__
Jacek brings his mother with him on day six. Ewa stands at the water’s edge while her son changes into his boots and washing-up gloves. Midday already, and the sky is clear, the sun high. Martin has sweat patches under his arms, on his back. He watches Ewa hold the front of her T-shirt away from her chest, and then flap it back and forth to get cool air at the hot skin beneath. He sees yellow pollen on her shoes, the hem of her skirt, damp hair at her temples.
They work for a while, and Jacek asks questions which Martin answers. Ewa says very little. She crouches on the bank and looks at the water. Lids down, lips drawn together, arms wrapped around her shins. When Martin says it’s time to move downstream 100 metres, Jacek says he wants come with him and Ewa says she will go home.
Jacek watches Martin watching his mother as she wades through the long grass back to the road.
– She used to swim here with my Tata, I think.
– Your father?
Martin tries to remember a wedding ring. Sees Ewa’s strong palms, her long fingers.
– He is in your country.
– Oh?
– He is illegal. Too much problems at the border, so he don’t come home.
Martin watches Jacek as they unpack the bags again. Fair with freckles. Narrow lips, pale eyes, broad nose. A good-looking boy, but not at all like his mother.
__
Day seven and Martin doesn’t go to the river. After breakfast he sets up his computer, a new graph template, and plots the data from days two and three. Both agree with day one’s graph, with Martin’s predictions, and he starts sketching out a structure for his argument, writes a first draft conclusion. The sample results should have come back from the university yesterday, including the mud and weed from day four, which would speed up Martin’s analysis. He goes downstairs to the small office mid-morning to check for faxes again, but the guesthouse is quiet, café closed, reception deserted. Sunday. So there won’t be anybody at the labs, either, but Martin walks out to the phone boxes in the town square anyway.
Jacek hammers on the glass.
– Where were you?
– Wait.
Martin holds up one finger, but the phone just keeps ringing out at the other end. Jacek peels his pink gloves off while Martin leaves a message on the lab answerphone. The boy cups his hands around his eyes, presses them up to the glass, watching him. It is stifling inside the phone box and Jacek’s hands leave a sweaty streak on the pane outside.
When Martin opens the door, Jacek has his fists on his hips. Rubber boots on the paving stones beside him.
– Why didn’t you come?
– I’ve finished. I only need to do a couple more tests.
– Oh.
Jacek picks up his boots and falls into step with Martin. The sun is strong and they walk together on the shady side of the narrow street which leads back up to the guesthouse.
– I’m going home tomorrow.
– Tomorrow?
He looks up at Martin for a second or two, then turns heel and runs.
__
Martin sleeps in the afternoon and is woken by the landlady’s husband with a message.
– Is it from the university?
– No. From my wife’s sister.
Martin stares at the man. Eyes unfocused, face damp with heat and sleep.
– From Ewa. Jacek’s mother. She works here. My wife’s sister.
– Oh, yes. Yes, sorry.
– She says you should come to her house. She will cook you something to eat this evening. To say thank you.
__
Martin showers and sits down at his computer again but finds he can’t work. Looks out at the birds instead, washing in a puddle on the flat roof of the building opposite. The concrete is mossy and Martin wonders where the water came from. He has been here a week and it’s been 30 degrees straight through and hasn’t rained once. The skin on his back is damp again, and under his arms, and he thinks he hasn’t anything clean to wear this evening, so he takes a T-shirt down the hall with him and washes it in the bathroom, lays it out on his windowsill to dry.
It is still slightly damp when he goes out to find Ewa’s. Bottle of wine bought from the guesthouse bar under one arm, map and address on a scrap of paper from the landlady’s husband. There is a slight breeze and the T-shirt is cool against his skin. He catches sight of himself in the bakery window as he passes, pushes his hair down over his forehead a little as he turns the corner. An involuntary gesture he hopes nobody saw.
__
Jacek opens the door.
– You’re early!
