Crustaceans

by Andrew Cowan

  FOUR

  I remember a moment just after you were born. The midwives were busy with Ruth, washing her down, unplugging the wires, and I wandered into a corridor to stand a short while alone. It was as good as any place to be – peaceful, spacious, uncluttered – though a smoker would have had to search longer. There were No Smoking signs everywhere. I breathed and exhaled, the air was suddenly full of you. And I thought, Who am I now, and what can I show you? I stared at the palms of my hands, the empty hands of your father, and I made myself promise never to hit you; I made myself promise never to leave you. I trusted in promises then. I was what you had just made me, and my thoughts ran to the seashore in summer, absurdly, too hastily, for I knew the names of nothing we might find there, but already we were gathering shells, casting stones at the waves, raiding rockpools for crabs. Crustaceans. I knew that word at least, and I helped you pronounce it.

  Of course my hands had no idea then of the work you would find them. Today, in this cold, with your coat plumped out by your scarf, they would strain to fasten your toggles and I would scowl at your restlessness, the effort just to make you stand still. I would shape a tissue for your hand and guide it to your nose, show you how to pinch as you blew. I would kneel and turn you around and demonstrate once more how to tie the knots in your laces. Then I’d count the fingers into your gloves, ease the rim of your hat over your ears, and hold you by the shoulders and smile. So many things you wouldn’t want to be shown, and which you wouldn’t have time for.

  But I was always too keen to instruct you, and too conscious by far of the life you’d grow out of. Whatever you wouldn’t remember or notice, I made it my job to preserve. Nothing should be lost or discarded or buried. At first Ruth was indulgent – she saw the fear in all my behaviour – but she later grew wary. As if it wasn’t enough simply to be there, your father, it seemed I must also become your curator. I treated you like history. In the weeks before you were born I packed a small suitcase with jars and cartons and tins from the supermarket, a capsule of brand names and packaging I wouldn’t let you see till you were older; much older. I bought a copy of every newspaper published on the day of your birth, then added a videotape of that evening’s news on TV. I kept the plastic bracelets that identified you to the nurses, and the shrivelled stem of your umbilical cord. I filled a shoebox with the cards and letters of congratulation that arrived in the first weeks of your life, and added to this the microtape from our answering-machine, another half-dozen messages, including one from my grandmother, who died before she could meet you. In Ruth’s old rucksack I saved the toys and books you seemed most attached to, and some of the clothes we most liked you to wear. I kept a memento of each of your birthdays, and a souvenir from each of our holidays. I photographed you constantly, and sifted through every drawing and painting you made, adding captions and dates, and filing all of this neatly with your nursery-school workbooks in a banker’s box in our attic. And then, in a black-and-red notebook, twelve inches by eight, I registered each small leap in your development – the age you sat upright, abandoned your pushchair, copied your name – until the changes were too many and too subtle and I decided at last I could trust to your own memory.

  For a while I was able to recite the entire extent of your vocabulary. There were thirty or forty mispronounced words, and I listed them all on a page in the notebook – abo for apple, banki for blanket – each one dated, explained, and spelled as you spoke it. Your word for my hands was hams, and this at least I could share with Ruth, who had used the same word herself, lying beside me on that bed in my flat eight or nine years before. My hams. They were, she’d said, splaying the fingers, the worst thing about me. Sexual attraction for Ruth always began with the hands, and she preferred them smooth and unknotted, slim-fingered, unblemished – more like a young woman’s in fact; much like her own. And mine were like spatulas, like shovels, too broad and too square. Also too pudgy, too knobbly, too blotchy. But they’d do, she assured me, pressing my palms to her cheeks and holding them there; they’d pass. She found their ugliness endearing, I supposed, another excuse to feel sorry for me, and I was relieved when later she called them dextrous, a reference to my performance with clay on the wheel, though meaning, I hoped, much more than that.

