Ghostwritten
Authors: Isabel Wolff
Ghostwritten
In memory of my mother
The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.
William Faulkner,
Requiem for a Nun
31 August 1987
Holidaymakers speckle the beach, reclining behind brightly striped windbreaks, hands held to eyes against the late afternoon sun as they gaze at the glittering sea. On the horizon squats a huge grey tanker; in the middle distance a scattering of white-sailed yachts, their spinnakers billowed and taut. At the shoreline a young couple in surfing gear are launching a yellow canoe. He holds it while she climbs in, then he jumps on and they paddle away, the boat rocking and bumping through the swell. Two little girls in pink swimsuits stop paddling for a moment to watch them then dash in and out of the water, shrieking with laughter. Behind them, a family is playing French cricket. The ball soars towards the rocks, pursued by a dog, barking wildly, its claws driving up a spray of wet sand.
On the cliff path behind the beach, people are queuing at the wooden hut for tea and biscuits, or an ice cream,
or bucket and spade or a ready-inflated Lilo, which is what a couple of teenage boys are buying now. ‘Don’t take it in the sea,’ warns the woman behind the counter. The taller boy shakes his head then he and his friend carry the airbed down the worn granite steps to the beach.
Here, the sand is pale and dry, glinting with mica. As they head for the water, the boys throw a covetous glance at a blonde woman in a black bikini, who’s lying on a white towel, perfectly still. She’s enjoying the warmth of the sun and the sound of the sea pulling in and out, as steady as breathing. A sandfly lands on her cheek and she brushes it away, then pushes herself up, resting on her elbows. She gazes at the headland, where the grass has dried to a pale gold: then she looks at the dark-haired man sitting beside her, and gives him an indolent smile. Now she turns on her front, reaches behind to unclip her bikini, then hands him a tube of Ambre Solaire. The man hesitates, glancing at the woman’s two children who are building a sandcastle a few feet away, then he removes the cap and starts rubbing the cream onto the woman’s shoulders. As his palm strokes her skin, she sighs with pleasure.
Her daughter, kneeling in the sand, looks up. Seeing the man’s hand moving over her mother’s waist, the girl reddens, then stumbles to her feet. ‘Let’s go rock-pooling,’ she says to her little brother.
He shakes his blond head and continues digging. ‘No.’
‘But I want you to.’
‘I’d rather stay with Mum.’
The girl picks up her plastic sandals and bangs them together. ‘You have to come with me.’
‘Why?’
She puts on the right shoe. ‘To help me.’
‘Don’t want to help you.’
‘Well you’ve
got
to …’ She shoves her left foot into the other sandal, bends to do it up, then grabs the bucket that the boy was filling and empties it. ‘I’ll carry this; you take the net.’
The boy shrugs his narrow shoulders, then stands. He hitches up his red swimming trunks, which are hand-me-downs and much too big; he picks up the net lying nearby.
Their mother lifts her head. ‘You don’t have long,’ she says. ‘We’ll be leaving at six, so you’re to come back when you hear the bell from the tea hut. Did you hear me?’ she adds to her daughter. ‘Hold his hand now. You must hold his hand.’ The girl gives a sullen nod then starts to walk towards the rocks that spill down from the low cliff to the sea. Her brother follows her, dragging the net, its stick leaving a sinuous trail, like the tail of the yellow kite which he now notices, swaying high up, against the blue. He cranes his neck to watch it, one eye closed against the sun.
The girl glances behind and sees that he’s not following her. ‘Ted!’ she calls. ‘Come on!’ She wants to get as far as possible from their mother and her so-called ‘friend’. ‘
Teddy
!’ The little boy tears his gaze from the kite and follows his sister, jumping onto her footprints, leaving no tracks of his own. A toddler wobbles across his path, naked except for a sun hat, then tumbles over, wails, and is hastily scooped up.
Now they’re passing a boy and girl who are digging. The trench they’ve made is six foot long, and so deep that they’re visible only from the waist up.
Ted stops, entranced. ‘Look, Evie!’ She turns. ‘It’s ‘normous.’
‘It is,’ she agrees seriously. ‘Must have taken ages,’ she says to the girl who is about her own age, although tall and long-limbed. She’s wearing a white T-shirt with a large black ‘J’ on it. Evie wonders what it stands for. Julie? Jane?
‘It did take ages,’ the girl replies. Her face is a pale oval framed by long dark hair. She tucks a hank behind her ear and nods at the rampart of displaced sand. ‘We’ve been digging all afternoon, haven’t we, Tom?’
Tom, a thickset boy of about eight, straightens up. ‘We’re making a tunnel.’ He leans on his spade. ‘Like that Channel Tunnel they’re building.’
