Authors: Stella Whitelaw
‘Where’s that, Mark?’ I asked. ‘Where did you see this old castle?’
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I made it up.’
It was an amazingly detailed drawing with tiny, feathery pencil strokes of light and shade. The aging of the stones was quite remarkable work. I didn’t say anything. No point in suddenly becoming the gushing mother.
I took my mug of coffee over to the armchair and sat down. Mark was immersed in the drawing.
‘The painting on the wall,’ I said. ‘Did you do that as well?’
It was an unframed painting, daubs of bright colour that somehow merged into a raging sea. It looked very young and somehow full of energy.
‘Yeah. Acrylic paint.’
‘It’s very good. And the paintings in the kitchen?’
‘Rubbish stuff I brought home from school. But gran likes them. She put them up.’
‘Would you like some coffee?’ I asked, not arguing.
‘I don’t drink coffee,’ he said, not looking up from his drawing. ‘Gran says it isn’t good for you.’
‘Quite right.’
This was awful. I didn’t know how to talk to my own son. The silence hung like a shroud. I had to learn how to be his mother all over again.
‘Would you like to play a game?’ I suggested.
He sent me a withering look. ‘I’m too old for snakes and ladders.’
‘I was thinking more of poker or gin rummy. We could play for ten pence pieces. Do you know how to play gin rummy?’ I
rummaged around for packs of cards.
Mark was calculating the odds already. He closed his drawing book. ‘Cool,’ he said.
We took spray carnation buds and a box of chocolate peppermints to the hospital the next morning. Mark said they were her favourite sweet. I wrote a note, at his dictation, for his head teacher. The boy was a born organizer. He’d appoint me as his PA soon.
He’d won
£
1.50 off me last night so our relationship was a rung up the ladder. It was still a slippery ladder.
My mother was looking frail, in pain, stitched up and on a drip but pleased to see us. Mark was thrown by the disinfectant smell and gory hospital atmosphere but acted cool. I was proud of him. He inspected my mother’s bed chart as if he was a visiting surgeon.
This boy was only eleven, but he acted going on twenty. His genes were ahead of his shoe size. Had I done this to him? Was I at fault? Had I stripped him of a normal childhood?
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked, knowing it was a stupid question. She had aged. Whenever I thought of my mother, the picture in the frame was of the young widow who brought me up. I never noticed the years creeping on. They had suddenly arrived, robbing her skin, her face, her bones.
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘A bit sore. Chocolate peppermints! They’re my favourites. Lovely, thank you. The food here is not up to scratch. Where are all these gourmet cooks from television? I thought we would be getting cordon bleu menus.’
‘When you get home, you’ll have wonderful meals,’ I promised, forgetting I couldn’t cook.
‘She does a mean pizza,’ said Mark, not looking at me. He was investigating the equipment around the bed. ‘And she made
chocolate muffins. Some were burnt.’
It was praise of a sort. It had been a shop pizza but I added anchovies and extra feta cheese. Not exactly home cooking but a step forward. I was not at ease being talked about as if I was in another room, so I hauled him away as soon as my mother showed signs of tiring. It would be antisocial to swop germs.
That afternoon Mark went out to play football with some friends. I let him go. I was hardly his keeper. I flaked out on to the sofa, my thoughts in a turmoil. What had I done, all those years ago. Nothing more than offer a homeless actor a bed for the night. Not even a bed, a lumpy sofa.
‘Sounds like five-star Hilton,’ he’d said, hanging about till I’d finished my chores at the theatre. ‘Take me home, lass. I’ll be gone in the morning. You can’t leave me here on the street, not in this weather. It would be cruelty to animals.’
I couldn’t refuse him and my heart melted. I had a job and a regular salary. He was really down and out. It was nothing, only the loan of a sofa and a blanket.
It was not a long walk through the drifting snowflakes to the double-fronted Victorian villa that had seen better days, now divided into flats and bed-sits. My fingers were numb and blue and I fumbled with the key in the lock. I’d left my gloves in the café.
‘Here, let me do it,’ he said.
We’d climbed the stairs to the attic flat, glad to be out of the snow, but the house was no warmer and the top floor was exposed to the cold northeasterly wind that crept in all the window cracks. I’d stuffed them with paper. They’d made their maids sleep in the attic, poor girls. Up at five, to sweep the grates, to light all the fires.
