‘Of course, darling, don’t worry about it at all, see you when I see you …’ Bye.’
Barbara replaced the receiver and shrugged, fighting down her swelling disappointment. Her towel and toilet bag were on the bed; Nurse Anderson stood expectantly at its foot.
‘I don’t think I’ll bother with a bath this morning.’
The nurse clicked her tongue, ‘Now then, we can’t let standards slip, can we? You always have a bath, Mrs Lewis. It’s nice to freshen up.’
‘They aren’t coming today – my daughter and grandson. Going out on a boat trip up the river with some friends.’
Nurse Anderson picked up the towel and hung it over her arm, moving her body towards the door as if to encourage this patient who really got on her nerves, though she did not know why. ‘Oh well, you can’t blame them really, can you? Not very nice for a little boy, visiting here, let’s face it. Not nice always being with old folks, let’s …’
‘Oh, I know.’
‘Now let’s get this bath over, Mrs Lewis, I do have a lot to do.’
Feeling drained of all resistance, Barbara sighed and followed her to the door.
The trouble began when Anna went to the bedroom to pull on her old denim shorts, then stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. White legs, covered with stubble; fleshy thighs, mottled, with a streak of pink down the front where she had caught some sun. ‘God, I’m ugly,’ she thought, ‘Matthew will take one look at me and throw up.’ For a second she wanted to cry; then walked with some determination into the bathroom.
The razor (probably left by her brother-in-law Alan, since Richard always used his travelling electric) was old and blunt, but Anna set to work on her legs. Five minutes later three rivulets of red traced a delicate path over the contours of her flesh, gathering in a pool in the hollow of her thin ankle. She swore, but finished the other leg in much the same fashion, blotting the blood with Tom’s brown face flannel. Then, after rinsing the sprinkling of scum and stubble from the bath, she took from the cabinet a bottle she had bought two days earlier. The label announced that ‘Instabronze’ would turn her into a golden goddess in just ten minutes – an experiment that Anna, who cherished the devout sceptic’s secret longing for miracles, decided she must try.
She supported one leg upon the bath, unscrewed the lid and poured the yellowish-white cream into the palm of her hand. ‘Spread quickly over the surface of the skin making sure that the “Instabronze” is spread evenly.’ Anna smeared the stuff all over her calves and thighs, finding it hard to reach the backs of her legs, and allowed herself a cursory glance by way of a check. Now for the arms. She repeated the process, slopping more and more of the cream into her palm and slapping it on her skin. There was a problem at the shoulder: did you stop at the high point of a sleeveless tee-shirt or continue to the neck, stopping at the face – which would then peer wanly from its stem like a snowdrop stuck on a brown twig? The trouble with the ‘Instabronze’ was that it became absorbed so quickly into the skin that whilst Anna was wondering where to go with it, she forgot where she had been. It was rather like trying to complete a ‘Paint by Numbers’ with invisible ink.
Anna stared at herself in the mirror, remembering suddenly something she had forgotten: the extraordinary concoctions she and Hilda had made in the kitchen of ‘Ahoy’, because Barbara used to say that it was wasteful to spend their money on suntan preparations. ‘Of course, Dad was on our side,’ she thought. He had laughed one day to find them stirring and mixing, whilst their mother had gone shopping in Synemouth. Anna had played safe with vinegar and olive oil, suspecting none the less that Barbara would be less than pleased to find the expensive oil cooking her daughter in the sun. Hilda, who had read in a magazine that something called cocoa butter was an ingredient in expensive American lotions, decided to combine melted butter with drinking chocolate, thinning the sticky mixture with some of Barbara’s cologne. They had smeared their inventions over their limbs (young and firm then, Anna thought), taken the two pale-blue bath towels and stretched themselves hopefully on the lawn. William had chuckled, saying they were like a fish and chip supper followed by hot chocolate, and offending their teenage dignity by slapping both of them on the bottom as he passed. After an hour he called softly from his deckchair, ‘Excuse me, you two beauty queens, I think you ought to know the Queen Mother is coming down the path!’
Anna started to laugh quietly as she remembered her mother’s face. The kitchen was covered with debris; half a pound of butter wasted; the open bottle of cologne; and the sight of two daughters standing by towels stained with long greasy marks. Two days later she had produced a bottle of Boots’ suntan cream for each of them, and William had whispered that vanity always vanquished prudence.
