Crustaceans

by Andrew Cowan

  In the evening, once she had put you to bed, Ruth sat down on the sofa, curling both legs beneath her, and lifted your workbooks onto her lap. She arranged them in order and tucked back her hair; she licked her thumb and turned the first page. The sheets were dog-eared and stapled, larger than foolscap, and as she browsed through them I went out to the kitchen; I poured myself a drink and came to sit with her. I leant into her shoulder and looked again at your tracings of the preprinted letters and numbers, then your less tidy attempts to write them unaided, with no guidelines to help you. There was your name at the top of each page – a broad scrawl to begin with, becoming tighter and smaller – and your sketches of houses and people, insects and animals, some immediately recognisable, a few only clear from their captions, and all of them strangely proportioned, oddly misshapen. You gave your men fat circles for hands, their fingers as long as their legs. The women had eyes too big for their faces. Well done, Euan, we’d say; that’s lovely, no matter what it was that you showed us. And those were the words in my head as I looked at your pictures. You had done well, applied yourself, approximated a likeness, expressed yourself, and in the process produced something that was lovable, your mark. Ruth was weeping when she put down the last book. I gathered the pile into my arms and said I would take them up to the attic. When? she said sharply. And I paused, laid them back on the floor. Eventually, I smiled; whenever.

  Ruth wept too on the morning you started at school; quietly, as she stood in the kitchen, her briefcase packed ready for work. I touched her arm and she sighed, attempted a smile. She shook her head and gathered her things, hurriedly pulled on her coat. She went through to kiss you, and whispered something into your ear, ruffled your hair, but you didn’t glance up from the television, and seemed not to notice her leaving. Even as I helped you into your clothes – your green and grey uniform – you didn’t take your eyes from the screen. I laced up your shoes, and asked if you wanted to take anything with you, but you laughed and said, No. You chatted excitedly all the way to the school. And though you held my hand tightly as we went through the gates, across the playground and into your classroom, there was no fearfulness or shyness. I remember you stared at a girl who was bawling. You saw a book that you recognised and you showed me. You picked up some sticklebricks. And then you told me to go. You pushed me away, and sat cross-legged on the mat in front of your teacher, patiently, keenly waiting for what next. For you there was only ever what next. But I didn’t go. I went outside and looked back through the window. The other parents edged by me, and I continued to stand there. I waited until your teacher began calling the register, until I saw you lift up your arm, and it was then that I left you, turned and crossed the wide playground. The streets were deserted and I walked slowly home. I had a kiln to unpack that day in my studio, but I went first to your bedroom and collected your workbooks, your scattered drawings and paintings, and took them at last to the attic. I stayed up there all morning, rereading my notebooks, carefully sorting your things. There was so much of it, Euan, and already so much that seemed to be missing.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  You were seven months old the first time you sat upright, aged three and three months when at last you abandoned your pushchair. You could write your own name just before you turned four. I know the date you were weaned, and when you caught your first cold; I recorded the moment you took your first steps. I took photos of you feeding from Ruth. None of this, I once thought, should ever be lost or discarded or buried. Whatever you wouldn’t remember or notice, I made it my job to preserve. But though your questions now are constant, unceasing, it seems it’s only your last day that concerns you, and of course you want to hear every detail. You want to know what we were wearing, and if Ruth smiled for my camera. You want to know the age of the girl, and the name of her dog. You want to know how long it took me to find you, and if you were to blame, and if it’s alright to come back now. Again and again, if it’s alright to come back now.

  That afternoon you were wearing your red swimming trunks, Euan; your new ones, the pair you had slept in. You had worn them all morning under your shorts, and when Ruth helped you undress on the beach I looked to the soft pouch of your penis and saw how grubby you’d made them. She dropped your shorts to the blanket beside her, and then your shirt, your sandals and socks, and later, when I began taking my pictures, I pushed them aside with my foot; I moved them out of the frame. Like me you burned easily, but we’d forgotten your sunblock. I said to Ruth that she ought to leave your shirt on, and I remember the taut globe of your belly – which always surprised me – and the way you placed your hand there as you drank from our bottle. Half an hour only, Ruth told you; then you’ll have to cover up again. She touched the top of your arm, where the skin was beginning to flake. Do you hear me? she said, and you nodded. Some water dribbled on to your chin and she wiped it away with her thumb.

