Canvey Island

by James Runcie

  ‘That must be what they mean by drop-dead good looks,’ said Dad.

  It made me sick to be in the same room as them. They were always giggling and giving each other looks and they couldn’t wait for me to go to bed.

  One night I dreamt of my mother’s coffin in a dark chapel surrounded by candles. I was alone and my bare feet were cold on the floor. When I lifted the lid, I found that the coffin did not contain my mother but me.

  I couldn’t get back to sleep. I got out of bed and knocked on my father’s door. I was sure I could hear rustling inside, a second person: her.

  Dad opened the door, but only slightly, so I couldn’t see him properly. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘Go to bed. It’s all right.’

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  I thought he wanted me to go away.

  ‘Where’s Auntie Vi?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t ask me. What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m scared. I can’t sleep.’

  ‘What are you scared of? Was it a bad dream?’

  ‘I dreamt I was dead.’

  ‘Look, son, there’s nothing I can do about your dreams. I’m sorry. We all have to live with them. They’re not real. You just have to ignore them, all right?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Now go to bed. It’ll have gone in the morning.’

  ‘But, Dad …’

  ‘On you go, son. Don’t start fretting.’

  Mum would have taken me in beside her but Dad closed the door. I tried to listen for noises, movement and conversation, but he was waiting to hear my footsteps going away. He called out, ‘Go on. I’ve told you.’

  I tried to stay awake and then I heard a door slam. ‘Hopeless,’ I heard Auntie Vi say.

  Violet

  Martin started to hide things. They were small objects that we didn’t notice had gone, little bits and pieces that could easily have been mislaid, like Len’s Sunday tiepin, or my butterfly brooch. At first we thought it must be our own carelessness but then they’d turn up in old jam jars or Lily’s button box, places where we would never have put stuff ourselves.

  ‘I think I can guess who’s behind this,’ I said. ‘Someone I can touch with a very short stick.’

  But Martin always looked innocent and we never caught him in the act. I think he thought it was funny, as if he was waiting to see how angry we could get when we couldn’t find what we wanted. Sometimes, when he was bored or tired of our questions, he would go and get whatever it was straight away, pretending I had left my ring on the washstand or my gloves on the table in the hall.

  When Len asked Martin to confess he just kept lying.

  ‘It’s not me, Dad. Honest. You’re always losing things.’

  Then he started to be faddy about his food.

  ‘I do my best,’ I said to Len. ‘Sometimes I don’t give him any vegetables at all and yet he still won’t touch his meals.’

  I tried everything: fried whitebait and pilchard splits, corned-beef fritters, steak and kidney pie, luncheon-meat surprise. We were strict with him and said he couldn’t have a pudding if he didn’t eat his main but that didn’t stop him. At least it meant extra baked custards or apple turnovers for the rest of us, because I wasn’t going to let anything go to waste.

  The child was spoilt enough as it was. We gave him tuppence a week to spend on gobstoppers, pear drops and Spangles; anything he liked, we were that good to him. Perhaps Martin thought he could live off that alone. He worked out the combinations that he could buy from the jars in Ivy’s shop – four Black Jacks or four Fruit Salads or a Bassett’s sherbet fountain. Some weeks he would buy a tuppenny stick of liquorice and try and make it last for days, keeping it in his pocket, nibbling bits off the end when he was nervous. But I told him all those sweets were going to have to stop if he didn’t eat his tea.

  I tried to be cheerful but it was damned hard. ‘Not hungry?’ I would say brightly. ‘Never mind.’

  It was a Sunday when it all blew up. We were waiting for the pub to open and Len was grumpy because it was that bit later. It had been raining and so we’d been shut up in doors as well. Len was pacing up and down, annoyed with the both of us probably, me trying to do my best in the kitchen, Martin kicking his football against the bedroom wall. Opening time at the Haystack was still a good hour away. I should have been back looking after George but Len had asked me to stay on and give him a bit of company since Martin was being so difficult.

  It started with the usual thing. Six o’clock and Martin refused his baked beans on toast. This time he did not even bother to pick up his knife and fork but stared ahead like he was simple.

  ‘Come on, Marty,’ I said. ‘It’s your favourite. I made it special because you’ve been feeling poorly. Speak to me. Tell me what’s wrong.’

  His father said, ‘Come on, son. Eat it up. We can’t go on like this.’

  Martin turned and looked at his father all innocent, as if Len was the one that was mad, but he still didn’t say anything.

  ‘Come on, don’t be silly.’

  I could tell Martin was hungry because it was a Sunday and the sweet shop was closed. When I told people about it later, they said it was because he wanted attention. Well, he was certainly getting it now.

  ‘This is daft, son, daft.’

  The boy just stared into space. He wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t even look at his father.

  ‘Come on … tell me why you won’t eat. Is there something wrong?’

  Soon it would come, Len’s temper. I had not seen it for such a long time.

  ‘Why are you doing this? Come on, tell me. Why won’t you speak? Why won’t you eat? Tell me.’

  Martin must have known that he could stop it at any point. All he had to do was to speak or to eat, but he just continued to stare down at the plate of food, refusing to look at either of us.

