The Undertow

by Jo Baker

  His father crashes into the surf in his eight-shilling shoes, his trousers not even rolled up.

  “It’s okay—” Will says, shifts his hold on Janet, her cold, wet weight, her dampness. Dad grabs her, his fingers grazing Will’s chest. He whisks the weight away. Janet wraps herself onto Dad’s Sunday shirt like a baby monkey.

  “She fell,” Will begins, “But I—”

  His dad smacks him round the head. Will’s good leg skids out from underneath him, and he falls. He lands on his bad hip, in the water. The pain is sudden. The cold is sudden. He struggles to get up. A wave crashes into his face. He splutters, blinks, can’t breathe. His dad grabs him by the wrist, hauls him to his feet.

  “You stupid little bastard,” his dad says. He doesn’t shout. His voice is low. “You stupid little bastard, what on earth were you thinking?”

  His dad drags him up onto the shore. Will’s toes scrape and stub on the stones. He stumbles, loses his footing, scrambles to catch it again. They are on the beach, wet pebbles, then dry. His dad heaves him upright; Will hops and staggers. He looks up at his dad. Will’s cheek hurts, his ear burns, his eyes sting with salt. But the pain from his hip is bad. It feels very bad. His dad shifts Janet up higher, an arm wrapped round her little wet body, the darkness of sea-water leaching out across his chest.

  “She fell,” Will begins. “I got her—” If he could just explain. “Dad—”

  But his dad just turns and climbs back up the beach, arms wrapped around his daughter. His mother stumbles down to meet the two of them, her arms outstretched, a towel billowing between her hands. They pause in a huddle of arms and fabric and exclamations. Then his mother breaks away, and comes towards Will. She melts into a blur of red dress and dark hair against the cool blue sky.

  His neck is tight from the drive; when he double declutches and changes down the gear for the turn, his shoulder hurts.

  He wants to be home. He wants to take the deckchairs out into the back garden, and split a bottle of Guinness with Ruby, and watch the bats dart in the evening sky.

  He feeds the steering wheel through his hands and straightens up after the bend. He should never have agreed to bring them to the sea. They could have gone somewhere else, out to Hampton Court or Epsom Downs. He’d thought today that he was going to lose her too—his little girl, the solid vital strength of her, sucked into the waves. Like he’d lost his little boy; the little boy Billy had imagined he would be. This was not the deal. Billy wants to bang his hand on the steering wheel. This was not what he signed up for.

  The world is fucking treacherous. You can’t trust it.

  Ruby’s quiet. Angry with him. She’s turned away now, onto her left side on the seat, curled onto her hip and shoulder, and breathing deeply. Janet whimpers in her sleep from time to time; or that might be Sukie, curled up in the footwell, shivering with dreams. His ma sits in the middle of the back seat, her head lolling. She snores. He hears nothing from the boy, but he knows he is awake. He just knows it. Awake and stewing. That’s what he does: stews.

  It’s not like he meant to hit him. Sometimes he just brings it out in him. The anger. The fear.

  They rumble down Madeira Road, reach the edge of the cricket green.

  “Rube,” Billy says, and then when she doesn’t register, louder: “Ruby.”

  She stirs, turns, blinks at him. “Mmm?”

  “Drop you off first, with the kids.”

  “Okay.”

  • • •

  He has to lift Will out of the back seat, and the boy puts his arms around his father’s neck, and Billy feels the slight weight of him, all bones and air, and the dragging calliper and built-up boot hanging like lead weights from a balloon. The boy digs his face into the man’s neck.

  “Sorry,” the boy says.

  “Shh.”

  “Sorry, Dad, I’m really sorry.”

  Billy pushes through the garden gate, sets him down on the cement path. The cement is crumbling, and needs patching.

  “Sorry,” the boy says again, arms round his neck still.

  “Don’t keep on saying sorry,” Billy says. He detaches the arms from round his neck.

  “But you keep on being cross,” the boy says.

  “Just shush.” He feels the grey drip of guilt. He wants a drink.

