by Tim Pears
‘Of course they will,’ I assured her, rather wishing someone would do the same for me. We strolled away from the chalet park past the beach and along the promenade into the small town, in whose steep high street we discovered three charity shops and one bona fide second-hand bookshop, in each of which we rummaged companionably. I bought a thriller. Mary found a T-shirt for Jack and a cap she thought Ellie might like. We then spent an hour in the museum, during which we discovered that our fossil hunters had headed in the wrong direction: richer pickings were to be found east rather than west of the town. Even though it meant that my children would have suffered as a result of my brother’s ignorant spontaneity, this information gave me, I confess, a certain mean-minded pleasure.
As Mary and I headed back to the chalet, laden with fresh supplies from the supermarket, she paused to kiss me. My mind was stirred with amorous intention, but the others were there already, on the cramped verandah to the seaward side of the cabin. On the table was a pile of sticks. Apart from Delilah, who I could see through the window in the kitchen, from where there came an enticing smell of chocolate, everyone sat in plastic chairs, bent over; they were whittling pieces of driftwood, with an assortment of knives.
Noting my presence, James said, ‘Not an ammonite in sight. The whole place has been picked clean.’
‘Look, Daddy,’ Ellie said, holding up the stick she seemed to be carving into a kind of mini totem pole. ‘I’m going to colour it later, too.’
Jack was sharpening a sliver of wood to a fine point. Mary came round the side of the chalet behind me, saw the knife our boy was proudly wielding, and shrieked. Each whittler jumped. Jack stared at his thumb – as too, over the next few seconds, did everyone else. At first we did so because that was where Mary was looking, but the particular way in which Jack sat rigid, horror-struck by something he knew had happened but was yet unfelt and unseen, gripped my attention. Then it appeared, a scarlet line of blood rising out of the cut in his thumb. Jack started sobbing, Mary was beside him, a tissue unearthed from her pocket.
‘Plaster,’ she said, and I rushed to the car and grabbed the green medical bag.
The cut was not deep. Once he had a plaster on, badge of pain and bravery, Jack began to recover himself. Mary, though, was shaking her head. No one spoke, waiting while she packed away the first aid. Finally, she let it out.
‘I cannot believe you gave a sharp knife to a seven-year-old child,’ she said, addressing my brother without looking at him. As if to emphasise the point, she picked up the penknife and warily closed it.
James, fortunately, said nothing. Instead, our own daughter spoke up to defend him. ‘Jack was fine till you yelled, Mummy.’
‘And his girlfriend,’ Mary continued, transferring James from second to third person, and thereby, I understood, dragging me into it, ‘is in my kitchen, where she’s taken our various chocolate bars from the fridge and melted them together in a saucepan.’
The gravity of this second charge, articulated in the open air, made me want to giggle. If someone else had, it would quite likely have set us all off. There was instead a fearful silence.
‘Who’d like to help me get lunch together?’ I asked, eventually. ‘We can eat out here.’ Ellie rose to assist, and followed me inside.
‘Pass stuff out the window,’ James called.
Mary sat with her wounded son on her lap, hugging him close to her. Julian raised the stick he’d been whittling to his lips and blew. A breathy squeak emerged. He was carving a whistle.
We ate lunch in a tense atmosphere that was no aid to digestion. Dessert consisted of what Delilah presented as ‘chocolate sludges’, reconstituted blobs of the melted chocolate bars, and they were strangely delectable, laying traces of their parentage on one’s tongue. Delilah ate none herself, but leaned back with one of her coloured cigarettes. The day was hot and snoozy, the sea blue-grey, calm and inviting: there was a general consensus, led by the children, to return to the beach. In the commotion of clearing the table I drew my brother aside.
‘Can we talk now?’ I asked him. ‘Let’s you and me take a stroll, join the others in a while.’
‘Thanks, Si,’ James said. ‘I appreciate it. It needn’t take long. I just have to get some things off my chest, you know?’
He stood up and started gathering cutlery. What on earth was he talking about? ‘No. No, I’m the one who wants to talk, James,’ I insisted, but my brother had already turned away, passing a tray of cheese and hummus back through the window.
