Island (24 page)

Calum was retching too. He tried to breathe in on it and made it worse, couldn’t get his breath. I scrabbled over to him and hit him on the back and he went down face first onto the rock. Blood came out of his nose and a stream
of water gushed out of his mouth, then his eyes opened and he lifted his head. We put our arms around each other’s huge jacketed bodies and gasped in unison. Eventually we crawled and staggered along the rocks (the rocks dividing our bay from the jetty bay) to the stony beach and up to the cave of the boat house. It was so quiet out of the wind that it boomed. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep but Calum was badgering me, pulling on my arm, grunting at me to do something. Blankets. There were some blankets on a shelf at the end of the shed, blankets and a sleeping bag.

‘T-take off your j-j-’

My fingertips were numb my fingers couldn’t bend or do anything I got something off, the jacket, I rolled the blanket round me and curled up I went down to the bottom.

When I woke I was very cold and aching all over. I remembered where I was from the beginning. From dragging the boat out of the boat house –
Iris
– dragging it across the pebbles to the water’s edge. I realised.

It was her. Our mother.

She had done it. Made the storm. She had done it to stop us leaving. To keep Calum on the island.

He was lying behind me – I checked, but I could hear him snuffling anyway. I turned my head back and rested it on a bunched up bit of blanket so I was facing out of the shed towards the sea. It was raining now and the wind seemed to have dropped, but I could still see lumps of foam blowing off the tops of the waves. The Blue Men. Her storm. It was obvious.

It was the first time
since I’d been there that they’d had a storm. A sudden storm that shows up just before the ferry leaves. To stop me taking him away. And when I get round that by demanding a boat – she lets us get far enough out to drown then swamps the boat. We could have drowned. We could both be dead.

No.
I
could be dead. Despite what she said, Calum wasn’t intended to die. Calum was intended to remain captive.

My teeth were chattering and my whole body was shaking. Cold, yes, but also shock. She deliberately set out to kill me. When it came down to it and Calum actually made a run for it – she would stop him. With force.

With a fucking tempest.

We needed to get warm. My watch was full of water, I had no idea what time it was. I crawled to Calum and poked him awake, his skin was grey. ‘Come on.’ He staggered and stared around him as if he couldn’t believe it. Then–

‘G-Gerry’s boat.’

‘Fuck Gerry’s boat. We’ll have to pay for a new one. Your mother can pay. Come on.’ We got to the top of the little path and cut across the field to avoid going through the village – staggered in our blankets up to Calum’s place without seeing a soul. It was raining so hard the blankets were as wet as our clothes.

He found me a T-shirt, sweater and jeans that I could hold up by tying a scarf through the belt loops, and a big pair of socks. I took them into his squalid bathroom and locked the door before I changed. The clothes were clean but they made my cold flesh shudder. Calum lit the fire and I made cups of tea. I emptied my poor soggy tobacco
tin into the fire and Calum ferreted about on his table and passed me his new packet of tobacco to put in it. I rolled us both a fag and we sat in front of the fire and gradually the heat crept through and we began to thaw, he put more wood on till the whole hearth was alight and we both must’ve drifted into sleep again. When I woke up it was dark. The fire was glowing and my body ached in every limb and muscle. My throat was raw and my eyes stung. I felt as if I’d been turned inside out.

I listened for the wind but it had dropped. She’d called it up for exactly when she wanted – and having prevented us from leaving, she let it blow itself out. Calum was asleep, his head tilted down, his breathing harsh. His face was as blank as a child’s. She’d tried to drown him. To stop him getting away from her. Or so she would know he was dead before she was. There was nothing she wouldn’t do … the storm before I arrived. That was my welcome from her.

The trickle in my belly was a kind of fear. But I knew its dimensions. It was containable. She made us choke and crawl for our lives. I got up quietly and found my shoes. OK. Anything I might do to her ran the risk of being what she
wanted
me to do anyway. It didn’t matter anymore. It was time to give myself the satisfaction of action.

I couldn’t stop shaking, everything I touched I seemed to drop or knock over. But Calum slept like a baby. I put another lump of wood on the fire and pulled the old fireguard in front, and quietly let myself out. His key was in the lock – I took it and locked the door after me then pushed the key back in under the ill-fitting door. He was safe for the night. I was going to confront her now. Now while I was angry enough to slit her gizzard and laugh as she bled away to nothing.

20
Susan’s father

I was stumbling as I walked along
the lane, I couldn’t work out what was wrong then I realised it was the clothes, Calum’s trousers were too long for me. But I was ravenous as well, once I began to move. I was clear. It would happen now, no point in going softly or attempting to control it. It would happen now and I would deal with the consequences afterwards. She had to be finished before any other life could take place.

I went in my own back door and crammed some biscuits into my mouth, standing there in the dark chewing and gulping them down as fast as I could, unable to think about her or anything that was happening until I had something in my belly. Like putting petrol in a car.

Then I went through to her hall. The TV was chattering softly in her sitting room. I knocked on the door and went in. She was in her chair in front of the TV, when she saw me she scrabbled to get up and her paper fell off her lap.

‘Where’s Calum? What’s
happened to Calum?’

‘Did you think you’d drowned him?’

