Come on,” I shout. I pull her down the steps to the beach. She resists me slightly, but comes anyway and we leap into the soft sand at the bottom.
“Race you to the sea,” I shout, and launch myself forwards, floundering in the loose unmanageable sand, my feet sliding backwards with every step. I look round to see where Megan is, and she’s right behind me. Once we reach the firm sand she runs ahead and we race to the water’s edge.
“Look out!” I shriek as a large wave breaks. I grab Megan and lift her out of the way of the incoming water.
“Put me down!” she yells, so I put her down further back.
She runs straight back into the sea. “Megan!” I shout. “Your shoes.”
But I’m too late. She’s paddling through the foam and seaweed, giggling wildly, jumping through the waves, bending down to pick up a strand of seaweed. “Look,” she says. “What is it?”
“Seaweed,” I say, laughing.
“What’s it for?”
I shake my head. “It’s not for anything, it just is.”
She comes out of the water, trailing the seaweed, her trainers and the bottom of her jeans soaked. “I’m a bit wet,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Not to worry. We can always buy some more clothes.”
She looks at me in amazement and I’m taken aback by such a daringly extravagant thought. I don’t normally behave like this; I’m always careful with my money.
I change the subject, bending down to pick up a shell. “Look.” We examine it together—a small, beautifully shaped curl, perfect in its tiny meticulous pattern, glistening richly after its journey through the sea.
Megan is fascinated, and starts to search for some of her own. Our hands are soon full.
“We need a bucket,” I say.
“What for?”
“To put the shells in. Let’s go back up to the road and see if there are any shops along the seafront.”
We leave our shells in a neat pile and struggle back through the sand. It penetrates my shoes and is surprisingly cold. We find a shop and buy two buckets and two spades, a special offer at £1.99 a set. As we leave the shop, I point out the ice creams.
“We’ll have an ice cream later,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because you always have ice creams at the seaside.” The wind whips round us as we stand on the seafront.
We walk back to the sea, stopping on the way to examine the layers of dried seaweed left stranded by previous high tides, and picking up more shells as we go. The wind is swirling the soft sand into the air in a hazy whirlwind dance around us. It dies down briefly, then starts again, sharp and burning against our legs.
We stay by the water’s edge for a long time, building a castle with a moat, adorning it with shells, a feather for a flag, seaweed for grass, razor shells for a drawbridge. Megan is completely absorbed in the task, but when the rising tide attacks our creation, breaching the castle’s defences, she becomes hysterical.
“No,” she shouts, digging furiously to divert the water. But the sea wins, smoothing out the mounds of sand and the channels between them. In the end, she stands up to watch the destruction. She has been sparkling with enjoyment, but her vivacity drains away very quickly and she looks tired and pale again. She turns her back on the sea.
“Stupid sea,” she says, and starts walking back to the road.
I see the sand dunes further along the beach, so I take her hand, which is cold and damp. I’ve been shivering for some time, but she’s looked warm enough until now. “Look,” I say, pointing to the dunes. “If we go up there, we can shelter from the wind.”
She doesn’t seem interested, but lets me lead her. “Why is there grass on the seaside?”
“Those are sand dunes. They always have grass growing. I think it makes them stay there.”
Just as we reach the dunes, a shaft of brilliant sunshine pierces the clouds. The dunes are unexpectedly pleasant and inviting. We find a hollow in the middle, and feel warmer and safer.
“Can we build another sandcastle?” says Megan.
I shake my head. “The sand’s too soft.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Try it then,” I say.
She digs slowly for a bit, putting sand into the bucket. She turns it upside down, pats the bucket with her spade and lifts it up. The sand streams out.
“Stupid sand,” she says, and kicks the bucket out of the way.
“We can dig a hole,” I say.
“Who wants to dig a stupid hole?”
If she says stupid once more, I will have to walk away. I take a breath, swallow and pick up a spade. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
I start digging, and when she realizes that the hole can be really big and easy to dig, she joins me.
We dig for some time, pulling out bits of wood, Coca-Cola cans, shells, dried seaweed, and sorting them into separate piles.
“Why is there wood?”
“Maybe it’s from ships that have sunk and broken apart, or maybe people have brought it from their homes and had a barbecue.”
“What’s a barbecue?”
Does she really not know, or is she pretending? “You know, when you cook meat and sausages and things outside.”
