The Playground

by Julia Kelly

  On the beach Sophie was like a child, so happy to be by the sea, long-legged and giggling, apologizing to strangers about her wayward dog, helping her little girl out of her socks and shoes and trying to find Ben’s spade. Her hair looked different – had she had it cut? Surely not since yesterday? And she was wearing a cozy-looking navy-blue duffle coat with a checked lining that I hadn’t seen before. I smiled at her while Beige Nicola got herself comfortable on my picnic blanket before I’d even straightened it out. She wrapped her arms around her girls, all three of them watching Buddy’s every move and whimpering any time he came within sniffing distance.

  One of her girls thought it would be a good idea to cover the blanket with pebbles from the beach. And did Beige Nicola do anything to stop her? No, of course she didn’t. I soon gave up trying to organise things, took Addie’s hand, encouraged her to go and play with Lauren who was skimming stones into the sea, while I caught up with my new friend and tried to get a conversation started. I moved in close and whispered, ‘Her kids are afraid of dogs.’

  ‘I know. It’s a tiny bit awkward, isn’t it? But they won’t be staying long. She has to get back to bake biscuits for the school cake sale.’

  ‘Ah no, it’s lovely to see her.’ I said, all blasé, carefree. I couldn’t let her see how put out I was, how them being there changed everything, never mind that I’d only packed for three:

  3 × packets of Snacks crisps

  3 × cartons of smoothies

  3 × packets of chocolate buttons

  1 × bag of Babybel cheeses (that Sophie and I could also share)

  3 × blueberry muffins (which hadn’t quite worked out. The first two attempts had burnt and these ones were crumbly and underdone, less muffins, more of a doughy mush in tinfoil, but I thought they tasted yum.)

  Lauren had become naked from the waist down; her Love Heart knickers abandoned on the sand because of some problem with them. Her bum looked too large when compared to the rest of her and somehow too adult-looking to be on view. Addie was annoying her, mimicking her every move. ‘Stop copying me,’ she shouted, interested only in running away from the waves with Beige Nicola’s little, but bigger, girl.

  ‘They’re not playing with me, Mama,’ Addie whined.

  ‘How do you do it like that? It’s amazing!’ Sophie said, about Addie’s hairdo. Joy had styled it that morning into two tidy plaits that formed a perfect heart shape at the back of her head.

  ‘All Joy’s work I’m afraid.’

  ‘God, she seems amazing – you’re so lucky to have someone like her.’

  ‘I am lucky, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But nothing. Joy is a lovely human being,’ I said, not wanting her to think I was a bitch.

  Another family was making their way through the sand towards us, encumbered with buckets and blankets. We weren’t the only mad ones, it seemed. And where did they sit, with the whole great spread of beach before them? Right beside us. Staring, smiling, encouraging their children to play with ours as they organised themselves. Why couldn’t they all just bugger off and let us be by ourselves the way I’d planned it?

  I told myself to snap out of it. The sun was warm on my neck and Beige Nicola’s kids had begun to relax; both had ventured a few inches away from their mum and were occupied with the fishing net. I would try to be a little more flexible, to forget about my original plan.

  I battled on. ‘Did you hear that Billy Flynn climbed over the railings the other day, when he couldn’t get in by the gate? He ran through the flowerbed, uprooting all the flowers Irenka had planted, just for the heck of it. She went berserk!’

  The story fell flat and Sophie didn’t even hear the best bit about Irenka wounding him with her garden shears because just at that moment Beige Nicola started shouting at her daughter, who was down at the seashore, trying to remove her clothes too. ‘No, darling. It’s too cold for no knickers,’ obscuring the crucial part of the rather amusing remark I’d just made.

  Other things I’d been planning to say to Sophie – things that might have interested or amazed or fascinated or made her laugh – were never said.

  And I was developing the sort of headache, just above my left eye, that I always got when I was talking to mothers I didn’t really know about things I wasn’t really interested in. The conversation was unsatisfactory and left me feeling the way fast food does, filling you up for a short time but leaving you hungry half an hour later. There were so many missed opportunities, so many unheard jokes and distracted half sentences and meaningless conversations about shoe size and toilet training and all of those other things that had become such a fundamental yet dull part of my life.

