Vital Signs

by John Metcalf

  “Of course you can, sweetheart. With chocolate in it, too.”

  Perched on Peter’s shoulders and clutching his forehead, Anna shrieked with laughter as he gave her a jolting, running piggyback to the road and the bus stop.

  * * *

  Peter held up the top strand of barbed wire while Jeanne ducked through. Anna squirmed underneath on her back.

  “Oh, no!” said Jeanne, fingering the triangular rip in her skirt. “I knew I should have worn slacks.”

  “I’ve gone in the mud,” called Anna.

  She was up to her ankles in the boggy ground where the stream spread into mallows and watercress.

  “Well, don’t just stand there!” shouted Jeanne.

  Anna sloshed towards them, mud splashing up her legs.

  “Oh, God!” said Jeanne. “That’s her new sandals ruined.”

  She sat down near the bank and said, “This is far enough. Give me a cigarette. I’ve got a stitch and I still ache from all that walking yesterday.”

  The shallow stream which curved through the field was only four-feet wide. Its edges were lined by long rank grasses which trailed after the current. Polled willows marked the course of the stream into the fields beyond. A few yards downstream from where they were sitting, the cattle had churned the ground into a muddy bay with their sharp hoofs.

  Jeanne burped loudly.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m getting too old to eat cucumber at suppertime.”

  “Shall I take my shoes and socks off?” said Anna.

  “Yes, and wash the mud off your legs, too.”

  Anna sat on the edge and dabbled her feet in the water. The sun was sinking but it was still warm. The oak trees in the far corner of the field were motionless under the blue sky. Swallows starting their evening feed were flickering over the stream’s surface.

  “Peter?”

  “What?”

  “Shall we play skipping stones like yesterday?”

  “The water’s not wide enough.”

  “Play boats then.”

  “We haven’t got any boats.”

  “I’ll get some.”

  She clambered out of the stream and wandered about looking for twigs.

  “Put your sandals on,” said Jeanne, “or you’ll tread in thistles or something.”

  “Go and look under the trees,” said Peter.

  “Can I have your jacket for a pillow?” said Jeanne.

  He rolled it up and pushed it under her head.

  “I’ve got a bellyache,” she said. “I think it’s indigestion.”

  When Anna came back, Peter broke the twigs into even lengths and they sailed them from the willow stump to the place where the bank was trampled down. Anna cheated by following her twigs down the stream and poking them free if they stuck in grass or lodged against the bank so Peter took off his shoes and socks and got into the water with her. They paddled down the length of the course, pushing their twigs and splashing them forwards with scooped hands to the winning post.

  When all the twigs had sailed away, Peter sat on the bank to smoke a cigarette. Anna was crouched over the trampled part of the bank at the edge of the stream. Picking up a stone, she started to chip down the walls of the sun-hardened hoof pocks, letting water trickle in and fill them.

  “Look at me, Peter. I’m making little pools.”

  “I can see.”

  “I’m going to make all these into little pools.”

  “You could dig a channel and let the water go from hole to hole,” said Peter. “Or you could flood all this, right up to where I’m sitting.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “You’d have to block the stream—build a dam.”

  “We’re going to build a dam, Mummy,” called Anna.

  “It’s getting close to your bedtime,” said Jeanne.

  “Oh, not yet! Just a little dam. All right?”

  They wandered up and down stream searching for large stones and Peter lugged them back, one by one, to where Jeanne was lying, reading a paperback. When they had piled up fifteen or so, Peter got down into the water and started to place them across the stream just before it narrowed out of the little bay. He made a double row.

  “We need two more big ones,” he said. “Go and see if there are any under the oak trees.”

  Anna ran off and Peter hauled at the rocks, turning them, wedging them, changing their positions. The water was already showing a drift along their line and a heavier rush through the gap.

  “One huge one, Peter!” shouted Anna.

  He hurried over and knelt beside the big rock. He worked it backwards and forwards until he had loosened it in its bed. He pushed it forwards and forced his fingertips underneath.

  “You bring that branch,” he said to Anna.

  His arms at full stretch, the rock bumping against his thighs at each step, he hurried back to the stream. He straddled the line of stones and dropped the big rock to close the gap.

  Jeanne sat up at the noise and said, “You’re going to rupture yourself if you’re not careful.”

  As he straightened up and eased his back, he said “Feeling better now?”

  “Yes, it’s gone now. Where did you put the cigarettes?”

  “Somewhere there. Near my jacket.”

  Anna arrived breathless, dragging the awkward branch behind her.

  “Good girl!” said Peter. “We need small stones now to fill the holes underneath. Okay?”

  She went off again and as she brought the stones, three or four at a time, Peter groped down into the deepening water, forcing them into holes and gaps. He saw his wrist coming out of the muddied stream and realized that he’d had his watch on all the time. He undid the soggy strap and held the watch to his ear. It had stopped.

  “Hey, Jeanne. Catch this.”

  She put the paperback down on the grass and he tossed the watch up to her. He looked around the field. The light was just beginning to fade. The shapes of the trees looked darker against the sky.

