Easy Peasy (5 page)

‘He's coming,' I whispered into the receiver. ‘Mum's arranged it with his mum – who's wearing see-through. You can see everything. What shall I do?'

‘Nothing,' Elaine said. ‘You poor thing. You'll just have to stick it. What can you see?'

‘Her bosoms. Ginormous. Promise not to tell anyone else he's coming. I'd die.'

‘Cross my heart.'

‘On your mother's life?'

‘Course.'

I went back into the kitchen. Huw was standing on Wanda's lap grabbing handfuls of her candy-floss hair.

‘Is Pud … is Vassily ill?' I said.

‘Tests,' Wanda said. ‘He has to have these tests up King's Lynn, for his ears and that.'

And that. I wanted to ask her about all his nipples. Whether he had to have tests for them.

6

Now I can't give the envelope to Daddy. I never can. Now there is nothing to stop me opening the envelope and reading what's inside. Nothing to stop me knowing. Knowing what? Knowing something about him that I do not know. That I want to know. Do I? Truly? There could be nothing in the envelope anyway, nothing of any significance. What
do
I know about my father?

Born: 10th October 1920, Ralph Harris Dawkins – an only child.

Parents: Harris Edmund and Eugenie May Dawkins – both dead before my birth.

Schooling: don't know – but bright. Oh yes, there's a book of Longfellow's verse awarded to him on Prize Day in 1932. Can't remember the name of the school. West Mersea?

Started reading Classics at Durham but joined up (called up?) in 1940.

Then, I don't know. Prisoner of the Japanese until 1945.

Employment: Civil Service, Ministry of Agriculture. Why didn't he return to university? Don't know.

Marriage: My mother, Astrid Larson, 1948. Astrid the daughter of Professor and Mrs Larson. Mummy has told me about their first meeting. A September afternoon tea-party in the garden of the Larsons' home. Select undergraduates invited. Mummy only twelve, a serious tall girl, with wispy white plaits. I've seen photographs. This young man with his curling black hair the first man she had ever noticed in
that
way. He talked to her as if she was grown-up and untangled the string of her kite.

Eight years later, they met at a reunion organised by her father. She had never forgotten him. She had been fascinated by the black hairs on his wrists and hands that grew even down the backs of his fingers. Her father was blond and his hands and wrists were smooth. She had another boyfriend then, someone called Patrick who still writes to her occasionally, but when she saw Daddy again, she knew he was the one for her.

Family: Hazel born June 1959; Griselda, December 1960; Huwie, 1969. Why so long before they had the children? Unusual then. Mummy had no intention of having children, she said, and Daddy hadn't felt strongly. She had her work: she's a writer, magazine articles and stories, a couple of light novels, travel books – they travelled whenever they could – Egypt, Canada, frequent trips to Sweden – before we came along. When Mummy said this it made me feel as if we had spoilt their fun. Hazel was a surprise, she said, and Huw a downright accident. But I was planned. They wanted a companion for Hazel, another girl preferably, and, obediently, along I came. It made me smug when I was little to know this, that out of the three of us, only I was chosen. So why was it that I seemed the odd one out? That Hazel looked like Mummy and had this air about her, still has, as if she has a right to be here and that whatever she says or does is correct? And Huwie has always been happy-go-lucky, a cheerful fat baby with a plume of white hair, growing into an affable lanky young man who couldn't care less, I shouldn't think, whether he was planned for or not. But me, why do
I
find life so hard?

But anyway, my father. What else? Various promotions which meant moves from district to district and house to house. Three years at ‘The Nook'. Only three? It seems longer. What else? Little. His dreams. His fondness for fiery food and his terrible digestion. His moods. He played golf at every opportunity. He drank whisky and smoked a pipe and, sometimes, cigars. He and my mother played a mean game of bridge, I believe. What else? A handsome face, in photographs, eyes that were very wide and dark, but I only remember his glasses and the way they reflected me back at myself, didn't let me through. I didn't like to see him without his glasses, he looked too exposed, vulnerable. The growling of his electric razor in the mornings. The
Daily Telegraph
that he read in the toilet every morning with Biro scribbles round the edges where he tried out anagrams for his crossword. Cigar smoke hanging like a blue cloud in a lamplit room. Holding on to his legs once, I must have been small, my arms round the two warm tweedy pillars, peering through the gap, and feeling safe. My Daddy. Safe. Did I? Puddle-duck. The time he was so angry with me, over Puddle-duck. Don't think of that now. His tears when the next-door neighbour ran over our cat. No. Did he cry? Surely not. We never had another pet.

