She carried him into the house. Wrapped in his blanket, he was a bundle of yellow wool with a tiny pink nose sticking out. I kept looking over her shoulder to see his face, but I couldn’t find him in his woollen nest. So I asked her how he was, and that was the first time she put her finger to her lips to shush me. I thought of how I had never seen her do that in the library, even though that’s what librarians are supposed to do. One finger pressed down over both lips so they bulged a little beneath it.
‘Shush, Howard. Baby’s sleeping.’
She held him closer, gathering his blanket around him, and he woke with a yell.
Baby’s sleeping. It became her catchphrase. Be quiet, Howard, baby’s sleeping. I can’t do that, Howard, baby’s sleeping.
He slept in his carrycot next to our bed. Every night I would wake several times to the sight of Kathryn bent over in her nightie, checking on him, and I knew she was resisting the temptation to touch his face, just in case, to listen for his tiny heartbeat, just in case, to bend her head to his mouth so she could feel his breath on her cheek, just in case.
In fact he was a good sleeper, right from the first. He even snored a little, his lower lip gently puffing away, bubbles of spit blooming.
When I looked at him I saw my own mouth, big and unwieldy, pouting back at me. And when I lifted him from Kathryn’s arms as she went to fetch his bottle, it was my mouth I saw open, the lower lip dropping drastically so he looked like a little clown with drawn-on downward lips. His hair swirled at his crown and stuck up in a tuft at the back of his head. ‘Just like a cockatoo,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a cockatoo touch,’ I whispered to him, holding his face to mine and feeling the hot dampness of his cheek as he cried and cried.
When he was a few months old, I came home from work and said her name, but there was no response.
‘Where are you?’ I called down the hall. ‘How’s Robert?’ I removed my scarf, gloves and coat. As I bent down to unlace my shoes, a smell reached my nostrils. It was sweet, horribly sweet, and slightly musty.
‘Kathryn?’ I said, but again there was no response. Leaving my shoes on, but unlaced, I pushed open the living room door. The smell became stronger. Burning. Something was burning.
She was asleep on our new three-seater sofa; Robert was in his carrycot at her feet, and his baby blanket was scalding by the gas fire.
I picked up the carrycot, removed the scalding blanket, and switched the fire off. I looked at my wife, at the blackness beneath her eyes, at the hair that was stuck to her cheek. She was fast asleep, her mouth hanging open, her head slumped down to her chest. I didn’t want to wake her. I wanted to let her sleep. So I opened the window a little and I left her there on the sofa.
I carried my son up the stairs and he didn’t stir. I opened the door to his room, and I put the carrycot down on the floor. I reached down and fished him out of his blankets. His hair, dark brown, was like a fine cap, tight to his skull. The skin on his legs and arms looked tight, too, filled to bursting point with flesh. I smelled his head, feeling the wispiness of his hair tickle my nose, and he smelled of Kathryn. He didn’t smell of baby powder or of any sweet smell of his own, but of Kathryn’s mixed odour of rose talc and gingery sweat. I inhaled the smell deeper, and then I put him down in his cot and covered him with his new Sooty eiderdown.
‘Where’s Robert, where’s my baby?’ Her voice reached me before she did.
When she came into the room, her face was bright red and still skewed from sleep; her eyes looked odd, as if they were staring in different directions.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s here. Look.’
She rushed to the cot and gripped the bars. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s all right.’
She reached into the cot, but I put my arms around her and turned her towards me. ‘It’s all right.’
‘Howard, what – ’
‘Shush,’ I said, as I held her. ‘Baby’s sleeping.’
five
Summer, 1974
It was a lovely caravan park, Rockley Sands, and it was one of those weeks where the sun doesn’t stop shining and you wonder whether there could be anything better in the world than strolling through Bournemouth pleasure gardens, the band playing, your wife with her hand in yours, your son running on ahead.
