by Andrew Cowan
Near the crest of the rise are the houses with portholes, pink and blue walls, and a sign for the college, which is five streets below. Descending, I recognise everything sharply, the upward tilt of the sea, half-timbered hotels with fibreglass awnings, the pubs. At night, unable to sleep, I have traced the map of this route in my mind, the exact sequence of shopfronts. On the next corner comes the laundromat, its green conical roof sprouting a weathervane, a fat metal artichoke, and there I indicate left and follow a dark twist in the road, flint walls on both sides, and emerge to a car-park where a digger stands idle in a space marked by bollards. The gravel is swollen with ice. I make a wide circle and stop a yard short of the boundary trench, directly facing the college. In your first summer we came here, took photos of you in my lap on those steps, in your buggy with Ruth on that corner. Carved over the entrance in blocks of blackening sandstone are the words T.E.C.H.N.I.C.A.L. I.N.S.T.I.T.U.T.E. and the date 1906. The high narrow windows, barred now at street level, were always that grimy. I work my arms into my coat and gather up my tobacco and papers; my hat, scarf and gloves. From here I will walk. I push open my door to the cold, and remember my tissues, my cough sweets. I leave the car without locking it.
The college of course proved no better than my father had said it would be. To his mind, I knew, this town would always mean holidays, deckchairs and beachballs, frivolity. Nowhere so marginal, so close to the sea, could lead to anything solid or lasting. But most things about me then seemed to provoke him, testing his patience, his comprehension. Nothing I ever said could change that. I hardly bothered to try. I was putting myself out of his reach, the weight of his expectations. I had no other ambitions.
The engineering departments – marine, mechanical, agricultural – occupied most of this building, the wide flagstoned corridors smelling of oil and burnt gases. Art was taught in a wing at the back, and although the students there were visibly different, and kept themselves separate, the courses they followed were no less applied or vocational. The prize for best work in graphic design was sponsored by a greetings-card company. The ceramics department, where I spent my three years, was run along factory lines. It occupied four rooms in the basement, giving on to a courtyard, whilst sculpture, for which Ruth had enrolled, was dispersed throughout the building and its prefab extensions, never finding space enough anywhere. We met daily in the canteen, in the long queue for lunch, and always sat as a couple. That anyway seemed to be solid, and lasting.
Soon after our first Christmas apart, sitting knees touching in the clatter of pans from the kitchens, a tin-foil ashtray between us, I said, I’ve got something for you, and slid a Yale doorkey towards her. Ruth watched it approach, let it remain where it lay. It’s a key, I said, and she nodded. You don’t have to take it, I said; not if you don’t want to, but I’d like you to have it. The brass teeth and notches were shiny. Only if you want to, I said. She drew on her cigarette, narrowing her eyes at the smoke, and then slowly, exhaling, she picked it up from the table. Thank you, she said, and shifted around in her chair. She crossed her legs and tucked the key in the back pocket of her overalls. Her knees had left me, but she was smiling, and I talked excitedly then about nothing in particular, what I’d been doing that morning, who I had seen, all the while hoping she’d speak, say something to stop me. But she did no more than smile, and the key wasn’t mentioned again until she used it, four or five days after that.
It was the rasp in the lock that woke me. I opened my eyes to a blur of pillow and bedclothes, sunlight on the wall, and listened as if eavesdropping to the close of the door, her slow steps on the boards, the heavy fall of her coat. A long zip unfastened and she kicked off her shoes; the bed creaked as she climbed in and I rolled over to face her. It was a Saturday. She was wearing wool tights, a singlet, and my key round her neck on a cord of brown leather. She dangled it before me, tickled my nose. It fits, she said, and pulled the blankets over our heads. She smelled of outdoors. I burrowed half-way down the mattress, curling my legs around hers, and pressed my face to her belly. I could hear her breakfast. She tugged at my hair. I peeled her tights from her hips and went lower.
