Emily Bullock
The second time our mother left, we packed the car with deflated beach balls, rolled-up lilos, towels and booze, and Dad drove us to Freshwater. The clapperboard chalet had belonged to our maternal grandmother. A signboard tilted out onto the pavement: For Sale. And that’s when we knew our mother wasn’t coming back.
By the time we unloaded, the sun was setting behind the reeds at the back of the garden. We sat on the concrete patio, yellowing plastic chairs creaking, watching the horizon burn. There were four of us kids: Aaron the oldest at nineteen; us middle ones, Ben and Carrie, at eighteen and sixteen; and Diane the youngest at thirteen. We held out the blue plastic beakers, Dad topped them up with gin. A carton of Marlboro Reds lay open on the table.
We smoked and we drank.
There wasn’t any ice but a breeze wormed its way up from the baked mud of the riverbed, wriggling through the humid July evening. The gin tasted sharp like tears.
We didn’t talk much, we drank more.
Ben dug out an old board game from a cupboard in the living room. Game of Life. It was bowed with water damage but we picked up the plastic car counters anyway, forcing them uphill at times, sticking in pin-people, working our way through the game. We played until the light failed us.
A bulb hanging in the kitchen behind us wasn’t bright enough to hold back darkness, swallowing up even the outline of our toes. Pheasants cried for their mates, stalking the reeds at the edge of the grass. No stars, but the moon appeared from the clouds every now and again, bringing the molehills, the cracked angles of the plastic chairs, into focus. The green glow of Dad’s Casio watch pulsed, beeping to some agenda we didn’t know about.
Time stretched around the chalet. Peeling white paint, small leaded windows like a cricket hut from one of those Sunday-night dramas our mother used to watch. Diane began to hum the Miss Marple theme music, dropping notes until it was tuneless as the buzz of gnats about our ears. Ben threw a packet of fags at her. She reached in, stuck a cigarette between her lips. The blue lighter lay on the patio table beside the abandoned game. Dad was nearest to it. Diane eased herself up, kneeling in the grass, stretching for the lighter. No one stopped her.
Five red tips glowed in the grey gloom. Gnats feasted on us. No one swatted them away.
Dad was the first to leave the garden, calling from the doorway, ‘See you in the morning.’ But his voice rose at the end as though it was a question he wanted to ask.
Us kids took the bedroom; a double, and a single with another mattress that slid out from underneath. Candlewick bedspreads, in shades of pink and green, lay across our feet and we sweated through the winceyette sheets. Our mother must have slept in the same bed when she was a girl, younger than Diane was now. Our mother was an only child; maybe back then she longed for company. She used to tell us about this place, but somehow we’d never got round to visiting.
The ceiling sloped towards our heads. The blue flowered wallpaper felt hairy, damp like an old flannel. It was a bit like camping.
Dad slept on a lilo pressed against the wall in the lounge; no settee, only those wingback chairs old folks have. We heard the squelch of the plastic all night. He turned and turned, turned and turned.
The next morning we found Dad on the floor, the sheets twisted about his legs. The lilo gave one last dying gasp. He sat up, opened a can of Heineken. We followed ants marching down the corridor, stepping over them to get to the kitchen. Sand under the orange lino crackled, making us notice the itchy gnat-bites on our arms and legs. We scratched, shedding ashy flakes of skin.
No one remembered to bring milk so we had cornflakes with water, and a couple of beers each for breakfast. We carried the rest of the beers, the lilos, beach balls, and some towels, through the gravel car park, across the road, and over the seawall to Freshwater beach.
‘I don’t need any help,’ Dad shouted.
He blew up two lilos and two rainbow-coloured beach balls. We lay on the towels, waiting for him to be done. Diane burned cigarettes into the plastic castle-shaped bucket. There wasn’t any sand on the beach, only smooth pebbles that felt like Murray Mints when grasped in your hand.
Dad slapped the lilos on the water. Spray splashed over his rolled-up jeans and bare chest. We all hobbled over the shingle to the shoreline, except Aaron, who didn’t want to leave his can of beer. Despite the heat of the day the water nipped at our ankles. Dad steadied the red lilo with his hands. Us girls struggled on, slipping against the hard plastic. It made farting noises as we tried to find a balance, its ridged and wrinkled edges scratching our legs.
Ben tried to clamber on next.
‘You’re too big,’ Dad said.
Ben stood belly-deep in the water, arms over his chest, watching us get hauled away. He sat astride the other lilo but the waves kept pushing him back towards shore. He dragged the yellow lilo up the beach, weighed it down with pebbles and beach towels. The wind was too strong for the beach balls. They rolled away, disappearing over the seawall, off to find some other kid in some other place.
Dad dragged us girls through the waves. We laughed and screamed until holidaymakers tutted and shook their heads. We shouted louder after that. He ran parallel with the beach, twisting, then pushing us out to sea. Our legs, hanging over the sides, grew numb. Behind us, life on the beach shrank and shrank. Dad’s chin dipped under the level of the waves. If he let go, slipped and sank out of sight, would anyone notice? How far would we drift?
Diane began to rock, pitching forward. She puked; swallowing too much sea water will do that to you. It frothed like lager, running between the plastic grooves. We wriggled, ready to abandon ship.
‘It’s too deep,’ Dad said.
He half-swam, half-dragged us through the cold water. We reached the shallows. Dad collapsed on top of the red plastic. We rolled off, banging our knees on the shelf of pebbles. Waves buffeted him but the inflatable kept him afloat. We staggered out of the sea, shivering; watched him from further up the beach. Hunched, raw from the sun and the salt, he looked like a deflating beach ball.