I was shivering. This was life in a cold climate.
‘Sorry there’s no heating,’ I said. ‘The electric fire needs fixing and the landlord takes ages over any repairs.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m going to flake out in five minutes. I’ve had enough of today. I’ll be asleep before you’ve made your hot water bottle.’
‘I haven’t got a hot water bottle.’
‘You’re not very well organized, are you?’
I showed him the minuscule bathroom and heard water run and the system flush while I hunted out a blanket and put a clean pillowcase on a spare pillow. My room was even more basic. A single bed against the wall, a chest of drawers, curtained space for hanging clothes and an ancient, sagging sofa angled towards a toaster-sized portable black-and-white television set.
My flatmate, Jilly, was away for the night. This was not unusual as she had a regular boyfriend. She might return at any time.
He came out of the bathroom, cleaned up, jeans folded over his arm, trainers twinned in his free hand. I averted my eyes from the bare brown legs, muscular arms, his white T-shirt almost glowing in the gloom.
I’d put on my striped M&S nightshirt. It was about as sexy as a bin liner. He couldn’t see my scraggy black hair. It was tied back with a scrap of ribbon.
‘Goodnight,’ I said, my hand on the switch of the bedside lamp.
He folded himself sideways on to the sofa and pulled the blanket up to his ears. ‘Goodnight,’ he grunted.
I remembered it all so clearly, had replayed it a hundred times. I stared into the darkness, listening to his breathing. My guest did not sound at all grateful but then it had not been a good day for him. Whereas I had everything in the world to look forward to, a career, good friends, perhaps one day falling in love with the right man. I would like that.
I’d never had a man sleeping in my room before. Chalk up new but unnerving experience. I listened to the creaking of the sofa as he turned, trying to bend his long legs into a comfortable position.
It was not long before I was asleep, so I was unaware of the temperature dropping to below zero. Ice formed on the windows, outside and inside. Sometime in the small hours, he crept into my bed for human warmth and to stretch out his cramped legs. His feet were frozen.
‘Sorry, I can’t sleep,’ he said, shivering.
I wrapped my arms round his cold body, as if he was a child. But I felt the rough hair on his chest brush against my skin and my breasts tingled. This was no child. A fine flame of awareness stirred in my body.
Perhaps I had been waiting for him. A man who came from nowhere. A young man whom I didn’t know, so there was no commitment, no strings, no relationship involved. I wanted the experience, to feel what it was like to be a woman, to be as knowing as my friends with their flirty winks and giggles.
His mouth was on my neck, kissing my skin with sweet and gentle kisses. The fear left me. This lost and despairing young man could be the right person to teach me the secrets of womanhood. It might even be helping him, restoring that elusive male
self-confidence
as well as giving him the warmth of my bed.
He would be gone in the morning and no one would know. Only me and my body. I wasn’t even sure of his name. I don’t think he knew mine.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.’
It was all so new. I had never gone any further than a few kisses and furtive fumblings in the back of a car. This half-naked young man wrapping himself around me was a different matter.
‘I don’t know what I want,’ I said, my courage almost deserting me like water down a plughole. But my body knew. It moved itself, had a mind of its own, shifted so that my breasts were against his arm. It was enough to fire him.
He cupped my roundness tentatively in case I was alarmed and pushed him out of bed, but his fingers were gently finding the nipple and with slow strokes, taking his time, he brought me alive and pulsing.
I had never felt such an exquisite sensation. I was throbbing, longing for more, desperate for a closer touch. His hand went under my passion-killing nightshirt and I gasped as his fingers trailed my bare flesh.
My whole body was coming alive but I didn’t know what to do. A tingling engulfed me down to my toes. Any minute I would be out of control.
‘Slowly, slowly, sweetheart,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry. We’ve got all night.’
His T-shirt had gone, flung off and thrown on the floor. His kisses were sending my mind into a spin, exploring the moist softness of
our mouths. I was responding with an intensity I did not know I possessed.
He paused, lifting his weight off me. I saw the darkness of the night through the window. Everywhere was frosty and silent and sleeping.
‘Don’t stop,’ I whispered.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really sure?’