We walked off as they had done earlier, west along the shore, our feet crunching on pebbles in the hot sun. While the sandy beach behind us was jam-packed, along this stretch were scattered less gregarious families. They lay uncomfortably on rugs which were landscapes of miniature undulation, and tiptoed down the steep shelf to the sea.
‘Lovely girlfriend,’ I said.
‘Delilah?’ he asked, as if there were someone else I should have noticed. ‘Yeh. Thanks. She’s okay.’
‘And Julian,’ I said. ‘Some musician. When he plays that guitar it’s hard to believe the boy’s only thirteen.’
James grinned. ‘Ah, it’s only talent, Si, eh?’
I realised that my brother was mocking me, but whether he was implying that I myself had too little talent, or that I made the opposite mistake of putting too much emphasis on it, I couldn’t tell. We walked beyond the last swimmers. Dotted here and there ahead of us were people on their knees, poking about in the debris that had fallen from the grey cliffs.
‘About the knife,’ James said. ‘Sorry, Si. But Ellie was right. I mean, you and I got up to a lot worse when we were kids.’
As he said this James made a slight nod, in a vague westerly direction, up and over the cliffs towards the middle of Devon.
‘You thinking of looking in on old haunts?’ I asked him.
James stopped walking. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But now you mention it.’
‘It was just the way you … ’ I mumbled. ‘I thought … ’
‘The two of us. Yes, Si. What, you and me drive over there tomorrow? See if any of the old faces are around.’
‘We could take the others,’ I ruminated. ‘Show them where we come from.’
‘Either way,’ James concurred, ‘it’s a great idea. Ah, to hell with it. Let’s get back to the gang.’
My brother took my arm, and gently turned me right around.
‘I wanted to have words with you,’ James said. ‘But now I feel like we’re reconnected, Si.’ He smiled at me, his blue eyes glinting in the sun. It was easy enough to see how girls had always fallen for him. He’d perfected that smile at the age of fourteen. It was a cheap trick and it wasn’t going to work on me.
‘No, James,’ I said. ‘I need to talk with you. And if there’s something on your mind too, by all means share it.’
James strolled head down, pondering this request. We began passing those we’d passed earlier. An elderly couple emerged from the water, climbing the pebbled shore, a pair of ageing wrinkled nymphs.
My brother took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Fair enough, Si. What it is is this: all my life I’ve had you looking down on me. I’m not prepared to put up with it any longer. You’ve chosen your way of life: marriage to a solid, wage-earning woman, two well-behaved children, house in suburbia, security, caution. I respect that. It’s your choice. It’s not mine. I don’t want to settle … down, give up my freedom.’
It seemed my brother had rehearsed a litany of his resentment – as, of course, had I. We walked slowly and fell into step, crunching on the pebbles. The way he made our children being well-behaved a part of his contempt did something to my heart: I felt a thud of my pulse, the temperature of my blood rise.
‘What have I ever done to hurt you, Si?’ James continued. ‘Yet I can feel you and your wife’s disapproval every time I see you. Why do you think I never drop in on you when I visit the old folks? I mean, let’s be honest, Mary’s always had a problem with me.’
Damned right sh
e has, I thought. ‘I just think,’ I said, ‘she works with clients who lead chaotic lives, and lack the resources to do things differently. Whereas you don’t.’
James stopped again. ‘Exactly!’ he said. ‘I knew it.’ He shook his head, grinning. ‘Don’t you see, our choices are personal. One is not better than the other. I’m forty-two years old, and I’m not prepared any longer to be looked down on, by anyone, least of all my older fucking brother.’
We passed the chalet park, which seemed strangely deserted, and the sailing club, single-masted yachts parked up on the concrete. I could feel a burning in my chest. ‘I’m two years older than you, James,’ I told him. ‘I can’t help looking down on you.’
‘Don’t be so fucking puerile,’ James said. ‘Concealing your anger, as ever. You wanted to have it out and now you’re trying to sidle away.’
‘Well, all right,’ I said, ‘you’ve got a point. I do think of you as my kid brother. And I’ll start treating you as a mature adult the day you stop scrounging money off our ageing parents.’