She nods, and keeps digging. After a time
, she takes off her coat and then her shoes and socks. I lay them out in the brief patches of sunshine, in the hope that they will dry out. After a while, she flops down, exhausted. “I’m too hot,” she says.
“You must put your coat back on when you stop digging,” I say. “Otherwise you’ll get cold again.”
She looks at me sideways, and I wonder again how much she really doesn’t know and how much she thinks she’s fooling me. “I’m hot,” she says again. “I thought we were going to have an ice cream.”
“Good idea. Put your shoes and socks on and we’ll go and fetch them.”
“I don’t want to go. I like it here. You get them.”
“You’ll have to come with me.”
“No,” she says.
Her determination confuses me. It’s as if she can disconnect parts of my brain and divide up my thoughts, so I can’t think clearly. How do you get children to do something if they don’t want to? “Please?” I say.
“No.”
It’s quite warm here, with the shelter from the wind; she can’t go far in the time it takes to fetch the ice creams and I would see her if she came up to the road. “All right,” I say. “I’ll be very quick.”
I pick up my purse and climb out of the hollow. The wind is cold and tugs against my coat. There are drops of rain in it which join the sand blowing harshly against my legs.
As I cross the road holding our ice creams, I’m reminded of holidays with my brothers. My father wouldn’t come to the seaside, so for a few years we went without him. I remember Adrian taking charge; sleeping in a caravan; learning to swim with Martin who was much more patient than the others; Jake and Paul fetching the fish and chips, arguing over who had most chips.
I can’t find the hollow. I struggle up and down the sand dunes, trying not to panic, furious with myself for not making a detailed map in my head before leaving.
“Megan!” I call.
There’s no answer. I circle from above and below, looking for a familiar landmark—a pile of feathers, a dune that is higher than the other, another with more grass. I call again. Still no reply.
Then, suddenly, I’m there, stumbling over the bag with all our belongings in it. “Megan!” I shout, but she’s not where she should be.
I stand still to get my breath back. “Megan!” My voice is torn to rags by the ever-increasing wind, which is now blowing into the hollow.
I look at our hole and see a small movement. I step forward and take a deep sigh of relief. She’s in the hole: that’s why I couldn’t see her. “Megan,” I say, fighting to stay calm. “Why didn’t you answer when I called?”
She doesn’t acknowledge me, doesn’t turn round. I lean over and smoke spirals up towards me. She’s collected all the bits of wood, piled them into a wigwam structure and lit a bonfire. She is oblivious to everything else around her. Her face is rapt and attentive as she gives the fire her full attention. She’s lost in a different world, a fantasy landscape within the flames, where only she exists, where I am irrelevant.
Great drops of rain start to fall and make strange flat patterns on the sand.
9
on top of the world
I’m partway through a cheese and pickle sandwich when I realize it’s no good. We have to go home. I take a bite and it stays in my mouth, so hard and dry that I can’t swallow. I try to chew it, but there’s no saliva to help me break it down. I want to spit it out, but I can’t do that in front of Megan, so I force myself to keep chewing. Nothing has worked, except those short cold hours on the beach, and there’s nothing else to do. I struggle not to cry as I face the reality of our situation and recognize the sinking, humiliating sense of surrender.
Megan is tearing her egg sandwich apart, her tight little face screwed up with disgust. “This is a stupid sandwich. Why can’t we have something nice?”
I don’t reply. I look out of the window to see if there’s still a normal life going on outside, but the scene is blurred. I’m never going to penetrate this normal life. Whatever gave me the idea that it was possible? This sense of failure is familiar—an old friend who left me briefly, but has just been hovering round the corner, waiting for a good moment to return.
“This is a stupid café,” says Megan.
I force myself to concentrate. I can’t make up my mind whether I should comment on the café—which is perfectly all right—or the stupid, which pounds away in my brain every time she says it, hammering in another nail, and another, and another. Piles of stupids, mountains of stupids, falling over each other in their anxiety to be heard. “Have another bite,” I say.
She looks at me with contempt and pushes the plate away. “You’re stupid,” she says. “I hate you.”
She’s right, of course. I am stupid. I’ve done crazy things, and I don’t know where they came from. Did I really steal a baby? Did I really take Megan and believe that I could disappear with her? What about James? What about my family? Where did they fit into my mad dreams?