  Years afterwards you examined them just as intently, hunkering beside me on the floor of my studio. I’d collected you early that day from nursery, as I often did then on a Friday. You had your own corner, your own tools and clay, and I would fire whatever you brought me, no matter how formless, how far from completion. Which was my promise to Ruth – not to try to teach or correct you – though I knew from the start that you’d never allow me. You wouldn’t be shown, hadn’t the patience for lessons, and of course you rarely stayed long in your corner. Every task I began became a game that involved you. Completing my paperwork, my orders and invoices, you would sit by my side with some forms of your own and scrawl through them. As I tidied my cupboards, my benches and shelves, you’d want to drag out the boxes, the sieves and stacked buckets that were stored underneath them. When I loaded my kiln you’d insist on playing with the props, stilts and cones; any clay I prepared would be decorated with gouges, lumpy additions, your name. But I didn’t much mind this. It was enough to have you around, for those few hours of my week, in the place where I worked. I liked you to see me, busy at something, your father, and when you wandered away, as you regularly did – down the white plasterboard corridors, looking for places to hide, other studios to visit – I would find that I missed you, the work that you caused me.

  My neighbours, mostly painters and printmakers, gave you sandwiches, crisps, crayons and pastels, strips of bubble-wrap, postcards. You were, everyone told me, no trouble at all. You called them your friends, even remembered their names, and often when you came back you’d be carrying another clutch of scrap paper, some more paintings and drawings to add to the sheaf in your corner. But that afternoon you didn’t want to go out, and you didn’t once interrupt me. You cut a ball of red clay into pieces and carefully arranged them in order of size, then planted a tool in each one. You lay on your belly and drew a picture for Ruth, another for me. You sat for some time with your drink, staring at nothing, and then decided to empty my bowls of pebbles and shells onto the floor, my bucket of grog and my sand, and pretended you were alone at the seaside. My 260 square feet of studio became our caravan, our beach. At home in yourself, I might not have been there. For half an hour then, all my other chores done, I sat up at my wheel – where I’d been working all morning – and though I switched on the motor, and slapped some more clay on the disc, I did nothing, but watched you. Miming and talking, and constantly moving, you were, I gathered, an orphan. You picked through the mess at your feet, looking for objects of interest – treasure and crabs, imaginary creatures – and you explained them as I would, to another just like you. I heard my voice in yours; and Ruth’s, her exclamations. I slipped down from my seat and squatted beside you. Pretend you’re a daddy, you told me, and nodding, I laid a small shell on my palm. It’s a periwinkle, I said; is it a good one, Euan? Not so bad, you said, and dropped it back on the floor. You shuffled closer. You asked to look at my hand, and studied it closely, tracing your fingers over the bumps, the clay that was etched in the creases.

  It was always my habit to use too much water when throwing. The clay became liquid, a wet glove to each wrist, and as the moisture evaporated it left behind a grey sediment, pallid and papery, which broke as it dried along the grain of my skin. Even after I’d washed, the grey would remain. And as you looked now at those lines, something occurred to you. What is it? I said, and you asked me my age. You were by then not merely four, but four and three-quarters, and age was important. Just as each house must have a number, so too must people, and mine was a three and a nought. Did that mean, you wanted to know, that I was going to die soon? No, not for a long time, I promised; not till I was very much older. But I was already old, you informed me, still holding my hand. You offered it u
p to me. See the lines, Daddy, you said. See the grey? Your voice was concerned, but consoling, and I wasn’t to worry. It’s only quite old, you told me, not really old. I think you’re right, I smiled, and cupped both my hands round your face. My mother was twenty-five when she died. It was only a number. I patted your arm and said we ought to clear up: Ruth would be expecting us home soon.

  More than a year has now passed since that afternoon, half a year since I last worked in my studio, and my hands are once again empty – idle, redundant – but for this one simple routine: I reach for my tobacco and papers. I hold the pouch in my left palm and pinch out some fibres. I draw them down the V of a Rizla, spreading and tamping, untangling the knots. I nip away the excess and return it to the packet. I put the packet aside. I roll the tobacco in its channel of paper, my hands almost touching, my head bowed and steady, as close here to the posture of prayer as I will now ever come. Then the momentary pause, and the tuck of my thumbs as I fold the Rizla in on itself and quickly smooth it out to a cylinder. I lick and seal the gum, fit the cigarette to my mouth and reach for my lighter. I touch the flame to the tip and breathe down the first smoke, then slowly exhale. And I wonder, would these hands seem older or younger to you now, Euan; nearer or further from dying? No trace of clay-dust remains, no layer of grey, but there are stains – amber-brown and persistent – on the pads of my thumbs, at the tips of my first two fingers, in between each of the knuckles. Which is something, at least, I never meant you to see, that your father never intended to show you. And one promise I failed to keep.

