by Andrew Cowan
TWENTY-FOUR
The sea scared and thrilled you. With my jeans rolled to my knees and my shoes round my neck, I once held your hand at the shore-line. The sand underfoot was smooth and compact, or seemed so. The sun was slowly descending. We watched the waves rolling in, breaking then seeping, thinning towards us. You squealed as the surf licked your toes, danced backwards, and I tightened my grip on your hand; I coaxed you into the water. There was nothing to fear. We submerged ourselves to the ankle. But as the sea pulled away so did the ground, it melted beneath us. We curled our toes, tried to anchor ourselves, but we were tilting, losing our purchase. The glinting backwash raced past us. Your hand slipped from mine as you fell. I tried to help you but you wouldn’t allow me. Furious and bawling, you stalked off towards Ruth, the wet seat of your underpants sagging. She widened her arms to embrace you, and as the sea lapped again I started to shiver; I heard the noise you were making, and watched as she led you away.
You always felt safer hiding in the hollows at the base of the cliffs. Red sandstone and chalk, there were tucks and folds there just deep enough for you to crouch down in. We had to pretend we had lost you, pretend surprise when we found you. And our beach, from the start, was a place where we found things. Periwinkles, cowries, mussels, razors, limpets and tell-ins. We soon learned their names, or I learned them for you. Shells, Ruth called them. Shells, you repeated. I made some earthenware bowls – fat-bellied, wide-rimmed – to keep them in. And another – larger and flatter – for the pebbles with holes in, which were called lucky hagstones and were supposed to be rare, though we found so many we became choosy, kept only the smoothest and tossed the others back to the sand. Above the scalloped ridge of the tideline there were bird-skulls, cuttlefish, bits of driftwood and rope. In the scree that fell from the cliffs we found fossils – spiralling ammonites, bullet-shaped belemnites. And when the tide was low we could search further out, lifting rocks as rounded as turtles and bearded with weed, to find our crustaceans.
You were eight months old the first time we returned to this town. Nothing greatly had changed. Like something outgrown it seemed less than it was. We came for the day, a duty observed, and didn’t suppose we would do it again. Alone amongst the seafront cafés and restaurants, the Metropole had closed. We looked in at the windows. The chairs were stacked up on the tables, ghostly white in the darkness. There was a slew of papers and mail on the floor. We ate instead in the Atlantis, and left a large tip for the waitress. We took some photos of the places we knew, and wasted some coins on the amusements. And finally, because we hadn’t been there before, and couldn’t think what else to do, we pushed and carried you to the top of the cliffs, a mile or so north from the pier. The cafés and gardens slowly dwindled to grey, a strip of bleak concrete, seemingly endless. The drop to the beach grew shorter; the sea wall gave way to sand dunes, marram grass, boardwalks. We turned inland, through a thicket of shade, and emerged to a golf course, where we found a chalk groove in the turf, the start of the cliff-path.
The climb out was a slow one, the air drugged below with bracken and gorse, wide and windy above. There were caravans at the summit, a grid of white dots in a field. You were asleep when we reached them, and we sat for a while in the grass where the land fell away, looking out to the sea, the pale feathered sky. Ruth hitched up her skirt and kicked off her shoes. Dimples formed in her knees when she straightened her legs. She was heavier than she had been. I pillowed my head in her lap and told her I loved her. When you woke you drank from her breast, and later we strolled round the caravans, no two the same and none of them new. We chose our favourite – pale green panels on white, lozenge curves at the corners, a lumber box outside the door. Tufts of grass shivered in the breeze underneath it. I cupped my hands to a window and peered inside, attentive to every detail, trying to imagine. Ruth strapped you into your buggy. She said it was time to get back – her new job began in the morning; we had a long drive – and as we trundled away we passed an old man in a deckchair, the first person we’d seen. How do? he said. Ruth would talk to anyone. A few paces on she touched my arm and told me to wait.
