Trevor, William - Children Of Dynmouth

Stephen turned the main light off and returned to his father’s desk. He sat in front of the white typewriter, listening to the ticking of the clock in the corner by the window. The fountain-pen in the wooden bowl was blue, a small slim pen that had been hers. He remembered her using it, writing Christmas cards with it, and shopping lists.

In the room she seemed real. She felt quite close to him, as though her spectre might appear, but he didn’t feel afraid of that. He touched the fountain-pen and then held it in his hand. It seemed warm to him, as the handle of a spoon or a fork had often been, passed from her hand to his, after she’d mashed up something on a plate for him when he was younger.

He tried to remember if his parents had quarrelled the holidays before she died, but couldn’t remember that they had. It had been a fine summer. His father had been busy writing about shore larks. They’d gone to see Somerset playing Essex, Virgin 70 not out.

The more he thought about that summer the pleasanter it seemed. He remembered one Thursday morning walking with his mother from Primrose Cottage to a place called Blackedge Top, an old quarry on a hill. They’d gone to see another hill, which had been a Roman fort, covered in ferns now. He remembered having supper in the garden of Primrose Cottage, his parents seeming fond of one another, not quarrelling or even disagreeing. They’d sat there for hours, until nine o’clock at least, until the small garden became shadowy in the dusk. There’d been a smell of roses, and of coffee. There’d been pink wine, Rosé Anjou 1969 on the label, celebrating the completion of the first half of his father’s book on the shore lark. He’d had Ribena with ice in it himself, and he could remember now, quite distinctly, thinking how horrible it must be for Kate, not to have a father, nor ever to have an occasion like this.

Yet all the time it must have been different. His father had wanted things to be different, as Edith Thompson had, in love with Freddie Bywaters, as Mrs Maybrick had, and Mrs Fulham. They had sat there that night, after he’d gone to bed, and their faces had changed. They had stopped smiling because it wasn’t necessary to pretend any more. They had sat there hating one another, quarrelling in bitter voices, not wanting to look at one another. As he thought about it, creating the scene as it must have been, his father shouted at her that she was useless and silly. His father was quite unlike himself. Nothing she ever did was any good, he said. The strawberry jam she’d made hadn’t set, she couldn’t even take a telephone message. It sounded stupid the way she went on about loving the sea. It was no good pretending, his father said, it was no good having birthday celebrations in the Queen Victoria Hotel just so Stephen wouldn’t know.

He left the room and in his bed he wept with a violence he had never known before, spasm following spasm. It was as though she had died again, only it was worse, and he felt guilty that he hadn’t wept properly when she’d really died. He felt that if he had all this would somehow not have happened. He pressed his face into the pillow to conceal the sound of a sobbing he could not control. He wished he could destroy himself, as she had been destroyed. He wished he might die. He fell asleep still wishing that.

He dreamed of the saintly Constance Kent cutting the throat of her baby brother in a quiet country house not far from Dynmouth. And of the beautiful Mrs Maybrick soaking the arsenic from fly-papers in order to poison her husband. And of Irene Munro improving her complexion with Icilma cream, and of the torso in the plywood trunk. His mother slept in a deck-chair, near a fuchsia hedge, her black hair like polished ebony in the sun. A bundle flapped in the wind, a rust-coloured headscarf, her rust-coloured coat. Screams came from the bundle as it fell, turning twice in the air against the grey-brown cliff-face. The sea washed over her, swirling the headscarf into foam that was crimson already. The flesh of her face was rigid: taut, icy flesh that no one would touch. The setters rushed towards the sea and then pulled up short, barking at the waves. ‘Come on, come on,’ he called, but they took no notice. The sun was setting, making the dogs pink, like the pink wine that had been there on the table.

The setters ran away, sniffing the air excitedly. In the far distance they stopped, sniffing again, at a pink lump on the sand. It wasn’t her, it was Commander Abigail in his swimming-trunks. His lips were drawn back in a snarl of pain, his skinny white limbs were like a frozen chicken’s.

‘She’s over here,’ a voice shouted from the top of the cliff. He looked up. His father was pointing down at the rocks. The sea had gone out, his father shouted, but it hadn’t taken her with it because she hadn’t wanted to go. ‘She just wanted to die there,’ his father said, beginning to laugh. She had only herself to blame.

And then Mr Blakey stood among his rose-beds with his shears dripping blood, and her head lay in the soil. Her body without it walked away towards the house, staggering from side to side, blood flowing from the stump that had been her neck.

She had only herself to blame: she said that herself too, waking up in her deck-chair. She’d been silly, getting into an argument on the edge of a cliff and saying the wrong thing. But Stephen said it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter in the least if her strawberry jam didn’t set, no matter what his father said. In his dream he felt relief because she hadn’t died, because it had all been some other dream, because she was smiling in the sunshine.

Kate sat by the summer-house with the setters, hugging them and whispering to them, seeming small beside them. She brushed them with a brush that was kept in the summer-house, making them stand still, with their heads up. She wished people were like dogs, she said to them, and they looked at her knowledgeably with their big, drooping eyes. She sat between them on the steps of the summer-house, their chins on her knees, warmed by the heat of their bodies. It would be nice to breed dogs, she thought, and imagined setters running all over the garden, like the dalmatians in The One Hundred and One Dalmatians. She imagined living alone in Sea House, being quite old. She imagined puppies in the hall and a row of kennels at the side of the house, and people ringing the doorbell because they wanted to buy one of a litter. She would never have married because she couldn’t marry Stephen. She might even be like Miss Lavant. People would tell other people the story of the woman in Sea House who lived alone with dogs. They’d tell of a tragedy on the cliffs, a death that wasn’t what it had seemed to be. You couldn’t blame Stephen for hating Dynmouth, people would say, for going away from it and all its horrible reminders.

But later, in a different mood, she knocked again on his door. The future she’d visualized was silly, puppies and a row of kennels and being alone. It was probably acceptable enough. But it wasn’t a happy ending.

She could hear him in the room, yet he didn’t answer. Something dropped to the floor, there was a rattle of paper. He was causing these noises deliberately, so that she’d know he was there, so that she’d know he didn’t want to talk to her. His face had become cold and hard, like a face that could not smile and never had.

She knocked again, but still he didn’t answer.

Stephen wished she wasn’t always there. He wished she wasn’t forever tapping on the door of the room that was meant to be his, calling out to him when he didn’t answer. She was there every morning as soon as he left the room, on the stairs or in the hall. A sloppy look kept coming into her face. She was sorry for him.

‘Well, what are you two going to do today?’ Mrs Blakey had a way of saying, annoying Stephen because of the implication that everything they did had to be done together. She said it in the kitchen, on the Wednesday of that week, looking round from the Aga where she was frying bacon. She put the bacon on to two warmed plates and placed the plates in front of them. She asked again what they were going to do.