For an answer I pulled his head down and captured his mouth in a kiss that sent his pulses racing. His hand moved down to my stomach, circling its smoothness, stroking my hips and finding the softness of my inner thighs.
I could hardly believe what was happening. I didn’t know it would be like this. I was being transported to another planet that was all shooting stars and bursts of moonlight. Light was dancing on the ceiling.
‘Has no one ever touched you here before,’ he said softly.
‘No, never.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s wonderful.’ I sighed, giving myself up to this new and amazing pleasure.
Of course he had been gone in the morning before I was even awake. I should have known that would happen. He had collected his clothes and let himself out.
I stretched myself now, letting go of my long-ago dormant memories and went outside the cottage, standing in my mother’s windy, weedy garden, drinking in the view and the fresh, scented air. The landscape calmed me. There was such a sense of peace even though a southeasterly gale was blowing up. Clouds were gathering like bruises. There had been warnings on the radio. I hoped Mark would get home before it got really blowy. And it was beginning to get dark. Surely he couldn’t play football in the dark?
It was a long time since I had thought so deeply about that night. I didn’t regret it for one instant although the following weeks had been a roller-coaster of despair and exhilaration. They had been
long and difficult, trying to work, trying to hide the sickness, trying to disguise my growing size.
My mother never asked the name of the father. When I told her that I was pregnant, she went very quiet. Then she took me into her arms and comforted me and brought me home. Months later, she held my newly born baby and loved him without question from that moment on.
Mark was a mirror image of his father, short of the New York glamour and, of course, as yet lacking the authority, the fame and the power. He was an unruly boy but he had the same dark rangy looks and firm jutting jaw, the same piercing eyes.
‘Can we play that gin betting game after supper?’ Mark called out. He was trudging along the cliff path, muddy and dishevelled from the activities on pitch, shirt flapping. He looked damp and sweaty. He needed a bath.
‘Sure,’ I said, relieved to see him. Mothers worry all the time but I hadn’t remembered. The wind was getting quite fierce. ‘But don’t up the stakes.’
‘I’ll be making five or six quid a week at this rate,’ he said confidently. ‘Awesome. I need new tyres for my bike.’
‘So you’re planning on becoming another Bill Gates, eh? I’ll be coming to you when the housekeeping runs out and we are down to bread and cheese.’
‘We could go to town and have fish and chips. I’ll lend you the money. Gran won’t do fish and chips in case the pan catches fire.’
‘Quite right, too. Chip pans are dangerous things. But we’ll go to that fish restaurant on the front sometime, the one near the tourist office. They are pretty good. I used to work there, part-time, when you were a baby.’
‘Did you know me when I was a baby?’
‘I sure did. From the very first second of your life.’
He nodded, still off-hand. ‘I guess so. That’s so cool.’
I wondered if he knew another word.
My mother’s progress continued steadily despite the lack of gourmet food, which really annoyed her. We went to see her every day. I realized I was going to be vacuuming around in the cottage for a long time. I was already getting first-degree cycle burn. I ought to phone management and tell them I wasn’t coming back until she was better. Call it extended sick leave. They might get uppity but for once I didn’t really care.
Bill Naughton took the call. I didn’t want to talk to management so timed it when they wouldn’t be there. Neat but cowardly.
‘Hi, Sophie! Where you been? We’ve missed you. How are you? Are you all right? We heard it was an emergency.’
‘My mother had to go into hospital. A last-minute cancellation came up for an operation she’d been waiting ages for, quite serious.’ I didn’t mention Mark. No one knew about him.
‘Is she recovering OK? The op was OK?’ Bill’s vocabulary was pretty limited today. Perhaps he was stressed out.
I could hear theatre sounds in the background, which bugged me. Work was going on which I missed. I wanted to know what was happening.
‘She’s doing fine, smiling through a forest of drips and lines. A bit woozy, still. But how’s the show? How has Fran been doing?’
‘Hey, you should have been here. Fran had her Pinocchio put out of joint. Quite severely. You should have seen the tantrum. She was a danger to passing traffic. Elinor came back, bless her. A bit croaky but a walking miracle. She dragged herself from her sickbed and
took over with barely a hitch. Though she did need a double Scotch in the interval.’
