A Short Affair

by Simon Oldfield

  I pulled the car over to laugh at the chimpanzees. They moved in an infantrymen’s file formation through the thick mud of a tidal causeway. Their absurd arms, though sensible for African forest canopies, flopped and splashed in cold British muck. They floundered, their fur caked and matted, but they doggedly processed towards the shore. Two chimps dragged a motionless third, its bowed legs dragging pitifully behind. Tourists left their idling rentals to watch. The falling pound and the novelty of the sea animals had been a boon to the tourist industry. Police cars and Support Unit vans arrived as the apes collected at the shore visibly exhausted. I told my wife to stay in the car with the youngest while the older boys and I went for a better look.

  The chimps huddled to pick mud and seaweed from each other with a meditative patience. More police gathered. More tourists gathered. The apes chattered into each other’s ears as the crowd churned and grew restless. The boys and I got caught up with the excitement. I felt happy-drunk, watching their ridiculous grimacing heads swivel, big monkey-ears flopping, stupid brown eyes wide with fear. We cursed the chimpanzees. The police told the crowd to get back in our cars and leave. So, we cursed the police. News vans appeared as if by precognition and their antennae rose towards heaven.

  We pushed forward and the police formed into a line of black batons and chartreuse hi-viz jackets. My oldest – he’s fifteen – with his shirt pulled over his nose ran forward and launched a rock over the shouting crowd and police. As soon as the missile was launched, he did a victorious fist pump and swaggered away. He’s always been my favourite. It fell short of the animals, but they scattered. On the packed earth and asphalt the comedy gait of the creatures became sinister. The chimps moved with purpose. They bared their teeth and screeched at the crowd. They banged driftwood on the ground. The animals returned to their huddle only to be interrupted by another stone thudding to earth nearby. Every human, tourist and police, was yelling. Teeth bared and brows furrowed, spit flew from our snarled mouths. My middle boy, barely ten but tall for his age, searched about for rocks so the oldest and I could sling them at the animals. It felt great to be doing something as a family again. The line of police burst into a flurry of batons to push us back. Behind them, the chimps darted back and forth as if pacing a cage. Someone got a direct hit. The crowd exploded into cheers. The animal, screaming and thrashing, held its broken arm.

  The next rock smashed through the window of a blue Ford Fiesta on our right. Everyone flinched and looked around confused until we realised the chimps were throwing the rocks back. They rushed the line of police. Their howling screeches seemed to be everywhere at once. Black fur and teeth flashed. A grey-muzzled chimpanzee was jumping on the chest of a fallen riot cop as it bashed wildly at his face with a chunk of driftwood. I gathered the boys and legged it.

  We got into the car and sped away. The boys and I laughing, talking a million miles a minute. Still out of breath, I tried to explain to my wife what happened and my oldest was re-enacting his beautiful first throw. My youngest looked between his brothers, glowing with admiration. My wife picked something from my hair. I examined the pink chunk of curd, maybe it was brains. I put down the window and tossed it out.

  ‘Who wants fish and chips?’ I asked.

  The car erupted in cheers and clapping.

  From the great gleaming white wall, we ate our takeaway and watched the continuing melee below until the sun set. From this height, the dead bodies were insignificant, black, punctuation marks. Tiny toy cars burned and popped black smoke. Helicopter gunships strafed the beach. How much it all looked like a video game and one that we were winning. Afterwards we drove along the coast and marvelled at the serene moonscapes of our coastal towns.

  UNDER THE WAVES

  Barney Walsh

  Artwork by Mary Ramsden

  UNDER THE WAVES

  Barney Walsh

  Abigail died when she was a little girl, just six years old – died and came back, clever trick if you can do it. Like something out of the Bible, not exactly. She drowned. Her lungs filled with water and she sank under the waves, into the depths, as if for ever. Now, loads of years later, she can still feel it happening (she tells Bex) – as if it were yesterday, as if it were now. She can see it: a young father and his little daughter walking by the sea one dull summer’s afternoon. The sandy beach stretching endlessly empty before and behind them, low weedy cliffs walling off the world. A few gulls wheel overhead, darker smudges on the sky’s grey. The man’s dead skinny, wears a baseball cap; his face is wisped with a patchy attempt at beard. The girl’s bright-yellow coat is all zipped up, the hood’s drawstring yanked tight around her face. A harsh northern wind slices at her pink cheeks. They ignore each other, this man and this girl, as if they are strangers, together only by chance. Alone in their own heads. Tiny seashells crunch under his unlaced boots, under her little white trainers. The waters twist darkly into the distance.