  Ruby nudges the gate open with a hip, carrying Janet. The baby sleeps, slumped forward onto Ruby’s shoulder. Billy strokes her hair back from her face. Flushed cheeks and a salty crust trailing from the corner of her eye.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” he tells Ruby.

  “Right.” She doesn’t meet his eye.

  A sudden flare of anger. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t start on this, Ruby.”

  “I’m not starting anything.” She meets his eye for just a flash, then reaches out for Will’s hand.

  “C’mon, love,” she says.

  He feels his anger flush through him, satisfying. She will ruin the boy: he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t listen, doesn’t give a damn. He needs sorting out and it’s Billy who has to do it, like he has to do everything. If he doesn’t, who will? He’s his father after all.

  She shuts the door quietly behind them, and Billy turns back to the car, where his mother sleeps.

  He’ll get her home. Then he’ll drive round to the Cricketers. Perfect for a summer evening pint. A view of the Green, and a canvas roof, and barrels set out in a row behind the rough timber bar, like a marquee for a fete. Sprung up on the foundations of the old pub, it had, which had been flattened in an air raid. Gives you hope.

  • • •

  Just as he’s pulling onto the London Road, his mother says something from the back of the car. It makes him jump. He’d thought that she was sleeping. He doesn’t catch the words.

  “What is it, Ma?”

  But she doesn’t reply. He twists round; she’s slid over to the right side of the car, where Will had been sitting, and is looking out the window.

  “You all right, Ma?”

  Nothing. Then, after a moment, “Where are we going?”

  “Home.”

  He watches her in the rear-view mirror. She just looks out of the window. Frowns.

  She’s still not used to the flat. But there’s no room for her in the house now there’s Janet too.

  “Have you there in a jiffy,” he says.

  He notches the car down a gear for the bend.

  They pull up outside the squat block of flats. The lawn slopes towards them. Pots of red geraniums stand beside the white-painted front steps. In the dim evening light the blooms look brilliant, like gouts of freshly spilt blood. It’s the new couple in the other ground-floor flat; they are nice, and keep everything nice. They look out for her.

  He gets out of the car, and helps her out of the back. She leans heavily on his arm. She is bulky now, solid with support garments.

  He’ll just get her in, get her settled, and be on his way. He has a few bob still, despite the expenses of the day. A couple of pints of cold wallop. Do him right.

  She looks up at him as they go in through the front door into the narrow communal hall, as if she doesn’t know where she is. Still half asleep. He takes her key off her and opens the door. She stands looking in, but doesn’t move.

  “C’mon, Ma, let’s get you sorted.”

  She looks up at him, her pale irises are clouded-looking, her whites lined with broken capillaries. He takes her elbow and steers her down the hall, past the cubby-hole kitchen and into the sitting room. She doesn’t shake him off: she lets herself be steered. He stops at her sagging chair, the one from the parlour in Knox Road. She sinks down into it. He crosses briskly back to the door and flicks on the light.

  “There we go.”

  She blinks round at the room.

  “Too bright?” he dodges to switch on the lamp on the card table, then switches off the main light again. The little lamp casts a cool glow through its blue satin shade, and a cone of light like a UFO
hits the ceiling.

  She blinks up at him. She doesn’t look quite right.

  “Cup of tea, Ma?” he asks.

  “Mmm.”

  He makes the tea. The kettle is slow to boil on the gas. He drops the tea canister and it clangs against the counter: he hears her suck in her breath from the next room. He brings through a laden tray: the teapot with the cosy hastily bundled on, a bottle with an inch of milk in it, a cup and saucer. She looks disapprovingly at the assortment of tea things, as he knew she would, but does not complain, as he also knew.

  “I wonder sometimes.”

  “What, Ma?”

  She reaches across and turns the cup around on the saucer, so that its handle faces towards her.

  “I don’t know. Just.”

  “What?” He feels a flare of irritation, a wash of guilt. “Go on.”

  She shakes her head. She tugs the tea cosy down, like she’s straightening a child’s jumper.

