The Kindest Thing - страница 10

Once I had children of my own, every seaside holiday brought a moment of intense anxiety that rose like bile, then a falling sensation, a rush back to the numb panic of waiting for news while my mother spoke to strange men in hushed tones. The earth sways. I am flirting with disaster, I am tempting Fate, bringing myself, my children here, a sacrifice to the ocean. Neil had told me about Scylla and Charybdis when we were in Greece, the two monsters that sat either side of a narrow strait. If sailors managed to avoid the sucking whirlpool of Charybdis they sailed too close to the grotesque Scylla with her six heads, each with three rows of teeth, her loins girded by dog’s heads. Scylla would drown and devour her captives. I imagined my father struggling against the pool of Charybdis, being pulled deeper and deeper, the water closing over his head, his limbs burning, heavy, feeble. Or Scylla, sated, cradling him in her loose embrace. Dad’s bones clanking softly in the slow current, crabs in his eyes.

Determined to face down my monsters, I dandled the toddlers in the foam along the shore, showed them how to jump the waves. As they grew, I taught them to float and crawl and dive. Allowing myself to fear the worst, I pictured them gone, my eyes racing over the sand and the blue beyond. It’s a talisman: if I dip myself into the foam of tragedy and coincidence, give rein to the dread, then it will not come to pass. Some superstitions are hard to shake.

After those first few days my father’s death was never mentioned. And talk of his life was strictly rationed. Now and again my mother would mention how he loved to sing or recall watching him play cricket when they were courting, and I would keep still and hold my breath and long for more, so afraid was I that I would forget him. But she would always snap out of any reverie and if I asked a question, tried to keep her talking, she would feign forgetfulness or ignorance. ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember. Now I must get on.’

One ill-judged day, at the age of twelve or so, I pulled out the photograph albums from the sideboard drawer. My mother was watching television. She saw me and tensed, straightening her spine against the sofa back and studying the magazine on her lap. I sat in the armchair and began to turn the pages, thick creamy vellum with black and white photographs carefully attached by corner mounts. This album ran from their marriage to our early childhood, and at the end the photographs were in colour: Martin and I in matching jumpers and tartan slacks, in romper suits on rugs, bundled up in woollen coats and tam o’ shanters feeding the ducks. Our clothes so formal, like little versions of our parents’, save the romper suits.

I turned the pages, longing for an invitation to share them with her but not daring to say anything. I was staring at a picture of my mother and father in evening dress. She looked vivacious, her lips dark with lipstick, her hair swept up in a chignon and her small figure stunning in a tulip gown. He gazed at her with great affection, his black suit and white shirt pristine. My mother laid her magazine aside and stood. ‘I’ll sort the ironing out,’ she said. ‘Turn that off, she nodded at the television, ‘when you’ve finished.’

With everyone out, I listened to the house settle around me. The lack of sleep took me back to the days when Adam and Sophie were small. The same aching muscles, dry eyes pained by the light, a spine filled with sand, emotions horribly close to the surface. As a new mother I would eat to try to maintain some energy, some equilibrium, but now I couldn’t. Instead I ran a bath and lay there until the water cooled.

Later, as I was hanging out the washing, I heard the doorbell.

A man and a woman are on the doorstep. For a moment I think they are selling windows or are Jehovah’s Witnesses – something to do with the suits they wear even in this heat. But they aren’t smiling. They flash ID cards at me and introduce themselves. All I hear is the word ‘police’.