I felt suddenly so pathetic. Elinor had rallied and shown up. I was the fraud, the useless nonentity. She had come to Joe’s rescue.
‘How marvellous. I’m so glad. She’s a real trouper.’
‘One of the stage hands is prompting. We’ve got a youngster who can read. Doesn’t concentrate like you, says the prompt lines like a sergeant major on drill parade, but it’s OK. And Joe takes over when the boy has to change scenery.’
Joe was prompting. I felt snail-sized, ready to be stepped on. His caustic comments would deafen my ears. I ought to be put on the witness protection scheme.
‘That’s good,’ I said with unfelt optimism. ‘I’m glad all is well but I had to be with her. I’ve only got one mother.’
‘Don’t worry, we understand. We’re doing fine. I miss you, of course. That lovely, frozen smile that needs warming up. I’d soon warm you up.’ His voice dropped to an intimate, sexy phone call level. Thank goodness for several hundred miles of cable.
‘So Mr Harrison will know how draughty the prompt corner is,’ I said. ‘He never got that door fixed.’
‘It’s been fixed now.’
‘Typical. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘Can’t wait to see you, darling.’
I put the phone down. I couldn’t use my mobile any more as it needed recharging and the charger was back in London. I only hoped Bill wouldn’t use the redial system to get hold of this number. He could be devious. I didn’t want him phoning here for off-stage late-night intimate chats.
Mark stood in the doorway, tossing a ball from hand to hand. No school today. I wasn’t good at entertaining small boys. Apart from unsuitable card games.
‘All right if I go down to the beach, kick a ball around?’ he asked, unsure of whether he ought to ask or not. ‘Some of the gang will be there.’
‘In this weather?’ It was dull and gloomy, scurrying clouds laden with rain. He’d get drenched.
‘Gran says I ought to get more fresh air.’
‘If Gran says, then we do as Gran says. OK, but take something waterproof.’
‘Whatever.’
That vocabulary. Were words part of the curriculum these days?
But he had already gone, down the lane on his bike, legs stuck out sideways. I hoped his brakes were working properly. I worried about everything now.
My mother had a small but interesting collection of local books. I was reading one about the Purbeck stone and marble quarrying in Swanage, how many historic bits and pieces of old London were salvaged and brought back to Swanage as ballast in the quarry boats, columns, milestones and statues. There was an old jail house and the front of Swanage Town Hall was once the 1670 porch of the medieval Mercer’s Hall in London. All the cast-iron bollards around Swanage still carried the names of London boroughs. Perhaps Mark and I would go look at them, a sort of living, walking history lesson. He wasn’t very interested in history.
There was a Shakespearean play lurking somewhere in the names of the old quarries, Dancing Ledge, Seacombe and Windspit. The Swanage hills were honeycombed and scarred with ancient workings. And the clock tower on the front was from the old London Bridge, commemorating the Duke of Wellington.
I was lost in the book, my coffee cooling, when a familiar sound dragged me back to this century. Rain was spattering hard on the window panes. It was starting to hail and sleet. That big black cloud was stationery right overhead, poised to blanket Swanage in a torrential downpour. Mark was in weekend gear, sweater and jeans. Surely he’d have the sense to take cover? It would blow over eventually.
But it didn’t blow over. An hour later it was still pouring. A trickle of water was running down the stony cliff path, and behind the house, a stream of rain was washing down the lane, taking loose stones and debris with it. I couldn’t sit there and wait for Mark to swim home.
I put on a long, belted mackintosh of my mother’s, wellington boots, tied a scarf round my head, packed Mark’s waterproofs and a change of clothes into a plastic bag, threw in a packet of mints. I
also put on sunglasses which seemed daft but was the only way I would be able to see in the rain.
It was too dangerous to cycle down the lane, so I splashed through the flow and puddles. I had my fingers firmly on the squeaking brake lever as I attempted to free-wheel down the steep roads that led to the sea front. A few cars passed me, drenching me with fans of spray, so considerate these warm, dry drivers on their mobiles.
I spotted Mark huddled alone under the porch of one of the seafront beach huts. The porch gave him very little shelter, and much larger drops of rain were gathering and falling on his shoulders. I parked my bike against the rails and trudged over the wet sand to him. He was comatose with cold, face pinched with misery.
