A Perfect Life

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘Let’s get across the creek and sit by the black boat,’ says Jem. ‘We can get a lift if we’re quick – I just saw someone sailing back up the creek. If we miss them we’ll have to swim – or the short arses around here will. I think I can walk with the stuff on my head.’

  He glares at Foss, sniffing balefully but standing still and patient, as he is loaded with towels and fishing nets.

  Jem

  Dad just sent me a text. ‘Looking forward to tennis tonight at 7.’ He must be home. I can’t believe I’ve got to spend all sodding afternoon on the beach with Mum crying and behaving like she is totally unstable and these kids squabbling. Foss has got a slug of snot running down his nose and no one has done anything about it since I last wiped it before we left home. Now there’s nothing to use. Oh gross. He has just blown his nose on his T-shirt. He is so Third World.

  All Mum did was wave as if to a taxi, at some bloke in a boat and say, ‘I think he’s getting a cold.’ Then there’s all the palaver of getting in this guy’s boat. Of course he thinks he’s won the jackpot because Mum, even crying with dark glasses on, is a lot prettier than his wife who is sitting in the front of his boat with a red handkerchief knotted round her slightly sagging neck and a baggy T-shirt disguising God knows what. Mum, on the other hand, is wearing a yellow dress with very small straps and she is brown, and much too much of her body is visible as her dress is wet.

  ‘Mum, put something on,’ I whisper as the guy lifts Foss on to his boat. The wife looks as though four lepers shedding fingers and limbs are rubbing up against her. I can’t stand it. We are just trying to get across the bloody creek. ‘You are really pissing that woman off,’ I hiss.

  Mum lifts up her sunglasses and looks at me in astonishment. ‘What are you talking about?’ she squeaks.

  ‘You’re naked,’ I reply, beyond exasperation now.

  ‘What? I’m wearing a dress and a swimming costume,’ Mum hisses back.

  ‘Yeah, whatever, but this could be a good idea.’ I pass her my cricket jersey.

  She gives me a sharp look but she puts it on. I wish Coral was here. She is good at getting Mum to pay proper attention.

  It’s not so much that I think Mum needs protecting; it’s more that I think I do. I don’t want to be in the middle of some cheesy row where an old bag is offended by my mum. My mum is nice, she just doesn’t notice. Coral says I notice too much, and sometimes I think she’s right, but Dad always notices a lot, too. I’ve seen him looking at people like this bloke looks at Mum and I just have to turn away or put my music on. I can’t stop him, but I can cover Mum up so this guy can’t remind me of Dad doing the same thing to Jeannie Gildoff at the barbecue we went to at their house.

  That’s when my parents started to go psycho, I reckon. Jeannie Gildoff looks like she’s about ninety but with a kind of Barbie doll approach to age. So she’ll wear a dress, but whereas Mum’s dresses are soft and feel really nice, hers all stick out in a big bunch of skirt and stiff material and they always remind me of those films where people are going to the high school prom in the nineteen sixties. Anyway, whatever. For some reason Dad finds her sexy and I was having a slash at the back of their swimming pool to get away from their son Heath who thinks he is so great, and I came back past Dad and Jeannie. They didn’t see me. Dad was talking to her in a dark green corner where a huge tree makes a canopy over a table made of squashed-up shells pressed into concrete so they look as though major smashing has been going on. But that’s not the point. The point is, Dad was looking down the front of the kind of nurse’s uniform thing she was wearing and he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about you and me, Jeannie.’ And she was presenting herself – there is no other way of putting it – and her eyes glittered and she had coffee-coloured lip-gloss and it had bled around her mouth.

  ‘Nick, it’s dangerous to say that sort of thing –’

  I couldn’t handle it so I coughed and barged through them and went back to the pool. I had to even talk to Heath to stop myself thinking and hitting out at something. Dad gave me fifty quid, which I didn’t think was odd until now, and now I think he was bribing me.

  Later that night he came and found me in the TV room and he said, ‘You know, there are things about marriage that I find difficult.’

  If he had poured a can of iced lager over my head it would have felt the same as the seeping of cold rage. ‘Dad, can you shut up, please?’ I said and turned up the TV.