The land, he said, was owned by the council. The ground rent was cheap, but there was no electricity. A gas bottle lasted six weeks. His water came from standpipes and he washed in the shower block. But sooner or later, he said, the site would be plumbed from the main and then the rent would go up. He blamed the EC. He told us the cost of his carpets, his fire surround, and how he’d come by them. They were knocked off, he said, from a holiday camp. He was nobody’s fool: he’d bought his caravan from a couple like us, and they’d wanted two thousand, but he’d played one against the other and got it for half. Which was the trouble with marrieds, always divided. He said he was single himself. He would let us know if he heard of anything going – the council kept a waiting list, but he knew of ways round that. Ruth wrote our number in red biro on the racing page of his newspaper. She was sure we could afford it; there was her new salary, and what remained of the money my grandmother had left me. That evening she wrote to the council.
It was two years before the man phoned us. The council, he said, had passed on our names. He didn’t remember us. No, I don’t recall that, he said. No, that can’t be right. He called Ruth lovey. He wanted three thousand, and claimed he’d paid almost that ten years before. When we drove out to meet him he showed us his shower stall, his toilet, the new pipes beneath his caravan. He ran the taps at the sink. It was the best thing ever happened, he said; and long overdue – he’d personally been on to the council for years. He mentioned the cost of his carpets, and his fire surround – he’d made a lot of improvements, he said; paid over the odds. We didn’t haggle, we agreed to his price. I’d spent the last of my grandmother’s money on a new kiln, but Ruth had just been promoted – to Assistant Regional Arts Development Officer – and things were going well for us.
We came out whenever we could, summer and winter – two weeks in July, every bank holiday. Your fifth birthday was spent there, my thirty-first. From inside it always seemed to be raining, always seemed windy, even on the mildest of days. The metal casing pittered as it warmed, then again as it cooled. The slightest movement – Ruth brushing your teeth, drying her hair – sent tremors throughout, as if a gale had suddenly rocked us. The cars that passed on the grey aggregate driveways sounded like hail, or a downpour, and the curtains would tremble. The steady hiss of the mantles at night was soft and continuous. Soon after we’d bought it Ruth said, You’ll want it all white; but I said it was fine – the orange swirls in the carpet, the beige and brown benches, pink drapes at the windows, the pale wood veneer. I never wanted to change it. And of course you were happy in our caravan, secure in its dimensions. Every time you glanced up you would find us.
When the sun shone we took our meals outside on a blanket. We played board games, drew pictures, went off on excursions. We descended the rickety steps to the beach. Daily we made a life for ourselves there, consciously made it, and sometimes, as I put you to bed, I’d look over the things you’d collected – the shells shedding grit on your coverlet, the pine-cones and sticks, the brochures and toys – and ask you where they had come from, and which was your favourite. Together we’d assemble the events of your day; I’d help you to place them in order. There were no stories in my childhood, none to speak of, or none that could be spoken. I tried to make sure there were plenty in yours.
But that last evening we spent in the caravan you said you were tired; you wanted to go to bed early. I said I was tired as well. I sat on the edge of your bunk and yawned; I stretched out my arms. There was a bottle of wine in the fridge. In the passage Ruth was getting undressed for her shower. I watched as she stepped from her pants, her breasts swaying, folds creasing her waist as she lifted her legs. There were straps of white on her feet, the ghost of her sandals. When she ducked under the water I stared at her clothes on the floor. I tried to get up, but you twisted out of your sheets and crooked an arm round my neck. I turned my fa
ce towards yours, inches between us. You were wearing your new swimming trunks, your red ones. Some girls were drunk and shouting in a neighbouring caravan. Teenagers, you said, and I nodded. I could hear the sea, the distant thump and wail of the fairground. It started to rain. Your eyes were heavy, and I remembered the smell of chlorine when I’d woken that morning, your wet hair on my cheek. The story of that day might have begun there; I sensed you were waiting. What is it? I said, but you didn’t reply.
