Beside the Sea (7 page)

Kevin was lagging, pulling at my shoulder and snivelling, he didn’t have any memories either, the fair was already forgotten, Did you like the dodgems? I asked him. What? he said in his sulky little voice. We went in the red one three times, said Stan, did you see us? There was too much hope in Stan’s voice, I preferred not to answer.

We reached the hotel. I was frightened. We went into that place like going into a church. I often go into churches, when they’re empty of course. There’s a smell which makes you think about time passing, there are candles, there’s silence, it always has an effect on me, a hollow feeling inside. Churches are very old but they are still standing. They are old but they never die. An empty church is something you can’t explain, I like it. The hotel was the same. Something had to happen there. We went in with our rain and our mud, all that stuff we lugged with us, everything we’d picked up outside, we left traces of it all over the place again, the nightwatchman still didn’t give a damn, there was another match on the tiny black-and-white TV, and what if it was always the same one? Always the same match on the same TV and us coming in every evening from that filthy weather and never hearing the nightwatchman say Good evening, how are you? Good night, madam, and what are the names of these two fine lads? He gave us the key, recognizing us without looking up, he knew
his job by heart. I would have liked to ask him what time it was, what day it was, to have something clarified, the beginnings of an explanation about what was happening. He wouldn’t have heard me. It wasn’t worth it.

We climbed the six floors without holding hands, without talking, without complaining, Kevin wasn’t even crying any more, he looked dazed, walking with great wide eyes, a sleepwalker. Those six floors were a punishment, it had to be done, all three of us had got the message there. I looked at my boys, sad, tired and struggling, it was the law, that’s what I thought, These stairs are the law. Fuck this life where stairs are the law.

We didn’t make a sound. We walked like old men, the ones who don’t talk any more because they’ve got the message, so they just keep their heads down. Yes, we’d grown old. Let’s hope it’s not too late, I thought.

On and on we climbed, our place was up at the top, above the others, they were all asleep beneath our footsteps, and we climbed on. The nightwatchman’s TV was just a tiny crackling sound now, the keys behind him hung there like bats and he didn’t even feel the threat. We were breaking away from the earth, leaving a little bit of it on each stair, that was the mark left by my children, patches of dirt on brown lino. Their shoes had had it. Eaten away by the sea, ruined by
the rain, my boys were walking in exhausted old shoes, why should they carry on if even their shoes couldn’t follow?

We didn’t talk but we could hear each other. We could hear our breathing, getting louder and louder, were there people behind those doors to hear my kids suffering? Was their breathing getting inside their dreams, and blowing on them, snuffing them out? My God, I would have liked that so much, for my kids’ breathing to have snuffed out all the dreams of people I don’t know, and for there to be nothingness instead, a bit of room for nothing, behind every door.

We got to the sixth floor. There weren’t any more stairs after that, we couldn’t get it wrong. When it came to an end that was where we belonged. We knew that.

The room was freezing, the heating had gone off, I didn’t have the strength to go and see the bloke downstairs. Last floor. Last leg. I wasn’t going back down. I wouldn’t complain, he could watch his match in peace. I felt the cold in there straight away, but I also noticed straight away that the room was lit by the moon. Not a beautiful round moon, no, but nearly a half, a roughly drawn shape but it shed a little light on the bed, there didn’t have to be just rain in the sky, no, there could be something else, we’d moved on to something else.

Kevin wanted to go straight to bed. I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to be clean. To have the face of a five-year-old, with no black stains from his tears and the rain, no snot or salt from his chips, no reminders of that day.