‘It was my idea,’ the girl adds. ‘We’ve done it all by ourselves.’ She turns to Tom. ‘Mum’ll be surprised when she sees it.’
Tom laughs. ‘She’ll be amazed.’
‘You making a real tunnel?’ Ted asks him.
‘Yes.’ Tom points to a deep recess at the back of the hole.
Ted peers at it. ‘Can I go in?’
‘Maybe,’ Tom shrugs. ‘When it’s finished. But we’ll have to be quick because the tide’s coming up.’
‘The time’s coming up?’ Ted looks at the sea.
‘The
tide,
silly,’ says Evie. ‘Come on, Ted, we’d better go …’
On the other side of the beach, the children’s mother closes her eyes as her companion’s hands caress the swell of her hips. ‘That’s lovely,’ she says. ‘Can you hear me purring?’ she adds with a laugh. Someone nearby is listening to Radio One. She can hear the Pet Shop Boys. ‘Always on My Mind’.
Her boyfriend lies down beside her. ‘You’re always on
my
mind, Babs,’ he murmurs.
She puts her hand to his chest, spreading her fingers against his skin. ‘This is the best holiday I’ve had for years
…
’
By now her children have reached the rocks – jagged grey boulders thinly striped with white quartz. They clamber up, and Ted peers into the first pool. He stares at the seaweed, some brown and knobbly, some as green and smooth as lettuce. He pokes his net at a sea anemone and, to his delight, it retracts its maroon tendrils. Then he spies a shrimp and thrusts the net at it. ‘Caught something!’ he shouts, but as he inspects the mesh his face falls – all that’s in it is a brown winkle. ‘Evie!’ he calls, dismayed to see that she is fifty or sixty feet away. ‘Wait for me!’ But Evie keeps on jumping across the rocks, the bucket swinging from her arm.
As Ted follows her he looks out to sea and spots a yellow canoe with two people in it, lifting and twisting their paddles. He hears a distant roar, and sees a motorboat rip across the water, the wake fanning out in widening chevrons that make the canoe rock and sway. Then he returns his gaze to Evie. She’s peering into a pool. ‘Evie!’ he yells, but she doesn’t respond.
Ted steps onto the next boulder but it’s crusted with tiny black mussels that cut into his feet. The rock beside it looks smooth, but when he stands on it, it wobbles violently, and his thin arms flail as he tries not to fall. Sudden tears sting his eyes. The rocks are sharp, and his trunks won’t stay up and his sister won’t wait for him, let alone hold his hand like she’s supposed to. ‘Evie …’ His throat aches as he tries not to cry. ‘Eeevieeee!’
At last she turns. Seeing his distress, she makes her way back to him. ‘What’s the matter, Ted?’ She stares at his feet. ‘Why didn’t you wear your beach shoes?’
He sniffs. ‘I forgot.’
Evie heaves an exasperated sigh then turns towards the sea. ‘Then we’d better go this way – the rocks are easier. Mind the barnacles,’ she adds over her shoulder. ‘Ooh
there’s
a good pool.’ It’s long and narrow, like a little loch, with bands of leathery-looking weed that sway to and fro. As Evie’s shadow falls onto the surface, a small brown fish darts across the bottom. ‘Give me the net!’ Ted passes it to her and takes the bucket as Evie crouches down, thrusts the net under a rock and swiftly withdraws it. There’s a glint of silver. ‘Got it!’ she yells. ‘Fill the bucket, Ted! Quick!’
Ted dips the bucket in the pool then hands it to her. Evie tips the fish in and it swims to the bottom then scoots under a shred of bladderwrack. ‘It’s
huge
,’ Evie breathes. ‘And there’s a shrimp!’ She feels a sudden euphoria – her loathing of her mother’s ‘friend’ forgotten. ‘Let’s get some more.’ As she dips the net in the water again she hears, faintly, the bell that the woman in the tea hut rings when she’s closing.
A few yards away the waves are breaking over the rocks; the two children can feel the spray on the backs of their legs.
Ted shivers. ‘Is it high time yet, Evie?’
Evie remembers Clive’s hands on their mother’s flanks. She thinks of his hairy chest and his thick arms, with their tattoos, and of the grunts that she hears through the bedroom wall.
‘It isn’t high tide,’ she answers. ‘Not yet …’
Ted picks up the net again. ‘The bell’s ringing.’
Evie shrugs. ‘I can’t hear it.’
‘I can, and ‘member what Mum said, she said—’
‘Let’s find a crab!’ Evie yells. ‘Come on!’
