There ought to be a law against it.
I recognise him, the tallest boy, the one Frances likes, leaning against the railing drinking beer, as Johnno pulls himself up the ladder and onto the planks, lying down and feigning exhaustion after his dive.
I cannot go up there, cannot tug one of them by the T-shirt and, with a trembling voice, ask for help. Frances would never forgive me. You what? In front of Him? I can hear her voice and I can see her face, pinched tight with fury and shame.
Okay, okay, okay, he says, the tallest boy, and he puts his beer down, arms up in the air, and saunters, slowly, to where the planks end and the sea lies waiting below. He stops, poised, until he is sure they are all looking, and then, back to the sea, with a cat-like grace, he leaps high, a backflip, and then straight down.
He hauls himself up the ladder, the faintest hint of a smile on his face, and looks at them. All of them watching him. And in his look, there is a challenge. Anyone else want to try that?
No one does.
If Frances were here, it would be different.
She would spring high, high into the blue sky, double flip and then down with a fearless speed they all envied. I have seen her and I know that in her defiance she is better than all of them. She has a fearlessness that I long for, that I admire. And that also scares me.
But she is not with them.
He draws back on his cigarette, one hand running slowly down the waist, the hip, the thigh, of some girl who looks bored and uninterested.
This is the way you have to look. I know, Frances has told me.
You’ve got to make it seem like you don’t care, she says. Never let them know. And she is good at it. But there is a difference between real lack of interest and feigned lack of interest, and I have seen it. I have seen her indifference towards Him, the tall boy, and I have seen it towards Will Mills, the doctor’s son from down the road. Freckled Will who follows Frances everywhere, cracking smart jokes in an attempt to impress her.
But with Him there is a difference. Frances looks bored, but she is watching him. He pulls himself up out of the water and she is there, smoking a cigarette and talking to someone else; he is looking for his beer and she is standing right near it; he has had enough and she has already decided to leave, seconds before, in anticipation of his move.
He has a tattoo on his arm. A crooked anchor.
His dad did it to him when he was drunk, Frances has told me.
I stare at it, fascinated.
Once Frances tried to scratch a similar mark into her ankle. Razor blade, teeth clenched, and blood. I watched in awe.
You tell and I’ll . . .
I promised. Crossed my heart. Hoped to die.
It did not work. It is never called a tattoo. To do so would be to admit failure. It is a scar. An accident with a piece of glass. Pissed and cut herself with a beer bottle.
But I know.
Just as I know that Frances sneaks out at night to visit Him. Just as I know that Frances would be furious if she were here now. If she could see Him with that girl. She would pretend that it meant nothing to her, that she had not even noticed, and she would turn all her attention on to someone else, anyone, even That clown, Johnno, rather than let Him realise.
But she is not here. And I am standing alone on the jetty, without her, not knowing where to go or what to do.
Did you ask them, any of them, if they had seen her?
I take one step, two steps more, towards the outer edge of the group. A shy boy, skinny and trying too hard, who hangs around, eager, waiting for his turn to jump, wanting it, but knowing it will never come. Fat Tony, belly slopping over the top of his too tight jeans, hangs with him. I know him. His family owns the fish and chip shop on Grange Road and he works there after school. If I go with Frances, he always gives us an extra piece of fish, wanting it to be noticed but not wanting it to be noticed. Sometimes Frances also manages to bludge a packet of cigarettes. Sometimes he offers without even being asked, desperate to impress, desperate to be as bad as she and the rest of them are.
I know he has seen me, but he will not acknowledge me. Not in front of all of them. I understand and I back away from him, turning around to go back down the jetty to safety.
But it is too late.
Hey, it’s Franny’s little sister.
Stopping me in my tracks.
What yer doin’ up here?
I am scarlet, crimson to the core.
Trying to be like her older sister, and they all laugh.
Steve’s the one to teach her that, and Johnno nudges Him, the tall one, snicker, snicker, and I wish I was somewhere, anywhere else but here.
Gonna give us a jump?
They are, I think, going to come and throw me in, and in my panic, I am trying to talk, stumbling for words to explain that I am just looking for Frances. Has anyone seen Frances?
But they are not interested in me after all.
It is Tony they have turned to. Fat Tony who is grabbed, pushed and shoved towards the edge of the jetty, and I see him squealing, great rolls of fat wobbling. Stand back, everyone! This is gonna be a fuckin’ big splash. Tidal wave, mate, bigger than the one Nostradamus predicted, and Tony is clinging to the railing as they push, heads burrowed into his flesh, so that it is impossible for him to hang on. He’s going in. I do not want to see. I turn my head and try to block out the sound of the splash.
Who’s next? they shout, wild-eyed with the success of the last push.
And the skinny boy knows it is him. He fidgets nervously, unsure whether to run, to struggle, or simply to laugh. They seize him and he gives in, too awkward to know how to play the game, wanting it to be over, yet dreading that they will do what they always do: get him halfway there and give up, bored with his lack of fight.
Nah – too bloody easy, and they drop him so he loses his balance and falls on his knees.
But it is a trick.
