Rough Music

by Patrick Gale

  Breathless, and bruised where his foot had struck unexpected stone, cursing at once his lack of assertiveness and ineffectual parenting of his parent, he staggered back on to the still dwindling beach just in time to rescue Mum’s robe from the greedy surf. Somehow the thing’s wet edges sapped his confidence in her.

  “I won’t panic,” he thought, “because there’s nothing to panic about. I’m a weak swimmer, that’s all. She’s fine. She’s having a ball and she’s absolutely fine.” Wincing from the mussel shells under foot, he clambered on to a great rock so as to be able to see beyond the roiling waves and keep a protective, albeit impotent, eye on her. The sun was beginning a garish setting and was fast losing its warmth. Shivering, he absently pulled on the toweling robe and screwed up his eyes.

  The Lilo was now much further out. Presumably the rip tide had caught it and the owner was resigned to its loss. It was one of the odd facts of beachcombing that one never came across the remains of Lilos lost at sea. Did they sink on bursting? Did wily fishermen pick them up to sell afresh or did they merely sail farther and farther out to sea to become floating nesting pads for seabirds? There was no sign of her. Will glanced over to the Strand and saw that the lifesavers’ flags planted there earlier had disappeared. Then he saw some late walkers on the cliff path pointing down to an inlet just out of his view. Then he made out Mum.

  She was battling with the current, he assumed at first, then he saw a second head. It was another woman. Then he saw arm muscles and a flash of chest hair and realized she was struggling with a long-haired man. He appeared to be coughing and flailing and shouting all at once. Then, extraordinarily, she performed some maneuver whereby she seized him from behind, around his chin, and like an illustration on a lifesaving instruction notice, began towing him to shore. Will glanced desperately about him but the beach was now deserted except for children still absorbed in a huge sand castle they were defending against the encroaching tide. The cliff walkers had gone. From the houses on the Polcamel headland came the shouts and laughter of families uncorking wine and lighting barbecues. In the New Age encampment, the tethered dog set up a wretched howl.

  Will leaped to the sand, ripping off the robe, and ran back into the sea, which now felt less cold. He had barely got in past his waist when she hove into view, still swimming strongly but with breath coming in great gasps. The man, who Will now saw was about his own age and had hair that hung in tight dreadlocks to his shoulders, was no longer shouting or flailing but floating quite limp in the water.

  “If we can just …” Mum panted. “Get him on to the beach, he’ll be fine.”

  “Here. I’ll take his feet.” Will took the man by the ankles, whereupon the man lashed out, kicking him in the chest and winding him before fighting clear of Mum’s grasp.

  “Of course I’ll be fine. I was fucking fine to start with,” he said.

  “You were drowning,” she said flatly.

  “You brainless woman,” he muttered and made woman sound like an insult.

  “Don’t you dare to talk to my mother like that,” Will began. “She was only—”

  But his words died as the man whirled around, eyes full of red sun, and glared at him so close to that Will could smell the wine on his breath. His face was blank for a moment or two as he seemed to read Will like a poorly-worded notice, then he assumed an expression that mixed contempt with a wintry bitterness and walked away up the beach as though nothing had happened.

  Will stared for a second, then was freshly aware of Mum’s heaving lungs. “Here,” he said and threw the robe about her, rubbing her shoulders. “Hot bath for you the moment we get in, my girl. You’re freezing.”

  “He was drowning,” she said as they walked up the beach arm in arm. “I was heading for the whatsit. The Lulu.”

  “Lilo.”

  “Yes. And I suddenly saw him.” Her teeth chattered. “He was already about two feet under. I saw his hair fanning out in the water.”

  “You saved the rude bastard’s life.”

  “Judging from his reaction, I’m not so sure. Oh dear. Poor man. How ghastly. He’d probably waited all day for the beach to empty.”

