by Susie Day
“It means other things too,” he says heavily, putting down the paper and clasping his hands on the table. “But yes. You forget things. First the small ones, like where you’ve left your handbag. Then the words for things: people included. Then the things themselves. Finally yourself.”
He says it like facts, like what’s on TV. He doesn’t look upset, or angry. I suppose those things pass.
“Is that why she called Merlin Gareth, just then? She’s forgotten his real name?”
Merlin’s dad purses his lips disapprovingly.
“Gareth is his real name. ‘Merlin’ is an affectation we don’t tolerate in this house – much like that costume he so likes to wear.” He nods at me: at the tailcoat I’m still wearing. He picks up the paper, shaking it out. “It confuses her, you see.”
I grip the too-long sleeves, drawing the coat around me.
He keeps reading, and I slip out, back down the hallway.
There’s an open door. I can hear Merlin – Gareth – softly reading from a magazine to a pale woman in a high-backed armchair. She’s about the same age as my mum. With curly dark hair, and fluffy pink slippers that aren’t quite on her feet.
Merlin’s head tilts up, his neck red in patches, clearly having overheard.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
I don’t know what else to say.
He nods, slowly.
I slip the coat off my shoulders, wanting to give it back to him, all of it. Merlin the Magician. The life I thought he had. The coat sags on the doorknob, tails trailing on the floor.
“Will you be there, tomorrow?” he asks, his voice soft but urgent.
“Of course I will. Yes. You?”
“Do my best,” he says, his smile weak.
I want to say goodbye to his mum, but she’s looking at Merlin, watching his lips move.
He smiles down at her, and starts reading the magazine again.
I linger at the front door, listening to the low purr of his voice reading about beauty surveys and skincare regimes. Then I let myself out.
Outside it’s all blue skies, bright and fresh.
It feels obscene. The sun warms my skin, as if nothing is wrong.
Behind the peeling white front door, everything is wrong.
I’m wrong.
I thought I knew him but I don’t. I thought he was special – but he’s not. He’s an ordinary boy with a too-real life, who wants the world to think he’s a butterfly.
I can’t blame him. I can’t imagine how awful it must be. The blank, black space left where she should be.
So he puts on a costume, to paste over it. And I think suddenly that we’re all doing it: showing the world something not quite honest. Purple boots and retro shades. Yoga bottoms and third eyes. Black dye to cover up the greys onstage. A brave face for baby. We can’t help ourselves.
Maybe it is honest, after all. Nothing’s hidden. We show to the world our intimate hopes, our longed-for dreams. Our better selves. There’s not much more personal than that.
But the end of the day Merlin the Magician still has to go home, wipe his face clean, and be Gareth again.
My hands are shaking. I busy them in my bag, knuckling the bottle of hair dye aside, ashamed. I find Diana instead, her chunky plastic reassuring under my fingers. The process is comforting and familiar: line up, focus, wind on. I snap off a series of shots, click click click.
Here’s where I took a photograph. Here’s where I took a photograph. Here’s where I took a photograph.
That’s what Merlin said, in the Cave: that I was wasting my time. The sky is big and cloudless, an expanse of blue above an endless glittering sea, impossible to cram into the viewfinder. Not the fairground swirl of music and screams. Not salt, chips, fresh air and sugar on the wind. Not tears on my face, for everything I’ve got wrong. For Merlin.
I’m taking pictures, not memories. But the pictures will remind me, for ever, of how huge and strange and tragic this moment is. I can remember it. I didn’t know how important that was.
How lucky I am.
I put the camera away and do nothing but look.
I am a camera. I see, and remember.
I think: I don’t want to be anyone else.
I’m ready to be me.
14. Wishgirl
On Saturday, Red’s not the only time-traveller in town.
The extra campground in the field on Penkerry Point is rammed. There are jeans with turn-ups and cigarette packs tucked into T-shirt sleeves wherever you turn. Red lips and tight sweaters, high ponytails and hairspray-stiff fringes. The Fifties Fest crowd mingles with the usual Penkerry day trippers: trainers and smartphones, mopeds and bobby socks. It’s as if all the rules of time have been wished away.
