The Girl on the Pier

by Paul Tomkins

  Next, Kitty’s bedroom: dim and musty, yellowing net curtains muting the twilight. As suggested I look under the bed, and in the wardrobes, but there is an overwhelming amount of stuff, tightly crammed into the limited space. How would I recognise my mother’s possessions, even if I found them amid my aunt’s lifetime of hoarding?

  Sorting through it all won’t be easy. It’ll have to wait until another day.

  ELEVEN

  It got no better, in the days following our domestic apocalypse. Laura made an immediate exit, but most of her possessions remained. A curt text stated that her father, Mick, would be round to collect her belongings. She also made it clear that while she couldn’t face returning to the property, I had a couple of weeks to find alternative accommodation before it would be put on the market. I tried phoning, to discuss her plans, but she refused to answer.

  A day later, Mick duly arrived.

  The knock on the door was met, deep in my core, with the kind of dread reserved for bailiffs or, worse still, underworld debt collectors who negotiate with the persuasion of baseball bats and knuckledusters.

  No giant – I’d guess five feet nine – Mick was however the thickest-set man I’d ever known: a dense mass of stockiness, with the look, and accoutrements, of an East-End gangster. As a young man he’d spent time in the army, where he boxed to some distinction. And although he’d grown a little saggier over time – most notably in the loose skin beneath his chin – he’d also continued to bulk up and expand on a diet high in red meat. A veritable pit-bull of a man, beside whom I resembled an overgrown poodle.

  “You know why I’m here”, he said, standing right up against the door as I opened it. Minimal eye contact, words kept to the necessary.

  We walked solemnly inside, heading straight through to the lounge. As he brushed past to lead the way our shoulders met in a brief moment of disturbing intimacy. I harboured fears that he was here to kill me. Or, more accurately, was capable of killing me, and was here. Ever since the very first meeting almost nine years earlier I’d felt thoroughly intimidated. His chunky fingers would envelope my relatively reedy digits whenever we shook hands. These handshakes were always painfully long and firm; Mick apparently unprepared to relinquish his grip until absolutely certain I knew of his strength, his innate capabilities, with every handshake a warning. Thankfully we were beyond such formalities now; otherwise I could see it lasting for days, with every inch of life squeezed out of a thoroughly crumpled set of fingers left to resemble broken twigs in a surgical glove.

  I found equally unnerving his ability to say very little; to remain taciturn when it would be easier to speak, talking only in simple words when called upon – in my company, at least. In the company of others he could be positively loquacious. With me he was guarded, holding something back; I feared what the man thought but elected not to utter. Not the silent type, with nothing to say, but the strong and silent type, with lots to say, just never to me.

  The relationship between father and daughter also disconcerted me, not least Laura’s insistence on calling him ‘Daddy’. Not ‘Father’, not ‘Dad’, not even an annoying but acceptable ‘Pa’, but this most juvenile of names. Daddy. It made my skin crawl each time I heard it. Likewise, Laura remained ‘my little girl’ to Mick, but it always felt to me in some distinctly unnatural way. After all, she clearly wasn’t anyone’s little girl – not any more. I certainly didn’t want to harbour the sense of corrupting a minor.

  But perhaps I already had. I had physically harmed his daughter, albeit unintentionally. I had broken her heart and helped ruin the life we were sharing, all in one highly regrettable evening. None of it is the kind of behaviour I’d expect any right-minded father to casually shrug off – and this particular father was far from right-minded. I could only conclude that Laura spared him the full details of her version of events, covering up the cut on her forehead with her hair. If she hadn’t, I doubted I’d still be conscious.

  Mick clutched a piece of paper: Laura’s inventory, from which he listed items for me to locate. He also rummaged about without bothering to ask my permission – opening drawers, filing through papers, snooping in cupboards. The list existed for a reason, I wanted to point out, and yet felt powerless to object. I knew the man’s thinking: his daughter owned half of the house and therefore he could do as he pleased, acting on her behalf. He took some unlisted electrical appliances – microwave, DVD player, toaster – perhaps just to make life awkward for me. But as long as he left all essential things untouched I decided to keep quiet.