‘Oh, that,’ James said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. ‘What’s that to you?’
‘What’s it to me?’ I gasped. ‘Have you no idea how anxious Mum is about money? Council tax, energy bills, food bills, everything goes up, their pensions stay the same, she has her own small nest egg which you’re burrowing into like some unpleasant natural phenomenon, a parasitic offspring; the BBC Wildlife Unit should make a programme about children like you.’
‘Oh, very good, Si,’ James said. ‘Very funny.’ He turned towards me, frowning. ‘It’s not about them, is it? They’ve not lent me very much, actually.’
‘Lent? Is that what you call it? What, you’re going to pay them back?’
We were now in amongst people, though I was not aware of them except as vague coloured shapes we passed through, across the promenade.
‘No,’ James said. ‘You think I’m taking what’s yours. Well, don’t worry, Si. You can tell Mary not to worry, either. I’m only taking an advance on my own inheritance. Not yours.’
We walked along the crowded sandy beach, close to the water. I didn’t see the others up ahead of us – in fact I don’t think I could see anything at all in that moment, my vision was a red blur, there was only my body lumbering blindly forward – but Mary tells me she saw us, bobbing or shaking our heads.
‘How dare you?’ I said. ‘How fucking dare you? You filch money off Mum and Dad and accuse me of worrying about my money? You little shit, James.’
My brother smiled. ‘Hit a tender spot, eh, Si, old boy? Still bothered by living off the wife, I suppose. You’re an artist, Si, you’re supposed to live off people. They like it. It makes the Marys of this world feel useful. But I guess you figured that your inheritance would pay her back.’
The heat had risen and now my head was on fire, my skull melting, other shapes could have been forming from it. ‘I have no plans,’ I said, my voice all out of control, ‘to take anything from our parents.’
‘You see, the difference between us,’ James said, ‘is you always needed Mummy and Daddy’s approval, I never did, and you know what? You still do.’
I bent and took James around the waist and with a great roar, half-lifting him, lunged sideways into the water. He was hopping on one leg backwards through the shallows. Mary said it must have looked highly comical to those who did not know me, two large, fully clothed, middle-aged men larking about. As we plunged beyond knee-high depth, the water slowed our momentum. We spun together and fell with a huge splash. Children who had scattered now stood back and watched us, in a widening radius of attention.
I punched my brother. He landed blows on my head. It felt as if we had three or four arms each, grabbing and hitting each other, flailing with unpractised fists. I felt my head go under the water, then out again. There was salt and blood in my mouth.
Somehow James was managing not only to attack me from in front but also to pull me off him. Then I realised that these were the hands of other men, dragging me away from my brother. My sight was restored to me and I saw that men hauled him back too, and I could hear the screaming voices of women.
I was out of breath and gasping. ‘Thank you,’ I said, to those who had restrained me. ‘Thank you.’ They loosened their grip. I did not yet feel the pain in my jaw, or swelling eye.
I understood at once how pathetic we must have been, what a disgraceful spectacle we’d provided. Was I ashamed? No, I felt a sense of glory coursing through my veins; understood already that this was one of the most vivid moments of my quiet life.
Delilah and Julian helped James, bedraggled, back to their camper van, and the long drive home.
I stayed on the beach, wrapped in towels, sodden clothes drying out in the hot sun. Our children sat close by, and watched me, until they’d got over the sight of their father floundering in the sea, and they wandered back down to the water themselves. Mary let me lie then with my head in her lap, and with great tenderness stroked my hair as my left eye swelled and closed.
‘So,’ she said, in a teasing tone of voice that was tinged with affection, ‘you really told him.’
‘Yes,’ I said. It hurt to talk, my jaw aching. ‘And nothing will change. Ever. We’re stuck with it. It’s just the way that it is.’
I could hear all around me the high excited voices of the crowd; then another sound, that of waves rustling on the shore. The heat of the day dissipating. People packing up. A sudden squawling chorus of seagulls, neither mocking nor applauding me. Mary joined the children, and I watched them. They waded out, to where the waves were cresting. Ellie plunged beneath the surface. Mary lifted Jack above each breaking wave, lifting him up, lifting him, up, forever.
