Heavy Water: And Other Stories (17 page)

Weatherless Victoria, and a cafe in the old style. Coffee served in leaky steel pots, and children eating Banana Splits and Knickerbocker Glories and other confections the color of traffic lights. In this place the waitresses were waitresses by caste, contemplating no artistic destiny. Outside, the city dedicated itself to the notion of mobility, fleets of buses and taxis, herds of cars, and then the trains.

She was several tables away, facing him, with her slender eyebrows raised and locked in inquiry. Rodney glanced, blinked, smiled. Then it was dumb show all over again. May I? Well if you. No I’ll just …

“Well well. It
is
a small world, isn’t it.”

“…  So you’re not going to murder me? You’re not going to slag me off?”

“What? Oh no. No no. No.”

“…  So you’re back here now.”

“Yes. And you, you’re …”

“Me mum died.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. So you’re just here for the …”

“For the funeral and that, yeah …”

She said that her mother had been very old and had had a good life. Rodney’s mother was also very old and had had a good life, at least on paper. But she wasn’t dead. On the contrary she was, as the saying had it, “very much alive.” He was back with his mother. There was nothing he could do about that. He had to talk to her a lot but everything he said enraged her. Better to seal up your lips, he thought. Mum’s the word. Seal up your lips, and give no words but—mum. She said,

“I can’t believe you’re being so sweet about the money. Have you got loads more?”

“No. What? Sweet? No no. I was upset at first, of course. But I … What did you do with it in the end?”

“I told him I
found
it. In a cab. It’s New York, right?” She shrugged and said, “Went upstate and got a place in the Poconos. We were there twenty-two months. It was handsome. Look. A boy. Julius. Not quite one.”

As he considered the photograph Rodney was visited by a conventional sentiment: the gift of life! And stronger, according to his experience, in the black than in all the other planetary colors. “Can he talk yet? When do they talk?” And he pressed on, “Our code of silence. What was that—sort of a game?”

“You were a Sir. And me with my accent.”

The implication being that he wouldn’t have wanted her if she’d talked like she talked. And it was true. He looked at her. Her shape and texture sent the same message to his eyes and his mind. But the message stopped there. It no longer traveled down his spine. Sad and baffling, but perfectly true. “Well I’m not a Sir anymore,” he said, and he almost added “either.” “Did, uh—?”

“It was nice though, wasn’t it. Restful. Uncomplicated.”

“Yes, it was very nice.” Rodney felt close to tears. He said, “Did, uh, Pharsin continue with his …?”

“He got it out of his system. Let’s put it like that. He’s himself again now.”

She spoke with relief, even with pride. It had not escaped Rodney’s plodding scrutiny that her face and her long bare arms were quite free of contusion. Violence: it’s in their culture, Rock had said. And Rodney now asked himself: Well who had a say in that?

“He’s back doing the chess,” she said. “Doing okay. It’s up with the economy.”

Rodney wanted to say, “Chess is a high calling”—which he believed. But he was afraid it might be taken amiss. All he could think to offer was the following: “Well. A fool and his money are soon parted.”

“That’s what they say.”

“Take it as …” He searched for the right word. Would “reparations” answer? He said, “Still doing the mime?”

“Doing well. We tour now. How about you? Still doing the painting?”

“Got fed up with it. Don’t know why really.”

Although Rodney was not looking forward to his rendezvous in Sussex, he was looking forward to the drinks he would have on the train to prepare himself for it. He turned to the window. His upper lip did its thing: slowly folding into two. He said,

“So the rain held off.”

“Yeah. It’s been nice.”

“Thought it looked like rain earlier.”

“Me too. Thought it was going to piss down.”

“But it held off.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It held off.”

1997

HEAVY WATER

J
OHN AND MOTHER STOOD
side by side on the stern deck as the white ship backpedaled out of the harbor. Some people were still waving in friendly agitation from the shore; but the great machines of the dock (impassive guardians of the smaller, less experienced machines) had already begun to turn away from the parting ship, their arms folded in indifference and disdain … John waved back. Mother looked to starboard. The evening sun was losing blood across the estuary, weakening, weakening; directly below, the slivers of crimson light slipped over the oil-stained water like mercurial rain off fat lilies. John shivered. Mother smiled at her son.

“Tired and thirsty, are you, John?” she asked him (for they had traveled all day). “Tired and thirsty?”

John nodded grimly.

“Let’s go down then. Come on. Let’s go down.”

Things started heating up the next day.

