Outside the damp green world sliding by. Ash and poplar. Cord moss and hart’s tongue fern.
♦
Angela had offered Alex the front seat on the way back so that she could sit quietly with Benjy in the back without being quizzed by Richard who was giving Alex a brief lecture on CT scanning. Iodine, barium, how The Beatles helped because EMI used their profits to make the prototype.
What’s this? asked Benjy, dipping his hand into the green plastic bag that was squished between him and Mum.
Oh, said Angela, it’s something I bought.
Alex looked round and saw that Benjy was holding a Victorian doll, stained lacy dress, blank china face, too broken to be an antique, too weird to be a toy.
Who’s it for? said Benjy.
For me, said Angela. For someone.
Benjy slipped it carefully back into the bag, half believing that it might hiss and bite him if he treated it roughly. Can you put it on your side? He lifted the bag gingerly by the ends of his fingers. I don’t like it.
What’s that? Richard glancing into the rear-view mirror, now that they had exited the narrow chicane of high hedges. Alex caught his eye and gave the faintest shake of his head, meaning Don’t ask, because he, too, knew now that something was wrong.
♦
Louisa turned to him as he came into the bedroom. What do you think?
He scanned her top to toe. Hair? Clothes? The earrings. Metal sunflowers, bronze and silver. They make you look younger.
How much younger? Thirty is good. Sixteen is not.
Ten. Ten years younger. I like them. He swivelled and lay down with his head on the pillow. Sorry about this.
About what?
Family holiday. Not quite as restful as I had planned.
This is restful. She lay down next to him.
They stared at the ceiling, a king and queen on a tomb. The smell of cocoa butter. He liked Benjy, he liked Daisy, he liked Alex but he didn’t like Dominic. Something weak about him, insubstantial. And his own sister…? They had the same parents, they had lived in the same house for sixteen years but he had no idea who she really was.
Hey.
What?
You’re off duty. She checked her watch. One hour. She rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand.
The spill of blonde hair, hips curved and creaturely. Desire coming back as strong as ever, that switchback of feelings. Wanting, not wanting. Anxiety, content. How fluid and unpredictable the mind was.
Wait. She put her finger to her lips, got to her feet and locked the door.
Are you sure this is a good idea?
I think it’s an excellent idea. She lay down beside him again.
What if someone hears us?
You can apologise publicly over supper.
He lifted her blouse and put his hand on that little bulge of warm flesh above her waistband. I’m afraid I can’t be too gymnastic in my present state.
Gymnastic? What were you planning?
♦
What happened? Mum looked as if she had been standing in an inch of foamy water for the last thirty minutes. The same vacant expression she’d had all day.
I think there must be a leak somewhere.
Warm damp air, that flooded cellar smell. Alex splashed across the floor and turned the machine off. Wet clothing slumped and levelled in the glass porthole. At home she’d be shouting and swearing. Go and get yourself a cup of tea and I’ll sort this out, OK?
Thank you, Alex. She walked off into the kitchen, the damp slap of her shoes receding.
Christ. He squatted and ran his hand round the front hatch. Dry. Something at the back, then, or underneath. He heaved on the big white box, rocking it gently from side to side so that it boomed and scraped out of its recess. He peered into the dark between the side panel and the plastered wall. Darkness, two disconnected pipe ends, a broken circlip lying in the suds.
My God. Dad was standing in the doorway, like a bloody lemon as usual, letting someone else get their hands dirty. Washing machine broken?
No. It’s on fire. He wanted to go over and punch his father. But the china doll…Did Mum know? Was that why she was acting so strangely? She seemed so fragile. He shouldn’t do anything to upset her. He reached into the recess and picked up the circlip. Tendrils of black slime, the little metal ridges sheared smooth where it had come free. He stood up. You find a mop and clean this place up. I’m going out to the shed.
♦
The little fold where the curve of her bottom met the top of her thighs. He ran his hand down her back. The most adult activity, yet it made you feel like a child again, at home with your own nakedness, touching another person, skin to skin.
Something hovering that he could almost touch, some secret which had eluded him for a long time. But the warmth of her body under his hand, the quiet of this room, distant voices in the garden. He let it drift away.
♦
In the corner of the shed, a crumbling wooden workbench, toy piano in sun-bleached red plastic, fishing net, spark plugs, filthy webs over everything. He picked up a coil of rusty garden wire thin enough to cut with the kitchen scissors. Red electrical tape. He wiped the roll clean on the leg of his jeans. Three-inch nail. Use it like a tourniquet. He sat down on the roller, light-headed suddenly. He hated being trapped inside other people’s problems. He kept his life simple. Do your work, choose good friends and keep your promises. He didn’t deserve this crap. He’d been dreaming about Coed-y-Brenin for weeks, nothing to do but cycle and eat and sleep. It scared him now, something happening to Mum while he was away. The idea that he might not have a home to come back to.
Are you making something? It was Benjy.
Washing machine’s bust.
He’s being a man, said Daisy.
He didn’t want to be a man. He wanted to run away with them. But he couldn’t say it. This gulf between them, a sudden flash of what Dad might be going through, of what he might have been going through for years. Fear and disgust, thinking how similar they might be after all.
See you later, yeh? Daisy laughed. Send out the helicopter if we’re not back in two hours.
♦
Little princess. She really did believe it on some level, the old dream, not that her real parents would come to claim her one day, purring Bentley, chauffeur, paint like a mirror. Nothing that naïve, simply that they were out there somewhere. Because she looked at Mum’s brothers and the word uncle made her skin crawl. Three years since she last saw them. Never again, hopefully. Fat and badly dressed, smelling of cigarette smoke and fried food. That awful dog with the patch of hair shaved off and the stitches crusty with dried blood, sleeping on the sofa. At least Dad wanted to be rich. You looked at Grannie and Gramps and you saw where it came from, polish on the table every day, antimacassars and family photos and the row of china figurines. But she was Mum’s daughter, too. The fear that something genetic might rise and up and claim her if she wasn’t strong enough. That period when Mum was fucking everything in sight, echoes of that shitty estate, people with nothing to live for.