I’m not wasting one second.
It hasn’t been easy. I’ve had to ask strangers for favours: not very Blue. I’ve had to admit I’ve been wrong, even to myself. Red was kinder than I expected. She even helped; whispered a few cheating secrets in my ear so I could make this perfect. She looked guilty. I’m guilty too. I didn’t tell her about Merlin. Let her keep him as he is in her mind: a perfect dream of a boy.
There’s more to do. But everything’s ready.
I spend the morning packing. We won’t be back to the caravan until late, and Dad wants the suitcases in a line, ready to sling in the car tomorrow. Tiger scoops her stuff off the floor in armfuls, finished in minutes. Mine takes longer, all folded. Everything fits neatly, the way I like it, unapologetically. Milly. My bluebell perfume. The photos pinned above my bunk: Peanut’s scan, the patch of grass, my top-hat silhouette.
The top hat means something else now. Something sad.
Everything today is sad.
And more.
I stroke my thumb down the back of my hand, just once.
“Tea!” shouts Mum.
She’s lying in state on the sofa, under instruction not to move an inch.
“I’ll pack it now, all right?” I say, dragging my case out through the curtain.
“Don’t pack it, make it!” she says, flapping an arm feebly.
“Milking it,” says Tiger, in a sing-song voice from the kitchenette table.
“Am not!”
“Are too,” calls Dad, from their bedroom.
It feels fragile. We’re not quite ourselves. All on tiptoe, not sure when a joke might make someone cry instead of laugh.
I fill up the kettle, and clear out the fridge while I’m there, pulling down the list of possible Peanut names to take with us.
“What about Lemon?” says Tiger. “Or Chive Blossom?”
“For a boy or a girl?” says Mum.
“It’s not a name, it’s a paint colour,” Tiger snorts, flapping a booklet at her. It’s a paint sampler: rows of coloured squares, all with daft names so you can tell between the seventeen shades of white.
Mum levers her head off the sofa, surprised. Dad pokes a curious head out of their room. I duck my head, embarrassed by all the drama.
“We talked, me and Tiger. Sorry about before. Peanut can have my bedroom. I want Peanut to have my bedroom – but on one condition. We get to pick the new paint colour.”
Dad blinks, then breaks into a grin. “OK, deal. So long as you pick something, you know. Baby-friendly.”
“Oi!” Mum pouts. “I’m growing a rock’n’roll superstar in here. Rock’n’roll is not pastel. You go for it, girls.”
Tiger begins gleefully circling the ugliest squares of colour.
Aubergine Frenzy. Tangerine Dream. I add a few more to Peanut’s name list. Mum beckons me over, and I half expect her to cross them all out again – but instead she gives me a kiss on the cheek.
She strokes my hair; fusses at my sore ear. I kiss her tummy through her top, still on tiptoe: safer than words.
“Hey, can we pa
int my room, too?” Tiger says, sucking the pen. “I mean, if it’s going to be our room.”
She’s wearing the purple smiley-face T-shirt again, as promised; sees me eye it wistfully. She fixes her giant blue eyes on me like an offer, a hand held out.
“Make me a cup of tea and you can paint the whole bloody house,” says Mum.
I fetch mugs.
Scarlet Sunset. Crimson Dream. Firecracker. Dragonskin.
The beach is packed. It’s another beautiful blue-skied day: the best yet. The tide’s highish, so every pebble of beach is taken. One side of the pier is all families with deckchairs and parasols, sun tents and coolers stuffed with ice. On the other side is another crowd, up on its feet, ready. Dan’s easy to spot, wearing a huge inflatable doughnut to advertise the stall in the fair. Down on the pier itself, at the furthest end, there’s a stage with a canopy, like a miniature rock festival hovering above the water.
The stage is empty but it’s nearly twelve. Almost time for King Biscuit and the Crunchy Frogs, a scratch band made up of Woody, and Janice, and last-minute volunteers from the other line-ups. The new opening act of the Fifties Fest.
