Ivy and Abe

by Elizabeth Enfield

  ‘He’s certainly in holiday mood,’ Jon had said, as we made our way down through the streets of the village that lay below the monastery. ‘Shall we go into town tomorrow and look for souvenirs?’

  Jon, Cathy and I wandered through Deauville, pausing to look at the arrays of beach shoes, shells and pottery.

  ‘What about one of these?’ Cathy suggested, as we stopped outside a shop with piles of bowls, each painted with an image of a French man or woman and a series of individual boys’ and girls’ names.

  ‘They’re nice,’ I said, looking at one with ‘Claudette’ painted on the side. ‘Do you think they have an Ivy?’

  We found an Isabeau, Ignatia, Ila and Inès, but no Ivy.

  ‘There’s a Catherine,’ I said.

  ‘You know I hate that.’ Cathy pulled a face.

  ‘I might get one.’ Jon picked up a bowl with a woman’s name.

  ‘Jean?’ I said.

  ‘It’s Jean, stupid.’ He pronounced the J like ‘zh’. ‘It’s French for John.’

  We’d laughed.

  ‘Did you three have a good afternoon?’ Mum asked that evening, as we gathered in the hotel bar before dinner.

  ‘Yes.’ It had been nice to spend time with Jon and Cathy. ‘I didn’t buy anything, though,’ I said, scanning the bar.

  ‘Looking for Abraham Lincoln?’ Jon asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did you two slope off to the other day, anyway?’

  ‘Nowhere. We just went to get some cheese.’

  ‘Cheese?’

  ‘Brie,’ I said. ‘And Camembert.’ I said the names, hoping to impress him. Mum referred to all cheese that was not Cheddar as ‘smelly cheese’.

  ‘French cheese?’ Jon said, and I tried to think of something to counter his insinuating tone but we were distracted by Mum.

  She’d just picked up her drink and was about to carry it to a nearby table when she dropped it. The glass shattered as the wine cascaded over the floor. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said to the barman.

  ‘What happened?’ Dad asked.

  ‘It just slipped from my hand,’ Mum said. She looked confused.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  But there was something else.

  Something about the way they looked at each other.

  ‘But how did it happen? Did someone jog you?’

  ‘No, Richard. It just happened.’

  The barman began to wipe the floor as Dad ushered Mum to a table.

  ‘I was just clumsy.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all?’

  An uneasy silence followed. None of us was sure what to say.

  I was the first to break it. I was trying to help. ‘Shall I ask the barman for another drink for you, Mum?’

  ‘Ivy, keep out of it,’ Dad snapped, and the awkward silence continued until Cathy announced that she wanted to buy a pair of espadrilles.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Rope-soled shoes.’ Cathy hadn’t mentioned them when we were shopping earlier.

  ‘They sound weird. I bet they’re not comfy.’

  Uncomfortable shoes were more comfortable territory.

  After that Dad’s bonhomie seemed to disappear and Mum was strangely withdrawn. I was glad of the chance to get away when it came, surprised at my own lack of hesitation in taking it.

  ‘Ivy.’ I recognized Abe’s voice as I went into the dining room later that week.

  ‘Hi.’ I tried to appear casual.

  ‘I haven’t seen you lately. What have you been up to?’

  ‘We went to Mont Saint-Michel. Have you been?’

  ‘We were going to go yesterday but Mum said it was too hot so we ended up driving to a beach instead. It wasn’t that nice, not as nice as the one we went to the day before.’

  ‘How was your picnic?’ I asked, remembering.

  ‘Good. We might go to the same place again tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh.’ The chance of spending time with him seemed to be disappearing.

  ‘Are you here today?’ he asked, as if he was thinking the same thing. ‘Will you be by the pool later?’

  ‘Probably, after lunch. We might be going to a museum this morning.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. And then: ‘We’re going to the beach we went to on Wednesday again tomorrow. It’s our last day. I wondered if you might like to come too. Jackie and Tessa don’t want to go again so there’ll be room in the car.’

