by Patrick Gale
Deep in her second gin, Sylvia had raised the old theory, much discussed in Alzheimer’s chat rooms and fund-raisers, that early onset of the disease was particularly common in people whose lives had been basically unhappy, even traumatic; the bereaved, mothers of murdered children, survivors of persecution. Publicly he scorned the theory, finding it as crudely metaphorical as the insulting myth that sad, repressed personalities were more prone to cancer than sunnily open ones, so that child-blessed wives were favored over unloved virgins. In private, however, he had lately found the theory like a mental burr that stuck and chafed however hard he tried to dislodge it with reason.
He had always thought of Frances as someone who had led a happy life. All or most of his images of her were happy. The image he had carried in his mental wallet all these years was of her grinning, in a swimsuit, on a sandy beach. But perhaps he was confusing her feelings with the ones she evoked in him? She always spoke of herself as happy, basically happy, fortunate too. Could it be that she was trying to convince herself? Repeat the statement often enough and it became true? Had she been protecting him or had he been fooling himself? Certainly they had undergone their trials—what long-married couple had not?—but theirs was a sound marriage and, he had just learned from Sylvia, to be counted a successful one. “You’re still together forty-one years on? It’s a successful marriage.”
Frances looked up and, seeing him loitering on the pavement, waved.
BEACHCOMBER
Julian would have been perfectly happy to be left alone. He was happy with his room with its lookout window and its sounds and smells of the sea. He was happy with the beach, especially when the tide cut it off from the bigger one around the corner and it became Our Beach. He was happy sitting among the rocks reading The Story of Troy, making sand castles, fishing in rock pools, buying cornets from the ice-cream van that drove around the bay twice a day. In the evenings he could barely keep his eyes open long enough to eat and in the mornings made himself a picnic breakfast rather than wait for his parents to appear. The grown-ups, however, seemed to feel that his happiness could not be complete unless it directly involved them and kept pestering him to swim, to go for a walk to visit some old church or another beach not nearly as nice as the perfect one on their doorstep. He knew his parents liked peace and quiet—“Ah! Peace and quiet!” was a typical exclamation of theirs on returning from some excursion—and by the same token that they enjoyed doing nothing at all because leaving their deck chairs or beach towels was always accompanied by such protestations of effort and a sort of nasty-medicine insistence upon doing what they believed to be the right thing. They baffled him.
When it was announced that his uncle and cousin were coming to join them for a few days, Julian had been excited. The mystery cousin was especially intriguing. He had become accustomed to obedient signings of Christmas and birthday cards to the enigmatic Skip and sensed, from people’s reactions, that it was unusual and therefore faintly glamorous to be able to talk of my cousin in California, but she remained unreal to him, less real even than a character in a book because she entered his life supplied with fewer telling details. He sensed from the way his parents dismissed certain television programs and their thinlyveiled disgust when a well-meaning but distant relative gave him some Charlie Brown books for his last birthday that there was something not quite right about American culture. Judged against the things they did value—Bach, Rievaulx Abbey, Shakespeare—it must have seemed too new, too brightly colored. The romantic matinées he watched with his mother were usually American (at least the best ones were) but it was understood they were an indulgence not to be discussed in his father’s hearing, like the chocolate bars they sometimes wolfed between meals, all the better for being secret.
Julian could tell his parents were unhappy about the unexpected visit from the over-bright way, all smiles, in which his mother announced it to him. “And you’ll be able to play with Skip! Won’t that be fun!”
He had probed their unease with questions. How long were they staying? Where would they sleep? What did Americans eat? Until something in his father’s vexatious, “You’ll find out soon enough,” told him they knew little more than he and were afraid of what lay beyond their ken.
Until now he had always been glad his cousin was a girl. She would prove a more interesting playmate, should they ever meet. This was his first thought when he heard she was coming. A girl would enjoy his quiet sandy pastimes, making seaweed gardens, collecting shells, exploring rock pools for shrimp and baby crab, poking sea anemones with shells to make them close. A girl would prove no threat and would not expose his male deficiencies the way another boy might. Then a chance remark of his mother’s—“I suppose the poor thing will be glad of some female company for a change”—undermined this fragile certainty. He pictured the doll-like perfection of the creature bearing down on them—even her name suggested Shirley Temple bounce—her poise, her wit, her feminine guile, and he saw how, by polarizing their little household with her mere presence, she would expose his corresponding lack of brutish capability.
