The Servants (6 page)

m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h father since the wedding, they had eaten Chinese on both occasions, saving the leftovers from the first night and eating them in front of the television the following evening. David only had a spring roll—which he insisted on calling an “egg roll”—and some rice and beef. Mark had a suspicion that he didn’t even like Chinese. Every now and then since they’d been down here he’d mentioned Mexican food like it was a big deal of some kind, but Mark had never tried it, which meant it probably wouldn’t be much good. Mark’s mother didn’t eat very much, though she did have some of the crackers.

When they’d finished, Mark picked up the remote and turned the television on. He knew he was pushing his luck, because David said his mother needed peace and quiet—but by the time his stepfather had come back upstairs from cleaning everything up, Mark and his mother were watching a nature program about penguins and there wasn’t anything David could do about it. Instead, he sat at the other end of the couch and watched it with them.

He watched the television, anyway—but Mark knew he wasn’t seeing the same thing. David didn’t know about the time Mark and his mother had gone to London Zoo a couple of years before and spent two whole hours watching the penguins at the special pool. They’d made up stories about each of the penguins, saying which was the penguin policeman, which the lifeguard, and which had been the best female penguin swimmer of all time but gave it all up to have a family and now only came out of retirement once in a while to su 

t h e s e r va n t s

pervise the young ones as they zipped around, swimming in the shallow pool and poddling up and down the ramps and stairs. His mother kept saying they ought to go home but she didn’t really want to, and so they’d sat there for a long, long time next to each other on the bench, laughing and pointing, as if no one else had been there.

David
certainly
hadn’t been there, and didn’t even know about that afternoon. At least Mark’s real dad had been there to tell about it when Mark and his mother got home. Back then David had been in America, yet to force his way into Mark’s world—and so while he
thought
he was sitting there watching the same thing as they were, he . . . wasn’t. He was watching some boring David version of the show, and he’d never know the difference.

When the documentary finished, David looked at his watch, but Mark was way ahead of him. He was on a roll tonight.

“Good night, Mum,” he said. He kissed her on the cheek and left, before David could find something to tell him or ask him about.

When he got back to his room after brushing his teeth, he picked up the books that lay in the corner of the room and flipped them under the bed. Then he got one of the ones he’d brought with him from London, and turned back to the first page. He could read it again.

It was a struggle to maintain interest to start with, but after a while it was okay. It was a bit like walking through some part of a city where you’d been before. You noticed different things.

 

m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h An hour later, he turned the light off and went to sleep. The room was cold and he woke up a couple of times in the night, but only once did he hear coughing, and if he dreamed of anything moving past him in the night, when the morning came, he did not remember it.

 

seven

The weather the next morning was no better. When Mark asked if they were going to go into town, like his mother had said, David shook his head firmly.

“Drop it,” he said. “It isn’t going to happen, not today.”

Mark marched out to the seafront with his skateboard and scooted up and down. The progress he’d made a couple of days before had faded away, however, and he seemed to fall off even more than he had before. He decided to try leapfrogging the problem, and found a short plank and a brick and set them up. The first attempt at jumping was a painful disaster. The second and third were worse. And then some man appeared from somewhere and shouted at him for stealing his brick, or something, and Mark stalked off, swearing under his breath.

In the afternoon, he finished rereading his book, and though he tried to start another, this time it didn’t work. He sat up with his mother for a while but had nothing to tell her about, and she seemed not to have a lot to say either. He went back down to his room and played video games for four m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h hours, sitting with his face up to the screen and using his iPod headphones to make the sound a little better. When he slept that night he thought he had slept deeply, but the next morning he felt very tired, as if someone had taken his eyes out in the night and dried them in front of the fire. The next day it was on the news that some parts of the country had snow, but of course it didn’t snow in Brighton. It had to get really,
really
cold to snow by the sea, David said, even though Mark had not asked him for his opinion on the matter. Instead of snow there was sleet, and rain, and freezing winds. Despite this, Mark dutifully trudged out to the promenade with his board and endured forty minutes of falling over again. After some deliberation, he also broke David’s prohibition on going farther than the line of houses painted in Brunswick Cream.

