Eight Foot Blue - 5

Rah had already finished her eggs, because she’d started them when Dad had been at the top of the stairs. Mum and Dad had a room on the second floor, because Dad wouldn’t let Mum ask the Pengellys to swap. It didn’t bother me much anyway, how long it took Dad, apart from the fact that we never got the window seat.

And anyway I’d already decided not to eat that day, because I’d fallen in love with Lily. It was because I’d read somewhere, or I’d heard somewhere, that food and love didn’t mix. I don’t think it was in cookery, or biology, though perhaps it was in English maybe. And even if I’d wanted to eat, I don’t think I’d have been able to. My stomach was tangled up in bad fisherman’s knots, which was not like a bad sensation, in fact it was good. I didn’t want to do anything to lose it. It was like if I ate, then I’d smother my feelings.

Still, the worst thing was that no-one had noticed that I wasn’t eating at all. Not Mum and not Dad, and not Rah. It wasn’t that I exactly wanted to tell them about Lily, or her blue hair, or her cigarette, or the shark I was meant to catch even. No. But weren’t they my family? And shouldn’t they have known instinctively, just how I felt? Shouldn’t they have wanted to know more about me?

“What are we going to do today?” said Rah all oblivious, and already sounding bored.

“I thought we could go to the beach,” said Mum, which was what we were going to do, because it was what we always did. Rah didn’t look pleased. She sat and watched Mum, and I could tell she was thinking with her eight year old whirr-whirr thoughts, because she had pulled her face into a funny twisty shape. I knew what Rah was going to say, but I didn’t want her to say it. Not because she was wrong, but probably because she was right.

“But we went to the beach yesterday,” said Rah. Yesterday, when it hadn’t been hot, but it hadn’t been cold. When I’d spent the whole day watching the clouds making shapes.

“But I don’t really like the beach,” said Rah through her twisty mouth, with her whiny voice, the one she saved for mornings like these. “It’s boring,” she said.

“Rah, leave it,” I said, trying to get big brotherly. I mean I wasn’t thinking of myself, because the beach was boring, but I was thinking of Dad, and maybe really I was mainly thinking of Mum.

She had gone quiet and distant, in fact she’d been quiet and distant all morning when I thought about it. I knew why. The holiday had been her idea, and yet now we were here, there wasn’t much else we could do but the beach.

“There’s nothing for me to do,” said Rah. Dad should have got angry, or Mum should have got angry, but they didn’t because Rah was always bored. Often Mum would talk about it with more than a hint of pride, saying something like, boredom is a problem you face with an achieving child. When I was younger and I got bored, they bought me crisps, or some sweets, or a drink.

“You could build a sandcastle,” said Mum patiently.

“What’s the point, everybody does that and anyway castles aren’t made from sand,” said Rah. “They’d fall down,” she said.

“I’ll help you,” I said and Rah cocked her head and looked at me, and I could tell she was still thinking her thoughts.

“But what’s the point,” she said again. I sighed.

“We’re going anyway,” said Mum, firmer now, but still not really firm. “We’ll find something to do when we’re there.”

Dad sat quietly. He was slowly drinking his tea, and waiting for his food, and also lighting a cigarette. Sometimes I liked the smell of smoke, when it came across all bonfire, like when Lily had been smoking with her lighthouse glow, embers on, embers off in the dark. So sometimes I liked smoking, but not now in the morning, when half the world was watching us. Then I thought Mr Mills right.

I heard an old woman tutt suddenly. She could have been a Grandmother I guessed. She was ageing bitterly at the next table, with a younger man, and a younger woman, and two children like us, a boy and a girl. When she tutted it was like her teeth rattled round in her head. I heard her thinking too, it’s his fault, see it’s his fault, as if she’d proven a point.

But Dad didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care. He’d long since grown used to people like her watching him. He inhaled, coughed, and then from somewhere found a smile. He inhaled again. “We could get a motor boat,” he said.

“George. NO!” shouted Mum. Then we both looked at her, my Dad and me.

“Yes, can we, please, I can drive,” said Rah excited, and now it was already said.

“We can’t,” said Mum.

“We can,” said Dad.

“You can’t,” said Mum more pointedly and Dad shut up, his smile going, then gone. He twisted his cigarette hard into the small silver foil ashtray on the table, stopping all the smoke, putting out the glow, so the room felt cold and dark.

And I watched television sometimes, too much Mum said, and I realised how much of a Coronation Street soap opera we were. Me and my family, with the other breakfast folk all hanging on our words, our drama and what might happen next.

“I can,” said Dad through his teeth, and it was like he was thinking the whole room would stand up and applaud, burst into song, a musical. The triumph of the human spirit.