  So this guy in the boat is super efficient, you can tell from the way he pats the picnic basket as he puts it in, and he tucks it away under the seat even though we are only going to be in his boat for about two and a half minutes while we cross the creek.

  ‘Thank you so much, you are so kind.’ Mum has a way of sounding completely pleased with strangers, whoever it is – sometimes it’s a person at a petrol station who fills our car up for her, more often it’s someone she has asked the way from – but how she sounds makes their day and they smile at her and she smiles back and feel-good is radiated and I often feel sick, to be honest.

  Right now I feel sick, but not because of Mum, more because the wife of the guy is glaring so badly. Ruby notices, too, and sticks her chin up in the air and folds her arms. She is so good at looking arsy, like Coral. Then Foss notices and he just sticks out his tongue. I have to make myself cough so Foss and the lady don’t realise I am laughing, but luckily we are across the creek.

  ‘Sandy Beauchamp, and that is Margot, my wife. Delighted to meet you, Mrs . . .?’

  The man holds on to Mum’s hand after she has scrambled out of the boat and is standing up to her knees in the water, holding up the skirt of her dress in her other hand. He is leaning out over the side of the boat and his face is sunburnt and his expression is alert.

  ‘Yes, thank you. I’m Angel Stone, and these are Foss and Ruby and Jem,’ says Mum, looking distracted as Foss hurls himself off the boat.

  ‘GERONIMO,’ he shouts, splashing in the shallows.

  ‘Foss, bring that basket here, everything will be soaked – come on, you lot.’

  Mum waves to the sailing man and turns away and I look down through the opaque water and see a muddled blur of stripes reflected from his wife’s T-shirt as they glide away.

  ‘What’s for lunch?’ Ruby tugs at Mum’s dress as we flounder up through sand deep and dry like brown sugar.

  ‘I don’t know. Ask Jem, he bought it,’ Mum pants, collapsing on her knees at the highest point where we can see the frilling waves of the sea one way across the marshes and the black houseboat moored in the backwater behind us. This small stretch of sand is like a desert island, and is where we have had picnics every summer I can remember. The houseboat has always been there, and I still hope I will get into it one day. Though I never have yet. I have swum up to it and climbed on the roof so many times and the door remains locked, the curtains closed and I have never known what it is like inside.

  ‘I need to get some cockles.’ Foss crouches over his equipment and, selecting a bucket and a rake, he traipses off. Mum calls him back and gives him a sausage roll.

  ‘You’ll starve and then the fish will eat you,’ she teases him. ‘Don’t go far, please, you are not old enough to be anywhere on your own.’

  ‘I AM old and I AM going on my own,’ says Foss, hysteria rising in his voice.

  ‘You won’t get any until the tide goes out, so just stay close by, and then we’ll all go,’ Mum tells him. Then her phone rings and Foss sidles away.

  Even though he is only four, he knows there is a lot of escape time when Mum is on the phone. It’s a good opportunity for me to get a sausage roll and remove the cigarettes from the plastic bag and I sidle off, too. I know where I am going – to chill out by the houseboat, out of range of Mum. I stop to look at Ruby’s sandcastle. She’s already made ramparts and stuck a silver plastic windmill on a hill behind it, and for once she doesn’t even turn round or expect any input from anyone. She just gets on with it.

  Mum’s voice is low, m
ind you, it’s always low; Coral’s boyfriend Matt says it’s full of sex. When he said it, it shocked me so much I couldn’t speak for the whole amount of time it took me to smoke a fag on the roof with him. But now she is talking to someone very intensely. Sitting with her legs crossed and her dress all bunched up around her, the bracelets on her wrist glint in the sun as she pushes her hair back, and they clatter and jingle in a way that is as much Mum as her scent. I’m glad she’s here, but I wish Dad was too.

  The houseboat is dense, sooty black; it looks as though it’s made of velvet, and it has dark red windows and a red corrugated iron roof. Under my body the sand is warm when I lie down, and a gorse bush shelters me from the breeze coming in from the far away foaming sea. The trickle of sand shifting under my head is so comforting. My eyes close and I let the cigarettes fall out of my floppy hand. I am not old enough to deal with my parents cracking up. They used to be in charge of all of us and I don’t think they are now.