‘Drowned?’

‘You nearly did.’

‘Is he alright?’ She came close to me and clutched at my clothes. ‘These are his – where is he?’

‘He’s at home. At his home.’ I didn’t want her near me. I moved away.

‘Did he go–?’

‘How could he go? How could we go? In that storm.’

‘But he didn’t come for his dinner–’ She seemed completely stumped by this. She let herself down slowly onto the edge of a chair, took off her glasses and dropped them. Then she stared at me as if it was a deep mystery only I could solve.

‘Well no he didn’t. Surprise surprise. And you know damn well why.’

‘Why?’

What a performance. What a poor, vague, confused, incomprehending innocent. All her massive power carefully shrunk down into this harmless-looking fragile vessel. But I don’t want to play this game. It’s making me shake with anger and there are things to be said before I do it. I make myself sit down. Her remote is on the chair arm. I turn the sound down to nothing. ‘What is the point in pretending?’

‘What?’

‘Fuck it I
know
.’ I kicked
the side of her chair. ‘Forget the four-star acting I fucking
know
. I know what you are I know you tried to drown us there’s no point in all this bullshit anymore.’

She opens her mouth then closes it. I go over to the other side of the room and look out the window at the dark. I am breathless with anger. ‘Admit it.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I know who you are. You’re my mother and you just tried to drown me.’

She stares at me without replying then she starts to get up.

‘I’ve traced you. I’ve been to your parents’ house. You can stop pretending now.’

She is going past the fireplace. The fire is burning, it is too hot in this room.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I want to phone Calum.’

I am across the room before she can get the door half open. I slam it shut. ‘No.’

‘I want to hear him say he’s all right.’

‘If I was you I wouldn’t call up a storm unless I was damn sure who it would and wouldn’t drown.’

She is edging away from me, feeling her way along the wall backwards.

‘Stand still!’

She stops. I suddenly feel like laughing. She
is trying to get away from me and she can’t, after all that. She is my victim. I sit back across the arm of her wing chair. ‘Those magical powers always backfire, don’t they? You know the one where he wishes everything he touches will turn to gold? Then dies of starvation?’

‘What d’you want?’

‘I want you to admit it.’

‘Admit what?’

‘Who you are.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

I rest my head back against the chair and let my eyes close for a minute. Why won’t she give up?

‘Have you found somewhere else to stay?’

‘
What?
’

‘I asked you to move out by the end of the week. Have you found somewhere else?’

‘OK. Listen to me. I am Susan Lovage. I was born October 2 1968. I was wrapped in a white towel and left on the steps of Camden post office. OK? I was found by a cleaner at 6.30 a.m. and taken to hospital and my mother’s name is Phyllis Lovage and her address was on the birth certificate. So there’s no point in you pretending anymore.’

There’s a short silence. I can hear the rain dashing against the window.

‘What d’you want?’ She is polite as ice. ‘Money?’

‘Sure. Money would be nice.
I’ll have money. But I want to know why, OK. For a start, why?’

She comes away from the wall and moves slowly to her usual chair. She sits. ‘Whoever told you this. They should have told you Susan died.’

‘I’m not dead.’

‘Susan died when she was ten months old.’

‘What of?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know what your own daughter died of.’

‘Get out.’

‘You what?’

‘Get out.’

‘Well, no. That’s not the plan.’

She’s shuffling to her feet again. ‘I’m going to call the police.’

‘Are you? What’re you going to say to them?’

She doesn’t reply. I let her get close enough to reach for the handle then I slam my foot against it.

‘Let me out.’

‘No.’

‘Let me out!’ She raises her arm to strike my leg but doesn’t. After a bit she goes and sits down again.

‘Why don’t you know what your daughter
died of?’

‘I wasn’t there. I was in Italy.’

‘So how d’you know she died?’

‘My mother told me.’

I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

‘This is none of your business.’

‘Where did she die? In care?’

She speaks with slightly exaggerated patience as if to an idiot. ‘It is none of your business.’

‘You’re going to get tired of this before I am.’

She shakes her head.

‘D’you want more proof? I’ve got my birth certificate. School reports. Social workers’ assessments.’

No reaction.

‘You
know
. You’ve known since the day I got here – before. You
know
. You can’t play games with me anymore because I know you know.’

She doesn’t even flicker. Just sits there in her chair staring at her hands clasped in her lap.

‘You hear? I
know
.’

Out of the weariness and the aches and pains from the buffeting water and the weight of the boat and the sharp stinging grazing of the rocks and the choked expanded half-drowned lungs and gasped raw throat, anger is coming.
A big strong hot slow wave of anger builds. That woman sits there looking away from me.

‘Who was my father?’

She looks up briefly. ‘Susan’s father was my father.’ She looks at her hands again.

Anger is red. A hot flood of red across the eyeball. A warm waterfall of blood.

21
Seven swans

I woke up sweating in a panic
my hands were lost I couldn’t touch my face. I was in bed. I sat up. My hands were covered in Calum’s long sleeves which had unrolled, I still had all my clothes on, all
his
clothes on. There was a bottle of milk gone sour by the cooker, I could smell it from my bed. The light was murky, around dawn I’d say. My throat was sore and dry.