  I glance up through the smoke at the mirror and turn the key in the ignition. The seaside is less than thirty minutes away.

  FIVE

  My mother was leading me to my grandparents’ house. It was summer and the pavements were chalky, the hedges swollen in sunshine. I noticed the moss dividing the paving slabs, scuff-marks on my sandals, tiny insects. I picked up an Embassy coupon to give to my father, and paused by the wreck of an abandoned ice-cream van. All four of its tyres were flat. It had been there for months, a familiar landmark, more visible to me then than the tower blocks around it. The clack of my mother’s heels drew me on. We were in a hurry, it seemed, though she never once said so. I ran to catch up with her, but she remained always ahead of me, hardly even aware of me. When finally we came to a main road – heavy trucks streaming past us and a smell of exhaust, streets of older housing beyond – she forgot to offer her hand. I had to remind her. As we stepped from the kerb I noticed the scrubbed rawness of her knuckles and the mauve indentation where her ring should have been. Her grip briefly tightened and I looked up to her face. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. She wore a polka-dot headscarf, pink lipstick. When we reached the far side she released me.

  My grandmother, tall and thin and wearing an apron, was cleaning the outside of her windows. Stretching upwards, she looked over her shoulder and made a face of surprise, more puzzled than pleased. She came to meet us at the gate and I went straight indoors to her living room. The darkly varnished door of the sideboard was slightly ajar, inside a smell of tobacco and beeswax. I found the biscuit tin and took it through to the kitchen, where I sat at the table and waited, the blue-painted wall directly before me, my grandparents’ chairs to each side. After a while I arranged the sauce bottles on the oilcloth to hide the blemishes and stains. Beneath my elbows the pattern of flowers was fading, almost scrubbed out. Eventually I heard voices approaching around the side of house. The doorway darkened as they came in, and then my mother bent to embrace me. She kissed the top of my head and quietly said, I’ll come for you later, be a good boy; and I nodded. After she’d gone my grandmother gave me a biscuit and poured out a beaker of barley water. She watched as I drank it. Then she went back to her chores and I played alone at the rear of the house, the upstairs windows blankly reflecting the sky.

  It was several days before I saw my mother again. I remember the green of the hospital gardens, the lawns close-cropped and spongy, the hedges as tall as my father. He stood near my grandad in the shade of a tree, the soil bare beneath them, their shoes darkly polished. They were smoking, facing away from each other. Two of my aunts and my grandma sat on a bench in the sunshine, speaking in murmurs. A cream-coloured ambulance was parked by the flower-beds. The driver wound down his window and took off his cap, raked a hand back through his hair. The red-brick of the hospital buildings resembled the bay-fronted terrace where my grandparents lived. Above the orange roof-tiles the sky was cloudless and blue. For some minutes I searched the shadowed interior of the hedges for insects, and found instead the denser mass of a bird’s nest. When I lifted it out I scratched the back of my hand. Inside were a few fluffs of down, but no eggs, and I carefully replaced it. A couple of nurses strolled past me, smelling of perfume, their watches pinned upside down to their tunics. They smiled. My father stamped out his cigarette. He called me to follow him.

