The Playground

by Jane Shemilt

  “You met Martin out there?”

  “I was working in the bar; he came in one evening when I was closing up.”

  “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world . . .”

  “Exactly.” How random it must sound to him, how ridiculous. Another night, a different shift, and Martin wouldn’t have found her, they wouldn’t have fallen in love. They wouldn’t have shared their dreams and she wouldn’t have left her home. The smell in the garden reminds her of her grandparents’ village in Zimbabwe: sun-warmed pine, wild sage, and the faint aroma of dung.

  “How old were you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  He nods as if he gets it, the things love makes you do when you’re young, when you think life will let you make mistakes and there’ll be time to come back from them. He reaches behind her for another beer and his skin brushes hers briefly, very lightly. She flinches.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  It isn’t okay. Her mouth has dried up and sweat prickles in her armpits. The memory has returned in a heartbeat, the mouth at her neck, the desperate struggle to breathe. She gets to her feet. “I should probably check on the kids.” She turns away to hide her trembling lips.

  “See you at supper,” he calls after her; she senses him watching her leave, a little puzzled. The silvery green of the olive leaves blurs as she walks through them, as though the landscape itself were drenched in fear. She’d hoped the terror would diminish here, but if anything it’s worse. Counseling is supposed to help, but everything she googled involves money; she’ll just have to wait it out.

  At supper, the children sit together at the end of the table; their sunburned faces float in the dark above the flickering candles. Ash is asleep in bed upstairs. Sorrel is sucking her thumb. Izzy has her arm around Poppy’s neck; she passes the fingers of her other hand through a candle flame, back and forth, again and again. The children watch, mesmerized, until Eric moves the candle away. He chats quietly to Blake who sits next to him, glancing up at him often, nodding in agreement. Charley is unusually subdued. The incident in the pool seems to have taken its toll. Paul is yawning over his wine, Melissa crumbles bread on her plate, neither has noticed their daughter playing with fire. Eve glows next to Melissa’s pallor, a smiling earth mother, serving out spoonfuls of flaky fish and curled tentacles in a tomato sauce. Her breasts swing freely in a yellow halter-neck top; the nipples stand out like little tubes. Martin is watching her from beneath lowered lids; Izzy’s eyes flicker between the two of them. Grace puts down her fork. Her appetite has vanished. Melissa hasn’t touched her food, but then she hardly eats, her cheeks are hollowed as if with hunger. Eric pours glasses of water for the children. He looks preoccupied; worried about the house maybe, the fight to maintain it all. Grace closes her eyes; behind the lids she sees stones falling, walls crumbling, a house becoming dust.

  Then Paul calls out and her eyes open; he is waving a bottle of wine, offering it about. Martin holds out his glass then turns to chat to Melissa about the beach they visited the day before. The moment passes. Grace picks up her fork; Martin is allowed to look at another woman, everyone flirts on holiday. He loves her and their children. He’s far too lazy to pursue anyone seriously. She can’t help smiling at the way his shirt strains across his belly; too fat and too lazy. Martin catches her smile and returns it; she feels better. He can flirt all he likes; he belongs to her. Soon they will be in bed, together, but then her mind darkens at the thought of hands on her body, even his. They haven’t made love in a month, maybe more. She looks at those familiar hands on the tablecloth, tanned now, the index still ink-stained; perhaps it will be different tonight.

  Poppy nudges Sorrel. “It’s your turn this evening.”

  Sorrel looks around the table then down at her plate, shaking her head.

  “The kids have been taking it in turns to choose a myth,” Eve tells Grace. “Then Martin makes it into a story; so clever of him.” She turns to Martin, her eyes shining. “I expect Sorrel would like one with a dog in it. Can you do that?”

  “Of course.” Martin smiles at Sorrel. “Let’s see, a dog. Can you tell me the name of a dog in your favorite story, little Sorrel?”

  “Spot,” Sorrel whispers.

  There is a quiet snort, Poppy or Izzy, ignored by Martin.

  “Once upon a time there was a dog named Cerberus—or Spot for short—who had three heads. One ate breakfast, the second lunch, the third gobbled down supper.”