  The beach was about a half-hour drive. I sat in the back of the car with Kirsty and Abe. His dad wore a black fisherman’s cap to drive. His mother sat next to him but turned round every now and then to say something to us.

  ‘So this is your first trip abroad, Ivy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you doing your O levels next year?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Abe does his O grades. We don’t have O levels in Scotland.’

  She faced forward again and spoke to Mr McFadden as a lorry carrying hay bales drew out of a side road ahead of us. ‘Don’t get too close, will you? They never look safe to me.’

  Kirsty raised her eyebrows. ‘Mum’s always spotting potential accidents.’

  ‘Better to be safe,’ Mrs McFadden said.

  ‘If it’s going to happen it will,’ Abe’s dad said, glancing in the rear-view mirror. ‘Murphy’s Law.’

  ‘I thought Murphy’s Law meant that anything that can go wrong will,’ Kirsty said.

  ‘That’s the pessimist’s interpretation,’ Mr McFadden replied. ‘I think it just means that everything that is going to happen will happen. You can’t do anything about it if it does. It doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen to you. Your bread might not land butter side down but someone’s will.’

  ‘Look out for the field with the donkey. I think the turn-off for the beach was shortly after that,’ Mrs McFadden said.

  We left the main road and drove down a smaller lane, until a row of sand dunes topped by a strip of grey-blue sea hove into view.

  ‘Have you ever been to Cornwall, Ivy?’ Mr McFadden asked, as he parked.

  ‘We’ve been to Devon a few times but never to Cornwall.’

  ‘The beaches here are very similar.’ He opened the car door. ‘The two land masses were joined thousands of years ago and you get the impression that one beach starts where the other left off.’

  ‘Shall we just go, Dad?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Their mother got out, opened the boot and pulled out a striped canvas bag with two plastic handles, which she handed to Kirsty. To Abe she passed a large tartan rug. ‘Greg, can you take this one? It’s got the drink in it. And, Ivy, do you mind carrying the bread?’

  I took the paper-wrapped French sticks she handed me. ‘Can I carry anything else?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Mr McFadden was already striding with purpose, searching out a picnic spot. The rest of us followed.

  ‘Shall we set up here?’ Abe’s mum asked, gesturing to a crescent of sand half enclosed by dunes.

  ‘Let’s have a photo of the two of you,’ Mr McFadden said, as Abe and I laid out the rug and anchored it with pebbles. He kicked off his shoes and produced a camera, motioning me to stand next to Abe. ‘Smile!’

  I smiled shyly and was surprised when, moments later, he handed me the photo he’d taken. ‘A souvenir,’ he said.

  ‘But how?’ I’d never seen a Polaroid camera before. ‘How come you didn’t have to wait for it to be developed?’

  ‘Modern technology.’ He laughed. ‘Are you going to have a swim before lunch?’

  We did go into the sea before lunch. It wasn’t really swimming.

  ‘You won’t go out too far, will you?’ Mrs McFadden asked, as we set off.

  ‘Mum! We’ll be fine.’ Kirsty grinned at her mother.

  The sea was rough and we stopped when we were waist deep and jumped over the waves.

  ‘Let’s try surfing,’ Kirsty said, and tried to explain to
Abe and me at what point we should launch our prone bodies on to the waves. ‘I did it with Aunt Katrina at Pease Bay … Try this one,’ she urged us, as a wave rose a few feet from where we were standing. We threw ourselves into the water and tried to roll with it but our attempts were not exactly successful.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Kirsty said. ‘Let’s try a few more times then go for lunch.’

  More of the same. More being dunked by the waves until eventually I hit one at just the right moment, stretched my arms in front of me, the way Kirsty had shown me, and the wave carried me to within a few feet of the shore. Fantastic.

  ‘Well done!’ Kirsty was shouting.

  ‘That was brilliant,’ I said, when I’d walked back out to the two of them.

  After a few more attempts, Abe was complaining: ‘Argh, I just keep going under.’

  ‘One more wave and then we’ll go in?’ Kirsty suggested.

  I rode the next wave too. It was exciting.

