Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘But where’s the harm in just having a chat?’ Dory butted in.

‘Fleet,’ she suddenly rocked back in her seat and gently cuffed the boy away from her, ‘stop messing around with my skirt.’

Dory gazed at her, blankly, as she admonished the boy. Then he blinked. Then he gazed at her again, almost in awe, as if he hadn’t actually seen her — not for hours, not for days …

Elen…

With her birthmark. Her graceful demeanour. Her soft, brown hair. Sitting opposite him.

Right there.

‘Did you apologise to the man with the tractor?’ she asked, glancing up, distractedly, and then freezing for a moment — almost with surprise — as she gauged his strange expression.

‘Tractor?’ Dory repeated, blankly.

‘Toby. The man with the tractor…Fleet. No! ’

She cuffed the boy away again.

‘Toby?’

‘The volunteer.’

‘Oh yes …but of course,’ Dory rapidly caught up, ‘of course I apologised.’

‘It was all just so…’ Elen shuddered, traumatised.

‘I said he’d been ill,’ Dory whispered, ‘I said his grandpa had just died.’

Elen stared at him, blankly. Dory took a sip of his coffee. He paused. ‘I mean what else could I say? It was horrendous. A simple “sorry” without any proper explanation…’ he shrugged ‘…It just wouldn’t have felt quite enough…’

‘ Yes …’ Elen frowned, biting her lip. ‘But…’

‘But what ? But nothing . It was utterly humiliating. You should never have…’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Elen exclaimed. ‘The woman in the shop…’ Her jaw stiffened.

‘Anyway…’ she struggled to rein in her fury, ‘he was fine when you took him for a spin with Harvey the other week.’

‘Was he?’

Dory stared at her, cryptically.

‘ Wasn’t he, though?’

‘If having a terrible tantrum qualifies as “fine”, then yes, absolutely…’

Elen’s jaw dropped. ‘A tantrum ? But why didn’t you…?’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’

She was stunned.

‘I wanted to save you the unnecessary distress ,’ he maintained.

‘But surely there are some things…’ she argued.

‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Do you always make a habit of telling me everything?’

‘ Yes . Of course I do…I mean…’ She frowned.

‘Everything? Every little thing?’

As he spoke a waiter approached the table, his arms heavily laden with their food.

‘Okay, two adult portions…’ he slipped the steaming plates down carefully in front of them, ‘and…’

He glanced around him, looking for a child.

‘Sorry. Yes …’ Elen reached out for the plate. ‘He’s playing under the table…’

As she reached her jumper slipped back revealing the familiar pattern of bruises on her wrist.

Dory flinched. The waiter handed her the plate, appearing not to have noticed.

‘Enjoy your meal,’ he said. Then, ‘You too,’ he added, directing his words at their feet.

Silence

The waiter headed off. Elen placed Fleet’s portion next to his Fanta. ‘Your dinner’s here, Fleet,’ she said softly, ‘do come out and eat.’

Fleet promptly emerged from under the table and sat down on his chair.

‘Good boy,’ she said, and patted his shoulder.

Dory picked up his knife and fork, plainly infuriated by the child’s eagerness to oblige his mother.

‘Anyway,’ he said gruffly, referring back to their former conversation, ‘I handled it. It was fine.’

‘I still would’ve appreciated being told,’ she said, spreading a paper napkin on to her lap then reaching over to grab Fleet’s, unfolding it and tucking it into the neck of his jumper.

‘Will you make Mummy very happy by using this fork?’ she asked, picking up the fork and showing it to him, gingerly.

Fleet stared at the fork. He nodded. He took a hold of the fork.

‘Good boy,’ she said, returning to her own meal.

Dory peered over at his son. His hold on the fork was, at best, erratic. He stared at him, frowning. Then—‘Fleet, I think you’re eating with the wrong hand,’ he said.

Fleet continued to prod at his food — clumsily — from a peculiar angle.

‘Why don’t you use your other hand?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m sure it’d be much…’

‘My other hand is full up,’ Fleet informed him.

‘Full up? Of what ?’

Fleet lifted his other hand. The other hand contained a tissue, a train time-table and a red lighter. He placed them all down, gently, on to the table-top.

‘But where on earth did you get this ?’ Dory asked, reaching out for the lighter.

‘Mama’s pocket,’ Fleet said simply, swapping his fork into his other hand and commencing to eat his meal with it.

Dory stared at the lighter, blankly, then his gaze shifted, pointedly, to the old train time-table.

Elen’s brown eyes, meanwhile, remained calmly focussed on her plate.

There were two lighthouses — the old and the new. The old — no longer in use, painted black, open to the public — stood adjacent to the railway (with its Light Railway Cafe) and several hundred yards east of the nuclear power plant.

The new lighthouse — taller, leaner, smartly emblazoned with black and white stripes — stood further down the coast, like an upended hornet, its vicious sting supplanted by a powerful lamp, which blinked — calmly and benevolently — into the Straits of Dover.

Since the long, pebble-strewn spit on which they found themselves was so exceptionally flat and uncluttered (little more, in effect, than the brazenly exposed flesh of the immodest sea-bed) it was possible to see the two lighthouses from virtually every vantage point. With this in mind, Dory had concocted an entertaining plan to take a photograph of his son in which — by a quirk of perspective — he could make it appear as if the child were a tiny Goliath, supporting the new lighthouse in his outstretched hand.

But the boy wasn’t being cooperative.

‘Just hold up your arm and flatten out your palm…’ Dory explained (for what felt like the hundredth time), adjusting Fleet’s unwieldy limb to the perfect angle, ‘then stay still— very still — okay?’ He took several steps back. He lined up the shot. He was just taking the picture — his finger pressing down on the shutter — when Fleet–

Click

— dropped his hand.

‘Damn.’

Dory waited a couple of seconds for the digital image to reconfigure. Had he managed to snatch the shot before…?

Uh…

The picture sprang into focus on the tiny screen–

Nope

‘Fleet?’

‘What, Papa?’

‘That didn’t work. You moved. It won’t work if you move. So you need to lift your hand up again and keep it still this time, okay? Just like I showed you before…’

‘I don’t want to,’ Fleet grizzled, ‘it hurts .’

‘What do you mean, it hurts ? How can it possibly hurt?’

‘It does ,’ Fleet insisted.

‘He’s too young,’ Elen said, ‘to really grasp the concept…’

‘Well let me do it first,’ Dory snapped, passing her the camera, ‘so he can get a general idea of what I’m trying to achieve from looking at the image on the back…’

Dory went to stand in line with the new lighthouse. He glanced over his shoulder. He posed. Elen tried her best to recreate the trick.

‘Could you just…?’

She waved him forward.

‘Forward?’