  Last year when we came here, we brought St Granny – that’s what we call Dad’s mum. It was really hot and we lit a fire in a pit Dad dug with me and Coral and we had sausages and walked out for miles at low tide. St Granny went to sleep by the fire and Mum and Ruby and Foss collected a basket of cockles. I helped them. I like digging my hands in the mud to find them, and even more I like mud sliding afterwards. Dad and Coral and I had a massive mud fight and we had to walk miles to swim to get it off before we went home. There are photos somewhere – I’ll find them to show Mum when I get home. It was a lot better than today.

  Angel

  Cold like a blade rasping down the right side of her body wakes Angel. A sharp breeze from the sea snaking in with the tide, flipping flower heads, twisting stems of wiry sea lavender in its path, coils around Angel’s bare arms to lick her flesh, raising goose pimples and an involuntary shiver. She is not sure how long she had been asleep, and the sun is behind a cloud giving the afternoon a flat sullenness. Blinking, stretching, shivering and remembering are simultaneous actions. Angel stands up and reaches for a towel, and looks around for the children.

  ‘Hello-o. Can any of you hear me?’ The sun suddenly spills out from behind a bed of cloud and the balmy splendour of late afternoon light unfolds like silk to settle on the marsh, diaphanous and lovely. Angel narrows her gaze to try and absorb the glancing sparkle of water in the creek and brightness stings her retinas, creating an imprint on her vision of tungsten blue and neon green patterns. Closing her eyes, the dark velvet of the lids dances with orange blobs as if she has been staring at the sun itself. Opening them again, it is as soothing as ointment to look at silver-green grasses bent and yielding in the cool sugary sand. Angel puts on Jem’s cricket jumper and walks towards the sea. She has a warm feeling of pulled togetherness, she is calm and looking forward to getting everyone home. And seeing Nick. Dealing with it will be good, and however difficult it is, it won’t last for ever. Nick will want to get away, he will go and cut the grass or settle into the sofa to watch cricket on television with Jem. He is unlikely to say he is coming back for good; there is no sign that Angel can see that he would want to. He has been away so much Angel feels he has already let go of their life at the Mill House. She feels his detachment, his desire never to be pinned down, is one part of their break-up. It has always been easy for him to say he wants to be around, but in reality, he never is.

  There are spare ribs for supper, or as Foss calls them, square ribs, and she could make some kind of pudding – Ruby would know what, and she could get Foss to decorate it with the filthy synthetic cream in an aerosol can she noticed Jem had bought this morning. She will get through this. Angel breathes in deep the heady ozone, and smiles, passing Ruby’s castle, a sensual series of undulations and humps, low-rise but large, very small-town American in its nonchalant sprawl, and highly decorated with sea lavender and razor clam shells.

  ‘Where are you?’ she shouts into the breeze. The sun moves behind a small cloud and light drains out of the afternoon, the smell of salt and mud on the air stronger when the glare has faded; the silence suddenly too long. Angel’s heart begins to race, unreasonably fluttery. Where are the children? All she can hear is the sigh of the waves and mournful piping of marsh birds. The drone of a plane cuts through, heavy, rolling across the sky like a lid. Angel takes a breath to shout and nothing comes out. The effort of breathing in again is huge now, as panic shortcircuits her body and she begins to close down, legs jelly, arms lead, voice evaporated. She is rooted in one spot, closing down. Her breath is fast and shallow like a dog panting. Suddenly, into her paralysed hysteria, the low mumble of Jem’s voice dollops like cream, pouring delicious cool relief on to Angel’s consciousness. And there is Ruby laughing back to him, both voices seeping comfort into Angel’s ears. In an instant she dismisses her fears without a backward glance or a moment’s acknowledgement. It is time to walk up to the bridge to get back and that will take at least half an hour. And then there is the evening to get through, and the square ribs to cook. Time to get on now.

  The kids appear round the end of the dune, and Angel falls in step with them, ruffling Ruby’s hair with her hand.

  ‘Hi, you two, where’s Foss? We need to get going.’

  Jem and Ruby are carrying a bucket of water between them. They both look at her, blank surprise on their faces.

  ‘We thought he was with you. We haven’t seen him,’ says Jem. ‘Ruby came to get me to fill up this bucket and we’ve been right along the creek, but we left Foss with you.’

