The Playground

by Jane Shemilt

  Then it’s Izzy’s turn. She sits down and smiles at Donna. Donna smiles back, a little uncertainly.

  “So you stayed last night, Isabelle?”

  “Yes.” Izzy sounds a little bored. Perhaps that’s the way to deal with the police. Izzy might be clever, cleverer than Grace has given her credit for.

  “I gather you live fairly close by; I can’t help wondering why you didn’t just go home after the party?”

  “Dad was drunk.”

  “Right.” Donna scrawls rapidly in her notebook and looks up again. “Did you hear anything in the night?”

  Izzy stares at her.

  “So you slept through until Poppy’s mother called upstairs?” There’s a hint of impatience in Donna’s tone.

  Izzy shakes her head. “Dad’s car woke me earlier so I went downstairs to do homework.”

  “You’re an early bird then, like me?”

  Izzy shrugs. “I had homework to finish, it was too noisy the night before.”

  “Was that because Ash was making a noise?”

  “The grown-ups were dancing; the music was really loud.”

  Donna writes fast. She is getting the story she needs, fitting the fragments together, like the first pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which are always the easiest to place.

  “What’s Izzy up to?” Martin whispers to Grace, his eyes on Izzy. Grace glances at Melissa; her legs are twisted around each other, she is picking at her cuticles as she watches her daughter. She and Melly were the only ones who weren’t here last night. Melly must have thought, as she had, that the children had been working, at least for part of the time.

  “Saying what happened, I suppose,” she snaps.

  “She’s making it sound worse than it was. There was music playing in the background and some dancing, not that much.”

  “And drinking,” Grace mutters. “Paul was obviously plastered.”

  “Thanks, Isabelle, let’s take a little break now.” Donna signals to her colleagues and they leave the room.

  “I’ll make something for the kids. Sandwiches will have to do.” Martin takes a knife from the block, pulls bread from the box, and peanut butter from the cupboard. He seems to know the kitchen well, but then it would be natural to help if he arrived early with the kids on a Sunday morning and Eve was busy getting ready. How foolish to let that niggling worry about Eve, about Martin and Eve, get the upper hand, especially now.

  She glances at her watch. How much longer will they have to wait to hear anything?

  Sorrel is tugging at her hand; the little girl is trembling. “I want Mummy,” she says.

  “Let’s go outside and see if she’s coming.” Grace takes her hand, and at the moment of opening the door, a car pulls up on the drive. Eric gets out very slowly. He looks different, stooped; years older.

  “Daddy!” Sorrel flies to her father.

  Eric kneels to his daughter, clenching her to him, his face hidden as Eve emerges from the passenger seat. She is bent over, her hand on her abdomen as though protecting a wound. She begins to walk slowly to the house. She turns as Sorrel calls to her; her face is unrecognizable, so swollen and white it looks just as if she too had been immersed in water for a long time.

  Sorrel is in the playroom again with Poppy and Izzy because the kitchen is crowded with people; Izzy’s dad has arrived; he isn’t talking very much. Some of the grown-ups are trying not to cry. Her daddy is actually crying, which makes her feel shaky. Mummy doesn’t look like Mummy. The playroom is dark because no one has turned on the light and she can’t reach the switch; the curtains are still half over the windows. She can see the donkeys standing by the shed, their heads hanging down; they look sad. No one is saying anything and it’s scary. Ash normally makes little noises in the background, like he’s talking to himself. They’re not usually words but it doesn’t matter because you can tell what he means and, anyway, he’s learning words. Then it hits her all over again, like something actually hitting her; he won’t be able to learn any more words now. He won’t ever actually talk in sentences. She starts crying and Poppy rolls her eyes but moves over and lets her sit in the chair with her. Noah pushes the door open wider and comes in and sits on the floor by the chair. She puts her bare feet on his warm back, which feels nice.

  “Gross,” Izzy says.

  Sorrel takes her feet off again. “Ash was all right when he went to bed,” she whispers.

