Dreams Before the Start of Time

by Anne Charnock

  Skye runs full pelt towards his friends, and sharply changes direction as the ball is kicked across the beach. Freya’s reminded that the boy’s sportiness doesn’t come from her. It definitely comes from his father—a good-looking surfer boy when she met him. Broad-shouldered, hair bleached by the summer sun. He had all the charm you’d expect from a fancy upbringing. No dropped consonants. An IVF upgrade if she ever met one.

  That’s why she kept the baby, kept Skye. It wasn’t part of some premeditated plan. Given that she found herself pregnant, she knew the kid would have a good start—excellent stock and so on. She decided, now or never. And she wasn’t, and still isn’t, looking for a long-term partner—a happy-family scenario. Not after her childhood. She’s been happy with summertime hook-ups; they’re uncomplicated. Craig was an exception, but that lasted only a couple of years. She couldn’t get the hang of having another adult around—took too much effort.

  “Damn,” she says. She still hasn’t done it. Gerard had pressed her to make a will. He insisted she acknowledge that he was Skye’s father—which surprised her—even if she appointed someone else as his legal guardian. He asked, “What’s going to happen to Skye if you fall off a cliff next week?” She didn’t like to admit she had no disaster plan. However, she and Craig had one time agreed that he’d look out for Skye, “if anything happened.” She needs to have a proper chat with him.

  She stands up and tries to capture Skye’s attention. One day she’ll have to tell him that Gerard’s his dad. For the time being, he doesn’t need to know, and he doesn’t need to know about the money. She’ll say she’s been saving up her tips.

  Their chalet has subsided by six inches along one side, but it’s more noticeable on the outside than inside. Fortunately, the slope favours the drain outlet in the shower tray. Freya gives Skye the key; he knows the routine. He’ll go home and entertain himself for half an hour while she cleans the site’s bathroom facilities.

  Though mid-season started two weeks ago, the campsite is half-full. At one time, the site was packed through low, middle and high. Some of the stalwarts haven’t returned this year, and the reason is pretty obvious to Freya. The entrance signs are bleached of colour. Half the reception notices are out of date. The open areas of grass need reseeding. And there’s only so much Freya can do to spruce up the bathroom facilities. No one can fault the cleanliness, but the place needs gutting and refitting. According to How to Build a Business Empire on One Good Idea, once you’ve found success, you need to reinvest. You must refresh your business offering or else, before you know it, someone will steal your market share. You’ll have no one to blame but yourself.

  She clears the table as she would in the restaurant before serving dessert. She removes the salt and pepper pots and the sauce bottle, wipes crumbs off the table surface. She brings two tangerines to the table, each on a small plate. “I’ve been thinking, Skye. I’ve been saving my tips, and I feel I should spend a bit of money on your education.”

  If she’d cartwheeled across the kitchen, he couldn’t look more surprised. “I’m serious, Skye. I think some key skills would be invaluable. How about some advanced surfing instruction with Craig’s sister? She runs summer classes from Fistral Beach. And I think you could make a start towards lifeguard qualifications—improve your swimming. And what about some guitar lessons?”

  He shrugs his shoulders, “Okay.”

  “And if I start the crêperie, and assuming all goes well, we’ll think about one of those new wetsuits.”

  Freya has a long-term strategy which doesn’t exactly fit with Gerard’s idea of education. Skye has a sweet singing voice, and if he takes up the guitar, he could play the bars when he’s older. And if he takes up surfing more seriously, he could easily help out Craig’s sister as a summer job. Down the line, he could start his own surfing school if she buys him a few boards and wetsuits. Or, if the crêperie does a roaring trade, she could expand to other beaches. Skye could help her, join her as a business partner. From the outset of any business venture, the smartest entrepreneurs will plan their exits, according to Smart Moves for First-Time Entrepreneurs. Find a successor, sell your stake, retire.

  She won’t try to explain her strategy to Gerard. As she sees it, there’s little point in Skye studying hard. It’s anyone’s guess which occupations will exist in ten years’ time. Small-scale tourism is the safe bet around here.