  A few minutes later we were back with Abe’s parents.

  ‘Ivy’s like a fish,’ his mum said, handing me a piece of bread and gesturing at the picnic. ‘Dig in.’

  After lunch Abe and I walked along the ridge of sand dunes.

  ‘Mum and I might have a wee nap,’ Mr McFadden had said, as he wrapped leftover bits of cheese and ham and put them back in the basket. ‘Why don’t you three go and explore?’

  ‘I’m going to read my book,’ Kirsty excused herself.

  ‘Shall we go up to those woods?’ Abe pointed out a cluster of pine trees about a mile away.

  ‘Okay.’

  We threaded our way along the path that crossed the dunes towards the patch of green.

  ‘It was nice of your parents to let me come,’ I said, wondering if mine would have let someone encroach on their holiday so willingly, and feeling shy alone in his company.

  ‘They like having people around. Shall we go up there?’ Abe pointed to a path that seemed to wind around the edge of the dunes.

  He took the lead. We chatted at first, about this and that: school, friends, family, pets (Abe had a tortoise called Fred), the music we liked, previous holidays, until we fell into a silence that surprised me by not feeling awkward. It was eventually broken by the sound of people. Not voices, not laughter. But people making sounds that were something between strange and familiar.

  As the path dipped into a bowl created by the surrounding dunes we found the people and discovered what the noise was. They were surrounded by the remains of a picnic: a bottle of water, leftover bread and a couple of apples. Discarded shoes lay in the sand – rope-soled shoes, like Cathy wanted – a bikini hung to dry on a tuft of couch grass and a towel was spread on the ground. Next to it, too obvious when they should have been tucked neatly into a bag, was a pair of knickers and a crumpled shirt.

  All the details seemed to jump out at me. These people had had a picnic and been for a swim. I took in all of that, as if it might make what was really happening go away. The boy, who looked a few years older than Abe and me, was wearing a pair of faded blue shorts. But they were down around his ankles, and his buttocks, which were white, contrasting with the tan of his back and the dark hairs of his legs, were moving with purpose on top of the girl beneath him. Her dress was ruched up around her waist and her legs were clasped around the boy.

  It was only for a second or two that we stood there, rooted by the unexpectedness of what we were seeing, not sure whether to go on past, ignoring them, or turn round and find another route. But in those seconds I found myself strangely mesmerized by the movement of their bodies, the sounds they were making and their obliviousness to our presence.

  Then the girl turned her head, saw us and raised her hand, flicking us away in annoyance rather than embarrassment. Her gesture distracted the boy, who turned his head and grinned.

  The only embarrassment was between Abe and me, as we turned and beat a retreat. We were unsure what to say to each other and the silence between us was uneasy now.

  Abe spoke first. ‘Typical French.’ He shook his head, as if he stumbled across French couples making love in the dunes all the time.

  ‘Yes.’ I tried to appear nonchalant.

  The woods, once we reached them, were fenced off.

  ‘We can’t go in.’ Abe looked at his watch. ‘We should probably head back anyway.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shall we go along the shore?’

  ‘Maybe we should.’

  ‘I think I’ll take my shoes off and carry them.’ Abe sat down and began to unlace his plimsolls. I sat next to him and he shifted slightly, moving closer to me so that our arms were touching.

  ‘Cathy wants to buy these shoes with soles made of rope,’ I said, as I leaned forward to unlace my own shoes and kick them off.

  ‘Espadrilles?’ he said, as I sat up. ‘Kirsty got a pair the other day. Blue ones.’

  His chatter about shoes made the fact that he’d put his arm tentatively around my shoulders seem normal.

  ‘She wasn’t wearing them.’

  ‘She thought they might get wet.’

  ‘Oh.’ The feel of his arm around me was delicious. I wanted to lean in, put my head on his shoulder, but I didn’t.

  ‘Okay?’ Abe asked, and I nodded.

  ‘It’s such a beautiful place,’ I said, wondering, What next?

  ‘Ivy, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked at him expectantly, without being quite sure what I was expecting. He seemed a little scared. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can I – can I kiss you?’

