‘You’re very busy, though, Howard.’
We went into the kitchen and Mum untied her tabard. She hung it on the back of the door and pressed both sides of her hair, as if to straighten her head. ‘Shampoo and set tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting you.’ She cleared some newspapers from a chair. ‘It’s not often I have my son all to myself.’
‘I’ll make some tea,’ I said.
I reached for the caddy with the Chinese pattern. I’d loved playing with the empty tea caddy as a child, filling it with dominoes or marbles and wondering at their reflection on the shiny gold insides. That tin always seemed so much more precious than its contents.
‘Is Kathryn all right?’ Mum asked, spreading her hands out flat on the tablecloth.
‘Fine. She’s fine.’
‘Still working – ’
‘At the library. Yes.’
‘Good. That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘She likes it.’
‘It’s good for her to be busy. Now that Robert’s growing up.’
Steam from the kettle dampened my face. A slick of yellow fat lay on the milk I’d poured in both our cups.
We waited for the tea to brew.
‘Is there a reason for this visit, Howard?’
‘No reason.’
I could tell Mum was studying my face, so I looked away. A small silence grew.
‘Tea,’ I said.
Mum watched me pour.
‘I was looking at some old photos yesterday,’ I began.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. There was one of me sitting on your garden bench. By the forsythia bush. I must have been about nine. It was funny. I hardly recognised myself.’
‘You were all frizzy hair and freckles then.’
I put the pot down. Rain had started to batter at the window, big drops of it running down and settling on the sill. The back door gave a rattle in the wind.
I brought our tea over to the table and sat down. ‘But I didn’t remember looking so, well, feminine,’ I said.
‘Oh, you weren’t girly,’ Mum said with a wave of her hand. ‘It’s just you looked a little different. And you were a bit – gentler than the other boys.’ She reached for the sugar and dropped a heaped teaspoon into her cup. ‘I remember one day you came home with a girl’s belt on! Lord knows where you got it.’ She blew on her tea and chuckled. ‘You can only have been four. Red it was, with a white buckle. You wouldn’t give it up for all the tea in China! I had to hide it from you, in the end.’ She shook the tin with the woven handle towards me. ‘Biscuit?’
I didn’t respond. I’d forgotten the details of the belt, but I did remember Mum taking it away. I’d cried to have it back, and she’d told me that people would think I was like a little girl, if I cried over such a silly thing as a belt. And I remembered that she’d held me by the arm, hard, and shaken me, the belt jiggling up and down in her other hand.
She chewed a digestive, then put her cup down. ‘Is something wrong, son?’
‘Then he is like me.’
‘Who is?’
‘Robert.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He’s like me.’
‘Of course he is! He’s your son all right.’
‘He’s a sissy, like his dad.’
‘What?’ Mum looked into my face. ‘What are you talking about?’
I fiddled with the handle of my teacup. ‘I was feminine.’
She let out a loud hoot. ‘But it wasn’t anything – anything serious – that thing with the girl’s belt. Of course not.’ She smiled for a moment. ‘I knew I didn’t have anything to worry about, with you.’ She pressed a hand, still warm from her teacup, onto mine. The skin on her knuckles was lumpy and white, as if it had been moulded in plasticine.
Her cuckoo clock chimed five. I realised my hands were aching again.
She stood up and began to rinse her cup in the sink, her thumb squeaking on the side of the china. ‘You haven’t touched your drink, Howard.’
I flexed my fingers. They were long and thin, hairless, freckled. Despite years of gardening, I’d never let myself have dirty fingernails. I wondered what was wrong with me.
‘It’s bucketing down,’ Mum said, staring out of the window. ‘Perhaps you’d better stay. We can have our tea together. Do you want to phone Kathryn?’
When I didn’t reply, she came away from the window. ‘Howard?’ The plastic cushion on the kitchen chair gave out a puff of air as she sat down. She sighed. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you something. After your father died, people thought I might not be able to carry on. But I had you, and in a few years, if I’m honest, I barely missed him.’ She caught hold of my chin and looked me in the eye. ‘I hardly missed him, Howard, because you were my little man. No one could ever say you aren’t man enough. Not in my book.’
