Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  Each property was self-consciously open plan. There were no real fences – no boundaries – as if the fearless inhabitants were perfectly content to own both everything and nothing, concurrently.

  She felt lonely – like one of those dilapidated huts: solitary, care-worn, old. She sniffed, mournfully. Her nose was running. She shoved her spare hand under her mac, angled it, carefully, then slipped it into a small pocket hidden inside the folds of her skirt. Here she felt the sharp edges of a neatly folded piece of paper. The time-table. Next to it? A tissue. But she didn’t pull it out – not immediately. Her slim fingers dug down still deeper and touched something else. Something cold and metallic.

  The lighter. Kane’s lighter. She grabbed a hold of it, curled her fingers around it, drew a deep breath and squeezed; ducking her head, closing her eyes, almost smiling, as she etched its keen shape into the pliant flesh of her palm.

  The lifeboat was out on call. The station was empty. Elen stood in the small shop, utterly panicked, desperate to find any visual evidence of this phantom vessel with which to distract her already dangerously recalcitrant son. She unearthed a pamphlet by the till: The East/South East Stations and Museums Guide, 2002. On the front was a photo of an orange, motorised dinghy bouncing through the surf manned by four volunteers in white crash-helmets.

  ‘There we go…That’s what it looks like,’ she told him, pointing. Fleet didn’t look. He was staring ahead of him, blankly, rubbing his index finger up and down on his lip.

  The kindly woman behind the till instantly took pity on them.

  ‘Is he terribly disappointed?’ she asked, smiling down at the boy.

  ‘Just a little,’ Elen smiled back.

  ‘Well there’s a few nice photos of our actual launch – the Pride and Spirit – on the wall over there,’ the woman said, ‘just next to the door. And once you’ve shown him those why don’t you pop outside and take a look at the launch tractor? If you’re very good…’ she spoke to Fleet directly, ‘one of the men on standby might even start it up and take you for a quick ride. Would you like that?’

  Fleet completely ignored the woman. He continued rubbing his finger on his lip.

  ‘Wow,’ Elen said, ‘a launch tractor! Did you hear that, Fleet?’

  Fleet gave no sign of having heard her.

  ‘He’s a little overwhelmed by it all,’ she explained, with an apologetic shrug.

  ‘Did you travel far to get here?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Only from Ashford.’

  ‘Well that’s not too bad, is it now?’ The woman spoke to Fleet again:

  ‘I’m sure Mummy will bring you back again very soon, and you’ll be able to see the boat next time.’

  ‘Of course he will.’

  Elen squeezed Fleet’s hand, encouragingly.

  ‘Ow!’ Fleet said, snatching his hand from his mother’s grasp.

  The woman smiled, distractedly. Another customer wandered into the shop.

  ‘We mustn’t get in the way,’ Elen said, stepping back from the counter, ‘I can see it’s all systems go today…’

  The woman nodded. ‘There’s a trimaran in trouble on the other side of Rye Harbour,’ she explained, checking her watch with a slight air of anxiety, ‘the crew’ve been out for around half an hour…’

  Elen hadn’t actually given a second’s thought since her flustered arrival at the boathouse to the crew and the probable reasons for their absence. In fact she’d given little thought to anything beyond mollifying her husband and pacifying her son. As the woman spoke her cheeks reddened. She felt mortified, ashamed, embarrassed for having allowed her own pathetic, little, domestic drama to play itself out in a theatre generally reserved (and deservedly) for tableaux of a far more heroic stamp.

  ‘You all do such an amazing job,’ she gushed.

  The woman ignored this. ‘Why don’t I go and have a quick chat with one of the men and see what we can arrange?’ she said.

  ‘That’s terribly kind of you. Fleet will be thrilled…’ As she spoke, Elen placed a warning hand on Fleet’s shoulder. Just in case.

  The woman smiled at the new customer. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ she said. ‘We’ve just got to try and muster up something extra-special to turn the day around for this little chap…’

  The new customer chuckled, sympathetically. The woman headed off.

