Chapter NINE
I DIDN’T SEE MUCH OF TRACEY DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS, TURNING her down several times when she telephoned and asked me to meet her in the village. I even said no when she suggested we spend the afternoon at her house, despite the opportunity this presented of basking in the comfortable normality of her household, and the thrill that came over me when I considered the possibility of seeing Amanda again. Even in the face of these temptations, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my mother alone. Immediately following our visit to Mabel’s, her mood had plummeted. She had taken to her bed and stayed there, refusing to rouse herself when I went into her room to try to coax her out of bed. “I might never see my own mother again,” she sobbed, buried under blankets. “I’ve got nothing to look forward to. Nothing.”
I felt I had no choice other than to stay at home and make sure she didn’t do anything foolish. While I watched over her, I sought refuge in the books I’d sneaked out of the mobile library. Since my initial foray, I’d perfected my skills at sneaking books from the adult section, making sure I put on a particularly baggy item of clothing before running down the driveway to the van. I didn’t feel too guilty about deceiving the librarian because she didn’t seem to notice the absence of any of the items I took, and I always sneaked them back onto the shelves within the regulation lending period of two weeks.
When the mobile library arrived that week, however, I was a little disturbed to find that I’d almost exhausted the potentially interesting titles in the adult section. After finding only one volume there that even vaguely interested me, I waited to check out the little stack of children’s titles I always took out to avoid arousing the librarian’s suspicion. As I stood there, I found myself eyeing the slush pile of titles she didn’t approve of that had been sent by the staff at the main library. I hadn’t heard of any of the authors, but two of the titles on the top of the pile looked particularly interesting: Sons and Lovers and Brave New World. So when the librarian dropped her date stamp and bent awkwardly behind the checkout counter to pick it up, I took the opportunity to grab the two books and stuff them down the front of my anorak. After I got them home, I was thrilled to find that I enjoyed these books, and to realize that if I could continue to poach from the librarian’s slush pile the horizons of my reading would broaden significantly.
Despite the distraction offered by my new reading, however, I was becoming increasingly concerned about my mother. The only time she got out of bed was to go to the toilet, and five days after we’d visited Mabel the only thing she had eaten was a packet of cream crackers and a bowl of Heinz cream of mushroom soup. Otherwise, she’d refused to eat, and I was beginning to wonder whether she might have decided to starve herself to death, wasting away so that I’d barely be able to distinguish the outline of her body from the ripples and ridges in the blankets, and she’d end up being carried out of the house again on a stretcher, this time a bundle of loose skin over jutting-out bones.
It was distressing, too, that my father seemed unconcerned. “Oh, she’ll pull herself out of it,” he said, slapping on another coat of paint in the hallway. “She’s just sulking after she got the news about her mother. But she’ll get over that soon enough.” Then he turned up the radio so he could listen to the cricket match.
Maybe he was right, maybe this was just a minor hiccup in my mother’s recovery; maybe she’d get back to landscaping the back garden once she’d got over her initial shock. But, really, I never knew with my mother. What I did know, though, was that if she didn’t have any food she wasn’t going to get better. And though I might not be able to control her mood, I might be able to persuade her to eat.
“Mum,” I said, entering her room soon after my father had left for work. “Are you awake, Mum?” The curtains were closed and I found myself immersed in a grainy semidarkness, able to make out my mother’s undulating form beneath the bedclothes only after I’d been standing there for several seconds. She lay on her side, facing me, silent, unmoving. “Come on, Mum,” I said. “It’s time you got up.” I could make out her features now; they looked pale and smooth as paper in the dim light. Her eyes were closed, the lashes unflickering, her mouth without tension. I knew she wasn’t asleep; her breathing was too shallow. “Come on, Mum,” I said again, running my hand over her hair. I’d expected it to be soft, but it was crisp and springy with matted-in lacquer, a hard sheen-repelling touch. I stood up and walked over to the window. “Wakey, wakey,” I said, pulling back the curtains, dazzling myself with the bright morning light.
“Bloody hell, Jesse,” my mother said, pulling the bedclothes over her head. “Shut those curtains. You’ll send me blind.”
“It’s time you got up,” I declared. “You can’t spend the rest of your life in bed.”