– Sorry.
He leads Martin up the stairs, two at a time, cartons of cigarettes and cake mix piled high along one wall. The narrow entrance hall of Ewa’s flat is similarly crowded: disposable nappies, tuna fish, toothbrushes in different shades, pink and green and yellow. Jacek sees Martin looking at the boxes.
– The man we rent from. He keep things here, we pay him not so much. Every week is something new coming for him to sell.
A table stands in the middle of the room, a wardrobe in the corner. Mattress leant up against the wall and draped with a sheet. The window is open and the radio on. Martin recognises the song, a current hit, but can’t understand what the announcer says afterwards. He goes into the kitchen, where Ewa is chopping and Jacek stirring.
– Can I help?
– No!
Ewa pours him a glass of wine and pushes him out into the bedroom-dining room again.
– Five minutes.
The wind is blowing into town from the river, and Martin can hear church bells ringing out the evening service.
They eat, Martin and Ewa smiling and nodding, Jacek concentrating on his food, not worried by the silence.
– Jacek, can you ask your mother to tell me a little about the town, please?
The boy looks up with his mouth full, Martin swallows.
– I know very little. I would like to know.
It is not true. He knows what she tells him already, what the boy translates for her about the nine churches, the resistance during the war and occupation, the failed collectivisation of the fruit growers during the communist era.
– There was a jam factory here when she was my age. Everybody was working there, or they were farmers. Apricots, pears, apples, and I don’t know how you say those small ones. Berries?
Martin asks about the communist years.
– You want to hear about no food and unhappiness, yes?
Martin rubs his sunburn, and Ewa slaps her son’s hands.
– Jacek! Sorry. I don’t understand him, but I see he was bad. You translate only, yes? Yes?
Ewa points at her son and then pours them all more wine, offers to make Martin some tea.
– The way we drink it here.
Jacek’s translation is sulky, sleepy. Black, in a glass so you can see the leaves floating. Boiling water, hot glass with no handles so your fingerprints get smooth and hard from the holding. Martin looks at the tips of his fingers, Ewa smiles.
– I didn’t know your sister owns the guesthouse.
– Yes.
Ewa smiles, Jacek yawns.
– She gives my mother work.
– And her husband?
– Tadeusz?
– Uncle Tadeusz does no work.
– Sh! Not true.
Ewa speaks more herself now, interrupts her son’s translations. She tells him her brother-in-law is a plumber. That he put his faith in the church. Her explanations are ungrammatical, sometimes nonsensical, but Martin enjoys listening to her. She says that they built new houses a year or two after the elections, a whole row, right in the centre. New times, new buildings. Flats above, shop spaces below. Brick, solid, good windows. And Tadeusz put in all the pipes, toilets, baths, taps, sinks. He got a loan to pay for all the materials. Copper piping and ceramics, imported from the west. He had the houses blessed when they were finished, but not yet painted. The priest came and threw his hol
y water around the empty rooms and Tadeusz was so proud. She remembers the wet, dark spots on the pink-red plasterwork, that it was a hot day, and that the dark spots left white marks behind when they dried.
– He never got paid, Tadeusz, and he cries often now.
Each time he defaults on his loan, and the houses are still empty. A while ago there was new graffiti on the wall of the last one in the row: send the nuns abroad and the priests to the moon.
Ewa looks at Jacek, who isn’t listening any more, eyes half closed, head propped in his hands. She whispers to Martin:
– I think Tadeusz write that.
Martin feels her breath on his neck as she speaks, can smell wine and soap mixed.
– My sister, she wanted that Jacek and me should live with her. After Piotr left.
– Your husband?
Ewa doesn’t answer, her eyes are unfocused.
– I couldn’t. Not live with Tadeusz. He’s not a bad man, but so much bitterness.
Martin is drunk and so is Ewa.
– I don’t want my son be bitter, you see. I want that he like his life, this town, his country.
Martin nods.