  The list generally lacked controversy. A good majority of the items were hers and hers alone: clothes, jewellery, toiletries, along with a couple of sentimental trinkets she didn’t like to be without. There were just a few dual-owned possessions noted, and although not happy to lose them, in the circumstances I handed them over with an accepting shrug. Should a divorce ensue – and it felt unavoidable – then in time I would be losing a hell of a lot more.

  Perhaps as punishment, perhaps as pre-planned vindictive spite, Mick set about tearing down streamers, unpinning decorations and dismantling the three-piece tree. The Anti-Claus, he packed up Christmas, to take away. Not that their household wasn’t bedecked with gaudy tinsel and baubles; not that Laura in any way needed these things now. December 21st, and Christmas was officially cancelled.

  Decorations detached and disassembled, Mick began to study Jacob’s painting of Black, which was leaning against the living room wall, awaiting further repair. Here – on the surface, to someone like my father-in-law – stood a depiction of a nubile young woman, staring any onlooker in the eye in a state of undress. Where Mick might previously have accepted calling it art (whatever that was), I guessed he now thought it pornography; art being the excuse to hang an image of a naked woman on a wall. When he placed the painting beside the pile of confiscated goods I felt a rush of anger. No way would he be leaving the house with it. A link to both Jacob and Black; a link to more history and emotion than Mick could ever dream of. Somehow I had to broach the subject, and then possibly fight this colossal man. But he must have looked again, must have seen the light catch the lines of Sellotape holding the canvas together. He moved it away, back to where he found it.

  Just as I thought things had passed off relatively peacefully, Mick emerged through the front door to collect the last remaining bag. He left it momentarily untouched as he approached. I felt my anal sphincter constrict, like an animal pulling itself into its shell. At the moment his club-like hand gripped around the neck of my t-shirt, drawing the material in across my chest – tight under my armpits, untucked from jeans – I feared projection into the adjacent kitchen, through a section of wall where there existed no door. Instead, he pushed me down onto a nearby chair.

  For once he towered over me. His face drew in closer than ever before, as though he were about to kiss me. With warm, stale, coffee-tinged breath blowing against my skin, he simply whispered, in a tone far more sinister than any yelled threat, that should I not meet his daughter’s deadline for vacating the house, he would kill me. About that I should make no mistake.

  My legs still shook, some twenty minutes after Mick’s departure. The shock hit me as soon as the front door closed tight (deadlocked, double-bolted), and I needed an immediate horizontal bearing. Somewhat surprisingly, I felt calm when facing the prospect of violence. My body told me I was ready: should things escalate beyond merely threatening and turn genuinely nasty, I had this notion that I would defend myself. However great the delusion, and however futile such attempts would have proved, my nervous system felt composed under pressure. It felt totally exhilarating. However, whatever primordial chemical reaction took place in my adrenal gland, in order to override my innate lack of courage, its effects almost instantly ebbed away.

  The whole experience left me down and deflated; Laura’s absence accentuated, the relationship’s finality clearer than ever. Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but Laura had been a companion, an ally. First it was her
physical self, now the wider web of her influence, her touch, her taste. Next would be half of everything, split down the middle by an invading father-in-law with tape measure and chainsaw.

  Without the DVD player I faced up to Saturday night TV, which I stared at over a microwave meal that, due to unforeseen circumstances, had to be cooked in the oven. As if being separated and friendless on a Saturday night wasn’t bad enough, being forced to endure the mindless terrestrial programming – people laughing at their own stupidity – made it almost unbearable. The alternatives were a World War II documentary and a further investigation into the plight of Thalidomide victims, neither of which I felt mentally prepared for. I craved easy but engaging viewing, and found only the polar extremes.

