The Trailing Spouse

by Jo Furniss

  Camille drew another sharp breath. But, of course, Lani had been doing a job. Like the memory of the cobras, Camille readjusted to an adult point of view. She didn’t doubt that her nanny’s warmth had been genuine, but maybe Lani needed hugs in lieu of cuddling her own children. Perhaps the attachment to Camille and Collin was compensation for raising her own family via the money she sent home. Maybe her devotion reassured her that she wasn’t a bad mother.

  Bold with adrenaline, Camille walked up to an open window and peeked into the living room. This had been her home, and she still felt a kind of ownership. Birthday parties and sleepovers. Family dinners and film nights. Plaiting her mother’s hair while her father threw a Frisbee with Collin.

  Something like that. She scratched a prickle of sweat on the back of her neck; she’d thought that once she was here, seeing it with her own eyes, there’d be a gush of memories. All she got was a trickle.

  She pushed herself away from the window and followed the concrete walkway to the rear of the gardens. A chain-link fence, swamped by creepers, divided the homes from the rain forest.

  The garden behind her old house was smaller than she remembered. The land seemed to shift under her feet, shrugging off its childhood dimensions and resizing to adult scale. The two images—now and then—overlapped in her mind. She remembered columns of ants churning up rivers of loose soil like valleys seen from the sky; seedpods that rooted with supernatural speed; bold macaques that Lani kept from the kitchen with well-aimed ice cubes; and stiff grass that left Camille scratching herself bloody even while she planned her next adventure.

  A sharp rustle snatched Camille’s attention to the forest. A jungle fowl flapped onto the fence, its iridescent tail gleaming. There’d been no fence when she lived here. In fact, she recalled, they’d trespassed into the rain forest so often there was a rough pathway into the trees. They’d always wanted a tree house but only managed a lean-to that her mother feared would harbor snakes. They’d tortured her with their wandering. She’d worried about the swimming pool too. Ah, yes! There’d been a swimming pool. Right in the garden. Aboveground, with a wooden deck built around it—and that’s where they found the nest of cobras!

  Camille walked closer to the fence as though she could sneak up on the memory and spy it in its native habitat. She remembered a garden party. Voices laughing and beer cans fizzing. Smoke from the grill. Sausages spurting fat when she stuck in her fork and ketchup licked off her chin. Heat that boiled over inside her body. She’d wanted to swim, but her mother didn’t like her to swim alone. Even great swimmers can get a bang on the head!

  “But I’m hot!” Camille’s indignation was feverish.

  “Call Collin.”

  “He’s with his friend. It’s not fair, I don’t have anyone to play with. I’m going in!”

  “You need someone to watch you.”

  “I’ll watch the pool”—a man’s voice.

  From her vantage point by the fence, the scene played out; then overlaid onto now like the shadow puppets that had decorated her childhood bedroom.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Mother told the man. “Cami can wait.”

  “I might dip my feet.” He laughed. “I’m roasting.”

  Mother dug a beer from the cooler and pressed it into the man’s hand while she bent and whispered into Camille’s ear: No splashing, no screaming, five minutes only. He’s here to talk with Daddy. Then Camille was free to grab her savior’s arm and drag him in her wake, her mother and the other women cheering—for him, Camille saw now through her adult filter, not for the excited girl but for the handsome man who was sweet with children. What woman doesn’t cheer for that?

  She let go only when she was sure he wouldn’t change his mind, and then she raced up the steps, smashed through the safety gate, and leaped into the simmering air. They say anticipation is already happiness, but her relief as she was swallowed up by the water exceeded all expectation. She stayed at the bottom, the sun’s rays skittering like fireflies over her skin, until the man’s feet appeared, dark and wiggling, making her laugh out wobbly bubbles that she chased to the surface.

  She hadn’t meant to splash him. She heard her mother’s voice again quite clearly as she leaned over the garden fence, peering into her childhood. “No splashing!” But the refreshing water had filled her with voltage, and she rocketed to the surface, triggering a curling wave. She watched, useless to stop it, as the wave rolled around the rim of the pool, gathering size and pace until it washed over the man’s trousers, his shirt, even splashing his face.

