Getting a Life

by Helen Simpson

  “Don’t, don’t, don’t,” said Dorrie several times, but softly. The other two children joined them, sobbing.

  At last she got them all past reception and up the stairs.

  “I don’t like you, Daddy,” wailed Martin through tears.

  “I know you don’t, Martin,” huffed Max, storming off ahead.

  Really, he was very like Martin, or Martin was very like him—both prone to explosions of aggressive self-defensiveness— although of course Martin was six, whereas Max was forty. Because Max did this, she had to do the opposite in order to redress the balance, even though doing so made her look weak and ineffective. He sometimes pointed this out, her apparent ineffectiveness. But what would he rather? That she scream at them like a fishwife? Hit them? Vent her temper or ignore them, like a man? Let them get hurt? Let them eat rubbish? Let them watch junk? Just try doing it all the time before you criticize, not only for a few hours or days, she reflected as she reined herself in and wiped tears from blubbing faces and assisted with the comprehensive nose-blowing that was needed in the wake of such a storm.

  At least he didn’t hit them when he lost his temper. She had a friend whose husband did, and then justified it with talk of them having to learn, which she, Dorrie, could not have borne. She really would much rather be on her own with them, it was much easier like that. Like a skillful stage manager, she had learned how to create times of sweetness and light with the three of them; she could now coax and balance the various jostling elements into some sort of precarious harmony. It was an art, like feeding and building a good log fire, an achievement. Then in Max would clump, straightway seizing the bellows or the poker, and the whole lot would collapse in ruins.

  “I’ll get them to bed, Max,” she said. “Why don’t you go for a swim or something.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the bar,” he said frostily. “Remember they stop serving dinner at eight.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t forget to turn the listening service on.”

  “No.”

  “I know when I’m not wanted.”

  She choked down her reply, and gently closed the door behind him.

  “Now then,” she said, smiling at their doleful tear-smeared faces. “What’s up? You look as though you’ve swallowed a jellyfish!”

  They looked at her, goggling with relief, and laughed uncertainly.

  “Two jellyfish!” she said with vaudeville mirth.

  They laughed harder.

  “And an octopus!” she added.

  They fell on the floor, they were laughing so hard.

  The second day was an improvement on the first, although, as Dorrie said to herself, that would not have been difficult. They turned away from the glare of the packed beach towards leafy broken shade, walking inland along a lane whose hedges were candy-striped with pink and white bindweed. A large dragonfly with marcasite body and pearlized wings appeared in the air before them and stopped them in their tracks. Then they struck off across a path through fields where sudden clouds of midges swept by without touching them. When they reached a stream overarched by hawthorn trees the children clamored to take off their sandals and dip their feet in the water.

  “This is the place for our picnic,” said Dorrie, who had brought supplies along in a rucksack, and now set about distributing sandwiches and fruit and bottles of water.

  “We can’t walk across the strand today,” said Max, consulting his copy of the tide tables as he munched away at a ham roll. “Low tide was earlier this morning, then not again till nine tonight. Fat lot of good that is. But tomorrow looks possible.”

  He had heard about an island not far from here which, once a day, for a short time only, became part of the mainland. When the tide was out you could walk across the strand to the island and visit the ancient cell of the hermit who had lived centuries before in the heart of its little woods.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it,” said Dorrie, looking over his shoulder at the week’s chart. “No pattern to the tides, no gradual waxing and waning as with the moon. I thought the tides were supposed to be governed by the moon, but they’re all over the place.”

  The children sat by them, each with a bag of potato chips, nibbling away busily like rodents.

  “There is a pattern, though,” said Max. “When there’s a new moon or an old moon, the tides are at their highest and also at their lowest. It’s all very extreme at those times of the month, when the earth, moon and sun are directly in line.”

  Martin, having finished his own bag of potato chips, was now busily capturing ants from the grass and dropping them into his sister’s bag.

  “Don’t do that,” said Dorrie.

  “And when the moon’s at right angles to the sun, that’s when you get neap tides,” continued Max. “Less extreme, less dramatic. What the hell’s the matter now.”