“What, so he’s not quite all there then,” said the man called Mr. Brine.

“You could say that,” said Mother.

“Bit slow on the old uptake.”

“If you like. Yes,” said Mother simply, gazing across the deck to the sea (where the waves were already rolling on to their backs to bask in the sun). “Are you too hot, John, my pet? Say if you are.”

“Does he always cry then?” asked Mr. Brine. “Or’s he just having a good blub?”

Mother turned. Her nicked mouth was like the crimp at the bottom of a toothpaste tube. “Always,” she consented. “It’s his eyes. It’s not that he’s
sad
. The doctors say it’s his poor eyes.”

“Poor chap,” said Mrs. Brine. “I do feel sorry for him. Poor love.”

Mr. Brine took his sopping cigar out of his mouth and said, “What’s his name. ‘John’? How are you, John? Enjoying your cruise, are you, John? Whoop. Look. He’s at it again. Cheer up, John! Cheer up!”

Drunk, thought Mother wearily. Half past twelve in the afternoon of the first full day and everyone was drunk … The swimming pool slopped and slapped; water upon water. The sea twanged in the heat. The sun came crackling across the ocean toward the big ship. John was six feet tall. He was forty-three.

He sat there oozily in his dark gray suit. John wore a plain white shirt—but, as always, an eye-catching tie. Some internal heat source fueled his bleeding eyes; otherwise his fat face was worryingly colorless, like an internal organ left too long on its tray. His chin toppled into his breasts and his breasts toppled into his belly … With some makes of car, the bigger the model, the smaller the mascot on its bonnet; and so, alas, it was with John. A little shy sprig for his manhood from which Mother, at bathtime, would politely avert her gaze. Water seeped and crept and tiptoed from his eyes all day and all night. Mother loved him with all her heart. This was her life’s work: that John should feel no pain.

“Yes,” said Mother, leaning forward to thumb his cheeks, “he’s still a child really—aren’t you, John? Come with Mother now, darling. Come along.”

Mr. and Mrs. Brine watched them start to make their way below. The little woman leading her heavy son by the hand.

At eight o’clock every morning they were brought tea and biscuits and the
Cruise News
in their cabin by the adolescent steward: Mother thought he looked like the Artful Dodger with rickets, for all his cream blazer and burgundy slacks. With a candid groan John rolled off the lower bunk and sat rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, very like a child, as Mother nimbly availed herself of the four-runged wooden ladder. She drank two cups of the taupe liquid, and then gave John his bottle—the usual mixture she knew he liked. Next, tenderly grunting, she inserted his partial (John fell down often and heavily, and one such fall had cost him two incisors—years ago). As she withdrew her hand, threads of saliva would cling yearningly to her fingers: please don’t take your hand away, please, not yet. In the bright stall of the bathroom she put him through his motions. And at last she clothed his cumbrous body, her tongue giving a cluck of satisfaction as she furled the giant Windsor of his flaming tie.

Dreamily she said, “Do you want to go down for your breakfast now, John?”

“Gur,” he said. (“Gur” was yes. “Go” was no.)

“Come along then, John. Come along.”

Out through the door and the smell of ship seized you by the sinuses: the smell of something pressurized, and ferociously synthetic. They entered the zigzagged dining room, with its pearl-droplet lighting, its submarine heat, and its pocket-sized Goanese staff in their rusty tuxedos. In a spirit of thrift Mother consumed the full buffet grill—omelette, sausage, bacon, lamb chop—while John did battle with a soft-boiled egg, watched with enfeebled irony by Mr. and Mrs. Brine. There were two other guests at their table: a young man called Gary, who had thoughts only for his sunbathing and the inch-thick tan he intended to present to his co-workers at the ventilation-engineering plant in Croydon; and a not-so-young woman called Drew, who came largely for the sea air and the exotic food—the chop sueys, the Cheltenham curries. Then, too, perhaps, both Drew and Gary had hopes of romance: the pretty daughters, the handsome officers … There’d been a Singles’ Party in the Robin’s Nest, hosted by the Captain himself, on the night they sailed. An invitation was waiting for John when he and Mother came staggering into their cabin. She slipped it out of sight, of course, being always very careful, you understand, not to let him get upset with anything of that sort. Taking a turn on deck that evening, they passed the Robin’s Nest and Mother, with maximum caution, peered in through the wide windows, expecting to witness some Caligulan debauch. But really: whyever had she bothered? Such a shower of old bags you’d never seen. Wherever were the pretty daughters? And wherever were the officers? “At it already,” said Mr. Brine at dinner that night, in a slurred undertone. “The officers nail down all the talent before the ship weighs anchor. It’s well known.” Mother frowned. “Going abroad, the girls want looking after,” said Mrs. Brine indulgently. “It’s the
uniform
 …” Soft, see-through white of egg bobbled hesitantly down John’s long face, pausing on his chin to look before it leapt on to the expanse of the serviette secured to his throat by Mother.