  Elen turned to the new customer, embarrassed. ‘He loves boats,’ she said. The customer gazed down at Fleet, benignly.

  ‘What’s your favourite kind of boat?’ he asked.

  Fleet didn’t answer.

  ‘He built a model of an old clipper once,’ Elen said. ‘From a kit. Made a really good job of it, didn’t you, Fleet?’

  ‘Gracious me!’ the man exclaimed. ‘That’s quite impressive, isn’t it?’

  Fleet grimaced. He gazed up at his mother.

  ‘I want to go home now,’ he said.

  Elen shot the customer an agonised look. The customer smiled.

  Elen took Fleet over to the wall near the door. Here – just as promised – were a series of smart, colour photographs of the station’s Mersey Class launch, both on and off the water.

  ‘These are some pictures of the wonderful lifeboat which is normally stationed here,’ she told Fleet (determining to make up for her previous inadequacies), ‘and the very brave people who sail on it.’

  Fleet gazed up at the photographs, blankly. Then, ‘But there isn’t any boat here,’ he said.

  ‘This is the boat,’ Elen explained. ‘It’s called the Pride and Spirit. It’s out at sea right now rescuing some people who’ve got into trouble on a trimaran.’

  Silence

  ‘A trimaran is a boat with three hulls,’ the other customer explained, helpfully.

  Silence

  ‘Aren’t those lovely, bright colours?’

  Elen pointed to the boat’s blue and orange finish. As she reached up her sleeve slipped back revealing the row of fading bruises circling her wrist. She quickly dropped her arm.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fleet said, yawning nervously, ‘I want to go home. Where’s Papa?’

  ‘Daddy?’

  Elen glanced around her.

  Through the open door of the shop she saw Dory deep in conversation with one of the standby volunteers. The volunteer was handing Dory a leaflet. Dory was writing down his phone number on to a piece of paper and passing it back.

  Dory looked tall and handsome and extremely dashing. Quite the part, in fact.

  ‘Oh God, what on earth’s Daddy doing now?’ she murmured, her throat contracting.

  Fleet turned to look.

  ‘John likes the water,’ he confided (with a slight smile), ‘almost as much as he likes fire.’

  ‘Hush now,’ Elen whispered as the woman from behind the till came bustling back into the shop.

  ‘That’s all fine,’ she said, beaming. ‘Toby says he’ll happily show your boy around the tractor if you just head on out there in the next five minutes or so…’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ Elen enthused. ‘Say thank you to the kind lady, Fleet.’

  Fleet gazed up at the woman. ‘John burned down the barn,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ The woman seemed briefly thrown off her stride by this unexpected piece of information. ‘Which barn?’ she wondered.

  ‘The barn in Oxford.’

  ‘Ah. I see…’ she suddenly caught on. ‘And was there much damage done?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Fleet nodded, enthusiastically, ‘because he locked all the beggars inside. He wanted to burn them alive, but mostly they just got suffocated in the smoke.’

  The woman blinked.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she finally responded. ‘Well that wasn’t very nice of John, was it?’

  Fleet shrugged. ‘Served them right,’ he opined, manfully.

  ‘Gracious me,’ she exclaimed, ‘but what about all their poor families? What about their mummies and their daddies? Wouldn’t they have been upset?’

  ‘No,’ Fleet s
eemed unmoved by her argument. ‘It was good,’ he insisted, ‘because that’s when John knew.’

  ‘Knew what, exactly?’

  ‘That he needed to abandon the sheltered world of academe,’ Fleet pronounced, almost as if by rote, ‘and pursue his fortunes in the real world.’

  The woman looked over at Elen, quite amazed. ‘They won’t half come out with things at that age, eh?’ she laughed.

  ‘He’s terrible,’ Elen tried to smile back, ‘I just can’t take him anywhere.’

  ‘I don’t want to go anywhere,’ Fleet muttered, suddenly reverting back to his sullen self, ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Right…Good!’ Elen almost sang, pointing towards the exit like an actor, glibly improvising stage directions in an amateur panto. ‘Let’s go and see this fabulous tractor thingummy, shall we?’

