The Undertow (27 page)

Will swings himself along, all callipered up for the walk. He carries a football in a string bag. He and Dad will have a kickabout.

They follow the high-water mark, a trail of bobbled seaweed and worn shells. The pebbles are tan and gold and grey; he leans over, calliper stretched out, to pick one up. The stone fits his hand neat as anything, and is golden, and almost seems to glow from inside. He drops it into his shorts pocket, and it makes the fabric droop to one side, weighing him down like a diver, pulling at his snake-link belt. Sukie bounces round him, black as a scrap of left-over night, and he laughs at her happy jowly face and dips for another stone, and reels his arm back and flings the stone overarm, putting as much welly into it as he can, sending it towards the sea, staggering with the after swing, his boots scuffing unevenly through the pebbles. Sukie flings herself after it. He watches the nearest waves for a plop and splash, but the pebble falls short, clatters, and Sukie scrabbles to a halt, legs going all directions, scattering stones as she searches, making him laugh.

He glances round to catch the others’ attention; Dad is spreading out the blanket. Grandma stands like a stooped bird, waiting, her skirts and coat stirring in the breeze. “Awfully windy, Billy.”

Dad sets out her deckchair, unfolding it and grinding it down into the stones. Grandma huffs down into the seat. “There.” She looks up and around her. Squints into the bright sun. “Billy, can you pass my knitting bag?”

Will swings himself up towards the family. His big boot clumps and drags and is hard work uphill on the stones.

“Are you having a nice time, Grandma?”

Grandma peers up at him. “Lovely, thank you.” She clicks her false teeth. “Lovely to have a day out with the family.”

He’s sure it is. It wouldn’t be nice spending all that time alone in her flat. It’s dark, and smells funny, and she makes him look at old pictures; that’s all she seems to do. Knit, look at old pictures, and drink tea.

But he is having a nice time too.

Dad is unfolding the windbreak. Mum strips Janet, peeling off layers of cardigan and pinafore and blouse and vest and pants. The baby stands naked for a moment, all belly and goosepimples, before being hoisted into her swimming costume. It is yellow and knitted and elasticated round the legs so that it balloons out round her backside. The straps are already slipping from her narrow shoulders. Dad hammers the windbreak into place with a stone. The shopping bag is stuffed with sandwiches and bottled pop and biscuits, but that’s all for later. Dad eases himself down onto the rug, lies back, lets out a sigh, though it can’t really be that comfortable.

Will sets down the football, and the bag slumps over it like a fallen parachute. Grandma says something, and Dad says, “Eh,” and leans up to her, but she’s not talking to him, she shakes her head: she’s counting stitches, or she’s talking to herself. Sukie comes scrabbling up towards the blanket with a mouthful of leathery seaweed, slapping it around, growling happily.

“She’ll knock the baby flying,” Mum says.

Dad lifts up a stone and flings it way off towards the sea; Sukie goes bounding after it happily, dealt with.

“Fancy a kickabout, Dad?” Will grinds a foot into the pebbles.

Dad tweaks his cap down over his eyes. “Not now. Later. Play with Jannie.”

He worked all week. He cleaned the car. He drove all the way down here. He put up the windbreak. He’s not playing football now.

Mum sends Janet on her way with a pat on the bum. The baby waddles a few steps then squats down to examine a bubble of dried
seaweed. She picks it up and starts to chew on it. It must be quite satisfying, popping the bubbles, but Will wouldn’t fancy the salty cabbageyness of it himself.

Mum looks up at him from where she sits on the blue-green-red tartan rug. Her beautiful lipstick. Her eyes blacker than anybody’s eyes. She reaches into her handbag and gets out her cigarette case. She lights up.

“You going down to the sea with her?” she asks.

Will nods.

“Right then, love.” She sets about unstrapping his calliper. “Be careful.”

Janet’s hand is cold and small. Her head, at waist height, is a ball of blonde fluff. She is like a little yellow chick with her fluffy hair and her yellow swimming costume. He’d like to scoop her up and kiss her big round tummy, but he’s not strong enough. He’s been told, and won’t do it again.

Anyway, Janet’s not keen on being kissed. She yells and struggles when you put your arms around her. Pushes your face away.