After that she would use her key whenever she called, and each time I felt as if waking. The hours I spent alone in my flat have left no trace in my memory. I remember instead the sprawl of her being there, its suddenness, my bed disarranged and the clutter she caused. Also her moods, the work she demanded. It was what I wanted. Ruth brought drugs and showed me how to gum three Rizlas together. We bought cider from the off-licence over the road and got drunk for days at a stretch, then stayed sober for longer. We taught ourselves card games, played board games, did crosswords; I read to her from novels whilst she drew me; sometimes we took our meals on the floor. In the spring we went out on excursions, looking for teashops, museums, places someone’s parents might go. I’d brought my mother’s old camera from home and presented it to Ruth for her birthday. She arranged her photos in scrapbooks, adding captions cut and pasted from brochures, and called it her work. Then in the summer we dragged my bed to the window, splintering the floorboards, and slept as though in the open, made love in the open, until we noticed one evening a woman in a neighbouring building, ironing and naked, and realised we too were on show, just as exposed. I bought a roller-blind that weekend, and eventually attached it, but still we rarely unfurled it. The bed went back to its alcove.
Over the months Ruth’s things began to accumulate in my space, and I didn’t much mind them, not whilst she was there. But the moment she’d gone – back to the house she shared with four others – I would gather them up and find somewhere to store them. I took care to fold her clothes neatly – care she wouldn’t have taken – and I washed what was dirty. Her bangles and pencils and trinkets filled a box under the bed. She left notes for me too, written on postcards, scraps of cartridge paper, pink notelets, and these I pinned, overlapping, behind the slats of the kitchen partition. Then I could return to myself, to my walls and ceilings and doors. Her absences sometimes lasted for days, sometimes a few hours. I would come home to the surprise of her being there, sitting at the table by the window, taking a bath, thumbing through art books. I would meet her climbing the stairs as I descended. We hardly ever arranged things, when she’d be round or how long she’d remain. In that way we pretended our lives were still separate, and it wasn’t until our second year ended, another long summer before us, that I finally met Polly, your grandma.
She had been a few times before, driving down in the morning, gone by mid-afternoon – visits Ruth hadn’t mentioned until they were over. You’d loathe her she told me; be grateful I’ve spared you. She’s awful. But Polly, it seemed, was determined to meet me, and when she arrived without warning in that last week of term Ruth was given no choice; her mother insisted. They came round to my flat at midday and Ruth kept her key hidden, knocked three times on my door. I remember the clip of Polly’s heels on my floorboards, the sheen of her tights and the bulk of her legs, the powdery scent of her perfume. The bedsprings creaked as she sat down. I had no milk to make tea. I’m sorry, I said, gesturing around me. Not at all, Polly smiled, and glanced at her watch. She said she would take us for lunch, and I suggested the Metropole. Its menu-board, propped up on the pavement outside, was the most expensive we knew. Mum’ll hate it, said Ruth. I’m sure it’ll be charming, said Polly; and once inside, despite her glances to the bottles in baskets that hung from the walls, and the framed photos of film-stars, and the mould on the wall in our corner, she said again it was charming, though she asked for the flowers on our table to be taken away. A few white petals had fallen. She plucked them from the tablecloth, pink lacquer on her fingernails, and dropped them in an ashtray. She gave the ashtray to the waitress. Ruth had just begun rolling a cigarette.
It was Polly who determined our seating – she wanted to face me – and guided our choice from the menu, and did most of the talking. I was struck by her hair, a solid mass sculpted back in a wave from the top of her forehead. A
single copper-red strand glinted from the shoulder of her blazer. It was gone when she returned from the toilets – the bathroom, she called it – for nothing about her was accidental; her makeup, her jewellery, her clothing, all were immaculate, perfectly matched. Her manners too were impeccable, impenetrable. Subtly she plied me with questions, and I remember her delight, the sudden deepening of her interest, when I mentioned my father. She claimed to know of his work. I felt certain she didn’t. How fascinating, she said; you must be very proud of him. Not really, I frowned; no, I don’t think so. Well, I’m sure he has every reason to be proud of his son, she smiled, and asked then about my mother – perhaps she too was artistic? I shook my head and refilled my glass. My mother’s dead, I said flatly. Polly dabbed her mouth with a napkin, briefly patted my hand. I’m sorry, she said, and looked in annoyance to Ruth. I wasn’t aware, she said. I shrugged and said nothing more. Ruth’s leg pressed against mine, and for the rest of that meal we listened in silence as Polly recounted in detail the problems she’d had with her builders, the alterations she’d made to her house, the fabrics she’d chosen. She wondered when Ruth would be returning: her bed would need airing. I’m staying in town, Ruth told her; I’m moving to Paul’s, we’re looking for work. And I nodded, or smiled, though we’d made no such arrangement, hadn’t even discussed it. I see, said her mother.
