Sunflowers in February

by Phyllida Shrimpton

  There you go, Ben! It’s easy.

  I’m going swimming.

  Matthew had to ring the landline, complaining that I’m ignoring his messages on Ben’s mobile. Mum answered, and I could hear her having a one-sided conversation, arranging something on my behalf, my confidence slowly dropping to my hobbit feet in their boys’ socks. ‘Yes, he’s here. I’m sure he’ll go. I’ll get him for you.’

  ‘Are the others going?’ I ask him, relieved it’s only swimming and not another sport and hoping there might be a gang of us.

  ‘No, just me and you. I don’t see them much any more. I don’t even see you much any more,’ he grumbles. ‘Anyway, see you in thirty,’ he says, before putting the receiver down.

  Shutting the front door behind me, and with Ben’s bag over my shoulder, I make my way to the street where I’ve agreed to meet Matthew. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it right this time, Ben’s swimming shorts are on under my clothes, spare boxers and a towel in the bag, and some money.

  But I’m not prepared for the changing rooms …

  Matthew goes into the male group changing room, holding the door open for me to follow, then he basically strips off right in front of me. I feel the red hit my cheeks. ‘Don’t worry about today,’ he says. ‘They’re all knobs. We’re not playing that lot again for a while.’ He’s standing in front of me with a sympathetic expression on his face, and isn’t prepared for the giggle that I reply with and the squeaky ‘OK’ that comes out.

  He’s naked. Right here in front of me. Absolutely starko! Completely unaware that he’s trying to have a serious conversation with his best friend’s sister with everything that he’s got to offer on display.

  I try to think of something sensible to say to him, but all I can think of is I can see your willy, and it makes me splutter before I turn away and share my supressed laugh with the wall, as I slide off my jeans, grateful that I’m already wearing Ben’s swimming shorts. I can hear Matthew pulling on his own shorts and sighing loudly in a why do I bother? kind of a way, before he leaves the changing room, the door closing heavily behind him.

  I hit the water hands first in a dive. I am in the water, under the water and breaking the surface of the water in seconds, and it feels great. My skin registers its coldness and it makes me yelp happily as I shake the water from my eyes. I lie on my back and let the pool, heavy with the scent of chlorine, hold me on its surface, arms and legs weightless, eyes facing the ceiling, eyelashes heavy with bleach-scented droplets. Rolling on to my stomach I push forward, burying my face in the water to swim; push forward, take a breath, push forward, take a breath. After a while I try with my eyes shut, feeling my body sucking in air, my heart pumping, losing myself in a rhythm, like a watery meditation. It feels so good. I am neither boy nor girl. I am neither Lily nor Ben. I am neither guilty nor innocent. I am simply life, breathing, moving, being. Push forward, take a breath, push forward, take a breath.

  An elbow in the face from a passing kid stops me mid-swim, and I return. Lily in Ben’s body. Guilty.

  I’m angry with the kid for ruining my moment, but the two lines of mucus, like insipid slugs, sliding from his nostrils, are a strong contributing factor towards my decision to leave him alone … quickly!

  ‘Coming to the top board?’ Matthew swims up to me as I’m hurriedly trying to get away from the slugs, convinced that they must now be floating near me, ready to attach themselves to my hair. I look over at the three boards with their varying levels in the diving section, then raise my eyes up to the platform near the ceiling of the pool.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I reply without thinking. ‘Last time I jumped off the second board I almost lost my bikini!’ I immediately realise my error and how ludicrous that just sounded, and Matthew looks confused for a moment before suddenly laughing out loud.

  ‘Yeah right, just before you went to the changing rooms and put on your big girl’s blouse.’

  I laugh back, but he yells, ‘Come on, turd face,’ and swims off, as if there isn’t any doubt that I would want to fling myself off something that high.

  Ben has never been scared of the top board, but I have, and I am now up there, looking down at the pool and wondering why my heart is beating quite so fast. What am I afraid of? I’m already dead!