Just as his body relaxes, they turn, one grabbing his arms, the other his feet, and with a quick wink, his jeans are yanked off, tossed to someone else, swung high in the air and then tossed again.
He kneels, trying to cover himself, and I cannot bear it.
Please . . .
They land at my feet. One wild toss too far, and the jeans are there, on the ground at my feet. In a moment that is too quick for me to realise what I am doing, I swoop down and grab them, thrusting them into the arms of the boy before anyone can stop me.
There is silence.
All eyes are on me.
Stopping the fun, hey? It is Johnno who advances and he is grinning. I step back until I am up against the railing because I cannot tell, just cannot tell, what kind of grin it is.
Leave her alone.
I think it is the tall boy, Him, who has spoken, but I do not look up, not straight away. Better to stare at the ground, better to keep backing away, moving down towards where there are people, and I want to turn and run, run as fast as I can, but I do not want them to think I am frightened.
Hey. And I look up at him, Johnno, standing right near me. Still grinning. Come ’n see us when yer older. He winks slowly. When yer more like yer sister. We’ll talk about fun then, hey?
I do not move and I do not answer him. We stare at each other, until his grin dissolves and he backs off, with a shrug of his shoulders, and swaggers over to the group.
I also turn. I want to go home. I do not want to wait for Frances anymore.
Yes, I tell them later when they ask me if I am certain that I saw nothing.
Yes, I tell them later when they ask me if I am certain that I heard nothing.
They are wanting particulars, facts, clues that might help them.
And I have none to give.
13
It is morning. Weak wintry morning.
The cream satin curtains that belonged to Martin’s mother are drawn, but I can see the milky light of day through the gap where they meet.
The storm has gone and it is quiet.
; The first morning that I woke in this room, I felt I was waking in someone’s parents’ bedroom and I had to be on my best behaviour.
He brought me breakfast in bed. Tea and a boiled egg on a tray, and I was careful not to spill anything, not a crumb, on his mother’s pink quilted bedspread.
The night before, our first night together, he had told me he was overwhelmed.
You are so beautiful, he had whispered over and over again.
In the dark, his face had looked different. I had looked at him, his face above mine, and I had not known who he was.
Martin is the kind of man who says ‘I love you’ on the first date, Jocelyn once said to me.
And she was right.
But even so, even knowing the flimsiness of those words, I had held them, just for a moment, in the palm of my hand. Like a gift.
But that was then.
This morning is the morning after our fight and I am alone. Lying in Martin’s mother’s bed, looking at the soft light of the sky through the gap in the curtains, and not wanting to move.
I did not sleep, and when I sit up and see my face in the mirror on Martin’s mother’s dressing table, I am not surprised at how tired I look.
He, too, did not sleep. I know. I felt him toss and turn next to me all night. Twice we found ourselves lying face to face, eye to eye, and, not liking what we saw, we both turned away. This morning, when he woke, I too was awake, but I kept my eyes closed and my back to him.
Aren’t you going to work today? he asked.
I did not answer him.
I can hear him in the kitchen. He is eating toast and drinking herbal tea. His morning brew. The paper is spread in front of him and he is trying to read.
I open the curtains and they slide, silently, across the window to reveal the complete expanse of grey.
This is how he finds me when he comes to say goodbye. Sitting here, on the edge of the bed looking out at the empty sky, knowing where I have led us, but unsure as to what will follow.
I will tell them you’re sick, he says. He seems about to say something else, but then changes his mind.
I, too, am about to speak, but it is impossible to pick my words. There are so many things I could say.
We look at each other, both silent, and then he turns. Gone, out the front door and into the cold morning. I listen to his car start, I listen to him pull out on to the road, I listen until he is gone and I am alone, here in his mother’s house.
And as soon as he has gone, I want to run after him and tell him I am sorry.
I sit in the kitchen and it is cold. Bare lino floors, laminated cupboards and nylon netting curtains. I hate this room. I hate all the rooms in this house. It is not my house and it is not Martin’s house. It is still the house of his dead mother.
I brought almost nothing when I came here, and if I leave, I will have almost nothing to take away. The things that I own are still in a cardboard box at the back of the wardrobe in the spare room. A painting I bought with my first pay, a vase that someone gave to my mother and my mother gave to me, a few books and a large white platter.
I came here with that box and my clothes. A single car load.
Martin put my clothes in the space he had cleared in the wardrobe and he put the box in the other room.
When I took out my painting and showed him, he frowned.
It doesn’t really go, does it? he said.
He was right. There is beige and cream striped wallpaper on most of the walls in this house.
From Dorothy’s to here.
But he is not, as he likes to think, the only person I have been with. There was a time, before Martin. I have never told him. I have never told anyone. I do not like to think about it, and on the few occasions when I remember, I feel ashamed.
He was Polish and he studied Design at the Institute of Technology. He was older than I was. He was older than most of the other students there.
I had seen him but I had never talked to him. We did not know each other, but one afternoon he came and sat next to me under the clear green shade of a plane tree on the Institute lawn. He told me about himself and I listened, too shy to respond in any other way.
