by Polly Samson
The crabs disappeared into the shadows long before they reached the water. I could see the marks they had left in the sand, like scars or stitches or lines of perforations to be torn apart. Al went back to the cottage for the remainder of the wine and then we sat on the damp sand, side by side, swigging from the bottle like teenagers.
I was leaning back onto my elbows and looking up at the stars and for a moment I felt entirely at peace in a way that I hadn’t managed since I was a small child. But then Al, in all his innocence, touched me and the strength of his hands brought the blackness back, like old bruises made new. He pushed me onto my back, beside the stinking fisherman’s sack. He pinned me there, with my skirt around my waist and the rough grittiness of the beach against my skin. He was using his knee to push my legs apart. I wanted to cry out. I wanted him to know about me without my having to tell him: I needed him to understand that gentleness and privacy were the only options. His fingers were rubbing me, but I knew I’d stay dry while I fought the panic that was knotting me up like old rope.
“No stop,” I tried not to scream as the sound of the waves grew ever louder in my ears, except it wasn’t the sea, it was his breathing. “Ssh,” said Al then, his hand over my mouth. “I can hear someone,” and rising from his knees he shouted, “Who’s there?”
There was the scrunch of boots on sand behind my head but on our side of the sea wall. “Evening to you,” and then a rumble like laughter, muffled by a sleeve.
“The crabman,” whispered Al, as Petroc, hunched and snaily inside his oilskin, continued on his way to check his pots, his torch beam swaying before him but leaving us untouched by its light.
I could still hear the sea through the bedroom window and the light from the lamp outside was soft through the open curtains. Al’s mood had changed between the beach and the cottage and he unwrapped me gently, as though I was made from bone china. He brushed the sand from my legs as I pushed my shoulder blades deep into the pillows which made my breasts rise towards him; I pulled in my stomach so that -- from the outside at least -- he would believe me perfect. The pillows sighed beneath us as he leant over me, drawing himself inside so tenderly that I could believe it was the first time for us both and his brown eyes stayed open, warm and liquid as malted milk, even at the end when his breathing became more frightening.
“I didn’t withdraw.” It was later, I don’t know how long, but he was stroking my face with soft fingers, as we lay face to face, curled into one another like babies.
I should have told him then. It doesn’t matter.
“I love you,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind.”
Why would I mind?
There were things about me he didn’t know then. About the scars inside. About the things those men had used, the meat reek of them, the smell of my own blood, their eyes closing in on me, so many years ago that for most of my life I could pretend it never happened. My therapist once told me -- I think it was while I was still in the hospital - that within seven years, not a single cell of my body would remain that those men had touched. I suppose she wanted to give me something to look forward to when she said that.
“I want to marry you,” Al said. I should have told him. “I want you to have my babies,” he said. Then I knew it was wrong of me not to say and I started to cry. The sea rushed to the shore, close enough that it sounded like it was boiling on the stones. “Marry me,” he said.
I always think there’s something rather disgusting about preparing a crab; the juiciness, the trickle on your fingers from the wet brown meat you’ve scooped out, like scrapings from the inside of a skull, and after that, probing with a skewer into the fiddly places makes me think of bits of brain being pulled from an ear and I get a pain in my own, like when you stick a Q-tip in too far, or a hairpin. There was something on the radio the other day about how you can slice a brain any way you like but you won’t find a morsel called memory.
I mix the meat with finely chopped shallots, tomatoes, cayenne, salt and pepper and spoon it back into the shell, packing it neatly like cement. Alan likes it like that and it really is the least I can do, though he’s never as appreciative as I would like him to be.
There was a time. Candy stripe sheets on a rented bed and Al’s fingers following the lines of tears on my face. “Nothing you tell me will change the way I feel,” he said and for a while I allowed him to believe that I was perfect. There was a time by the sea that Al was so dazzled by love that he couldn’t see anything deeper than the blush on my skin.
I lie in bed, Al becomes Alan once more and the world fades.
