Skin

by Tobias Hill

  Here we go,

  The Captain and I,

  Riding on land

  That is nice and dry!

  The sea is wet,

  And terribly salt,

  Though I know of course

  That it’s not its fault.

  The waves are enormous,

  And when they break –”’

  Laughter outside. The slam of a car door. When I try to stand up my legs have gone to sleep. I shift on the bed and the blood prickles back into its vessels. It’s too dark to read but I know this story by heart, it’s always been the twins’ favourite. I can’t see a thing except their hair, white on the pillows like sand on a beach at night. The screen saver too, a moving light on the corner desk. Fish eating fish. There’s worse places to be than this. But I’ve lost my place. Anywhere will do.

  ‘“WUFF, WUFF, WUFF! Bumpy rushed to the front gate – and there was little Tessie Bear with Big-Ears! They had heard Noddy was back. How they hugged him, and how his head nodded making his bell jingle loudly!”’

  More laughter outside. A man’s voice, then a woman’s voice, high but throaty, familiar as salt. I stop and listen for a while.

  ‘No. No! No. Really not. Ring me, though, will you? Page me, e-mail me, fax me. Fax! Goodbye. Bye.’ She’s whispering now. The kiss rasps like a match. A front door clicks open and shut. It’s ours. ‘Dan, are you home?’

  I put my hand in my jacket pocket, feel the letters. Six of them. Final demands. Tomorrow or the next day, the whole house will stop like a worn-out battery. I can’t tell her. I could do with a drink.

  ‘Dan. DANNY!’ Plastered, listen to her. Standing at the foot of the stairs, bawling. I’ve got some catching up to do. The bed creaks. ‘Daddy, you didn’t do the necklace bit.’ Ah, bollocks.

  ‘We’re almost there, love. Right. “Oh! A pearl necklace! Oh, Noddy, NODDY! For me! Goodness, I never in my life thought anyone would give me such a lovely necklace. I’ll put it on.’”

  The bedroom door opens in a flood of light. She leans there, a cup of water in her hand, hair like glass fibre. Her face is dark, though. I can’t see what she’s thinking. Then she leans her head to move hair off her face and I see the slackness of her eyes and mouth.

  ‘Have they been OK?’ She doesn’t whisper. June opens her eyes, yawns.

  ‘They were sleeping like babes until you came in.’ She folds her arms, balances the cup against her breasts.

  ‘Gee, thanks. Am I supposed to feel guilty?’ She’s not looking at me. Her eyes are on the screen saver. The little fish swim faster than the big fish. The big fish have orange teeth. I sit back against the headboard.

  ‘I can’t tell you what you’re supposed to feel.’

  She snaps back fast, ‘Don’t be smart, Dan. I just asked if they were OK.’

  ‘They’re fine, Julia. Tickety-boo.’ She sighs.

  ‘Fine. Say goodnight to them for me, eh?’ She shuts the door behind her, but carelessly. It swings ajar.

  One of them shifts under the duvet, whispers. ‘Beautiful shells, Daddy.’

  ‘Shells, yeah. Sorry, pet. Almost there. “She looked sweet in it, and Noddy was very pleased. Then he gave Big-Ears the sack of beautiful shells. For your garden and mine, he said. And some for Mr Plod too—to put round the edges of the flower-beds.

  “Wonderful! said Big-Ears, astonished. But what was it like, Noddy, at sea? And where’s your ticket back, Noddy? Can you tell me that? Because no one comes back from the sea.”’

  ‘May, are you awake? Eh?’ Page-hiss, white falling across white. A simple movement doing complicated things. ‘“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Three cheers for Noddy! Two cheers for Tubby! One cheer for Bumpy! Hurrah! Hurrah for the Captain! Hurrah for everybody! The End.” G’night May, night June.’ Whispering now. ‘Love you to death.’

  ‘Night, daddy.’

  ‘Goodnight, daddy. Goodnight.’

  November

  I open my eyes and the air smells of classrooms. I’ve had this dream more times than I care to count in the last six months. A going-back-in-time dream, trying to make things better. Always a little different, always the same stars: me, Julia, the computer, the twins, the train. They’ll all be in here somewhere. A small pantheon of death gods. I close my eyes and wait for someone to say something.

