by Sarah Moss
‘In a minute.’
I put my head down on the table and took a deep breath. It’s what the parenting handbooks, the modern ones, tell you to do. Breathing. If things are bad enough to require a more extreme response you are advised to leave the room and count to ten. A small, eggy finger was inserted into my ear. I sat up and administered plain yoghurt with some of Julia’s plum jam, a combination that Giles finds morally preferable to the purchase of fruit-flavoured yoghurt.
Raph finished his yoghurt, got down from the table and took the dustpan and brush out of the cupboard. I watched, holding Moth’s bowl, as Raphael swept up the egg, put it and the bread in the compost bin and Moth’s plate in the sink. Then he came back and leant on my shoulder. I put my arm round him and kissed his yoghurt-smeared cheek. I thought I might ask Giles to clean the egg out of the brush, later.
The Wild Boy, here, is interested in use and not in amenity, and as such he is, oddly, the prototype of the hero of much didactic children’s literature, particularly for boys, of this period. The childish concerns approved not merely by Thomas Day and Maria Edgeworth but, more surprisingly, by Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, Charles and Mary Lamb, are those of the nascent petite bourgeoisie. Good children are economically active; moral consciousness is matched by and sometimes subsumed into an understanding of the marketplace. Advice to parents often, but not always, mimics this preoccupation, as if what readers buy in the form of the handbook is shares in the literal and metaphorical future company of their children.
I glanced up, as if something had changed in the room. I had all the settings on low power to conserve the battery, and the light coming from the screen showed a few of the tea-stained papers on the table and the long shadow cast by my mug in the institutionally blue glow. No child’s cry came rushing down the dark stairs.
And so the literary marketplace is implicated in both the literal marketplace and the fictional marketplaces within these texts. The handbook, more than most genres even in this period, is acutely aware of its commodity status in a way that, I hope to show, oddly mirrors that of the ostensibly unsocialized Wild Boy. Perhaps for the first time, childhood was for sale.
Too many adverbs. I deleted ‘acutely’ and ‘oddly’, then decided I’d rather lose ‘ostensibly’ and keep ‘oddly’. Reading it through, I realized I had no citations and therefore no footnotes in the first three pages, which is in violation of academic codes of obscurity and arse-covering, so I opened a file of notes and began to skim through for quotes I could insert without changing the course of the argument.
The sound came again, a noise that could easily have been the wind finding a new crack to moan through or a seagull roused by whatever fears disturb seagull sleep. It occurred to me for the first time that while we imagine we have nothing here to fear but each other, in fact anyone with control of a small boat could land at any time and our only defence would be to locate an adequately charged mobile phone, stand on Raph’s bed where the reception is usually good enough for the exchange of information and hope the wind was in the right direction and that there was somewhere to land a helicopter. As the locals found when the Vikings came this way, there’s nowhere to run on an island. I began to wonder if we should assign a helipad before the visitors came, whether it is possible to call the emergency services using Skype, and then realized that I’d been assuming Giles was bonding with puffins until he could be quite sure I’d got the children to bed and washed up, but presumably puffins go to bed when it gets dark, and it was hard to imagine what even an ornithologist might wish to do with a cliff full of puffins asleep in their burrows. I heard the sound again. I saved my work and backed up. I turned the laptop towards the doorway, though the light barely illumined the mulch under Moth’s chair. The noise, like breathing, was clearer now, and I took comfort from the conviction that pirates do not storm islands and then hide in the parlour sobbing.
The sitting room was dark. Giles was sitting in a low early Victorian armchair, crying. I had thought I had the monopoly on emotional outbursts round here.
‘Giles. What on earth are you doing?’
‘Sitting in the dark, what does it look like?’
I went over and stood in front of him as if he was the teacher and I’d been caught. You’d expect that when men like Giles feel that things have gone so far as to justify tears they would do it properly, with runny noses and perhaps primal howling, but his grief seemed adequately absorbed by the linen handkerchief in his hand. I reached out towards him and then folded my arms.