‘Mum,’ he said in half a voice.
I put my arms round him and gave him a big hug. He didn’t respond in any way. ‘Here’s your waterproofs. Put them on now. I’ve brought dry clothes as well for you to change into.’
‘Ch-change where?’ He was shivering.
‘You can change into them at the fish and chip shop. Fancy some fish and chips for supper?’
He came marginally more alive. ‘At the f-fish restaurant on the corner?’
‘Yup. Where’s your bike?’
‘I dunno.’
I pushed his arms into the waterproof jacket, zipped it and pulled up the hood. It was like dressing a flexie doll. ‘We’ll find it. Come along before the weather gets any worse.’
‘I’ve lost my ball.’
‘It’ll get washed up on to the rocks. We’ll look for it later.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I used to live here, remember? Tides. Everything gets washed up eventually.’
We found his bike where he had abandoned it and pushed both bikes to the fish restaurant. I chained them to the quay railing. We went inside into a fog of steam and heat from the fryers. It was like a sauna. The smell rose up, that succulent smell of frying fish, fish
freshly caught that day from the sea.
I grabbed a window seat so that we could watch the rain while we ate in the dry. Mark hurried off to the gents clutching his bag of dry clothes. Meanwhile, I ordered cod and chips for two, an orange juice for Mark and a large glass of house red, any vintage, for myself.
I wasn’t too wet, considering. Gran’s mackintosh had stood up to the onslaught. I was damp on the shoulders and where it flapped open. My hair was soaked but it would soon dry in this heat. I wiped the sunglasses and put them back on the top of my head.
Mark came back, half-grinning, in dry clothes and dry socks, carrying his sodden trainers. He had recovered his spirits. ‘Thanks for the mints.’
He looked at my glass of red wine and was about to say something but I got in first.
‘I know. Gran says drinking isn’t good for you.’
‘Do you drink?’
‘Occasionally. Not exactly an alcoholic but I like a glass or two of red. It warms you up, cheers you up and is apparently good for the heart. Medicinal.’
‘Why are you wearing shades?’ he asked curiously.
‘They’re cool,’ I said.
‘Whatever.’
It was a great meal. Mark tucked into his battered cod and chips as if he had never seen a chip in his life before. Dollops of tomato sauce decorated his plate with surrealistic art. He drew in sauce. He even talked, which was a minor triumph. Not a lot, but enough to chalk it up as a civilized meal.
His conversation was mainly speculation about the dinosaur footprints found on the shore, and whether we would see Britain’s only poisonous snake, the adder, on one of our cliff walks. He hoped we would. I was not so enthusiastic. Dinosaurs (footprints only) I could cope with but not snakes.
We waited till the black cloud exhausted itself and blew off to find a new area to lambaste. I hurried across the street to buy new trainers. No way could Mark walk home in that sodden pair. They were coming apart at the seams.
It was getting too dark to look for the lost ball. Mark accepted that. ‘We could look tomorrow,’ he said, pushing his bike uphill. He had said
we
. It was a small victory. I savoured the word.
I was getting short of clothes to change into. I’d only brought a small bag and had already worn and washed everything twice. My mother’s sweaters and jerseys were too small for me. Nothing for me to borrow. I needed to shop soon.
Mark switched on the television while I made a pot of tea. He wanted to catch the result of some football match, maybe soccer or rugby union. Something that needed a ball and a field for men to run about on. I could hear the newscaster’s tinny voice as I boiled a kettle and set a tray. My mother still used a teapot, milk jug and tray. Not a teabag in sight in her kitchen. She would get on very well with Elinor.
Mark stood in the kitchen doorway, eyeing me warily, as if expecting me to suddenly take off on a broomstick. He’d read all the Harry Potters. ‘That theatre you work for,’ he said. ‘In London.’
‘Yes, in London,’ I agreed.
‘Are you called the West Enders?’
‘Yes, that’s the name of the company, why?’
‘And the theatre is an old Victorian theatre called the Royale?’
‘Is this a quiz programme you’re watching?’
‘No, it’s on the news. Your theatre’s just collapsed down a hole. It’s fallen down. Made a big hole. Pretty cool, don’t you think?’