She put a hand on my shoulder and rubbed. A sob built in my chest, and I knew that if she embraced me my tears would fall. But she just let her hand rest on my shoulder.
‘Robert will be fine. You’ll see.’
I watched the rain hammer on the glass of the back door, and I pictured my beds turning to mud.
Later that week, I came home from work to the noise of a drill. The sound of a whirling blade biting into wood or plaster has always set my teeth on edge.
I followed the noise upstairs to Robert’s bedroom. I put my briefcase down and tapped Kathryn on the shoulder, but she didn’t stop drilling into his doorframe. Her cheeks were warm, her eyes bright with concentration. I was reminded of the look she’d had the day she leant out of our back bedroom window and let the poppy seeds fall to the ground.
I tapped her on the shoulder again. She stopped the drill but didn’t look at me. Instead, she stooped down to pick up a bronze bolt lock from the top of my toolbox, which was by her feet.
‘You could have just screwed that in,’ I said.
She shrugged and rummaged in my toolbox for screws. I thought of how her fingers would smell metallic when she was finished.
‘You’re early,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ she said. ‘I’m fixing Robert a lock on his door.’
I didn’t want to respond irrationally, so I took a few moments to remove my coat and hang it over the stair banister. ‘Why didn’t you ask me to do that?’ I said, loosening my tie.
‘Because you would have said no.’ She held a screw against the hole in the bolt and squinted.
‘That won’t do it,’ I said. ‘And you know there’s no need for him to have a lock.’ Getting angry, I told myself, would not help this situation. It would not help this situation at all. ‘When did he ask for a lock?’
Kathryn turned the screw. ‘It was my idea.’
‘What?’
‘He needs some privacy.’
‘He’s fifteen!’
‘Exactly.’ She wiggled the bolt over in its carriage. ‘It’s a bit stiff. Is there anything I can do about that?’
I stared at her and she raised her eyebrows back at me. ‘Well?’
‘Where is he, anyway?’ I demanded.
‘He’s gone to see about a job on the farm. Plucking turkeys. Christmas money. I said he could.’
‘With Luke?’
‘All the boys do it, Howard.’
I flexed my hands in my pockets and breathed out. And in again.
I took the screwdriver from her. ‘Let me do that,’ I said. I leant into it with all my weight and twisted the screw tight to.
Kathryn watched me in silence.
‘I’ll just test it.’ I stepped into his room, giving Kathryn a gentle push out into the hallway, and closed the door on her.
I slid the bolt over into its hole and stared at it. Kathryn had chipped the paint on the doorframe but hadn’t done a bad job, overall.
‘Is it working OK?’ I heard her call through the door.
I didn’t a
nswer. I rested my forehead on the cool wood of his door. With one hand I gripped the bolt and pulled it out of its home, then pushed it back.
‘Is it sticking?’
I was aware of the marigold smell of his room again. The blank blueness of the walls and bedclothes. The brightly coloured bottles and tubes containing God knows what. The jewellery box for his earring on his chest of drawers.
‘Howard? Are you coming out?’ Kathryn rattled the door handle.
‘In a minute.’
Was he with Luke right now?
‘Howard?’
Champion emblazoned across his chest.
‘What are you doing in there?’
Sweater too tight.
‘Are you coming out?’
She had given them her blessing.
‘I’ve got to go to work,’ Kathryn called. It was Thursday. Late opening at the library. ‘I’ve got to go, Howard.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
She waited for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll see you later, then. There’s a casserole in the oven. It should be ready about seven. Save me some.’
I listened to her footsteps on the stairs, and, after a minute, the front door slammed.