Smiling to herself Anna suddenly remembered that the instructions on the ‘Instabronze’ had emphasised the importance of washing the hands immediately – and she had been daydreaming with it still coating her palms. She looked down. Already a tracery of fine brown lines showed against the orange of her skin. Horrified she attempted to scrub the stain away, but her skin remained orange. Reaching for the abrasive cleaning powder she sprinkled it over her hands and rasped them together, then took the scrubbing brush and ground the powder into her skin, wincing at the punishment. She looked down and saw the long, uneven streaks spreading over her thighs like a sunset, matching her striped arms. Her elbows and knees closely resembled the wrinkled skin of an ancient orange, left too long in the fruit bowl.
As she was filling the bath, with tears of panic gathering in her eyes, Tom came in. ‘What are you doing Mum? You’ve gone a funny colour.’
‘Well, that’s pretty clever of you,’ she muttered.
‘Yes, honestly,’ he explained, innocently helpful. ‘You’ve gone sort of yellowy, on your shoulders there, and your legs. Were you trying to make yourself as brown as Matt?’
At 12.30 promptly, they sat on the end of the pontoon and Anna felt sourly as if she had been scrubbed all over with a wire brush. She wore a long-sleeved tee-shirt and jeans, even though the sun was at its hottest, and wished – as the kind of boat her father used to call a ‘floating gin palace’ swung slowly round towards them, with Matthew in his swimming trunks upon the cabin roof – that she had never set eyes on the Pauls.
George Treadle lumbered along the pontoon behind them and called Matthew to throw him the rope, ‘I saw them bring her up from the Marina last night, Anna. She a fast one, that’s for sure,’ he said. George reached out, caught hold of a rail of gleaming chrome, and held the boat steady as Adrian Paul lifted Tom aboard, holding out a hand for Anna as she clumsily scrambled across, nervous as always of the streak of cold water beneath her.
As it had approached them Invader had reminded Anna of a tiered wedding cake, decorated by strange flying protuberances. It seemed curiously top heavy, as if at any moment the laws of science must insist that it sink slowly beneath the little lapping waves of the river, a sacrifice of modernity to its age. Now, on deck, Anna felt like a fly in an empty swimming pool, tiny and exposed.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Adrian’s face was flushed. ‘I’ll show her around,’ said Matthew, leaping down on to the deck. ‘No, you won’t, that’s my job,’ called Valerie, waving him aside. The three of them wore the same expression, like children, Anna thought, with a new toy. She felt touched. Already Tom was running around the deck screaming, ‘Look at this, look at this!’
Invader swung out, making the people fishing from their dinghies bob wildly from side to side.
‘Well, do you like her?’ Adrian repeated.
‘Yes, it’s … lovely,’ Anna replied.
‘You look hot in all those clothes,’ said Valerie, looking dubiously at the jeans and tee-shirt and resting a hand on the brief white shorts which revealed her own long brown legs.
‘Yes, well, I forgot to bring shorts. It doesn’t matter.’
Anna screwed up her eyes against the dazzle of sun on white fibreglass and shining chrome. Matthew had climbed aloft again, and was lolling on the cabin roof, dark against its whiteness. His swimming trunks were brief; Anna averted her gaze, shaking her head when he called to her to come up and join him.
Instead she wandered in to Adrian, who sat at the wheel. ‘Not bad, eh?’ he said over his shoulder, and without waiting for an answer went on to list Invader’s assets. ‘She’s got twin diesels, goes about twenty-five knots maximum, not that that’s much good to us along here. The limit’s five knots – too slow. That’s radar up there, and we’ve got VHF and autopilot, so Val and I can have a cuddle and still keep on course!’
He winked at her. ‘Want to take the wheel?’
‘No thanks. It’s safer in your hands.’
Adrian reached out and put an arm around her waist. ‘You know all boats are female? Well, no female’s safe in my hands!’
Valerie stood in the doorway. ‘There he goes again,’ she said, with no emotion in her voice. ‘Come below and I’ll show you the galley and cabins. How would you like a glass of cold white wine?’
‘Bring me a beer, love. Terrific to have a fridge on board,’ Adrian added to Anna, so that once again she felt oddly touched at the childish quality of his pride.
Matthew joined them. ‘Give her a burst, Dad.’
‘Use your head, Sonny Jim. What’s the point of getting into trouble when we’ve just got her?’
Matthew looked sulky. ‘What’s the point of being able to go really fast if they won’t let you? It’s stupid to have a speed limit. A river’s not like a road.’
‘But you once complained to me’, Anna said, ‘about motor cruisers not knowing the river rules enough to get out of your way in good time when you’re windsurfing. And whizzing past making unnecessary wash. You’ve changed your tune a bit, haven’t you?’