Up on deck two Irish builders were stirring and swearing beneath the lifeboats, having slept where they dropped. Mother hurried John along. Soon those two would be up in the Kingfisher Bar with their Fernet Brancas and their beers. The ship was a pub afloat, a bingo hall on ice. This way you went abroad on a lurching chunk of England, your terror numbed by English barmen serving duty-frees.

Mr. Brine was a union man. There were many such on board. It was 1977: the National Front, the IMF, Mr. Jenkins’s Europe; Jim Callaghan meets Jimmy Carter; the Provos, Rhodesia, Windscale. This year, according to Mother’s morning news sheet, the cruise operators had finally abandoned the distinction between first and second class. A deck and B deck still cost the same amount more than C deck or D deck. But the actual distinction had finally been abandoned.

At ten o’clock John and Mother attended the Singalong in the Parakeet Lounge. And here they sang along to the sounds of the Dirk Delano Trio. Or Mother did, with her bloodless lips. John’s head wallowed on his wide bent back, his liquid eyes bright, expectant. It was a conviction of Mother’s that John particularly relished these sessions. Once, halfway through a slow one that always took Mother back (the bus shelter beneath the sodden Palais, larky Bill in the rain with his jacket on inside out), John went rigid and let forth a baying moo that made the band stall and stutter, earning him a chuckling rebuke from handsome, dirty-minded Dirk at song’s end. John grinned furtively. So did everybody else. Mother said nothing, but gave John a good pinch on the sensitive underflab of his upper arm. And he never did it again.

Afterwards they would take a turn on deck before repairing to the Cockatoo Rooms, where Prize Bingo was daily disputed. Again John sat there stolidly enough as Mother fussed over her card—a bird herself, a nest-proud sparrow, with new and important things to think about. He gave signs of animation only at moments of ritual hubbub—when, say, the contestants wolf-whistled in response to the Caller’s fruity “Legs Eleven!” or when they chanted back a triumphant “Sunset Strip!” in response to his enticing “Sevenny
Seven
…?” This morning Mother got six numbers in a row and reflexively yelped out
“House!”
as if making some shameful declaration about her own existence. Now it was
her
turn to be stared at. Rank upon rank of pastel cruisewear. Faces contracted in disappointment and a sense of betrayal … The Caller’s assistant, a girl in a catsuit who was actually called Bingo, came to validate Mother’s card. But what was this? Oh dear: she’d got a number wrong. Mother’s head dipped direly. The game resumed. No more numbers came her way.

At about twelve-thirty John was taken down for a quiet time, with his bottle. Much refreshed, he escorted Mother to the Robin’s Nest for the convenient buffet lunch. It took John a long time to get there. For him, dry land was as treacherous as a slewing deck; and so, as the ship rolled, John found himself doubly at sea … With trays on their laps they watched through a hot glass window the men and women playing quoits and Ping-Pong and deck tennis. Mother appraised her son, slumped over his untouched food. He didn’t seem to mind that he couldn’t play. For there were others on board, many others, who couldn’t play either. You saw crutches, orthopaedic boots, leg calipers; down on C deck it was like a ward at Stoke Mandeville. Mother smiled. Her Bill had been a fine sportsman in his way—bowls on the green, snooker, shove-ha’penny, darts … Mother’s smile, with its empty lips. She
did
have secrets. For instance, she always told strangers that she was a widow. Not true. Bill hadn’t died. He’d walked away, one Christmas Eve. John was fourteen years old when that happened, and apparently a normal little boy. But then his panics started; and Mother’s life became the kind of tired riddle that wounding dreams set you to unlock. Such a
cruel
year: Bill gone, the letters from the school, the selling of the house, the move, and John all hopeless now and having to be kept at home. Bill sent checks. She never said he didn’t send checks. From Vancouver. Whatever was he doing in
Vancouver
…? Mother turned. Ah there: now John slept, his chin tripled over his plump tie knot, the four trails of liquid idly mapping his face, two from the corners of his mouth, two from his eyes, eyes that never quite went to sleep. Mother let him be.