He feels light without his calliper and built-up boot. His limp is different because he can’t put much weight at all on the bad left leg without the support of the metal frame. It hurts too much. So he skips along, using the good leg for weight-bearing and the bad leg for balance, tiptoe to the ground. His shorts flap around his thin leg like a skirt.

Janet, small but smart, has worked out that she can step from pebble to pebble, fitting her small feet to their smooth surfaces comfortably. Her cold little hand in his, her pink toes placed carefully among the stones, the fat dimpled knees bob in and out in front of her as she walks. He though, he can’t control his body like that. He lurches along at her side, like her pet monster.

He tries not to pull on her as he limps, in case he makes her lose her balance. They come up towards the creeping water’s edge.

Sukie rushes up; she brings a half-shredded bit of driftwood, white as an old bone, and dances up to Will’s side with it, taunting him; he drops Janet’s hand to grab the stick, and Sukie digs all four feet into the stones and tugs against his grip, shaking her head and play-growling. If she could laugh, she would be laughing now, and it makes him laugh too. He says, “Leave it,” in a big deep voice, and she does, and he lifts the piece of driftwood and skims it out towards the sea.

Sukie races after it, bounding into the shallows, then swimming. Will leans down to catch Janet’s hand again. The sea comes curling up towards them, washes over their toes. She laughs, a big laugh that makes her belly shake, and she looks up at him, her face all crumpled up with delight, and he laughs back down at her, out of happiness.

The water swoops up and over their feet, their ankles. They step out further—good leg bad leg—into the water. It slaps up Will’s shins, up to Janet’s knees. He steadies himself against the drag of the water, against Janet’s pull. She’s trying somehow to stretch herself up and out of the sea, shrieking at the cold, delighted. It makes his hip hurt, but she’s so happy. Sukie’s got her stick, and swims back towards them, head sleek and black, eyes big as a seal’s, like she belongs to the water. Will is up to his knees, good leg firm, bad leg supported just on the ball of his foot. Janet is up to the roundest part of her round belly, and is shivering. Sukie stands dripping. She drops her stick and shakes, spraying them all over with ice-drops of water, making Will yell, making Janet squeal. The stick washes up towards him, and he drops Janet’s hand to get it. He’s just thinking how it’s easier in the water than on dry land, the water wafting it towards him, suspending it at knee height so he doesn’t have to stoop, when the wave peels back, pulling out to sea, and Janet goes down.

It happens so suddenly that he can’t make sense of it—she is there, and then she’s gone—landing on her backside completely under water and dragged away by the wave’s pull. He looks down at her little pink and yellow form through the surface of the water, like he’s looking at her through a glass lid. There is just a moment of blankness. She’ll stand up, she’ll get to her feet and reach up and grab his hand. But she doesn’t.

He reaches for her. For a moment his balance has gone too, and he’s going to land on her, in the water, but it’s just a second, less than a second, and he’s got his arms round her, got her up again, on her feet, and from there he lifts her up onto his good hip, and he can hold her, he can actually, after all, lift her. She is freezing cold. Sputtering. Big eyes wide and wet and red. Too shocked even to cry.

“It’s okay, petal, it’s okay.”

He is strong enough. He is strong. Her wet body clings to him, hard; she lets out a great wail; she’s shaking and crying, salt in her eyes and one arm round his neck, her fingers digging in, and the other fist up to try and rub the salt away. She shivers, jolts with sobs.

“I’ve got you, it’s okay.”

A wave rolls up and over his legs, cold. He feels such an ache of tenderness. He wants to crush her to him, pull her right into his body, make her safe; he edges himself round on his good leg. And there is Dad running towards them, and Sukie’s skipping around his feet, and Grandma’s standing up on the blanket at the top of the beach, crying, “Oh my gracious, oh my gracious me,” and the pebbles are flying out from underneath his dad’s feet, and he’s cursing at Sukie and kicking her out of the way, and Mum is coming down behind him, a hand covering her mouth, the other flapping around for balance. But it’s okay, because Will has got her. He takes an awkward step towards them all. Dad’ll take the weight off him and carry her safely back; Mum can wrap her up and give her a cuddle and all will be well. A drink and wrapped up in a towel and they will soon have her warm and dry and happy again. Because he was strong enough.

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.