Throughout the afternoon couples and families arrive. The kids pile on the trampoline, all of them jumping together, until one harmonious bounce - like a seventh wave -flings them into the side netting or dumps them in a heap. The women draw deck chairs and sun loungers towards the centre of the lawn. The men who congregate around the ice stand and drink. The men who congregate around the fire stand and stare. With the charcoal flaky and white and evenly spread across the slab, the burgers, chops, chicken wings and chipolatas are strategically arranged on the grill, sometimes with forks and serving tongs, sometimes with fingers and thumbs. Most of the men come to prod and point, or just to stand with their hands in their pockets and watch. The meat spits and cracks. Fat drips from the mesh and fizzes on the glowing, powdery coals.
After the food, the men disperse, but the women consolidate their position in the heart of the garden and they communicate. They communicate about the children and about the schools in the town - the good schools and the bad ones, the church school and the other one. They talk about parent governors. They talk about drugs and film stars. They talk about money. They talk about the European Union and the Middle East and breast-feeding. The women have come together, but the men have separated and spread out. They are elsewhere. The male diaspora extends as far as the road, where one man is checking his brake pads and has placed his bottle of Budweiser precariously on the wing mirror of the car. It also includes one man watching an international rugby fixture on a portable telly in the children’s playroom, and a man in the kitchen loading the dishwasher for the second time, and a man asleep under the cherry tree, and a man on his mobile phone by the gate, and a man rehearsing the military-style execution of a garden gnome with a water pistol to the back of its head, and a man under a pile of children on the trampoline, and a man whose bleeper went off ten minutes after he’d arrived and hasn’t been seen since. The children bounce and bounce and bounce and the dog barks.
At the end of the day the women stand and separate and go in search of their men, and the men come together to shake hands and seek out a task. Such as the pouring of a bin-load of slush and beer labels into an outside drain. Such as the extinguishing of embers and the scattering of ash.
6
‘You’re standing on a beach. It’s lovely and warm. You can feel the sun on your face and the sand between your toes. The sea in front of you is calm and quiet and blue, like the sky. You lie down on the beach and close your eyes. There’s no one else around - it’s very peaceful, very safe. And as you lie there, feeling the gentleness of the sun on your skin, all your aches and pains seem to melt from your body, flow through you into the sand. The sand soaks it all from you, all the weariness, all the tension, any tightness in your muscles and joints - it’s all absorbed by the sand. And the sound of the sea, the slow, easy rhythm of the tide, is soothing your mind, washing away all the frustration, all the anger, all the pressure and hurt. Listen to the tide on the shore. Let each swish of water wash another problem out of your mind, let each swell of the tide carry your troubles back to the sea. Back to the huge, blue, bottomless sea. Breathe the fresh sea air through your nose, fill your body with dean air, draw it deep into your lungs. Relax. Listen to the sea. Feel the sun on your face.’
There was a beeping noise outside in the street, a lorry reversing around a corner. Or possibly the noise of a pelican crossing, the traffic lights at red and the pulsing green image of a little robotic man in mid-stride.
‘You stand up and just a few yards away there’s a jetty with a boat tied to it, a little sailing boat with your name written on the side. You climb down into it and undo the rope. A warm breeze fills the white sails and pushes you out into open water. But you’re not afraid, because the boat knows which way to go. You sit down and watch the water going past, and see tiny coloured fish down below, and shells on the sea bed, and beautiful coral, and the next time you look up you see you’ve come to land on a small island. It’s a desert island with a few palm trees swaying in the breeze and a brilliant white beach. The boat has brought you here. It has brought you to meet someone. Someone you need to see. They’re waiting for you in the middle of the island. And even though you’re a little afraid, a little bit nervous, you walk to the top of the beach, feeling the warm sand under your feet and between your toes, and you push through the bushes and the grass and step out into a small clearing in the middle of the trees, and there in front of you, waiting for you, is the person you need to see.
‘And now you talk to the person. You say the thing you’ve always wanted to say. You speak-words come out of your mouth.
‘And now the person talks to you.
‘And you listen.
‘And you watch.
‘And you stay with that person for as long as you need to, saying the things you need to say, listening to their voice, watching their face and their hands. And when you’re ready to leave, you say goodbye.
‘You say goodbye.
‘And the boat with your name on it is waiting for you. You climb in and it carries you back across the water, and even though you watch the little island on the horizon until it disappears from view, you know you can return there whenever you want, that the little boat will always know the way. And now you look into the water again, seeing the coral and the shells and the tiny coloured fish, and when you look up you’re back at the jetty, back at the beach. You lie down and let the warm sand and the sound of the tide soothe your body and your mind. Listen to the waves. Feel the sun on your face.
‘Then, whenever you’re ready, whenever you’re calm enough and rested enough and ready to open your eyes, men you can open your eyes. Take all the time you need, then, when you’re ready, open your eyes.’