It should be Joanie and the Whales out there.
Mum and Dad’s faces say they’re thinking it, too. It breaks my heart. Here we all are in the sun, not feeling it. Today is all about regret.
But they hold hands, and Dad shouts, “Preggo lady coming through!” as Mum gingerly takes the steps down on to the beach. A path clears for them, and she picks her way slowly through the chairs and sunburnt people to claim a spot on the beach, waving back at us so we can find them later.
Tiger spots Catrin and runs to her, holding her tight, not letting go.
I go to The Bench.
Red wouldn’t come in, last night. I guessed she wanted to spend our last night watching the sea and the sun coming up; expected to find her waiting for me, right here. But she said I’d know where to find her today. She’ll be here somewhere.
I wait, Diana in my hands, taking shot after shot of the party all around me. Trying to soak all my feelings into the film, all my sorrow and disappointment, all my hope and love.
Then there he is.
Merlin: in top hat and tails, eyeliner restored.
He hesitates as I stand up to say hi. We do an awkward dance, not sure of each other. In the end he finds his most charming smile, flicking his hat off to tumble down his arm, catching it perfectly as he sketches a deep bow.
Merlin the Magician, at my service.
It makes me sad, beautiful as he is. It’s like my photographs. I can see what’s not in the picture.
He straightens, and stands stiffly, clutching his hat. All nerves. Not magic at all.
I can’t bear it. I grab the hat from his hands, and plonk it on to his head. He laughs, and tips it up, and I can’t help myself. I hug him. I slide my arms under his jacket. He breathes in, sharply. Then he wraps his arms across my back, tentative, then holding me close. I rest my cheek on his T-shirt.
There are hammers in there, thumping through his skin.
A wolf-whistle pierces the air, above the low thump of the music.
It’s Mum, installed on a sunlounger, fingers at the corners of her mouth. Beside her I spot Dad with his shirt off, giving me two approving thumbs up.
“And let’s go,” I say, pushing him up the promenade with my face glowing madly.
We fall into step, Merlin’s arm sliding across my shoulders.
“Hey,” I mumble, suddenly struck with guilt. “I’m so sorry. About your mum.”
“Thank you.”
I look up, about to say more, but he shakes his head.
No need to explain.
He grabs my hand and we run along the prom, down the beach steps, into the crowd as a roar goes up and the band begin to play. The drumbeats echo off the cliffs, across the water. The crowd seethes and pulses, sweaty bodies all around me, Merlin behind me, holding me up. I get lost in the music. We get lost together.
Three bands later, we crawl through the crowd. I’m sweaty and disgusting, but so is Merlin, and he doesn’t seem to mind. We get ice creams in tubs and meander down the prom, talking about nothing. Everything. Every word matters.
Over on the calmer side of the beach, the deckchairs are now all tilted back, away from the sea. There’s a projector fixed to the Pavilion, playing films across the cliff face as if it’s a screen. People are going round with buckets, handing out special headphone sets you can rent for two quid – but the soundless version is pretty entertaining. It’s the end of one of the Pirates films: flashing swords and big hats. This side of the cliffs is in shade, though the sunlight’s too bright for it to really work yet. Once it gets darker, it’s going to look amazing.
I’m counting on it.
We weave through the deckchairs and parasols till we find our spot. Tiger and Catrin are already there on the picnic blanket, clinging. I slip in between Mum and Dad, to sit with my head resting against Mum’s knee. Merlin folds his legs up like a dead spider.
Toy Story starts to play and we idly watch the familiar scenes, half of us with headphones, half making up new dialogue as we go along. I snap a few shots of the rock-lumpy faces playing across the cliff. We all take turns to wear Merlin’s hat.
In the next break, Dad fetches fish and chips. Me and Merlin share.
The crowd starts to thin out, as the day trippers leave. I hate watching them go. Time’s ticking away – but I don’t want to waste what there is of it feeling sad.
Light flickers across the cliffs, as the next film begins.