A week later – her own tenancy over – Ruth arrived at my flat with her boxes, her rucksack, and we took jobs in a restaurant called the Atlantis, the sea shifting grey through the windows, clear skies turning to cloud every morning. In the clammy heat of the kitchens I loaded a dishwasher. Ruth waited on tables dressed in clothes she’d last worn to school – a black skirt and black tights, a white blouse and bra – and looking out through my hatch I saw the girl she said her mother always complained of, slow-limbed and sulky, lethargic. The men she served saw something else, and I watched how they teased her, heard later what they’d said to her. Most days she talked about leaving, and when at last she was sacked, the weather worsening, and her attitude, she was told, no better, I dropped my apron in the slops-bin and hurried to join her. She told me to go back; I said that I wouldn’t.
We soon found other jobs. Ruth tore tickets in a booth at the funfair; every morning at nine I washed the floors of a nightclub. But we had by then exhausted our pastimes, told all there was to tell about each other, and Ruth no longer drew me; she was tired, she said, of repeating herself. What money I’d saved I spent on a second-hand television, and for the rest of that summer, our evenings enclosed by the rain, we sat up on my bed and watched it. Ruth had said my flat would resemble a prison cell, and living there daily in her company – seeing my walls as she saw them – perhaps this was how it became. We could find no escape from each other there, no escape when we needed one. She called it suffocating, the closeness, and in time we learned how to argue. But that was okay. I had no need of parents, I’d decided – I had no need of anything much – and now I began to believe I had no need of Ruth either. When our course resumed in September she moved herself and her things to another shared house, and we agreed to spend more time apart, though our separations were always short-lived – a few days, a week at the most – and went unnoticed by anyone else. Ruth kept her own key but she no longer wore it. Sometimes she left it behind. What pushed us apart or drew us together was hardly examined, and we rarely spoke of the future. I presumed she would leave me; she would eventually go. I suppose I had always believed that.
SEVEN
The light inside the beach hut was dusty, the air tangible, close with the scent of my aunt. She was Jeannie, my mother’s sister, short where my mother was tall, and rounder. She wore a navy blue swimsuit, pinched tight at her waist, wide on her hips, and when she lifted me on to the bench I saw the soft jolt of her breasts and a sudden plump whiteness where the sun wouldn’t reach her. I stopped crying and stared. She plucked the snot from my nose with her fingers and dabbed my eyes with a towel. You’ll live, she told me. My knee was grazed and gritted with sand. A trickle of blood rolled down my shinbone, and as she cleaned me with water lukewarm from a bottle I gazed at her breasts and said, I wish you weren’t just my auntie. Do you? she asked. Who would you like me to be then? My mum, I told her. Jeannie pressed my leg dry with the towel, and quietly said, You already have a mum, Paul. Outside my grandfather coughed; I heard the whirr of the line that tethered my kite to his deckchair. In the family it was said that my mother had gone or passed on or been taken, though my father had once said taken herself. Frowning, I said, No; my mum’s dead now. Jeannie spread a finger of Germolene over my wound. She squared it off with her thumb. But she is still your mum, she insisted, not lifting her eyes from her work; and she’ll always be that. You only get one. A moth skittered in the slope of the roof and I watched it. It was a year since the funeral, her burial. I hadn’t been allowed to attend; and I still hadn’t been taken to visit her grave. Why did she die? I asked. She wasn’t very well, my aunt said simply, as if the answer was obvious. She peeled the backing from a plaster and stretched it over my knee. But what was wrong with her? I said. Jeannie sighed. I don’t know, she replied; I don’t think anyone knows that. Not even my mum? Not even your mum, she confirmed, and gripped me under the arms. Her breasts pressed fatly together, the flesh crinkling. Now, she said; finished, and lowered me on to the boards. How’s that? I stood lamely beside her, one foot on tiptoe, and looked up to her face. Not even my dad? I persisted; doesn’t he know? Jeannie touched the back of my head to guide me outside. I saw the distant seethe of the sea as it broke on the beach, a dog yelping at the waves, and suddenly turned and latched onto her, my arms wrapped tight round her bulk, my face squashed to her belly. She didn’t return my embrace but waited, softly breathing, until my hold on her weakened. These are things you’ll have to ask your dad, Paul, she said; when you get home. She offered her hand. Okay? she asked, and I nodded. Down on the sand my grandfather was reading his newspaper. He squinted over his glasses as we came out and cleared his throat. All mended? he said. Jeannie lowered herself to a deckchair and patted my arm. Go and play now, she told me.
