by Simon Mason
She stopped, confused.
The attendants were talking about Dad, who was already at the foot of the ladder.
‘Took me by surprise,’ one of them said. ‘They told me he’d be coming after lunch.’
‘Who is he?’
‘From the county diving team. Apparently he’s pretty good.’
The second one said, ‘Doesn’t look very fit to me. Bit old too.’
They both turned and scrutinized Dad, frowning, and Martha turned and hurried back to the baby pool.
‘He got in!’ Tug said excitedly.
‘There’s been a mistake,’ she said, looking up at Dad.
Everyone in the baby pool was looking up at him too. Word went round that an Olympic diver had arrived to train.
Laura and her mum joined them in the baby pool.
‘You didn’t say your dad was a diver,’ Laura said.
‘He’s not.’
Together they watched Dad on the ladder. He knew people were watching him. He slipped once, turned round and grinned, and pretended to slip again, and there was laughter.
He climbed up. There were three diving boards. The first was a fixed shelf about ten feet above the water, and Dad climbed past it.
Tug cheered.
‘Be quiet, Tug. People will think we’re with him.’
The second board was a springboard, about fifteen feet up. Here Dad stopped.
‘He’s going off the springboard,’ Martha said.
Tug grew more and more excited. He began to splash about, and Martha apologized to Laura’s mum.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I know how hard it is looking after little ones.’
‘He’s easy,’ Martha said. ‘It’s the other one that’s difficult.’
They all looked up.
‘I hope he knows what he’s doing,’ she added anxiously. ‘I don’t want him to hurt himself.’
As they watched, Dad looked down and gave them a wave. They waved back nervously. Several other people in the baby pool waved back too. Encouraged, Dad gave a little bow, which raised another laugh. Then he turned to the board, lifted his arms and stood there perfectly still, chin up, very poised and serious. A respectful silence fell over the baby pool.
A minute passed.
Tug said, ‘Why isn’t he moving, Martha?’
Martha felt anxious. ‘He doesn’t know what to do. I don’t think he’s ever even been off a springboard before.’
‘How do you go off springboards?’
‘I don’t know. On television they run along the board.
They sort of prance. I hope he doesn’t try to do that.’
Dad suddenly pranced onto the board, which immediately sank under his right foot, throwing him off balance and propelling him violently forward. Whinnying with surprise, he bounded upwards, very high, and came down crookedly, left foot first, in the middle of the board just as it sprang back up again. Body buckling, he loped up once more, even higher, hands scrabbling in the air, and, now completely out of control, crashed onto the very end of the board, which sank dramatically under him, down and down – before suddenly whipping up and lobbing him out, way above the pool. There was a moment when he hung in mid-air, spread-eagled, open-mouthed and very surprised. Then he dropped with a roar of alarm twenty feet into the waiting water.
Everyone in the baby pool stared in silence.
‘He is strange, isn’t he?’ Tug said thoughtfully.
It took Dad a while to return to the baby pool. By the time he had crawled out of the water, limped out of the diving arena (‘I think I’ll leave it for today, thanks,’ he said very quietly to the attendants as he passed) and back alongside the main pool, Laura’s mum had been into the changing rooms to fetch some ointment from her nurse’s bag.
‘It’ll help with your soreness,’ she said. Martha noticed that there was something odd about her face as she spoke to Dad. After a while, she realized that she was trying not to laugh.
Laura just stared.
Martha held Dad’s hand. She was cross, but sorry for him too. ‘Don’t try to speak,’ she said.
Dad wasn’t sure he could speak. His chest, stomach and face were bright red.
Tug said, ‘Why did you make that noise?’
Dad looked at him.
‘That noise,’ Tug said, ‘when you hit the water.’
Dad found his voice, though it was quiet and a bit croaky. ‘The thing is, I didn’t want to hit it, Tug. But I couldn’t get out of the way in time. Was it a loud bang?’
‘We thought the bloody roof was falling in,’ Laura said.
Dad seemed oddly pleased. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘the water in this baby pool is far too hot. It’s stinging my stomach. I wonder if we might be better off in the café. How about some lunch?’ he said to Laura’s mum. ‘On us. The least we can do after all this sympathy – not to mention the ointment.’
11
Dad was in high spirits on the way home. Martha, on the other hand, was quiet.
‘Are you still cross with me, Martha?’ he asked, looking at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Just because my diving’s a little unorthodox.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve stopped being cross.’
He grinned, and went on, ‘I like swimming baths. I’m glad I thought of going. I don’t think much of swimming, to be honest. But you meet nice people there.’ He grinned again. ‘It was a good idea of yours to invite them over. When are they coming?’
‘A fortnight today.’ Martha looked at him thoughtfully. He was whistling, and slapping a beat on the steering wheel.
‘What did you think of her, Dad?’
‘Who? Olivia?’ Olivia was Laura’s mum.
‘Yes.’
‘I liked her.’ He grinned again. ‘I liked her very much.’ He looked at Martha in the rear-view mirror, as if expecting a response.
