Arthur
A perfect summer’s evening. Step out of the pub and there’s hardly any change in the temperature. The smell of cut grass and spilt beer. I close my eyes and breathe it in. Everything feels like a blessing. The sun going down behind the row of shops, bathing the pub bins in the last light. A quick whiff of warm rotting food and chip fat. May’ll be busy at home – ironing short-sleeved shirts for the holiday and cleaning out the cool-box. She’ll have everything sorted. There’s no point rushing back.
The door opens again. The lads stumble down the steps to a blast of ‘Rivers of Babylon’. Billy tries to do a bit of dancing. The daft bugger. He trips and rams his shoulder into my chest.
‘Watch it, mate.’
‘There you are, Arthur!’ he says, ‘the big man, the king of Her Majesty’s fine postal service.’ So close I can see the acne on his cheeks, the fillings in his bottom teeth.
‘Alright, son,’ Jim is coming down the steps behind him, draping his jacket over one arm. He puts a hand on Billy’s back. ‘Time for home.’
‘Eh? No, Dad! The night is young – right Arthur?’
‘I told you you shouldn’t’ve let him have the last one.’
Jim shrugs, ‘it’s not every day you turn twenty one.’
‘Bollocks to this!’ Billy says, ‘I’m off into town.’ A bus is coming down the road, stopping with a hiss at the traffic lights. ‘Lend me some money will yer?’
‘Not this time. More than my life’s worth. Yer Mum’s waiting at home. Come on.’ Jim tries to pull him by the arm but he hangs on to me like a kid, like I’m Gandhi or Jesus. I push him away – only gently. He never did have much of a clue about personal space.
‘I’m just saying, right, I’m just saying… you’re a bloody legend. No word of a lie.’
Jim shakes his head. ‘Ok son, let’s go before you propose shall we?’
‘I’m just saying… the night is young.’
‘Some of us ’ave got work in the morning.’ Jim helps him down the kerb and out of the path of oncoming traffic. ‘Enjoy yerself, you jammy bastard. Not too much gambling mind,’ he shouts, ‘and whatever you do, leave those classy Welsh birds alone.’
I wave him away, watch him drag Billy round the corner next to the bookies.
I should be going straight home as well, but the night is young and after a week of diagonal rain, posting disintegrating envelopes through the doors of the great and good it seems a bloody shame to waste an evening like this. So I walk in the other direction. Past the butcher’s, the baker’s, the café on the bridge that’ll be serving bacon butties in the morning – right about the time we’ll be driving over the River Dee.
I walk across the road into the park. A Willy Nelson track I can’t quite shake. She loves him in spite of his ways that she don’t understand. Fast picking guitars. Harmonica used as another kind of percussion. Walking to the beat down the avenue of limes. I can’t believe how empty it is. The patterns of sun and shadow like my own special lighting. Sing it under my breath even though I can never quite get his accent. Throw my jacket over one shoulder and strut on the gravel like a catwalk model or a cocky American cop. No bloody excuse for it, except I’m a little bit pissed and there’s no one around to tell me to stop being such a tit.
Everything feels like enough. The week’s holiday stretching ahead. And no getting up for church on the Sunday. No arse-numbing sermon to dream through. Then sings my soul. Worshipping at the shrine of the full English breakfast before braving the jellyfish in Llandudno Bay. Blowing up the dinghy with the foot pump – taking Karen out as deep as she dares and then a bit further. Pretending I can’t hear May shouting at us to be careful. Squinting back at the shore and taking it in. The people turning pink. The Great Orme. All those grand bed and breakfasts, painted in deck-chair colours, facing out to sea.
Somewhere in the distance there are girls screaming. Kids in the field throwing sticks and swearing at each other. The shouts of teenage boys. I stop and lean against the mulberry tree. The sound of the stream trickling. On Llandudno pier you can see the waves frothing in the gaps between the wooden slats. Karen used to be scared looking down, as though she’d be sucked through by the sheer force of the water. Once I picked her up and pretended I was going to chuck her over the side and she screamed and May slapped me on the arm and told me to stop tormenting her. That same year I let go of her hand in the arcade and she was lost for five, ten, fifteen minutes, hiding behind a fruit machine, finally popping out and shouting ‘Boo!’ – thrilled by the look on our faces. May called me a bloody careless idiot, and I told her I am, I know I am, I always bloody have been.
That song in my head again. Over and over. Through the teardrops and laughter they’ll pass through this life hand in hand. The sun in my eyes and May at home getting everything sorted so I don’t need to worry, so I can just climb into bed and drift off without a care in the world. The sky is shifting. All the blood rushing to my head. I steady myself on a bench then sit down and shade my eyes. The rose garden could do with some care and attention. Those kids again, getting nearer, coming from the path by the duck pond. They stop a few yards away. Three lads in nothing but football shorts, shaking their wet heads like dogs swimming after ducks in the canal.