‘Has something gone wrong?’
He stood up, his shoulders cocked against the starlight. ‘For fuck’s sake. No, everything’s lovely. Pa’s been dead a year, that’s all. And don’t pretend you miss him. I’m going to bed.’
He stamped up the stairs.
‘He hated me,’ I shouted up. ‘He tried to stop you marrying me. I’m not going to pretend I miss him.’
I went back into the kitchen and banged the door, which was built to last in the nineteenth century and is good for that kind of thing. Like counting to ten, banging doors doesn’t change much unless the audience is already in the mood. Giles is right, I don’t miss Hugo, who would have been prosecuted for inciting racial hatred had he aired some of his opinions in venues less exclusive than the drawing-rooms of West Sussex, who told me at our wedding reception how lucky I was that Giles’s tastes were so catholic (as to encompass oiks as well as foreigners, I presume). He put Giles under some pressure to protect the Cassingham estate with a prenuptial agreement, the estate which in fact consists of a structurally compromised Tudor house that no one but a banker could afford to maintain and a collection of enormous antique furniture which is venerated with the kind of respect afforded to mummified ancestors in some parts of the world. Giles’s first memory is of Hugo beating him with a belt for racing his toy cars across the mahogany dining table. I found some more of Raph’s variety box, and ate it fast enough that the sugar surge carried me up the stairs for the last word, or at least another word. I heard Raph’s voice and looked into his room. Giles was sitting on the bed with his arm round Raph’s shoulders. They didn’t see me, but sat talking about the best kind of solid fuel for the stove in the cottage considering the carbon costs of bringing pellets of recycled paper to Colsay. I went to bed.
Night Waking: 03:07
I am lifting Moth before I am awake enough to see. I cradle him against my shoulder, my ears ringing with his screams. He is still rigid, convulsing as if we are being tortured to death before his eyes.
‘Moth, love. Mummy’s here. It’s all right, Mummy’s here, Mummy’s got you. Hush, love.’
I sway from side to side, rubbing his back, and begin to pace.
*
Giles reappeared mid-morning. Raphael, having dismantled the railway system with a series of explosions, had brought all the urban planning mats together and was building a town whose exquisite design boded ill for its imaginary inhabitants. I was sitting on the floor reading to Moth, hoping that my proximity might in Ralph’s mind outweigh the disadvantages of Moth’s premature assaults on civilization.
‘Hi,’ said Giles.
Moth pulled my hair, which I hadn’t brushed. ‘More reading! Mummy more reading!’
‘One hot day Lucy and Tom and their mummy and daddy decided to go to the suicide. I mean, seaside.’
Giles squatted down. ‘Are you OK?’
I glanced at Raphael, who was working on the lift-shaft of a multi-storey car park in Lego. ‘Not particularly. You?’
He shrugged, the shrug of an Old Etonian and a gentleman undergoing the dark night of the soul.
‘More reading!’
‘Lucy is helping to pack up the picnic. There are sandwiches and biscuits and hard-boiled eggs and apples and a bottle of orange juice. There is also a lovely chocolate cake. Giles, Jake was looking for you. Something about the roof. Tom, reinforcing gender stereotypes, has gone to get the buckets and spades from the sandpit.’
‘
I’m sorry I didn’t get up in the night.’
‘You never do.’
He looked away. ‘Don’t be like that. Shall we talk later?’
I shrugged, the shrug of a woman who would say a great deal more if the children weren’t listening.
‘If you’re not too busy with the puffins. I expect I’ll be in. They go to the seaside in the train. Lucy wears her armbands so as to be all ready to swim when they arrive.’
‘Moth swimming today?’
Giles and I looked out of the window as if there were ever any possibility of toddlers swimming in the North Atlantic in June.
‘Not today. Too cold.’