  “You’d better go,” she says. “You’d better get back home to them.”

  “I’d better.”

  She nods. Purses her mouth, making her lips fold up into deep creases.

  “I’ll call by tomorrow,” he says. “After work. I’ll bring you something. A bun.”

  “Good boy,” she says, and he dips down to let her kiss him. The faint press of her skin is cool as glove leather.

  “Right then,” he says.

  “Right.”

  He turns to go. “Good night, Ma.”

  She sucks in a rusty breath, and says at last: “Be careful with that boy.”

  Billy blows out a sharp breath, irritated. “Ma. Don’t.”

  She reaches for his hand, squeezes it, and smiles at him. Her teeth are perfect now, a row of even white plastic, and candy-pink gums.

  “Are you sure you’re all right now,” he asks her. “You’ve got everything you need?”

  She nods. “I’m happy,” she says.

  “Good,” he says. She really does look happy. He glances at his watch.

  “I’ll drop by tomorrow, then,” he says. “Bring you a cream bun.”

  “I’d like a cherry bakewell.”

  “Cherry bakewell it is then.”

  He kisses her. And he leaves her there, sitting in her chair, in a solitary pool of light. He’ll get something for the boy. Make him something. Billy can’t quite think what.

  Amelia pours her tea. She lifts the milk bottle and trickles some in.

  “I suppose it’s just too much trouble to fill a jug?”

  She glances up at the shadows in the other chair; there is nothing there.

  She takes up her knitting, and tries to pick up where she left off, but something has gone wrong: she’s lost count shaping the sleeve, and she has to ravel back. The wool bumps along, unhooking itself from the loops before, rolling back onto the ball in tight waves.

  When she doesn’t look directly, she can almost see him. A dark shape, a shadow of him in the chair. If she doesn’t look too closely, if she doesn’t stare.

  “He’s older than you now,” Amelia says.

  Her hands, as they twist and tug the wool, are dark and knotted like driftwood.

  “I used to think he looked like you,” she says. “I’m not so certain any more.”

  Because there are no photographs, there’s nothing to compare, and despite herself, despite her determination to remember, she can’t be sure. She glances up, looks directly at the armchair. There is just dark space there, emptiness. He was never the kind of man to sit around in armchairs, anyway. Always off and up and doing, fixing something, pulling something apart and putting it back together again. But sometimes, in the stillest room, she catches the scent of the sea, the roar of waves, and an unexplained joy floods through her like sunshine, and it feels, for a moment, like he is coming home.

  This is her secret. She can’t tell. This is her happiness.

  St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital, Hampshire

  September 30, 1957

  SISTER KATHLEEN WHISKS PAST, gives him a smile. Sister Kathleen. Even in his thoughts, her name seems to come out with a sigh. Will glances round at Cosimo, who raises a bald eyebrow in appreciation. Sister Kathleen is a peach: they have agreed it, though they’re not sure what it means. She goes to open the French windows and sunlight catches in the curls that escape from underneath her cap.

  He is having a break from traction today. Traction as in extraction and as in tractor and as in intractable. The pulleys and weights dangle from the end of the bed, and even though he’s released from them he’s still unable to walk, because he’s in plaster from ball of foot to just above his hip, his toe pointed like a dancer’s and his hip joint held immobile. He’s leaning up against a stack of pillows.

  He has Perthes disease. They are trying to fix it. They are trying to stop his hip bone from grinding his hip socket into bits. He imagines it like the mortar and pestle in the chemist’s shop: his hip bone is the pestle, his hip socket is the crumbling mineral that is being ground up, and not the solid white bowl it should be.

  Sister Kathleen heaves open the French windows. The net curtains billow in the breath of sweet damp air. She comes back to fetch the first of the patients.

  Today, while they are out on the veranda, getting their dose of fresh air and sunshine, the nurses are having a Big Clean.