He walked past the rusty metal columns on the beach, stranded supports from a portion of the old West Pier, cut off

from the tangled wreckage of the rest of its remains, which started fifty yards out in the water. Before the fires that had destroyed the pier, it had been possible to take tours on its remnants, small groups of people in hard hats being shown how it had once been—the ballroom, the tea shops, the viewing platforms. Mark’s mother and father had done this, once. Mark had stayed in the playground with his dad’s sister, who was visiting. Going on a broken old pier hadn’t seemed interesting at the time. Now it was no longer possible, and never would be again. He wished he’d properly understood the difference between these two states of affairs at the time.

 

t h e s e r va n t s

He walked on past the bars and cafés, all closed, which had been fitted into the old arches underneath the raised road level. He walked past the area where a few small, old boats lay on the pebbles, a kind of museum of the fishing that had used to be done here, many years ago; and past a large piece of machinery wrapped in canvas, the base of the carousel that was there in the summer season.

He kept on walking, illicitly, all the way along the seafront until he was level with the big, modern hotel. Mark looked up at it and realized that there was no one there to stop him. He was eleven years old. He knew what was what. David couldn’t make him stay where he wanted him to. It was stupid, and it wasn’t fair.

He walked across the promenade and up the stairs and over the road. Pushed his way in through the swing door and went up another small flight of stairs, and then he was in the big hotel’s atrium.

Music was playing quietly. It was nice and warm and, of course, it was not raining—though if you tilted your head right back you could see the dark clouds through the glass roof, four floors above. Small groups of grown-ups sat at the tables, men and women dressed in black and white bringing them coffee and tea. Kind of like servants, Mark supposed, though he doubted any of them had to sleep in cupboards in the basement, but were probably allowed to go to their own homes at night. He sat down at one of the tables, on a wide couch that was covered in a fabric that looked exactly like the carpet. After a while, a thin man wearing an apron came over.

“I’d like a cup of tea, please,” Mark said.

 

m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h

“Are you staying in the hotel?”

“No. Do I have to be?”

The waiter stared down at him, one eyebrow raised. “Are your mother or father around?”

“I’ve got money,” Mark said, reaching into his pocket and bringing out a handful of change. “How much is it?”

The man just looked at Mark and then walked away. At first Mark thought he’d gone to fetch his tea, but after fifteen minutes it became clear that he had not. Mark held his position, getting more and more furious. He wasn’t staying in the hotel, but what difference did
that
make? He’d stayed here before, with his mum and dad. Why couldn’t he be here now?

Who
said
he couldn’t be?

Then he noticed the thin waiter talking to someone behind reception. Both he and the woman looked over at Mark. Mark got up and walked away, pushing his way back out through the revolving door and into the cold. By the time he got back to the house, it was raining again and he wasn’t in the mood for taking any hassle from anyone. He went straight upstairs, pushing past the gatekeeper. His mother was sitting in the armchair, hunched over. She looked up quickly when he came in.

“Hey,” she said. Her voice sounded odd. “Is it raining again?”

“Are you
ever
going to come out?” he asked.

“I’d like to. What time is it?”

“Only four o’clock. Things are still open. We could go to the Lanes and you could look at rings and stuff.”

 

t h e s e r va n t s

“Oh, honey . . .”

“No,” David said. “It’s foul out there.”

“Just let her do what she
wants
!” Mark shouted. “Why do you always have to
interfere
in everything?”

He turned back to his mother to enlist her support, and noticed that her skin was very pale and that her nose was running.

David handed her a tissue and turned to Mark. His shoulders looked stiff. Mark stared back at him, willing him to squat down in that way he did, so he’d be at the right height for Mark to thump him one.