  Sorrel giggles. Grace smiles; this is Martin at his best, telling stories, being funny, being kind. This is how he is with their kids, how he was when she met him.

  “He belonged to Hades, a big old guy with a long ginger beard. Hades lived in a special place called the underworld.”

  “That’s where people go when they die, right?” Izzy puts a tanned elbow on the table.

  Martin nods and continues. “One day, Hades took Spot up to the world for a walk in the sunshine, where they met a pretty girl, picking flowers. She began playing with Spot, and they were having such a lovely time that Hades decided to take her back to his home.”

  “Oh, why?” Izzy asks.

  “For Spot to play with, of course.” Martin glances at her. “But then all the flowers in the garden began to die.”

  Sorrel slips her thumb into her mouth, her eyes are very wide.

  “It turned out okay, though,” Grace puts in. “Because—”

  “Her mummy took her home!” Martin beams. “And the flowers started blooming again. The end.” He bows to Sorrel, she smiles, and Eve claps loudly.

  Paul laughs. “It’s different from the version I remember. Didn’t he—?”

  “Bedtime.” Eric scoops up Sorrel and heads for the stairs.

  “Bedtime for us too.” Grace rises. “Come on, kids.” She kisses Martin. “Great adaptation,” she whispers. “Don’t be too long.”

  Outside the moon is shining on the olive trees; there is a dense scatter of stars in the sky. The bushes rustle quietly as they brush past them. When a dark catlike shape bounds across the path Grace stops, shocked. It vanishes up a tree, the wide tail disappearing into the leaves.

  “What was that?”

  “A pine marten,” Charley whispers. “There are tons of them here, Izzy’s been watching them for days. She says the fathers eat their own babies.” She sounds disbelieving.

  Blake is hitting the bushes with a branch from an olive tree; he looks absorbed.

  “Careful, you might hurt something,” Grace tells him; he glances up, surprised, as if he hadn’t realized what he was doing.

  She shepherds the children into the stone building and shuts the door. The bedrooms are whitewashed, each with a view of the garden, a shower, and a wide, soft bed. Martin comes in after an hour; he starts snoring as soon as he lies down. Grace lies awake, disappointed and relieved at the same time. The scent of sage and thyme drifts through the open shutters; from somewhere in the garden the glass plates clash together gently, making discordant music in the dark.

  Izzy can’t believe how ugly pine martens are. They look as though they can’t decide whether to be badgers or cats or some kind of weasel. There are lots around here, they have beady eyes and lumpy bodies and scrabbly paws. They hide up in the pine trees so you’re not sure if they’re there and whether one might fall on you at any moment. Sometimes they creep along the walls like giant rats. No one else knows where the den is; it’s her secret, hers alone. She saw the mother pine marten going into a hole near the bottom of a dried-up tree. It came out again later with a smaller one following it and they went scuttling off together. They didn’t come back, that was yesterday. Izzy is pretty sure there’s still one left inside the hole, though; when she went close up she could hear scuffling noises. Now she’s watching from behind another tree. There’s a new big pine marten who’s arrived and is waiting outside the hole, probably a male one, the father maybe. He’s crouching near the hole and keeping really, really still. It’s
boiling hot and the crickets are loud. There are ants crawling all over her feet and sweat is trickling down her back. She tries to breathe in and out very slowly so the daddy pine marten won’t see any movement. There is a lizard on a stone near her left foot, like a plastic toy, green with little yellow bumps all down its back. She can hear Poppy’s voice in the distance, calling her. She smiles, Poppy has no clue where she is. Then her father starts, his voice is much louder obviously, and she’s worried it will scare the pine marten. “Darling,” then a little later “Izzy Tizzy,” which makes her want to vomit. Finally, he shuts up. She’s safe. The only person who could possibly find her is Blake, who has started following her around like a little dog, but he’s helping Eric cut stuff in the garden this afternoon. This is about the farthest away you can get from the house and still be inside the fence. After maybe half an hour the daddy pine marten crouches lower and goes stiff; a baby pine marten starts coming out of the hole and he pounces faster than you can see and the baby makes a noise like a rusty door opening. The daddy pine marten’s jaws clench tight on the baby’s tummy, which kind of bulges out then opens up, a bit like a purse with a red lining that’s come unzipped. The daddy pine marten runs off with it in its mouth; the baby is actually still moving though not much. When Izzy goes nearer to look at where they’d been, there is blood on the ground, it’s still warm. The ants are at it already. The baby was powerless. It wasn’t that interesting after all.

