by Tim Pears
The film ended. The lights came up. The big man in front of the boy rose and left. The other spectators got up, carrying or pulling on their coats, and departed in ones and twos.
The boy thought that if his little sister had to go to the hospital again, his mother could surely leave her there awhile and come to collect him from the cinema. He watched as other people came in, but not his mother. In time, the lights went down, and another film began.
Through the Tunnel
The girl, her father, her older brother, Sol, and his friend, Bobby, walked from the house across a cornfield to the cliff. At the top there were two downward paths: a steep one to the left and an easier one to the right. Her father took the right-hand path.
‘How do you know which one to follow?’ Stella asked.
‘Jif told me.’
They descended in single file, the boys at the back, speaking to each other in seemingly random words, or barely intelligible scraps of sentences, that prompted imbecilic laughter.
‘We’ve travelled all this way,’ Stella said, ‘to where Mum and Jif came as children, and they can’t even come to the beach.’
‘We’ll get them there before the end of the week,’ her father assured her.
Halfway down the cliff path Stella saw a long sandy beach open out before her, populated by a multitude of semi-naked humans. Glancing to the left, she saw another bay with pockets of sand between rocks, uninhabited.
The boys threw off their shirts and ran, kicking water at each other, into the sea.
‘Hang on,’ the girl called, but they did not wait for her. Her father spread suncream over her shoulders and back. He applied it to his own large, white body and lay down on a towel to read a book, pages shaded by the brim of a straw hat. Stella swam in the warm, still sea, then wandered along the beach. Children built sandcastles, dogs ran, a family played a strange variation of rounders, pot-bellied men comically athletic. Some women were bare-breasted: all of their bosoms were different, Stella found it hard not to stare. Everyone was dark, their skin deeply tanned. A young girl caught her eye and threw a frisbee in her direction but she ignored it.
Her father dozed. She could not see the boys. They did not emerge from the ocean for hours. It was as if they’d visited Neptune’s underwater kingdom.
‘It’s not healthy shit,’ Stella’s mother said. ‘It’s pestilential filth. The stink of it turns my stomach and it’s mine.’
The girl sat cross-legged on the window ledge. Her father sat on the side of the bed.
‘My body takes food and rather than extracting nutrients infects it with the poison and expels it with a kind of mischievous glee.’
‘It,’ Stella’s father said. ‘It.’
‘Cancer, then.’
‘I should be the one looking after you.’
‘I won’t let you. Jif knows my pills. Anyhow, she’s happy caring for me.’
‘She’s doing so. I wouldn’t say she’s happy.’
‘Oh, she is. I promise you.’
Stella’s mother slept and dozed through the day. Jif stayed with her. In the evening she came alive for an hour or two with a fitful, febrile energy. She was like a light bulb flickering on and off, a power line buzzing, short-circuiting, buzzing again. It was like pain kept cutting the supply.
‘Sing to me, Sol,’ she begged her son.
The girl’s father poured wine, and lemonade, passed round bowls of nuts and olives. Sol extracted his guitar from its case and tuned it with solemn precision, then played simple chords and sang dreary songs. His friend Bobby bent forward and nodded along with each song, face hidden behind his long hair. It looked more like he was agreeing with the sentiment of the lyrics than feeling the beat.
‘What a voice,’ Sol’s mother said, made happy, though it appeared that even the slight muscular activity of the faintest smile caused her pain, and it manifested as more of a grimace. ‘Don’t waste your talent, darling boy,’ she said. ‘Your father wasted his, don’t do the same.’
Stella saw her father shake his head.
‘Providing for one’s family,’ Jif said, ‘teaching young people, that’s hardly a waste of talent, surely?’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ the girl’s mother said. ‘You know nothing about it.’ She turned to Stella and said, ‘Read to me.’
The girl turned to her father, who rose and fetched a book from the pile he’d brought with them. Aunt Jif rose too and went to the kitchen. Stella’s father handed a book to her.