Rapture
Jim scanned the warehouse for a sign of his daughter.
‘Look away,’ Doug’s mum said. ‘They’re more likely to hurt themselves if you’re watching them.’
The trouble was, Doug’s mum had no idea how clumsy Lily was. Jim swept the three-storeyed, multicoloured scaffolding of the indoor play arena. Where was Lily? Jim spotted Doug: the little fellow rolled, Jim saw him fall over and come straight back upright, he was like one of those roly-poly toys; those wobbly men. Invulnerable. Lily was not. At home, she regularly tripped herself up, knocked elbows or knees; her face was rarely unblemished by bruises. The scaffolding poles here were wrapped in some kind of foamy polystyrene, but Jim didn’t trust it.
‘They know when you’re watching, they check,’ said Doug’s mum. ‘Leave them. They look after themselves.’
Were all children the same to her, diminutive blobs? She and Jim sat on yellow plastic chairs at a red table, under high, garish lights. Fred, his infant son, was asleep in his buggy beside them. In the play arena Jim saw a toddler tumble down a ramp. At the bottom she looked around on all fours with an expression of shock. He thought she was going to cry, but then a kind of manic grin spread across her features and she crawled back up the slide for another go.
‘Fancy a coffee?’ Doug’s mum asked. ‘I’ll get the kids something.’
‘Thanks, sure. Lily doesn’t like—’
‘They eat anything if they’re hungry,’ Doug’s mum said, and, pulling her bulging woman’s purse from a rucksack, pushed between chairs towards the cafe counter. Jim turned his attention back to the play arena. There was a wire mesh around the outside. Was it securely tied to the poles? Was it strong enough to withstand a small, stocky girl ricocheting against it? Scaffolding can fall away from houses, there was an incident reported in the local newspaper. A builder was killed. When was the last time this whole play frame was tested?
He spotted Lily, clambering into an orange tunnel. He watched the other end, waited for her to emerge. She didn’t. She’d got stuck. The poor girl couldn’t move. Panic would set in. Hysteria. She wouldn’t be able to breathe, and— Wait a minute, were those her green socks appearing from the end she’d entered? Lily was reversing her way out.
Lily reminded Jim of
his younger sister, the year she started at the school he already attended. Beth was a large, clumsy, deep-voiced girl who made other children laugh. She said things and people chuckled; she hopped or skipped, and they fell about, Beth wasn’t entirely sure why. Her fame spread through the school, as certain children’s does. ‘That funny kid in Year One’s your sister, Jimbo?’ There was something intrinsically amusing about her, how she occupied the bodily space allotted to her in the world, and it was beyond her control. Beth sometimes felt, she would tell Jim later, as if she were someone else’s comic creation. God’s, perhaps.
Beth remained popular, a person who leavened with humour the air of the rooms she entered. She got jobs easily, became a valued colleague. Was now the wife of a happy man, mother of jovial children. Perhaps Lily would follow the same path.
‘Here you go.’ Doug’s mum put a white Styrofoam cup on the table in front of him. She nodded to the boy in his buggy. ‘You don’t want to let them sleep in the daytime,’ she said. ‘They’ll be up all night and then you’re fucked.’ She put tiny sachets of sugar and containers of milk by his cup, along with a spindly plastic twirler, or whisk. ‘They don’t need as much sleep as people think.’
Jim suspected Doug’s mum had taken pity on him, the father on both drop-off and pick-up duty. ‘I’m going to Kidzone if you want to come,’ she’d said. ‘A bit of rough’n’tumble’s good for them after nursery.’
Jim took a swallow of coffee, and spat it back into the cup. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.
Doug’s mum jumped. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
Jim grimaced. A taste of drains remained on his tongue. His mouth felt unclean. ‘They call this coffee?’ he said.
‘Cappuccino,’ Doug’s mum said. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I mean, really, thanks, it’s just, you know.’
‘Know what?’
‘Have you tasted it? It’s, like, it’s shit. I mean, how can that be? Capitalism’s meant to be efficient, right? And there are espresso machines out there that make amazing coffee. So how can a company that makes crap like this survive in the marketplace?’