“Who says I can’t?” she snapped, her voice stifled by the bedclothes. “It’s my life, I’ll do as I bloody well please.”
“You’ll end up with bedsores,” I said. This was true—I’d read about it in an article in one of my mother’s Woman’s Realm magazines about a woman who was in a coma for eight years before she woke up. “And your legs will stop working.” This was also true, or at least I thought it was. I seemed to recall reading how they had to keep moving the woman’s legs or the muscles would turn to jiggly slabs of fat.
“I don’t care,” my mother said, hiking the blankets farther over her head.
“Of course you care. If you can’t walk, I’ll have to push you around in a wheelchair. And you won’t be able to work on the garden anymore.”
“Hmmph …” She pulled the covers down, so that I could see one eye peering at me. “I don’t have the energy to take care of a garden. I don’t have the energy for anything.”
This was my opening. “Well, if you got some food inside you, Mum, don’t you think you’d feel much better?”
Her eye stared at me, unmoving, glassy, like a marble.
“And I was just thinking that if I went and got you some of your favorites—you know, made you some cheese-and-pickle sandwiches and bought you a packet of Mr. Kipling cream cakes …”
“Mr. Kipling’s?” She shifted her head, so that I could see both of her eyes now. They seemed to hold a slight glimmer.
“Yes, Mr. Kipling’s. You know how they always cheer you up.” I beamed, hoping to shift some of the jaunty hopefulness in my words into her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, letting out a long, hefty sigh. “To be honest with you, love, I’m not sure there’s anything that could cheer me up right now. It’ll take more than a packet of Mr. Kipling’s.”
“I could get you the vanilla slices or, if you like, the chocolate éclairs.” I could feel my cheeriness slipping.
“Well … I suppose I could …” My mother raised herself onto the pillow and I felt my hope rise with her.
“So what do you want, then, vanilla slices or chocolate éclairs?” I pumped the enthusiasm back into my voice.
“I’ll have the vanilla slices,” she said, pushing the blankets from her chest to reveal her yellow flannel nightdress and her bare arms, still tan from spending all that time out in the garden. “No, I tell you what, why don’t you get the slices and the chocolate éclairs. After all, I haven’t had a decent meal in days.”
Ten minutes later, having raided the sparse contents of my piggy bank, I was out the door and on my way to retrieve my mother’s beloved cakes. Of course, I couldn’t go to the Midham Co-op. I’d have to go to the next nearest Co-op, two miles away in Reatton-on-Sea.
I pulled my bicycle out of the garden shed and set out. It was a beautiful day, warm and breezy, the sky pale blue, the clouds huge snow-white cumulus that patterned the fields with fat, ever-shifting shadows. As I cycled along the winding, narrow road that led to the coast, I felt exhilarated by the wind and the sun on my face, the steady pumping of my legs against the pedals. I was almost able to leave my worries behind as I breathed deep and hard, took in the smells—earth and grass and the drifting perfume of summer flowers and, when I was almost there, the briny ripe smell of the sea. And then I saw it, a line of dark blue horizon against the paler sky. I pedaled faster as I came to a slight hill, huffing upward and then, after reaching its crest, freewheeling downward until I reached my destination.
Despite its name, the buildings that made up the village of Reatton-on-Sea weren’t right on the coast, and I was a little disappointed to realize that, so far back from the cliffs, it wouldn’t be Reatton-in-Sea anytime soon. It was, though, a little more lively than Midham. The village’s little high street curved away from the main road in a meandering S, and, in addition to the Co-op, there was a pub, a launderette, a post office, a bank, a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s, and a couple of poky little shops that sold seaside souvenirs. Next to the Co-op was a dingy-looking amusement arcade, with a row of flashing bulbs above its shabby marquee.
I bought my two packets of Mr. Kipling cakes without incident, pocketed my treasured Co-op stamps (despite being banned from the Midham Co-op, I was still collecting them, taking care to make sure that my father handed them over to me after each of his shopping trips), and headed back along the high street on my bike. I had planned to go back home immediately to deliver my mother’s cakes, but as I reached the junction with the main road I found myself irresistibly drawn toward the cliffs and the place where the land met the sea.
