Authors: Jonathan Gash
“We can never take a real holiday.”
“Isn’t this a break?”
Lottie’s exasperation was showing. They strolled along the Maldon estuary. It was a pretty scene. Children crowded the play pools despite the chill. The narrow lookout spire of Maldon’s ancient church was painted a garish mustard, the greensward expansive. Small yachts competed for leeway in the narrow river. Buster was good, never more than yards away.
“Will we be walking here ten years from now?”
“I hope so.”
She understood, for Davey was his grandson, not hers. Which didn’t lessen the problem; it was just as horrifying. But, she argued with herself, time had gone on. They slept together, and now she sometimes stayed over. Maybe a woman wanted a sense of completeness, whereas a man didn’t? Women used different words: commitment, meaningful. Men sank into their minds and kept more within, so maddening. They didn’t share the same dependence on words.
What she did know for certain was that she couldn’t go
on. Raise the subject, all she got was “I hope so.” Time moved, she thought tartly, for her also.
“We never have gone away, have we?”
“I can’t,” Bray said simply.
She appraised him as a dog chased a stick thrown by two children. Bray smiled, calling Buster not to join in.
“It’s the phone, the e-mail, the messages. I’m going over the next TV episodes. They’ll have the competition in. Kylee might ring any second.”
“Kylee’s getting more abusive.” Lottie searched for ammunition. “She curses everybody. She’s getting worse.”
Kylee was now a young tyro, working full time in Mr Maddy’s and doing well. Lottie had had occasion to contact her there, and was startled to be told that Kylee couldn’t come to the phone. She had last visited Bray a fortnight before. Bray had taken the day off, and they had stayed in the shed most of the day. Lottie felt barred, almost as she was now by Bray’s resolve.
“It’s her way. She’s getting excited about…” The finish, he meant.
“Couldn’t we get on without her now?”
He was astonished. “I can’t see how.”
They sat on the oak benching overlooking the barges. Buster wandered the nearby ditch, occasionally pausing to make sure Bray was still there. Lottie thought how well Bray looked. He wore a long-sleeved Fair Isle pullover she had astounded herself by knitting. His frame had thinned.
“The system’s set up. The television stations will not need to screen the competition entrants in the USA, because her ladyship Kylee says so.” She bit her tongue, quickly amended, “Kylee goes in fits and starts.”
“She’s never less than a day out of synch, Lottie.”
“It’s her attitude.” The last time Kylee had spoken to
Lottie the girl’s scathing comments had quite worn her down. She had rung off in temper.
“It has to be endured,” he said quietly. “The benefit, you see.”
“
She
benefits, Bray!” Lottie snapped. “You pay her.”
“I have a fortune,” he replied simply.
He’d established a company and made Geoffrey the beneficiary. Old Mr Haythorn in the bank was having a time of it keeping abreast of the income. It was success, but meant nothing if it didn’t find Davey.
“You’ll be touring America, Bray.”
“That’s why I need you, Lottie.” The thought was unbearable, but he forced himself. “What if messages came tonight and we ignored it? It might be our only chance.”
“Can I ask, Bray?”
She felt resigned, here on the pretty strand with the sailing vessels gliding by, the families at picnics, children splashing in the pools. It seemed to mock her futility.
“I’ll be devil’s advocate.” She turned to him. “You know how I feel. It’s only love speaking.” Appalled at her temerity, she came right out. “Do you really believe there’s any chance, Bray? After all this time?”
He stood, hands in his pockets. Buster came up, tongue lolling, ready to go on.
“I believe, Lottie.” He cast about for a twig, threw it with a show of effort. Buster stayed, looking at Bray, recognising a sham.
“When I first learned of it, the horror,” he said so quietly Lottie had to lean to hear, “I stood in the garden at night. It was the stars. Me and Davey used to watch them. I realised everybody would give up eventually. Geoffrey, Shirley, the American police. Despair would win.”
“I’m sorry —”
“No, let me.” He was some time resuming. “I considered how it would be, to take my own life. Strange how rational it can suddenly seem. Then I thought of Davey.” He fondled Buster’s head against his knee. “And all of an instant it was clear as day. Davey, if he was able to remember back to me, to his shed with his carvings, all our games, Davey would
know
that I would come looking for him. Maybe I’d get it wrong, and search hopeless places. And maybe I’d die, or come up against impossible obstacles. But one thing Davey does believe, is that his Grampa is coming, following, trying to find him.”