“You must be especially kind to Skip when she comes because she doesn’t have a mummy.”
“But she’s older than me.”
“You must still be kind to her. She’s only got her father and this’ll be her first time in a foreign country.”
“We’re not foreign. We’re Great Britain.”
“You know what I mean. Foreign to her. Apart from your Uncle Bill, we’re all the family she’s got.”
“Doesn’t he have any relatives, then?”
He saw that this thought had not occurred to her but that she masked her ignorance with her usual retort when he had her cornered. “You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself.”
He resolved that his only recourse would be extreme politeness. It was plainly impossible to be kind to someone you didn’t know but he could be polite, studiously polite, so as to highlight her American not-quite-rightness even as she exposed him. Meanwhile he resolved to preempt the effects of her arrival by striving to be all his parents could wish for in a son. He embarked on the expected holiday diary without prompting, sticking in postcards of the churches and villages they visited along with pieces of dried seaweed, lolly sticks and museum tickets and writing a drowsily dutiful report at each day’s end. He swam when his mother told him to swim, although the brine stung his eyes and made him retch when he swallowed it, although he stubbed his toes on unexpected pebbles and had a horror of Moray eels. This morning he had agreed to play cricket with his father for the same reason.
Last year, one of their overnight camping trips had unluckily coincided with his short-lived devotion to the novels of William Mayne and he had expressed a wish to remain in the Height of Extravagance reading the last chapters of A Swarm in May rather than walk through the drizzle-sodden field where they had spent the night to peer down some ancient well.
“God, you’re so boring,” his mother had shouted.
She had probably forgotten saying this—it had goaded him into action and so served a temporary purpose—but it wounded him deeply. Wounded and warned him. For it made him aware of the terrible possibility that her love and loyalty were not automatic, that she or his father might look at him with coldly assessing eyes and find him not the boy for whom they had hoped. They might reject him as they threw out cakes that were stale or returned clothes that had revealed signs of shoddy tailoring. He knew they could not send him back to some factory or abandon him in a wood, like the parents in a fairy tale. Or rather, they could—he knew about child-killers, Henry had told him—but he knew this was not their style. He knew they could not put him into Borstal or approved school unless he broke the law, but he knew they could send him away. Boys were sent away all the time, sometimes to the other side of the world, so far that they could only go home in the longest holidays and sad, unsatisfactory arrangements had to be made for the shorter ones. He had read of such things in several books.
They did not truly p
lay cricket, of course, because there were only two of them, but his father produced bat, ball and a set of stumps. Pa had played cricket up at Rexbridge, played in the university team at Lord’s, and Julian sensed without anyone saying as much, that it would please him immoderately if Julian turned out to excel at the game too. He had tried. Elements of cricket appealed—like its relative stillness, the bulky pads, the linseed oil, the arcane method of writing down scores, the words silly mid-off—but he had an unshakable horror of the rock-hard ball and the damage it could do. He had been shown a horrible photograph of a bird killed by a flying ball at Lord’s and subsequently stuffed. He fumbled even the easiest catches because at the last minute his concentration was thrown by the memory of the bird or an image of broken fingers or pulped brain. Why should the ball be stained bloodred if not, like the floors of the Victory, to disguise the marks of carnage?
They tried bowling and catching practice first. The idea was for him to attempt to bowl his father out. Failing that, Pa would endeavor to hit the ball so as to grant him an easy catch. Occasionally he would grow impatient and whack the ball far over toward the cliffs so that Julian had to run for it. His mother clapped when this happened and called out bravo from behind her novel in a voice not her own.
Julian had always bowled daisy-cutters, not daring to attempt an overarm bowl lest it betray his lack of coordination and send the ball off at a dangerous or merely ludicrous angle.
“At least have a go,” Pa insisted. So he did and the ball flew wildly off course. “If you learn one thing this week,” Pa said, “it’ll be this.”