I used to take him every week in Oxford, to a mother-and-baby class where the mothers stood with cold water lapping around post-natal stomachs, eyeing each other’s stretch marks and chanting ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ while the babies stared at the lights and turned blue. ‘Giles, if you could look after them for a minute I could make some more bread.’
He sighed. ‘I thought you wanted me to go talk to Jake.’
There was a streak of something green above his left ear.
‘Jake wants you to talk to Jake. I don’t care. I don’t particularly want to make bread. I don’t even want to write my book any more, I just want to sleep. But if I don’t, you’ll have to go to Spar and buy Hovis in a plastic bag, which is fine by me.’
Raphael had gone very still, as if listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear.
‘I don’t like it when you talk to me like that.’
I hugged Moth tighter to me.
‘And do you like it when there isn’t any bread?’
Moth squirmed round and pressed his face into my shoulder.
‘Fine. I’ll mind the kids.’
I tried to put Moth down.
‘Up! Come up! Moth coming too!’
He scrabbled at my knees. I picked him up and we went into the kitchen, where he clung to my jumper as I found flour, oatmeal, bicarb and yoghurt. I don’t need to measure any more, so Moth could sit on my hip, silent, as I poured and mixed while Raphael and Giles sat silent in the panelled playroom. I wondered how Raph could bear to wait for the bombs to fall.
After lunch I took Moth upstairs and changed his nappy. We went into his bedroom and closed the curtains.
‘Ready for you to have a little sleep, OK? Ready for you to curl up in your cot with Duck and Bear and Baby and go fast asleep.’
‘No,’ said Moth.
I laid him down on his front and begin to sing ‘Hush, Little Baby’ and pat his back. He looked up.
‘Come up! Cuddle Moth!’
‘Not now. Time to sleep now.’
He pushed my hand away and struggled to sit up.
‘More reading!’
I laid him down again. My head was aching.
‘Not now. Reading when you wake up. Sleeping now. Hush, little baby—’
‘Mummy more reading!’
I pushed him back down. In a few minutes I would be able to tidy up the kitchen, have a large drink of water and then either do some work or go sit on a rock and watch the sea until I felt better. Or try to play with Raphael.
‘More reading! Now more reading!’
‘Papa’s gonna buy you a mocking-bird. If that mocking-bird don’t sing—’
‘No mocking-bird. Reading! Moth come up!’
I put one hand on his bottom and the other between his shoulders. He squirmed and I pressed down. I could feel his ribs flexing. I would listen to the news while tidying, I thought, and perhaps there would be ice to put in my water. I could try to check e-mail and see if any of my friends had remembered that I am here, maybe even take my phone up the hill to where I can sometimes get enough reception for text messages.
‘Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. If that diamond ring turns brass, Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass.’
‘More reading! Don’t push!’
I stood up and slammed my hand into the mattress next to his head. He screamed. I shook his cot.
‘Moth, for fuck’s sake go to sleep right now. If you don’t go to sleep this minute, I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to take a knife and kill myself. Is that what you want? Mummy will be dead and then you’ll be happy.’
My hands on the cot rail are shaking. I must not attack him. Must not touch him or I will put my hands round his neck and kill him. I cannot leave because I would never come back and I cannot stay because I am about to pick him up and ram his head into the wall until he stops making that intolerable noise.
‘Anna, what the hell are you doing?’
Giles grabbed my shoulder. I stopped myself before my fist connected with his arm.
‘I want three fucking minutes to myself. I want to pee. I want to have a drink of water. I want to brush my hair. I used to give lectures and write my book.’
Giles pulled me out of the room. Moth was shrieking louder and higher than usual, Mummy, Mummy.
‘Go away, OK? Just go away and get control of yourself. And don’t let Raphael see you like that.’
But Raphael was standing on the top step, looking at the floorboards as if he were reading them.
‘I need to go to Moth.’
Giles stood in the doorway.
‘You might need him but he certainly doesn’t need you. Just go away, Anna.’