  Maxine had been trying to pull her bag of chips away from Martin, who had suddenly let go, with the result that Maxine’s chips had flown into the air and over the grass, where Martin was now rolling on them and crushing them into salty fragments.

  “Stop it!” called Dorrie.

  “Get up this minute!” shouted Max.

  “Why should I, it’s a free country,” gabbled Martin, rolling back and forth, enjoying the noise and drama.

  “My chips!” sobbed Maxine. “They’re all squashed!”

  “What’s your problem,” said Martin with spiteful pleasure, getting up as his father approached and brushing yellow crumbs from his shorts. “You threw them away, so that means you didn’t want them.”

  “I didn’t throw them away!” screamed Maxine.

  “Liar, I saw you,” goaded Martin. “I saw you throw them in the air. Little liar.”

  Maxine howled, scarlet in the face, struggling with her mother, who was trying to hold her, while Martin ran off out of range, dancing on the spot and fleering and taunting.

  “Why is he such a poisonous little tick,” said Max, though without his usual fury.

  On their way back to the hotel they passed a campsite and stopped by the gate to read its painted sign.

  “Families and mixed couples only,” Maxine read aloud. “What does that mean, Mum? What are mixed couples? Mum? Mum?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Dorrie. She was reminded of her parents’ description of looking for somewhere to rent when they first came to London, with the signs up in the windows reading “No Blacks, No Irish” and her father with his Dublin accent having to keep quiet for a change and let her mother do the talking.

  “Why do you suppose they want mixed couples only?” she murmured to Max. “Why would they worry about gayness?”

  “I don’t think it’s that,” said Max. “I think it’s more to put off the eighteen-thirty element: you know, bikers and boozing and gangs getting into fights.”

  “You twenty years ago,” said Dorrie.

  “Martin in ten years’ time,” said Max.

  “What’s a couple?” persisted Maxine. “What’s a couple, Dad?”

  “A couple here means a man and a woman,” said Max.

  “Oo—a—ooh!” exclaimed Martin, giving Maxine a lewd nudge in the ribs and rolling his eyes.

  “A husband and wife,” said Dorrie deflatingly.

  “So a couple’s like a family,” said Maxine.

  “Yes,” said Dorrie.

  “No,” said Max. “A couple is not like a family. That’s far too easy, just two people. It doesn’t qualify.”

  Dorrie was laughing now, and put her arms round his waist, her head in his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair. The three children stood round looking at them with big smug smiles, beaming with satisfaction.

  “Come in for a hug,” said Dorrie, holding out her arm to them, and they all five stood rocking by the side of the road locked in an untidy squawking clump.

  “You’re looking well,” said Max, gazing at her that evening across the mackerel pâté and the bud vase holding the min
iature yellow carnations. “You’ve caught the sun. It suits you.”

  “It was a good walk today,” said Dorrie, suddenly shy.

  “They’re lovely but they’re very tiring,” said Max, draining his glass of beer. “Exhausting. You should be more selfish.”

  How can I, thought Dorrie, until you are less so? It’s a seesaw. But she kept quiet. He went on to talk about the lumberyard, how it was doing all right but they couldn’t afford to rest on their laurels with all these small businesses going down all round them.

  “We’re a team,” declared Max, grandiose, pouring another glass for them both.

  “Ye-es,” said Dorrie. “But it’s a bit unbalanced, don’t you think, the teamwork, at the moment?”

  “Are you saying I don’t work hard enough?” demanded Max.

  “Of course not,” said Dorrie. “You work too hard. Don’t be silly. No, I meant you do all the work that gets somewhere and gives you something to show for the effort and pulls in money, but the work I do doesn’t seem to get anywhere, it doesn’t show, it somehow doesn’t count even though it needs doing, of course.”

  “I don’t see what you’re driving at,” said Max, starting to look less cheerful.

  “I don’t know,” said Dorrie. “At the moment I feel sub. Sub something.”

  “Suburban?” suggested Max.

  “Subordinate?” said Dorrie. “No.”

  “Submerged, then. How about submerged.”