I had the MG Magnet by then; Kathryn liked the leather seats. They didn’t get too hot in the sun, and that week the sun seemed to pour in every window, heating every surface. Each day we went on an outing in the MG, taking a picnic lunch with us. Robert was four years old.
Kathryn would make the sandwiches in the caravan kitchen, which was really a shelf and a hob in the living room – which was really a corner of the caravan with a cushion running beneath the window – but we liked it. When we arrived, Kathryn commented that the caravan was more modern than our house. ‘Look at that hob,’ she said. ‘Wipe clean. Electric. Lovely.’
‘You can’t control electric,’ I said. ‘Not like gas.’
‘And you’d know about ovens?’ she said, with half a smile.
‘I know about power supplies,’ I replied, but she was busy telling Robert not to run around the caravan.
He was exploring, which was something he liked to do – indoors. Opening cupboards, looking beneath cushions, swishing the curtains back and forth. Kathryn raised her eyebrows at me as he rushed into the toilet, looked under the seat, and made a close examination of the toilet brush. He liked to know the details of everything. ‘The toilet’s got a lock!’ he said, flipping it so the little sign went from ‘vacant’ to ‘engaged’ and back.
‘Robert, are you all right?’ Kathryn knocked softly. ‘You can come out now. We’re going in a minute.’
Moments after we’d made the sandwiches, packed the picnic bag and got our sandals on, Robert disappeared into the toilet.
‘I’m coming,’ he called, as sunny as you like, but then he stayed in there for another five minutes while we tried to remain unconcerned. I picked up the MG keys and the picnic bag. Kathryn and I stood together outside the toilet door, waiting.
‘You try him,’ she said.
‘Are you all right, son?’ I called, rapping hard on the door but trying to keep my voice light. Most likely he’d broken something in there and was trying to hide it.
‘Yes.’
‘Come on out then, will you?’
Kathryn watched me with wide eyes as I leant against the door and listened for him. ‘What’s he up to?’ she hissed.
‘Robert. We’re going to go in a minute.’
‘Coming,’ he sang out.
But the door didn’t move, and there was no sound. ‘This is why we don’t have a lock on at home,’ I said.
‘Perhaps we should just leave him. He’ll come out when he’s ready.’
‘Right, Mum, let’s go,’ I said in a loud voice, winking at Kathryn. ‘Have you got the picnic?’
Kathryn looked blank.
‘We’ll see you later, then, Robert,’ I called as I walked to the door of the caravan, opened it and closed it again, shushing Kathryn before she could say anything.
We stood in silence for a moment before she said, ‘This is silly,’ and began to bang on the toilet door with her fist. ‘Robert!’ she shouted, ‘Mummy’s worried about you! Come out now! Robert!’
He came out then, his coarse hair sticking up at the back of his head, and rushed into her arms. At that moment he looked just like her, with his big eyes and curvy lips.
‘What were you doing in there?’ I demanded.
He buried his face into her waist and she stroked his head.
‘Robert?’
He spoke into Kathryn’s stomach. ‘I like it.’
‘Whatever can you like about a toilet?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Why don’t we sit down for a minute?’ suggested Kathryn.
‘But we’re going to Brownsea.’
‘There’s no rush, Howard.’ She led Robert over to the ledge of cushio
ns beneath the window and sat him on her lap. He was wearing his T-shirt with a picture of the power station on the front. I’d bought that for him at the last open day. The picture had cracks running through it from so many washes; the towers were beginning to fade.
I stood at the window, the picnic bag still in my hand. ‘You had us worried.’
‘He’s sorry,’ said Kathryn.
Robert’s knees were pale and smooth, unnaturally so for a boy of that age, I thought. I was sure I’d had scabs and grazes at four, although I didn’t remember how I got them. I just remembered the pleasure of peeling back the congealed flap of blood, uncovering the fresh pink flesh beneath. ‘Don’t pick at it or it will never heal,’ Mum would say, offering a thick fabric plaster.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. I reached into the picnic bag and searched for a caramel wafer. ‘Is the toilet really your favourite room?’ I asked, handing him the wafer.