So that is him. Oh the little things. One tiny thread attached to another. Could I reconstruct him from the tiny threads? His fear of insects, ants and flies. Not fear, surely, but profound distaste – disgust. The fly-papers in the pantry at ‘The Nook'. Fly graveyards. I couldn't bear to look at them. I don't mind insects but I too hate the sound of flies, a filthy whine.

Is there a fly in here? I think I heard a fly, but it has settled. I could not sleep if there really was a fly in here. Foxy has turned over so I cannot see her face. She could sleep through anything. I want to see her face. She is breathing so softly I'm afraid that she will stop. She doesn't dream, she claims, or only rarely. But she must dream. It is just that she sleeps so soundly her dreams are sealed in. She doesn't remember them but they are there. I've seen her dream, her eyes moving beneath their lids, her lips twitching, sometimes a smile, even a chuckle or a squeak of fright. I have never known her to have a nightmare. Because I sleep so badly, maybe, the sleep I do have seems full of dreams, always vivid, often anxious, sometimes bad. I wake up with a scream jammed in my throat like a fist and my heart pounding. But sometimes they are only tedious. I used to recount them to Foxy over breakfast, long sagas of missed trains, strange encounters, falling or losing my keys, or standing on a stage with the curtains opening, the orchestra striking up – and no idea what I was supposed to sing. She used to listen patiently, one eye on the
Guardian
. I try not to bore her with them now – and anyway, I like to save them for work and let Connie, the expert, get her teeth into them. But I wish I knew what was in Foxy's dreams. I wish I could climb into her head and watch them and tell her what I've seen. ‘Don't you ever dream about me?' I used to plead before I knew her better.

Her hair feels cool. I could snuggle up to her, mould my fretful body round her warm, solid sleep, soak it up, perhaps catch sleep from her like a bug, breathe in time with her breaths. No, that does not
work
. I cannot hold her because then I would have to be still and I cannot be still. If I buried my face in her hair then I would drown. Not drown, suffocate. What is the matter with me? I must be calm.

Calm! This is the day my father died. I want to cry but it is stuck.

The bar of light from the landing falls diagonally across the bed, across my waist and up to Foxy's shoulders, lighting up strands of her hair. Warm shiny brown. The green sprig pattern on the quilt cover is the only other colour. Everything else is black or grey, the colours leached by the greedy night. Not greedy, Foxy would say, that's a pathetic fallacy. It is only
night
. But Foxy loves the night, loves her sleep. No cars have passed for a long time, when they do pass the lights illuminate the deep pink curtains, a brief glow of rose and then dark again.

If I could have a wish, one wish, what would it be? That Foxy never leaves me, of course. But if I had two wishes, I only ask for two not three, the second wish would be for sleep, not just for tonight, but for the continued ability to sleep. I cannot do it. I cannot sleep a whole night. I don't know why. I don't have the confidence to slip into it. That's what it takes: confidence. Confidence that you'll wake again and that everything will still be here. Sometimes I sleep for a while but then I wake and once awake, I cannot get back again. It's like trying to sink a plastic duck in a bath, it will not sink, it will bob up to the surface. That is my mind and sleep. It will not sink.

I must get up. The room is stuffy with Foxy's sleep. I need to pee. I'm too hot, woozy. Too much brandy on an empty stomach. I need to drink water and I should eat something. Softly, softly, I move to the edge of the bed, sit up gently, gently, so I do not make the mattress bounce. I put my feet to the floor. My dressing-gown is on the chair. Quietly I walk, soft steps lest the floorboards creak. My hand on the door knob slowly turning, the door opening a crack, yellow light spilling in.

‘You all right?' I've woken her.

‘Fine, fine,' I slip out, push the door shut, turn the knob slowly so there's not a click. She'll go back to sleep. But I will stay awake.