  He had smiled and told her not to cry, but all these years later her skin burned again with shame and panic because she had soaked the guest who came to speak to Daddy. She remembered the rough towel in her hand, his wet hair between her fingers as she scrubbed him, the sound of his laughing protest. And she remembered his face emerging from the cloth: damp, ruffled, but smiling—thank goodness, smiling. She remembered his eyes as he promised not to tell her mother. She remembered his face. Edward Bonham’s smiling face.

  Chapter 32

  “Is that a Sea Breeze?” Amanda pointed at Josie’s drink, wedged into the sand beside her rattan mat. Amanda settled onto a sun lounger, and Josie closed her laptop.

  “Dad said I could.” Josie picked pineapple off the rim of the glass and sucked it into her mouth with a soft pop.

  “Vodka in the middle of the afternoon. You’ll be asleep by dinnertime.”

  “Surprised you’re not on the frozen margaritas yourself.” Josie waved her hand along the beach bar to indicate that everyone else was getting tipsy.

  “I’ve already got a headache.”

  Josie squirmed around in a crackle of snapping fibers. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “No! God, no.”

  Josie turned back to the sea, pulling her gleaming white baseball cap down to touch the top of her glasses. She licked the corners of her lips in her feline way and said, “You’d make a good mother.”

  “I hope I get the chance.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Amanda wanted to bury them in the sand. Was she supposed to have said that she considered herself a mother already—a stepmother to Josie? Or would that be overstepping the mark?

  “You’re not distracted like those mothers who have stuff going on.” Josie’s voice was nonchalant, but her lips remained parted, eyeteeth showing. She dug at the cuticle of one thumbnail with the other. “I don’t suppose Dad’s keen.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well . . .” She scooped up white sand and let it run from her fist like an hourglass. “I guess he had enough with me. Being a handful.”

  “He’s never described you like that—”

  “He had to look after me when she had her breakdown. And then after she died.”

  Amanda waited, but Josie was silent. “He wanted to look after you; he’s your father.”

  “It was hard for him. Everyone wondering why his wife killed herself, what drove her to it. As though someone else must have climbed into the driver’s seat and taken over her controls. Which is stupid because then it would be murder, right, not suicide?” Josie sucked pineapple bits through her straw. “He gave up a lot for me. So maybe that’s why he’s not sure about having another child.”

  Amanda reached for her own drink and drained it, her mouth as dry as sand. Since when is he “not sure” about having a child? Stopping fertility treatment was temporary—that was what he said—until she recovered from the miscarriage and he got back on an even keel at work. He said he wanted kids. He knew she wanted kids. People don’t just change their minds about that. Has he been keeping his true feelings from Josie or from me?

  “I remember this one woman at my mother’s funeral.” Josie cleared her throat. “She kept saying, ‘I just can’t see it.’ No one else dared mention the s-word—suicide—but she stared out the window the whole time, saying over and over, ‘I just can’t see it,’ as though scientists had discovered a new color in the rainb
ow.” Josie got to her feet, hands on hips, scanning the beach. “I suppose if you do have a baby, I could help look after it. Pay it back.”

  Amanda sat up on her sun bed. “There’s nothing to pay back. And it’s a moot point because I’m not pregnant.”

  “You’re not too old. Where is he?”

  “He went to get snorkels.”

  “Over there.” Josie pointed to Ed, who was leaning against a lone palm tree with a pile of flippers at his feet. He seemed rapt by a group of teenage girls playing volleyball in tiny bikinis. Amanda remembered the illicit thrill of sun and eyes hot on her bare skin; the girls were flaunting themselves and enjoying the attention. But Ed’s staring right at them. One of their dads will notice and thump him.

  Josie watched too, pulling the sleeves of her modest rash vest. “I’m going for a swim.” She ran across hot sand into the crystal water.

  After the girls scored a noisy point, with much high-fiving and readjusting of bikini bottoms, Ed seemed to come around. He stood upright, one hand steadying himself on the tree, glancing up and down the beach, and gathered his snorkeling equipment. Amanda found her book and opened it somewhere in the middle before Ed reached her.