By the Reatton cliffs, the asphalt of the road became a sandy path down to the beach, and right beside it stood the Holiday Haven Caravan Park, identified as such by a big painted sign. Below, there was a wide swath of sandy beach, dotted with holidaymakers who lay sunbathing on bright blankets and striped deck chairs; at the shoreline, the little figures of children bounced in the frothy white of the unfurling waves. I pulled to a halt next to the Holiday Haven entrance, climbed off my bike, and leaned it against the sign. The caravan park must have suffered some serious erosion, because the cliff there looked as if a huge voracious monster had taken bites out of it, with big clumps of dark clay spilling like crumbs down those jaw-shaped indentations to the beach. All the caravans were a good hundred yards away from the cliff edge, except for one, a particularly old and weathered-looking specimen, its sides patterned with rust. It was sited on its own narrow peninsula, within less than thirty feet or so of the tumbling cliff edge. I imagined myself within its thin metal walls on a stormy night, a cold east wind bawling outside, the waves roaring hungrily below. What would it be like, I wondered, to be inside that caravan if it was pulled down into the swirling cold water of the North Sea?
Just as I was pondering this, the door of the caravan was pushed open and a stringy boy wearing flip-flops, shorts, and an oversized bright blue T-shirt emerged. He slammed the door behind him, making the windows shiver noticeably in their flimsy aluminum frames, then began to make his way to the park’s entrance. He moved with a loose-jointed gait. The breeze, which was so much more vigorous here at the coast, tugged at his clothes, pulling them around his body so that, under the thin fabric of his T-shirt, I could make out the bony shape of his rib cage and the scrawny outline of his shoulders. His hair, dark and wild, was sent flying back from his head like a spiky mane. He didn’t notice me watching him, because as he walked his face was bent over the book he was holding in both hands to prevent its pages from flapping in the wind.
“Excuse me,” I said as the boy reached the gate of the caravan park.
“Argh!” He gave a start, jumping back and fumbling, then dropping his book. “Bloody hell, do you always go creeping up on people? You could scare a person to death like that.”
“Sorry,” I said, regretting that I hadn’t thought to cough or clear my throat to warn him of my presence. “I didn’t creep up, I was just here.”
“I’ve lost my place now,” he said, giving me an irritated look before bending down to retrieve the book. I noticed the title, Animal Farm, and a cartoony picture of some pigs on the cover. The boy retrieved the book, then stuffed the slender volume into the waistband of his shorts. He looked to be at least my age and must be embarrassed, I thought, to be reading what looked like a fairy story.
“Sorry,” I said again. “Really, I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
“Well, I suppose there’s no harm done.” He had a neat little nose, broad cheeks, and watery blue eyes.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I saw you come out of that caravan. And I was just wondering … well, what’s it like to stay there? You know, right on the edge of the cliff like that. Is it scary?”
“Not really.” He bunched up his eyebrows, which were slender and tidy, and looked at me as if I was a little odd.
I ignored his look and continued. This was a topic I was determined to explore. “Aren’t you frightened, though, that it’ll fall into the sea?”
He barked out a high laugh. “Maybe, but that might not be a bad thing. It might make my dad buy us a new place to live.”
“You’re not on holiday? You live here?” I asked, even more intrigued.
“Yeah, my dad owns the caravan park.”
“God, that must be great, being right on the sea like this. I mean, being able to watch the waves all the time and see the ships and imagine all the places they’re going to.”
“You think so?” he asked. He seemed a little taken aback at my enthusiasm, but also a little pleased, his bright mouth easing into a smile.
“Yes,” I answered. “I’d love to live here.” It might not be a neat little street with neat new houses, but it had a view that stretched all the way to the horizon. How could anyone not want to live in such a place?
“Are you having me on?” he asked, resting his hand on his hip and eyeing me suspiciously.
“No,” I answered. “Really, it must be great.”
“Well, yeah, actually, there is something nice about looking out at the sea. And hearing it. I love the sound of the waves.”
“It must be very soothing.” I listened to the lulling softness of the waves behind us on the beach. They rose and fell so steadily, like the slow exhale and inhale of a peaceful sleeper.