I rested my head against yours and thought back through our day. There was the pub we had gone to that lunchtime. We’d sat by a river in the shade of a lime tree, pestered by midges, the water slow-moving, almost stagnant beside us, and you hadn’t wanted to leave, you wouldn’t be hurried. In a minute, you’d told us, sipping your drink; I’m busy. Further along was a mill-race, and there I’d held you by the waist and lifted you over the sluice-gates, your screams lost to the roar of the current as it foamed underneath us. Afterwards we’d driven ten miles through villages drowsing in sunshine, looking for a swing-park, and I’d let you sit in the front seat, wearing my sunhat and glasses, Ruth’s map spread out on your legs. In the afternoon we’d gone down to the beach, and I’d shown you a crab, semi-translucent, emerging from a melt of wet sludgy sand on my palm, and then we’d dug another trench around Ruth, a speedboat trailing a scar of white spume on the horizon, the sea almost turquoise. In the evening you’d led us along the cliff path into town, swiping with your stick at the bushes, and we’d eaten scampi and chips in a shack called Shrimply the Best, the lights coming out on the pier, the last of the yachts drifting down to the harbour. We’d returned along the tideline at dusk, and it was then that I’d coaxed you into the water, but the slippage had betrayed me, you’d lost your footing and fallen.
There were these things and others – tantrums, arguments, an hour spent cleaning the car – and though I wondered how much you’d recall in five years, or five weeks, still I said nothing. It was time you were sleeping. Ruth had turned off her shower. The rain outside was torrential. The teenagers were laughing. And when at last Ruth stepped from the stall, I kissed your forehead and lifted your sheets; I helped you back into bed. I let that day go. It was the stuff of forgetting, of anyone’s holiday, and of course there would be so many others just like it.
TWENTY-FIVE
St Anne’s Works is a cluster of reclaimed industrial sheds, an artists’ co-operative now, subsidised, grant-funded, a charity. The surrounding streets are derelict, the city centre a ten-minute walk. The sun disappears each afternoon behind a six-storey structure of concrete and glass – the old social security offices, vacant on every floor – whilst across the wide ring-road, strung between two Victorian warehouses, a sagging grey banner advertises Units to Let, and always has done, ever since we moved up from London. The traffic never slows. In the pitted, rubble-strewn car-park the only vehicles most days are bicycles, chained to the railings. My studio is one of thirteen conversions in block number five. Plasterboard partitions divide me from my neighbours, and though for a week every summer the studios are open to the public, it is rare that the public takes the trouble to find us. Only the private view generates interest, any kind of attendance – mostly family and friends, and friends of friends, art students, a few local dealers. This summer we hired a jazz band, a bouncy castle, and put up a marquee in the car-park. A city councillor, dressed as though for a wedding, delivered a speech from under the awning, then mimed the cut of a ribbon. I declare the bar open, he said. A few people applauded. Someone with a camera and flashgun took pictures, jotted down names. I crouched by your feet and unbuckled your sandals. What is it? you said. Something, I said; you’ll see. I pointed behind you – pointed at nothing – and as you turned to look I grabbed for your waist, scooped up your legs. I ran around the marquee, your jolting weight in my arms, and tipped you on to the castle. Again! you shouted; do it again, Paul. You’d begun calling me Paul. Say Daddy, I said; and then I might do.
Later I left you with Ruth and unlocked the door to my studio. I had a four-pack of beer, a float of loose change. Sheets of white catering paper covered the worktops. Hidden beneath were my tools and materials, my buckets and sieves, my father’s bowl and your drawings – any evidence of how it might be when I was working, or when you were with me. The benches and shelves, usually so cluttered, were neatly arrayed with the best of the mugs, plates and teapots that I’d failed to sell in previous years, unpacked from their boxes. But though I’d thrown similar things since – marginally better, freer perhaps – very few of these were displayed. I had other outlets – two galleries in town, a garden centre, the castle museum shop, occasional craft fairs – but I spent less and less time now at my wheel. I produced enough to supply whatever demand there might be, to guarantee some regular income, but I’d become, through you, other than I had been. The forms had changed, my methods. I’d begun building again, slowly by hand, pots like small rocks, like big pebbles, which had gradually grown larger, increasingly unruly, unsuited to anyone’s home, I assumed, but our own. I wanted surprises, and mixed glazes and clays with incompatible elements, producing pieces that resembled fossils of bowls, fossils of plates, and I’d stopped removing, smoothing away, any sign of my involvement, the marks and blemishes, the cuts and striations. All of that now remained, the surfaces deep-textured, the glazes cratered and foaming, and a few of those pieces, a dozen perhaps, sat amongst my older work that evening, unpriced and unlisted.