  Which gives him, what? An hour? There’s the dusting, the sweeping, the mopping, the polishing. And then there’s the fetching and carrying and the sit-down feet-up cup-of-tea afterwards. Hour and a half? If the boys keep quiet—not too quiet, not suspiciously quiet—they’ll be left alone. And by the time the nurses come back to fetch them in again, he and Cosimo will be long gone.

  “You ready, Cos?” Will asks.

  Cosimo gives him his lopsided, scarred smile. It makes his whole left cheek and forehead dent up like moon craters. “I ready.”

  Cos reaches his good hand down and lifts his backgammon set onto his knee. He clicks open the box and displays, inside, the squashed-flat collection of sandwiches from the week’s teas. Some of the older ones look a bit crisp around the edges.

  “Good,” Will says.

  Cosimo nods and clicks his backgammon set shut.

  Will glances up and down the ward—Sister Kathleen’s back is turned, Sister Joyce is rummaging around in one of the silent boys’ beds. All clear. He leans round to reach into his locker. Toffee tin, penknife, box of matches with a wad of paper stuck inside to stop them rattling, then the hank of string and his bow and arrows. He’s taken the suckers off the arrows and sharpened the tips with a pencil sharpener: they look pretty serious and deadly now.

  He shoves the supplies beneath his blanket, then lifts his stack of comics from the locker. Eagle, Tiger, and The Beano: he lays them out over the bulging blanket as legitimate veranda reading and quite effective camouflage. He surveys the landscape of his bed.

  Good.

  The broom handle is stowed between the mattress and the bedframe. His fingers curl round the reassuring strong beech. No-one has noticed it’s missing yet. Who’s really going to miss a stray broom handle anyway? They’ll just think that someone has taken it away to fix a head to it. Last night Cosimo had moved like a cat—a three-pawed cat—to fetch it from the broom cupboard while Sister Brenda dozed at the nurses’ station.

  Down the far end of the ward Sister Kathleen and Sister Joyce begin to shift the beds and the boys. They get in behind the tubular steel bedheads and shove at the frames until the castors swivel into line and start to roll. The little wheels can be tricky—they creak and stick and there are halts while the nurses mutter and dart around to kick them into line with the hard black toes of their lace-ups. He and Cos will have to watch out for that.

  Will and Cosimo’s beds are a third of the way down the ward. Cosimo, being ambulant, doesn’t need to be rolled out into the sun. He slides out of his bed with his backgammon set clutched under his arm, and gives Will a nod as he passes. Will nods back. He watches Sister Kathleen
, her shoulder to a bedhead, her backside bulging against the starched sheet of her skirt.

  “Pppssst.”

  It comes from Mickey, on the other side.

  Will turns towards him. His stomach grazes against the rough edge of the plaster.

  Mickey has something wrong with his muscles. All of them. In the summer he beat Will at croquet. Will is pretty sure he cheated. Mickey’s eyes seem to have got too big for his head now, and his head seems to have got too heavy for his body, and he’s not playing croquet any more.

  “I’m coming too,” Mickey says. The words are difficult for him. They come out loose and wet.

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes I am,” Mickey says, “or I’ll tell on you.”

  Croquet is a game for toffs, for girls and vicars. Football; that’s a game that’s worth winning at. And even with a calliper on, Will is pretty handy: he may not be fast, but with his built-up boot, he’s got a right foot that no-one can argue with. Granted, he doesn’t know of any professional footballers that use a calliper. But he won’t need a calliper for ever. He’s getting better. Everyone says. He’ll be fine, if he’s just given the chance.

  But if they pin his hip, that’s it, over. No-one can have their hip pinned and play football.

  Mickey is serious. Mickey is a complication. And Mickey is also a toe-rag, and will stiff you given half a chance.

  “Look,” Will says. “You’re all right here.”

  Mickey just stares at him from his pillow; wet pebble eyes.

  “Me and Cosimo, you know. We have to go. We’ve got no choice.”

  A slow blink.

  “But you, they take care of you, you’re best off here. They’re not going to …” The word is like a blister in his throat. “Operate. Not on you.”