  The man lights a cigarette, but it’s soon finished. He flicks it towards the sea; the wind snaps it inland. The girl, Abbie, skips along the water’s edge, dancing in and out of the waves’ grasp. Tiny lights blink in her heels at every step, red for port and green for starboard. The sea scares her, a bit, the choppy grey masses of it heaving over one another. She’s being brave, by getting so close – but God, just the sheer weight of all that water, can you imagine? (‘I’ve seen the sea before,’ sniffs Bex.)

  Abbie kicks at the pebbles scattered about the beach, looking for one she likes. Of all the many, many stones stuck in the sand here, washed by the sea, one of them will have magic powers. She’s making it up but she knows. If she can only be the girl who finds it. Like in a story. It’s here somewhere – telling fibs, pretending to be just normal stone, smooth-worn rock – but Abbie’s not fooled. Somewhere there’ll be one you can rub to make a genie appear; or one you can squeeze in your hand while making a wish to pop you into some next-door universe, more dangerous than this one but less scary and loads more fun. Or there’ll at least be one you can put in your mouth to turn yourself invisible, something like that. Something to make the bullies go away, maybe. She just has to find it. There’s lots of different colours and patterns, but nothing that really looks magical. The pebbles are brighter when they’re wet; they go faded and disappointing as they dry. They click together under your feet. Abbie keeps looking, ignored by the man, till at last she spies one that’s interesting, and picks it up: a translucent jade disc, an almost perfect circle. It’s a lens, an eye, of clouded green crystal. Uncut emerald. A crystal ball, a scrying stone. She holds it up to her own eye, but can’t see much through it yet: a few dim misty shapes, maybe, a vague swirling. Blurry images of the future, or the past. But she’ll have time to practise later, to see better. She zips it for now into her coat pocket.

  And just then from nowhere a huge dream of a wave rolls in, catching Abbie unawares, reaching far across the sand. Grey as ash, it lifts her from her feet. She gives a cry and topples into the surf; her tiny fingers claw at the sand, at the shingle, but as it withdraws the wave pulls her with it, its strength astonishing, stealing her little body away – and she’s gone. Only empty beach remains, as if she never existed; even her footprints washed to nothing. The man, the girl’s father, safely above the tideline, takes one hesitant pace towards the sea, and stops. He stands there blinking, clenching and unclenching his fists. He doesn’t know what to do. No one else is in sight. After that one freak wave, the water has gone back to its normal, choppy sanity. He twists around to scan the grassy line of little cliffs behind him: there’s nobody. No one’s seen a thing. He looks again at the sea: the slate waves swell and fall, break at the edges, slide up the sand, cloudy liquid glass, and out again – but there’s no sign of his kid. As if he’d only ever imagined that he had a daughter. He has no idea what to do. He thinks of the pub, of the way the evening’s or afternoon’s first pint begins to drown all a day’s bad thoughts. Maybe he’d dive in, if he could see anything to swim for, any hint of Abbie’s shiny y
ellow coat splashing amid the waves – but she’s gone. And maybe he wouldn’t have bothered, anyway. (‘You know he wouldn’t,’ says Bex. ‘He didn’t, the selfish cowardly bastard.’ ‘Don’t,’ says Abigail.)