  “That’s nearer. Still not quite . . . I know! Subdued. Though submerged is growing on me. Submerged is accurate too. That time at Marks, all my twenties, half my thirties, it’s like a dream. I’ve almost forgotten what it used to be like.”

  And she tried to explain to Max her feeling about this encroaching blandness, adaptability, passivity, the need for one of them at least to embrace these qualities, even if this made them shudder, if the family was going to work.

  “We all have to knuckle down,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

  “It’s just it seems, some of us more than others.”

  “If we want to join in at all,” opined Max. “Life. It’s called growing up.”

  “It doesn’t feel like growing up,” she muttered from her side of the fence. Rather it felt like being freeze-dried and vacuum-packed. Knuckled down was putting it mildly.

  “Well, as I said, whatever you’re feeling like, you’re looking well,” said Max, and that made them both feel better.

  “Lovely, in fact,” he added, leaning across to touch her face meaningly.

  After dinner, sitting in the Family Room drinking coffee, they found themselves drawn into a quiz game provided by the hotel as the adult equivalent of the children’s conga. The quizmaster was a sparky woman in an emerald green jacket and pleats. She split them into groups and bossed them through an unnecessary microphone.

  “What’s the other name for kiwifruit?” she demanded, and echoes bounced off the ceiling. The groups whispered and giggled and scribbled on their scoresheets.

  “What flag is all one color?” she asked. “Here’s a clue, somewhere not very nice. Ooh, I hope no one from there is in this room!”

  “Birmingham?” suggested Max.

  “Very funny, the bearded gentleman,” said the woman. “Now we’re out of Miscellaneous and on to the Human Body. Let’s see how much you all know about the body, you jolly well should considering your age. And the one who’s paying for the holiday will certainly be hoping to know a bit more about the human body of the opposite sex or else they’ll have wasted their money, won’t they.”

  Dorrie’s mouth dropped open, she nearly dropped her drink, but nobody else batted an eyelid.

  “And we’ve quite enough children here thank you very much while we’re on the subject so let’s hope you all know what you’re up to,” continued the woman, arching a roguish eyebrow. “Right. Now. Where are the cervical nerves?”

  “And where’s your sense of humor?” Max whispered into Dorrie’s ear, observing her gape rudely at the woman.

  In bed that night, surrounded by their sleeping children, they held each other and started to kiss with increasing warmth. He grabbed shamelessly between her legs, her body answered with an enthusiastic twist, a backward arch, and soon he was inside her. There must be no noise, and she had pulled the sheet up to their necks. Within a couple of minutes they were both almost there, together, when there came a noise from Martin’s bed.

  “Mum,” he said sleepily, and flicked his lamp on. “Mum, I’m thirsty.”

  Max froze where he was and dropped his head and swore beneath his breath. Martin got out of bed and padded over towards them.

  “Did you hear me, Mum?” he asked crossly. “I want some water. Now.”

  Dorrie was aware of her hot red face looking up from under Max’s, and heard herself say, “In a minute, dear. Go back to bed now, there’s a good boy.” Martin paused to stare at them, then stumbled over back towards his bed.

  “Do you think he’s been traumatized?” she whispered to Max, mortified, cheated of the concentrated pleasure which had been seconds away, the achievement of it, the being made whole.

  “Do I think he’s been traumatized?” growled Max incredulously, rolling off her.

  “Where’s your sense of humor, then,” she murmured in his ear, but he pulled away and turned his back on her. She didn’t blame him.

  Their third day’s adventure was planned by Max. They were going to cross the strand and explore the hermit’s island. Today the tide was out at a reasonable time of the morning and the sun was up too. They stood and gazed across the shining sands at the exposed island, which was now, for an hour or so only, part of the mainland.

  “It’s further than I thought,” said Dorrie. “It looks well over a mile. Maybe two.”

  “Half a mile at most,” said Max heartily. “Let’s get going, remember we’re racing the tide. Come on, you lot, shoes and socks in the boot.”

  “I think they should wear their plastic sandals,” said Dorrie. “I can see stones. Weed.”