When I finally located Megan on the beach and found her playing with the fire, the sense of unreality that had been hovering round us for some time seemed to have taken over. The world in front of me was splintering into thousands of unconnected pieces.
“Megan,” I said. “Ice creams.”
I might as well have not been there. I knew I had to assert myself somehow, regain some control, so I stood on the edge of the hole and started to kick sand into the fire.
“No!” Megan shrieked. She tried to stop me with her hands, shovelling the sand out of the way as quickly as I pushed it in.
When I saw her hands so close to the fire, I panicked, dropped both ice creams and reached across the small fire to grab her arms. She was incredibly strong, and kicked out at me, but I managed to hold on until I could throw her down on the sand away from the fire. I held her there for a few seconds and then she started screaming.
“Help! Help me, I’m being attacked!”
I didn’t know what to do. “Megan!” I shouted. “Stop it!”
What if someone heard her? Would the police turn up? Would some stranger leap into our hollow and save her from me? I let her go and she crawled straight back to the fire.
The sand and the ice creams had succeeded in stifling it. All that remained were some charred pieces of wood, a pile of sand and the white slithery mess of two upside-down ice creams. Megan and I stared at it, breathing heavily. The rain was pouring down by then, and there was no chance of the fire surviving anyway.
“Come on, Megan,” I said tiredly. “It’s raining.”
She went rigid and her eyes seemed darker than usual, glaring at me without blinking. “I hate you,” she said.
We ran all the way back into the town centre, away from the beach, and tumbled into the nearest café, soaked, breathless and disoriented. I only bought the sandwiches for something to do, while I tried to think where to go next.
But I can’t think.
“When are we going to get dry?” says Megan.
“I don’t know.”
“You said you’d buy me some new shoes.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” It now sounds preposterous.
“Well?”
“Well—I don’t know.”
“I’ve got wet feet.” She must be used to addressing her mother like this, imperiously, expecting attention, demanding, but maybe not getting it.
“I don’t really think it’s a good idea to get more shoes—”
“You said—”
“Yes.” I give up. I get to my feet. “Come on then, let’s find a shop.” I can’t stand up to her. I am weak and she is powerful. I have the strangest feeling that she’s responsible for everything that has happened, somehow controlling me and bringing me to this café at the seaside in the pouring rain.
We go into a shoe shop and come out with an absurd pair of slip-on shoes with bows on the front. Megan is delighted with them and keeps looking down to check they’re still there. We carry the wet trainers in a carrier bag. My
feet are very cold now, but I am too tired to think about them.
“I want to go home,” says Megan.
I am filled with a huge, overwhelming feeling of relief. I want to go home too, back to James. I want to speak to him now, urgently.
“Look,” I say, “we’ll go home as soon as possible. I need to make a phone call.”
She looks suspicious. “Who to?”
“Just someone I know.”
“I thought you didn’t know anyone at the seaside.”
“Well, I do. Let’s go back to the café. I’ll buy you some chocolate cake and you can sit there for five minutes while I make the call.”
She doesn’t reply, so we retrace our steps and order the cake. “Excuse me,” I say to the girl who serves us. “Could you just keep an eye on my little girl for a few minutes? I need to make an important phone call.”
The phone box is only a few yards away. I can watch the café as I talk.
The girl smiles. She’s wearing orange lipstick and green eyeshadow, and she has a dimple in each cheek. “Of course. I like children.”
So do I, I think, but Megan isn’t a real child. She’s a clever illusion. I hesitate at the door and look back. She’s pulling the cake into pieces, taking a few crumbs at a time and compressing them into solid balls. She lines up the little balls on the table in front of her in a neat, ordered pattern. She looks misty, unreal.
I leave the café and run through the rain to the telephone box. It’s red and shiny, and my insides jump with excitement at its redness. I think of my father—who is not my father.
I haven’t used a phone box for years, but I know I’ll need lots of money for a long-distance call. I step in and sort through my purse. I only have about a pound in change—it may not be enough. Then I discover that I can use my credit card. Well, I think. Another thing I didn’t know. Is there no end to it?
I dial James’s number and he answers before I can hear a ring. Was he sitting by the phone waiting for me? I try to speak into the receiver, but no sound comes out.
“Kitty, is that you?”
How does he know? Can he read my silences as well as my facial expressions, the small inflections of my speech? Can he reach down inside me and see things that I can’t?
Astonishing Splashes of Colour Page 26