But Martha said nothing. She frowned to herself. In the café at the swimming pool something odd had happened. To start with, Olivia had been very friendly to Dad, giving him the ointment (‘Like calamine lotion,’) and telling him what to do if he woke up the next day in pain. She had laughed at his funny stories and joked with him about the boredom of swimming (‘Unless someone is kind enough to entertain us with a circus move from the springboard’), and Dad joked back. If she thought Dad was strange, it didn’t seem to bother her. But as soon as Martha invited her and Laura to lunch, she suddenly became unfriendly. Not exactly unfriendly – embarrassed. She stopped making jokes, and began to make excuses. It was clear that she didn’t want to come for lunch. She didn’t seem to want to see Dad again. It had taken Laura a long time to persuade her to accept.
Martha sighed. It was a shame that Olivia had gone off Dad so quickly. Otherwise, perhaps she could have been his girlfriend.
Martha said, ‘I think I’ll invite Marcus for lunch as well. He’s good at conversation.’
‘I like Marcus. Is his conversation as strange as he is?’
‘He’s surprisingly practical.’
‘That is strange.’
He drove on in silence for a while.
She wondered why Olivia had gone off Dad.
‘Let’s sing a song,’ Dad said at last. ‘We always used to sing in the car. Who knows a song about a bear?’
Tug put up his hand.
‘Please,’ Martha said. ‘Not the bear.’
Tug began to sing, and Dad joined in. Tug sang mainly one note, and Dad sang mainly another note, neither of which was the right note.
‘Please!’ Martha cried out.
‘If you want us to sound better,’ Dad said, ‘you’ll have to join in.’
They sang on.
‘Sing up, Martha,’ Dad shouted. ‘I can still hear myself.’
She looked at him laughing. He was laughing the way he used to laugh, and he looked so happy that, despite herself, she laughed too. And then she began to sing. They sang ‘The Bear Went Over the Mountain’ – with wild variations and excruciating harmonies – all
the way home, which seemed a very long way, and when they got there they were all hoarse.
‘That was terrible,’ Dad said. ‘Let’s not do that ever again.’
They parked the car and got their things out of the boot.
‘Just to be clear,’ Dad said to Martha. ‘You’re not cross with me?’
She shook her head.
‘You’re a good girl,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault you can’t sing.’
Together they went down the street to their house, and when they got there they found Grandma and Grandpa waiting outside for them, very angry.
12
Grandma and Grandpa were Mum’s parents, not Dad’s. Grandma was tall and sprightly, with elegant white hair and an indignant expression. Grandpa was tubby and shrewd-looking. Both of them liked to speak their minds.
As they all walked together to their house, Grandma and Grandpa spoke their minds about Dad, who had forgotten Sunday lunch even though he had been reminded several times.
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ he said, again. His high spirits had vanished. He looked ashamed.
‘At one o’clock we telephoned,’ Grandma said. ‘There was no answer, of course. When it got to two o’clock we came round and naturally you weren’t in. The beef’s ruined,’ she said. ‘We shall have to make do with salad.’
‘Salad for Sunday lunch,’ Grandpa said. ‘Wouldn’t be my choice.’
‘It’s the thoughtlessness that makes me cross,’ Grandma went on. ‘Though why I should expect anything else I don’t know. Anyway, we shall have salad, and then we shall have our little talk. You haven’t forgotten about that, I hope.’
Dad didn’t say anything. Grandma and Grandpa walked ahead, and Dad walked behind on his own, and Martha and Tug walked at the back, holding hands.
‘What’s she saying, Martha?’ Tug whispered.
Martha whispered back, ‘Dad forgot about us going to Grandma’s for lunch.’
‘So will he have to talk to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will I have to talk to her?’
‘Only a bit.’
They went down the street, and along the side of the park until they came to the road where Grandma and Grandpa lived. The houses in the road were all quite big, like Grandma’s. They had front gardens and garages. Some gardens had rockeries with little waterfalls, and some had miniature windmills painted red or brown.
‘Martha?’
‘What?’
‘Will there be those glass things?’
‘You know there will. Grandma collects them.’
‘I don’t like them. They break when you touch them.’
‘You’re not to touch them. Grandma will be cross. If you touch them she’ll talk to you.’
He began to sniff. ‘I don’t like Grandma talking to me,’ he said.
‘Shh, Tug.’
They walked on.
‘I don’t like salad either,’ he added quietly.
They had their salad at the big table in the dining room. Along one side of the room was a large window looking out onto an immaculate lawn, and along the other was a sideboard covered with glass ornaments. These were the Swarovski crystal figurines that Grandma collected – glass teddy bears holding up glass love-hearts, and glass koala bears playing glass cellos, and dozens of tiny kittens and rocking horses, and two huge kingfishers perching on a glass branch, and, worst of all, a row of five tall glass flamingos coloured pink with elegant breakable necks.
‘You aren’t eating your salad, Christopher,’ Grandma said. Christopher was Tug’s proper name.
He carried on staring at his plate until Martha nudged him, and then he turned to her in surprise. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said in an injured voice.
‘Christopher,’ Grandma said. ‘Salad.’
‘He doesn’t like salad,’ Dad said.
‘It’s not a question of him liking it. It’s good for him.’
‘Does he look unhealthy to you?’