He nodded. I put the picnic bag down and knelt before him, placing my hands evenly on his knees.
‘Why is that?’
He shifted on his mother’s lap.
‘Robert? I’d really like to know.’
‘It’s got a lock on the door,’ he answered, biting into his biscuit.
It must have been around eleven by the time we boarded the ferry, and Robert had let go of his mother’s hand. The ramp clanked into place and grey smoke pumped out over the water. Kathryn said she would go and sit indoors, out of the sun. Gulls barked overhead and the salt in the air misted my sunglasses. I took them off and, squinting in the bright light, looked around for Robert.
He was sitting on deck with another boy. The boy wore a pair of red shorts, and his bare chest was darkly tanned, but he was smaller than Robert. He’d emptied a blue plastic bucket onto the wooden boards and they leant together, counting shells, their fingers sorting through the ridged lips. I remembered a shell I’d kept as a boy, how it had glinted on the beach, and how dull it had looked on the shelf back home.
‘Can I have a look?’
Neither one spoke.
‘Here.’ Kneeling by the bucket, I picked up a large mollusc. It was the wrong shape, but I held it to my ear anyway, tilting my head and closing my eyes.
‘Daddy – ’
‘Shush. I’m listening.’
The two boys looked at each other, Robert screwing his face up against the sun.
Reaching over to shield my son’s eyes, I said, ‘I can hear the sea. In this shell.’
‘Let me,’ said the boy in the red shorts. I handed the shell to him; he clamped it to his ear and shook his head. ‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘Let Robert try,’ I said. The sun was warm on my shoulders, and the sea air seemed to have cleared my head of all memory of this morning.
But the boy ignored me, threw down the shell and sorted through the others in his collection, balancing them, one on top of the other, in little piles.
I handed another shell, almost as big as the first, to Robert. ‘Try it.’
He took it and held it briefly by his ear before shaking his head.
‘Closer,’ I said. ‘You have to hold it closer. Or the sea won’t reach.’
Just then, the other boy upset his piles of shells. They clattered on deck and the boy began to wail.
But my son didn’t move. He kept the shell to his ear while I shielded his eyes and watched him.
‘I can hear it,’ he said.
The boat chugged beneath us; the sea was a calm pond. Brownsea was sandy, full of gorse. The rich smell of the shrub rose up in the heat, mingling with the sweat of hundreds of families searching for shade. Many of them, denied the use of cars, had flopped out on the nearest strip of grass by the harbour, and I knew they would still be there when we returned to the ferry.
But we would walk further. As we walked, we passed shirtless men in shorts, lying on what was left of the scorched grass. Women rested their heads on their husbands’ naked thighs, chests or stomachs, and stroked their exposed skin. Couples smiled and sweated together as their children played somewhere within earshot, their shouts softened only slightly by the fierceness of the sun.
I had read that the most beautiful part of Brownsea was the north-east beach, and I intended to take Robert and Kathryn there – it was about a thirty-minute walk – although I hadn’t yet mentioned it to them.
After ten minutes of walking along the gravel trail, Kathryn said, ‘Shall we stop here?’
‘Can I have an ice cream?’ asked Robert.
‘We’re not there yet.’
‘I’m hot,’ said Robert, and his mother knelt before him and wiped his forehead with her hand.
‘I’d like an ice cream, Howard,’ said Kathryn, standing up and touching my arm. ‘I think I saw a van back there.’
‘All right.’ I smiled. ‘One each, then.’
Kathryn had a Midnight Mint. It was her favourite, dark chocolate encasing cool white ice cream. She ate it carefully, as she always did, nibbling off a section of chocolate before licking out the ice cream within.
I had a 99 cone, as did Robert. When I asked him if his was good, he nodded without bothering to stop licking.
‘Let’s sit for a while,’ said Kathryn, pointing to a grassy area beneath some trees.
Kathryn sat with her head in the shade and her legs in the sun. I propped the picnic bag against the trunk.