  “Lousy book!” said Jeanne. “My behind’s damp.”

  She got up and plucked at her skirt.

  “How’s your dam coming along?”

  “It’s beginning to build,” said Peter. “Look.”

  The water was rising, lapping at the sun-hardened mud of the trampled bank, flowing in a thin waterfall over the line of rocks.

  He stripped the twigs off Anna’s branch and jammed it from bank to bank behind the stones.

  “Here’s more little ones,” said Anna.

  “Put them in-between the rocks and the branch.”

  She stepped down into the water and cried, “Oh, Peter! It’s up to my knees.”

  “What can we use for filling?” said Peter.

  “How about turf?” said Jeanne.

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Peter started to tear up turfs and hand them down to Anna, who put them on top of the row of stones. The force of water curving over the top dislodged some of them and Jeanne said, “You’ll have to press them in hard, Anna.”

  Another turf was washed forward and flopped down across the branch behind. The water surged over.

  “Look at the way it flows,” said Jeanne. “It looks like glass.”

  “Oh, Mummy,” said Anna. “I don’t know how to do it.”

  Jeanne took off her shoes and stepped down into the pool.

  “Ooh, it’s cold,” she said.

  “Soon get used to it,” said Peter.

  Jeanne began placing the turf, tamping the cracks, groping underwater to plug gaps. She looked behind her at the spreading pool. The water was more than halfway up the trampled slope. Slowly, the water flowing through the dam was being lessened to a steady trickle at the base.

  “We’ll have to build the top up fast,” said
Jeanne. “It’s nearly over the edge now.”

  Peter worked his fingers forward under the turf, tearing and ripping at the matted roots.

  “Hurry up!” said Jeanne. “It’s beginning to go.”

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” said Peter.

  He passed the turfs down to Anna.

  “Is it holding?” he said.

  “Not for long. We’ve got to get higher.”

  “It’s coming through the side!” shouted Anna.

  “Here! Catch these!” said Peter as he tossed the sods to Jeanne.

  “Get out of the way, Anna!” said Jeanne.

  She slapped the turfs into position, stemming the burst through. The hem of her skirt was trailing in the water so she tucked it into her underpants.

  “I’ve got to have something to work with!” said Peter.

  “Anna, go and look for a piece of tin or something he can use to dig with.”

  Anna got up and wandered off across the field.

  “Hurry up!” called Jeanne.

  “I am hurrying!” shouted Anna.

  “And fetch me some sticks as well.”

  Peter scrabbled at the turf as fast as he could. The cold water was nudging at the back of Jeanne’s thighs. The pool stretched back from the dam, nearly level now with the field.

  “Three more rows across the top’ll hold it,” said Jeanne.

  Anna trailed back with a rusty tin can, which Peter stamped flat. He sliced and hacked at the turf, peeling back long strips. Jeanne was wedging the turfs in, driving sticks through the layers to skewer them together, forcing props into the banks, laying the turfs higher and higher. Anna sat on the bank, plunking pebbles into the water.

  “I’m cold, Mummy.”

  “There’s a hell of a pressure,” said Jeanne. “I can feel it pushing against my legs.”

  “Reinforce the sides,” said Peter. “Where it got through before.”

  “Mummy, I said I was cold.”

  “Put Peter’s jacket on.”

  Dusk was falling. The trees were black shapes against the flushed sky. A cool breeze was beginning to blow.

  Jeanne piled and shaped the turfs until the dam was slightly higher than the level of the field. Her blouse was splashed and mud-stained.

  Peter dropped the flattened tin can and, sitting back on his heels, wiped his hands on his thighs.

  “Just look at that!” he said.

  Jeanne waded out and stood beside him. The water lay wide and sullen in front of them.

  “How long do you think it’ll hold?” she said.

  Peter shrugged.

  They looked down on the pool, watching a thick swirl where the current moved in.

  “Are we going home now?” said Anna.

  “It’s holding up pretty well,” said Jeanne. “Don’t you think?”

  Peter realized that his hand was smarting. He had a cut in his palm and had torn a fingernail.

  “You look funny with your skirt in your knickers,” he said.

  “Give me your handkerchief,” she said. “I want to dry my legs. And don’t use the word knickers. It sounds disgusting.”

  “Are we going home now, Mummy?”

  “Yes, poppet.”

  “Can I have cocoa?”

  “I should think so.”

  “Can Peter tell me a story?”

  “You’ll have to ask him when you’re in bed.”

  At the fence, they stopped and looked back. The place where Peter had torn up the turf was black. In front of the black patch there was a glimmer in the grass. The rising water was overflowing, seeping and trickling forward between the roots, glinting in the twilight.

  They took it in turns to carry Anna home. Jeanne undressed her in the kitchen and gave her a quick wash at the sink before taking her up to bed. She was so tired she forgot to ask for cocoa and a story. Peter took off his damp trousers and dropped them on the kitchen floor with Anna’s clothes. He went into the sitting room and plugged in the electric fire.