  6. October

  Eve

  Eve hears footsteps. The scent of bonfire and apples drifts into the bedroom, the donkeys bray once from their paddock. Distant traffic hums against the quiet of the weekday afternoon. Her ring glints red from the bedside table; the old-fashioned settings leave scratches on skin. The footsteps are coming closer. Eve freezes, her lips on Martin’s shoulder; her mind empties of pleasure.

  “Martin, listen.”

  He opens his eyes, frowns at the unfamiliar ceiling, then sees her; the fan of wrinkles around his eyes deepens but she clutches his arm.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  He looks about as if for a place to hide and, pulling the duvet around him, rolls off the side of the bed farthest from the door; there is a muffled thump, a snort of laughter.

  The girls are at school, Ash is at nursery for another two hours, and Eric is scoping out a project for a musician’s garden near Brighton and not due back till evening. Igor was left in charge of the bonfire; might he be prowling around the house? What if Melly has walked over for coffee? It could even be Grace calling by before school pickup. Eve gets up and straightens the sheet, her mind scrabbling for words. Sorry, I was in the shower—that’s what she’ll say—give me a few minutes. Yes, that’s Martin’s car in the drive. He took a notepad down to the garden, I think he was after some peace. While she makes tea for her visitor, Martin could dress, sneak out by the front door, and reenter from the back. She kicks his clothes under the bed, tightens the belt of her dressing gown, and sweeps open the door.

  “Sorry, I was in the shower . . .” Her gaze lowers, lowers farther. Not even a child, just the dog, half sitting, half lying against the wall, whining quietly. Her legs weaken with relief. She lets herself slide to the floor. “Noah! What are you doing here?”

  She kisses his smooth head and he pads after her into the bedroom.

  “I thought it was Eric coming to kill me.” Martin begins to laugh.

  “Not funny.” She retrieves his clothes from under the bed but he catches her hand.

  “Come back to bed.”

  “We can’t.”

  “We have an hour at least.”

  “The poor dog—”

  “He won’t say a word.” He pulls her down, narrowly missing Noah.

  Later, he helps her change the sheets and leaves with a book ostentatiously tucked under his arm. She stands at the door to wave him off. Igor has dismantled some headlights and has spread them out on the forecourt by the garage; he looks up and stares at them both. She ignores him and turns back into the kitchen. Now that she is on her own, guilt begins to lap at her in small, cold waves. There is a little pile of vomit by Noah’s basket; he’d come to find her like a child then, feeling ill. After she’s cleaned up, she makes tea and lets Noah into the garden where he lies down on the grass. She sits on the swing and lifts her face to the sun. It’s still warm, the dry summer has become a dry autumn; her eyes close.

  The crunch of wheels on gravel startles her, she drops the cup, tea soaks into the bark chips. Eric’s truck sweeps into the drive; he’s returning earlier than planned. He emerges stretching and walks over to the shed. He hasn’t noticed her on the swing; she watches his easy gait, the swing of his shoulders, the play of the muscles across his side, familiar anatomy. Guilt swells. She usually tells him the truth about everything: the children, of course, and the little things of every day, where she’s been and how she feels, though she hasn’t shared that for a while. She could slip off the swing right now, approach him, confess, but the risk would be too great; he might never forgive her. The punishment would be a deeper, lasting silence. She stares down the garden to the wood, wishing the children were around, running in and out of the trees as they did all summer, distant company.

  “The shed’s been ransacked.”

  “What?” She blinks up at Eric; she hadn’t noticed him approach. His eyes are narrowed.

  “It looks like Noah pushed the door open; the sack of fertilizer has been chewed. There are granules all over the floor.”