He told me he was going to see a play that weekend and he suggested that I come along. And I wanted to. Really wanted to. But when the night came, I could not bear the thought of turning up and seeing that he had not meant it. He would be there with other people and he would be surprised to see me, perhaps even embarrassed, and I would hang, useless, shy, awkward, on the edge.
So I stayed at home. Anxious. Distressed. All night.
I did not believe that someone like him could want someone like me. Even when he telephoned the next day to ask what had happened. Even when he drove down to Grange and we walked along the beach. Even when we ate fish and chips together in the square at Henley, drinking beer and watching the seagulls swoop and squawk in the heat of the late afternoon, and I felt I was living the life of someone else.
Even when he kissed me. Outside the Chinese Palace restaurant.
Why are you so shy? he asked. It’s not so scary.
But it was. More frightening than I could ever have explained to him. I was terrified, certain that every word I spoke would be the one that would send him away.
He took me to a party the following weekend. I went against my better judgement. It was all I had dreaded it would be. A long dark corridor and a kitchen filled with people I did not know. I leant against the fridge, watching some boy pull every jar of vitamins out of the kitchen cupboard and swallow one of each, dancing wildly and shouting that he was cured, while everyone laughed and I, too, tried to laugh, until he pulled me into the dance with him, whirling me round, and I wanted to die with the weight of my own clumsiness and awkwardness.
So I went and sat outside. To hide on the back steps under the black night sky, waiting there until he eventually came and found me, drunk and miserable.
I can’t do this, I told him, my words slurred and heavy.
He took me to his house and undressed me slowly, carefully, in the darkness of his bedroom.
You should have come and got me, he said.
But I could never have done that.
And he put me to bed, lying next to me, under cool white sheets. Kissing me up and down, until I told him things that made me burn with shame when I remembered, days later.
The next morning I sat, head aching, in his kitchen while he talked. He explained that he thought I was beautiful but he could not be with me. I have a girlfriend. She is away, and I should not have done what I have done. I am so sorry, and I knew that I had been right. It was a mistake. He did not want me. Once he had seen who I was, he did not want me.
I did not speak to him again, and I did not speak of him. Ever.
He tried, once, to talk, but how could I? He tried and I walked away.
So there has been, for all intents and purposes, just Martin. And I am sitting in his mother’s kitchen, thinking about this place to which I have brought us, when he telephones.
And I think, at the first sound of his voice, that he is going to tell me it is all right.
But he tells me something else.
It’s your mother, he says.
And I hold the edge of the table, waiting for him to continue.
14
Dorothy also woke early this morning.
I know this because she wakes early every morning.
Her room is dark, winter-morning dark. It is at the front of the house, on the other side of the corridor to the room in which Frances and I used to sleep. Whenever I picture this room, I see it with all the light blocked out by her heavy blue velvet curtains. They are too grand, out of place in the rest of the shabbiness, but she loves these curtains.
I bought them when I got married, she would tell us. I saved for months. I told the shop I wanted them to be the colour of the lakes in northern Italy.
But they must have made a mistake. They are the colour of mould. Cloudy. She does not see it a
nd I have never told her.
In the darkness of her room, Dorothy lies still, eyes open, not moving. I do not know what she is thinking. Her mind wanders, floating over all that was, both real and imagined, and this is the way she stays, sometimes for hours, sometimes only for a moment, until the sound of a car, a door slamming, a dog barking, shifts her. From then to now.
It is cold this morning. Sitting on the edge of the bed and listening to Martin leave, I shiver.
Standing at the back door, Dorothy’s breath comes in frosty clouds. She bends down to pick up the papers, eight of them delivered each day. When she has finished with them, she will stack them in the sunroom. The piles cover the floor.
My God, Martin said when he first saw them, trying not to trip over as I rushed him out the back door.
The second time he came, he cleaned them up for her. He sweated all afternoon, pink and hot, as he carried them out the back for rubbish collection.
She ignored him.
When he finished, he flopped on the couch, a sweet, acrid odour permeating from each of his pores, and asked her for a cup of tea. Still she ignored him, knowing that I would make it for him, knowing that I would thank him for all he had done. And I looked out at the sunroom, wanting to be appreciative, but I could not think what to say. It was bare. Naked. Embarrassingly so.
Dorothy puts her coffee on the stove. I know this because this is what she does every morning. She makes it thick and black so that it coats the bottom of the cup like tar.
Good lord, Martin said when I once made him a cup. It makes my liver curl up in horror. He threw it in the sink.
Dorothy has a cigarette with her morning coffee. There are none left in her pack, and none in the pack that she keeps hidden on top of the fridge. She has more, a stash on top of the kitchen cupboard. She thinks I do not know about them. She drags a chair over, and climbs up, on tiptoes, fingers searching in the far corner.
And this is when it happens.
The chair topples.
Like all accidents, it happens in a time of its own, one quick over-balance that is played out slowly with time enough for her to hold her entire life in her hands and think, This is it. It has come to this, before landing with a thud on the linoleum, cigarettes flying down with her. Packets strewn across the floor.
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