  The light inside the hospital was gauzy, the walls painted white and pale green. A nurse strode ahead of us, splay-footed, her shoes as clumpy and black as a man’s. I noticed red buckets of sand, rows of metal pans in a storeroom. A tall bony man in pyjamas shuffled to a halt in the corridor and waited until I had passed him. A woman in slacks and white clogs touched my head as she stepped round me. Then we entered a ward of elderly men and I heard a voice calling, Here she comes now, everyone rise! The nurse said something short in reply, and one of the men gave me a wink. He was laughing. The blue cast of his cheeks turned a shade darker and he folded his arms on his chest. I stalled by the foot of his bed and he reached to his side for a bag of boiled sweets. I went cautiously towards him, and heard another voice say, He’s come over all shy. The old man shook a sweet by the twist of its wrapper, and when I snatched it away his laugh came as a wheeze, then he started to cough. The nurse and my father were waiting by the next double doors. The floor squeaked as I ran.

  My mother had a room to herself, wide and tall-ceilinged, cool and uncluttered. A large enamel sink stood by the window. A block of bright sunlight fell just short of the bed. She smiled weakly across the distance between us and extended an arm, inviting me closer. I felt the pressure of my father’s hand on my shoulder. Her nightdress was pale blue and puffed at the sleeves, scooped low at the front. Her wrists seemed too puny, her chest too exposed. There were flakes of dry white skin on her lips. My father began talking, and though she appeared to be listening, her attention never once left me. Her gaze was kindly but feeble, like an old lady’s, and I stood where she wouldn’t be able to touch me. My father mentioned the sweet I’d been given, and I opened my mouth to show her, but she didn’t respond. She stared at the scratch on my hand, and frowned as though confused or annoyed, a single sharp crease in her forehead. Then came the slow pooling of her tears. She turned her cheek to her pillows and looked at the wall. It was time to withdraw. My father led me back through the door.

  In the weeks that followed I went with my grandparents to the seaside, and visited London with my father, and spent several days more in the company of Rene, his sister, until finally, one afternoon, I came home to find my mother again in our kitchen, a patterned pink blouse knotted under her ribs, rubber gloves on her hands, and the washing-machine churning. It was as though she had never been away, or at least, never would again. Yet I know, because I’ve been told, that she was to return to the hospital within a few days, her fourth time in less than a year. And on that last occasion, too, there was sunshine and I played unconcerned in the gardens, exploring the hedges, watching the nurses, though I didn’t accompany my father indoors. When eventually he emerged from one of the buildings, seeming dazed by the sunlight and walking forgetfully, my uncle Ron came up behind him and placed one hand round his shoulder, the other supporting his elbow. I remember we filed in procession past the signboards, the porters’ lodge and the flower-beds, and as we came through the main gates I saw the stalls of the market ahead of us, the council buildings beyond that, and complained we were going the wrong way, I’
d been promised we would go to the park. My aunt Rene had lifted me into her arms and from the height of her shoulder I saw the blankness and bewilderment in the faces around me, my grandfather supporting my grandma, my uncle guiding my father, and I asked, Where’s Mummy, when is she coming? To which there was no answer then, and for weeks and months afterwards, no answer from anyone.

  SIX

  I was warned about driving, cautioned against it. The mind wanders. For twenty miles this road to the coast meets no obstructions, no complications. It goes only there. But then come the trailers and chalets, the camping and caravan parks, and I took a right turn, came out where I hadn’t intended to be. We’re still heading for the sea, but the wrong side of the resort, towards my flat and the art school, away from our caravan.

  I have come this way too often before. The town is fringed here by marshes, allotments, donkeys and ponies in ramshackle stables. A black-girdered bridge takes us over the river, quayside derricks in the distance, the flourmill and brewery. I accelerate past warehouses, squat industrial sheds, and arrive at the racetrack. Outside the stadium are hoardings of stock cars and bangers. The colours are gaudy, surprising. A grey canvas banner says CANCELLED. Fifty yards further on I turn left off a roundabout and ascend towards bungalows, pampas grass in the gardens, trees and hedges made blotty with snow. An old man walks with one hand outstretched for a fall, touching the lampposts, the railings. A car pulls cautiously out from a driveway. I pass turnings for crescents and closes, ice corrugating the road at the junctions, and come alongside a playground, where I slow without thinking, to avoid or see what I don’t know. The pavements are empty, the wire enclosure deserted. A solitary gull heads for the roofs of the old town.