  ‘“Time takes a cigarette”?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like in the song. You know, Bowie? Oh, Dan-ny.’ I concentrate on her skin, how her neck glows between the furl of her school shirt. She’s so beautiful. Was. Is. And I’m the Four-Eyed Paddy Git again. My trousers are too short. I get nervous when she’s around. I get nervous quite a bit. My hands smell of her hair and Star Wars bubble-gum cards. I try and keep that for when I wake up.

  ‘So? Have you got one?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A fag, Dan! Jesus.’ I know I look shocked.

  ‘But we don’t smoke.’

  ‘How would you know? Anyway.’ She looks off towards the science buildings, folds her legs. Hiss of cloth against her thighs. She turns back to me, frowns and smiles. It makes my stomach lurch. I must be dreaming teenage hormones. ‘What do you want to be today?’

  This was one of our games. Something we had in common then. ‘A computer games programmer. Ace, that’d be.’ When I grin it makes my glasses slip and I have to stop grinning and push them back up.

  ‘Ace.’ She tuts. ‘I’ll be a photographer and a magician.’

  ‘You can’t be two things.’

  She kisses me. So fast, a quick little sigh of a kiss. While she’s up close, she says, ‘I can be anything.’ Then she stretches and sits back. ‘What do you think is the most important thing in the world, Daniel?’

  It’s a catch-out question. She’s going to show me up again. I don’t mind, though. I shrug up scrawny shoulders inside my worn jumper. ‘Computers. They’re cool. One day they’ll do everything. Drive cars and have babies even, I mean’ – Christ, I’m blushing in my sleep – ‘deliver the babies. Like doctors.’

  ‘Brr-brr.’ Julia makes a game-show buzzing sound with her lips. ‘Wrong. It’s miracles because they can happen anywhere and do anything.’

  ‘Then there must be miracles in computers, too.’

  ‘Yeah, like what? Passing maths CSE?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you said –’

  ‘You’re so stupid, Danny! I was joking, all right? There’s no such thing as miracles. Ha!’ She jumps off the wall, dusts herself down. She’s won again. Losing scares her too much to lose. I feel a shiver of anger.

  ‘This is just a dream, Julia. I know what’s going to happen. The twins catch a grasshopper on the yellow platform line. I’m buying you a paper from the stand. Are you listening to me, eh?’ I’m shouting it. ‘The grasshopper jumps and the train door opens before the train stops. It takes no time at all. It’s all done with, now.’

  She straightens, looks at me, begins to cry. She’s taller now, heavy-hipped, standing with one hand supporting the pregnant swell of her belly. Twins. Behind the wall a train rumbles closer. Click-clack click-CLACK. I can’t turn my head. Julia wipes her eyes and starts to walk away. I stand up on the wall.

  ‘I’m sorry. Stay, Julia! The twins are coming back soon, I promise, you’ll see. The computer will bring them back, because there are miracles in computers too. Don’t leave me with the twins, Julia. Please stay.’

  She doesn’t turn round. I sit down again. The bell goes for third period. The train sounds its klaxon, a long low hysteria. No one can hear me now.

  ‘The twins are coming back. Please stay.’

  October

  ‘Daddy, will you play Beanz with May?’

  ‘Not right now, love. Give me five minutes, eh?’

  I always loved the smoothness of the computer screen. Different from a TV, because of the possibilities. I can make such wild things happen behind this thick water-grey glass. The keyboard, too, the sound of it. Rhythms helped after the twins were killed. Anything mindless –
cooking, walking, typing. They helped me think not to think. I run my fingers across the solid plaques of letters and numbers. Shift and Enter click like dice.

  It always smelt of children in here. Even while the twins were gone. Especially then, actually. Milky sweet. On the floor below the window, May and June are doing a jigsaw puzzle called Beanz. It’s of baked beans and it has a thousand pieces. The twins seem to love it. They never get bored. They never even ask if they can leave the room. As if they just know they never can.

  This is what I do. If I ever went out now, and people asked me ‘What do you do?’, this is what I’d have to say. I sit in the bedroom of my dead children while they play games beside me. I surf the Net on a computer that has its power switch welded permanently on. I watch my children fade literally while my wife and I fade virtually and I wonder what to do about that. And I wait for my wife to come home.

  I look up at the window; not dusk yet. She’ll be gone for hours yet. I think she might be seeing someone else. We survived our children dying but we can’t get through their coming back. I sit, one hand loose at my side, the other clamped to the mouse. I start to surf the Net.

