Children of Light

by Lucy English

  I remember these times, which in my memory stretch for months but were probably only weeks. We never visit anybody. She reads me stories in a flat voice. Cinderella. Little Red Riding Hood. Snow White. I try as hard as I can to see Cinderella’s glittering ball like one of my parents’ parties, the grinning wolf like Alan Crawford and Snow White singing as she makes sausages and mash for the seven dwarves.

  Sometimes we go out, to the park I now know as Henrietta Park but I call it the pretty park. It’s filled with blossom and flowers and sunlight. There’s another park with swings and slides and a boating lake, but that’s too far, says Pammy. We sit on a bench. We sit in the sun and watch the people. She’s not a great one for talking. If I ask a question, she says, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ or ‘Don’t ask me that.’ Am I getting this wrong or was Bath quieter then? Now it’s so busy and in the summer heaving with tourists, but I remember warm late-spring afternoons in a park bursting with blossom. We watch a man walk right round the park. The shadows are getting longer. He passes by, raises his hat, and says, ‘Good afternoon, ladies.’ We walk back up the hill, slowly because Pammy puffs and wheezes. I see the paint on the doors. Peeling dark green paint, dark red paint. The windows of the houses are thick with lace curtains. The houses are a gold honey colour, all standing next to each other like old people in a church.

  From my nursery window I can see right across the town and it frightens me. We live up so high we might fall down. Pammy sits by the window and looks out as if she has been put in charge of all the people and not just me. At night I want my curtains closed. I can’t sleep unless they’re closed. I don’t want to see how high up we are. In the night I imagine the house is balanced on a rock and any minute it’s going to fall down and we’ll all be buried. I start crying and screaming, ‘It’s going to fall down any minute!’ Then Pammy comes in, in a flowery nightie, and puts on the light. I want to tell her how scary it is, but I can’t. She tucks me in and sits next to me. She yawns and yawns and rubs her eyes. I say, ‘Leave the door open.’ She pads back to her room heavily, like a bear. I think I can hear her getting into bed. The springs bounce. I think I can hear her snoring. I feel comforted.

  I went to school and Pammy left. This is a fact. I don’t remember it. I don’t remember saying goodbye or tears or presents, but I remember my school uniform. Grey and blue. A grey skirt, a blue blazer, a grey hat with a blue ribbon. Grey socks. It was one of those little private schools there used to be so many of but they got closed down because they were crap. We sat in rows and copied out letters of the alphabet. A,a,a. B,b,b. By the time I went to school I could already read, but nobody paid attention to that. The school had once been a house and the playground was the garden concreted over. The headmistress was called Miss Tanner. There were three boys, but the rest of the children were girls. I had never seen so many children before, shouting, skipping, singing, playing games I had never heard of and didn’t know how to play. The boys fascinated me. They had long grey socks, long grey shorts, and in between were plastered knees. They cut their knees and didn’t cry. Their shirts came untucked and they didn’t care. One had ginger hair and freckles, but orange freckles he wasn’t the least bit ashamed of. He stuck his arm next to mine and said, ‘I’ve got more than you.’ The other two boys were brothers, Desmond and Peter. They communicated by nodding to each other. Desmond got slapped on the hands with a ruler by Miss Tanner, because he was bold. He stood there, pink cheeked and defiant. It was Peter who wailed. Afterwards in the playground they plotted how they were going to get her. They were going to hide her chalk. They were going to piss in the girls’ toilets. They were going to get a black man to look up her skirt. I was silent and insignificant. They didn’t notice me. I heard it all.

  My father took me to school and my mother took me home. She didn’t talk to the other mothers. After all what had she to say to the dowdy women with fat babies in prams, but my father smiled and chatted. They were respectable women, but marriage had made them sport tweedy skirts and cardigans of sludgy green, over-permed hair and unflattering footwear. My mother was as remote as a princess. Sunglasses, and her hair under a headscarf. A cream suit and little pointed shoes. She said the same thing to me every day. ‘Did you have a nice time?’ It wasn’t the sort of question that needed an answer. She held my hand not out of affection but so I wouldn’t get lost. She walked slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, turning her head to look at her reflection in shop windows.