  “Shut up because he’s not all right now, is he? He’s dead.” Poppy has started crying and that makes Sorrel feel worse. Izzy walks around the room looking at things like the china donkey and the spoon with Mummy’s name on it and the little candles in candlesticks. She picks them up and stares at them, then she puts them back, like she is in a shop and she’s thinking about buying them but deciding they aren’t worth the money. She picks up Ash’s red tractor and looks at it for a while, which makes Sorrel want to snatch it away, except she daren’t. Noah licks Sorrel’s hand.

  “It’s not because he likes you, it’s for the salt and that’s also pretty gross.” Izzy makes a being-sick face.

  Charley would hold Sorrel’s hand if she were here and she would probably say something to Izzy about it not being gross if dogs lick your hand.

  “I’ve got a good idea,” Izzy says. It sounds like she’s thought of something really nice. “We can play our special game. That’ll take our minds off what’s happened. I’ve got the dice.”

  “We can’t,” Poppy says quickly. “There’s not enough of us. Blake and Charley aren’t here.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Izzy says. “We don’t need them for this one.”

  Sorrel’s tummy hurts, she wants Charley to be here. Charley doesn’t do whatever Izzy says and she makes her feel safe. Izzy gets up and takes the lighter thing from her pocket and lights one of the candles, it looks pretty, but Sorrel throws the wrong dice so she loses the game.

  “She’s too little,” Poppy says.

  “We can’t change the rules,” Izzy says; she holds Sorrel’s hand gently at first but then really tightly because at the last minute Sorrel tries to pull away.

  That night Poppy lets her sleep in her bed. She doesn’t seem to mind that she’s still crying; she can’t help it because her hand hurts and she wants her mother so much her tummy hurts again—but her mother as she usually is, laughing and cooking and stroking her cheek, not silent and staring, like some sort of monster.

  8. November

  Three Weeks After Ash’s Death

  Eve

  The little seat, the stroller, and the carriage have disappeared; corners that were stuffed with toys are now sharp-angled with light. The teddy with the shiny waistcoat and the red tractor have gone to the loft. The children appear and disappear on the edge of Eve’s vision, light-bodied and silent as ghosts. Eve walks slowly through the upstairs corridors from room to room, as if deep underwater. It’s hard to make her limbs work, hard to breathe. She stands by the bags of clothes in Ash’s room, puts in the green onesie, takes it out again, holds it to her heart. Eric wants to burn everything as if he could destroy grief that way. Ash was burned after the autopsy. Ashes to ashes. She had hoped no one would say it, but someone did, a woman she didn’t know, clutching a prayer book and watching her face.

  Eric carried the small coffin, red-rimmed eyes burning out of a blank face. A church warden helped. Eve watched as they made their way down the aisle. Poppy was by her side, Sorrel on her lap. Charley sat on her other side in order to hold Sorrel’s hand. Charley is a soldier of a child, as it turns out, stalwart and kind, hurrying to help with the funeral leaflets and the hymn books. Melly and Paul sat behind them with Izzy, whose head was bent throughout. Martin was behind them with Grace and Blake. The thud of Blake’s sandals hitting the pew threads her memories along with Eric’s face, Grace’s fierce hug, and the tears on Melly’s cheeks. Sorrel was as tearful as she had been since Ash died, but she can only hold her; there are no magic words, or none that she can find. The girls will heal, Eric had mutte
red at some point in the day, their lives will go on. Ash’s has ended, she’d replied.

  “He is dead,” Eve whispers to the yellow room, painted to match their golden-haired boy. She won’t see him again. She won’t feel his face against hers. The agony drenches her and then recedes before crashing again. She doesn’t cry, she hasn’t cried since the day it happened. She doesn’t have the energy. She doesn’t eat, and sleeps only when the sky pales outside, waking again an hour later with her arms aching as if from the weight of a child. Once she woke Eric to ask him if drowned children were heavier than sleeping ones. He shook his head and turned his face away. They’ve hardly talked since the funeral.

  She sits down on the bed, still holding the onesie. Faint music floats up from the kitchen; she hasn’t been downstairs in three weeks.

  There was no water in the lungs according to the autopsy, the policewoman told them.