‘Hopkins,’ he said. ‘Your mother loves Hopkins.’ The girl scanned the contents page, and looked up at him. He said, ‘Any of them.’
The girl read, her mother listening with her eyes closed, until Jif called them into the dining room for supper. They ate fried rings of squid, and shrimps, with fried potatoes and salad.
In the morning Stella brought her mother a peach she’d picked in the garden. It was red and yellow and perfectly ripe.
‘You’ve caught the sun already, darling,’ her mother said. ‘Thank God you’ve not got your father’s skin.’
When Jif came in, Stella moved away to the window. Her mother seemed then to lose sight of her, still there in the room.
‘You’re loving this, aren’t you?’ her mother told her sister.
‘What?’
‘Your entire life you’ve been jealous of me, and now I’m dying, long before you, and in pain, and you’re ministering to my wretched end. You must be relishing every minute.’
The girl’s mother sat in a chair beside the bed, while her aunt changed the sheets. Stella perched on the windowsill. Her aunt did not say anything for a time. Then she did. ‘Why would I be jealous of you?’
‘Oh, come on. My looks. My figure. Look at yourself. My boyfriends. My brains: you worked so much harder than me and still got worse results. I went to Cambridge and you went— Where did you go again?’
Jif said nothing. She took the pillows out of their cases and put new ones on. The girl’s mother waited patiently, but in the end she tired of waiting and said, ‘My work. My family. All of it. I’ve felt your envy, emanating from your pitiful existence. Your lovelessness. I thought there must be a man out there for my sister. Someone. Somewhere. Apparently not.’
Stella realised suddenly that her aunt had tears in her eyes and the next moment she gathered up the soiled linen and ran from the room.
‘They cut off my breast,’ her mother called after, ‘and I was still more of a woman than you.’
The girl followed and watched Jif drop the bedding in the hallway and run with ungainly stride away across the garden.
***
Stella and her father walked through the cornfield. The boys were not with them. Sol had said he would join them later.
‘Why is Mummy so mean?’ Stella asked.
Her father stopped. He took his straw hat off and wiped his forehead, replaced the hat and resumed walking. ‘Derangement,’ he said. ‘Illness, pain, medication. Any of these can throw a person off balance, and make them furious, and they take their anger out on those around them.’
The girl said, ‘Dying must send anyone mad.’
‘Indeed,’ her father said.
‘Is it making you mad, Daddy?’ she asked.
‘It is,’ he said quietly.
When they reached the cliff, the girl said she wanted to explore the other bay today. Her father stopped and turned. He looked down the steep incline to the rocky cove below, and he scrutinised his daughter. He gazed back down the slope, frowning. She could almost hear the slow-motion deliberation of his brain. Responsibility for her safety versus allowing her freedom.
‘Of course,’ he said. He swung the bag off his shoulder and extracted from it the tube of suncream and a bottle of water. ‘Have fun,’ he said. ‘Be careful. I’ll be in the same place as yesterday. Join me there or see you back at the house for lunch.’
The girl clambered down the path. The last stretch was across a stone shelf and she jumped from it on to sand. She unbuckled
her sandals then she took off her shirt and shorts, and put them in the bag with her towel and the things her father had given her. The cove was larger than it appeared from above, with rocks and sand hidden by the curve of the hill. It was uninhabited. Hers alone. Stella trotted to the water and waded in past big rocks. The water was so clear that it was impossible to tell how deep it was: stones, seaweed, a crab seemed close enough to touch. The girl was a strong swimmer, a winner of races, like her mother before her, who’d taught her to swim with correct, precise strokes; to gulp air efficiently. It was hard to recall that woman now.
Stella swam out until, treading water, she could see the wide, populous beach on the other side of the headland. She thought she could pick out her father, a bulky, white-skinned man on a red towel.
