The Playground

by Jane Shemilt

  Izzy had hurried to her room on their return to finish her weekend homework and Paul slipped in later, as usual, shutting the door. She needed his help, he’d said; he asked her not to disturb them. She paces to the window. The gravel garden looks pale and lifeless in the outdoor lighting. Eve’s lawn had shone in the sun at lunchtime; the smell of grass is still on her palms, the same scent that had been in the air the day she met Paul. He’d been sprawled like some god by the side of the grass court in the tennis club, twenty years ago. “Look at that,” her friend Julie had whispered. “Bet he’s got loads of girlfriends.” Melissa could feel him staring at her as she played; she’d felt exposed in her tennis skirt, babyish in the ridiculous socks, but she’d seemed fresh, he told her later, so innocent, so young. As the summer progressed he took her to the theater and for picnics by the sea in his sports car with the roof rolled down. She was fifteen, bowled over by the attention. When she told him about her anorexia, whispering with shame, he seemed refreshingly unperturbed. Her parents didn’t mind the age gap; her father said Paul was a man after his own heart, ruthless like him. Ambition should be rewarded, he’d said. He’d set him up in his own architecture practice. They were married after her interior design course. She spent a couple of years building her business before she was allowed a pregnancy, back to work after. Sometimes she wonders if they’d planned it all out between them from the start.

  The door of Izzy’s bedroom opens after a further ten minutes and Paul emerges, but as she moves forward he shuts it quickly behind him. “She’s tired out again, poor lamb. Come with me,” he whispers, and leads her downstairs. His clasp is firm on her arm; cheated again. He pours them some wine. “She’s doing okay.” He raises the glass to her. “Those lessons were a smart move, Melly. Good thinking.”

  His praise hooks her back, still. She moves closer and holds her hands out. “Smell, right here. Does it remind you of anything?”

  “You know I can’t stand perfume.” He frowns.

  “It’s just grass, not perfume. It took me back to that tennis club where we—”

  “Can you wash it off before bed?” He picks up his glass. “I ate at work; I’ve got accounts to go over.”

  She’s not going to cry, it’s her fault; she picked the wrong moment. He’s tetchy with tiredness, that’s all. Lina is laying out their food in the kitchen: pink salmon, green broccoli, and tiny new potatoes.

  “Please eat with me, Lina, Paul’s busy.”

  Lina sits down obediently. She must wonder why Melissa is so often on her own and why their house seems empty of friends. Melissa pushes her potatoes to one side. The stark truth is that she doesn’t invite friends around, or go out with them, because her husband doesn’t want her to.

  “I simply want to spend time with my wife at the end of a busy day,” he’d said, sipping wine. “Fair enough, surely?” She’d nodded, but the days had become weeks, months, then years. The friends had stopped phoning, stopped coming around. She touches the peonies that Lina has put in a vase on the table, a splash of scarlet against the gray; the petals feel very soft. The days are different now; there are Sundays to look forward to, conversation and laughter. The whole week feels warmer, richer, more colorful. It must be the same for Izzy.

  Melissa smiles at Lina. “It seems crazy we don’t know more about your family after all this time, Lina. Tell me about them.”

  Lina shakes her head, perhaps she doesn’t understand.

  “Your father, for instance. What does he do?”

  “He is dead,” Lina says after a pause, turning her head to the window. Melissa puts down her fork, walks around the table, and sits next to Lina, slipping an arm around her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” She feels guilty for having stirred the memories, guilty for not having discovered them before.

  “The war.” Lina makes a horizontal movement with her hand, as if sweeping something away.

  After a while, Lina gets up and they clear the table together in silence, but one that feels companionable. When they finish Melissa makes two cups of tea. Lina picks hers up with a little bow and walks softly from the kitchen.

  Melissa checks her watch, it’s late. Paul will be in bed, waiting. She hurries upstairs in a panic and stands in the shower for a long time, soaping her wrists again and again.