Raphael stood aside, looking at the wall as his mother stumbled down the stairs.
I went down to the shore. The sea was grey and opaque as milk, and drizzle greased the pebbles. The wind pushed at me as if checking I was still alive. I sat down and leant against a rock. I may have slept. After a while Giles was squatting next to me.
‘Anna, did you hit Moth?’
‘Where are the kids?’
‘Did you hit him?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t. Where are the kids?’
He sat down and stared out to sea.
‘Moth is asleep and Raph’s reading about bridges. I told him you are very tired and that when people are very tired they get upset, but he’s not happy. You should go talk to him.’
I shifted away from him. ‘Not now. I’m too tired. I need a break, Giles. I can’t be with them all the time, I’m losing my mind.’
He sighed. ‘Of course you’re not losing your mind. Do you want me to play with Moth when he wakes up? So you can do something with Raph?’
‘What about the puffins?’
He stood up. ‘I can take an hour or so. I’m only charting their decline. It’s probably already too late for the puffins. If I’m not going back to work, we’ll get those trees in, shall we, before it’s too late for them too? I’ll get Raph to come and help.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to sleep.’
‘Spend a bit of time with Raph first, OK?’
I don’t know much about trees, but it seemed at least as probable that we were interring these as planting them. Burlap sacks seem unlikely to sustain trees for two weeks.
Raphael walked round the bare sticks. ‘Are they still alive?’
Giles picked up the spade.
‘Of course they are. They’ll grow. We’re a bit late planting, but next summer we might even get a fruit or two.’
He positioned the spade and pushed it down with his foot. It slid deep into the ground and he levered up grass and mud and half a frantic worm.
‘Daddy, is that worm all right?’
I went over to Raph and put my arm around him. I could feel his shoulder blades like folded wings.
‘Raph, are you cold? Shall I get you a jumper?’
He leant on me. ‘No. But thank you, Mummy.’
I kissed his head and he looked up. He has the face of the young Venetian prince in one of those seventeenth-century portraits in the Ca’ d’Oro.
‘I’m sorry I shouted, Raph. I’m just very tired.’
He watched Giles turning earth. ‘I could make Moth be quiet.’
‘No. Toddlers do wake up, it’s what they’re like. You were, and you
sleep at night now, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes. Can I try with the spade?’
We’d planted one tree by the time Moth needed to wake, or at least by the time we needed to wake him.
‘I’ll go,’ said Giles. ‘Raph, do you think you and Mummy can plant another one? And I’ll bring Moth out to watch? I’ll start the spade for you.’
‘Giles, not there,’ I said. ‘It’s too close to the wall.’
Giles rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s fine. This is a dwarf apple, the roots don’t go far at all.’
I watched him cross the grass. Giles is tall and slim-hipped, and after Raphael started to sleep through the night and before Moth was born we used to go to a tango class, after which we hustled the babysitter out and pulled each other’s clothes off. I used to try not to wear tights, so hard to remove alluringly, on a Thursday. I still like the way he moves, I decided, but I would like it better on someone else. Someone who listens when I say I’m losing my mind.
‘Mummy.’ Raphael had turned over several inches of earth. ‘I can’t get the spade any deeper.’
I took it, pushed down and stood on it as if it were the pogo stick of my childhood. It slid down a little and I bounced. Raph laughed.
‘There.’ I stepped off and we pulled together on the handle. A clod of black earth, rich as chocolate cake, came up.
‘Mummy—’
A small bone, rabbit or maybe cat – there are no rabbits on Colsay – was embedded in the loam.
‘It’s just a bone, Raph. Some animal that died long ago.’
‘But Mummy.’ He stepped forward and crouched down. ‘Mummy, there are more. Look. And some cloth.’
I bent over. People do not bury animals in shrouds. Animals do not have hands.
‘It looks like a rabbit. Do you want to run and get Daddy? He knows all about animal bones.’