“It’s a holiday, darling,” his mother murmured. “Not a boot camp.”
“Well we wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Pa said. And he winked at Julian.
He had never winked before. It was extraordinary; like hearing him swear. And his use of we, admitting Julian to the select circle from which as a mere girl his mother was excluded, was briefly thrilling. In fiction and the playground, Julian much preferred the company of girls since most traditionally male interests bored him and girls were better at make-believe, relying less slavishly than boys on the previous afternoon’s television. Now, however, he wondered if his boredom were not a worldly mask for fear of failure. If he could kick a football without people laughing or bowl a respectable overarm that even stood a fighting chance of dislodging the bails it might change his whole view of things.
“Never mind the run-up for now,” Pa said. “Just whirl the ball round and round.” Julian did as he was told. How could this ever feel natural? It seemed as effortful as doing the crawl. “Now let go.” Julian let go and watched the ball fly high in the air and land uselessly between them. “Don’t worry. At least it was in the right direction. Now. Try again.” Amazing himself with his own eagerness, Julian ran for the ball and tried again. He began to whirl it over and over. “Just let go,” Pa said, an edge of impatience entering his voice.
“What if I hit you?” Julian asked, chastened.
“No chance.”
Julian let fly the ball, causing his father to lunge aside in a way that made his mother laugh.
“See?” he said, laughing too, but Pa was unswervable.
“Well try it again but without me there. See if you can just hit the wicket without me getting in the way and worrying you.”
Julian tried it again, with a run-up this time, and somehow sent the ball yards wide of the mark. His father caught it and shouted Owzat. It must have stung his palms, Julian knew it must, but he caught it without a flicker of pain. Manhood was astonishing. Maybe he enjoyed the pain? Maybe that was what men did? Like pulling off sticking plasters without crying and shaving and boxing and putting wounded rabbits out of their misery with walking sticks.
“I’ll never get it,” he said, taking refuge in a risky show of sulkiness.
“Of course you will.”
“Show me.”
“All right. Good move.” Pa seemed pleased. “Your turn to bat.”
“Not too fast, darling,” his mother murmured and turned a page.
“I won’t,” Pa said and, catching Julian’s eye, winked again.
He must have misjudged the distance or had the sun in his eyes. Julian had expected it to bounce a yard or two in front of him. Instead it seemed to come so fast that he lost sight of it entirely. Then something struck him so hard in the face it seemed best to fall down. He was briefly aware of the sudden chill of damp sand on his cheek, then everything went blank.
He heard crying in the distance, recognized his own voice and fled back into the darkness to hide. When he came to his senses, he was lying on his bed under a quilt and a strange boy was staring at him from near his feet, frowning. He had short reddish hair, freckles, a stripy T-shirt and he was chewing gum.
“Did they rub it with steak?” he asked. His voice was gruff and he talked American. Like Samantha in Bewitched only not so sweetly.
“I beg your pardon?” Julian asked back.
“They should’ve held a piece of steak to it, right after it happened, all raw and bloody. It stops it going black. You’re going to have a real shiner if they didn’t. You’ll look stupid.”
“Who are you, please?” Julian demanded.
The boy gave no reply but merely hollered over his shoulder through the half-open door, “He’s awake!” As adult voices drew nearer, he turned to go, pausing only to say, “Don’t let it get to you. Cricket’s only for sissies anyway. Tomorrow I can teach you baseball.”
“Is the ball soft?” Julian asked.
The boy gave a sullen grin that made him look much nicer but also rather frightening. “Not when I hit it.”
He was replaced by Ma, who kissed him and rubbed his head, and by a doctor, who examined his swelling eye with fingers that smelled of fish, asked him a few silly questions, like who he was and where did he live and how many fish-smelly fingers was he holding up before making up a cool, witchhazelly wad of cotton wool for Julian to press on his bad eye and declaring him as right as rain.