Thrilled by the idea, Ted follows his sister, relieved that she’s going more slowly now, even if it’s only to avoid spilling their precious catch. Here the rocks are not sharp with mussels, but treacherous with seaweed, which slips like satin beneath Ted’s feet. He longs for Evie to hold his hand, but doesn’t like to ask in case it makes him seem babyish.
‘We should have brought some ham,’ he hears her say. ‘Crabs like ham. We’ll bring some tomorrow, okay?’
Ted nods happily.
On the beach, the man flying the kite is reeling it in. The mother of the girls in the pink swimsuits is calling them out of the sea. They run towards her, teeth chattering, and she wraps a towel around each one while the encroaching waves lick at their footprints. The family that were playing French cricket are packing up: the father hurls the ball and the dog tears after it.
People are folding their chairs, or collapsing sunshades and packing up baskets and bags as the sea advances, then retreats, then pushes forward again.
‘Five more minutes, Clive,’ Barbara says.
He winds a lock of her hair around his finger. ‘So what’s happening tonight?’
‘Well, I thought we’d walk to Trennick and get some fish and chips; we could buy a nice bottle of wine, and
then
… I’ll get the kids into bed early.’
‘You do that,’ Clive whispers. He kisses her. ‘You do that, Babs.’ Barbara smiles to think that she’s only
known Clive for eight weeks. She remembers the rush of desire when she saw him – the first time she’d felt anything for a man in years. She thinks of how she’d loathed the job – sitting at her desk all day with nothing to see through the window but lorries and trucks with
JJ Haulage
on them; the only thing on her wall a road map of the UK. Just as she was wondering how much more of it she could stand, Clive had walked in. Tall and dark, with the shoulders of an ox, he’d reminded Barbara of a drawing of the Minotaur in one of Evie’s books. He’d come about his payslip – five overnights to Harwich that were missing. Flustered, Barbara had promised to correct it; then he’d suggested, cheekily, that she could ‘make it up to him’. She’d laughed and said maybe she would …
She’d told him that she had two kids – though no ex, God rest Finn’s soul; but Clive said that she could have had ten kids in tow and it wouldn’t have mattered. The fact that – at thirty-eight – he’s ten years older than she is makes Barbara feel light-headed.
The tricky thing had been introducing him to Evie and Ted. Ted had taken little notice of him, turning back to his Lego, but Evie had been hostile, and when Barbara told them that Clive would be coming on the holiday, she’d run to her room, slamming the door. But, as Barbara had said to her, Evie had friends – why shouldn’t Mummy have a friend? Why shouldn’t Mummy have a bit of happiness? Didn’t Mummy deserve it after all she’d been through? But Evie had simply stared at her, as though trying to drill a hole in her soul. Well she’ll just have to get used to him, Barbara decides, as Clive kisses her fingertips …
Suddenly Barbara realises that the bell has stopped ringing. She sits up.
On the rocks, Ted is getting tired. But now Evie has found another pool, a few feet from the water’s edge.
‘There’ll be crabs in here,’ she says authoritatively. ‘Okay, Ted, you hold the bucket. Be careful,’ she warns as she passes it to him. She takes the net. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I want to hold the net.’
‘You’re too young.’ Confident that this has settled the matter, she returns her gaze to the pool.
Ted thumps the bucket down on a ledge. ‘I’m five!’
‘Well I’m nine, so it’s better if I do it. It’s not easy catching crabs.’
‘It’s my turn. You caught the fish –
and
the shrimp. So it’s my turn with the net now and—’
‘Shhhh!’ Evie is holding up her left hand, her eyes fixed on the water. ‘I saw one,’ she hisses. ‘A big one.’
‘Let me get it.’
Evie leans forward, very slowly, then jabs the net at a clump of weed. As she lifts it out, a khaki-coloured crab, the size of her hand, is dangling from the mesh with one claw.
Ted lunges for the net. To his amazement he manages to wrest it from her; as he does so, the crab falls back into the water then pedals under a rock.
Evie’s mouth chasms with outrage. ‘You idiot!’
Ted’s chin dimples. ‘I’m not.’
‘You
are.
’ She glares at him. ‘You’re an idiot – and a baby: a stupid little
baby
! No wonder Mum calls you “Teddy Bear”.’
His face crumples. ‘Sorry, Evie …’ He offers her the net. ‘Catch it again. Please …’
Evie’s tempted, but then she notices how close the waves now are. ‘No. We’ve got to get back.’ She tips the bucket into the pool and the fish and shrimp dart away. Then she sets off for the beach, which looks improbably distant, as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. She can just see Tom and his sister, flinging sand out of that hole as though their lives depended on it. She turns back to Ted. He’s still standing by the pool, his fringe blown by the breeze. ‘What are you doing?’