  Eric had asked her, confused and stumbling over his words, if that meant Ash had died even before he fell in the water. It didn’t, she’d explained gently. An absence of water in the lungs was common in drownings; the larynx spasms in cold water, no water therefore enters the lungs. The technical term was “dry drowning.” It was a tragic truth that more children drown at their homes than anywhere else. Children get out of their beds and wander, she said, they fall into canals and rivers and swimming pools, even the sea sometimes; no one should feel guilty.

  Eve feels guilty, though; she knows it was her fault. She didn’t tell the police she’d been drunk. Drunk enough to leave the back door open, drunk enough to sleep through her son calling her and the sound of his footsteps as he stumbled his way downstairs. A tragic accident but one she could have prevented.

  Grace and Melly come over most days, taking turns cooking. Charley and Blake and Izzy keep the girls company after school, returning to their homes after supper. Eve told her friends she would understand if they didn’t want their kids visiting the house, considering what had happened. Melly hugged her and said nothing would stop them from coming over, Grace said the same.

  Eric sits by the bed in the evenings, his head lowered, saying nothing. A tide of blame swells silently between them: he should have made a solid gate with no gap at the bottom; he ought to have drained the pond and diverted the spring. She shouldn’t have held a party midweek or gotten drunk. The swell rises higher, but if she accuses him he’ll accuse her back. They can’t afford that now, not yet.

  Martin tiptoes in when no one is about and places something down on the bedside table that makes a tiny metallic noise. She turns to look; her ring, her lost ruby ring.

  “I found this in our bed at home, after our last afternoon together,” he whispers. “Sorry. It must have got swept up in my clothes after all. I brought it over to give it back the night of the party, but I couldn’t get you on your own; then, well, with everything that happened I clean forgot.” He shakes his head. “You must have been so worried. I’m sorry.”

  She’d forgotten all about the ring; it had been lost, she remembers now, she’d been so anxious, panicked even. That worry seems part of a distant dream that’s faded to nothing. She stares up at him silently; he could be a stranger. If she feels anything for him now, it’s to wonder how she could have felt so much and then nothing at all.

  Sorrel comes into the room later and climbs onto the bed. Eve holds her daughter very close; the warm little body is comforting.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be, darling. We’ve made everything safe now.”

  “Ash couldn’t breathe.” She is sobbing.

  “I know.”

  “He couldn’t take a breath. He was trying to . . .”

  “Don’t think about it, sweetheart.” Eve touches Sorrel’s wet cheek. “Think about the happy times. We had so many lovely times with him.” She gasps between her words as if surfacing for air, but Sorrel cries harder; she tries to talk through her tears but then Izzy is there. It’s a Sunday, she’s been here since the morning.

  “Let your mummy sleep.” She holds out her hand. “We need you for the game, Sorrel.”

  “Game?” Eve echoes dully.

  “In the woods, fresh air. Come on, Sorrel.”

  “Go on, darling, it’ll help you feel better,” Eve tells her.

  Sorrel clings to her but Izzy is smiling and holding out her hand and they both leave. When they have gone, Eve gets up and leans her head against the glass. Her eyes go to the donkeys’ field like a tongue to a painful tooth. Igor has rerouted the spring and filled in the pond; the fresh soil has a brown crust like a new scar. Everything in the landscape is dull brown: tan branches, brick-colored earth, and heavy beige clouds. Leaves lie on the ground in sodden russet layers. The children shun the little house that Eric made, preferring the wood as their playground. She can see them from the bedroom window, running in and out of the leafless trees. Sorrel’s red anorak shows up against the dark trunks. She lags behind and falls over often; she is probably crying right now. Her daughter’s pain feels deep but inaccessible, like an ache in your abdomen that keeps you awake but you can’t quite locate.

  Eve slips on the ring. It feels heavy on her finger, a little loose. She descends to the kitchen, holding tight to the banister, feeling her way as if in darkness. She hesitates at the kitchen door; Martin is chopping herbs. There is music, something jazzy. She’s not up to this after all, but Martin looks up as she turns to go.