  I can still hear Ben from last night – ‘You’d never be able to do what I do’ – as if he’s standing right by my shoulder mocking me. The water looks really far away from here, but I reason that it’s only ten metres down, and it won’t be long before it is over. I try to count the seconds it takes a boy who was standing with us to leave the platform and reach the water, but the telltale slap of skin on water before the enormous splash that rises from the surface makes us both wince. Then Matthew walks to the edge and dives off, straight as an arrow and plunging deep, before breaking the surface and popping successfully up through the crystal-clear water tinted blue from the tiles below.

  I hold my nose and jump.

  My stomach stays on the platform, and my body drops towards the shiny reflections below, then I feel the water crackle and bubble around my head and ears as I enter it. No slap and sting of skin on water for me. I ‘whooo’ as my face lurches back out again into the echoey air of the building. Success! Fear, I decide, is a feeling that stops you doing something that might be fun. I have no time for fear.

  After five more jumps my stomach starts to join me on the descent, until jumping in becomes something I can do without thinking much about it. It dawns on me that experiencing something each time with the intensity I felt in the beginning is almost impossible. I recall the toddler that I watched out of the window in Ben’s bedroom, and realise sadly that this is how we forget each little part of our lives that in the beginning we thought so wonderful.

  If I stay in Ben’s body forever, will I, again, get used to all the things I have enjoyed in raptures over the last two days? Will delicious food become something I just chew on again? Will loving my mum and dad start to become a feeling I take for granted? Will the very act of living make me complacent once more? I take one more jump. Backwards. I decide that if things get too samey, change them a bit and enjoy it all over again.

  ‘There you go, Ben Richardson. I can do what you can do.’

  Matthew is sitting on the side of the pool when I eventually swim up to him, the adrenalin pumping round my body, making me feel very much alive, but he looks vaguely fed up. ‘You OK?’ I ask, shaking the water from my face and hair.

  ‘I thought we were in here together,’ he answers with a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘We are,’ I answer back, ‘… aren’t we?’

  ‘You jumped!’ he says, curling his lip.

  ‘Yeah?’ I answer and ask, both at the same time.

  ‘You’ve been running up the stairs and jumping off the board, over and over, like a little girl … and holding your nose …? What’s that about?’ He lets go of his nose when he finishes his little mime, letting me know how silly I must have looked. ‘We dive!’ he says, as if he is amazed that Ben could have forgotten. I look up at him from my position in the water, and once again I realise how difficult it is to be someone else. Even if it’s my own twin.

  ‘Sorry?’ I say weakly, and I know that this barely makes up for anything, as he gets up and makes for the changing rooms.

  I’m back in Ben’s bed, the scene of the crime, and the place where quite possibly a further and premeditated crime will be committed.

  It was an odd day today. I wanted to run at it with my arms open and embrace everything I’d left behind, but in the end all I really did was live a Ben kind of day, doing Ben kind of things, even though I did them badly.

  With sadness, I realise that even if I manage to squeeze another day out of Ben, it could never be a Lily kind of day. But even so, all those little things that almost go unnoticed like sunshine, or cake, or the warmth of someone’s skin … at least I could have those things again.

  I know that when I meet Ben in the night I’m not going to
want to swap places again. I’m not going to want to lift myself off his bed and give up my chance.

  *

  I didn’t have to make a decision about wrestling Ben.

  There was no Ben.

  My total relief at waking up for another glorious day is masked by the unsettling reason why Ben didn’t appear. ‘Where are you?’ I ask the empty space in my room. ‘I’d have felt better about winning if we had at least fought over it. Not that I was going to let you back, but you could at least have tried.’

  Nothing.

  ‘At least let me know you’re OK?’ I say, getting annoyed. ‘Is this hide-and-seek, your idea of payback? Are you trying to put me on some massive guilt trip, Ben … because if you are, it’s working.’

  The stinging vine of guilt that grew yesterday increases its sting. What if my selfishness really has actually pushed him out of limbo and into the afterlife … the place where I should have gone?