  Ruth that day was wearing her red cotton frock, the buttons undone at the top and the bottom, and her legs were visible to the thigh as she knelt in the sand, a faint down of blonde hair. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and I remember the dip of her breasts when she leaned forward. But she was wearing pants; they were red like her dress, and your trunks. They were red and expensive and once bought to please me, lace-panelled and silky, but fading, washed out, as old as her dress, whilst I was in shorts, a T-shirt and sandals, all of them new. Ruth had chosen my clothes before we came out on that holiday; she had taken me round shops I wouldn’t normally go into. I hadn’t worn sandals or shorts since I was a boy, and hadn’t thought they would suit me. But Ruth liked my legs – they were skinny like yours – and she said I ought to show them more often. So I wore my new shorts, longer and baggier than yours, and that day Ruth wore her red pants. Her red knickers; on a lady or girl, they’re called knickers.

  It was Ruth who picked up my camera. She told you to stand close beside me, for it was our legs that she wanted. She called them my best feature, and the picture is cropped at my waist, my hand on your shoulder. And so later, when I took up the camera, I said now it was my turn; I would capture the feature I liked best about her. She was scooping a moat around the sandcastle we’d built. Bent forward, the sun slipped down her dress, and I focused the lens on her breasts. She looked up and poked out her tongue – she didn’t smile – and no, you weren’t standing beside her, not in that picture, but there were so many others; the film by then was almost used up. An hour earlier, as you’d taunted and run from the surf, I’d walked backwards, focusing, snapping, and winding. And some time before that I’d sat you on the steps of our caravan, Ruth looking out from the window, my shoes and sunhat and glasses arranged on the grass. In the morning, as you’d walked along the track into town, holding Ruth’s hand and sharing her umbrella, I’d called out to you suddenly and then taken a snapshot. I’d crouched by the carousel in the funfair and waited for your horse to dip into view. I’d used a flash in the amusement arcade, and leaned over the balcony in the swimming-pool. And then later, much later – not that day, or even the next – there would be one more, the final shot on that film and the last I would take, the aperture closing around you, and then darkness.

  But you were already absent – your clothes kicked out of the way – when I took that photo of Mummy leaning over our sandcastle. It had been raining all night and for most of the morning. The sand was soft and fine at the surface, damp and grainy a few inches beneath. You had gone up the slope of the beach to gather some shells, some decoration to place round the turrets. Which was my idea, Euan. I’d passed you your bucket – that was all you would need – but still you’d insisted on taking your spade, your blue one. Perhaps you’d already decided on some other plan, perhaps it was then that you’d decided to hide. I would be along in a minute, I’d told you, lifting my camera, removing the lens-cap. I had said I would find you – those were my words – and I’d said you weren’t to go far. So it wasn’t your fault, you weren’t being naughty. I had said find; so of course you’d think hide. You we
re five and a half.

  A minute isn’t a long time, more than enough for one photo. Another minute slipped by, and then a few more – nine or ten, maybe fifteen – but I didn’t forget you, I held you somewhere in mind as I lay on my back in the sand at Ruth’s side. You were always hiding, Euan, and sometimes we would ignore you. Eventually you’d come out to join us. But I wasn’t ignoring you then; I always intended to follow. In a minute, I’d said. The sand was warm and I began to feel drowsy. Ruth sat across me, one hand splayed out on my chest, and she drank the last of our water. I narrowed my eyes to the glare of sunlight. I smoothed my hands on her arms and she lowered herself to her elbows, her chin touching mine, and she kissed me. She rolled on to her back. I had an erection. We held hands, and I listened to the sounds of our holiday, the gulls and the hush of the sea, the cracking of the breeze in a windbreak, a bellying deckchair. There was a motorboat, murmuring voices, a dog barking, and the noises of children. But I couldn’t hear you, your voice amongst theirs. It was the dog that disturbed me. I’d better go and see what he’s up to, I said.