  “Ah, so you’ve come downstairs at last.” He reaches to switch off the radio and it’s too late to escape; he smiles, but seen across the kitchen, he looks smaller than he used to be, obscurely disappointing.

  “I thought we’d get ahead with supper,” he says cheerfully. “The kids are outside; Melly’s gone to fetch them in. It’s mild now but they say it’s all set to change. The wind’s in the north, a big freeze is coming, snow maybe. Unusual for the time of year. Storm Adelina is approaching. God knows where they find these names.” He’s talking fast, as if scared of silence. Eve looks out the window to the sky, where gray clouds have massed; if the predicted weather had happened three weeks back, the pond might have frozen over. Ash would have fallen on ice. He’d be playing on the floor now, with a scab on his forehead. She might have worried there would be a scar when he grew up. A little white scar, the kind of thing a girlfriend would notice; he’d smile and tell her the story, about how he’d followed the dog outside on a cold morning when he was little . . .

  “It’s good to see you up and about.” Martin puts a cup of tea in front of her. “I wish to God there were words to make it easier, I feel so helpless.”

  She sips the bitter tea; he’s forgotten she takes milk. What does she care about how he feels? Words aren’t important after all. They wouldn’t have saved Ash’s life; they won’t bring him back. It’s hard to believe she once set so much store by words, especially his. She can’t finish the tea and gets up. Martin steps forward to hold her, she endures the embrace, too exhausted to move away. When the children thud up the veranda steps she raises her head in time to see Izzy come in and stop short, a flicker of contempt on that smooth young face. Eve pulls away before the other children stream in. Poppy follows close on Izzy’s heels, Blake, and then Charley; Sorrel comes last holding Noah close to her chest. He’s much too big to be carried now, she is staggering under his weight. The children kick off boots and shed coats, scattering a shower of little stones that clatter to the floor. They walk silently across the kitchen and disappear. Melissa follows the children in and shuts the door. By then Martin is back chopping herbs. Melissa takes the dustpan and brush from under the sink and sweeps the floor clean.

  “I thought I’d make a pudding for supper,” she says brightly, straightening. “The children will be hungry.”

  Eve slips away upstairs again.

  Melissa

  Melissa is slicing apples at the sink when Sorrel returns to the kitchen a little later. Now she understands why Eve cooked so much, how soothing food preparation can be, how usefully th
oughts are blocked. She looks down at Sorrel. Her thumb is in her mouth and she is wearing a tiara crookedly jammed on her tangled hair. Tears are seeping through her fingers.

  Melissa kneels and puts her arm around her. Sorrel leans into her wordlessly.

  “Can I stay with you?” she asks after a while.

  “Of course you can. Are you being a princess?”

  Sorrel nods gravely.

  “Where are the others?”

  Sorrel’s glance slides to the door. There are children’s voices coming from the playroom on the other side of the hall. Izzy’s is the loudest, Poppy’s chiming in.

  Sorrel leans closer. “I want to see the donkeys.”

  Melissa takes her hand; the skin feels surprisingly rough. She turns it carefully, noting a small round area of dark crust on the palm. A healing graze, a burn?

  “How did you do that, darling?”

  Sorrel pulls her hand away. Messing around with candles, probably. Eve always has candles at supper; the children played with them in Greece. She’ll take them off the table, out of harm’s way. She leaves the apple slices under water and finds Sorrel’s anorak from the jumble by the door.

  The donkeys are bunched together under the trees; their long heads swing to watch every movement. Melissa and Sorrel walk around the outside of the paddock hand in hand. It occurs to Melissa she should be jogging; she hasn’t exercised since the accident. She slides a hand around her waist then feels guilty. How could her body matter against the grief that presses down on all of them?

  “Did they see it, do you think?” Sorrel asks, looking at the donkeys.

  Melissa follows her gaze, imagining those large animal eyes turned toward the stumbling child, absorbing the flung-out arm, the fair head disappearing beneath the clear, cold water, watching impassively as the broken surface steadied itself again.

  “Maybe they did, darling; it might have been nice for Ash to know that the donkeys were there with him.” A lie—he would have been terrified of the looming faces and sharp hooves; perhaps that’s why he fell.