“You do realise we’ll have been married seven years next month?” I say.
“That’s what it must be then,” he says. Perhaps he thinks that I no longer understand his sarcasm.
“Someone once told me that there’s a scientific explanation for the seven year itch,” I continue. “Apparently it takes that long for each and every cell in the body to die and regenerate. Strange to think there’s nothing of us left that set those crabs free on the night you asked me to marry you.”
He doesn’t reply, instead he clicks off the bedside light. He likes to wait until he thinks I’m asleep before he starts on me. I shut my eyes, let my breathing deepen. It’s not long before I feel Alan reach out and lift my nightdress, efficiently, like a surgeon. His fingers move across my stomach like calipers and I no longer bother to breathe in as his hands pass.
Low Tide
This is what Hal remembers from before. His earliest memory. The darkness closing around him like a shell and he’s curled inside, staring out. A crack of light, the sheen of white gloss at the edge of a door, a thin slice of shining passageway. It isn’t like anywhere else in the world this passageway because it has brown glazed tiles.
At the far end, Hal’s parents are at the kitchen table, talking beneath the glare from a bare bulb. He can hear them all the time he’s in his cot. Their voices hiss, the radio hums. Hal rubs wet fists to and fro, cheek to ear, ear to cheek, but it’s no help with the pain.
It takes all Hal’s strength to haul himself up and when he’s hanging over the rail, he sees what a dizzying way it is to the floor. He tumbles, then lands with a soft thump onto blankets that have been folded there. Maybe he crawls, maybe he stumbles towards the voices and the light: he’s only aware of them getting closer and wanting his mum.
As soon as she sees him, Anna sweeps him onto her lap. She’s soft and cool and tastes like salted butter. He cries because of the pain in his mouth and his throbbing, hot ears, and then there’s the burning of his dad’s finger, rough as a cat’s tongue, rubbing whisky onto his raw gums. The whisky is fire at the back of his nose, it makes him feel sick, but it stops the pain for a moment, or at least replaces it.
Hal has no idea if all small children can recall their babyhoods but it’s fun to show off sometimes.
“How on earth do you remember all this?” Anna says. “I mean, right down to the colour of the tiles at Checkpoint Road.” Hal can tell that his mum’s impressed. And he’s not making it up, remembering the shiny browness of the tiles is proof enough of that.
“I used to lick them because I thought they were chocolate pudding,” he says, and watches Anna’s big grey eyes crinkle at the corners. There’s nothing better than making her smile: Hal thinks she looks kind and pale, like an angel. And he knew she’d be happy if he remembered something about the way things used to be; and she mustn’t be sad, especially not today. Not in front of his dad.
They’re on the train, heading South and he can’t wait to be there, at the sandy beach that’s been on his mind ever since his dad sent the picture. It was a postcard with swirly giant’s writing, “Wish you were here,” engraved in the sand. “The seaside, the sea,” he chants, bouncing so hard on the old-fashioned dusty velvet seats that their tangled innards creak and ping beneath him.
“Bim! Bom! Bum! And the beach!” Hal resorts to made-up songs listing everything he sees out of the train window: fields with cows,
and big stone houses, mud and pigs and tractors and horses, fields where hay and straw are mystery packages coated in plastic, shiny and black as liquorice wheels. “In my day, it was all square bales,” Anna says.
“Thing I remember about Checkpoint Road,” she says as they pass a deserted racecourse, “was the day your dad kicked a football, right through someone’s window…”
“Why did he do that?”
“By mistake, of course!” she snorts. “We had to run like mad, with you in the pushchair and the shopping, and everything falling about.”
“I was scared as hell,” she says. “We were only kids. There’s no way we could’ve paid for the window. The pushchair always felt like a toy to me, like I was still a little girl clopping about in my mum’s shoes, pretending.” Hal looks up and notices that her eyes are sparkling. They always do when she talks about the happy time.