Where would I find a trace of him? I wondered. In the drawers of the table we’d bought from MFI for his homework? Underneath his denim-like valance sheet? In the wardrobe I’d once pasted with cut-out pictures of Sooty and Sweep? Then I noticed that, on his bedside table, he still had the model Somua tank I’d bought for him at the museum, years ago. I picked it up. Its wheels and gun were furred with dust. I weighed it in my hand, studying the blank face of the soldier sitting in the armoured turret. I decided to take it with me. I would have to keep it safe for him.
I unbolted the door.
eight
Joanna
November, 1985
Simon strides ahead, binoculars swinging from his shoulder. He’s wearing his new Barbour jacket. The tartan inside flashes at me as he walks. I let him go on, so I can swagger by Shane’s house slowly enough to see if he’s at the window.
There’s a twitch in his curtains as I pass. I let out a damp breath, flick my newly Elnetted hair, walk on with a slow swing, hoping he’ll follow.
Simon waits at the lane by the church. His watch slides up his wrist as he reaches for me. I stop far away enough for him not to be able to touch. ‘Come on, then,’ he says, ‘if you’re coming.’
He’s suggested we have an outside tutorial, despite the freezing damp. We can look for birds down at the pools, he says; the fresh air will do us good. But I know he wants to escape Sunday afternoon in our house. Who wouldn’t want to avoid Mum in her pink weekend jogging outfit (which has never been outdoors), the Antiques Roadshow and the Sunday supplements?
Down the pools, a line of wetness forms around my white slip-ons. Cold moisture oozes up from the ground, catching the bare twigs, making them sag.
A dog-walker stands and waits, looking off towards the cooling towers as if nothing’s happening while his pooch bends its hind legs and lets its behind tremble.
‘Here’s the look-out,’ says Simon, pointing at a wooden building that looks like a shed with a slit around it. Inside, the walls are covered with information sheets, telling you what kinds of birds you can expect. Each sheet has the power station’s logo in the corner.
I’ve seen the twitchers down here before. They have all the gear. Huge binoculars, and cameras with lenses like the fashion magazine photographers have, for snapping models. Zoom in, focus, snap. They sit there watching, waiting for their birds, lenses pointing. Primed and ready.
‘What are we doing here?’ I ask.
‘Observing the wonders of nature.’
I sit on the bench and look through the slit at the greyness outside.
‘And you can tell me what you’re doing in history, while we’re at it,’ Simon adds.
Everything’s going dark. The water looks like Simon’s mac: thick and heavy. The branches hang over it like they can’t wait to fall in.
‘We’re doing cholera.’
Simon raises an eyebrow. ‘Tell me about cholera, then.’ ‘You get it from dirty water. You vomit, and you shit yourself at the same time. Then you die.’
‘I see. And what’s this got to do with history?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
He looks blank. ‘Perhaps we’ll come back to it,’ he says. Then he thrusts The Pocket Guide to Birdwatching into my lap. Green cover. Pencil drawings. ‘We’ll do some ornithology instead.’ He taps the side of his glasses and looks pleased with himself. ‘Have a peek in there. You’ll be amazed at the variety.’
I keep looking for Shane through the slit in the wall. But all I see is grey branches and white steam from the cooling towers.
‘I’ll test you,’ I say, opening the bird-watching book.
‘Go on, then.’ He sits down on the bench and nudges me with a waxed elbow. ‘Do your worst.’
Keeping my thumb over the name, I show him a picture of a bird and read out the description. ‘Active, inquisitive and quarrelsome. Distinctive “tsink-tsink” call.’
Simon wraps his mac tightly around him and shivers as he thinks. ‘It’s a tit,’ he says. ‘I know that much.’
I don’t say anything. He pinches his thin lower lip and closes his eyes. ‘A yellow tit. No, wait. A coal tit.’ He beams. ‘It’s a coal tit.’
‘Wrong.’ I remove my thumb from the name. ‘Great tit.’ Simon shuffles up to me so he can see the book over my shoulder. ‘Close enough,’ he says, his breath damp on my neck.
I close the book and shift along the bench, away from him. After a moment, he goes back to his binoculars, twiddling with knobs and dials. Squinting. Dad used to do the same sort of thing with his record player.