“What’s this? Isn’t the next one supposed to be some sci-fi thing? Oh, wait, this is better.”
Dad claps and whistles as the title appears.
Rebel Without A Cause.
I hear a whoop from further along the beach.
“Back in a sec,” I whisper to Merlin, as Catrin goes off to fetch more headphones.
Dan’s inflatable doughnut guides me across the pebbles, and I find him, Mags, and a mouth-open Fozzie perched on an abandoned blanket.
“Was this you?” Fozzie breathes up at me, dazed, tugging off her headphones.
“I had some help.” I smile, grateful, at Mags and Dan as Fozzie stares, astonished. “Mags sweet-talked your mum into letting you leave The Shed early, so you’d get here in time. And Dan knew who to talk to in the Pavilion, to get the discs switched.”
I glance up at the cliff: giant James Dean, taller than the Red Dragon.
“You did say it looked better on the big screen.” I shuffle closer. “I wanted to say sorry. For everything. I didn’t mean to be a rubbish friend. I wish we’d spent more time together, and I’m really going to miss you.”
“Awwww, get you two,” yells Dan, leaning in to give us a plasticky hug.
“You, she’s not going to miss,” says Mags, batting his arm away.
Dan does a fake hurt look.
“All of you. But not yet. Come on. We’ve got chips. And Merlin.”
We snatch extra deckchairs out of the jaws of the incoming tide and expand our little camp as, slowly, the beach gets emptier. Dad and Fozzie both shout out the famous bits of dialogue. Mum and Dan have a friendly argument over which one of them is more uncomfortable – until Mum plucks the valve of his doughnut suit open, deflating him. I snap a shot of her victory cheer, and Dan, terrifyingly pasty in his Welsh dragon boxer shorts. I snap Tiger and Catrin, both gazing at the screen, expressions identical; Mags, falling asleep with an ice cream just slipping from her grasp; Fozzie frowning with concentration as Dad tries to show her how to play some particular chord on an imaginary guitar; Merlin, in close-up, looking directly into the lens; Mum, watching unobserved, quiet, happy.
They’ll be sad pictures too, because they’re the end of things. But they’re going to radiate happy all across my new bedroom wall.
I squint at Diana in the dark, and find I’ve got one shot left on my last roll of film.
I look around again for Red. She won’t show up in the print, but she should be here. This is her farewell party.
But there’s something else I shouldn’t leave behind without at least trying to capture it. One last perfect Penkerry picture.
They’re all still watching the film, so I whisper to Mum that I’ll be back soon, and slip away in the dark.
The pebbles are slippery and skiddy under my feet and a few times my flowery shoes get caught by an unexpected wave, but the flickery film light projected across the cliffs is enough to see by. The lighthouse spins across the water, slow then suddenly bright, and I can see the lights of the caravan park up on the top of the Point. But I cut straight past the end of the short-cut path, lit up as the lighthouse beam tracks across. I skid on across the pebbles, listening to the waves crash, always louder at night, on and up and then down into the dip in the pebbles, and into the chill of the Cave.
I shiver, wishing there was a campfire and Verushka/Danushka playing guitar this time; candles and birthday cake.
I hold my phone up. There’s no signal, but the screen light glows off the slimy walls, helping me find my way back, far back. I let the screen light travel up the algae like the lighthouse beam and there it is, high on the wall; fading already, half washed away. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLUE, in white painted letters.
I climb up the big boulder at the back, careful not to slip, and hold up Diana with both hands. I can’t use the viewfinder so I can only line up the shot, hope, and click. For all I know my final picture of Penkerry will be a wall of slime. But I’ll always know what it was meant to be.
I wind the camera on, carefully slip her back into my bag, and climb down the boulder, my feet splishing into a chilly puddle as I drop.
My screen light tracks across the darkness, then catches on a face.
Red.
She’s standing near the cave entrance, looking at her hands.
“Hey!” I say, relieved to have company in the dark. “Was wondering where you were. Should’ve known you’d go to the same place I did.”