  ‘Yes.’ That was it.

  Neither of us moved. Then Abe leaned towards me, put his arms around me and pulled me to him. His lips were on mine, tentative at first, but I found myself pushing my body closer to his so that I could feel my breasts against his chest and clasp my hands around his back.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d kissed a boy properly. There’d been awkward attempts at school and embarrassment afterwards. But with Abe, I liked it, I really did. I liked the way it felt as if he was tasting me, and I wanted it to go on and turn into something more – not what we’d seen on the beach but something else.

  Abe’s hand was moving down my side, almost touching my breast but not quite. I began to feel something new, something bold and slightly scary. I shifted slightly, and felt his hand brush my breast through the fabric of my shirt. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I usually did, a flimsy teen bra that was more of an acknowledgement that I’d reached puberty than support, but it had been too complicated, changing on the beach after our swim, to put it on.

  He kissed me again and his hand came down to rest firmly on my chest. ‘Thank you,’ he said, after a while, stopping and looking at me.

  I reddened. ‘We probably should go back.’ I reached for my shoes and started to put them on, without looking at Abe.

  Then we walked back along the beach, the same people who had left the family picnic less than an hour earlier but who had changed in themselves and in relation to each other.

  Before Abe’s family left, we exchanged addresses, but there was only ever one letter, which I kept for a while, wrapped around the Polaroid photograph of the two of us, in my secret box under my bed. It didn’t really say anything, although I searched for something between the lines and tried to believe Abe was telling me more than that Fred, his tortoise, had been missing when they’d got home, but they’d eventually found him hiding in a flower bed.

  I never wrote back. I wanted to. I started a letter a few times, but something always stopped me completing it.

  Sussex, 1965

  Philosophically, the universe has really never made things in ones. The Earth is special and everything else is different? No, we’ve got seven other planets. The sun? No, the sun is one of those dots in the night sky. The Milky Way? No, it’s one of a hundred billion galaxies. And the universe – maybe it’s countless other universes.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  I was so pleased for him that I
completely forgot my own disappointment. ‘You won? That’s so clever!’

  ‘Yes.’ Abe seemed anxious rather than excited. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Why should I? It’s really good.’ I wanted to hug him but something about his demeanour stopped me. ‘I can’t believe you won out of everyone!’

  Cathy had pointed out the ‘Design a Flower bed’ competition in the local paper.

  ‘But I don’t know much about flowers and I’m not that good at drawing,’ I’d said to her.

  I wasn’t keen at first but the prize was a ten-shilling book token and there was a book I wanted, more than anything: a copy of Gulliver’s Travels, with a red leather cover on which the title was embossed in gold. The pages were thick and creamy, tipped with red at the edges. It was the most beautiful book I had ever seen.

  ‘I’m sure we’ve got a copy somewhere.’ Mum hadn’t understood that I wanted this particular book.

  Abe and I had decided to enter the competition on a rainy day when we were stuck inside. We sat at his kitchen table, with the Cuban cigar box that contained coloured pencils between us, and sketched our flower beds. As soon as Abe began drawing, I knew I hadn’t a chance of winning. My sketchily crayoned blocks of colour couldn’t compare to his.

  He’d used a book to look up actual flowers and created a cascade of blooms of different heights and colours. My neat rows of indeterminate pinks and reds were pretty, but Abe’s flower bed came alive on the paper.

  ‘You should have won,’ I said to him. ‘Yours was the best.’

  I could barely contain myself. I was so happy for him. And the council would make the flower bed just by the traffic lights on the edge of town. Everyone who drove through would stop there and see it. And it would be Abe’s.

  ‘But it was your idea to go in for the competition and –’

  I cut him off. ‘It was Cathy’s idea and it doesn’t matter.’ I’d never thought I’d win and it hadn’t seemed possible that Abe would either. The competition was open to so many people. The whole of Sussex. How could two ten-year-olds compete with all the artists and gardeners in the county?

  The book token was forgotten. I’d asked for the book for my birthday anyway.