I dragged him to the bathroom and ran some water over his face, wiping away the stains and the hours, all those hours, I wiped everything away
except his tiredness, but that… was for later. I gave him a farty kiss on his neck. He laughed. I did it again. He laughed again, a little laugh that couldn’t cope any more, slightly irritable, slightly surprised too, normally farty kisses are on the stomach and on Sundays. But weren’t we at home here? And seeing as we didn’t know the time and seeing as we didn’t know the day, we were free to do what we liked! But Stan came and joined us and told us to stop, we were making too much noise. There’s no one here, I said, they’re all at the fair, all out in the rain and we’re never going to get soaked like that again, I’ll never let that happen again, never, I swear to you. Your hair’s still wet, he said, like I was a liar but at the same time I could tell he wanted to take care of me but couldn’t seem to, he couldn’t seem to any more. Have a wash and go to bed, I said and I took Kevin in my arms to cope with that big brown corridor.

How long was it since I’d carried a child in my arms? Billions of years. Kids grow up fast, they stick out in every direction, they’re heavy, then you can only hold them by the hand but not hug them to you any more, otherwise you knock into each other, you don’t know how to go about it, you get an arm or a shoulder in the way, you never find the right position. It isn’t any better with babies. You’re frightened you’ll drop them, or make them sick, everyone says, Careful with his head! you have to hold the head, it’s
fragile, it’s heavy, it can bump into things or tip back or twist the neck, it’s dangerous holding a baby in your arms, it doesn’t matter how often they show you how to in hospital, it’s not reassuring, that’s for sure. And when the head does stay put all on its own, the baby’s not a baby any more and cuddles hurt. Maybe the only real cuddle is in your tummy, when you’ve still got the baby in your tummy, I mean. No one to tell you what to do, to say you’re pampering it too much or not enough or not at the right time. You mustn’t wake a baby. You mustn’t ruin his appetite. You mustn’t hurt his head. You’re just with him. That’s all. You’re with him.

Kevin and Stanley were clean, they were ready for the night, as they said, yes, they often said I’m getting ready for the night, it’s nice, getting yourself all sorted for the night, they never say I’m getting ready for the day, because daytime doesn’t really warrant it, you’ve go to do it so you do, that’s all, but at night there’s a sort of preparation, like before a journey.

They got into bed, already accustomed to that brown hotel, the rain on the window, the false noonoo and even the cold, but I was afraid of the cold, I knew we had to fight it, that we should always head towards the warm not the cold, not into its world, its jaws, the sea of ice… like a glacier, what is a glacier exactly? Maybe we should have gone to see the sea of ice… were there buses to take
you there? And beaches? And what colour was the water? White? Blue? Grey? A sea without waves, then, without noise, a sea that never stirred, never went away, was that it? Would Stan have been able to walk on it? Would it have made him happy?

It was too late now. Maybe we’d got the wrong bus and the wrong hotel, it was too late. They were here. In the clean but old sheets. Don’t sleep at the bottom of the bed, Kevin said, sleep with us. I promise, I said, but without meaning to, I broke the word in half, pro… mise, pro… mise, I coughed a bit, there was a huge lump blocking my throat. Quietly, very very quietly, I said I’m not going to bed yet, I’m staying here but not going to bed yet, okay? I’m watching the moon. But it was them I watched, I watched them go to sleep.

Kevin took a while, he was all wound up, his legs twitched all by themselves, making little kicking movements annoying his brother, but Stan was the first to get to sleep. Curled up, curled up so tight he looked like a little lump, a boy with no legs. If I’d had any voice instead of that knot blocking the way, if I’d had any voice I’d have sung a song to Kevin so he could sleep, too. But I was full of spiteful little aches and pains, biting away at me. My throat, my heart, my stomach and my hands were all wet. The rain had crept between my clothes and my skin, so that I’d never forget it, maybe it would leave scars, like an illness.

I could see the children’s faces clearly thanks to the special night light provided by the moon. Kevin was looking at the wall, was he seeing the same things I saw earlier? Or was it a whole different story? What stories did Kevin tell himself to get to sleep – or to avoid getting to sleep? Sometimes he would say, I’m not going to sleep tonight, he was proud of that, but he never managed it and Stan would tease him. Kevin was like me, he wanted to know where we went to at night, where it took us. He ran his finger over the wall, maybe he was inventing drawings, words, cuddles, or just nothing, maybe his finger was moving all on its own, maybe the rest, all the rest was going to sleep and his finger would go on… what was I going to do if a little bit of him never went to sleep? Is that sort of thing possible?