  Hence the vomiting. Distracted by Martin, it’s possible she left the back door open after he arrived and the dog escaped.

  “You know he must be kept in the house unless we’re with him; he could get through the hedge to the road, if nothing else.” He is lecturing her as if it’s her fault and it probably is. “Did the kids let him out?”

  “Of course not, they’re at school.”

  He comes closer, his shadow cuts the sun. She slips off the swing and steps back. Her skin feels saturated with Martin; she probably smells of him.

  “Why are you looking like that?” He takes her arm, staring closely at her face.

  “Like what?”

  “Guilty, amused. Was it you?”

  “You are being ridiculous, Eric. I need to write up my notes, let me go.” Beyond Eric’s shoulder she glimpses Igor by the bonfire, half hidden by smoke. “Maybe Igor came into the kitchen for matches and forgot to shut the door.”

  Eric turns away, his face tight with anger. Her own begins to build; Eric believes the best of everyone, apart from her. It could easily have been Igor, but he’s a trustworthy guy, according to her husband, he works his fingers to the bone for his family in Poland. He can do no wrong. Eric doesn’t see the way he watches them, especially her, how resentful he seems, no matter how friendly she is. Eve retreats to the house and Noah follows her in, collapsing in a little heap on his cushion. Eric’s chair is in its accustomed place at the head of the table; he made it himself out of oak. Solid, well crafted, the kind of furniture that will last a lifetime. She runs her fingers along the curve of its back, the smooth surface as familiar as his skin. The wood is darkened on the arms where his hands always rest. What is she doing? What madness to jeopardize everything she has; her marriage to Eric above all things. She’s lying to her children as well, and to Grace, whom she likes very much. She has let her relationship with Martin slide from one thing to another, starstruck, flattered, careless. It must end now, before it’s too late. She’ll speak to Martin, bring it to a halt. He’ll understand, he might not even mind very much; neither of them made promises they couldn’t keep. They both knew it was a game and now it needs to stop.

  The clock chimes two. Noah sneezes in his sleep. There’s an hour left before she has to fetch Ash from nursery school. She flicks the kettle on, pulls out her files, and sits on the floor with her back against the stove, next to the dog. She thumbs through each child’s work, making notes for her reports. Blake’s writing is better, fewer reversal
s, his spelling has improved. Poppy has written a whole page. Izzy’s handwriting is perfect but she has only completed two lines. Her drawings are disappointing as well, small, flat figures on the page, lifeless compared with Blake’s swirling battles scenes or Poppy’s vivid colors. While she is musing over the work, her cell phone rings, startling her.

  “I just thought I’d see how you’re doing.” Melissa’s voice echoes from the phone. “If you’re worried about Poppy, don’t be; Izzy says she looks out for her at break times.”

  “That’s kind,” Eve replies, feeling guilty. The afternoon with Martin has driven everything from her mind. Poppy started secondary school a few weeks ago; Eve thinks about her daughter all the time, sometimes she pictures her struggling in the classroom or sitting alone at lunchtime, but not this afternoon. This afternoon she forgot about Poppy completely. “You sound kind of hollow,” she says quickly.

  “That’s because Paul’s redone the kitchen; it’s so minimal there’s practically nothing in here now.” Melissa laughs but the laughter sounds forced, it catches in her throat.

  “You sound sad, my lovely.”

  “It’s always lonely when Izzy goes back.”

  “I was just checking her work; her handwriting’s very good. There’s not much of it to judge by, but—”

  “That’s fantastic.” Melly’s voice brightens. “I knew it would improve.”

  Eve hasn’t the heart to tell her that good writing might be a bad sign, that her daughter might not have dyslexia after all, but something more complicated, involving choice or defiance. It could take a psychologist to unravel the problem.

  “Are you bringing Izzy on Sunday or is Paul dropping her off?”

  “Paul’s arranged to play golf with a friend, it’ll be me.”

  “Let’s chat about her work then.” A talk could take time; Sunday will be perfect.

  “Noah’s poorly,” Sorrel murmurs that evening, leaning her head on the dog.