“Yeah, exactly! It’s really, really soothing,” the boy said, apparently delighted that I understood. Then he added with a shrug, “But living in a caravan can get a bit cramped. There’s only the three of us—me, my mum, and my dad. But, still, it’s a bloody tight squeeze.”
I recalled my own family’s week in a caravan in Bridlington—how I’d had barely an inch of privacy, how the rain had thrummed on the roof as loud as bullets, the unbearable claustrophobia after the first few days. On second thought, perhaps living in a caravan on a cliff edge might not be as wonderful as I’d thought. Still, it did have some advantages. “It must be exciting seeing the erosion,” I declared. “East Yorkshire has one of the fastest-eroding coastlines in the world, you know.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and gave a slow, authoritative nod. After all, this was a subject I was well versed in—Mr. Cuthbertson had seen to that.
“I know,” the boy said, raising his eyes skyward, as if he’d heard this piece of information a thousand times. Then he grinned. “But you’re right—it can be sort of exciting sometimes. There was a big storm last year and about fifteen feet of the cliff went down in one night. I actually heard it fall.”
“You didn’t,” I said, amazed.
“I did,” he said. “It went thunk.” He gave an exaggerated nod, as if to imitate the fall of the cliff. “And the next day, when I went out, there was this giant piece of the cliff just gone. Disappeared.” He swept his hands in front of him, like a magician performing a trick.
“Really?” I said, looking wistfully toward the cliff edge.
“Yeah. And not long after that we had to move all the caravans away from the cliff. This man from the council came and said it was dangerous if we left things the way they were. We didn’t get round to moving ours, though. My dad said he’ll do it when he feels like it. He can’t stand the council telling him what to do. He thinks they’re a bunch of busy-bodies. But to be honest,” he said, glancing back at his family’s caravan then turning to me and lowering his voice, “I think they know what they’re talking about. Maybe you’re right,” he said, laughing. “I should be scared, living right near the cliff edge like that. I mean, every year there’s a little bit less of the caravan park. And though my dad won’t admit it, eventually we won’t have anything left.”
“Really?” I surveyed the caravan park. It seemed strange that this entire grassy stretch would be pulled into the water. Perhaps, I thought with a thrill, it would be Reatton-in-Sea sooner than I’d thought. “Have you ever had a caravan go over the edge?” I asked.
“No,” the boy said. “But I’d like to give ours a shove.”
I laughed. “It does look a bit the worse for wear.”
“Bloody ancient,” he answered, sighing. “I’d love to live in a normal house.” He waved a loose hand to punctuate his statement.
“So would I.”
“What, you don’t live in a house, either?” He seemed excited, as if he’d been longing to find someone else who lived in a situation as strange and different as his own.
“I do, but it’s not a normal house. It’s falling apart. My dad says he’s going to fix it up, but I don’t think he’ll be able to. He’s not very good at those sorts of things.”
“I just wish my dad would move us into any kind of house. Four walls, a roof, a real foundation—I’d settle for that. But he’s stubborn, is my dad. Once he gets something into his head, well, he just won’t give up. But fighting the North Sea—well, that’s a bit stupid in anybody’s book.”
“I suppose so,” I said, thinking of my own father. In some ways, he was just as stubborn. While this boy’s father had set himself up to battle the inexorable erosion of the coastline, my own father fought the forever-shifting tide of my mother’s moods. And the house he’d bought, supposed to be a bastion that would keep us safe, was falling apart, crumbling, as surely as those clay cliffs lashed by the relentless waves of the North Sea.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked.
“Jesse, Jesse Bennett. What’s yours?”
“Malcolm Clements. I’m thirteen. How old are you?”
“I’m thirteen as well.”
“So where do you live, then, thirteen-year-old Jesse Bennett?” He folded his arms across his chest. “I just moved to Midham.”
He laughed. “Well, no wonder you think it’s exciting here in Reatton. Midham’s even deader than it is here.”
He slapped at the air, and I realized that I’d never met a boy who made such wide and unrestrained gestures, whose hands moved so animatedly with his words. There was something almost girlish about Malcolm—his soft and energetic features, his bright and uncontained voice, the way he amplified everything he said with a gesture or a look. I rather liked it, and found myself enthralled by the drama he put into his conversation. And he seemed so eager to talk, willing to tell me about himself. Boys generally weren’t like that; they hid themselves behind bluster and bravado, seemed to think they were somehow better than girls. But Malcolm was different.