Some people came in, their eyes dutifully scanning the pots as they talked, tapping their ash on my floor. There was a rent reminder from the committee taped to the wall. One elderly man read it in full, peering over the top of his spectacles, then surveyed my work with a frown, and nodded and walked out. A large woman in a blue floral dress picked up each small bowl in turn, examined its base and replaced it. As she came near me I touched her arm and gave her a price-list. Thank you, she said, and laid it on my wheel as she left. It’s a shame it’s not yellow, someone said then; it’d go well in the bathroom. Do you do them in yellow? her companion asked me. I could do, I shrugged. They stared again at the vase, glanced at each other, and slowly made their way to the door. Others followed, and when at last Ruth brought you in from outside, your face flushed and damp from the bouncing, I was sitting alone, two empty cans under my chair. No sales? she said. None, I replied. Early days yet, she smiled. I took her paper cup and said I’d refill it, I’d be back in a minute.
I thought I wanted a cigarette. It was boredom perhaps, and the beers that I’d drunk, the smoke drifting in from the corridors. Six years and two months had passed since I’d last touched one, my promise to Ruth when she’d found she was pregnant. And it hadn’t been difficult – to stop or stay stopped – but just at that moment, released from my studio, I felt I deserved one, a reward for lasting so long. One cigarette on its own would not matter, compared to however many thousands I’d avoided. The thought was exciting and I found myself hurrying; I paid for Ruth’s drink with trembling hands and joined a small group of people I knew. Could you spare a fag, John? I said. He carried on speaking, casually passed me his packet and lighter. And the taste, of course, was nothing like I thought I remembered. I began sweating, felt giddy. The air beneath the marquee was stifling. There was a smell of warm canvas, spilled beer, John’s leather jacket. People were talking; I heard snatches, their voices, the band playing outside, and I though I was going to be sick. I let that cigarette burn back to the filter. I dropped it under my foot and ground it into the tarmac. Nicotine, I recalled, was a poison, and I’d proved to myself how little I liked it; I wouldn’t be tempted again. I swilled my mouth with Ruth’s wine, emptied the cup, and edged away to the bar for another. I went then to the toilets and soaped the smell of the smoke from my fingers.
Ruth was kneeling by my kiln with a dust-pan when at last I returned, sweeping up a smashed vase. The studio was crowded. What happened? I said, and immediately you began blaming the vase. It had hit the back of your hand, you
said; it wasn’t your fault. Ruth snapped at you; and crying, you wrapped your arms round my legs, complained you wanted to go home. I had no choice but to lift you, and really, I didn’t mind, I wanted to go too. Shall we? I asked, but Ruth said there was someone waiting to see me, and glanced past my shoulder. The woman was smiling. Dipping her head, she searched through her bag for a card. It seemed she had a gallery somewhere in London, another out on the coast. And so with you in my arms, repeatedly saying you wanted to leave, we talked business, or tried to. I missed so much of what she said. Conscious of the smell of smoke on my breath, I daren’t lean any closer. But it was the bigger, rougher pieces that she liked; she wanted to take half a dozen, and commission six more. She pointed them out, and found her chequebook, and said she’d return in a week, collect the remainder some time in September. Right, I said; yes. Okay then, I said, and as she departed Ruth produced my sheet of red stickers. I let you press the dots on the benches. You were careful, precise. You wanted to continue. Perhaps later, I said; we’ll see. And by the end of that evening I had sold three more of those pots, and several other things too, including a chocolate-brown tea-set. I sought out the couple with the yellow bathroom and took their address. No obligation to buy, I told them; but I’d phone when it was ready; I could send a photograph, a glaze sample if they would like one. I began work the next day, and everything was ready for collection and parcelling the morning we left for our caravan. It is waiting there still.