A week would pass before I saw my father again; several weeks more before I remembered my questions. I was happy on holiday. We were staying in Aunt Jeannie’s bungalow, in the coastal town where my mother was born and my grandparents had lived till Grandad’s work had brought them inland. Jeannie, being much older, had remained. She was married to a builder called Ian, later to a teacher called Peter, and would always be childless. Every summer until I was fourteen we drove to her home in my grandfather’s old car, a black polished Ford Popular with white-walled wheels and red leather seats which he kept, it seemed, solely for those journeys. My father stayed behind with his work, though it was years before I realised there could be no question of his being included, or of wishing to be. Jeannie made up a bed for me in her sewing room, and each August I returned to find the pebbles and shells that I’d collected the previous year, preserved as if I’d not been away, and my crab-lines and sunhats and books, all in their usual places.
There were reminders of myself in other homes too. During term-time, until I was old enough to fend for myself, it was my father’s sister Rene who took me in after school. She fed me and switched on her TV and together we waited for my father to appear in the doorway, red-faced and wearing a trilby, his heavy boots crushing her carpet. And when he wouldn’t be coming I stopped overnight, sharing a room with Colin, my cousin, his cot at the foot of my bed, my toys next to his on the floor. At my uncle Ron’s, where my father delivered me some weekends, I kept a bicycle in the basement and slept on an old army camp-bed, surrounded by the unwanted clutter of a family of girls. But in my grandparents’ house I had a room of my own, my name on a plaque on the door, and there I lived when my father was working away, sometimes also at weekends, often during half-terms. A patch of garden was set aside for my digging. I ran errands for neighbours who remembered my mother, slept beneath her framed photograph, an
d in my grandparents’ bedroom I found a shoebox of snapshots from when she was small, which finally I removed to my own room, but little was said of her, and the photos were never mentioned. When the time came to walk me back home my grandmother would fill her pockets with pennies from a jar in the pantry. She liked to play I Spy and test me with sums, and for each correct answer she subtracted from her pockets and added to mine. At our door she gave me my keys and waited. Her last words were always God bless and she never once came inside.
Our house was very old. It was leased from the college where my father taught sculpture. Wood beams crossed the ceilings; stone steps led down to the kitchen, up again to the living room. The tourists and students who passed on the pavement darkened our windows, the traffic on the road rattled the latches, but from my room high up at the back I could see out to a river and the vast green expanse of a park called the Racecourse. My father had his studio in the buildings below. He worked from a barn of corrugated fibre and breezeblock, the sliding doors as big as the walls, fluorescent strips hanging on chains from the rafters. A yellow forklift sheltered in a lean-to. His workshop and store cluttered a coach-house, the doors off their hinges, martins and mice in the roof space. I played in a landscape of rusting scrap metal – giant cog wheels and flanges, U-bends and ball-sockets, fat lengths of industrial tubing and thick plates of steel folded like cloth, the rivets like buttons. Whatever the weather at the front of the house, it always seemed cooler behind. The wind whipped through the trees by the river, whined in the pipes and hollows of my father’s constructions. Out on the margins lay the work he’d abandoned. A few finished pieces, waxed or whitewashed, rose from the nettles and junk in the sprawl of the courtyard. But closer to the house we had the start of a garden – a trellis on the wall, shrubs and herbs in earthenware pots, bulbs in the window-boxes. I’d helped my mother to plant them.