But his finger eventually slipped down the wall, and fell onto the bed, I heard the littl’un sucking his noonoo faster and he went to sleep. All of him. He was holding his noonoo against his mouth and his nose, all I could see now was his wet hair and his forehead… there were my boys… Both asleep and I didn’t know where they were any more. In their dreams, each in his own dream, far away from me, somewhere else. With the moon overhead, wanting me to look at it, to look up, not down at the mud, the girls who sold shoes, the mechanics, the shopkeepers, the nightwatchmen and the men
who served hot chocolate. Nothing down there could do us any harm now.

Why hadn’t I watched the red car? Why hadn’t I seen my two cowboys in their dodgem? Did they bump into lots of people? Were they the kings of the road? Were they brave enough to pay with my stupid bloody coins or did they get rid of them behind a truck, in a bin full of burst balloons and half-eaten bags of candyfloss? Had they lied to me? Did they already know how to pretend? Was it already too late?

The rain kept knocking on the window, insistent, wanting me to notice it, I couldn’t give a stuff about it now, it was the moon I was looking at. The rain falls down, it’s for all those people down below, I’m on the top floor. Higher up than the big wheel, higher than the sea, and anyway the sea had left town, it had got the picture long ago and pissed off, where the waves used to be there was nothing left but sand, with empty seashells, open ones, broken ones, not the sort you could give to anyone.

I remembered Kevin in the toilets at the café. Will you write a note? With mine, I knew the teachers corrected my spelling mistakes, Stan had been writing notes himself for ages, he just asked me to sign them. Stan knew loads of things already. Far too much. How did I end up here? There’s childhood. Okay. Then straight afterwards there’s the whole hostile world. You have to find that out.
Had Stan already finished his childhood? I really hoped not. He acted grown up but he slept like a child with no legs, like he was still afraid and didn’t want to take up too much room and get himself noticed.

They were sleeping differently now, with louder breathing, big sighs, it’s the sighs that take the tiredness away, deliver us from it, a bit like tears, but can you cry in your sleep?

I’d decided to start with the littlest, start with Kevin, I knew it would help me for Stan, because without Kevin Stan couldn’t be the big brother any more and that’s who he was, yes, it was the littl’un first.

I lifted his head to pull out his pillow, it was damp from his hair, from his saliva and his noonoo, mustn’t smell that pillow, must stay strong. I looked at the moon, that scrap of moon lighting Kevin’s face from so far away, that light coming from so far away to my son’s face. I sat down next to him, on the bed, with his knees against my back. I thought of those monks, there was bound to be one who’d just got up for me and he was a whole lot closer than the moon, he was just the other side of the door, a brown monk next to a brown door, with his candle in his hand and his never-ending prayer.

I put the pillow over Kevin’s face and pushed down on it. With all my strength. I didn’t want him to wake up and be frightened. I pushed even
harder to make that chunk of time go by, the time for fear, because I know all about that and I didn’t want to give it to him, I hope he never knew it, even when he waited for me at the school gates and I didn’t come, not at the same time as the others, not when I was supposed to. I didn’t want to spoil his face but I had to push hard and my shoulders hurt, I had to keep at it, for several minutes, to be sure.

My Kevin. We had some good laughs, the two of us. We had face-pulling competitions.
Impersonations
. Farty kisses. Jokes. Loads of things you’re not supposed to do. My Kevin. I’d given him one wall in the house to do drawings, I called it Kevin’s wall, he drew little men with no arms and red aliens, the social worker was horrified, she made a note of it in her book, but the littl’un loved that wall, when it was full up I’d paint it over in white and he started again.