  The first Window I enter is a ‘chat room’. Someone called Pharmer Gyles (www@worm.farm.co.cymru) claims he’s found an anti-ageing gene on worm farms. He’s trying to sell the copyright to three other Names. I sit back and watch for a while, then Exit and roam.

  When I was a kid I dreamed of this. It’s magic, the way I make Windows transpose and overlap. I can control all of it. Chat rooms, texts, graphics. Julia hated it until I showed her how to do it, back in the summer. Then she was mad about the freedom and chaos of it. All the New Age mystic stuff. For a while.

  There’s a tinny electronic trumpet call and a window appears on the top of the stack. A private room, a one-to-one talk. I could make it go away. My hand waits spidered over the mouse.

  WEBSTER? YOU THERE?

  YES.

  GREAT! DID YOU GET MY MESSAGES?

  I DON’T KNOW. I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

  MUCHOS APOLOGIES. AMY NAKAJIMA FROM ANCHORAGE UNIVERSITY? WWW@anchor.ouija.com. FROM THE INTERNET OUIJA, REMEMBER?

  WEBSTER?

  ‘Daddy? May’s thirsty again.’ It’s June, tugging my left hand. She pulls the fingers apart, tries to braid them. ‘Hold on, June,’ I whisper, ‘Daddy’s busy.’ I don’t take my eyes off the screen. I type.

  YES.

  IT’S JUST YOU LEFT YOUR ADDRESS AND STUFF ON THE ENTRY FORM, AND THE NET OUIJA WAS MY DISSERTATION PROJECT. ‘PAGANISM AND SOCIOLOGY’. DEADLINE’S IN TWO WEEKS, (ARGHH!!)<: I REALLY NEED TO FIND IF ANYTHING HAPPENED. SO MANY PEOPLE TOOK PART, BUT

  HOW MANY?

  CLOSE ON A MILLION. ALL OVER. GLOBAL OUIJABOARD, WEBSTER! AND I’M GETTING SOME PRETTY AWESOME QUOTES ABOUT RESULTS. THINGS YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE. ACTUALLY, I DON’T EITHER. THAT’S WHY I MAILED YOU. THE NET’S SO FULL OF ODDBALLS. I NEED AN UPRIGHT CITIZEN. LIKE YOU. A GENUINE PROGRAMMER! IS WEBSTER YOUR REAL NAME?

  NO.

  WELL CAN I HAVE IT?

  NO.

  OK, NO PROBLEMO. I’VE GOT YOUR WORK DETAILS. HERE’S THE KEY QUESTION, WEBSTER: DID YOU EXPERIENCE ANY RESULTS FROM TAKING PART IN THE FIRST INTERNET OUIJA?

  ‘Dada-daddy, I’m thirsty.’ She’s jumping up and down on my foot. I Exit from the private room, Exit the Net. A screen saver comes on; flying toasters bumping into fluffy clouds. My heart’s still going too fast. I haul the twins into my lap as I spin the chair round.

  ‘Aha! A thirsty girl! And what would you be thirsting for? Would it be bird’s-nest soup?’ Their bodies are cold as refrigerated meat.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would it be borscht?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could it be orange juice with ice in?’

  ‘Yes. Daddy, what’s borscht?’

  I go down to the kitchen and crack three ice-cubes into each glass. May’s glass has elephants on it, June’s has giraffes. It’s so good to have them back. My chest aches with it, so that for a minute or two I have to stop. Arms pressed against the counter, head down.

  September

  Julia took this one four years ago, back when she was into Incan mysticism. Our Neo-Hippy Trail days. It’s of a mountain town, one cobbled street with train tracks narrowing to vanishing point in the right-hand corner. Two women in black walking into that distance, already small.

  The houses look like Spain but in the foreground is a postbox-red train carriage, rusting up on the tracks, and painted in gold lettering it says FERROCARRILES ECUATORIA (SEGUNDA CLASE). The twins are standing in front of the carriage, arms at their sides, smiling, shy. Their heads don’t reach the top of the carriage wheels. This is the last photo we have of them before the crash. The train carriage looming behind them.

  It was in June’s My Little Pony travel-bag, I don’t know how it got there. Julia found it when we began, month by month, clearing out the twins’ bedroom. At the time it seemed like a message of some kind. That seemed logical. There were signs of death everywhere back then, echoes of the twins. Ghosts and auguries. Nights when I couldn’t sleep I used to just sit with this photo, the PC and the Anglepoise, looking for information. Writing it all down. Saving it.