  Poppy tells Izzy her secrets because Izzy listens; she says she wants to know all about the family. Izzy thinks Mum doesn’t look after things properly.

  “Look at that ring your mother wears,” she says. “She’s got bits of food stuck in it like she’s been cooking with it on. She doesn’t give a toss about anything. It’s all a mess in your house.”

  Poppy nods meekly. They’re in the wood; Izzy’s smoking. She offers one to Poppy but Poppy doesn’t dare.

  “Suit yourself.” Izzy shrugs. “There’s whole boxes of cigarettes in my dad’s office if you change your mind; he’s got a drawer where he keeps secret things, his bottles of booze and stuff. There were knickers in there once, black ones. I bet he has sex on the desk.” She blows out smoke in a ring.

  Poppy’s skin prickles. “Who with?” She tries to sound bored like Izzy.

  “God knows,” Izzy says. “Could be any one of his girlfriends.”

  “What does your mum think?” Poppy asks.

  Izzy shrugs, her face closes up. She doesn’t answer, but then she never talks about her mum. She stubs out her cigarette on a tree trunk, gets some chewing gum from the pocket of her shorts and gives some to Poppy. They walk out of the wood together, chewing.

  “Ninety-nine, a hundred,” they shout, smothering giggles. “Ready or not.”

  Blake watches them from behind the rain barrel. Izzy said they’ll play better games soon. She told him they’ll need the knife, so he had to admit he lost it, and she said don’t worry lots more where that came from, e.g., the shed. She came up really close and smiled and he felt amazing. The last time he felt like this was when they went camping and they played soccer and he got more goals than anyone else, and that was over a year ago.

  Sorrel is hiding behind a tree. She can hear Izzy growling; she’s being a monster. It’s supposed to be fun but it’s scary. She’s coming closer and closer and it’s too late to run, then suddenly Izzy starts laughing and she turns back from being a monster into a friend. Poppy starts laughing, so Sorrel does too. She doesn’t tell anyone about being frightened because that would be silly, it was only a game.

  Part Two

  Summer Holidays

  Later the police would pore over the videos we took that summer, play them over and over, looking to see where it all began. They start—as everything does—with the children. Poppy and Sorrel waiting by the door, wearing dress-up clothes. Charley and Blake being dropped off, Izzy arriving. Ducklings swim on the pond and the trees in the distance become a denser, darker green. Eric waves from a ladder by the trees, Igor trudges past with a spade. The clothes get brighter, lighter, skimpier. It was hot for months. Poppy walks with Izzy, linking arms, they look as though they are whispering. Blake is close behind, his head lowered. Sorrel and Charley play with the dog on a blanket. Ash runs toward them over the grass. For a little boy he ran surprisingly fast, surprisingly far. We didn’t realize that until later—would that have made a difference? Then shots of Charley giving Ash donkey rides around the field, Sorrel walking beside her. They are all smiling.

  If only we could stop the film, right there. Stop, rewind, and play again on a loop.

  Flicker, flicker. Food on the table. A fruit cake, a chocolate cake, cupcakes. Lemon drizzle then a sponge cake smothered in strawberries and cream. There are lots of Martin arriving and leaving, books under his arm, blowing kisses to the camera. His shirt becomes tighter, all that cake.

  Bonfires flare in the background; Eric made so many, there was a bonfire every Sunday to burn dead stuff from the garden; the children loved them, begged him for them, danced around them. There’s one long shot of them running into the woods, disappearing am
ong the trees, bleached out by the light like little ghosts. Eve was filming from the veranda by the house; so far away that you can’t really see what they are doing, but then, none of us saw what was happening at the time. We weren’t looking. It seems incredible now, when you think about it, that we were all too busy to see what was right in front of our eyes.

  4. July

  Eve

  The holidays arrive with a bang. Ash’s birthday party. Everyone’s coming: all the kids, plus Melly, Paul, and Martin. Grace hopes to join them after work. That’s twelve, counting Eve’s own family.