“One more station and we’ll be there,” Anna says. “Start putting your felt tips away.” Hal sees her reach into her bag for a small square of mirror, he sees her grimace at herself in it. Then, and much to his surprise, she glosses her lips with some pinky stuff from a little pot and, with a little brush twisted from a tube, sweeps her eyelashes into black spikes.
“What’re you gawping at?” she says, nudging him as she spritzes her wrist with a short burst of sweet, lemony perfume. The train judders and squeaks as it slows, then stops.
“Are we here, Mum? We are?” Hal wants to whoop but there are other people still on the train so he knows he must behave himself as he tussles with the door.
Hal leaps onto the platform, ready for anything.
“Is it a bird?” he wants to shout out loud. “Is it a plane? No, it’s Superman!”
It’s so bright outside, still. It makes you happy just to look at it, the sky as thin and blue as airmail paper, sunshine, and - now Hal can’t suppress a squawk - his dad at the barrier. Hal’s dad, waiting for them in a dark blue mac that reaches almost to the floor. The fabric spills around him, as he crouches to the ground on one knee, his arms held wide, and Hal can’t wait to throw himself against him. His dad has long hair! Hal can see it lift from his face as he moves.
Hal has never imagined a train station like this; open-air, not even a tunnel, for the the tracks to disappear into. He can hear seagulls screeching, though he can’t see any yet. A white picket fence runs all the way to his dad, the only other person there. Hal feels Anna’s grip tighten around his fingers before she releases him.
“Come on,” he urges, wanting her to run with him so that they will reach his dad together.
But she’s not moving and his dad is grinning like the Joker. For a moment Hal forgets her as everything goes blurry and he flies through the air into his dad’s arms.
“You’re so big!” says his dad and Hal wriggles as Christopher’s coat wraps around him.
“You’re heavy now!” he says, his chin sandpapering Hal’s cheek. This part is always a shock to Hal: the roughness of his dad’s skin, especially when he hasn’t seen him a while, and there’s the lovely, horrible smell of tobacco in his hair. Hal hangs over Christopher’s shoulder, he’s almost winded with excitement, shouting, “Come on mum!” to Anna who’s still fussing with a buckle on their bag.
“Wait until you see where I’m living,” says Christopher. “You’ll love it. You’ll be able to see the sea from your own bed.”
When she catches up, Hal thinks Anna looks like she’s been sneezing. Swimmy eyes and red cheeks give it away.
“Here’s mum,” he says feeling rather grown-up; as if he’s introducing his parents to one another, like it’s his party.
“You all right, Anna?” His dad must have noticed her face too.
Anna sounds short of breath: “Almost two years isn’t it?”
Hal watches her eyes as she scans his father up and down, not settling on anything in particular.
“You look different,” she says, frowning slightly. “Is everything OK?”
Christopher rubs his chin, as if he’s about to tell them a joke. “No beard, is that it?” he says.
“You didn’t have one then, did you?” she says.
Hal notices that so far all his parents have done is ask each other questions.
“Will you last?” says Anna turning to Hal. “Do you need the loo?”
Hal can’t think about toilets at a time like this.
“No!” he yelps. All he wants to do is run and leap about. “Can we go to your new flat now, dad? Can we see the sea?”
“Do you mind walking, Anna?” asks Christopher. “It’s all downhill from here.”
“Whatever,” she says.
“Do you want me to take the bag? And…” Hal feels his dad’s breath in his hair, nuzzling his scalp. “…And I’m glad you came, Anna, after all. You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed…” he gives Hal a squeeze, “…this.”
“We’ll see how it goes then,” says Anna.
Hal wishes she’d hug him too, or hug his dad, or just touch one of them to show she’s there with them. But she’s looking away from them, back along the track.
“Yeah, suck it and see,” says Christopher and when he laughs Hal catches Anna biting her lip.