  I’m in my bedroom at night and I’ve had that dream again about the house falling down. I’m crying and crying, but then I realise Pammy isn’t there anymore. I also realise that no matter how much I scream my parents won’t come upstairs. It’s a strange thought and a horrible one and it quietens me. I lie there in the darkness but I can’t sleep. Then I do an odd thing. I get out of bed, open Pammy’s door, and run back into bed as fast as I can. Pammy isn’t there, but I can imagine that she is. I imagine I can hear her snoring on the other side of the nursery. I imagine it so much I can hear it. Then everything feels better.

  I still do this, don’t I, when I’m by myself? I imagine somebody’s there when they’re not. It’s better than being alone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She woke up under the sloping roof of the hut to a wet, windy morning. The wind sang through the pine trees. The branches creaked and sighed. She had been dreaming of Felix. He smoked too much and wheezed in his sleep. She didn’t open her eyes. He was still beside her in her dream, where she was waiting for him to wake up and start coughing, but she didn’t want to wake him up. Dreaming about sleeping. It seemed a peculiar thing to do. She missed him. It was a physical ache that was difficult to smooth away, much worse than the baby, which was like being given a present and having it snatched from her. Missing Felix was worse because she knew him. He infuriated her. He went to bed far too late. He woke up far too late with a ‘Fuck! Is that the time?’ There was always something he hadn’t done, something he should have done two hours ago. Why hadn’t he seen a doctor about his chest? Why had he smoked so much and why was his life so bloody chaotic? But in the morning, when she was awake and he wasn’t, she felt tender towards him.

  Felix was beautiful in an odd way. He had long fair curling hair, masses of it. His face was angles and hollows. His eyes, which were slanting, were grey-blue. He didn’t look like an angel because angels don’t growl when they’re angry and forget to wash. He looked like a spirit from fairyland. A changeling, furious to be living with humans. He would disrupt them whenever he could. He would turn up at her narrowboat and sit by the stove, warming his hands. Long and bony, a philosopher’s hands. She knew he hadn’t eaten anything and he was tired. He would say, ‘Can I read you something?’ and out of his pocket came a crumpled bundle of paper, and he read one poem, then another. Strange poems with not much sense, like thoughts don’t make sense but have images and words which connect. This planet, love and community, and the goddess, something he saw on the street the week before, something he felt at a party, in a dream. But when he read he put so much into it, it seemed to make him flicker and glow like a candle at night. The closer she stood the more warmth she could feel.

  She opened her eyes and she was looking up at the terracotta tiles, lapped over each other, holding out the rain, which was coming down now in a torrent. It would keep her inside. She turned round to the imagined Felix, still sleeping. ‘I won’t wake you,’ she said, because she wanted him to stay peaceful in her mind. She crept down the ladder and lit the stove. She put the pot of coffee on and a pan of water so she could wash. The hut was gradually getting warmer. She lit the oil lamp and it gave out a soft light over the floor and the rough-cast walls. The coffee began to bubble and the smell of it filled the hut. She poured the liquid into a bowl, sat at the table and dipped in bread. Dark bitter coffee and chunks of baguette. A peasant breakfast. Tomorrow she would go to Draguignan.

  Friday morning

  Felix, this is a letter for you. There’s so much I never
told you. You needed to talk about yourself. I was going to tell you so many things but in the end there wasn’t time. I’m glad I told you about the Ferrou. Do you remember, I said to you, ‘You must find a place to go to in your mind,’ and you said, ‘Like where?’ Sad, and grumpy and hopeless. And I said, ‘I know this place in France,’ and when I told you, I could see you could see it. You were walking up the track and towards the great rock and the pool. I could see you looking into the pool and holding your breath. Afterwards you said, ‘Take me there.’ I was cautious because this is my special place, but I knew you needed some sort of vision, some sort of future and I said, yes.

  You are here with me now in this room, so I will take you to the Ferrou.