  Her teeth were chattering so hard now she could barely form sentences. Shock was setting in. When they were back in Blue House and her bath was running, he poured them each a medicinal brandy from the selection of drinks Dad had thoughtfully packed along with the contents of her herb rack. He found that his teeth were chattering too and clunked against the rim of his glass. He pulled on a thick cotton jersey and took his drink out to the veranda while the place filled with the urbane fumes of her bath essence.

  The few playground fights he had ever got into as a boy were set off by someone insulting her and this persisted into adulthood. By some piece of old-fashioned chivalric programming, he only lost his temper in the defense of women. Had the man not strode away as he did, Will might have hit him. He re-ran the odd scene in his head, adding in a Galahadish punch and confecting the exchange of manly indignation which followed, but the projector in his head kept jamming at the point where his knuckles brushed the man’s lips.

  The hazy sunset filled all the bay’s small slice of horizon. Will heard whistling and looked up to see Dad descending the footpath from the cliffs. They would turn the evening’s near-crisis into an amusing anecdote for him. He could already hear how it would be done, with exaggeration of his own feeble swimming, of Mum’s derring-do, of her refusal to let a handsome suicide drown on a perfectly nice evening. He thanked God Poppy was not there to spoil the fun with her dogged insistence on the truth and responsible behavior. By now she’d have called in some defenseless local GP to check Mum over and contacted social services and the Samaritans about the presence of a man in need of psychiatric help. Handsome or no.

  Will raised his drink in greeting. With his walking stick, Dad pointed at the stumpy, red-striped lighthouse on the far side of the bay and shouted something like “Fog!”

  Will smiled in reply, uncomprehending but eager. “The very image of our relationship,” he thought.

  BEACHCOMBER

  Everything about them was too loud—clothes, voices, manners, tans. And that motorbike was the last thing one expected which was, of course, precisely why he liked it. Frances could see at once that he was one of those people who would sooner die young and unappreciated than be found predictable. Something about his mustache confirmed this for her. What such people never seemed to realize was that in their pains to evade the norm, they became as fixed, as much creatures of habit, as the most staid conservative. The new university was the perfect nemesis for him. He would take drugs, sleep with his students, take sides with youth against age then wake up one day to find himself fossilized into a harmless campus character, no more scandalous than Gilbert and Sullivan.

  The strength of her reaction startled her. She was not a snob and would always spring to check snobbery in Julian, but these self-invited guests made her feel like a curtain-twitcher of the worst kind and she resented them for it. When they arrived she was talking to the doctor who had been called in to deal with the pocket drama of Julian’s being knocked out. The child had not been out cold for long. He came round as poor John was carrying him into the bungalow. He wept briefly with the pain then slid into a deep sleep. Worried about the wisdom of allowing this in case he had concussion, uncertain if she could safely give him painkillers, she had tracked down Dr. Hengist, interrupting his late lunch. The intrusive din of the motorbike angered her. Knowing it could have nothing to do with their landlords, she assumed it was some lout come to fool around on the sand. When John ran out and she heard him laughing and saw Bill and Skip coming in with him, she found the anger she had prepared for unruly strangers transferred to them. She smiled, laughed as she explained the drama, shook Bill’s hand, but she felt the anger hot behind her brow and in the hours that followed it had not lifted. She was sure it was illegal for a mere child, even this self-assured eleven-year-old, to ride pillion like that even for sh
ort distances, and they had come miles. Bill assured her they had spent a night in Salisbury to allow for an excursion to Stonehenge as though he thought that made such irresponsibility forgivable.

  At first she assumed that Skip dressed like a boy because it was safer on a motorbike and made it easier to disguise her age. Then it became clear from her manners, lack of them rather, that she felt more comfortable that way. She was a tomboy; scowling, monosyllabic, freckle-faced. Her actual, feminine name sat awkwardly on her slouching persona so it came as small surprise that her nickname had supplanted it entirely. Junior, Chuck or Beaver would have suited her equally. Frances did her best to draw her out, asking her about her trip and school and California but it proved such an uphill struggle she decided the girl was shy and that it would be kinder to leave her to scowl in peace.

