And then his father took a deep breath and began again. ‘The foghorn,’ he said, ‘blasts every thirty seconds.’
‘Do you know,’ Futh heard his mother say, ‘how much you bore me?’
After a moment, in which nothing was said and no one moved, his father stood and began to pack up the picnic, closing the lid on the cool-box, pouring cold dregs of coffee into the grass before putting the lid and the cups back on the Thermos, tossing the empty Pomagne bottle and the uneaten bread and pastry crusts and crumbs over the side of the cliff where they dropped onto ledges and rocks and into the sea and gulls appeared from nowhere, making an incredible noise. He picked up the picnic blanket, shook it out and folded it up.
His wife was still lying in the sunshine with her eyes closed. He walked slowly towards her until he stood above her. His shadow did not touch her and she did not open her eyes. Futh watched the circling gulls swooping down and attacking the scraps, making their din. When he looked, his mother was getting to her feet. She was turned away from him, holding her hand against the side of her face. She said, ‘I’m going home.’
She picked up the cool-box and Futh noticed the redness like sunburn on her cheek. Futh’s father took the bag and the blanket and walked with her towards the path. Futh looked down and saw the deep cut on the palm of his hand. The glass vial was broken, the perfume stinging in his wound, spilt on the grass and on his hiking boots.
Walking back to the caravan site, lagging behind his parents, he heard them talking although he did not catch much of what they were saying. He heard his father say, ‘What about him?’ and he saw his mother shrug.
Before the end of the afternoon, they were on the train. His mother, wanting something, looked in the rucksack and found a couple of oranges. She offered one to Futh, who took it, not really wanting it but not wanting to refuse it. He ate it slowly and was still eating it when his mother, having thrown away her peel and wiped her hands, leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.
That night, back in his own bed, Futh heard his mother in the shower. When she came to his room, standing by his pillow in her dressing gown, her face hanging over him like the moon in the night sky, she no longer smelt of violets or sun cream or the oranges they had eaten on the way home. She smelt of the cigarettes she liked to smoke when she finished something.
When Angela came to bed smelling of cigarette smoke, it was his mother he thought of, although he knew better now than to say so to Angela. And Angela, he supposed, was thinking of Kenny, whose cigarettes it was she smelt and tasted of.
He retraces his steps, but this time he takes the path which will deliver him to his last stop before Hellhaus. There is no signpost, just an opening in a hedge, a narrow gap leading from one small path to another. He is not surprised he missed it the first time and he is not certain even now that he is going the right way. He begins to feel little but the sting of his sandal straps sawing against his sunburn and his new blisters.
When he finally reaches his hotel he is exhausted. He runs a bath, takes a couple of miniatures out of the fridge in his room and goes onto the balcony. He has a view of the river. He is almost close enough to the water, he thinks, to jump in from here.
He is starving. He has not eaten since breakfast. He looks at the menu from the hotel restaurant and realises that he has just missed dinner. He will have to make do with a bar snack after his bath.
He undresses, selects another bottle from the mini-bar, goes into the bathroom and climbs into the tub. The water is painfully hot and he lies back with a groan and closes his eyes.
He feels as if he is missing something and tries to think what it might be. He missed his father’s roast on Sunday. He misses his stick insects, the smell of their vivarium. Angela will be keeping the stick insects because Futh is not allowed pets at the flat. Angela has never liked the stick insects. She says that they are the kind of thing a schoolboy keeps. She finds them creepy, and Futh is worried that she will not look after them properly, that she will forget to feed them.
He wakes feeling chilly. He does not know, for a moment, where he is. Even when he remembers, he is still bewildered because he is lying in an empty tub — all the water must have seeped out around an ill-fitting plug. He has no idea what time it is — his watch is in the bedroom and there is no window in the bathroom, no darkened sky to give him a clue.
His legs have seized up, and he is hungrier than he has ever been — his stomach is growling. His Aunt Frieda used to say, when Futh skipped meals, ‘Your stomach will think your throat has been slit.’
He can barely manage to get himself out of the bath, but he does. Hobbling into the bedroom, he sees, through the wide-open balcony doors, the night sky, the moon. He goes outside again for a moment, clinging to the railings and watching the river go by. Listing slightly from the spirits, his stomach complaining, he feels as if he is on a ferry and thinks that he would be very happy never to be on one again.
He can’t face calling down for food now. He is too tired to wait for it, too tired to eat. It is not really a bar snack he wanted anyway. He closes the balcony doors and the curtains. As he crawls into bed, he looks at the time and realises that it is already Friday. In twenty-four hours his holiday will be over.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Venus Flytraps
Ester, stirring, smells camphor. Without opening her eyes, she moves closer to Bernard’s side of the bed and puts her head on the edge of his pillow, inhaling his scent.
Bernard will not be back until tomorrow. Sometimes he calls at the last moment to tell Ester that his mother needs him, that he will be staying longer.
He visits his mother once a month. When Ester and Bernard were first married, Ester used to go with him, although she found the trips stressful. She was glad to have been invited back into Ida’s home but she was unable to think of her mother-in-law without feeling the scrape of the hair pin against her scalp. She used to take a little bottle of gin in her handbag and drink from it when they stopped for petrol and whenever she went to the bathroom.
The very first time they went as a married couple, Ida greeted them brightly at the door. She complimented the flowers Ester had brought for her, displaying them in her best vase on the living room table. She went to make coffee, refusing Ester’s offer of help. She said, ‘You stay right where you are.’ In the morning, Ida brought breakfast in bed. She gave Ester a magazine to read while lunch was being prepared. She would not even let Ester wash up.
Conrad still lived at home and Ester had always hoped to see him during these visits. But each time they went, he made himself scarce. Once, in the car on the way to Ida’s, she asked Bernard whether he was expecting his brother to be there. At first he did not respond and much of the journey passed in silence, her unanswered question sinking like cold air in the overheated car. She began to wonder whether she had asked the question out loud. And then, as they neared his mother’s house, he said to her, ‘Why do you care whether he’s there or not? You’re with me now. Or have you changed your mind again?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. But the truth was, she did sometimes wonder whether she had made a mistake. Anyway, she did not see Conrad at Ida’s, and she did not ask Bernard about him again, and Bernard never mentioned him.
Over coffee, Ida asked, ‘So when can I expect grandchildren?’