‘We didn’t have one then. It’s different when it’s your own,’
‘Whose?’ Adrian laughed. ‘While we’re on the subject, this is mine. You’ve got that magnified water-ski of yours.’ Matthew peered at the instruments panel with its battery of dials, ‘I’d rather have this thing,’ he said.
Anna felt disappointed, and turned to look for Tom. He was sitting perfectly still in one of the folding chairs, staring at the frothy wake which churned from the stern, his face full of ecstasy. ‘Mum, isn’t this great?’ he whispered, ‘I’ve always wanted to go on a boat like this. A really fast boat. Do you think it’s the fastest boat in the world?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she said, turning away.
The cabins had teak edges to the berths; frilled curtains, patterned in turquoise, navy blue and white, hung at the rows of portholes; the shower had a sliding door of reeded plastic. Valerie displayed the boat’s virtues, including what she called ‘two decent toilets that work properly’. So Anna found herself peering down a lavatory bowl and making admiring noises. The interior of Invader shone; the manufacturers had allowed no meanness with metal or Melamine or teak or tweed to detract from the impression of lavish uniformity.
Valerie switched on a radio, so that quiet pop music filled the galley, and opened a fridge stacked with wine and beer and soft drinks, commenting, ‘Look – Ade’s got his priorities right!’ She started to unpack the large hamper that lay upon the table, pulling out chicken legs, hunks of salami and garlic sausage, soft cheeses and bags of tomatoes. Two French loaves were wrapped in a red-checked tablecloth.
‘You didn’t get all this from the village shop,’ said Anna.
‘No, I only get basics like tins from there. I get most of our food in Synemouth, and use the freezer. Actually, I saw you in Synemouth – the day before yesterday. Were you visiting your mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she getting on all right?’
The question was merely polite. ‘Yes,’ replied Anna – then thought how dishonest, how foolish to try to protect this woman, standing amidst her picnic in all her health and prettiness, from truth.
‘Well, no, that’s not strictly true. Sometimes when I see her she seems better, but it’s an illusion. She’s got cancer, Valerie – breast cancer. I still find it hard to say. I don’t really know how long she’s got to live.’
Valerie Paul folded her arms across her chest, each hand rubbing the smooth skin it touched, and she shuddered. ‘Ooooh, it’s awful. I can’t bear to think about it.’
‘Don’t you think’, Anna asked quietly, ‘that we have to – at some stage? Have you ever had a relative who died? Someone close to you?’
‘No, thank goodness. Ade’s mother died when he was little, and he hardly remembers her. His father lives in Manchester, and he’s all right. He married again and his wife’s much younger than him. My parents live in Dover, but to be honest, I never see them.’
‘Why?’
‘We never really got on. I was an only child and they didn’t really want me to get married so young – all that sort of thing. Mind you, they’d like all this. They like Ade, now he’s done so well for himself. Actually, I’ve always found them a bit … well, a bit of a pain. There’s no rule that says you have to like your parents, is there?’
Anna shook her head. ‘So you never see them?’
‘About once or twice a year. We used to have them at Christmas, but Adrian and Matthew like coming down here for every school holiday, so it’s a bit of a problem.’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyway,’ Valerie added, taking turquoise plates from a cupboard and piling them on the table, ‘they get on all right. I think old people like to be left alone to get on with their own lives. You shouldn’t interfere all the time, don’t you agree?’
The day before yesterday Barbara had laughed, telling Tom stories about when his Grandad was a little boy and there was no television and few cars. Tom had been incredulous, full of pity for the terrible life they must have led, but Barbara had smiled her secret smile, and said that it was not terrible. In those days, she said, people talked to each other, and when the bombs fell on London they all scurried underground into the shelters and everybody was friendly, everybody helped. Anna had sat, listening to the tales she had heard before, remembering how the same stories had drawn each one of them, as children, into a vivid world of sirens and blackouts, rations and camaraderie, and how that history had seemed heroic, enviable to her – themselves a generation deprived. Sometimes she used to detect a note of wistfulness in her father’s repetitive anecdotes about the army, as if it was the last time he had felt free. Yesterday, beneath the mirth, Barbara had sounded wistful too.