  For once, Freya wakes before her alarm. She sits up and gently pulls the cord by the window, raising the blind slowly so that the mechanism’s click-click-click doesn’t wake Skye in the bedroom next door. She gazes across the campsite towards the reception hut. Two blackbirds, a she and a he, are playing follow-my-leader. Freya soaks up the postdawn stillness, and a welcome calm settles over her. Her night’s sleep was wrecked by bad dreams. She lies back with her arms behind her head and marvels at the novelty of having time to kill. She notices a spotting of mould in the top corner of her room—the corner that takes the full brunt of the westerlies.

  It’s her own fault she slept badly. Before she readied herself for bed, she scribbled a list of questions she should ask the council: Ask for a longer lease than they offer. A grace period on the rent. An extension of opening hours. And then she wrote a second time: A longer lease. The repetition was accidental—she wasn’t trying to emphasize the point. But it caused Freya to reel as she experienced a flashback to the incessant rewriting of her confessional statement.

  She sometimes wonders if she was brainwashed during her three months in the correctional unit; she hasn’t touched alcohol since her incarceration. She hadn’t argued with the instructor during her first re-education lesson—drinking alcohol was bad for pregnant women. She accepted she’d been stupid. But that wasn’t enough for them. They wanted self-examination, from every angle. What she was thinking in the moment she accepted the bottle of beer? How she did she feel as she took the first swig? How did she feel as she drained the bottle? What was the scale of her regret when the police arrived? And when she entered her cell? Was her own childhood a possible cause for her transgression? What were her self-diagnosed personality flaws? Writing, writing, more writing. She had to demonstrate self-loathing, it seemed, before they attempted to fix her. She felt they were mashing her brain.

  Physically, though, the unit was comfortable, even snug. Each woman had her own cell, all identical with lime-green bedding and deep blue cushions. More like a room in a budget hotel—clean, functional, light. And no mould.

  In her dream last night, she sat at a lime-green desk and scratched a story with a steel nail into the desk itself. A story about twins, a good twin and a bad twin. She kept scratching out and then rescratching the story because it didn’t make any sense that the twins could be so different. When she woke up, she had pins and needles in her writing hand.

  She’s chopping apples for breakfast when she murmurs, “Miss Trevaskis.” She hopes that one day the correctional unit and Trevaskis, the warder on her wing, will completely fade from memory. It doesn’t help that Trevaskis came into the beach bar, the one with the pancake maker, during Freya’s second week in the job. Freya heard her before she saw her. As warders went, she hadn’t been so bad, but Freya didn’t care for her motivational methods: “You’ve given your child the worst possible start in life. It’s time to clean up your act.”

  At the beach bar, as soon as she heard Trevaskis, Freya took off her apron, ready to walk out on the job. But she knew if she dumped the job so soon, word would get around town. She needed a clean work record, for Skye’s sake. Instead, Freya walked straight up to Trevaskis’s table—she’d come in with two girlfriends—and said, “What are we having today, my lovelies?”

  Trevaskis looked up, and without so much as a blink, she said, “How’s it going, Freya?”

  “Just fine,” she replied. “Couldn’t be better, thank you.” And that was that. She took their order, served the drinks. Freya worked there for two years, but she didn’t see Trevaskis again. A decent tipper, thou
gh: five on twenty-three.

  At six o’clock on the dot, Freya lays the table for Skye’s breakfast. She then slips out of the chalet, makes her way across the site to the shower block and begins the morning routine. Empty the bins, spray and mop the floors, wipe down the sinks, polish the mirrors, and finally she approaches the toilets. She doesn’t mind the job, not really.

  Last winter, overlooking the Gannel in Mr. Filipkowski’s mansion, Freya read Lucky Breaks of the Super Successful. The author tried to offer encouragement—stating that a single stroke of good luck is oftentimes all it takes for a person to fulfil their true potential. But Freya knew it was a lie. It made her angry. The author seemed to imply that all her years of hard work weren’t necessary, that she was a fool to imagine she could make her own luck, make it happen. She tore that particular page out of the book and flushed it down Mr. Filipkowski’s downstairs toilet.