Bray pointed along the thronged foreshore as if it was a feature she hadn’t seen until that moment.
“It’s all there is for me. The fullness today, tomorrow, of the future.”
“And if your competition doesn’t find anything?”
“Then I’ll do it again. Make a regular competition, year after year. And anything else I can come up with.”
Lottie couldn’t keep scorn out. “One crazy scheme after another?”
“I’ll grab at any straw.”
“And fail time and again?” she heard herself say, thinking even as she spoke, God, no, don’t. Her charity had vanished. She felt despicable. “You ought to be making a fail-safe plan.”
He froze, Buster wondering why the day had gone wrong.
Lottie thought, I hate that bloody dog, hate it for the totality of its unconditional love. Buster’s utter reverence was something she simply couldn’t match. They deserved each other, Buster and Bray together. For good. The ultimate Derby and Joan, bonded together in a lunatic quest. She could stay with them, fine, keep her emotional
distance. But become involved, you too were doomed, cankered and inert.
She’d had a friend once who had loved a priest well into her sixtieth year. The friend lived forlornly from day to ailing day, her life frittered.
Well, that’s not me, Lottie told herself with anger. Become a life-long vestal, tending the flame at some man’s shrine? She’d reached the end of her tether. Suddenly she was impatient to be gone from Maldon’s foreshore. Tonight, maybe get her best skirt suit on, the powder blue, call up friends and claim, whatever their priorities, this evening was hers. That new raucous club down the coast. She’d had enough, thank you. Life was too short.
“I’m so sorry,” Bray was saying, toeing the grass while Buster looked. “In other circumstances, I’d be more…”
“That’s it, though, isn’t it, Bray?” she said, sadness over her bitterness. “The circumstances. You’re never free. I’ve felt myself changing, becoming a sort of mini-you.”
He smiled, for once an open slow winning smile that a stranger could easily have mistaken for humour.
“It has been beautiful, Lottie,” he said simply. “Without you I’d have gone under. Kylee too. And George. You’ve all been superb, friends I never even hoped I’d be lucky enough to have. I don’t deserve you. I’ll keep going whatever comes. Your knowledge, Kylee’s lovely soul, George’s understanding. You’re all in me now.”
“I can’t go on, Bray, is what I’m saying.”
“I know, love.” He gazed at a Norfolk wherry as it glided up river, its sunset sail clapping in the low breeze. “You’re with me to the end. I love you.”
“But for those circumstances?” She said it bitterly.
“I’m sorry. Yes.”
They stood facing a moment, then Lottie turned.
“I’ll get the hamper.”
Bray was about to apologise but thought better of it and moved with her to their separation.
“Clint’s done badly,” Lois Marquese told Judy Trabasco in the teachers’ common room. “The kid you and Donna Curme were talking about.”
“Clint? Impossible!” Judy was annoyed, more for her friend Donna. Trust the art teacher to nit pick. Lois and Donna didn’t get on.
The art teacher brought Judy her coffee. “Can’t follow a single story line. It’s bizarre.” She explained the details, adding, “The boy goes off at a tangent.”
Judy said sweetly, “You mean he actually invents, hmmm?”
“Plenty of kids are erratic, Judy. There’s a weird limit in Clint’s mind.”
Judy laughed Lois’s criticism off. “The assignment was to invent the end to a children’s TV story?”
“
Reasoned
conclusions, Judy!”
“You mean Clint’s ending was different? Art
is
difference, for God’s sake. They’re children, mah deah! It happens!”
“His group’s out of the competition,” Lois Marquese said. “I had to bench them.”
Trouble was, Lois knew Donna had a special interest in the boy, and Clint’s parents were big funders.
“With his parents contributing to the new sports facility?” Judy countered lamely.
Other teachers were listening now, including the athletics programmer Dale Porrino, a lanky Barbadian transfer via Miami.
He interrupted, “Clint ran the wrong way today.”
“Wrong how?” Judy wished Donna would arrive, help her out.
“Softball,” Dale said. “Whacked the ball, but kept hold of the bat and ran forward.” Dale described it. Everyone present was into the story.