Did she want to be left alone? In a sense she did, Anna thought – despite her repugnance for Valerie’s complacency, her easy explanation of her own neglect. Barbara wanted no interference, in that she had set her course for death and needed only the emotional sustenance of quayside parting with her family. ‘And yet she’s wrong – so we have to do something about it,’ Anna thought, remembering how she had interfered after William’s death, meeting with Hilda and Richard, arranging the cremation, arguing about ‘Ahoy’ … and since then, nothing. When her mother had written that slightly coy, slightly questioning letter about her friend the Brigadier (whom none of them had met, deliberately), Anna’s reply had given information about John’s new job and the house they were going to buy, and finally (in a postscript) answered her mother’s delicate hints about the possibility of future companionship with the blunt and breezy observation that it was nice for her mother to have new friends, but of course no one could take the place of Daddy. That, Anna had decided at the time, was not interference; simply an expression of the obvious. Yes, she thought, I too told people that my mother loved being left alone to live her own life. Richard and Hilda agreed, during those odd quarrelsome Sunday lunches, when the gravy congealed upon our plates as we sat, drowsy with wine, and wondered why the accident of blood should draw us into unsatisfactory rites with these familiar strangers. So we left our mother alone, as Valerie leaves hers alone, and yet now I want to change her mind, to alter the course she has chosen.
Valerie was looking at her, asking for approbation, yet dreading (Anna could tell) that her guest would continue this uncomfortable conversation. ‘Perhaps they do want to be left alone,’ Anna said, ‘because they’ve had enough of us. But what if they grow desperate without their children, and wonder what was the point of having them, just as we will one day?’
‘Oh, I doubt that,’ said Valerie, with a tense smile and a toss of her head. ‘All I can say is, sometimes I can’t wait to have Matthew off my hands. Life’ll be much easier. Let’s face it, kids can be a terrible nuisance at times, can’t they?’
Again she looked hopeful, and suddenly Anna felt pity for this woman’s inability to shift outside the limits of her own language. Such clichés, she admitted to herself, formed the syntax of her communication with her own mother – so she above all must allow some charity towards the fear they hide, So she shrugged and said, ‘Oh sure they can,’ and saw the smile spread across Valerie’s face.
They ate their picnic when Adrian dropped anchor, about fifty feet away from the leafy bank, at a quiet bend in the river. Valerie peeled off her shorts and tee-shirt, and sprawled on a brightly-patterned ‘lounger’ in a lime-green bikini. Adrian removed his shirt, and Anna averted her eyes from the hairy stomach which swelled over the belt of his khaki shorts. ‘Thank God Matthew takes after his mother,’ she thought, watching as the boy leaned against the rail and smoothed his mother’s suntan oil over his arms and chest, rubbing it in slowly until his flesh shone in the sunlight. She felt hot and hemmed in by these bodies which offered themselves to the heat like chunks of meat under a grill. Shamed, almost.
‘Aren’t you hot, Anna?’ Valerie pointed at Anna’s arms, covered by the long-sleeved tee-shirt. ‘I’ve got a spare bikini in the cabin, if you want.’
Anna thought of her orange piebald body and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t feel the heat. I’ll stay modest today.’
Adrian opened his fourth beer. ‘Spoilsport! Eh, Matt?’
‘She can do what she likes,’ said the boy sullenly.
‘Can’t you take a joke?’ Adrian’s face reddened.
‘Don’t think much of your jokes. They’re embarrassing.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you two, don’t start squabbling! See what a hard time I have, Anna, keeping them apart?’ Valerie lit a cigarette and glared at her husband and son.
Embarrassed, Anna fussed over Tom, who had spilt lemonade on his bare legs. He had, with unusual lack of shyness, permitted her to strip him to his underpants, and now pinkened in the afternoon sun. When she looked up, Matthew was staring at her, but switched his gaze immediately to the river bank, where birds called harshly in the stillness. His nose was straight, the face in profile harsher, older-looking. Anna gazed at his face, noticing how his hair, damp with heat and oil, curled in tendrils over his ears, then dropped her eyes, seeing the oil gleam on the planes of his flat stomach, and observing how it flattened the hairs on his brown thighs. For a second there flashed across her mind an image of him naked, but the thought curled at the pit of her stomach, so that she looked away, feeling ashamed. Sweat trickled coldly from her armpit down her side.
‘Have some more food, Matt,’ said Valerie, holding out a plate to him. ‘You’ve hardly eaten a thing.’
‘Don’t want much,’ he muttered, but took a fat portion of chicken and squatted down at his mother’s feet, pulling and gnawing at the meat. His tongue slid out to lick his fingers. Soon there was a ring of grease around his mouth, and he wiped his hands carefully on his own skin, adding to its lustre.