  The kitchen is messy, messier than usual. The girls hang around Eve as she rolls dough, smooths icing, and pipes cream. Scraps of pastry litter the table, lemon halves lie on the floor and eggshells in the sink. Eve’s face is wet with sweat. The kitchen is a furnace. At lunchtime the children are hungry. Poppy asks for food, pushing against her mother impatiently. She gives up after a while, grabs an apple from the fruit bowl, and goes outside. Sorrel follows. Eve leans her elbows on the windowsill to watch, blowing the hair from her eyes, her hands sticky with icing. The girls trail after Eric, who is sawing wood and hammering lengths together to make the roof of a playhouse. They clamber over the planks, used to his silences; his quiet focus settles them down. Sorrel squats near him, patting sawdust into cakes on a length of wood. Poppy sits in the shade eating her apple and watching closely. The little house is taking shape quickly as if by magic; Ash’s birthday present, due to be unveiled at the party later. The slide and swing have arrived and Igor is assembling them, grunting with effort.

  Eve remembers her cooking and turns to the oven with a gasp. The papery cases of filo pastry are dark brown at the edges; she throws them away and starts again. They scorch again. On the third try they are perfect. She fills them with lemon cream, fresh dill, and tiny shrimp. Martin likes fish. She’s made the bouillabaisse, marinated the salmon, and baked crab patties, all with him in mind. Ash climbs on the table. He runs his fingers through a glistening heap of broad beans in oil, pushes his hands in her mouth, makes a face. She laughs and lifts him down, holding him to her for a moment, the small heart beating against her hands as he wriggles. She breathes in the warm smell of his hair as she sets him on the floor. Released, he tumbles into the cushions on top of the dog. She takes the cream from the fridge, then purees the raspberries. She is folding them together, absorbed by the red bleeding into the white, when Eric comes in from the garden, his face dripping with sweat. Noah runs to him limping slightly, wagging his tail. Eric glances at him as he crosses to the fridge, the bottles jangling as he yanks open the door. He drains half a liter of orange juice from the carton then puts it down.

  “Dog’s hurt,” he says, wiping his mouth with his arm.

  “Ash fell on him just now. He’ll recover.” She draws near, touching his hand; the skin is wet. “Do you remember it was hot like this, the day he was born?” Labor had been long and sweaty; Eric had been by her side throughout, attentive and tender, overwhelmed when his son arrived. She smiles. “It’s hard to believe that little baby is already three!”

  “He’s not a baby anymore.” He walks to the door, turns back, grins briefly. “He said ‘Dad’ by the way.” He disappears and she stares after him, stunned. Ash’s first word.

  Through the window, Ash is now sitting on a pile of bark chips trickling them through his fingers. He must have escaped from the kitchen unnoticed. She hurries out the door after Eric and bends down to Ash in the new playground. “What did the birthday boy say?”

  He picks up a handful of bark chips and shows them to her.

  “What’s Daddy called, poppet?”

  Ash rolls on his back, squeezing his eyes shut against the sun.

  Sorrel slips off the swing and squats near. “I heard him say ‘Dad,’” she whispers.

  Eve puts an arm around Sorrel and they watch Ash as he rolls from side to side. “Lucky girl,” she whispers back. “Wish I’d heard too.”

  “The house is s’posed to be a surprise.” Poppy’s angry voice comes from the top of the slide. “You’re s’posed to be keeping him inside.”

  Eve carries her squirming son back to the kitchen. She puts champagne in the fridge and watches Eric’s tall figure through the window, trundling pieces of wood away for the bonfire, too busy to celebrate this special moment together. She bastes the salmon, watching the dark soy and honey slide over the pink flesh. She knew what he was like when they married; has he changed or has she? She didn’t mind the silences at the beginning, she was busy with babies. It hadn’t mattered then but now it does. She puts the salmon back in the fridge and takes out the steak to marinate in oil and garlic. He’s a wonderful father and a loyal husband, but if she never said another word, he might not either. She rubs garlic into the meat, imagining the silences stretching for hours, days, weeks. She has a brief vision of their lives going forward into the future, spent side by side in wordless quiet, like life in a monastery. When she tells Martin that Ash has said his first word he’ll laugh and clap his hands. They’ll talk; the chat might open into a discussion about language and books, the novel he’s reading or the chapter he’s writing. It could be something else like the view from his balcony or the people in the streets. Anything. Small talk, Eric would say, but it’s talk that expands, the conversations swirl outward. Eric’s statements are like the shutters that close over shop fronts in the evening, metal ones that clang. Dog’s hurt; he’s not a baby anymore.