  It didn’t take long, another few minutes. I set out for the cliffs, scuffing through the soft sand, and if I noticed the girl, it was only in passing, for I was looking for you, Euan; your red trunks and dark hair. Our beach was busy that afternoon – as crowded as it ever became that far down from the pier – and there were so many children. I scanned the deckchairs and windbreaks, and I saw a few faces I recognised – other people we knew from the caravans – but they didn’t look up and I didn’t approach them. I shielded my eyes and looked out to the sea, the lethargic roll of the waves and the shimmering air, the scatter of figures on the shoreline. And of course you weren’t to be seen. I hadn’t expected you would be, but for a brief moment then I felt fearful – something disturbed me – and I glanced towards Ruth. She had turned onto her belly and she seemed to be sleeping. Her dress was bunched at her buttocks and her legs were splayed out on our blanket. Everything remained as it was; and when I turned again to the cliffs I saw the girl clearly, thirty yards in the distance. I registered then what she doing, and vaguely it seemed I’d known all along. You would have called her a big girl, Euan. She was fourteen – a one and a four – and her name, I learned later, was Chloe. She was a teenager, and she was digging in the sand at the base of the cliffs – frantically digging – and her dog was flapping its tail, edging closer then back, crouching and barking. She was wearing a yellow jersey, V-necked and sleeveless, and a pair of mauve shorts, some white plastic sandals. Her dog was an old one. His snout was grizzled, his belly distended, but he was large and excited, and I’m sure you wouldn’t have liked him. His name, I remember, was Toby.

  There was an immediate clench of adrenaline, my heart suddenly lurching, and yet still, for a few paces more, I resisted the impulse to run. I looked all around me, making sure that no one was watching, confirming your absence from all that I’d seen. And then I was sprinting, as fast as I could through the drag of the sand. I yelled out Ruth’s name. I stumbled, got up, and it was then that I found you. You were hiding. You had tunnelled into one of the hollows at the base of the cliffs. There were tucks and folds there just deep enough for you to crouch down in. But you hadn’t wanted to crouch; you had used your spade and gone further. The sand was damp – it had been raining all night and for most of the morning – and a section of cliff had crumbled, collapsed on to you, leaving a tall shallow groove, a pile of debris. I saw your legs, and I knew their size, their shape, and your ankles. They were skinny like mine. You were buried face down, and your toes had turned blue. I fell to my knees – Chloe kneeling beside me – and no, I said nothing to her. I began digging, and dug with both hands, but Chloe’s dog was excited. He jumped at my back. I felt his claws through my shirt, and I shouted; I swung out an arm. Chloe dragged him away then. She held him by the collar and watched me. She was crying, I remember, and some other people were coming towards us, Ruth somewhere amongst them. The dog was yelping, slavering wildly, and I shouted at Chloe. I told her to ring for an ambulance – there was a phone at the top of the cliffs, up the rickety steps – and as she ran off, the dog leaping beside her, I heard Ruth yelling your name, her panic and fury, and the echo of her voice skirling back from the cliff-face. Then she too was tearing with her hands at the sand, the rocks and fossil-strewn scree. There wasn’t much room. Other hands were trying to help us, our arms and elbows colliding. Some more sand collapsed from above. And when at last we got past your trunks I took hold of your legs in my arms and I dragged you. I panicked too; I didn’t know what I was doing. Your body juddered over the ground. Your head bumped as it came, and it was then that Ruth wailed, a sound I’d last heard in the hospital, five and a half years before.

  The digging had taken five minutes, ten, I have no idea, but it was a very long time, Euan, long enough for you to leave us, for your heart to stop beating. I turned you over. Your lips and fingers were blue, your hair claggy with sand, your eyelashes. There was a plug of blood-clotted sand in your nose and I plucked it away. And then I did what I knew, the ABC I’d learned in my lessons – the airway, breathing, circulation. I tilted your head back and opened your mouth. I pushed a forefinger to the back of your throat, and as I scooped for the sand there, finding nothing, I remembered – a fleeting image, a reflex of memory – a moment when you were eighteen months old and taking a bath in your tub. There was a moulded tray in the rim of the bath where the water would gather. You liked to drink from it. And that evening, as I glanced to the television, I thought I saw you suck up the sliver of soap that lay there. You seemed to be choking, and immediately I swept you out of the water. I forced my finger into your mouth. There was a blockage; I was sure I could feel it. I jabbed and clawed with my fingernail, and then turned you on to your front and patted hard on your back. But your cries were too clear – the soap, I realised, was still in the water. By then you were screeching, and my hands were shaking. I wrapped you in a towel, and cradled and rocked you; I bit hard on the towel to stop myself crying. I had panicked, as I always would. And I was panicking still. I thought I might cry. But you made no sound at all. You weren’t breathing, and you hadn’t a pulse.