After about five minutes, Abbie reached forwards and pulled a tissue out of the box. Both her cheeks were striped with the traces of dried tears. She wiped her face and dabbed at her eyes, and examined the tissue as if for some kind of explanation. Then she reached over for another tissue and blew her nose. The counsellor waited a few more moments as Abbie took a few deep breaths and reorganized herself in her seat.
‘Sorry,’ she said, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘No need to apologize, no need to apologize at all.’
His voice was more matter-of-fact now that the boat journey had come to an end, but still measured and kind. ‘How did it feel?’
‘Sort of like being asleep but not asleep. A bit like a daydream, but more…’
‘Focused?’
‘Yes, very dear.’
‘And did you sail to the island?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you afraid?’
‘Yes. A little.’
‘Do you want to tell me what happened? You don’t have to, if it’s too much.’
‘No, I want to.’
She’d pushed the tissues inside the cuff of her shirt. With her elbows on the arm of the chair, she locked her hands together and rested her chin on the saddle of her thumbs, partially obscuring her mouth. A few strands at a time, her hair fell from behind her ears in front of her face.
‘I… I was nervous. I thought I knew what was coming, you see. So I walked up the beach, like you said, and into the grass and the trees…’
She swallowed and pulled the remains of the tissue from her sleeve.
‘And pushed open the leaves and I thought it was going to be… I thought it was going to be…’
She was bent over now, with hunched shoulders, and tears dripped from behind the screen of her hair on to her skirt, making small, dark patches on the denim. ‘You know.’
‘Who did you think it was going to be, Abbie?’
‘My mum,’ she sobbed.
‘But it wasn’t your mum?’
Without looking up, Abbie shook her head, and another tear fell on to her skirt, distinct and precise, almost black against the light blue cotton, like a small hole.
‘Who was it, Abbie?’
Abbie straightened herself in the chair and lifted her face. As
her hair fell backwards from her face, she took a huge, trembling breath, dosed her eyes and, as she breathed out again, spoke two words that seemed to be made of air. She said, ‘My baby.’
‘The baby you lost?’
‘Yes.’
‘The last one, after the scan?’
She nodded. Then her head went down again and her shoulders shook, and a hand came out from underneath for another tissue, then another. The counsellor let her go on crying for a good few minutes, until the tears stopped, and when she reappeared it was with a creased and sodden face.
‘Do you want to go on?’
‘It was a little boy,’ she whispered.
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said I was sorry.’
‘Sorry for what?’
The beeping noise started again outside, definitely a pelican crossing, accompanied by the sound of a car screeching to a halt, then the revving of an engine, then the sound of squealing rubber and deep, sporty engine accelerating into the distance.
‘For losing him, for not holding on.’
‘And did he talk to you?’
Abbie nodded her head. ‘He said… he said he was sorry too.’
‘For what?’
‘For letting go.’
‘And did you touch him? Did you pick him up?’
‘No, but he was smiling,’ said Abbie, trying to make the same smile on her own face, and then, just before the tears flooded her eyes again, she said, ‘He didn’t cry.’
The counsellor handed over the entire box of tissues, put his hand on Abbie’s shoulder for a moment, then went out through a sliding door. The room was actually his lounge; there had been no attempt to disguise it as an office or even a study, and while he was gone a cat suddenly appeared from under the piano and leapt into Abbie’s lap. Not long afterwards the counsellor returned with two glasses of water. He handed one of them to Abbie, who took a few sips and put it down.
‘Shall I?’ he asked, offering to remove the cat.
‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, running her hand from the back of its head to the tip of its tail, then flicking off the loose hairs that had dung to her fingers.
The counsellor held out the other glass of water.
‘And what about you, how are you feeling, Felix? Felix?’
After successfully feigning invisibility up to this point in the proceedings, the repetition of his name made Felix not only conspicuous again but suddenly the centre of attention. Even the cat looked at him. And how was he feeling? Dry. More than anything he was dry. It was the thought of all that sun and sand. He downed the water in three or four gulps and croaked, ‘I’m O K. I’m feeling O K.’
Abbie reached out across the armchair for his hand.
‘Do you want to talk about anything?’
He didn’t. But when Abbie squeezed his fingers and stroked his wedding ring with her thumb, he nodded his head.
‘Do you want to tell us who was waiting for you?’
The beeping noise started up again outside. The cat rolled on its side and stared with its upside-down face and its bald, pink nose. Abbie gave Felix a reassuring smile and another squeeze of the hand. He nodded. The counsellor smiled and said, ‘So you get out of the boat, walk up the beach through the warm sand, push through the foliage. Who’s waiting for you, Felix?’
The counsellor went quiet, leaving a silence in the room that only Felix could break. The cat blinked at him, waiting for him to speak. The pressure from Abbie’s hand began to increase. Felix dosed his eyes.
‘Oliver Cromwell,’ he said.
7
Felix pressed the button, and when the beeping noise started they crossed the road and went into the café, which was really a greengrocer’s with a few tables in the back and a percolator behind the counter. He was expecting the worst, but, after tasting her coffee, Abbie looked at him from behind a moustache of froth, grinned and asked him if there was something he wanted to tell her? Possibly about a famous character from British parliamentary history? Felix shook his head and said that he was sorry.