‘Looks,’ Grandpa said, ‘can deceive.’
Dad made a noise, and they all fell silent again.
After salad they had fruit salad.
‘And now,’ Grandma said to Dad, ‘it’s time for us to talk. I suggest the children play in the garden. Martha,’ she said. ‘You’re a sensible girl. Please make sure Christopher doesn’t climb any of the trees, or go on the rockery, or in the greenhouse. And of course neither of you should go near the water feature.’
The garden was very neat, sloping down from the house past the rockery towards a line of fir trees, where the greenhouse was. Flowerbeds and ornamental trees bordered the lawn, and in the middle of the grass was a tiny fountain. Martha and Tug sat together on the lawn as far away from everything else as possible.
‘Martha, I’m hungry.’
‘How can you be hungry? You’ve had two lunches.’
‘It’s the salad. It’s made me hungry again. Salad does that.’
Searching through her pockets, she found the biscuits that she had saved from the swimming pool café and gave them to Tug.
They sat there in silence while he ate them.
‘Martha?’ he said at last.
‘What now?’
‘I’m still hungry.’
She sighed. ‘Let’s play a game.’
‘All right. What game?’
‘Hide-and-seek.’
‘All right. I’ll hide.’
First he hid in the greenhouse, and then in the rockery, and finally up a tree. Then it was Martha’s turn.
Leaving him crouched on the grass counting erratically in a loud, determined voice, she went up the garden to find somewhere to hide. She thought there might be a good place among the patio furniture, or along the path that went round to the front drive. But when she reached the back of the house, she suddenly heard shouting from the dining room and she stopped in alarm.
She heard Dad shout, ‘No!’, and the tone of his voice took her breath away, it was so strange and loud.
She stood there very still, head cocked on one side, listening. Grandpa said something she couldn’t hear. Then Grandma said, ‘Everybody knows. I don’t know why you don’t admit it.’
Feeling afraid, Martha crept quietly along the house wall until she came to the dining room window, and peeped through a corner of it into the room.
Dad was standing up at the end of the table, and Grandma and Grandpa were sitting facing him.
‘Anyone can see it, just looking at you,’ Grandma said scornfully, and Martha looked at him.
She had never seen Dad like this. His face was pale, even paler than usual, and shiny, and he was glaring all round the room (though not, Martha noticed, at Grandma and Grandpa). His voice was different too, harsh and strangled.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said with difficulty. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway,’ he added, ‘it’s nothing to do with you.’
Martha noticed how he ran his fingers through his hair, something she had never seen him do before.
‘It’s everything to do with our grandchildren,’ Grandma said.
Now she was talking about them! Martha pressed her face against the window, not wanting to miss anything.
Dad glared. ‘Leave my children out of it.’
‘You’re neglecting them. Endangering them, even.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘You leave them unattended late at night. You’re not in when they arrive home from school. Your house is dirty and hazardous. Do you even feed them properly, I wonder. Do you think we’ll stand by and do nothing? We’ve told you before. We’ve tried and tried to help you. We want to help you. But if you won’t let us, I warn you, we will contact the Social Services.’
‘My children stay with me,’ Dad said, breathing heavily. Then they all began to talk angrily, and at that moment Martha was jumped on from behind by Tug shouting, ‘Found you!’ into her ear. Caught offbalance, she staggered forwards with him round her waist and they tottered together past the window, fell over
the edge of the patio onto the grass, and lay there in a heap.
In the dining room there was sudden silence.
‘That was rubbish hiding, Martha,’ Tug said happily. ‘I saw you straight away.’
She pushed him off.
‘What’s the matter, Martha?’
‘Shut up!’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Quiet!’
Dad came hurrying round the side of the house, followed by Grandma and Grandpa, who stood together at the edge of the lawn with their arms folded, watching him.
‘Get up,’ Dad said, ‘and come with me.’
‘Will you play hide-and-seek with us, Dad?’ Tug asked.
‘We’re going home,’ Dad said.
‘Just one game.’
‘Now!’ Dad shouted.
Tug stared, and Martha got him up and held his hand, and they followed Dad past Grandma and Grandpa and round the house to the front drive.
Tug began to sniff.
‘Quiet!’ Dad said without looking round. ‘Keep up.’ And they went down the road as fast as they could.
‘Martha?’ Tug sniffed, as they went.
‘What?’
‘Did he break something?’
‘I don’t know, Tug. I don’t think so.’
After a while Tug said sadly, ‘I think he broke something.’
Martha didn’t say anything. Holding hands, they went out of Grandma and Grandpa’s road towards the park, trying to keep up with Dad, who strode ahead, muttering to himself.
13
The clock with the luminous face showed 11.00 p.m.
Martha sat on her bed with Little Women lying unread in her lap. She ought to be asleep, but she didn’t feel like sleeping. She was too busy thinking about Dad.
Dad was sitting in the shed in the garden. She knew he was there because every half an hour she went onto the landing and stood on tiptoe at the high window overlooking the garden, to check.
She didn’t know what he was thinking about.
From Tug’s room came the soft rasp of snoring, and she felt lonely. Getting off the bed, she went to her bedroom window and looked out at the moon in the sky.