  Adrenalin and fear surge back, filling Angel from her feet, pushing her breath out of her, hard, like a punch in the guts. She doesn’t know how long she has been asleep, how long Foss has been alone, but the timbre of the day insistently repeats, ‘He’s lost, he is not here.’

  Ruby’s eyes, Jem’s eyes, but not Foss’s eyes, stare at her, waiting for her to sort it out. Waiting for her to fix the fault line in the afternoon. If only she could. Angel wants to scream and thump her fists against someone’s chest. Her fingernails dig into her palms and she wants the pain because it is real, an effect of something she is doing. Foss not being here cannot be real.

  The children are still looking at her, expecting something of her. What can she give them? She hasn’t got Foss. Into her mind comes an image of a top hat, and herself pulling him out of it by the ears like a white rabbit.

  ‘Oh. With me? No, he’s not with me – I haven’t seen him, I fell asleep – I don’t know when I – FOSS-.-.-.-FOSS!’ Fear cannot be contained for a moment more, it is rushing and physical, a torrent bearing Angel away. She can’t keep still, she needs to move, pitching herself somewhere in futile defence.

  She runs past the children towards the creek, scanning the horizon wildly. ‘I should never have fallen asleep. How did I do that? Why did I do that? What have I done? He must be nearby, he must be nearby.’

  Running, stopping, running again, the panic inescapable. Red panic, burning in her eyes and ears, releasing a racing torrent of blood through all her veins, starting, jolting immediately to a halt, stopping, piling up, jamming, arresting every thought, anger growling low like an engine, action snarled up and slowed to nothing, overheating, not moving. Feeling sick with the relentless unending ‘stoppedness’. If Angel could scream she would. Her mouth open, a creaking whisper emerges.

  ‘Foss! Where are you?’

  The marshes stretch in every direction, empty but filling up with water as the tide creeps in. The mud expanse in front of Angel is wet now, pitted with greasy dark puddles, and as in a nightmare, the day becomes threatening, the light flat and the mud oozing, silent and unyielding. She is afraid to shout again, afraid not to receive a reply.

  ‘Let’s ask St Anthony,’ suggests Ruby, a mobile phone in her hand.

  ‘Are you going to call him?’

  Ruby raises her eyebrows and gives her mother a look reserved for idiots. ‘Oh yeah, Mum, like you can actually ring saints up. How would I know his number? I am not God.’

  Playgro
und tears spring to Angel’s eyes. Ruby is working something out.

  ‘Mummy, how much will you give St Anthony for finding Foss?’ Ruby doesn’t notice Angel crying; her head is bent over the phone. ‘I’m doing it on the phone calculator because I will give him two pounds thirty-seven which is all my money and Jem says he will give a fiver,’ she says. ‘So how much will you give, Mum, then we can pray?’

  ‘Um, fifty.’ Christ, was that the best she could do?

  ‘OK, that’s five. And two pounds thirty-seven, and fifty – Mummy, is that fifty pounds or fifty pence?’ Ruby, frowning, is at Angel’s side. She tugs her mother’s sweater, and does not let go. Angel closes her own hand over Ruby’s and squeezes the warm fist curled in her palm.

  The next hour exists beyond time. Injected with determination Angel runs, her feet echoing on the slapping mud, sound ringing around the marsh as if it is encased in tin. Her breath is rough and painful, and a musty taste of foreboding sits at the base of her throat. She pushes it down and runs, her footprints marking her jagged progress to and fro across the marsh like a damaged heartbeat on a screen. Her mud-caked feet ache as she hits into razor shells and pebbles and her muscles tremble uncontrollably when she pauses, panting. Jem catches up with her. He flips open his phone, squinting at the screen.

  ‘Shit, Dad hasn’t called back,’ he mumbles, throwing himself down on the bouncy sea lavender, his palms on his face blanking out the sky. Taking his hands away he sits up and looks at Angel.

  ‘Mum, this is pointless, we should call someone. Get them to send a helicopter or the police. I can’t get Dad, I’ve left so many messages on his mobile, and I think Gosha must be on the Internet, because the home phone goes straight to answerphone. We have to let someone know.’

  Angel shakes her head, crouching next to him.

  ‘No, he must be here. We’ll find him in a minute. Children muck around like this all the time. Think how many times I’ve lost any of you.’