  The message from the council clerk pings an alert as Freya is scouring a stubborn excrement mark. She stops, leaves the toilet brush standing in the toilet, and stands up straight. She peels back her plastic glove to reveal her wristband. She scans for the key, vital information: . . . pleased to inform you . . .

  She fist pumps inside the cubicle. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Phase two of her business plan is primed. There’s nothing to stop her now.

  But first, she returns to the toilet bowl. She scours, flushes and moves on to the next cubicle. Because Mr. Filipkowski’s book, Smart Moves for First-Time Entrepreneurs, is emphatic on the matter of financial risk: Don’t give up the day job until the profits are rolling in.

  THE POLES OF INACCESSIBILITY

  “Now listen. Don’t go haring off when the train pulls into Ürümqi,” says Marco. “A droid will come here to the carriage, so stay put until she arrives. She’ll arrange for porters to transfer your bags to the next train, and she’ll stay with you for the rest of the journey and while you’re in Xi’an.” He wags a finger at Toni. “Don’t go wandering off without the droid, Mum.”

  She replies with a raised eyebrow: No need for all this fussing.

  “We’re travelling light. We really don’t need porters,” says Atticus. “But thanks anyway.” They hug one another. The onboard public address system sounds a brief alarm and then: “Carriage doors will close in five minutes. Please leave the train if you are not travelling today on the Silk Route via Kiev, Volgograd and Astana to Ürümqi, where all passengers will change for onward destinations in China.”

  “Off, off, Marco, or you’ll be coming with us,” says Toni.

  He leans over and kisses her on both cheeks. “Have fun,” he says. He turns to leave, stops at the doorway to their sleeper suite and twists around. “You can’t charge around like you used to. I’ll be checking your health stats every day. And if I see anything untoward, I’ll insist you take a day’s rest. You know, I’d be daunted by this trip.” He allows himself a smile. “Report in every day. We’ll be worried sick otherwise.”

  Toni looks away, sees Amelie and the boys waving from the platform, and waves back. She doesn’t want anyone worrying about her; she rejects the role of ageing relative—a nuisance factor, a distraction from younger people’s busy lives. It’s such a drag being a family elder. But, as Atticus says, it comes to everyone.

  Well, not everyone. Her dad’s been dead forty years, and her mum . . . Toni wishes she and her mum could have averaged their lifespans. Eighty years would have been a decent innings.

  Of late, she finds it difficult to picture her mother; she depends on photographs. Her memories are fine threads, twisted together and stretched to the point of snapping. Eighty years—certainly ninety years—is enough for anyone. The fact is, she’s even forgetting Marco as a child, feels sad seeing him as an old man.

  She waves once again to her great-grandchildren. Seb’s almost a teenager, and as similar to Amelie as Theo is different. Toni wishes Amelie hadn’t done that; she went too far.

  Just once, Toni mentioned her embarrassment over Theo’s appearance to Marco. He said, “Whatever you or I think, it’s nothing to do with us. It was Amelie’s decision. And there’s no going back.” Even so, Toni feels out of phase, as though she has lived too long.

  “Looks like a party on the platform,” says Atticus. He sticks his tongue out at the children. “Quite a send-off, isn’t it?”

  Initially, they expected only Marco to come with them to St. Pancras station, but Amelie decided last weekend that she’d come along, with the boys—she wants them to feel involved with Gr’Atticus and Nan Toni’s big adventure.

  The public address system announces: “Doors closing in one minute. Please leave the train immediately if you are not travelling on the Silk Route today.”

  Toni’s heart pounds, but she’s not sure why. It’s only a short trip. They’ll have one night on the train, ten days around China, and one night on the train coming home. Probably it’s the fuss they’re all making—three generations waving them off. That must be it. She feels dizzy momentarily, unsure if the train is moving or if she’s falling. She attempts to blow a kiss, and by the time her dizziness has faded, the train has left the platform behind.

  Atticus leans back and sighs heavily. “I’m bushed! How about you?”

  She nods. “It’s been hectic. I’m glad Amelie came along.”

  “And the kids,” he says.

  “Yes, and the kids.” His eyes look heavy to her. “Atticus, why don’t you have forty winks. I’ll wake you when we’re in France.” She sends a message to Amelie: Thrilled you came to the station. Don’t work too hard. Are you getting to bed early enough? You looked a little tired. Nan Toni xxx.