“Was he sick or something?” The best Judy could do.
“No. In fact he was laughing. Did his hit, raced forward. Then suddenly stopped, looked around like puzzled. Stared at the pitcher – y’know, Farlow’s kid? – like he expected to see something else. Then ran back and round, too late. The kids went wild.”
“He looked okay?”
“Embarrassed. Said he just forgot.”
Somebody said, “Never heard of a kid forgetting a baseball pitch.”
“Sent him to the med facility.” Dale shrugged. “He was fine.”
After that, Clint’s art was out of the window.
They were in a car pool. That evening Judy told Donna about Lois’s remarks. Donna had seen Clint’s mistake at the softball game. Children did weird things, where was the problem?
Donna had her own viewpoint and gave it to Judy on the way home. “Lois is hooked on event sequencing. She’s totally in-course assessment. Okay, so the kid’s a dreamer.”
“What kid isn’t?” Judy said supportively.
After two days more Dale Porrino ran into Donna Curme outside the cafeteria. She asked if Clint had shown any more behavioural oddities.
“He’s academically patchy, give Lois that,” Donna admitted. “But he’s fine.”
“Didn’t he have some accident?”
“It’s on his record. He seems a normal seven-year-old.”
“They all mess around that age.”
Dale paused as Donna made to walk on.
“A couple of kids made that same mistake,” he said, grinning. “A Trinidadian. And that Nelson kid from Nassau, y’know, Bahamian kid last semester? Ran straight at the pitcher, kept hold of the bat. Like in cricket.”
“So it’s common?” Donna was relieved, still irritated by Lois Marquese’s decision to drop Clint’s group. Kids were grouped up to enter the competition. It was innocent, based on a children’s TV programme. It was receiving statewide publicity. Success would do the school no harm at all. There was media talk of a fantastic reward for the winning school.
“They played the wrong games when they were just out of the egg.”
They parted then, Donna happy now with one more remark with which to counter Lois Marquese’s scepticisms.
Mom saw Clint’s holidays as a threat. Pop didn’t. Mom cooled, because the staff hadn’t left for the day so she had to be on her guard.
“Hyme, I want Doctor here for the holiday.”
“Jeez, Clodie! That man costs!”
“We gone through this!” Mom’s voice rose.
“You think there’s still a chance that Clint —?”
“You think there’s
no
chance?”
There was no answer to that, so Pop made the call. Two days before the school’s weekend break Doctor flew in, took the penthouse at Tain Herrome International Airport Hotel, with three “personal family”. Pop covered the entire cost. Mom rejoiced. She made Doctor promise to pay Clint daily visits right to the end of the break.
Clint didn’t like Doctor.
The man was real important. Mom and Pop said. He had to be nice to Doctor because Doctor saved Clint’s life in hospital. What Doctor said was always true.
He was always careful when Doctor came. He listened close, only saying what Doctor would think was right.
School was better than home. Whatever happened in school got back to Mom and Pop. At home Linda Hunger knew everything. It was easier when Doctor came, because Mrs Hunger stayed out and didn’t come home to her apartment along the top corridor. Clint knew this because she had a growly motor – auto – that made noises that made him smile.
Pop wasn’t as much fun as other kids’ dads. Pop didn’t run races. The second class cookout Pop stayed away, though he was home. Mom came with other moms.
Christmas was lovely, no,
great
, all those colours. Clint told Miss Curme his class teacher that blue and yellow were better than red and green. She asked him why but he didn’t know.
“Can I choose?” Clint liked drawing one particular colour.
“You certainly can!”
The class were creating a long picture called a panorama. Clint’s group had to draw a hill and trees covered in snow. Other groups in class had to do a stable, shepherds, animals and Three Wise Men and an angel with wings.
Miss Curme was nice and sometimes pretended she forgot words and sums when really she hadn’t, to make the kids think she was dumb. They had fun telling her the answers. She was thin, wore glasses, and had too much hair round her head. Clint wondered what she’d look like in a hat. He liked her.
Planning Christmas displays, Miss Curme put the drawings up on sheets. Two others in Clint’s group, Leeta whose daddy was a minister who shouted in a Baptist church and a boy called Carlson whose pop was a secret in the State Capitol. Leeta and Carlson were good at cutting, but Clint was better at drawing.