  When finally I dozed off in front of the glaring box, finding comfort and escape in sleep, the TV brought me back to reality with a start at two a.m., with the added truth that the broadcasting output only gets worse the later the hour. How I missed the test card of my childhood, the girl and her clown. I ascended the staircase, alone, and went to bed, alone.

  * * *

  Six months earlier we were set on a completely different course. Having safely navigated the first fifteen weeks of a pregnancy that didn’t easily take hold, we made our way to Cambridge, treating ourselves to a celebratory weekend break. Laura wanted to revisit the city of her studies, and I was keen for a change of scenery.

  With the half-hearted back-combed hair of someone who never quite mastered rebellion, a youthful Laura spent three years in the city studying maths, reading Sylvia Plath and listening to The Smiths and Lloyd Cole. Within a year of graduating she felt the calling of something more altruistic than banking – which, in truth, I could never imagine her doing – and started on the path to becoming a nurse.

  For the journey she chose Abba’s greatest hits for the stereo, The Idiot’s Guide to Pregnancy & Childbirth as reading material, and with her hair, as had been the case for years, styled into a sharp, sensible bob. On the first evening we ate at a stark, stylish restaurant overlooking Parker’s Piece: the square common, with its historic lamppost – the ‘reality checkpoint’ – plumb centre, separating the student world from that of mere mortals. From our table we could see children playing on this broad parkland; in our heads we projected futures onto our unborn baby, trying to imagine what he or she would be like at a similar age.

  After leaving the restaurant we turned to stroll across the park. Suddenly Laura stopped by a grass verge, holding her midriff. She complained of severe cramps, which I put down to the meal disagreeing with her. But her face registered increasing agony, and it became clear through the crotch of her jeans that she was bleeding. Frantically I flipped open my mobile, phoning for an ambulance; emphasising the need to hurry, as if it’s ever any other way.

  I helped Laura lay flat on the grass, holding her hand; she squeezed back as if letting go would see her sucked out into the far reaches of space. I crouched, assuming the position I had expected to take in a birthing suite many months later; doing my best to reassure my wife as she endured excruciating pain. Cycles zipped past on the path, wheels passing within inches of our faces; no one stopping, or even slowing down. All the while our baby bled out in pools and clots.

  Finally some passers-by came to our aid, not that any were able to provide much help. But at least we were no longer alone.

  The ambulance ride – all rattle and chaos – was both fast and slow, long and short. All I recall is swaying from side to side whilst trying to keep hold of Laura’s hand as, with her face creased, she cried and groaned. It took an age, and yet we were at the hospital in no time. Then came the frantic rush along garish tungsten corridors, followed by the wait for a specific doctor who just happened to be nowhere to be found.

  In some soulless, sterile room it was eventually confirmed as a miscarriage, with my wife suffering the indignity of an internal inspection to make sure nothing of the foetus remained; after which they supplied her with a strong sedative and a bed for the night. I sat in a chair at her bedside, trying, and failing, to get some sleep of my own. Eventually I lowered the rail and carefully climbed beside her, holding her tight as she slept on.

  Looking back, I don’t think we ever fully recovered. At first it brought us closer together, but after a while I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it, and yet it remained all she wanted to discuss. With hindsight I can see how we drifted apart from that point on, unintentionally failing to meet each other’s needs, locked in the silent, unacknowledged feedback loop of minor disappointments; although it still took a crazy night to bring things to a final conclusion.

  TWELVE

  It is growing colder – past ten o’clock – as Black and I watch the world from our isolated wooden tower, detached from human life, south of a country, raised above a sea. With no sign of the others we have agreed to wait it out. Jacob is notoriously unreliable, so neither of us feels particularly surprised. Besides, there’s not a lot we can do given that I have destroyed the only practical route off the pier. The tide is now back in, and I cannot swim, while Black, somewhat understandably, says she will only leap into the sea in daylight. We have no choice but to sit tight.

  “You see that?” she says, and I look, expecting a mini miracle: shooting star, oil tanker aflame, dolphins playfully soaring and dipping. But I see nothing.