‘Can I have a sandwich now?’ asked Robert.
‘You’ve only just had an ice cream,’ said Kathryn.
He contemplated this for a moment before touching me on the leg. ‘Would you like a sandwich, Daddy?’
Just then a high screech seemed to bounce right round our heads and back again.
‘Did you hear that, Robert?’
‘Can I have a sandwich?’
The cry cut through the air again, clear and loud, and then I knew exactly what it was.
Robert reached for my hand. His fingers were sticky and hot.
‘Shall we go and see what it is?’ I said.
He hesitated for a moment, looking in his mother’s direction.
‘You two go,’ she said, with a nod and a smile. I thought how beautiful she looked then, with her bare legs stretched out on the grass, and her face calm and cool in the shadow of the branches.
We walked towards a clearing. Robert kept up with my step, his fingers almost glued to mine with ice cream and sweat. Then we heard the cry again.
‘Look at that, Robert.’
A peacock was standing in the middle of the dusty grass, feathers shivering in full sunlight. That bird made everything around it look bleached-out and tired. A fan of blue and green and purple spread out from its back and shook once, twice, three times. Its head glinted as it darted from side to side. I immediately wished that Kathryn was there to see it, too.
‘Isn’t it lovely, Robert?’
But he was looking off to the right. Peeling his fingers from mine, he pointed. ‘What’s that man doing?’
A man was crawling towards the bird on his hands and knees, open palm outstretched. His jeans were baggy, and with every shuffle forward they seemed to work their way that bit further down his backside. A streak of sweat darkened the back of his T-shirt.
‘What’s he doing, Daddy?’
By this time, a little crowd had gathered behind the crawling man. He managed to stay perfectly still as the bird shook its feathers again and took a step towards his open hand.
‘He’s feeding the peacock,’ I said.
‘Can we watch?’
‘Just for a minute, then.’
A few people had come to stand behind us, waiting to see whether the bird would take the bait. I held Robert’s shoulders as the man edged closer, his hairy arm stretching towards that little jerking head.
Then something else caught my eye. Beyond the bird I saw what must have been his wife and their child, a little girl. The wife was kneeling down, pointing and smiling, and the girl was watching, entranced. She wore a floppy sunhat just like
her mother’s, and their teeth were very white in the sun.
When the bird’s beak finally dipped into the man’s palm, mother and daughter began to clap, and, hearing this, Robert joined in. Of course, this caused the bird to take fright and hurry away over the parched grass, feathers bobbing. But Robert was smiling so much and clapping so hard, that I, too, began to applaud; together we clapped for at least a minute as we watched the peacock disappear into the trees.
‘Can you do it?’ Robert asked, grabbing my leg and looking up at me.
‘Can I feed it?’
He nodded. His eyes were bright and wide.
I crouched down and looked into his face. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ I said. ‘You can feed a peacock. When we get to the other part of the island. The best part.’
‘Can I?’ Robert looked at me with a little frown, not quite believing it.
‘Yes,’ I said, lifting him up onto my shoulders and carrying him away from the clearing, back to his mother. ‘You can feed as many peacocks as you like.’
‘They might bite me.’
‘They won’t. I’ll make sure.’
We never made it to the north-east beach, but I didn’t mind because, towards the end of that afternoon, two peacocks found us.
Kathryn spotted them first. I’d thought that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise to Robert, that I’d have to tell him we’d feed some birds on another day, but just as we were about to pack up our picnic things and head back for the ferry, my wife nudged me.
‘Over there.’
Robert was standing up, stretching and rubbing his eyes. It had been a long, hot day; he was tired, and I expected some trouble – perhaps a few tears or a little tantrum – soon.
I caught hold of his hand and drew him close to me. ‘Look,’ I whispered. ‘Look.’
They were just as magnificent as the first bird: their tiny heads made me think of clusters of precious gems, winking in the late afternoon light.
‘Do you think they’d like some sandwiches?’ I said.
The Pools Page 6