I entered an essay competition once and we’d had to write something with this title, and I’d written about the war and Douglas Bader, who lost his legs, then flew again, ready to be shot down. I came third which wasn’t bad for me, but I’m sure I would have won if it hadn’t been for Mrs Abrams, my English teacher from the first year, doing the judging. I bet she judged me as soon as she saw my name, before she even read my work. She knew who I was and she didn’t like the stuff I wrote. I think she once said, George don’t you know that poetry doesn’t have to rhyme.

Anyway, I didn’t want the other families to applaud and I didn’t want their songs, because I knew Dad was lying, or not lying exactly, but I knew he couldn’t get into a motor boat. It wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t climb down the steps on the quay, and he couldn’t step over the side. He couldn’t balance or sit down, and we couldn’t take a boat out without him, like we couldn’t go to the beach without him. These would have been the worst things we could have done, worse than not coming on holiday at all.

Rah knew all this really, and Mum knew that Rah knew all this, but we were both looking at her, not sure what she’d say, whether she’d argue some more or start screaming. Whether she’d start making a motor boat engine sound, which was the sort of thing she might just have done.

She was quiet for a second so Mum took her chance, just as Dad’s breakfast arrived. “You two can go now, go and have a walk to the shops,” she said, reaching in her cardigan pocket, and pulling out loose coins. She handed them to Rah, who put them in the purse that hung around her neck. Then we both stood up as quick as we could, because of all the bad things in the world, sharks included, there was nothing quite so bad as having to watch Dad eat. It wasn’t just peas he had a problem with. It was everything. He moved his knife and fork very slowly, but then chewed quickly, as though he’d almost starved in the time it had taken him to fill his mouth, And often he’d forget to lick his lips clean.

As we started to walk out of the breakfast room, Rah and me, I could see some eyes on us and some on Dad still, and I supposed Rah could see the same, because she had to go and do something beautiful. She turned and hop-skipped around the table and planted a sloppy kiss on Dad’s cheek while he was still eating. I wanted to cry. Dad wanted to cry. Mum wanted to cry. Rah was already crying.

Eventually we got outside, into the morning proper. The sun was already shining although there was still a bit of breeze, blowing over the sea and into us as we went down the hill and into town. We were going to get some newspapers for Dad, and some sweets for ourselves, and Mum hadn’t said that she wanted anything.

The air was all full with the seaside smell, everything mixed up, oil and fish and ice-cream. It was the kind of smell that triggers things, like holidays we’d had before, but also how we walked down the same hill yesterday, to buy the same papers, which I didn’t read, because they seemed to me to tell the same news.

Rah hadn’t stopped crying. I was walking in front of her and I slowed my steps because I wanted to hold her hand for a while, which was not just for her but also for me. I wanted to feel her warm, chubby, child’s fingers which were not all bone like Lily or Dad’s fingers. I wanted to twine her hands in mine because she was my sister and it felt right to be wrapped up in her now.

She was crying and I was thinking sometimes I was all she had, and sometimes she was all I had. I mean Dad had Mum, and Mum had what was left of Dad, and they had us, but it felt like we didn’t really have them, not with Dad being the way that he was.

Also I was thinking that there was nobody at school, not really, just teachers like Mrs Abrams, who weren’t exactly horrible, but weren’t exactly nice to me. Not even Mr Johnson, my English teacher now, who gave me my best marks and wrote things in red ink at the bottom of my homework, things I liked, like, good, poetry doesn’t have to be ethereal. I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant, but it sounded right anyway.

I supposed there were my friends, Sam and Greg say. I knew we’d been closer once, that there’d been the three of us, but then they seemed to stop coming round so much. I guessed it was on account of Dad having his bedroom in the living room at home. And I’d seemed to stop going to theirs too. I wondered now, if Lily lived in my town, whether she’d come round to mine, or whether I’d go around to hers. I was wondering too whether maybe I was just kidding myself.

For the moment there was only Rah, and we were at the bottom of the hill, and I still wanted to hold her hand. I was breathing in the fish air and the sea spray and all the smells were getting stronger as we got closer into town, and closer to the sea. I wanted to tell Rah about Lily and the night before. It was kind of an urge, Let it out George, let it out.

I mean Rah was only eight, but Rah was a girl, wasn’t she? And I wanted to ask her what should I do? I wanted to ask her how I should find Lily now? Where would she be hiding? I wanted to say do you think that she could love me, and how exactly can you catch a shark? Rah would have known, but she was still crying. She wouldn’t let me hold her hand and she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, which wasn’t exactly surprising on account of the fact that she never told me exactly what was wrong. When I asked she just spoke in riddles, and said things like work it out, it’s not hard.