I click my Walkman on.
Just as the chorus of ‘Into the Groove’ is about to start, I see something move in the trees, so I turn the tape off. ‘Let’s borrow those a minute.’
‘I thought you weren’t interested in bird-watching.’
‘I changed my mind.’
Simon flicks his fringe and hands over the binoculars. They’re greasy from his hands. I wipe them on my jacket before bringing them up to my eyes. Peering through them, everything goes tiny. Tiny pool, tiny trees, tiny twigs. I look out at a shrunken world.
‘You’re looking through them the wrong way,’ says Simon. He grabs the binoculars and turns them round. I get a big whiff of his expensive-cheap aftershave.
‘Silly girl,’ he says, holding out the binoculars to me. ‘For all that front, I think you’re a bit silly.’ His smile lengthens. ‘In a rather charming way.’
I let him pinch my knee with a cold hand.
‘Do you think Mum’s silly, too?’
He lets go of my knee, snatches back the binoculars. ‘Even sillier than you,’ he says.
Then I hear something weird. Something like ah-ah-ah.
I wonder if he saw me from his window, walking down the road with Simon. I wonder if he noticed I’m wearing the pink pencil skirt, even though it’s freezing bloody cold. I wonder if he noticed I walked behind Simon, so I didn’t have to look at his face, so he couldn’t look at me. I wonder if he followed us, his long legs carefully stepping in the places my slip-ons had been, ducking behind walls and hedges in case I looked back (although I never did).
‘I’m going for a walk.’
Simon lets out a breathy ha. ‘I don’t think you should go anywhere. It’ll be dark soon.’
I touch him then. I let my fingers fall over his hand, and it’s smoother than I expect. ‘I won’t be long.’
He lowers his binoculars, blinks at my hand on his wrist. ‘OK. But I’ll be watching you, silly girl.’
I pick my way through tangled brambles and spiky holly leaves. Mud gathers around my shoes as I stand on the edge of the pool, looking out over the water. I toss my hair back and open my eyes wide. I hang on
to a branch and lean over the water, looking for him. He might be hiding behind a trunk, or crouching behind some brambles. He might be watching me, like he did that day on Shotton Hill.
My hand, in its white fingerless glove, starts to freeze on the branch.
Then I hear that sound again. A high-pitched ah-ah-ah. I look all around for a flash of his green parka. Nothing. Smoke from the power station chimneys looks like snow clouds above me.
Perhaps it’s a bird.
But it gets louder, and seems human.
I let go of the branch. I have to grab a bramble to stop myself sliding down the bank and into the pool. Tiny thorns stick through my fingerless glove and into my skin. And then I remember coming here years before, slipping on the mud, grabbing a bramble to steady myself and tearing my palm on the thorns. A line of blood, edged by a flap of limp skin, pumped to the surface. Dad was already in the pool. I stepped forward into the water, and as I went deeper, the slime squeezed up between my toes. I went down. The cold water lapped underneath me – that was a shock, but a good one, I remember. The water licked me right along the place where I pee. I forgot the pain of my torn hand as the pool took me in. When Dad swam over and lifted me I felt like he could balance me on one outstretched palm.
If he was here, he’d tell me to look after myself. To take care. But those aren’t things you can do by yourself. You need someone else to do those things.
Ah-ah-ah.
Then I see someone.
Ah-ah-ah.
But it’s not Shane. It’s Rob.
I look again. There’s another boy. Their jackets move together on the other side of the pool. Rob’s going ah-ah-ah. Half singing, half sighing. I pick my way through a tangle of twigs and holly leaves so I can get a closer look. Then I crouch down and watch, still as a twitcher. I watch. I wait.
Rob is leaning on a trunk right by the water’s edge, and Luke is standing in front of him, very close. They’re staring into each other’s faces as if they’re going to fight. They’re focused, wide-eyed, squaring up to one another, chests puffed out, feet planted on the floor.
The Pools Page 16