It's 1:30 by the kitchen clock. Not even late, not for a Friday night, some people still out drinking, dancing, romancing. I drink water from the tap like I did when I was a child, my lips touching the chrome. The floor is cool under my bare feet, cool and a little gritty. It is Foxy's turn to wash the kitchen floor, so it will wait for weeks. She is a terrible slut, my Fox. Washing the floor is something I could do. Tomorrow she will give up most of a day's work to drive me for four or five hours, to my parents', to Mum's rather, house on the windy coast. I wish it was still ‘The Nook'. That was the best house. After that we moved several times, but nowhere had a garden like that, nowhere else had a tree-house. When I think of my childhood it seems all to have taken place there, not just three years of it.

When Daddy retired, they moved back to Norfolk to a tall shabby terrace in a village on top of crumbling cliffs. Because of their position, sideways to the sea on a headland, all the windows front and back look out across the cold North Sea. It feels a restless place to me, where sea-birds scream and splatter the roof with their droppings; where the wind never stops blowing and the short grass is bleached and spiked with sea-pinks. They had a fight about the decision to move there, which my mother lost. The sea is eating away at the coast, there are sudden cliff falls where yards of land, ends of gardens, sometimes a cliff-top chalet, are gone, just like that, plunged into the beating sea. My father wouldn't listen to advice, he liked the house, which is in no immediate danger itself. Because of the erosion the price of the house was minimal and that appealed. Also there is a golf-course nearby and more fresh air than anyone could possibly ever want. It does not feel like home.

‘A good place for you children to come back to,' Mummy said rather doubtfully, once the move was made. ‘A good place for grandchildren.' Which the three of us have failed to produce, so far.

Since Foxy is kind enough to drive me there tomorrow, I'll do the floor. I run hot water into the blue bucket and sprinkle in some Flash. I lift the chairs on to the table and sweep up the crumbs, a paper-clip, a penny, some peanuts and a dead wasp. I don't want a strange and windy coastal home to visit, I want somewhere I have lived. And I want Daddy to be there.

Daddy! When I thought what I would wish for I never asked for him to be alive! I asked for sleep,
sleep
, when my father is dead. And I asked for Foxy. If I had had a wish it should have been for him to be back, for this to be a mistake, all a mistake. I would do anything, give anything, to make him alive again. Would I? Yes, yes. Would I give up Foxy?

No.

I dip the sponge mop in the bucket and slide it across the floor making shiny wet paths across the cork tiles. Here and there a corner is broken and liquid settles in the dips. My nostrils twitch with the clean brisk smell. Not wishing for Daddy to be alive makes it seem that I've already accepted his death, so quickly, so easily. I feel traitorous and tears are on my cheeks, though I am not crying. Remembering Daddy three summers ago on my first visit to the new house. August Bank Holiday. Foxy living it up somewhere else with May. Daddy greeted me wearing a yellow-and-orange flowered shirt, a holiday shirt, short-sleeved and voluminous. I'd never seen him in such a thing before. He was making an effort for
me
. I was the only visitor that weekend but he dressed as if for a holiday, as if for
company
, in a hideously cheerful shirt. It made me cringe. I felt sorry for him, not sorry but … seeing him as small somehow. I don't know, but what is the expression? My heart went out to him. Good expression, a sensation like the heart unfolding, unfurling towards him. And is that the same as love? I don't know.

Neat wet stripes. I push the lever and squeeze black water from the sponge into the bucket.
Really
, Foxy, what a disgrace. I should leave the dirty water in the bucket as a reproach.
See
how dirty the floor was. But the floor is clean now and my feet leave prints in the damp, the soles of my feet tacky with detergent. Down the cold concrete stairs to the outside drain. The night air is cold and full of the charry smell of someone's barbecue gone cold. The water gurgles darkly away. And the sky is prickled with stars.

I switch the kettle on for tea. But tea is not what I want. There is something I would like, a comfort drink. I don't know if we have black treacle – but yes, a sticky tin in the back of the cupboard. Posset: one teaspoonful of black treacle stirred into hot milk. I sip it in the sitting-room, curled up on the futon. But it is not the taste of here with its stripped-pine floor, kelims and paper lampshades; it is the taste of a cracked leather Chesterfield you can hide behind and tapestry cushions with fringes you can plait or suck; a carpet you can stretch out on and trace its faded patterns of birds and flowers with your finger-tip.