  ‘We might’ve had a slim chance of catching the damn thing,’ Dory spluttered, ‘if you’d’ve just broken into a slow trot.’

  ‘A slow trot?’ Elen’s breathing was still jerky and irregular from the intense bout of exertion she’d just undergone. ‘We sprinted the last hundred metres, Dory. I literally had to drag Fleet along behind me. Didn’t you hear him screaming?’

  ‘I turned around at one point,’ Dory scoffed, ‘and you were collecting flowers from the roadside…’

  ‘Flowers?!’ She seemed stunned. ‘Are you serious? It’s the middle of winter. How could I possibly be collecting flowers? He dropped his glove, for heaven’s sake. We went back to grab it.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  He had the good grace to look slightly shame-faced.

  ‘We should’ve come in the car,’ she upbraided him (still deeply insulted by the ‘flowers’ comment). ‘It was just too far on foot.’

  ‘It’s not even half a mile, Elen…’

  Dory continued to fight his corner.

  ‘Fleet’s only five years old, Dory.’

  ‘Five years?!’ Dory exclaimed. ‘I could walk for entire days when I was five years old. I once walked seventeen kilometres when I was about five. Barefoot. By the time I arrived home the soles of my feet were completely black with dirt and dried blood. It took literally weeks before the stain wore off.’

  ‘Well that’s hardly the kind of conduct I’d advocate for a young child,’ Elen rebuked him, quite horrified.

  ‘Whyever not?’ Dory casually waved her reservations aside. ‘I absolutely thrived on it, as I recall.’

  She looked away, with a grimace.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t have one,’ she answered, ‘I just wish we’d driven, that’s all.’

  ‘I do believe,’ he murmured silkily, ‘that you’ve already made that point.’

  As he spoke Elen noticed – from the corner of her eye – a man and a woman about two tables along shooting them furtive, slightly disapproving glances. Dory also noticed. He leaned back in his seat, cleared his throat, then calmly inspected the brand-new time-table which he’d just picked up from the ticket office for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (‘Thirteen and a half miles of mainland railway in miniature…’).

  Elen unfastened her hair and shook it out. Fleet, meanwhile, was crouching under the table, quietly humming a sweet – almost inaudible – little tune while strumming away, dreamily, on his upper lip.

  They were waiting for their lunch at The Light Railway Cafe. The cafe’s fish and chips (according to the station guide) were apparently much vaunted in the local area.

  Dory placed down the new time-table. He peered over at the nosy couple. They were silently consuming their meal, but still maintaining a steady interest.

  ‘Fleet,’ he murmured (concerned that his son’s unconventional behaviour might be the real source of their fascination), ‘please come out now.’

  Fleet didn’t budge.

  ‘At least it hasn’t started raining yet,’ Elen sighed, staring out of the window towards the huge nuclear power plant which – from this particular angle – completely dominated the sky-line.

  ‘So there won’t be another train for the best part of an hour…’

  Dory inspected the new time-table again, pretending not to be concerned by his son’s total lack of compliance.

  ‘To be perfectly honest,’ Elen confided, pouring Fleet’s apple Fanta from the can into a glass, ‘I don’t think a long train ride is really what today needs.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  Dory looked surprised.

  ‘Well Fleet doesn’t like trains, does he? They upset him. Remember Victoria?’

  ‘Victoria?’ Dory scowled. Then the penny dropped. Victoria. God…

  Yes.

  ‘I wouldn’t even mind,’ Elen continued (obviously minding very much), ‘but it took about twenty minutes to persuade him into the car, and I only managed that by agreeing to bring the dog.’

  Dory didn’t comment. He picked up the time-table again.

  ‘We’re meant to be trying to relax, aren’t we?’ Elen persisted (but with an edge of timidity in her voice). ‘As a family, I mean?’