Swimming back to her own beach, Stella looked up and saw to her dismay half a dozen figures making their way down the steep path. She breaststroked slowly towards the shore. The group jumped in turn off the stone ledge then disappeared behind a large rock, then reappeared. They paused momentarily when they saw her bag, and looked around. The tallest one peered out to sea and must have discerned Stella’s bobbing head, for she pointed towards her, and the others turned in her direction too, and all gazed towards her. Then, seemingly at a word from one of them, they all kicked off their shoes and stripped to their trunks or bikinis and ran to the water. There were three girls and three boys, each one black-haired, dark-skinned. She estimated that all were older than her. A fat boy was overtaken by the others, who screened him from her view, splashing through the shallows, until they plunged forward, and revealed him once more, wading clumsily after them.
They swam towards her. Were they going to attack? Should she turn and swim out and round to the big beach and her father’s protection? Would she outpace them? Stella stayed where she was, treading water, indecisive. Then she realised that they were altering direction, swimming around a colossal rock. One after the other they climbed on to it, the tall girl first, who strode up across the sloping rock to its highest point and peered over the far side. The others followed her, the fat boy joining them eventually. Then the tall girl dived off the rock, out of Stella’s sight. One of the boys watched her and after a few moments dived in too. As the second boy dived, the tall girl appeared, swimming back around the rock. One of the other girls dived in, then the third girl followed, and finally the fat boy jumped. After a while the tall girl dived in again.
Stella swam in close to the rock and floated, watching. The group of divers yelled things to each other in the language she did not understand. A craving to join them filled her; a hunger.
The tall girl looked down at her watching them, and called out to her. Stella had no idea what she was saying, this glorious princely figure, this princess. Was she telling her to stop watching them, to go away? But then with an unmistakeable gesture, the girl beckoned to her. Stella swam in and climbed up on to the rock. The group spoke to her and when they saw she did not understand they each shrugged with a philosophical air.
Up close, her eyes green, the tall girl was even more beautiful than from a distance. So too was one of the boys. If she could just continue to gaze at them, Stella would never need anything ever again, not food or sleep or shelter, the sight of them would sustain her. Then the tall girl urged her forward, inviting her to dive into the blue-green water into which they had all plunged. Stella leaned forward. On this side, the rock curved back underneath itself. She stood at the edge, raised her arms above her head, put both palms together and executed as technically faultless a dive as she could muster. When she came back up to the surface they were all clapping her and whistling. She swam slowly back and clambered up on to the rock. So they continued to take turns diving, and swimming around and climbing out of the sea. At one point the tall girl sat on the sloping rock and the others sat too all around her. They gazed out to sea or lay back and shielded their eyes. Stella joined them. In the hot sun her skin dried in minutes. She closed her eyes.
When Stella woke, she was alone. The girl looked to the beach and saw that her companions’ stuff was gone. Had she dreamed them? Was she insane? Perhaps her brain was turning against her like her mother’s. But when she reached the sand, she saw their footprints.
***
Stella searched for her brother and his friend. She tracked them down in long grass at the end of the garden. She heard them before she saw them and crept closer.
‘I want it,’ her brother said. ‘I want you.’
‘I don’t want it,’ his friend told him.
‘Yes, you do. You just don’t know you do.’
‘I’m not ready,’ Bobby said.
‘I can feel you’re ready,’ Sol said. ‘You know you are.’
They stopped talking and the girl could hear sounds as if they were eating, and murmurs and groans. She wanted to ease herself closer so that she could see. Equally, she did not want to. The boys stopped kissing and started speaking again.
‘I don’t know what I am,’ her brother’s friend said.
‘I know what you are,’ Sol told him. ‘I can feel what you are. The body doesn’t lie.’
‘You’re lucky,’ Bobby said. ‘It’s simple for you.’
‘Yes, I’ve always known what I am. But whatever you become eventually, now is now. Come on.’
‘No,’ Bobby said. ‘No is no.’
‘No, it’s not. You’re aching for it, you know you are. It’ll be over in a second and you’ll be free.’