  Meanwhile something odd was happening to John. Talking to Bill, he was putting on a joshing, even loud, manner. He talked about distances and miles per gallon, things in which he never showed the least interest, became suddenly keen that everyone drink as much as possible and, she noticed, persisted in standing when the rest of them were sitting down, as though he needed to assert himself. What surprised her most, however, was the knowledge he revealed about all things California, not just history and geography but recent politics, student movements and what he called counter-culture. He had been researching. Not for this visit, naturally, which had taken him by surprise, but for the vaguer purpose of keeping abreast since Becky’s death so that when fate brought him together with his niece he should not be found wanting.

  Bill was handsome. Why should she deny it? He looked less like an academic than a farmer or cowhand, which would surely have pleased him greatly. He was shorter than John but thicker set, stronger-looking. He was the younger by several years but so tanned and weather-beaten that his face had more lines. Somehow the creases around his eyes and mouth and the lines etched in his brow contrived to look like signs of health whereas John’s furrows spoke only of anxiety. But even as she compared them, perched on a creaking bench beside the sullen child and looking discreetly from one to the other, she despised herself for even seeking comparisons. Bill was handsome, certainly, but his awareness of the fact undercut its impact, on second and third examination. As did the arrogant fullness of his voice, his assurance of attention. He had brown eyes, good white teeth, a firm jaw and, if his daughter’s bragging about his surfing prowess were to be believed, would have muscles to match. John was the better bred, however. She abhorred such terminology but there was no more effective way of distinguishing him. In purely veterinary terms, John plainly came of closer-matched bloodstock. His nose was longer, his cheekbones were more pronounced, his hands not flattened and spread as if by generations of labor. John was a gazelle hound to his brother-in-law’s mastiff.

  Supper was not a great success. On a whim, partly because it was a favorite of John’s, she bought some local sausages and made toad-in-the-hole. But the oven was not hot enough so the batter failed to rise properly and remained unappetizingly flabby in the middle. Although it doubtless confirmed all the worst things Becky had told him about British cooking, Bill at least ate the sausages. Skip, whose eyes had already widened with disgust at the dish’s name, announced that she was vegetarian and not hungry in any case. Although she was actually angry that no one had thought to warn her of this, Frances tried to cajole her into eating some vegetables instead but Skip only stared at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. Julian took this as his cue to show off and try to eat more sausage than was good for him, whereupon John ticked him off rather sharply and a mildly drunken gloom descended, unrelieved by Frances’s production—what had possessed her?—of an unseasonably hot rice pudding. The business of sending the children to bathe and settling them into bed provided a much-needed diversion.

  Frances returned from tucking Julian in—Skip, quite properly, had refused any such childish intimacy—to find the men smoking duty-free cigarettes and tucking into a second bottle of Wine Society claret. Succumbing to the urge to retire early with a novel, she bade them both good night. She felt Bill’s eyes on her as she crossed the room to take refuge in a bath and knew she was being chilly and rude but she was too tired to care. In any case, to announce that she had changed her mind and was going to sit up with them and prove the life and soul after all would have appeared odd even had she possessed the confidence required to reverse her decision.

  Had John not been drunk when he eventually came to bed, he would have been angry with her. As it was he merely expressed concern that she had not been very nice to Skip.

  “But I’ve tried,” she protested. “I talked to her. I helped her get ready for bed. I tried to make her eat.”

  “I think she’s terribly unhappy,” he said. “He can’t see it, of course, and she makes a big effort to hide it from him. She doesn’t want him to think it’s his fault. And it isn’t. I mean he didn’t kill Becky. But she’s just terribly unhappy.”

  She was astonished to hear him talk this way. She had no idea he thought in even this depth about any of them and actually felt a small pang of jealousy that he should wax sentimental about an ill-mannered brat he had barely met, even as she agreed and promised to make a special effort tomorrow. But then, even less characteristically, he started to make love to her without even waiting for her to turn off her reading lamp.

  “Ssh,” she managed. “He’ll hear!”