‘Come on then!’ The one who shouts it is the cockiest. Taller than the others, tanned and well built, like he’s been lifting weights in his bedroom. His head doesn’t quite match his body.
‘Get your tits out!’
His mates laugh, but they’re nervous, not sure whether to join in, not sure how far to push it. They look around, squinting into the sun. The girls come round the corner, in their tight jeans that flap at the bottom, T-shirts with big stiff collars.
‘Piss off, Dickson,’ one of them says but she doesn’t sound angry. ‘If you think you’re such a man meet us round the cricket hut in five minutes.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he says and his sidekicks giggle like children, ‘oh yeah?’
‘Not so talkative now are you?’
‘See you in five, hot stuff.’
I watch them walk off across the grass, practising their not-scared-of-nothing swagger, grinning like idiots. I could’ve taken Billy on into town. I’m still young. I’m young enough.
The girls are still by the pond, in an excited huddle. I look at them properly for the first time. Karen’s there. I sit up. She is. Has she been there all the time, hiding behind the others, out of sight? Press myself back into the hedge. Bloody hell. Karen. I should go straight over there and drag her home. I should do something – not just sit here a little bit pissed like the useless article I am. Too young to be out at this time, surely. Nearly fifteen. Next to the others she looks small, but not as small as I remember from seeing her yesterday at teatime. Is it possible she’s grown since then? They’re talking, arguing. I lean forward, try to concentrate. She’s shrugging at them, looking fed up, staring down into the mud.
‘Come on,’ one of them says, ‘you don’t have to do nothin’.’
The other girl grabs her arm and pulls her towards the grass.
‘Don’t be so shit-scared all the time, Kaz.’
And she’s going with them across the grass and I’m just sitting and watching and letting it happen.
I should never have had that third pint. I can’t move, can’t think what to do. What’s May playing at letting Karen stay out till all hours? At home ironing shirts and wiping down the table when her daughter’s out here, up to all sorts. I stand up, hold onto the arm of the bench, watch her legging it away from the others, heading towards the main path. They yell at her. They’re on their way to the pavilion. She’s going home. The relief. I want to shout after her, to run and catch up and hold her hand across the road.
At home I go to undo my laces and lose balance. Steady myself on the shoe rack and force the buggers off, kicking them to the back of the porch next to Karen’s purple trainers with the stupid stacked heels. My toes throbbing, socks drenched with sweat, stinking to high heaven.
‘Where’ve you been so long?’ May says.
‘Out.’
‘Care to elaborate?’
‘No, I don’t care to elab…elaber…. I don’t care to – no.’
‘Please yourself.’
She goes back to the ironing in front of the TV, some sort of police drama – a car chase through empty docklands.
‘Where’s Karen?’
‘Upstairs packing.’
‘Where was she earlier?’
She looks at me. ‘Youth group. At the church hall. Why?’
I shrug.
‘Something you’re not telling me, Arthur?’
‘Can’t a man just ask about the welfare of his offspring now and then?’
The iron hisses. She sits it upright and swops the pair of pants across to the other leg. ‘I thought you were a happy drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk.’
She raises an eyebrow.
‘Bloody hell, woman. What is this? An interrogation?’
I go back out into the hallway. I’d kick something if my feet weren’t already throbbing. I lean on the bannister, torn between going upstairs and leaving the house.
‘There’s a little bit of trifle that needs eating in the kitchen,’ she says, cool as anything, ‘if you fancy it.’
Of course I stay. There’s nowhere else. I sit at the kitchen table and eat with a giant spoon straight out the serving bowl.
‘That’s disgusting,’ Karen says. She squeezes past to get to the fridge, ‘and there’s no orange juice.’
‘Oranges don’t grow on trees, you know.’
She gives me a look, a don’t-think-for-one-minute-you’re-even-remotely-funny kind of look.
‘There’s nothing to eat.’
‘We’re using everything up before the holiday.’
‘Great. Then I’ll just starve shall I?’
‘Have some trifle.’
‘Blancmange makes me want to puke.’
‘Mmmmmmm.’ I suck a great lump of it off the spoon.
‘You repel me.’ She slams the fridge door, stalks out and runs straight up the stairs. Grace of an elephant and the TV blaring and the ketchup clanking against an almost-empty bottle of milk.
‘Forecast’s rain!’ May shouts from the other room.