  And then, far too soon, there was talk of home. Not from Beige Nicola of course, no such luck, no mention yet of the biscuits she had to bake, she was just settling in, her hands propped behind her back, her face upward towards the sun, her legs spread out on my picnic blanket. There was a hole in her left sock; an unpainted, yellowing-at-the edges toenail was toying with the tassels of my picnic blanket.

  No, it was Sophie who’d said it. ‘Oh, you can’t go yet,’ I said, sounding a little desperate, ‘we haven’t had the picnic.’ And when was I supposed to give her the birthday present? A honey-scented bath cream that I now considered to be wasted on her, on us, on the development of a friendship that wasn’t developing the way it should because Beige Nicola was there beside us, listening in, so that I had to dilute everything, make it general, censor myself.

  ‘God, of course, Eve. Thank you for going to so much trouble,’ Sophie said, settling down again, beckoning her children.

  And out came the picnic. And great news, Beige Nicola. I had miscounted; I had in fact FIVE smoothies, enough for everyone. Now I was in control, I was mother hen. The children gathered on sandy knees and wet knickers around me. Beige Nicola’s kids dove in and she sunk her teeth into a Babybel, her horrible big toe still fiddling with the tassels. Not one mention of ‘thanks’ or ‘I shouldn’t really’, or ‘you’re so generous’. All she said was, ‘You know, these are just full of sugar. I mean you might as well be giving them chocolate,’ as she read through the ingredients on the side of the smoothie carton.

  Sophie had brought some snacks too: homemade flapjacks in a recycled shoe box, hazelnuts and a large bag of cashew nuts, as well as some popcorn in a Tupperware container that made my shop-bought chocolate and juices look wasteful, artificial and unhealthy. She sat sideways on the blanket in her duffle coat, felt about for a tissue and wiped her nose – I hadn’t realised she had a cold.

  ‘Guess what, Ben, in the car on the way over, Addie said you were her best friend.’

  ‘Well, actually, Chloe’s my best friend,’ Ben said, shimmying over towards her, ‘because she has prettier hair.’

  ‘Ben, that’s so rude!’ Sophie said, giggling. Addie folded her arms in a huff and turned her little back to them.

  I hadn’t meant it seriously, Addie said it about everyone but I could see what Sophie was thinking: best friend, but they’ve only met twice. It also occurred to me for a disconcerting moment that she might think I was a lesbian – ridiculous for so many reasons, I know, but you never know – or just in some way obsessed with her. She complained about a cold sore on her lip and I told her I hadn’t even noticed it and then that it made them look bee stung. And I interrupted a story she was telling to say that she had a lovely speaking voice. I was just trying to be nice.

  We heard roars coming from the other family who had inched further down the beach to give us some space. Buddy was happily defecating on their son’s sandcastle.

  ‘Oh God, let me deal with this,’ Sophie said, getting to her feet, shouting ‘just coming!’ and checking her pockets for dog bags.

  ‘Eve, could you mind Ben for a second?’

  ‘Of course. Have fun!’

  Ha, she had entrusted me rather than Beige Nicola with her son’s safety. That had cheered up my day. God, I was being pathetic. Before I could
say, ‘Are you OK, little man?’ Ben had taken off like a bullet, towards the waves. I cursed and charged after him, dropped my keys, retrieved them and yelled at him to stop, fighting images of his death by drowning as I ran.

  Still out of breath with the captured and crying child, I sat back down on the picnic blanket, held him on my lap, found a game for him on my phone and shoved it into his hand.

  ‘So, how are things? It must be so hard for you.’ Beige Nicola asked as she examined her fungus-riddled toenail. Of course Sophie would have told her about the tragedy of my situation, how could she not? What woman wouldn’t mention it, even in passing, but did Beige Nicola think I needed her pity? Did she expect me to open up to her? She who wasn’t even supposed to be here. Who had – at last – started saying (giving me hope, giving me hope!) that she needed to get back to bake biscuits for the school cake sale. Well off you go then. Stick your head in the oven, frost up those glasses and bake, bake, bake.