“I’m sorry you ended up there,” he continued, pursing his lips. “If they gave awards for the most boring place on earth, it would probably go to Midham.”
“I’m going to move to London when I’m older,” I said.
“Really? Oh, my God, so am I,” Malcolm said, making his eyes big and round. “London’s where everything happens, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes. Have you ever been there?”
He huffed. “I wish! I’m stuck here most of the time. Farthest I’ve ever been is Scunthorpe. And, believe me, that wasn’t worth the trip. I’ve read all about London, though. The history, the buildings, all about the different areas, about the River Thames. I got a whole stack of books about it from the main library.”
“You go to the main library?” I asked. The main library was seven miles from Midham, in Bleakwick. Given the mobile librarian’s avid disapproval of everything they sent from there, I imagined it stacked, floor to ceiling, with deliciously illicit reading material.
“My dad takes me there when he has to go into Bleakwick,” Malcolm said. “While he goes to the bank and the shops, I go there and get my books.”
“Do they let you take books from the adult section?” I asked, scarcely able to contain my excitement.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t they?” he said, Then he laughed. “Oh, no, you’ve been using the mobile library, haven’t you? You’re wasting your time there, having to put up with that old battle-ax. Anybody would think she was born in the bloody Stone Age, the attitudes she has. Did she tell you not to read stuff because it was pornographic?” he asked, grinning.
“Yes. She wouldn’t let me take out Jane Eyre.”
Malcolm rolled his eyes. “She’s off her rocker. You ask me, she spends far too much time in that van by herself. You can’t borrow anything worthwhile from the mobile library. Even if you can find any decent books there, she’ll make sure you don’t get them out the door.”
“Actually,” I ventured, “I found out how to borrow good books from the mobile library. It’s just that the librarian doesn’t know.” I explained to him my new strategy of sneaking books from the librarian’s slush pile out under my anorak. Malcolm seemed impressed.
“God, I never thought of that,” he said. “But, even if I had, I probably wouldn’t do it. She scares the life out of me. You’re a lot braver than I am.” He gave me a gentle shove, then chewed on his lip a moment, as if considering something. “You know, if you wanted you could come with me to Bleakwick. You could come to the main library and you wouldn’t have to worry about sneaking things out. They let you take six books out at a time.”
“Really?” Just the idea of getting out of Midham to somewhere as busy as Bleakwick would make a welcome change, but going to the main library, having the chance to borrow whatever I wanted, that was definitely something to look forward to.
“So you want to come?” Malcolm beamed.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll just have to … well, I’ll have to check with my mum.” I had no intention of missing this opportunity, but I wanted to make sure that at least my mother had started eating before I went off to Bleakwick.
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t be going until after school starts, and you can let me know when I see you there. You will be going to Liston Comprehensive, won’t you?”
I nodded.
“Good!” He grinned. “So you want to come with me for a walk on the beach? I can show you the spot where that chunk of cliff fell down.”
I wanted to walk on the beach with this odd, interesting boy along the tide line, examining the sea’s debris—seaweed, bleached wood, seashells, and all the other fascinating items the waves churned up and disgorged onto the shore. It would be nice, too, to take off my shoes and socks and wade out into the water, leaving behind the colorful little gatherings of holidaymakers and that narrow ribbon of sand. I remembered the story my mother had told of my three-year-old self charging, oblivious to any restraint, into the water. For a moment, I let myself imagine doing it again, racing down the beach, galloping into the waves, gasping at the sudden cold, my heart sent racing, my body light and buoyant in the liquid vastness of the sea. And then swimming, sleek and slippery like a sea mammal, farther and farther from the shore.
But, just as I was about to take up Malcolm’s invitation, I remembered my mother’s cream cakes and that she was waiting, helpless, for them under the bedclothes. “I’m sorry, but I have to go,” I said. “I’ve got some shopping that I’ve got to take home for my mum.”
“All right,” he said, shrugging. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you at school, then, Jesse Bennett.”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’ll see you at school.” And with that I hopped on my bike and, feeling a lot happier than I had when I set out, began pedaling toward home.