  She hopes for a quick response. Here it is: Nothing gets past you! I’ll be fine when we’ve shipped the current job. It’s a stinker. Have a great trip and don’t you dare worry about me. Amelie xxxxx.

  Toni knows her dad would be proud of Amelie following almost exactly in his footsteps—conserving paintings rather than copying them. Amelie says many of the skills are essentially the same. The train accelerates, enters a succession of tunnels under the city and, several minutes later, emerges into the Kent countryside. Atticus is asleep already.

  She’s confident, in a pessimistic sense, that this will be her swan-song holiday. Even with all the assisted-living tech, she finds each day an effort. She now craves familiar places, as though there’s only time to reimprint good memories. She can pinpoint the best times of her life, the places where she experienced those heightened, feeling-alive moments. And there’s a pleasure in returning to recapture them. But she decided long ago, on her centenary birthday, that it was high time she cast off her past, her own history, let it all slip away. She has, at last, consigned her life’s milestones to a set of short, depleted sentences: My mother died in a car accident; my father remarried; I got on well with my stepmother; and more recently, Millie Dack was my lifelong friend. She feels unmoored, drifting free.

  It’s over a year since Millie’s funeral. Her boy, Rudy, dropped by their house yesterday evening. He hadn’t warned them, and in retrospect, Toni can see that he’d probably had second thoughts even as he knocked on the door. As Rudy sat down at their kitchen table, she felt a wave of guilt; she hadn’t contacted him since the funeral—Millie would be disappointed in her.

  Atticus opened a bottle of Bordeaux while Rudy apologized for the inconvenience—the table was untidy with medications and paperwork for their holiday. Rudy asked if they could do him a favour, a big favour, while they were away. He explained that although he’d scattered most of his mother’s ashes a year ago, he’d held some back because in her will she’d requested that some of her ashes be released on distant shores and hills.

  Toni said, “You’re kidding!” Rudy pulled from his pocket a small metal flask, pushed it across the table. Toni said, “Don’t you and your family want to do this, Rudy?”

  He said, “Honestly? I think she’d prefer to go with you.”

  So the small canister is packed away i
n Toni’s suitcase. As an afterthought, she packed a miniature trowel, because she had an inkling she’d inter some ashes under a blossom tree.

  They’re underground again, in Blue Bell Hill tunnel—the last tunnel this side of the Channel—and Toni’s mood lifts. It’s a relief to leave family and friends behind, to be with Atticus with no one else to consider. She can place her worries in a casket and shut the lid while she’s out of the country.

  Over recent weeks, she has obsessed about Amelie’s kids. And though this worrying serves no purpose, she can’t shed the feeling that she should have intervened—Amelie tends to listen to her. She still feels Amelie was wrong to have one child naturally and one child by clinic gestation. Basically, unfair. In fact, her decision to carry Seb was a clear case of misplaced sentimentality. All those damned Madonna and child paintings in her house.

  Amelie convinced Nathen and the wider family that she could carry her pregnancy without any problem; at the time, her work at the museum was solitary—she didn’t meet the public, she could avoid the patrons’ monthly visit. But Amelie’s journey to work every day proved another matter—the withering glances started to get her down. She came home in tears one day after a woman, bold as brass, told her, “If you can afford that bracelet, you can afford to look after your child better.” That’s when Amelie decided to take a career break. She stayed home for the rest of the pregnancy, rarely venturing out of the house, depending on Nathen to negotiate with the outside world.

  But Toni is convinced that Amelie and her husband went overboard with their second pregnancy. Why did they mess with his appearance so much? He doesn’t look like either of them. It’s as though a neighbour’s child absentmindedly wandered into their home and took up residence.

  Toni tells herself she won’t stress about the family from the moment the train enters the Channel Tunnel, which allows her ten minutes more to chew things over. Maybe she should double her efforts with little Theo, draw him in closer and try to ignore his delicate Pre-Raphaelite looks, his tumbling curls. Amelie really should think about a proper haircut for the boy. It’s shorter than it used to be, but heavens, it looks like a knife-and-fork job.