‘I thought it was a different game.’
‘Game?’
Technique, he had meant to say. Treatment. The point was this: a person can’t practise social work on himself. It would be like trying to hypnotize yourself - you just can’t. You can’t play that kind of trick on your own mind.
‘Trick?’
Whatever. She knew what he meant, and anyway he was just being honest. There was no point lying, was there? Abbie agreed that there was no point lying, especially not at 150 pounds an hour. Which led Felix to wonder, just for a moment, why the hell he was driving around the Lakeland Estate all year for not much more than the minimum wage, when he could just as easily stick a couple of comfy chairs in the living room, talk dreamily about sailing boats and sandy beaches and make a fortune. The pedestrian crossing beeped again. Abbie leaned over and squeezed his hand, the way she had done ten minutes ago, but with less intensity. His blood was free to circulate now. Her smile reminded him of the counsellor’s cat with its upside-down face, like a bat. She didn’t care if it was a trick or a game, she said, because already she felt a thousand times better. As if she’d done something she should have done ages ago.
‘Like you’ve closed a door?’
‘No, more like I’ve opened one. Opened a door and gone outside, and the sun’s shining.’
‘Good. That’s… good.’
The sun was shining, and it was still shining when they got home. Abbie went next door to talk to Maxine, tell her everything that had happened. Felix dragged the Flymo out of the shed for the first time since last autumn, chipped the crust of dried cuttings from blade and mowed the lawn.
That was Monday. Tuesday was quiet. It wasn’t an official holiday - the schools hadn’t broken up - but a lot of people in the town still observed some archaic festival or feast day related to the cotton industry, even though not a single thread of cotton had been spun there for over fifty years. Felix saw it as a chance to clean out his filing cabinet and bring his records up to date. Neville saw it as an opportunity for arranging a trip to Australia next year to see his brother and for goofing around. When he wasn’t sat behind a pile of brochures with the telephone to his ear, making calls to New South Wales, he was throwing darts at the dartboard hanging from the coat hook on the door, waiting for the travel agent to call back. At one point, Bernard stuck his head into the office to ask if anyone else could hear banging.
‘Thud, thud, thud, then nothing, then three more, then nothing. Been going on all day.’
‘Sounds like an airlock in the pipes, chief,’ said Neville:
‘Ah, could be, could be. Better get it checked out. Giving Thelma a migraine. Oh, while I’m here, anybody want to contribute to the coffee fund? We’re down to the last few pence.’
‘Can you break a twenty?’
‘Er.. .’
‘Tell you what, I’ll pay double next week.’
‘Felix?’
Felix dutifully stumped up a pound, then another for the lottery syndicate. As Bernard dosed the door behind him, Neville reproduced the set of darts from his pocket, along with a fistful of change. ‘Come on, then, Felix. Nearest the bull. Pound a game. Best of three.’
After lunch Felix called at the school to talk to Rubberdick. A prominent figure in the town, Captain Eric Roderick was often to be found in the pages of the local paper, expressing his opinion on crime, drugs, litter, skateboarding in the precinct, alcopops and other threats to society. An army man with medals for bravery, the Captain had reinvented himself in later life, putting his expertise in military manoeuvres and tactical warfare to good use in the classrooms and staffrooms of Britain’s failing schools. A disciplinarian and a believer in old-fashioned values, he had single-handedly restored the reputation of a struggling comprehensive in a neighbouring borough and was high on the list of government ‘super-heads’. He was rumoured to be a dose personal friend of the Home Secretary and had once appeared on
Question Time. The nameplate on his door carried his full tide and, after knocking twice, Felix was just about to turn away when he heard the instruction to enter. Inside, the Captain was sitting at his desk in front of a large, laminated sheet of card criss-crossed with red marker pen.
‘Bit of a crisis - entire English department down with hay fever. Having to juggle the timetable.’ Then, to himself, ‘One bluebell and they fall like dominoes.’ Then, to Felix, ‘How can I help?’
He gestured to Felix to take the chair in front of his desk and Felix obliged.
‘Er… do I call you Captain?’
‘Mr Roderick will do. Unless you’ve come to present me with another of these, in which case I’ll have my full tide.’
Without turning around, he pointed to a photograph of himself in military uniform, receiving a handshake and some sort of decoration from the Queen.
‘It’s about Ruby Moffat. You wrote to us about her. I phoned last week but you were teaching at the time.’
‘So I was. Antony and Cleopatra with Year 10. Pressed into action courtesy of the pollen count and the sensitive nasal passages of some of my junior staff. Do you have the reference?’
Felix pulled the blue folder from his briefcase and took out the only sheet of paper. The head teacher produced his own copy of the letter from his cabinet.
‘Ah, yes, the Moffats. Are you familiar with the family?’
The White Stuff Page 6