  “Down a bit. There. On the water.”

  “What is it?”

  “A dead seagull. Look – its wings.” And sure enough, wings become apparent, spreading temporarily as the carcass bobs on a breaking wave. Quite why it is such an unusual sight is hard to fathom. A sea bird, dead in the sea. But we both stare, transfixed. There is no other drama to observe, but all the same, it draws our attention on merit. There is something altogether larger occurring, something I can sense but not articulate. The lifeless creature makes its way to shore amid bubbles and spume, and is tossed back, time and time again, limp and pathetic, but undeterred. Can will remain after death? Is that what I am reaching for?

  We look, but say no more.

  The moon, obese and mottled, does something remarkable to Black’s face: the kindest natural light, glazing her skin a faultless pale-blue porcelain. She sits with her knees close to her chest, drawing herself up into a ball. The body language is all internal, nothing expressed outward, toward me. Cigarette drawn quickly from its pack, she strikes a match, and her face explodes with colour. Her eyes have never looked so alive. She closes them upon an extended intake of smoke.

  I inch closer, every few minutes. Unable to resist – like a petal whose emergence from the cluster is noticeable only through the eye of time-lapse photography – I am drawn towards the life-source in imperceptible movements. She does not appear aware of how close I have edged. I can feel the heat from her body on my arm. I almost expect static to draw its fine hairs towards her.

  “Jesus, this is so fucking weird,” she eventually says, flicking the smouldering butt over the edge of the pier. The fawn cylinder arcs in the air like a miniature distress flare against the night sky. We watch its pin prick of orange disappear out of sight, extinguishing silently in the sea.

  We sit, Black and I, in our post-apocalyptic landscape: an assemblage of rusting poles, bent brackets and twisted ironwork, peppered with glass shards and erratic lines of splintered wood. Unable to think of anything to say, I study our surroundings. Moss grows wildly in a ruptured guttering above our heads. Decorative architectural features lie about us, ripped away or fallen exhausted to the ground. Everything – everything – is cursed with the pox of pigeon shit, which subtly fluoresces in the moonlight. Bird carcasses lie amid their own faeces.

  Up close, the pier resembles a decomposing corpse: wrought iron braces and ties beneath a skin of wood exposed like a protruding ribcage, emaciated sinews barely able to contain the skeleton within; the regimental array of articulated bones: vertebrae and clavicles and sacrum, femurs and tibias and fibulas, phalanges and carpals and metacarpals. The structure rott
ing gracelessly away, displaying its innards, its splintered heart.

  “I like your clothes,” I note, forcing language into the silence. “They’re nice,” I add, somewhat redundantly.

  “They’re second-hand.”

  “They’re still nice.”

  “I only buy second-hand. Well, mostly.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Seems a waste to keep buying new stuff. And I guess it’s wearing a form of history – stepping into the stories and lives of other people. I feel like someone else – at least at first – before the clothes have my own memories attached. I’d be lost without Oxfam and the Salvation Army.”

  I ask which photographers she most admires. I’m no expert, but from my schooling I know a few of the luminaries, such as Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray, and what they represent.

  “Oh, lots. But I guess I’m most influenced by Diane Arbus. You know her stuff?”

  Damn.

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “I’m shocked. You really should.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Definitely. I love the way she focused on these people, all kinds of outsiders. Y’know, transvestites, midgets, giants. And also normal people, but in unusual poses or situations. She had a style that was very revealing.”

  “She captured their souls?”

  “Actually, I don’t think a photograph can capture the soul, because it’s just one still, two-dimensional image. But she certainly captures something about the person. There’s this one shot of a skinny boy in Central Park holding a toy hand grenade – at least I think it’s a toy. His other hand is clenched in an identical fashion, as if it too should contain a grenade. Sunlight bathes him, through the trees. It’s beautiful, almost tranquil. But it’s his expression that makes it. So intense. He looks a sweet kid, but a crazy kid – like he’s just necked a whole bag of sugar and six gallons of Coke.”