The doctor left but the voices continued, those of his parents and somebody else. There was laughter—the kind Pa only produced when he was with other men—and the unmistakable sound of ice in glasses. The strange boy was talking too, though not much. Julian began to feel slightly silly. The doctor had said he was as right as rain but Ma had not said he could get up. He did not feel ill and there were few things Pa despised more than malingerers, so he sat up. The soggy bandage slipped. Julian retrieved it and held it back against his eye, although it no longer felt so deliciously cool. He walked to the looking glass and peered at the damage. Reassured that he was indeed wounded, and quite dramatically, he padded out toward the voices.
His parents were in chairs on the veranda with a man in a black leather jacket and jeans. Not like Darrin in Bewitched, more like someone in The Virginian only less reassuring; a cattle rustler, maybe. A bad man. He had very thick black hair, much thicker and longer than Pa’s, and a mustache like Lord Kitchener’s on the England Needs YOU poster Ma had stuck up in the upstairs lavatory as a joke. Incongruously, the boy was sitting on his lap, swinging his legs. The grown-ups were all drinking. The boy appeared to have a whole bowl of Cheese Footballs to himself. The man looked up expectantly and said, “Hi there,” in a voice that was nicer than he looked.
The boy just stared.
“Oh darling. You’re up,” said Ma. “I didn’t think we should bother you till you felt ready. This is your Uncle William. Bill. Sorry. And this is Skip, your cousin. And guess what? They came all the way from Sussex on a motorbike like Steve McQueen’s.”
Julian remembered his resolution to be polite. “How do you do?” he said.
As he extended his palm to shake hands, the unsupported bandage fell from his eye and plopped wetly to the floorboards. Everybody laughed so he did too. He pretended he had done it on purpose and did it again. But nobody laughed the second time and he could tell from the way Skip looked at him that she was not deceived.
BLUE HOUSE
Taking time off did not come easily. Will was not one of nature’s travelers and was never happier than when doing what he usually did, holding the fort for others. He had been to Paris and Florence as a hostelling student and been inspired by Finn’s example to go backpacking across England in a last mad bid for freedom before sitting his Finals but in the twenty years since had only traveled alone once. After his first year in the children’s library, he took a cheap flight to Naples, spent a week in the second-best hotel he could find, sight-saw until his feet bled and was so wretchedly homesick and unhappy with no one to talk to that he finally swallowed his pride and came home a day early. Holidays might not have been the preserve of the married but they were, he decided, group activities. Since then he had confined himself to spending weekends away, visiting friends, sometimes even visiting friends in the middle of their holidays abroad. He always took a make-me-welcome present, entertained difficult children and aunts, left while he was still wanted, wrote a witty thank-you letter and was inordinately pleased to return home.
Kristin, who helped him in the bookshop, was quite capable of running it on her own for a fortnight. Gaia, to whom he sublet the café, ran it as an independent business with her retinue of underwaged devotees, and expected little of him anyway. Nothing in his life had been a great success up to now and he could not quite believe what his accountant and cash register had begun to tell him. He was convinced the delicate balancing act, the small economic miracle, would all slip sideways into chaos if he turned his back on it.
When one of the big chain bookstores opened a branch in town, he had been prepared to see his custom decimated. It had wavered, certainly, dipped, but he had weathered the storm and his loyal customers soon returned. He could not carry a huge range, but he gave a personal service. He knew what his regulars liked and so could recommend new titles to them when they came in. He also ran a popular mailing service, sending out small parcels of novels or biographies to customers isolated or expatriate, on the understanding that they would return anything they did not want. And returns were remarkably few. Like the chain stores, he invited famous and not so famous authors to give readings, but his Saturday meet-the-author lunches remained popular because lunch was free to anyone who bought a hardback first—regardless of who wrote it. And his lazy Sunday morning book-brunches had become a cult ever since a national radio program suggested they provided an excellent opportunity to pick up love or consolation. Kristin said the popularity was down to Will’s policy of letting customers browse on sofas or the little café terrace before they bought, resulting in an irritating stream of books which had to be reduced because of food smears. Gaia attributed sales to the excellence of her brownies and biscotti. Whatever the reason, it was a business that Will had conceived, set up, decorated and often run on his own—give or take some advice from Sandy—and he was loath to entrust it to others, however capable, for even a fortnight. Kristin said that if he telephoned her more than once in his absence, she would walk out on him.