  Then Len lost his rag. ‘Haven’t we had enough problems in this family? Why are you doing this to us? We haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, we’ve done everything for you. Everything, you little bastard.’

  ‘Len … don’t call him that,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a selfish, ungrateful little bastard. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Len …’

  ‘No, Vi, don’t protect him, his mother did that. I’ve had enough of this nonsense. After all we’ve done for you. Is this how you show your gratitude? Come on, tell me. Is this what you do? Perhaps I’m going deaf. Perhaps I can’t hear you. But Vi can’t either. Neither of us can. Because you’re a wilful, selfish, ungrateful little bastard.’

  ‘Len, he’s a child …’

  ‘I don’t care what he is. Come here.’

  He pulled the chair out backwards so that Martin fell towards him and on to the floor. Then he caught his son by the back of his jumper and dragged him towards the door.

  Instead of struggling Martin tried to make himself as heavy as possible, collapsing his weight so Len would have to work harder.

  ‘Don’t try that on me.’

  Martin closed his eyes like he wasn’t in the room and let his body be turned on to its side and Len pulled him away out of sight.

  ‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t think you can get away with all this rubbish. I’ve had enough and it’s going to stop right now.’

  Martin

  My feet banged against the walls. Dad was shouting, ‘I’ll teach you, you little bastard. I won’t put up with it any more. Do you hear me? No, of course you don’t. Anyone would think you were deaf.’

  And what if I was? I thought. Then you’d be sorry.

  ‘I’m going to show you what happens to boys who don’t know they’re born. If you won’t listen to reason then you’ll listen to the back of my hand.’

  He took me into his room and threw me on to the bed. I could tell he was reaching for some kind of weapon: a slipper or a walking stick.

  ‘Say after me: “I will eat my food.” Come on, say it.’

  The first
blow came down. It was a hairbrush. I could feel its spikes through my shorts.

  Then he hit me again. ‘This won’t stop until you speak. Say after me: “I will speak when I am spoken to.” ’

  I will not.

  ‘I will not be rude to my elders and betters.’

  My father began to speak and hit, speak and hit; the blows were like punctuation.

  ‘I will not steal.’

  There will be six, I thought. I must not cry.

  ‘I will leave a clean plate.’

  I will let my father exhaust himself. I will not speak.

  ‘I will stop being a miserable little bastard and a mummy’s boy.’

  Soon he will be gone and I will be alone.

  I felt the sixth blow.

  ‘And one for luck; not that we’ve ever had any in this damned family. Now start crying and don’t come down until you’ve stopped.’

  The bedcover had crumpled under my face but I could see the dressing table in the corner and the brush my father had hit me with. I remembered my mother being given it on her birthday and smiling. Allure brushes beauty and fragrance into your hair. It had wisps from the last time she had used it. I sat on the edge of the bed and began to pick out the pale-gold strands, curling them round my fingers.

  I heard her singing in my head:

  I see the moon,

  And the moon sees me:

  God bless the moon,

  And God bless me.

  The next day I had to say sorry to Auntie Vi. She was sitting on the settee in a smart black dress but had crossed her legs in such a way that her skirt had ridden up. I could see the catch of the suspenders holding her stockings.

  ‘Martin has something to say to you,’ my father began.

  Vi smiled.

  ‘Well.’ Dad pushed me forwards. ‘Speak.’

  Outside it had started to rain again. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  My father leant down so that he could speak directly into my left ear. His breath smelt of last night’s beer. ‘I don’t think Vi can hear that. It needs to be a bit louder.’ Then he leant back up. ‘If you can manage that.’

  Don’t be sad for more than a day, I heard my mother’s voice. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And what are you sorry for?’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ I stared down at Vi’s shoes. They were black leather with silver buckles. I wondered if my father had cleaned them for her.

  When I looked up Vi smiled before glancing away at the television we’d bought for the Coronation. It was showing an advertisement for a Cross Your Heart bra.

  ‘It’s all right, Len, the boy’s said he’s sorry.’ She opened her arms. ‘Give me a cuddle, son.’

  I couldn’t work out which was worse: to be hit again, to inhale my aunt’s perfume, or to be called son.

  I walked towards her, concentrating on her right shoulder, refusing to meet her eyes.

  ‘Come to me, my darling.’

  I noticed that her bosom had begun to crease with tidal marks. Even though I was in her arms, I could still see the slipping surface of her dress as I felt the pat of her hand on my back.

  I returned to my room. Before the flood, my two greatest fears had been of darkness and of being left alone; now they were my only consolation.

  Len

  That eating business was a right bugger’s muddle and I didn’t want Martin getting weirder as he grew up so I took him out fishing to toughen him up. The boat was an inshore trawler, thirty-two feet in length, and we’d been fishing off Holehaven for a couple of generations, ten miles upriver towards Foulness or downriver in the Mucking. We were after sprats in the winter and sole in the spring, pulling up the nets on a winch made from old car axles, gutting the catch on board and selling half of it to housewives on the wharf before packing the rest off to Billingsgate.