  He stifled her, however, with a not unpleasant, winey kiss, put out the light himself, knocking it over noisily in the process, and made love to her. It hurt, probably because she was so tense at the thought of a strange man and child lying and listening on the other side of the thin bedroom wall, and took longer than usual because of the alcohol.

  As though she were drunk too, however, she drifted off in the middle of it, away from the discomfort of mind and body, to a small, imaginary room where her new daughter was waiting for her, a perfect, pretty, entirely loving, meat-eating little girl. She barely noticed when he was through with thudding into her and was subsiding without his customary apologies into leaden slumbers, rapt as she was with every perfect detail of the baby and the extraordinarily acute sensation of her milky-breathing presence.

  When she returned, as it were, to the room and pulled her sweat-soaked nightdress back around her legs and prepared to sleep, she found herself breathing in time with the sea and feeling the house gathered about her as a creaking wooden shell, aware of husband, son and other sleepers as so many small animal presences she could bear effortlessly along on its frame.

  The following morning, because the sea was uncomfortably rough for swimming, she had hoped to organize a trip inland to a church with famously beautiful pew ends. However, Bill returned with Skip from a reckless pre-breakfast dip wildly excited. Nobody had told him there was surfing in Cornwall and he wanted to go in search of surfboards immediately. Something about him, his unbounded enthusiasm perhaps, had reduced John to a state of clannish adolescence. He tossed aside his C. P. Snow, declaring this a marvelous idea, and claiming he had always wanted to learn, which was news to her. Skip insisted that even though Julian wasn’t a strong swimmer he could still enjoy body surfing or they could find him something cheap and polystyrene. Julian, Frances could see, was torn between mistrust of this bolshy girl and puppyish awe of her father. At last he checked an impulse to linger mousily and tailed along.

  “You don’t want to come, do you?” John asked her in a fleeting way that made her feel he would have been disappointed had she surprised him and come too, so she smiled and shook her head, remembering last night.

  “I’m exhausted,” she said. “Just promise me a go on your board if you find one.”

  Left alone, she washed up breakfast, irritated afresh that her radio picked up nothing but pop music down here. She sat on the veranda with more coffee, anointed herself liberally with sun cream, and finished rereading The Grand Sophy in an unsatisfactory rush. Then, bored and feeling greasy, she went in
side again to tidy up. She made her bed, scooped dirty clothes into a bag, did the same in Julian’s little room then paused on the threshold of the room Skip had insisted on sharing with her father. It was odd how twenty-four hours could turn a neutral space, a spare room, into somewhere so intensely private. They had only swimming things and the clothes they traveled in. In an arrangement that had already struck her as both spendthrift and characteristically selfish, the belongings they could not fit on the motorbike were coming separately by train so would have to be collected. Despite this, father and daughter had managed to create a mess in the room. The bedding was all over the floor, an ashtray was overflowing on the chest of drawers and their wet swimming things were staining the bedside rug. The room had already acquired an alien scent; not just cigarettes, but something sweet and nutty she could not place.

  She hesitated a moment, familiar with the bossy disapproval that could be implicit in a room tidied in one’s absence. Then a breeze from the open window caught the cigarette ash and she felt compelled into action. She swept the ashtray off to the kitchen, wrung the bathing costumes out of the window before slinging them up on the washing line then made the bed. She realized, as she plumped up the pillows, that they must have slept in their underwear. Far from thinking the image sordid, she found it to be oddly touching.

  The girl had no bedside reading, which was surely a shameful lack in a writer’s daughter. He had brought a new copy of a novel, Couples, by someone called John Updike, and a dog-eared hardback of metaphysical poetry. She began reading the Updike where she stood then, turning a page, sank to the newly made bed. She was still reading, despite a certain impatience with the tone, when she heard the Volkswagen changing gear as it came down the track. She left the book as she had found it, open face-down on a folded-over page, tidied the bed again and hurried out. She was overcome by a surge of silly, hot-cheeked guilt, became panicked that she could not immediately settle convincingly to some other activity than snooping, so was discovered wandering the corridor like an inexperienced shade.