‘Oh, why the hell can’t you use a serviette?’ snarled Adrian.
‘’Cos I don’t want to.’
‘Why don’t you go for a swim and clean yourself up a bit?’
‘I was going to anyway, Dad. Thought I’d give you all the honour of seeing me perform.’
Matthew hauled himself up the ladder to the top deck, and stood looking down at them, screwing up his eyes against the sun.
‘Don’t be so daft as to think you can dive from up there,’ Adrian called, ‘come down and go off the back.’
Valerie stared sleepily up at her son. ‘I must say, even though he’s mine, that he’s turning out a handsome kid. Don’t you think he’s beautiful, Anna?’
‘Course she does!’ said Adrian, with a wink at his wife, ‘Anna can’t take her eyes off him, can you Anna? All you women are the same!’ He threw back his head and laughed, so that his stomach shook. Valerie joined in. ‘Well,’ she screamed, ‘if you put any more weight on Ade, I tell you I’ll be inviting that new young milkman in for morning coffee.’
Tom looked puzzled, his head turning from one adult to another, trying to understand the incomprehensible laughter. Though loud, it was not infectious; it shut him out, and made his mother look pink and irritated, even though she forced a laugh as well.
‘Can I swim too, Mummy?’ he asked, sensing dimly that she needed him to help her. But she looked through him for a second and he saw a dreadful vacancy in her face, the faraway sad look that seemed to afflict her more and more. Though Tom did not understand he was afraid she might be going to cry, and so he jumped up and repeated his request.
‘It’ll have to be in your underpants,’ she said, shortly.
Matthew stood on the stern and plunged cleanly into the water, showing pink soles as he disappeared, a long shadow beneath the surface, before bobbing up some distance away, to shake the hair from his eyes with a wild toss. He struck out for the boat, his arms cleaving from the water, and glittering drops of spray cast upwards from his churning feet.
‘Matthew won’t want you to spoil his swim.’
‘Yes he will. I won’t spoil it anyway.’
Dubiously she helped Tom down the ladder into Matthew’s arms, and watched anxiously as the child doggy-paddled in a small circle,
‘Stay near to him, Matthew,’ she called.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after him. Hey Tommy, you’re quite a good swimmer.’
Adrian and Valerie lay flat, their eyes shaded by dark glasses, whilst the debris of their lunch grew shiny on the folding table, and half-finished wine warmed within the glasses. Few boats passed them; there was not wind enough to sail and only a single daytrip boat made Invader rock upon the chain, as rows of curious and envious faces peered at them from its decks.
Matthew tickled Tom and lifted him in the water, never leaving his side. He pretended to race the child, and Anna smiled to see him pace himself, absurdly containing his own strength, so that Tom pulled out ahead. Suddenly, it was as if something within her softened like the butter left on the side of their plates, and she rested her head upon her arms, tenderly. The hot sun burned her back, and, with eyelids half closed, Anna felt suspended, listening to the two voices from the water, remembering nothing but the sight and sound of the minute just gone, whose echoes still reverberated in her head. She smelt her own skin and liked the fragrance, one that she associated with Tom folded into his towel after an evening bath, with that totally unthreatening love. Matthew’s voice called, ‘Anna! Anna! Look at us. Tom’s beating me!’ and Anna opened her eyes a fraction, still with her head resting, to see Matthew smiling up at her, his teeth white and his face shiny with water, the smell of the salt river mingled with the fragrance of suntan oil and filling her nostrils and, it seemed, the air all around.
Under her breath, her stomach folding as it does when an old lift starts its descent, Anna said, ‘I love you.’ She leaned forward to help Tom up the ladder, and said aloud, ‘Love you,’ thinking it did not matter, after all, if she was as unspecific as the sun, especially as the wine was making her drowsier and drowsier and the movement of the boat upon its anchor was gentle, soporific. Matthew was good; he had been patient with Tom, when he must have longed to swim alone, and now he was reaching up to her from the water, holding out his hand to her and smiling, pleading in mock helplessness to be pulled up the ladder. Happily Anna held out her hand, which he grasped tightly, pulling himself over the top and scattering drops of water in her face, so that she shivered slightly at the sudden coolness.
She wrapped Tom in the towel, and whispered, ‘Isn’t this perfect, my love? It’s completely perfect.’ Then they both watched silently as Matthew stepped over his sleeping father and climbed quickly up the ladder to the top deck. He stepped carefully over the chromium rail, balanced for a moment on the edge of the wheelhouse roof so that he was silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, and then made his exquisite, forbidden dive into the river.