“I’m not trying to—”

“Yes you
are,
” Mark said. “This may be your house, but we don’t belong to you. You can’t always make us do what you want.”

“Mark. It is
too
cold, and
too
wet, for . . .”

“Oh, piss off,” Mark said, his head feeling cold and clear, and stalked out of the room.

He could hear David coming after him before he was even halfway down the stairs, so he jumped the last few and ran into his room. He slammed the door quickly and grabbed the wooden chair and wedged its back under the door handle, like he’d seen it done on a television program a few weeks ago—a few seconds before David reached the hallway. The doorknob rattled and the chair creaked, but it worked. Mark was delighted. He’d never tried this before. It was worth knowing.

“Mark,” David said from the other side. “Open this door.”

 

m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h Mark opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again. David was all about talking. Not getting a reply would annoy him far more.

“Mark,” he said again.

Stepping carefully and quietly, Mark moved over until he was just the other side of the door. He could hear his stepfather breathing heavily.

“Mark,
open the door
.”

Mark said nothing. Every second that passed without saying anything was a small victory.

“I know you’re there,” David said then, disconcertingly. His voice was low and quiet. “I know you’re right the other side of this door, and I know you can hear me. So hear this. What your mother needs right now is for you and me to get on with each other. So what
I
need, if I’m honest, is for you to stop being such a little asshole.”

Mark blinked.

“Oh,
sorry,
” David added. “That’s an
American
word, isn’t it, and I know how much they confuse you. Try not being an
arsehole
instead, if that’s easier. Put another way, just fucking
grow up
.”

He walked away from the door and back up the stairs. The blood was singing in Mark’s ears, and his mouth was hanging open. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t believe it. This man, this
stranger,
was now calling him rude words! When Mark’s mother couldn’t
hear,
and so wouldn’t know what was going on!

Before this man arrived, everything had been okay, even after Mark’s real father had not been living at home so much

 

t h e s e r va n t s

anymore. But within mere weeks of David coming into their lives, Mark’s mother had started to get ill. And yet now he was blaming Mark for things and calling him rude words. Mark turned furiously from the door, and that’s when he noticed that there was something lying on his bed. A small bag. He went over and tipped the contents out.

It was a new book.

For a split second Mark felt guilty—but then he dropped to his knees and reached his arm under the bed. Swept out the books he threw under there a couple of nights before. He laughed harshly. Yep. Just as he’d thought. The book on his bed tonight was one of the same books David had bought last time. He hadn’t even
noticed
. Hadn’t been looking or caring when he bought it the first time, or when he’d bought it again today. He was faking it, pretending to do the right thing. Mark could just
picture
him coming back into the house, his mother asking what was in the bag, and his stepfather shrugging, saying just a little something for the boy, and Mark’s mother thinking how
nice
he was . . . Mark picked up the book. He yanked the covers off first, then tore the pages out from the middle, and then ripped and shredded these until the floor was covered with tiny pieces and the book was no more.

 

eight

His hands were shaking and hurt a little from what he’d just done, from the blurred fury they’d discovered within themselves. He could hear voices upstairs through the ceiling, mainly David’s. Mark couldn’t make out any words, but he could hear the music of them, the tune of utter calm, the sound of a man who was always right.

Suddenly, and all at once, Mark realized the enormity of his position. When he’d stood at the back of a small room, under protest, and listened as his mother and this man had been declared man and wife, he’d known what it had meant. Of course. But he hadn’t taken it
seriously
. His dad was his dad, and that meant—whatever this event declared to the contrary—his mother and real dad were still married in some way, still joined, remained the fabric of the world. This unspoken assumption had stood firm all the time they’d still been in London. London was London. It didn’t stop. It continued on. Things had to work the way they always did there, despite appearances. On the drive down to the coast, he now realized, this belief had started to waver, deep inside him where t h e s e r va n t s