  ‘Relax? On a day out?’ Dory seemed quite astonished by the suggestion. ‘Surely if you want to relax you simply stay at home and do nothing? This is a trip, Elen. On a trip you’re active – vigorous. You experiment. You explore. You try and expand your child’s horizons…’

  ‘That’s all very laudable,’ Elen conceded, ‘but I think it might be a mistake to try and run before we can walk…’

  ‘Fleet?’ Dory leaned back in his chair (ignoring her last comment). ‘Mummy’s just poured you your Fanta. You’d better come out and drink it.’

  Silence

  ‘Fleet,’ he repeated, ‘come out now, please, and have your Fanta.’

  Silence

  ‘Fleet…’

  ‘Dory…’ she interrupted him, quietly.

  ‘Fleet…’

  ‘Dory!’ she almost shouted. He stared across at her, startled.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll come out when he’s good and ready,’ she murmured.

  ‘But he can’t just sit under the table, Elen,’ Dory struggled to keep his voice at an angry whisper. ‘Next you’ll be advocating giving him his meal down there.’

  ‘Let’s just…’

  She smiled and gently cradled her coffee cup in her hands…(‘Let it go’, or ‘Try and behave like two civilised adults’, or even, ‘Enjoy the moment’, this gesture seemed to say).

  Dory grimaced. He straightened up. His nostrils flared. Elen tipped her head forward to cover her face with her hair.

  ‘You’re still upset with me, aren’t you,’ he suddenly rounded on her, ‘for giving that lifeboatman our telephone number?’

  ‘What?’ She seemed taken aback. ‘Upset? No. No. You’ve got it all wrong…’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes…It’s just…I just…’ she drew a deep breath, then glanced over towards the couple two tables along, ‘I simply wasn’t expecting…’

  ‘But where’s the harm in just having a chat?’ Dory butted in.

  ‘Fleet,’ she suddenly rocked back in her seat and gently cuffed the boy away from her, ‘stop messing around with my skirt.’

  Dory gazed at her, blankly, as she admonished the boy. Then he blinked. Then he gazed at her again, almost in awe, as if he hadn’t actually seen her – not for hours, not for days…

  Elen…

  With her birthmark. Her graceful demeanour. Her soft, brown hair. Sitting opposite him.

  Right there.

  ‘Did you apologise to the man with the tractor?’ she asked, glancing up, distractedly, and then freezing for a moment – almost with surprise – as she gauged his strange expression.

  ‘Tractor?’ Dory repeated, blankly.

  ‘Toby. The man with the tractor…Fleet. No!’

  She cuffed the boy away again.

  ‘Toby?’

  ‘The volunteer.’

  ‘Oh yes…but of course,’ Dory rapidly caught up, ‘of course I apologise
d.’

  ‘It was all just so…’ Elen shuddered, traumatised.

  ‘I said he’d been ill,’ Dory whispered, ‘I said his grandpa had just died.’

  Elen stared at him, blankly. Dory took a sip of his coffee. He paused. ‘I mean what else could I say? It was horrendous. A simple “sorry” without any proper explanation…’ he shrugged ‘…It just wouldn’t have felt quite enough…’

  ‘Yes…’ Elen frowned, biting her lip. ‘But…’

  ‘But what? But nothing. It was utterly humiliating. You should never have…’

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ Elen exclaimed. ‘The woman in the shop…’

  Her jaw stiffened.

  ‘Anyway…’ she struggled to rein in her fury, ‘he was fine when you took him for a spin with Harvey the other week.’

  ‘Was he?’

  Dory stared at her, cryptically.

  ‘Wasn’t he, though?’

  ‘If having a terrible tantrum qualifies as “fine”, then yes, absolutely…’

  Elen’s jaw dropped. ‘A tantrum? But why didn’t you…?’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’

  She was stunned.

  ‘I wanted to save you the unnecessary distress,’ he maintained.

  ‘But surely there are some things…’ she argued.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Do you always make a habit of telling me everything?’

  ‘Yes. Of course I do…I mean…’ She frowned.

  ‘Everything? Every little thing?’

  As he spoke a waiter approached the table, his arms heavily laden with their food.

  ‘Okay, two adult portions…’ he slipped the steaming plates down carefully in front of them, ‘and…’