  We set off before dawn. I told Martin he would have to help with the nets, gut the fish and keep a watchful eye on the weather. I showed him how to navigate through the buoys, avoiding the sandbanks and the treacherous currents, always aware of our position and the direction of the wind. I asked him to work out our course from the charts and how to navigate by moon and star. He asked all sorts of questions: who had drawn up these charts, how depths could be measured, who placed the buoys and installed the lights?

  I kept my hands on the wheel and told him stories: of my own old dad working the smacks, keeping the fish alive and storing them in wooden tanks in the estuary ready for market; of the boat facing a wall of water which I thought she could never mount; of the beauty of cockle banks and phosphorescence at night.

  The boat had a fair old history. Dad had even got it to Dunkirk and, despite being attacked by the enemy from the air, he had still got men out: forty-three of them, and from the inner harbour no less.

  I thought Martin would be interested in the war and how the soldiers had been saved but instead he asked if I’d ever taken his mother fishing and what she thought of it all.

  He asked about her childhood on Canvey and what the island had been like when we were young. I told him how Lily had grown up on a farm and could remember when it was all fields and water, just as it must have been when the Dutch first came and reclaimed it from the sea. There wasn’t even a bridge then, just a ferry at high tide and stepping-stones at low. I said how I’d courted her, bringing her wildflowers I’d gathered from the hedgerows: penny-cress, ragged-robin and shepherd’s-purse. I even told Martin how I thought she liked George more than me.

  ‘Uncle George?’

  ‘He was a handsome man, old George, but she was too young for him and he couldn’t wait. So I knew if I had a bit of patience I could win her over in the end.’

  ‘Was she beautiful?’

  ‘Of course. Carnival Queen, she was. Streets all lined with people in Dutch costumes waving and cheering. That was the year before I joined up. Long time ago now …’

  ‘I wish she was here, Dad …’

  ‘I don’t think she’d like it very much. She never did like this boat, I’ll tell you that. I think she was scared of it.’

  There wasn’t much of a wind, a light north-westerly, but it was getting colder and I was glad Martin had remembered his gloves. Normally his mother had to remind him about them. At least he was getting a bit more responsible now she’d gone.

  I winched up the nets and the fish splayed down on to the deck.

  ‘You can sort and gut them for me, Martin. You know how to do that, don’t you?’

  ‘Can I have bandages?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some of the women have bandages on their fingers. Then if they cut themselves it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But you’re not a woman, are you, son? If you don’t have bandages then you’ll learn not to cut yourself.’

  Martin pulled the fish away from the netting with his gloves on but took them off for the gutting. ‘It’s freezing,’ he said.

  Cirrus clouds, a cold front approaching. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken him out. He was too young, but I wanted him to see what it meant to go out and earn money for a family. I wanted him to be proud of me and love me as much as he loved his mother even though you can’t force these things.

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever marry again, Dad?’

  ‘And why do you ask?’

  ‘Will Uncle George ever get better?’

  I could see what he was getting at. ‘I’m quite happy as I am,’ I said. ‘It’s you I should be worried about.’

  ‘I’m all right, Dad.’

  ‘You tired?’

  ‘No,’ he said but I knew he didn’t mean it. Then he shivered. ‘Why do you do this, Dad?’

  ‘If I don’t fish I get restless,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful even though I didn’t see why I had to justify myself. My old dad expected respect and he got it, but now it looked like I had to earn it.

  ‘I have to go out,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I don’t t
hink I’ve got any blood. It’s all just salt water.’

  ‘Do you ever jump in and have a swim about?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, Martin,’ I said.

  ‘Can you swim?’

  ‘Your nan thought public swimming pools were dangerous …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Polio. She thought you could catch it bad in public places. That’s why we never had any library books. Mam was frightened of the germs. Only time she took one out she put it in the oven to bake the infection away.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘No, Martin, I can’t swim. But at least I get to drown quicker …’

  We turned and headed back. I pointed out the curving sea walls of Canvey and their sand-banked breaches, the open throats of the rivers and the creeks with boats waiting to cast off. The first oil tanker of the day steamed past on its way to Coryton.

  We docked by the landing jetty at Holehaven and unloaded our catch into crates of ice. Some of the women were waiting with the fish merchants, their wicker baskets at the ready. I remembered helping my own dad between the wars, putting the boxes in a barrow and pushing it right across the island to the station at Benfleet. Martin used the same barrow to earn a bit of extra money taking holidaymakers’ luggage from the bus stop down to the camp at Thorney Bay – sixpence a bag, he charged.

  ‘If I don’t watch out you’ll soon be earning more than me,’ I said.

  Once we’d tidied up the boat we went to the pub for a pint. Martin had hot Vimto and a full English to get some warmth into him. I asked him if he could imagine being a fisherman himself and taking over from me, keep his dad going in his old age.

  ‘Is that why you brought me?’

  ‘I only asked because I wanted to see what you thought you were going to do with your life.’

  ‘I’m going to stop water,’ he said.

  ‘And how are you going to do that, son?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I will. I’m going to stop it all.’

  Just when I thought I was getting through to him he came out with a remark like that. God knows what he meant.

  Violet