  ‘You know, you might not believe it now but you will love again,’ Beige Nicola, not the world’s most profound woman, said then, leaning back on her forearms, squinting at the sun. Pass the bucket. Why was I being so mean?

  Neither she nor Sophie noticed Buddy coming up behind them as they stood together watching their children play, both with their arms folded in the cold. He had the fishing net in his mouth. He ran between them and knocked them to the ground. Sophie roared laughing at Beige Nicola, grabbing hold of her arm to steady herself, before struggling to her feet again. ‘Goodness, what a scamp!’ she said, between howls. I didn’t make her laugh like this, had never seen her throw her head back this way.

  But we got our moment. I got mine. Beige Nicola’s children were easier to organise than ours and of course she had nothing to carry as she didn’t bring anything, so she set off towards the car. As Sophie gathered up the last of her things, saying what a brilliant day it had been and how we must do it again soon, I grappled for the gift, stuttering over my words as I tried to pull it out, playing it down, apologising, ‘Oh, God, it’s nothing. Just a tiny thing.’

  It was a wonderful success. She was thrilled, she was touched. I blushed and stammered and told her that I used to love it, that Joe used to buy it for me, and then we hugged and our sunglasses hit off each other’s but we didn’t comment on that, we just both rearranged them so we could begin the challenge of getting everyone from the beach back to the car. By now we were all freezing and I was so frazzled with everything that I picked up Ben instead of Addie and carried him over to where I had parked. It was only as I went to lift him into the car seat that I realised I had the wrong child. The Preparation H had seeped into my eyes, covering them with a greasy film and had made everything sepia-edged and fuzzy.

  And through the muddle and chaos I didn’t get the opportunity to say goodbye to Beige Nicola or her two pink girls. Never mind. Tra la la. My bag was light when I hooked it over my shoulder, everything that was in it now eaten or given away.

  I replayed the afternoon on the drive home, trying to reassure myself about how it had gone, recalling a few of the witty things I’d said, things that had got an unexpected laugh. Then cringing that I’d suggested dinner when it was far too soon for that. And about my hand touching a red patch on Sophie’s arm where I thought she might have grazed herself when she fell. And for calling her children by their nicknames and hugging them or helping them when it wasn’t my job. ‘No, I want Mummy,’ Ben had said when I’d tried to put him into Addie’s car seat.

  The gift. Had it been too much? Like the Elvis poster I’d bought to make Carla Brogan like me at school. It was in thanks for the torn newspaper cutting she’d given me of Bruno from the kids from ‘Fame’. I pretended I’d found it at home; little did she know that I’d forced Mum through every shop in Stillorgan searching for the perfect one.

  *

  Though the election was long over, Labour Party candidate Teresa Ferris was still staring in at us from the telegraph pole opposite our flat, with her painted lips and set hair. Her eyes followed me around the sitting room, always seeming to look away just as I turned to look at her.

  ‘Squirrel!’ Teresa didn’t flinch, but Addie was over, her small fingers smudging the window pane. ‘Hey, Mr Squirrel,’ she said, delighted, her exhales leaving little patches of condensation on the glass. She thumped at the window as he made his way – scuttle, scuttle – over the thick twine of the telegraph wire. And then he was gone, our excitement short-lived.

  ‘OK, say night-night to the playground,’ I was slowing down as I always did at this time of the evening. I contemplated the countless small battles we would have between now and bed.

  ‘It’s not bedtime?’ Addie said, releasing a bit of wind.

  ‘Excuse me, Little Miss Stink-a-lot.’

  ‘’Scuse me.’ She giggled at my giggling.

  ‘It is bedtime, I’m afraid. It’s cold and dark. Look, the park’s empty. All the children have gone home. Everyone’s asleep. Even the squirrels are off to bed.’

  She examined her reflection in the window, moved closer and gave herself a long, wet kiss. ‘Joy says I’m in charge about when I go asleep.’