  My teeth bite my wobbling lips, and tears trickle out of Ben’s eyes and once more I feel alone. ‘I just wanted a bit longer,’ I whisper.

  I don’t know if I am imagining it, but it feels like the softest of cool air is caressing my hand. The very fact that nothing at all is near my hand stops my tears mid-flow. ‘Ben?’ I whisper. ‘Is that you?’ I remember the time I put my arms round Fat Lucy, and sat near Ben, and kissed Beth’s cheek – they felt it. There is no answer to my whispered questions, but I hope with all my heart that I’m not imagining it, that he is here, holding my hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, but even as my words of lame apology come out I know that if Ben were to appear right now and ask for his life back, I would still hold out one more time.

  Uncle Roger lets himself in through the kitchen door, familiar and territorial, and a little glowing ember of irritation reignites inside me. I’m beginning to wonder if over the last few weeks he has crossed the boundary between being very helpful and becoming a predator. Mum is beginning to turn more to him than she is to Dad, and although he is Dad’s brother, I think Uncle Roger is a teeny bit jealous of his relationship with Mum. Who wouldn’t be, saddled with the amoeba that is Aunty Ruth? Uncle Roger seems to now be living vicariously off the wreckage that my death had caused, not allowing Dad the chance to find his new place in our family and spending far too much time around Mum. He’s like a silver-backed gorilla, muscling his way in and assuming the role of head of our household, while Dad steps down because of his misplaced guilt.

  ‘Your front door needs painting and your car could do with a bit of a clean,’ he says, cocking his head towards the front of the house where his two-door sports car is parked next to Dad’s old saloon. He winks and smiles at Dad, as if this thin charade will disguise the put-down. ‘Cigarette, Amelia?’ He waves a package in front of my mum, while Dad mumbles some apologies for not getting around to doing either of those things.

  I’ve heard better ways of saying hello!

  ‘Can you just help me with something, Uncle Roger?’ I ask, beckoning him away from my mum.

  ‘Of course,’ he answers with the expectant look of sureness that he often has. He follows me to the hallway where I open the front door and look out onto the street; coming up beside me, he looks out too. ‘I just wondered if you could, um … leave.’ I stand holding the door and turn to look at him. His expression is a medley of surprise, superiority and overplayed hurt feelings, and he opens his mouth to say something, but I interrupt. ‘Perhaps you could go home to Aunty Ruth and leave Dad to be chief gorilla of his family.’ We look at each other eye to eye, the gap between fifteen-year-old and forty-something bridged by the certainty of the knowledge we both share. And after a silent battle of eyeballs, and a slight knowing nod of my head, he eventually leaves.

  I head towards the kitchen, clenching my fist and punching the air. ‘Uncle Roger remembered something very important that he had to do,’ I tell them, as I walk back in. Dad looks vaguely relieved that his brother has gone but I wonder if I can detect an ever-so-slight look of disappointment in Mum. I search my mind for something better than Uncle Roger to fill their day and mine.

  ‘Can we go to the seaside?’ I ask, and the unexpected randomness of this question causes them both to look over at me with surprise.

  ‘It’s going to be pretty chilly today,’ Mum says, frowning, while Dad shrugs.

  ‘I was going to wash the car,’ he says, but we both know he wasn’t. Basically no one can think of a real reason why we shouldn’t go.

  *

  We’re in Dad’s car on our way to the coast, and I suddenly want to be there very much. It takes a good hour and a half to get there, but the radio is on and there’s an atmosphere in the car that isn’t despair.

  Parking next to the old sea wall, with the wind lifting our hair and catching our breath, we step out of the car and walk slowly along the seafront. A mosaic sea of greys and greens and black stretches out beside us, interrupted only by tilting boats whose bottoms are touching the sands of shallow tide. Seagulls swirl and swoop and call loudly to each other, their screams making the call of the seaside from my childhood, blown here and there by a glorious salty wind.

  The seafront is weathered and still sleepy from its long hibernation. Old buildings facing the sea are peeling and cracking from the barrage of cold and salt spray, and the beach is empty apart from a man, warm under hat and scarf and overcoat, throwing a ball for a madly happy dog.