  He stood in front of it warming his behind and legs. The sitting room was small and square, crowded by the chintz-covered settee and the two armchairs. On the wall facing him was a large painting of a windjammer under full canvas. On an occasional table under the chintz curtains was a basket made from the shell of an armadillo, its tail curving round into its mouth to form a handle. It was lined with red silk and full of wax fruit.

  He knelt in the armchair and looked over the back, glancing along the shelves of the small bookcase. Most of the books were sea stories, Edwardian travel books, memoirs. He heard Jeanne’s voice upstairs and her footsteps going into her own room. He took out a book called Travels on the Upper Yangtze by a Major K. Frazer and flipped through the pages. He felt too tired to read. He looked at a sepia photograph of a Chinese peasant with a pack on his shoulder. The caption read: A Typical Son of the East.

  Jeanne came down the narrow stairs, tying the cord of her housecoat. She gathered the cushions together on the settee and plumped them into a comfortable heap at one end. Then, she took a cardboard box from the top of the bookcase and settled herself into the cushions. She opened the box and took out bundles of Parker’s Red Dragon coupons, her albums, and the Free Gift Catalogue.

  She smoothed back the cover of a new album and slipped the elastic band off a bundle of coupons. She separated them into two piles, those worth five units and those worth ten. Then she started licking the top edges of the coupons and fixing them into the book. Peter sat in the armchair watching her. He could hear the wind strengthening, stirring the brass flap of the letterbox in the front door.

  “Jeanne?”

  She did not look up.

  “Umm?”

  “Do you know if there are any Band-Aids or a tin of Elastoplast or anything? I want to cover this cut.”

  She shrugged.

  “Have a look in the bathroom.”

  He went upstairs and washed the cut again. The cabinet in the bathroom was empty except for rusted razor blades. When he went downstairs, she had started on a second album.

  As she pressed the coupons into place, she was humming. He wandered over to the table and ran his fingers over the armadillo’s bristly plates. He pressed his thumbnail into a wax pear. He walked back and stood at the end of the settee watching her.

  “Hmmph.”

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking. I nearly killed myself humping that suitcase all the way from the bus. Blistered my hands, probably slipped a disc, and half of it was full of your bloody old coupons.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to leave them behind. You don’t get things for free very often in this life.”

  Peter tucked himself into the armchair again.

  “They’re not really free,” he said. “You pay for all that with the price of the cigarettes.”

  “Well, they seem free, then. Just as important. And anyway, I enjoy sticking them in the books.”

  “Those cigarettes taste so bloody awful though. Nobody’d smoke them if they didn’t have gifts.”

  “I hadn’t noticed you refusing them,” said Jeanne.

  She took the elastic band off another bundle of coupons and began to sort them.

  “And the things you get for them are very good anyway,” she said.

  “Such as?”

  “That dartboard I had. Solid cork. It was a good one.”

  “What other sort of things?”

  She picked up the catalogue and turned the pages.

  “Steam irons, power drills, ironing boards, spice racks, bathroom scales, Hoovers, tricycles, Ronson table lighters—oh, here’s one for you—document case. Genuine All-Leather Document Case. Best Quality Hide. All-Brass Mercury Zipper. Measures 30’’ by 15’’. Executive Styling.”

  She looked across at him.
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  “You could use it to carry all your little papers in. Your register and so on.”

  “Very nice,” said Peter.

  “Just the thing,” said Jeanne. “Executive styling, too. You could put all your little report cards in it.”

  “It’d be very handy,” said Peter.

  She laughed and said, “Peter has not worked hard enough this term. He has often been a naughty boy. He lacks team spirit and must try harder and cooperate with others.”

  “Extremely comical,” said Peter.

  “Yes, this case is just the thing for you. Cheap, too. Only two-and-a-half albums.”

  “Pack it in, will you, Jeanne. Whatever you say, I still think that teaching’s an important job.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Well, it is.”

  “I know. I agree with you.”

  “Oh, stop trying to take the piss. You’re not subtle enough.’’

  “I’m agreeing with you, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Oh, up yours!”

  “Tut! Tut!” said Jeanne. “I don’t think that’s the way teachers speak, is it?”

  Peter opened Travels on the Upper Yangtze.

  One of the older porters was a particularly sullen sort of chap. We suspected him of creating trouble for the very “Foreign Devils” who were supplying his daily food! All the efforts of Captain Frisby, who often quizzed him in his own lingo, failed to draw him out. Sullen he remained.

  “What’s the heavy silence for?” said Jeanne.

  “I’m trying to read.”

  “Oh, pardon me. Interesting book?”

  “Yes.”

  “Educational?”

  Peter got up, dropped the book into the armchair, and went upstairs to his room. He put the light out and got into bed. He smoked a couple of cigarettes, using the packet as an ashtray. He had not drawn the curtains and he could see clouds scudding across the moon. His hands behind his head, he lay staring out into the night.

  About an hour later, there was a knock at his door.

  “Who is it?” he said.

  “That’s a stupid question,” said Jeanne as she came into the room and closed the door behind her.

  “Who did you think it was? Jack the Ripper?”