But the forecasts aren’t always right. A couple of years back they’d said it’d be wet all week and they’d been wrong. It’d held off right until the last day of the holiday. Waiting in a chip shop in Bangor for a lightly battered fish. Perched on the brown-tiled window seat when the heavens opened. Rain dripping down the glass. Enough to make you feel right at home. A group of lads came in and ordered in Welsh. They looked me up and down. I didn’t imagine it, whatever May said. Laughing too loud. All the harsh words they knew we couldn’t understand.
‘Did you see that?’
May was reading the notice board. ‘What?’
‘The way they looked at me.’
‘Who?’
‘Them!’
She looked up. They were waiting at the counter pushing each other and laughing. Dressed in their scruffs with razored heads and sweatshirts covered in white paint. No more than nineteen.
‘Stop being so paranoid.’
‘How long does it take to cook a bloody fish?’ I folded my arms, crossed my legs and uncrossed them again. I felt like an idiot, suddenly, in the pressed chinos and short-sleeved shirt. Middle-aged and stuck in my ways and past it. Karen was in her own little world, doodling on the back of a leaflet with a biro. The lads were paying then and walking to the door bringing the smell of vinegar and turps and curry sauce that made me even hungrier than I already was. I could’ve sworn one of them winked at me on the way out. If I’d said anything about it to May she would’ve looked at me like I was losing it. They said something in Welsh – and it could’ve been anything really – like May said, they could’ve been talking about the weather. But I made my own translation and it stuck in my head as though it was a verifiable fact: stupid English twat.
And maybe this year Karen will tell me where to stick the dinghy and complain about the jellyfish and roll her eyes and ask if she can stay in the car while I buy the chips so she doesn’t have to be seen with us. It doesn’t take much to embarrass her these days. I only have to breathe.
When I get into bed there’s music coming from Karen’s room. I can’t make it out. The tune doesn’t seem to match the beat. May puts piles of folded clothes into the suitcases.
‘She’s going to wake up the neighbours,’ she says. ‘Just what we need. Betty banging on the wall with her walking stick.’
She looks at me, pauses then stuffs a pair of underkecks into the inside mesh pocket. This is my cue to do something. But I’m knackered. Everything’s a blur. Tongue still tingling with toothpaste. And the music isn’t that loud, really. I could close my eyes and start to drift and maybe I do because before I know it she’s out on the landing herself, knocking louder than the beat of the song. The door opens and then I know the song because it’s the same one from the pub, the same one that’s playing everywhere. Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? May says something in that tone she has and Karen’s shouting. The door slams. Then silence.
‘Thanks so much for your help,’ she says, huffing back into the room. She carries on balling up pairs of socks and stuffing them into any available corner.
I want to ask her how many miles she’s walked today. I want to say why can’t you be more gentle with her? Why does every little thing have to be a full-blown drama? I want to tell her that sometimes, when they argue, she reminds me, just a little bit, of her mother.
‘You’re tired,’ I say, ‘come to bed.’
She mutters something as she zips up the cases, switches off the lamp and climbs in. We settle into the usual tangle. Her skin leaking heat, toenails scratching my shin.
‘Ow.’
‘Sorry.’
I feel her relax against me. Her hair still stiff with hairspray.
She sighs. ‘That test tube baby was born the other day,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘The first one – in Oldham. They implanted it straight into her womb.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Can you imagine?’
I can’t. I think of the baby bird I saw in spring. Fallen from the nest. The raw pinkness of it – lying there on the path neatly, inside the lines of a perfect paving slab in a pristine dead-end cul-de-sac. And then the other thing, the shrunken boy. The little one we never talk about.
‘Is it normal?’
‘What?’
‘The baby.’
‘Yes. A girl. They called her Louise.’
May’s breathing starts to change. I try to listen, to hear any sign of Karen awake across the landing. Nothing. It’ll be a long drive tomorrow. The journey is always the best bit. All the things you’re going to do. Packing the car with so much stuff you can’t see out the rear window. Passing round the Murray Mints. The anticipation. Karen’ll be sulking in the morning. But I’ve still got the magic touch. I’m not past it yet. I’ll show her the jar of 2p coins I’ve been saving to use in the arcade. Just like last year, and the year before. It’ll go too quickly and then I’ll be back to posting letters. Redbrick house after redbrick house. Elastic bands, and sweat marks on the collar. Working on my tan from the knee down.
May turns away from me, kicking the duvet off her feet. Warm air from the window. The actual hoot of an actual bloody owl. I sing into her neck: ‘She’s a good-hearted woman in love with a good-timing man.’
‘Bugger off,’ she says.
I kiss her ear. Awake all of a sudden. Not wanting to sleep.
She sighs, ‘you won’t remember any of this in the morning, you know.’
I hum the next line and move my hands down over her hips.
‘I will,’ I say, ‘I bloody will.’