  I head down some stone steps leading to the beach, take off my trainers and socks and roll up the jeans I’m wearing. Placing my feet on the sand I remember instantly this feeling of millions of coloured grains tumbling over my skin.

  A memory of Ben and me from years ago, playing near this very spot, when we were about ten or eleven years old, appears like a vision in front of me. Ben convinced me to let him bury me in the sand and after helping him dig a deep hole I lay down in it as he piled the sand on top of me, pressing it down as he went. When he was finished, and I couldn’t move a single muscle, he turned round to see what Mum and Dad were doing. Dad was asleep on a beach towel, his book over his face, and Mum was engrossed in her book. And then, my darling brother put a bucket over my head and sat down next to me. I remember how I stared at the inside of that bucket while Ben repeated, ‘Tell me I’m better than you at everything and the bucket comes off. Tell me you’ll give me next week’s pocket money and I’ll dig you out.’

  I was scared, but I never gave in. Each time he repeated his ‘offer’ I answered a simple ‘no’ in return.

  Despite being grounded for two weeks, he laughed all the way home because apparently it was hilarious when Mum had wandered over to ask where I was and all she could hear was a muffled ‘I’m in the bucket, Mum.’

  My parents are standing slightly apart near the promenade, focusing all their attention on me. I wonder if they too remember us playing here as children, innocent and carefree. The cold sand, still holding our childhood memories, moves slightly with each step I take towards the edge of the sea, hard stones and sharp shells digging into the soft skin on the soles of my feet, but I don’t care.

  The briny, exciting scent of sea becomes stronger as I move closer to the water’s edge. I step over a heavy line of seaweed where the sea has scooped it along and pushed it into wave-like shapes on the beach, catching pieces of timber and modern treasure: a plastic water bottle, part of a child’s dolly, a rotten flip-flop. My feet sting with the intense cold of the winter-chilled water, making me gasp as I stand with the swell and dip of the sea caressing my legs from feet to shin, feet to shin, over and over.

  My gaze scans the far, watery horizon where a million wonderful things await in a world of opportunities, and a kind of melancholy stirs inside me with the need to go and explore it, wild and free and young. I wanted to travel the world so desperately all my life, and I want to travel it still.

  I need to.

  Another thought comes into my mind, and again I know it’s wrong, but I also know it is possible. If I stay in Ben’s bo
dy … if I hijack him, just until the exams are over, and I’m sixteen … I could go to Paris with Matthew and go on from there. I could beg, borrow or steal some money and see how far I get. Could I really keep hold of Ben’s body until then? My mind dances with vibrant tropical colours and heady spices, of people of all colours and creeds, of mountains and lakes and cities and deserts and splash … a wave hits my legs, turning the folds on the bottom of my jeans a dark, heavy blue.

  I turn my back on the rest of the world but my heart is still out there, flying high with my dreams and with them now are ribbons of hope.

  My parents wait patiently while I force on socks, which stick to my damp and sandy skin, as the golden dog comes steaming past us on his way to the ball that his owner has thrown, his fur flying and his paws pounding on the sand. Trotting back he comes by us, dropping the ball from his mouth, letting Mum pat his head with her stretched-out hand. I bob down on my haunches and hold my hand out too. ‘Come here, boy.’ The dog lowers his head as if he is not sure what to do, wagging but whining at the same time and darting around excitedly.

  ‘It’s OK, mate,’ the man calls over to me. ‘He’s not dangerous or anything, but he’s never done this before.’

  ‘Perhaps he wants to play?’ Mum asks, clicking her fingers at the dog, who ignores her and continues to whine and skirt around me, occasionally throwing a bark in my direction. He knows something is not quite right, just like Charlie did when I was in Beth’s bedroom.

  I laugh to cover up the attention the dog is creating. ‘I’ll have to stop using that new sausage shower gel,’ I say to the man, but even so I turn quickly and start walking towards the pier, away from the dog that knows my secret.