– There is not so much here now, but I show him places, take him to the river.
Ewa sighs. They sit with the breeze from the open window on their bright cheeks and Jacek has his head on the tablecloth, asleep.
– I don’t make him be at school this week. I think he can’t swim in the river now, but it is good that he speak with you. Has some nice time, learn someone new. More than in a classroom.
Ewa smiles into the middle distance and Martin looks at her. Only half a metre between them, the corner of the table, knees almost touching underneath.
He leans towards her. But Ewa catches him.
– No.
One hand on each of his shoulders, she holds him at arms’ length. Martin blinks.
An empty wine glass rolls on the table. Ewa shakes her head.
– Sorry, no.
She smiles and then Martin sits back in his chair again, sunburn itching, sweat prickling in his scalp.
He doesn’t look at her and for a minute or so they sit in silence. Jacek’s even breathing in the room and the church bells sounding again outside. When Martin looks up, Ewa is blinking, smiling at him.
– I am sorry.
She rights the glass on the table, then covers her mouth with her hand and laughs.
__
In the morning there is a fax from the department lab. Martin has a hangover, asks for coffee and water to be sent up to his room. His eyes skim the figures, cannot settle. He boots up the laptop, plots the lab’s figures onto his graph, though he already sees the disparity between the last set of results and his predictions. Days one and two show serious levels of contamination in mud and water, and correspond with Martin’s own data. Day three’s samples, however, are almost low enough to be considered clear.
Martin sits on the narrow bed a while, trying to decide if he is relieved or disappointed. The weedy water, the pool under the waterfall: Clean. As good as. But the premise of his paper: Void. His headache is bad, the day hot already, the shame of yesterday evening still fresh. Martin presses the heels of his palms against his eyes.
He wants to go home, he needs to get dressed. He goes to the bathroom where the window is open, the air much cooler than in his room. He stands under the shower a long time, warm flow on face and shoulders taking the edge off his headache, filling his ears, closing his eyes, replacing Ewa and her laughter with water falling on tile.
The room he returns to is strewn with papers and clothes. Martin works his way round it methodically, folding and sorting into piles. Before he packs, he checks through the lab technician’s tidy columns once more, notes the memo at the end of the fax: the weed sample has been sent on to botany.
On the way downstairs, he reasons with himself: if the weed results are interesting, he can propose to further investigate the river fauna in the conclusion to his paper. Over breakfast, he thinks he could propose a joint venture with botany, perhaps. Something to please the department. Zoology might even be interested: the weed may be thriving, but crowding other species out. At the very least, it is good news for Ewa. She is not working this morning, but Martin thinks he will leave a note for her, tell her it’s okay to take Jacek swimming again. He finishes his roll. Thinks he made a mess of the field study, the week in general, but there are still ways to make amends.
Martin stands in the narrow reception hall with his bags, sees Ewa happy by the waterfall while he waits for her sister to calculate his bill. Then he remembers how sad she looked the day she came with Jacek to the river, and he is shocked at the satisfaction the memory gives him.
There is paper on the counter in front of him. He has a pencil in his back pocket, but he doesn’t get it out. He pays and picks up his bags. While he loads up the car he tells himself it is too soon to know for certain. He has yet to test all his samples, examine all the possibilities; swimming at the waterfall could still be dangerous.
On the road out of town, he sees Ewa’s hand over her mouth, her eyes pressed shut, Jacek woken by her laughter and staring at him.
At the border, the road runs parallel with the river for a kilometre or so, and the traffic moves slowly. To his right, trees grow tall along the riverbanks and in his rear-view mirror Martin can see the rest of the country spread out behind him, dry and flat. His chest is tight with shame, but the border guard is waving him through now, and he is driving on again.
Reach
Wednesday and Kim’s mother goes up to the school for parents’ evening.
– She’s doing badly, then.
– Well, no, not exactly. She can read and write. Quite well for a seven year old, as it happens.