  For example, why aren’t I in the picture? I remember seeing Julia standing in the doorway of the town bank, under a cast-iron awning, camera blotting out her face. So what was my perspective, could I see the twins at all? One of them, June I think, is looking off to the left instead of at the camera. What does she see up there? Is that where I was? Was I looking back at her or was I thinking of machine code and new software designs?

  Then there’s the fifth figure. Under the chassis of the train carriage, crouched between the iron girdering of suspension and the black radius of a wheel. White trainers, dark hair, small as the twins, with something cradled in its arms. How many times was it before I noticed this hidden fact, the shadows resolved into a face? Many times. Did I see it on the day? And what is it holding so carefully? What does it feel, caught there on film in that secret place? I can see the whites of its eyes. So close. It looks terrified. It terrifies me.

  It’s just a snapshot. A coincidence. There are no miracles. June is not looking up the rusted tracks. Nothing is coming that she could have seen.

  August

  ‘Do you think they’re OK?’

  I’m down on my knees in front of the PC, injecting Superglue into the gaps around the power switch, when Julia comes in. She watches the twins as if they were patients on a leukaemia ward. My hands are spongy with sweat. Autumn never used to be like this.

  ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?’

  ‘They’re … pale.’

  I stop and look. May is standing in a path of thin sunlight, singing a TV theme tune, lost in her own world. The TV’s on behind her with the sound turned down. I can see it through her chest, a movement of pink light. Like a bare bulb held against fingertips. I turn back to the computer.

  ‘Pale. Is that what it is?’ I’m on the edge of laughter. I take a deep breath. ‘They’ve been like that since last month. Haven’t you noticed, love?’

  She doesn’t say anything, just lights a fag. Bad for the computer. She should worry about that. ‘Dan?’

  ‘What.’

  ‘What if there’s a powercut?’

  ‘For fuck’s sakes.’ I stop myself, sigh. ‘Then the PC would shut down. For hours, not seconds like last time. All right?’ Now the switch is welded to the main casing, permanently powered. With the screen saver on all the time it should be fine. I move over to the wall socket and squat down, start on that.

  Julia sits down on June’s bed while the girls get dressed. She doesn’t help them and they get stuck with their new shoes. She doesn’t come in here much anymore and they can’t leave the room, so she doesn’t see them a whole lot. I don’t see her a whole lot either. She goes out most nights. Gets away.

  May goes over and stands in front of her, solemn and almost albino-blonde.


  ‘It stings, Mummy.’

  ‘What stings?’ Harsh voice. Waiting for the punchline.

  ‘The sting. It stings.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  I put down the tools and look at them. May leaning forward, Julia flinching back.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, June –’

  ‘May!’ I tread on the glue as I stand up. It instantly hardens yellow against the bedroom carpet. ‘It’s May. Jesus, do you not even know your own child now?’ She’s up and running, pushing me back against the wall. Hissing.

  ‘No, I don’t, Danny. I do not know my own child. I don’t understand what’s happening.’ There’s a little quiet while we breathe. I shake her off, stare her down.

  ‘A wasp got in this morning. It’s the first time she’s been stung. That’s what happened. That’s what she’s trying to tell you.’ Hair hangs down around her face. It looks like she’s grinning when she cries.

  ‘That’s not what I meant, Danny.’ Whispering tears. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘A miracle, my love. That’s what’s happened. A computer miracle. Our children came back. Aren’t you happy?’ When she starts to shiver I go forward and gather her in. Hold on to her tight. Behind her, June has just learnt to tie a bow.

  July

  ‘Night, Mummy.’

  ‘Goodnight. Will you give your dad a kiss too?’ Their skin is warm and smells faintly of milk. Just like always. May has a 99P price sticker hidden in her hand and they press it against my hair, giggling, the three of them, Julia’s flank warm against mine. After a bit she sighs and I let them go and stand up and yawn.

  ‘Fancy a bite to eat?’ Julia says. I nod, grin. She comes up, kisses me. ‘Then I’ll get a bit of what you fancy.’ She quietly opens the bedroom door.

  I stand in the half-dark, full of happiness like an open bottle. I can hear them settling down and I want to hold them again. Then the PC screen saver catches the corner of my eye. It’s been on for ages, I think. Weeks. Ever since the miracle. I’ve been so wrapped up in the twins coming back, I didn’t even notice. I walk over, switch it to shutdown and click it off. Its light narrows to a median line and winks out.