  I want to find the beginning of this place. I can think of events, but they seem so random. When I first came here I felt, I am meant to be here. I was nine. Vivienne and Hugo were here and Jeanette, chattering away, but they have disappeared in my memory and there is only me standing with such awe and such fear. I looked up at the cleft in the rock, at the sun shining above it and into the pool dazzling me. Firewater. When I touched the water I thought it would be hot, but it wasn’t, it was cold.

  Here’s a memory. I’m in the top class of the prep school. The children in the first class look like babies and I can hardly believe I was that small. I’m as tall as my mother and I feel like an oaf. Felix, you once said to me your mother couldn’t see you for what you were. I don’t think my parents saw me at all. I was dressed. I was washed. I was given food and talked to, but I wasn’t a person. I was a pet, sometimes irritating, sometimes delightful but most of the time forgotten about. When I left home I was angry about this. I was so angry I wanted to forget about them. I wanted to eradicate them. Especially my mother.

  My mother sat there at social functions like a sorbet, but afterwards tore each guest to pieces. They were fat, ugly, badly dressed. My father laughed because she was funny; she was a great mimic, she could capture a person’s tone of voice, or their posture, and she found it funny too. It sent her into shrieks of laughter. When she laughed like that it terrified me. One day she would laugh about me, I knew it. I could already hear her: ‘That Mireille, with the freckles, that beanpole, darling, socks with sandals, did you ever, have you ever seen such a specimen (people were always specimens to my mother)? Have you ever seen such a frump!’ I felt ashamed. By my mother’s shallowness and also by my father being taken in by it.

  Hugo was ambitious. With Alan Crawford he became involved in property development in the south of France. After St Tropez had become fashionable the whole coast from there to Nice was gradually submerged under ugly holiday apartments. My father’s name was Devereux, and his grandparents were French. He spoke French, he understood French ways. He saw a way to make money and didn’t hesitate. I used to believe I was like my father because I knew I was entirely different from my mother, but now I know I was so different from both of them. What they ate, what they wore, what they bought was of paramount importance. My mother was so status-conscious she would throw away her curtains, have a baby, move house, if it would improve her standing in the eyes of other people. She was an excellent acquisition for my father.

  I am silent and shy. I read in my spare time. I am learning to read French and I can speak it. I pray every night. Please God, can I have a friend? I want a friend but I don’t know where to start. It’s nearly the end of the summer term, it’s hot and we have lessons outside in the playground, but Miss Tanner is lethargic and the pupils are half asleep. She tells us we will go on a trip to the Roman baths and all the class go, ‘Oh no, not again!’ But I have never been. My parents have never taken me. They only take me to places where they want to go. I have been to France more than seven times. I have been to Nice, Cap Ferrat, Toulon, Menton, Grasse, Cannes. When I say these names to my schoolmates their eyes widen. They have been to Torquay, Weston-Super-Mare, Dawlish, Paignton.

  When we go to the baths Miss Tanner gives us a long speech about Romans, watercourses, hydro systems. Underground and indoors it’s hot and sticky. I can make no sense of the stones. Then we are herded out to the great baths, and there they are. The golden pillars, the greeny water. The steam rising. The water pouring out from the spring into the basin, a constant gush of water. I have seen this before, of course I have, at the Ferrou. Again I feel that shiver. I put my hand into the stream of water, expecting it to be cold, but it isn’t, it’s warm. Not hot like a tap, but warm like a pond of water on a beach, like a cup of thé citron left on a café table. The temperature of tears.

  Here’s another memory. Going back now. I’m wearing a white cotton dress, white socks and black sandals. I’m sitting on a wicker chair outside a café. The chair has a band of green around its edge. It’s an uncomfortable chair and sticks to my legs. I’m drinking citron pressé out of a long glass, trying to keep the spoon out of my nose. I’m so hot. I’ve never been as hot before and we are in the shade. The café is in a street. There are people everywhere, talking, and I don’t understand because it’s French. A smell in the air of fish and scent from the purple flowers that trail over the wall. All colours are brighter. Hugo is in white, so bright I can hardly look at him. He is laughing. His sleeve is rolled up and his arm is brown. He is talking French. My mother is in the shade, dressed in mint green like an ice cream but one frozen so hard it won’t melt. She is wearing dark glasses. She crosses and uncrosses her legs. She is smoking a cigarette, slowly, like somebody who wants to enjoy all of it. Then Hugo jumps up and comes round the table and kisses her forehead. Her expression does not change, but they hold each other’s hands and squeeze tight. I can see their knuckles becoming whiter.