  She’s gone. Her father tries to light another cigarette, but his hands shake; he tries again, and manages it. He empties his head (‘Can’t have been much to be rid of,’ says Bex), turns and walks back the way they came. Along the crumbling sea, over the whispering sand. The wind beating at his ears, gusts of it shoving him onwards, away from Abbie, little pushes to stop him changing his mind. A path of splintering wooden planks breaks off from the beach, cuts steeply up through the rocks and back towards the caravan site. At the top he pauses, turns back to look one final time at the sea – feels like he’ll never see it, or something, ever again. Is it just the sea or is it ocean? He can’t think any more. His thoughts hollowed out. His little girl lost somewhere under those waves? – it’s just not a thing he can believe in. She must’ve run off back to the caravan, to the playground or wherever. Can’t just be gone. He’d been her dad but he’d never actually done much for her. Never even, like, tied her shoelaces. Left all that to her mother. ’Cause the foot’s backwards when it’s someone else’s, must make it tricky, what if he got it wrong and she laughed at him? Couldn’t stand that. (‘Seriously?’ says Bex.)

  But he’s back at the caravan site now, hundreds of identical boxes arranged over a few sloping fields. Each like a child’s tiny white coffin (‘Yeah, like he’d have thought of that,’ says Bex), till he gets in among them and they’re just plastic rooms on bricks again. He counts the rows to find his: up two steps and the door squeaks as it opens.

  The girl’s mother is sitting sideways on the couch in the caravan’s end window, hugging her legs to herself and staring out at the little patch of sea that’s visible from here. Last night at the caravan site’s bar has given her a bit of a fragile head. She lifts her cheek from her bare knees as the man flicks the door locked. He tosses his baseball cap into the corner.

  ‘I saw a seal, I think,’ the woman says. ‘Even from way up here. A little sleek dark head, I think it was a seal. Or maybe it was just a buoy. A buoy, or a boy. Or a sea lion, what’s the difference? Oh my head. Where’s our Abbie?’

  ‘What?’ says the man.

  ‘Where’s Abbie?’

  ‘Oh, right. Out playing, we’ve got ages.’

  ‘Ages for what?’

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  He comes over and kisses her. The back of her head bumps against the glass behind her, not helping her hangover. He puts his hands on her breasts and kisses her. It’s kind of unexpected. When’s the last time he touched her properly, like this, like he actually means it? Ages since. The only spark of life he’s shown in God knows how long; it can’t last but what’s even brought it on? Whatever, her vodka-stained brain’s in no fit state.

  ‘Hey, not right now, no,’ she says, pulling back her head from his. ‘Get off me.’

  ‘Just shut up, okay?’ he says.

  The couch is too narrow, he drags her to the floor, uses his knee to part her legs. Cheap scratchy carpet. Anyone passing could just look in, couldn’t he at least shut the curtains? He yanks her top up, squeezes her breast, it hurts, the other hand’s pushing itself down the front of her denim shorts. She almost tells him okay fine whatever just get it over with, as the simplest way to make this not be happening, but then instead she goes no – for once properly no – says, ‘I’m telling you don’t’, and when he takes no notice she shoves hard at his chest, trying to push him off, scratches at his face with her nails. It doesn’t do much, she’s not really got any nails to speak of, chews them too much, but she does sort of catch with a fingertip at the soft skin under his eye – it makes him go ‘Ow!’ He backs off. Muttering to himself, he slides back across the carpet and up onto the couch again. He gets a squashed cigarette from his pocket, lights it, and sits there, forearms on knees, looking down at her. His mouth opens to speak; he changes his mind.

  ‘You got something to say?’ she asks him.

  He stares at the carpet instead.

  ‘Or are you just going to sulk?’

  She stays lying on the floor. She’d ask him for a cigarette, but it’d mean talking to him again, plus she’s meant to be quitting. Smoking, not talking. Her shorts unbuttoned, her top hiked up – God, what if Abbie were to walk in right now, what would she think? But he’d locked the door, hadn’t he? From down here she can see sky instead of sea: the grey’s a bit lighter, that’s all. The clouds have waves too. Drizzle set in for ever, it seems; on and off for the rest of the week, at least. Rain ruining poor little Abbie’s holiday. No, Abbie doesn’t let stuff like that put her off – she’ll be out there anyway, running about playing, bossing the other kids, that’s if she’s not off wandering in her own imagination. Not bothered by a bit of water.

  The woman straightens her top and fastens her shorts. She dressed this morning as if it were sunny, not miserable; as if the weather might change just to suit her. But stuff like that never happens. She stands, glares at the man; his head still hangs forwards but he’s watching her now from under one cocked eyebrow.