So they did the cutting out and he did the drawings. He asked Miss Curme if he could have more paints and she said fine. That was when she said about choosing colours.
The kids did their piece of the big panorama. Miss Curme said it was a quiet period so she could get on with her marking. Her tongue made a slow wriggle in her mouth, slow as a worm. Some kids called her secret names. Carlson called her Dozy Donna and Leeta said shhh.
Leeta cut out the shapes that Clint drew and Carlson cut out the people Clint drew. He drew on white then coloured them in. Once, Carlson cut across a part he shouldn’t have so Clint drew it again and Carlson cut it right this time. Miss Curme said it was okay if that was the shape Clint really wanted but try to save paper next time.
The second afternoon Clint spilled some water. It wet the floor. Miss Curme said never mind and everybody started wiping up the wet. Clint said he was sorry. Leeta said it was an accident so God would forgive it. Carlson blamed the other kids for putting their papers down wrong. Miss Curme said none of that, please, or we’ll never finish before school’s out for Christmas.
Carlson liked Miss Curme. Carlson said she was cool. Leeta didn’t like her. She said she was too new to be any good. Carlson said she got great grades. Leeta said Miss Curme was from Delaware and that meant she was a reject and rejects were crap.
Clint said where’s Delaware. Leeta didn’t know. Carlson said it was back east so they went and stared at the Map of the Americas, shiny and too high up. They supposed it was on the right-hand side, this Delaware.
Miss Curme collected their drawings and made one big picture. Leeta said it would be wrong because her daddy in his Sunday sermons at the Tain Memorial Baptist
Congregational Assembly on Bankstone and Revere said life was always wrong.
Miss Curme said “Really great!” as the last ones were handed in. She stared at Carlson’s and Leeta’s and Clint’s piece, eyes round as anything, and said, “Oh my! Won’t you looka here! This is something else, you three!” and they felt real proud because it was the best in the whole panorama.
“Boats, though, right there in the stable?”
A whole row broke out. Some kids said sure they had boats because Saint Somebody walked on water and that meant he was a fisherman like Al’s dad who’d won a fishing championship last Fall. Others said no because it was a stable and that’s only for horses. Carlson said the manger was probably a boat if you really went into it.
“And these towers and kites? It’s very imaginative, but…”
A girl called Perlina who had a horse in a field near Tannerville said Leeta and Carlson and Clint shouldn’t get marks because it wasn’t fair. Everybody started talking. Some kids said could they do colouring like that. Other kids shouted no, the Christmas Baby had only a white towel like all kids started off with. Carlson and Leeta and Clint shouted back. Others yelled about babies they knew.
Miss Curme stopped the whole argument by making them sit still for a count of a hundred while she figured what order pictures should go on the wall. Somebody lost her wall board glue so she set them counting another hundred.
End-of-term PTA classroom tours were a worrying time. Leeta said Miss Curme didn’t want the kids to have any Christmas because she’d been thrown out of Delaware.
Long after she had dismissed the children Donna Curme spent time trying to incorporate the Clint-Leeta-Carlson picture into the Christmas panorama.
Her friend Judy Trabasco, who taught fifth grade, found her friend almost in tears fifteen minutes before the Head Teacher Session.
“Christ sakes, Donna!” she exploded. “Do it in sections, any order. Let the little bastards’ parents guess.”
“But they’re so influential, Judy! It
would
be their group!”
“Then do a link drawing yourself. Here!”
Judy set to with a Magic Marker, filling in.
“It’s supposed to be children’s work!”
Judy withdrew, inspected the drawings already tacked to the display.
“You know, hon, there really is a hint of talent there. How about calling the odd chunks Christmas of the Future?”
They settled on this.
In ten minutes they had written out two huge titles, and the panorama was in two lopsided parts. Judy Trabasco said the odd figures, the kites, towers, the strange hats reminded her of something she’d come across in a magazine. But then Judy had hordes of nieces and nephews, the Trabascos breeding famously.
Donna Curme was relieved. Maybe Clint simply extrapolated images that entertained him? He read a lot.
Maybe she could incorporate that observation in his end-of-term report? She said this to Judy, who said she’d be stupid if she didn’t.