  She bends to Noah, running her hand over his leg. He whines when she feels around the left hip joint; perhaps she needs to get him checked out by the vet; family concerns flowing into the cracks in her marriage, filling them up and sealing them over, disguising the damage.

  “The table’s finished.” Poppy appears in the kitchen, jerking her thumb at the window. There are two tables on the veranda, each set for six with candles already lit, colored glasses and beakers of flowers filled with meadowsweet and buttercups.

  “Thanks, Pops. It looks lovely.” She puts an arm around her daughter’s shoulders and cuddles her close although the slim body is rigid with resistance. “Shall we push the tables together? That way we can all talk to each other.”

  “Izzy said separate ones.”

  “Okay.” She drops a kiss on the bright auburn hair. Don’t fuss, she tells herself, it doesn’t matter. It’s a party, anything goes. “So what are you wearing tonight?”

  “Whatever. Jesus.” Poppy spins around and heads for the stairs. Eve crushes a basil leaf from the pot by the window, inhaling the peppery scent. She recognizes Izzy in Poppy’s words, in the way she’d turned her back. What did she expect? The two girls have become close, whispering in the lessons, disappearing together in the garden. They are friends, and friends leave their mark. Outside the candles glow in the dusk. It’s getting late, she should hurry.

  “Let her be,” she mutters to herself. “Let her grow.” Children change and then change back. She’d wanted freedom for her kids, she should be prepared to take risks.

  After her shower she dresses and inspects herself in the mirror. Her body isn’t thin like Melissa’s or shapely like Grace’s, but her arms are turning brown; the dusty pink of the new silk dress suits the color of her face. She doesn’t look like a thirty-four-year-old mother of three; she doesn’t feel like one either. Anticipation seethes in the pit of her stomach. She puts on eyeliner, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick; picks up her wrap and then steps back, looks at her reflection in the mirror and smiles.

  Eric has started the barbecue; she hands him a beer. He drops a kiss on her shoulder, it feels like a truce although they haven’t fought. Perhaps that’s the trouble. Fairy lights sparkle in the olive trees, lighting the drive along its length to the front of the house, around the side, and all the way to the garage and barns at the back.

  The girls appear with Ash. Poppy has glitter on both cheeks. Sorrel has smeared some unevenly on her forehead. Both must have found her lipstick. They look older, a little unfamiliar
; even Ash has glitter on the back of a plump fist. They take him to the playhouse with an air of ceremony, exclaiming as they point to the windows, but he runs out and falls into the bark chips, crowing as he throws them about. The girls follow slowly, disheartened. Poppy frowns at her mother, her fault for letting Ash see the house earlier.

  The girls brighten when Martin arrives with Charley and Blake. Poppy takes them on a little tour of the equipment, pointing out the smooth joints and bright colors of the house, proud of her father’s work. Charley hangs upside down from the bars, her hair touching the ground; Sorrel laughs, clapping her hands. Blake careers down the slide, Ash on his lap.

  “Grace can’t make it after all.” Martin’s eyes follow his son as he carries Ash up the steps and down the slide again. “She’s waiting for the plumber; the washing machine broke down, tonight of all nights.”

  Eve can see he believes what he’s been told though she recognizes an excuse, a lie. She gives him a flute of champagne and they tip glasses. He laughs aloud with pleasure as she knew he would when he hears about Ash’s first word. Eric glances over from the barbecue and then back to the coals, his expression unreadable.