  “Good match?” she asked.

  “What is?”

  “The volleyball.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and half smiled. “Too hot for all that.” His face looked ashy despite a flush of sunburn across his cheekbones.

  “Maybe you should cool off?”

  Ed looked down at her. “What?”

  “Cool off. Maybe you should.”

  “Where’s Jo-Jo Sparrow?”

  Amanda dropped the book into her lap. “Are you all right, Ed?” He was pale and rubbing at his elbow.

  “Hot, isn’t it? I had a bit of a head rush, slipped on some water by the bar. And Bernardo’s kicking off about paperwork for the jet. Says it can’t wait.” He threw his mobile phone onto the lounger and hauled the plastic mask onto his face. The snorkel flapped foolishly as he glanced around. “Where’s Josie?”

  “In the water.”

  He nodded once and set off, high-stepping as Josie had done on the hot sand.

  Amanda watched Josie swim in to meet her father. They kneeled in the shadows, baby waves pushing them together and apart as he adjusted her mask. There was some disagreement over the life jacket; Josie waved it away, Ed shrugged his on and clipped it shut. Finally, they pushed off into the shallows and two spumes of spray marked their progress to a dark patch of reef.

  Amanda motioned to a passing waiter, and when she looked back, the sea was flat and empty. A low drone signaled the arrival of a dive boat. A flash of yellow flipper on the reef: Josie diving. She tried to recall the exact words of their conversation a few minutes before, but the lines were as slippery as the ones in her book. Something about Josie being a burden, wanting to pay it back. She recognized the lone-child guilt, but she was surprised by the weight of the millstone that Josie carried. A low rumble of male laughter at the bar, and in her head Amanda heard Ed say: You owe me. Could Josie’s guilt be coming from him? Was that something he’d told her? You owe me. Was that how he might justify . . . abuse?

  Why did that word make her shudder when she suspected him of so much more? A pattern of attacks on eighteen-year-old women, in preparation for whatever he had planned for his own daughter as soon as she was of age. As soon as Amanda knew, she became responsible. And that was one thing Ed was right about: she didn’t like responsibility.

  She looked at Josie’s laptop. Had she been writing? Posting on her blog? Amanda picked up her own device. The website loaded in her browser. Timer: six more days. A new image: a hand-drawn GIF of a stick girl pushing against a window frame until it broke apart, and she fell out. The scribbled lines blurred to a frenzy as the girl plummeted. It was disturbing. Amanda tapped the GIF to make it stop repeating the image over and over, and it connected her to a new page.

  Preamble

  A sapling rises

  When timber bequeaths the light;

  Cultivating fruit

  For his sour relish.

  Your voice in the rain, crying

  “Leave her to ripen.”

  In the future: Six Days Until D-Day (oops, lost a day—stupid island Wi-Fi!)

  In the past: Thirteen Days That Made Me Me

  Post 6 of 13: Winners and Losers

  The slightest breeze stirs the cotton bunting across the starting line. All the parents sigh with relief. Mothers who are not in the race slump beside the running track, fanning themselves with wilted napkins. The school nurse arrives with a fresh supply of oranges. I inch my toes onto the white line. Even the chalk is melting. Crouched low to tie a lace, I see ants crawling in the grass. The sound of cheering children recedes, as do the parents’ shouts of encouragement and teachers’ booming instructions. I steady myself by focusing on Teddy, a hundred yards away at the finishing line. He gives us a thumbs-up.

  To my left, Lillian and her bovine mother pose no competition. On the far side, Clement points to his eyes with two fingers and turns them on me while his mother adjusts her sports bra. I imagine he’s an ant who will be squashed when I start running. The next pair aren’t even on their marks. And in the lane directly to my right, my mother’s blindingly white trainers, looking like they’ve just come out of the shoebox.

  I shift my gaze to Teddy on the finishing line.