  “Nonsense,” said Max. “Lovely sand, skipping across the golden sand. Don’t fuss, don’t spoil it all with fussing.”

  “Skippety skip,” sang Robin.

  “I still think,” said Dorrie.

  “Give us a break,” said Max.

  “I’m not wearing my jellies,” said Martin. “No way.”

  “No way,” echoed Maxine.

  When they started walking they were less absolute, but by then it was too late. The gleaming silver-pink sand was knotted with wormcasts, which made the children shudder, and studded with pebbles, and sharp-edged broken shells, which made them wince and squawk.

  “Come on,” called Max, striding ahead on his prime-of-life leathery soles. “We’ve got to keep moving if we’re going to be there and back in time. Or we’ll be cut off.”

  Dorrie helped the children round the weeds, through ankle-deep seawater rivulets blue as the sky above, clucking, and lifting, and choking down irritation at the thought of the plastic sandals back in the boot.

  “You were right, Mum,” groaned Martin mournfully. “I wish I’d worn them.”

  “So do I,” said Maxine, picking her way like a cross hen.

  “So do I,” wept Robin, who was walking on tiptoe, as though that might spare his soft pink feet the wormcasts, and slowing them all down considerably.

  “Come on,” yelled Max, a couple of hundred yards ahead.

  “We can’t,” yelled Dorrie, who was by now carrying Robin across her front.

  It felt desperate, like the retreat from Moscow or something. Trust Max to engineer a stressful seaside event, trust Max to inject a penitential flavor into the day. They were by now half a mile out; it would be mad to go on and dismal to turn back. The sun was strong but muffled by haze, and the sky glared with the blanched fluorescence of a shaving light.

  “What’s all the fuss about,” said Max, having unwillingly rejoined them.

  “I think we’ll have to turn
back,” said Dorrie. “Look at the time. Even if we make it to the island we won’t be able to explore, we’ll have to turn round and come straight back and even then we’d be cutting it fine. Why don’t you go alone, darling, you’re quicker on your own.”

  “You always have to spoil it, don’t you,” said Max, furious as a child. “You never want anything I plan to work.”

  “Their feet hurt,” pleaded Dorrie. “Don’t let’s quarrel in front of them.”

  “Robin, you’ll come with me, won’t you,” said Max, squatting down beside his son. “I’ll give you a piggyback.”

  “Max,” said Dorrie. “It’s nearly midday, it’s not safe, why don’t you go ahead with the camera and take photos so we’ll all be able to see the hermit’s house when the film’s developed.”

  “Robin?” said Max.

  “I don’t know what to choose,” said Robin, looking from his father to his mother and back again. He was out of his depth.

  Dorrie felt anger bulge up as big as a whale surfacing, but breathed it down and said again, “Take the camera, darling, that way we’ll all see the secret island,” and hung the camera round his neck. She made herself kiss him on the cheek. He looked at her suspiciously. The children brightened. She forced herself to hug him. The children cheered.

  “All right,” he said at last, and set off across the wet sand, running simple and free as a red Indian.

  “I didn’t know what to say, Mum,” said Robin, spreading his hands helplessly. “Daddy said go on, go with me, not Mummy. You said no. I felt splitted in half.”

  “It’s all right,” said Dorrie. “Now everybody’s happy. Look at that seagull.”

  Above them, floating on a thermal, was a big white cruelbeaked bird. Seagulls were always larger than you expected, and had a chilly fierce look to them, without gaiety. She could barely speak for rage, but did not assign it much importance, so used was she by now to this business of ebb and flow. Who else, she wondered, could be living at such a pitch of passion as she in the midst of this crew; so uncontrolled, so undefended?

  Having poked around the hermit’s mossy cell and raced the tide back, white-toothed wavelets snapping at his heels, Max was in a good mood for the rest of the day, and they all benefited. He felt he had achieved something. He had achieved something. He had conquered the island, he had patterned it with his footprints, he had written his name on the sandy floor of the hermit’s very cell with his big toe. Next week he would show them the photographs to prove it.