‘Want a beer, Dad?’ Aaron called.
Dad waved a limp hand, signalling he’d be right back. Aaron screwed the spare can into the stones, shielding it from the sun. The pebbles were stacked on top of each other, crevices and holes all around. We dropped cigarette butts, ring pulls, straws. It was possible to lose so many things between the cracks.
‘I’m hungry,’ Diane said.
She sat herself on my outstretched legs, the warmth of skin on skin took us both by surprise. I opened my knees, she dropped down onto the beach, bum-shuffling away. She wrapped herself tighter in the towel. Against the backdrop of the sea she looked so small.
Other families went to the tearooms, the chip shop, or unwrapped cling-film-cosseted sandwiches, unscrewed tartan flasks of steaming tea, when lunchtime came. We drank the rest of the beer, smoked a packet of cigarettes, chewed our nails. The sun overhead so bright that it ate up all the shadows. After lunch, the tide came in, pushing the beach-goers closer together; jostling with their chairs and windbreakers. Dad lay in the sun, eyes hidden behind a pair of plastic Mickey Mouse sunglasses he’d found on the promenade; the small arms stretched to snapping point. Mums applied sun lotion. Fathers read newspapers. Pensioners sucked on Mr Whippy soft-whip. Kids paddled. The slick, the rustle, the slurp, the splash. The sweet and salty smell of the seaside crowded about us.
The steps under the corner of the seawall were empty. We went there instead. Dad couldn’t be moved.
Waves bashed against the top, feathering us with foam. We took it in turns to launch ourselves onto the lilo, cresting the surf, getting washed back onto the steps.
A man with a Labrador, up on the promenade, said, ‘Shouldn’t be jumping off there. You kids will do yourself some damage.’
Ben laughed, took another dive.
The square-edged bruise on his thigh lingered for weeks, dark and angry.
The next day even the cornflake packet sat empty. We went to the Spar.
The shop smelled of iced buns and the vents over the aisles puffed out hot breath. Every corner of the ceiling had a security mirror, distorting us as though we were walking through a hall of mirrors. We shared the last of the Heineken, passing the can from hand to hand until it was warm as tea. We picked up a cauliflower and a sachet of cheese sauce, chucked it in the basket. The powder inside the packet was set like concrete. When we add water to it later (because we’ll forget the milk again) it won’t turn out much better. The rest of the basket was taken up with beer, a bottle of own-brand vodka, and a loaf of Mother’s Pride. From the running total Ben kept calling out, we were twenty pence away from nothing when we reached the counter.
The old woman on the till rang up the food but her hand hovered over the booze. She twisted the gold rings on her swollen fingers. Ben put the tenner on the counter.
The woman said, ‘I haven’t got change. Maybe you should come back later with your parents.’
Aaron picked a postcard from the wire rack, a handwritten sticker poked out the top: 20 pence each. ‘Who needs change?’ he said.
The woman pushed her glasses high up on her nose, peered at each of us. ‘I believe you’re going to supply alcohol to a minor.’
Aaron shrugged. ‘What’s it to you?’
The wrinkle-faced woman didn’t offer us a bag and we didn’t ask. We cradled the stuff in our arms, walking through the car park, stopping outside the Anchor to collect Dad. An old bloke, in a black suit and white vest, sat opposite him on the picnic bench. A dried yellow stain on his lapel was shaped like a heart.
He smiled at Diane. ‘What you got there, missy?’
She held out the postcard. A banner across the middle read Seven Wonders of the Isle of Wight.
Diane read them out. ‘Ryde where you can walk. Cowes you can’t milk—’
Dad flicked the back of the card. ‘Who you sending it to?’
Diane shrugged. She put the postcard on the bench as if it weighed too much to hold.
Dad slammed down his pint glass. ‘You kids know where your mother is?’
We shook our heads.
The old bloke leaned across, tapped the postcard. ‘This place is one of them wonders. “Freshwater you can’t drink”.’ The same rocky outcrop and pebble beach could be seen if you looked over the road. ‘But they got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Freshwater bubbles up through the salt. Brings good luck to those that see it. Looks like smoke out in those rock pools. Cools you down like ice cubes dropped in your drink. It’s a wonder all right.’
We left the shopping with Dad, ran all the way.
Skidding over the seaweed-covered rocks. Other kids looked up from their beach-fun, heads turning. We held out our arms, lending each other balance. We were a blur like low-skimming seagulls. One of us laughed and we bounced that call between us.
The pools were clustered under the chalk rock-face at the far end of the beach. The tide eased itself out leaving pools exposed, ringed with emerald weeds and bristling red anemones. We crouched around the deepest one.
We waited for the smoky mist to show us that fresh water was coming. We waited for the sweet scent of it. Maybe salt would harden on the drying rocks, pushed out by the springing of fresh water. Maybe sunlight reflecting off those crystals would dazzle planes in the sky. We waited, knees aching, jagged edges of the rocks biting into our pumps.
We waited.
Diane was the first to leave, and somehow with her gone there was no need for us older ones to stay. But we didn’t look at each other as we walked away. Perhaps things would have been different if we had glanced up, seen our own pain staring back. I suppose we’ll never really know.
That holiday was over twenty years ago. The last time we were together. Diane and Dad stay in touch sometimes, the boys not so much. Being all together would only make it easier to see what was missing. The chalet must have sold, our mother must have kept the cash; can’t blame her for that. We’ve never been back, but I believe we’re all still there: standing on the rocks, staring into the pool, waiting for fresh water that will never spring.