Anna maintains several feet between them the whole way to his dad’s and walks with the bag squashed to her chest. Christopher doesn’t set Hal on his feet like he expected him to but walks with him hugged to his side. “Big bear, little bear,” he says. Meg floats briefly into Hal’s mind. Because of Meg, the word “girlfriend” will forevermore make Hal think of someone with a sing-song voice and soft hair.
Meg and his dad usually walked arm in arm. Or they swung Hal between them, though sometimes Meg complained that it made her back hurt. Meg had lots of really mad jumpers, dayglo pink and green stripy ones, and Hal’s favourite which was electric blue with yellow smileys on the front.
Hal clings around his dad’s neck so that when Christopher swallows he feels his Adam’s apple knock against the skin of his arm like a knuckle. It’s funny seeing his dad without Meg.
“Breathe that air,” his dad says, swelling out his own chest so Hal’s hugged even tighter.
The hill winds towards the sea, between rows of houses painted in the soft colours of icecreams and biscuits. Gulls, the only white in the sky, call out like nasty babies. “Better than pigeons any day,” Hal says.
At the foot of the hill, between the road and the sea, there’s a wide stretch of sandy ground dotted with caravans.
“Look, there it is, my flat, above the café.” Christopher points up at a couple of windows on the corner, opposite the caravans. “Any closer and I’d be in the ocean,” he says. “What do you think?”
They had stop in front of a big mermaid painted on the front of a café. “Wicked!” She is all pink-skinned and smiley, leaning against one side of the door, combing her golden hair which falls in a cascade, framing the café’s entrance.
“Did you paint her, dad?” Hal breathes in deep, preparing his chest for pride.
“No, Tamsin did her,” Christopher replies, and Anna says: “Tamsin?”
“She’s one of the waitresses here,” he explains. “She painted the mermaid at the same time as I painted the inside of the place, but it’s only ordinary blue.” Tamsin’s uncle owns the café, he says, as well as three guest-houses. Nothing touched since the Seventies.
“All coffee and cream,” he says. “Plenty of work painting that lot. That’s how I got the flat. Perk of the job.”
“I might have guessed,” says Anna, with a mysterious sort of a snort.
Beyond the mermaid door, the café is closed but smells oily. Christopher leads them behind the tall counter and up some creaky stairs of cracked tomato-red linoleum. The cooking smell seems stronger when they reach the top than it had been among the empty tables. The stairs emerge straight into a sitting room, with a sloping ceiling. Hal’s eye is drawn to the big telly in the corner.
“Doesn’t this chip-pan stench get right in your clo
thes?” asks Anna, sniffing loudly.
“Mmm, doughnuts,” says Hal, appreciatively. “Smells lovely.”
“Don’t know about doughnuts,” says Christopher, “but we can have our breakfast down there tomorrow if you like. Nice eggs straight from the chickens out the back. Come and see, Hal, you can watch them from the window here.” Christopher scrunches back the brittle-smelling net curtains for Hal to see out.
“You’ll probably get woken by that randy old cockerel down there before you get used to it,” he says.
“We’re only staying the two nights, don’t forget,” says Anna. “I don’t suppose that’s long enough to get used to anything much, not even clucking.”
Hal is fighting back some annoying tears, holding his dad’s hand and looking out of the sitting room window at a run of sagging chicken wire and the hens scratching the earth in the garden below. He can smell the ancient dust in the nets and the window tastes bitter, like match-ends.
“Funny,” says Anna, joining him there. “Your dad, not being in town.”
“It’s the siren’s song,” says Christopher, moving to stand behind her so they almost touch. “The sea,” he says into her ear, so close that his lips almost brush her neck. He points to it out of the window, his arm over her shoulder, while she stands very still with her hands on the sill. He must think she’s blind, Hal thinks, but all the same he’s subsumed by a sudden wave of happiness.
In fact, you can’t see anything much worth looking at but the sea; there’s the garden with its tufty chickens and edging of frothy blue and mauve hydrangeas, there’s scree, rusty metal rails, sand and caravans as well, but the vast blue glitterbed of sea fills their eyes.