I think it was six minutes, the exact time. You had to keep the pressure on for six minutes. I didn’t have a watch. I looked at the moon and tried to feel the time passing, the raindrops kept on falling but they couldn’t see my little boy any more, stupid bitches, he’d cried with cold, he’d kept his head down to walk through the mud and they’d bitten his neck, I hated them. Two days they’d been attacking him, with no let-up, and he was so defenceless, thinking the sea knew him and that
you drink hot chocolate with a straw. My innocent boy, that pillow felt so heavy at arm’s length, but it was taking everything far away, turning away all the bad luck, I had to hold on, hold on and think about you really hard, all my love on you, just for you, all of it.

I remembered the day Kevin wrote a word on the wall, his first word, it was me, it was mummy in stick letters, he was proud and so was I, that’s who I was, he’d recognized it straight away, I was mummy, no more or less than the others, mummy, that’s what I did, what I knew how to do, mummy, and I left it there, I never covered it with white paint so all the pictures had to be done round that word, MUMY, like the little stick men he drew, maybe I even saw their hands behind their backs while the red aliens spiralled round me, and I showed it to the social worker, my name on the wall in stick letters, how could she compete with that?

I was still pushing down on the pillow, Kevin hadn’t moved, he was a good boy, he did as he was told. I was thinking only of him and I remembered his first word. His first word came one morning when he was lying on the floor with loads of cushions round him because he couldn’t sit up very well, he was blowing bubbles of spit, Stan was lying on the lino laughing, his head on his hands, really close to Kevin, and the littl’un leant forwards, he took a handful of his hair and said Stan. That was
his first word. That evening in the kitchen Stan told me he wasn’t his half-brother, he was his whole brother now, I said okay.

My arms hurt more and more, I changed them over from time to time pushing with one, then with the other so that they took turns to rest, but I was tiring faster and faster, I was hot, the raindrops on my back had dried and now it was drops of sweat that I could feel running under my arms. I could feel them breaking out and running down. One after the other. They went right down to my stomach. I mustn’t think about it. I had to think about Kevin. All the time. All the time. Was he still dreaming? Was he already on his way somewhere else? Could he feel me? Was he alright? I looked at the white pillow, my wrist bent back, no strength in my hand, no blood, white against the white of the sheet, then a cloud passed over the moon and I couldn’t see anything any more. How could I calculate the time? I could hear the rain on the window, how long did a song last, should I sing? No, mustn’t leave Kevin, had to stay with him to the end.

I remembered the day I knew I was pregnant with Kevin. I was at the health centre with Stan, he had an ear infection, he’d cried all night, the neighbours had banged on the radiator, I was exhausted. We were in the waiting room, it was already Doctor
Dart in those days – goodbye, Doctor Dart! – yes, it was always him who looked after the kids, and we were all jumbled up in that waiting room, old people, young people, tiny babies, there was coughing, there was shouting, you could hear children crying in the consulting room, it was hot, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing, Stan was bright red and he was in so much pain he kept banging his head against the wall, whinging and banging his head, we waited a long time. I remember. No one looked at anyone else, except when a door opened because everyone was frightened of missing their turn, none of us liked being like that, jumbled in with the others, with their illnesses. I remember I was worried. I hadn’t had my period for three months and I was often sick in the morning. And then a woman, an Arab woman, came and sat down opposite me. In her arms she had a tiny baby, I mean really tiny! Never seen such a tiny baby. And I knew I had one too. Almost invisible but secretly taking root. I nearly smacked Stan to shut him up. I got up and we left.

The cloud moved on past the moon and the glimmer of light came back. I thought I felt Kevin move underneath me but it was just my hand slipping. He was still motionless. Under the pillow. All limp. I thought that maybe he was dead but I didn’t dare check. I didn’t want to see him. Not yet. Was he blue? Were his eyes open? Did he still have
his noonoo in his mouth? Maybe the noonoo had helped him, maybe the noonoo had suffocated him too and I needn’t have pressed for so long?