Her daughter’s class teacher pushes Kim’s report around on the desk with her fingertips and Alice waits for her to pull the words together.
– She’s just not an easy child to reach, Mrs Bell.
__
Home is the end house of the terrace above the seafront. From her bedroom window, Kim can see over the rooftops to the old pier and, beyond it, the last curve of sand before the headland. Seagulls hover on thermals, suspended, and Kim watches them at the window, swaying, waiting. From here she will see her mother when she comes home from the school.
In the door and then chopping, no sitting down between and no hello either. But this is not unusual. Kim’s description of her mother in one of her schoolbooks: she always cooks with her coat on.
Kim waits after her mother has passed along the path beneath her windowsill to the back door and the kitchen. Face still pressed to the wall, and so still hidden from the street below, Kim listens a while to the pot and pan noises, then goes downstairs to find Alice. Early evening, getting dark, her mother is working by the blue light of the grill-flame, chops spitting underneath. Kim stands in the doorway a minute or so, but Alice does not turn. An evening like any other: potato peelings on the counter, mother’s back at the sink. Kim wonders briefly if she got the day right, if Alice has been to the parents’ evening after all, but decides against mentioning it. Joins her brother in the sitting room instead, watches TV with Joseph until dinner.
If she’s staying, Alice will take her coat off and eat with her children. Tonight, she has a cup of tea and makes sure the washing-up is underway before she heads off out to work again. A reminder of bedtimes and a brisk kiss each on her way to the door. This too is normal, so Kim breathes a little easier, dries the plates slowly that Joseph washes fast. Watches the familiar sight of her mother’s back receding down the garden path. She can close her eyes and see Alice making her way down the hill to the seafront. Keys gripped in her right hand, left holding her collar together against the wind.
Kim’s eyes are sore tonight, scratchy, her lids heavy. She keeps them closed, keeps her mind’s eye on her mother a little longer. Imagines the sea flat behind Alice as she opens the salon door, surface skimmed into ripples by the wind
. She knows her mother chose the shop for its view across the beach, along the seafront. Has heard her telling the customers, watched her polish the wide glass window clean of rain and salt. Alice plays no music in her salon, she does not talk much. There is calm when she cuts and sets hair. In the summer with the door open and the sea air. In the winter with the hum of the dryers and the wide window misted against the dark afternoons.
Kim opens her eyes again at the kitchen window, her mother long gone, brother back in front of the television. She dries her hands on the damp tea towel, flicks the last crumbs of dinner off the kitchen table. Kim tries to rest her forehead on the cool surface, but can’t; her neck stiff, resisting, caught somehow by her shoulders. The days before the parents’ evening have been edgy, and she can’t relax now, not sure what to do with all the worry.
__
When Alice is asked about her business, she says she makes a decent living for her family. Margins are tight with debts like hers, but she has no gaps in her appointment book to speak of, few concerns to raise with her accountant.
When Alice thinks about her daughter, as she does this evening, she sees her pale eyes and paler hair, the solid flesh of her face with its closed, impassive expression. Stubby thumbs sucked white and soft and drawn into tight, damp fists.
Alice has long fingers and strong nails: neat ovals without cuticles. She does them last thing before she leaves the salon, after the work is done. Alone with her thoughts and files. Rubbing the cream in, hand over hand over hand.
She didn’t argue with what the teacher said this afternoon. Not an easy child. Alice has heard those words before now: from different sources, in different disguises, so many times she has come to expect them. Would never say so, but she agrees.
With Joseph it was simple: love arrived with him. Fury when the midwife carried him away from her across the delivery room to be washed and weighed. Kim was early. Only a few weeks after Frank had gone. Gas and air, and Alice kept telling the midwife she wasn’t ready for the baby, but she came anyway. No tears and not much pain either. And then it took Alice years to get used to her: her rare smiles, her uncooperative arms and legs.
Field Study Page 2