  ‘What?’ she says, a hand on the caravan door.

  One last chance for him to say something, but he’s still not got a word.

  ‘Fine,’ she says, opens the door and steps out into the wintry wet summer. She tries to slam the door but it doesn’t catch, bounces and slowly swings out again. She has to go back and shut it properly, listening for him laughing at her but hearing nothing.

  Arms folded, she walks off down the hill, needing to get away. Barefoot through soggy grass. The wind cold on her skin, a few fine pinpricks of rain touching her bare limbs. This holiday was a bad idea, but she’s known that all along. There’s nowhere else to go: she follows the path down to the bay, a dent in the rocky coastline, where a few sad families have gathered, doing their best in awful weather. If this summer had any sun, if it weren’t for the water lacing the air, it’d probably actually be nice here. Maybe. She could go in the little cafe, one of the camp’s plasticky log-cabin-type buildings, have a cup of tea. Get out of this drizzle that’s threatening to get worse. If she sits there long enough Abbie will materialise, wanting ice cream or something. They can share a dish. But as she gets closer she sees the place is full – miserable people escaping miserable weather – and she can’t stand to be in a crowd right now, not if she looks half as bad as she feels. Plus she might have disgraced herself a bit the night before. Women would frown, men would smirk, and she can’t be dealing with it right now.

  She veers off instead in the other direction, heading uphill to the top of the lumpy cliffs that line the coast. There’s a bench up there, usually it’s empty, facing the sea, where she’s come to sit a couple of times before, just to gaze out at the waves, not thinking anything at all, letting her mind be empty, her hangover drain away. If you can call them cliffs, which you can’t really. Low, sandy hills, heaps of brown boulders with little tufts of grass on top. She holds on to the rock with her toes, high enough to see pretty far in all directions: the thin beach curving out from the bay, north and south; the caravan-studded fields behind her, woods rising beyond them; and the sea stretching away for ever before her. She thinks vaguely of her own childhood holidays. Her parents always took her to some godforsaken seaside town, all bleating amusement arcades and elderly candyfloss, tacky gift shops and the smell of fish; whether it was somewhere new or the same dump every year, they all blurred into one. If there were ever days it didn’t rain, they’ve not stayed in her head. She’d promised herself, then and lots of times since, that if she ever had kids she’d take them abroad every year – off into the sun – but that isn’t what’s happened.

  She gets to the bench; it’s all hers but kind of damp. She sits anyway, hugging herself, leaning towards the sea, her bare knees pressed together and feet apart, toes pointed in like a child’s. She lets her thoughts, memories, all
the other bits of her head, all pour into the water, disappear under the waves to be washed away, as if for ever. But once when she was a girl, on holiday, there’d been a ship wrecked on the beach. She sees it again. Where? She can’t remember, it could even have been here. The wreck looked like it’d been there always. It stood tilted, hull stuck deep in the sand, tall and black and monstrous, dead, a great jagged wound in its flank to let the water in and its guts out. Maybe her memory’s exaggerating, maybe it was only a little trawler or something, but she’d crept past the warning notices – being brave – to have a better look. It was like a huge dead animal; she’d wanted to stroke its ancient skin, as if she could comfort it. But then when she’d got near it’d been all barnacled and spiky with rust, too ugly to touch. It’d towered over her, its echoey metal creaking high in the wind. Her feet sinking ankle-deep in watery sand, she’d got a bit scared and backed off – what if it was haunted? Maybe it set sail in the night, a ghost ship, doing whatever weird and wicked stuff. She walked away, and as soon as the sand got firm enough she started to run.

  Now there’s no wreck, no ships at all, only a lifeboat, skipping across the water – bringing someone safely home, she guesses, or probably just practising. Though now she’s finally wondering, rising to her feet, where’s our Abbie got to? It’s not that she’s looking, particularly, but only that she just sort of notices – as if by accident, as if it weren’t anything to do with her, even as she starts again to run – that there’s no one in sight, among all the children she can see on the beach, or messing about in the little playground there, who could be her daughter.