Stella had heard enough. She wanted to hear more. She wanted to leave. She wanted to stay longer. She pushed herself backwards and slipped down into the ditch and crept away.
***
On the day following, after Jif had helped her sister wash, and changed the bedding, the girl said she had to leave but her mother asked what the hurry was and begged Stella to lie beside her.
‘I want to hug you but it hurts so,’ she said. ‘Lie with me, darling.’
When she was on her own, Stella’s mind amused itself, but it seemed unable to lying next to another person. Time barely passed. She stared at the ceiling.
‘Believe it or not,’ her mother said, ‘I was like you at your age. Quiet. Watchful. Timid. It all changed quite suddenly, I don’t even know when or how, exactly. I think something must have happened but I can’t remember what it was. I realised everything was easier than I’d thought.’
Her mother did not move yet Stella sensed her attention shifting towards her.
‘What do you love to do?’ she asked.
The girl could not reply. There was nothing or there were too many things, she was unsure which.
‘Tell me just one,’ her mother persisted.
Stella thought as hard as she could but nothing came. She asked her mother why she had refused further treatment.
‘What has your father told you?’ her mother said. ‘I’ve been through it once, it was horrible, the cancer returned. That’s what they said. “We’re sorry to have to tell you that it’s returned.” It never left. It was there all the time, lurking, a monster in a cave. I’m not going through that again.’
‘What about us?’ Stella asked. She turned to look at her mother, whose eyes were closed. The door opened and her aunt came in.
‘Sorry,’ Jif said. ‘Got caught up with the farmer.’ She carried a small white bowl, which she put on the bedside table before going to the window and drawing the curtain. ‘I think your papa’s getting ready for the beach.’
The girl rose from the bed. At the door she turned and watched her aunt take two slices of cucumber from the bowl and place them like coins over her mother’s eyelids, where she lay so still.
Stella scampered down the steep path towards the cove. There would be no one there today, hers alone, a prospect that thrilled her yesterday and today filled her with sorrow. But when she skipped over the stone ledge and jumped down to the sand she saw them, all six, already there. They were out on the same rock as before. She swam out and joined them.
&n
bsp; This time, when the tall girl and the others rested, Stella did not close her eyes. After a while they swam inshore. As they walked up the beach the handsome boy abruptly jumped on the other one and pulled him over. They wrestled on the wet sand. The victim was more muscular than his assailant. He turned the handsome boy, and pinned him down. The tall girl stood above them and called out what Stella guessed were numbers, one to ten, whereupon the boy let go his grip, and the two of them rolled over and climbed to their feet, laughing.
The tall girl, the princess, spoke to Stella. She guessed from the tone, and facial expression, that what was being uttered was a question, but had little idea of what it might be. Something related to what had just happened? The tall girl pointed to the fat boy and asked the same or a similar question. The fat boy shook his head and turned and began to walk away but the tall girl fetched him back and brought him before Stella and asked the question again, this time acting out the meaning so that Stella understood.
An advantage of having an older brother, of her particular brother anyhow, had been years of unwilling apprenticeship in trying to fight him off.
The fat boy was slow and clumsy. Stella tripped him easily and so long as she kept his bulk off her, was able to control his movement until she felt him tire. Sand on their skin was an abrasive. Stella pinned him down. She heard the tall girl count to ten, then relaxed her grip and climbed to her feet. The others applauded. The fat boy struggled to stand. The tall girl pointed to Stella’s skin, and brushed off sand. Then she took her hand and led her back into the ocean to wash it off.
***
That evening they ate fish that had so many bones that by the time they’d unpicked them the fish was cold, its texture unpleasing. After their mother had gone to bed, Sol and his friend listened to music, sharing a pair of headphones, pressing their heads together and stretching the headphones over their two skulls. The girl’s father and aunt played Scrabble. Stella watched. Jif said, ‘You can play too if you like,’ but she declined.