  ‘Does she now?’ Joy had returned from Monaghan creatively revived and more controlling than ever. We’d had an argument about my parenting skills before she’d even unpacked; Addie had been half-naked and happy on a chair by the kitchen sink, doing the washing up, singing an old country song her dad used to play for her. (Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine, when you gonna let me get sober?) Aside from the inappropriateness of the lyrics, Joy felt this was a further sign that Addie needed some professional help to come to terms with her father no longer being part of her life. Then she suggested that she (not I) take Addie to see a wonderful therapist she’d met at the retreat. She’d left a brochure for Oasis Counselling on my bedside table, told me to ‘find a quiet moment to consider it’ and had disappeared into the bathroom with a bucket of Epsom Salts.

  ‘Is Granny asleep?’

  ‘Yes, Granny’s asleep.’

  ‘Is Alfie asleep?’

  ‘You can see he’s asleep. Now, that’s enough questions.’

  ‘Is Daddy asleep?’

  ‘You don’t have a daddy any more. Just like you don’t have a little brother.’ That was not a sensible thing to say. I wasn’t handling this well.

  ‘Or a crocodile,’ Addie said, grinning. Addie was fine. Addie was going to be OK; we were going to be OK.

  I turned away from her, tried to think of other things, tried to catch the headlines on the six o’clock news.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, peoples there.’

  ‘Really,’ I said, kneeling on the ground, balling up a bit of newspaper and throwing it onto the fire. Another of Joe’s old jobs. He always seemed to be passing me on his way upstairs or down, with a bucket full of logs, always on his knees, sweeping the grate, forehead creased with industry, engrossed in this, his favourite daily ritual. I’d become quite adept at it.

  ‘Peoples. No clothes on!’

  ‘Silly-billy,’ I said and stood, wiping my hands on my jeans, leaving great black streaks along each leg. I walked over, bent down behind her, held her around her waist, blew on her neck. Reflected in the window, the flames from the fire were licking the telegraph wire. It took a moment to see what she was pointing at, and then to make sense of it, but there on the bench beneath the oak tree in the playground, was a boy in a red sweater, his bare backside moving up and down, a girl’s legs bent either side of him.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What happened, Mummy?’

  ‘Never mind. Silly people. They’ll get very cold. Now, how about a cartoon?’ I said, pulling her away and turning on my computer which I’d set up on the coffee table beside the window.

  ‘I love you. You’re my best friend,’ she said, settling into her seat, thrilled at my inconsistency.

  She pointed at a thumbnail illustration on YouTube for an episode of Peppa Pig she hadn’t seen and settled into her seat. I tur
ned back to the window – they were still at it. Then the girl must have seen me; she pushed the boy off. He stood up, tugged at the belt of his jeans. It was Dylan Freeney, Mimi’s ‘dream child’, the boy all the mothers loved. Dylan and Juliette doing it in the park. Juliette grabbed her bag, sat back down on the picnic bench. No wait. Not Juliette. Juliette’s hair was longer, blonder. It was Dylan and some girl I didn’t know. I closed the shutter, turned back to the TV, tried to concentrate on the news.

  The beautiful female newsreader, so polished and coiffed, always made me feel grubby. Too aware of my unshaven legs, my dirty, bitten nails. Two hundred jobs were to go at a factory in Roscommon. There would be Social Welfare cuts in the budget. House prices had fallen again.

  ‘Come on, Peppa,’ says George, ‘I want to rape you.’ I looked over Addie’s shoulder to see the two little cartoon characters ice-skating, and then the sound of kids giggling and a thumb over the camera, and more giggles. ‘Peppa’s dad wants to fuck you.’

  ‘God, what’s going on this evening? OK, that’s enough Peppa.’ I stretched over, slammed the lid down and pulled her away.

  ‘’Nother one,’ she said, holding up her hand, voice cracking. ‘Look at my thumb, it says one.’

  I carried her protesting down to the bedroom.

  ‘I want more cartoons! You’re hurting my tummy’s feelings. Is it school tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, sweetie.’

  ‘But I don’t like school.’ She started to cry.

  ‘Do you want to see me hop?’ she said, with a quick change of tactic, jumping from foot to foot. ‘I’m not very good but it’s the bestest I can do.’

  ‘Fantastic. Now, off we go.’

  ‘But I didn’t do whining and crying.’

  ‘You are doing whining and crying.’

  ‘But I want to be happy. I want to be good.’