  My parents are dead now, but they stay young in my mind and I think I now understand their passion. It was about owning. Each wanted to possess the other. Without my father my mother was half a person, bored, flicking through magazines, telling me to sit up straight and not slouch, but when he walked into the room a look came over her face of complete radiance. Suddenly the way she sat and the way she talked was aimed, I can see it now, at dazzling and overwhelming him. In the end there was nothing he could see but her and nothing she could think about but him.

  We are due to go to France for nearly all of the holidays. My father is working on a project on the coast. The previous summer they bought the Ferrou and it stays there. One dark pool. One unmodernised hut. They want to build a holiday home, with a swimming pool feature under the great rock. I have seen the plans. I know about building plans because when we return from France we will be moving into the new house my father has designed. He talks about this new house, how it will bring him a great deal of attention. It has a fountain courtyard and a garden, sweeping down a hill. It’s all my parents talk about these days. New houses. My mother’s going to sell the furniture in Bellevue. It’s old-fashioned and that is bad. Everything in my room is also old-fashioned.

  It’s Sunday morning and I come down for breakfast. My father’s up and dressed in his cricket clothes. He’s going to play cricket later. They have been discussing the new house. He looks at me thoughtfully, which he rarely does because my mother usually diverts his attention. He says, ‘Why don’t I take her to see the site? It would be good for her education.’

  ‘Trampling about in mud?’ says my mother with a sneer.

  ‘I won’t get dirty,’ I say, because spending time alone with my father is a treat.

  She looks at me as if there is nothing right about me. ‘Go on, turn her into an architect. She’s such a brain-box.’

  We go in the car across Bath. It’s not sunny. It’s humid and overcast. My father tells me about drainage problems, but I’m thinking about the new house, the magic castle. ‘Here we are,’ he says, but I don’t see anything. A drive of mud, as if a finger has scraped into the earth to taste it. We get out of the car and walk across the mud, which is soft like paste and sticks to my shoes. In front of us is a pile of grey concrete bricks. It looks like an air-raid shelter or a public lavat
ory. This is the house. My father tells me about the cunning design. It’s layered down the hill and this is the first level. It’s flat-topped and squat. We go inside. But it’s just concrete and more concrete. Wires coming out of the walls, holes in the floor as if its innards are being operated on. I feel cheated. I hate it. I would rather live in a little hut like the Ferrou, even though there is only one tap, because it is golden and private. This place is a prison. My father tells me where the kitchen is going to be and the lounge. We go outside through more mud and puddles of water. There’s a view across a smudgy valley. The hill rolls down to a wooden bridge across weed-filled water. I look at the bridge, then I run, right down the hill. My father shouts after me, but I keep running. He catches up with me on the bridge. He is hot and cross in his cricket clothes. ‘You silly girl, what are you doing!’

  He’s not often cross with me and I burst into tears. ‘What’s up? What is it, my special girl?’

  ‘I don’t want to live here. I want to live in France.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mireille walked into the square. It was the Easter weekend and the village looked festive. In front of the church bunting had been hung up, and around the square flowers planted in wooden tubs. The church was open, ready for the Easter mass, and from inside came the chattering of the cleaners, their French dipped in the Provençal accent until it twanged and resonated like a wet guitar string. Outside, Jeanette and Auxille were chattering too, their hands, if not flapping near their heads to emphasise a point, smoothing down their best clothes. Auxille was all in black. A neat little black suit with an opal brooch on the lapel. She had tiny lace-up shoes and silk stockings. She still had shapely legs. Jeanette’s hair was now blacker than ever, almost blue-black. Her dress was red and tight and her shoes were red and high-heeled. She was wearing a gold necklace and at least six rings. When they saw Mireille they waved wildly. Macon lumbered out of the café.