  I pinched your nostrils together and put my mouth over your mouth – sand gritting my tongue, my lips – and I gave to you all the breath that I had. Your chest rose. I breathed into you again, and felt your neck for a pulse, but still there was nothing. I found the end of your breastbone, and measured two finger widths up, my nails broken, flaps of torn skin on my knuckles. I locked my hands together, one on top of the other, and pressed down with the heel of my hand. But that was too much; your chest was too small. I pressed with only one hand, and released, and slumped back on my heels; I counted one-and-two, and did it again. Sweat stung my eyes. I counted fifteen compressions, another two breaths, and then I returned to your chest. I did what I knew, what I thought I remembered, forcing your heart to circulate blood, transferring my oxygen, counting fifteen then two, fifteen then two. And all the time Ruth was saying your name, pathetic and pleading, holding your face in her hands to stop the loll of your head as I thrust down on your chest, until at last I told her to take over, to copy what I had done: pinch your nose, seal her mouth over yours, blow hard and evenly. But she was too hasty, she wanted to start even whilst I was pumping, and then she didn’t do it quite right, and I snapped at her, I shouted. I shouted at Mummy as I had shouted at Chloe.

  The ambulance was a long time in coming – it felt like a long time – and I remember Chloe came back to us, though not now with her dog. She was panting, and seemed frightened, but she said she had phoned. And I kept going, my shirt clammy with sweat, the backs of my knees. My new sandals bit into my feet. My arms and shoulders were aching, and I felt a hand on my elbow. The man was bearded, older than me, and he offered to take over; he said he knew what to do. But I shook my head, Euan. I wouldn’t allow him, for I was your father; it was my job to help you. The other people were standing now at a distance.
Some couldn’t watch, but how could they leave? The parents had ushered their children away. Then I heard the man asking Chloe where she had rung from, and what directions she’d given. She pointed to the top of the cliffs, our caravan site, and admitted that she’d left no one to meet them. Come on then, he said, and led her away by the arm. They started to trot. I heard their feet on the steps. I took all of this in, and I continued to count – fifteen compressions, two breaths – and I heard the sounds of our beach, the speedboat passing and turning, the sea. I noticed the bruise on your chest where I was pressing, and the limp jerk of your arms and your legs, the dusky cast to your face. I saw Ruth wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, the snot from her nose. But I wasn’t crying, Euan. I thought that I might, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t something I did. And though I knew it was hopeless, that you’d already gone, still I wouldn’t give up. I kept hoping. I couldn’t imagine a future without you, as I couldn’t then keep from my mind the images – the random memories – of how you had been. Your life passed before me, Euan, the life you were leaving, all the stuff I’d recorded, and which you would never have time for.

  I saw all of that, and I saw the paramedics hurrying towards us, their blue and yellow jumpsuits, and the weight of their bags bumping into their legs. And no, the ambulance didn’t come down to the beach, but we would see it later, a real one. It had a blue light and a siren, and it was parked up near our caravan. That would be after the ambulancemen had got your heart beating, independent of me. They took over, and I had no purpose then but to stand and look on. I reached out for Ruth, and she came to me slowly, desolate, lost to herself and to me, unable to watch. I smelled the sweat in her hair, and the sourness of her breath, but she wasn’t crying then; she was shaking. The men did what they knew, what they’d been trained for, and I remember the pads they clapped on to your chest, and the shout of Stand clear! The shock made you jolt, Euan; jerk up from the ground. The sound was hollow, a thwack like a slap, and Ruth glanced at you then, looked briefly. The men were watching a monitor. They slid a tube down your throat, and connected that to a cylinder. One of them squeezed a bag, then did some compressions. They stepped up the voltage; they got your heart beating. But you had already gone, Euan. You died because you’d stopped breathing. You died of compression asphyxia. The pressure of your burial had squashed up your chest so hard it couldn’t expand. Your lungs had failed. The respiratory centres in your brainstem had starved; they hadn’t had enough oxygen and so you had died. You could not be revived. But the heart is a machine, Euan; shocked into working, it carried on regardless. For three days more, it kept pumping. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, and the newspaper called it a Tunnelling Tragedy. Couple’s Agony At Tunnelling Tragedy. Your picture appeared on the television. Many people came to the funeral. We had you cremated. And no, you cannot come back now; it isn’t okay to come back now.