  Mr. Cox walks behind us and pokes his finger between our ankles, tugging the lace that binds our middle legs together. “Nice and tight,” he says. “Put your arms around each other.” But when I try to slide my hand around her waist, his hand is already there. She looks back over her shoulder and giggles. “You’re a dead cert,” he says. Then Mr. Cox leaps away onto his step and holds the pop gun aloft. The crowd goes still.

  “Last race, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Cox shouts. “The one we’ve all been waiting for. Bigger than the Wimbledon final.”

  “At least the women here get equal pay,” says the bovine mother.

  “What—nothing?” says Clement’s mum. The mothers cackle like crows.

  “The final!” Mr. Cox bellows, to a few listless whoops. “Of the St. Dymphna’s Sports Day mother-and-child three-legged dash!”

  My calves harden. The rings on my mother’s left hand dig into my rib as she pulls me close.

  “This is ours for the taking, Josie.” I glance up at her. She’s wearing the huge sunglasses that Teddy said make her look like a praying mantis. Her wrinkles spread out from behind the lenses as though her face has been smashed by a cricket ball. She calls them laughter lines, though she says it in the voice that means she’s speaking in opposites.

  “Feet behind the starting line, please.”

  Her white trainer jolts back an inch, leaving a smear of chalk and ants.

  “On your marks—get set—go!”

  Our conjoined leg lurches forward and our bodies bump together, my head bouncing off her left breast. She lifts me with her arm and our outside legs scissor forward, then the middle leg strides out again.

  “That’s it! One, two; inside leg, outside leg.” Her voice is as bubbly as pop. “One, two. One, two.” We get into rhythm. There are shouts of laughter—someone has fallen—but we are galloping along. Teddy is bent over, clapping his hands, and I can see his mouth shouting, “Come on,” even though I can’t hear his voice. Two heads bob along behind her elbow on the far side, but we’re a stride ahead and Teddy is coming up fast.

  “One, two,” I shout and we’re across the line and Teddy catches me as I fall and she comes down with me because we’re tied together.

  “You won!” Teddy grabs my shoulders and joggles them up and down. Mr. Cox appears through the crowd and says, “Medals.” Mum pulls at the cloth that’s cutting into my ankle now, but when it won’t come loose because it has pulled into a knot, Teddy gets a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and slices through the fabric. Mum follows Mr. Cox to the podium, which is really just a plastic box with a
scarlet cloth over it.

  “Come on, Teddy,” I try to pull him up.

  “Well done, Jo-Jo Sparrow.”

  “Come and see me get my medal.”

  “I have to go. The traffic to the airport will be bad.”

  “You’re not going to Saba, are you?”

  Teddy laughs. “No, just Schiphol. Easy landing. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I don’t want you to go!”

  “I’ll bring you a present from the airport.”

  “You’re back in time for the weekend?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss our weekend. I’ve made a plan. We’re going to run away together.”

  “On a plane?”

  Teddy laughs again. “To the circus!”

  I’d seen signs for the circus. “Cool,” I say, and don’t tell him it’s too young for me.

  “It’s a grown-up circus,” he says.

  “Can we run away on a plane another day?”

  “We’ll be together soon enough. Kiss for Daddy.”

  Teddy squeezes me and makes a bear noise. I watch him walk across the school field in his pilot uniform, making other mums’ heads turn like sunflowers following the sun.

  Amanda scrolled back to the poem. Her eyes lingered on “his sour relish,” until a thump to her right snatched her attention. She’d thought it was a falling coconut, but someone was running. A man had jumped from the bar onto the beach, heading for the water. A glass shattered as another man pursued. They reached the sea and waded in with their clothes on. Amanda stood. The atmosphere had flicked with a switch.

  “Oh my God!” A fluty voice from the bar, hitting a shrill note.

  The dive boat roared to life, pulling Amanda’s focus to the water. She started across the hot sand. Clothed men were wrestling something in the water. Not wrestling—carrying. As her feet sunk into wet sand at the water’s edge, the dive boat blocked her view. A hand on Amanda’s shoulder made her head whip around.

  “Is it your daughter? And husband?” The receptionist’s eyes were round with shock. Amanda looked down to see that she’d grasped him around the forearms, her hands as pale as the sand in the shallows.