The small child was hanging by tiny fingers. Below her, the ground seemed an awful long way away. Her wriggling kicked off a shoe and she watched it fall and bounce before coming to a rest. She looked up at her hands. They slipped a notch but held on. Behind her, her father’s back was turned. She wasn’t scared. He had said he would always be there for her. He had arrived over her bed earlier that morning, almost before it was morning, just as she hoped he would, when her wailing had filled up the house. It wasn’t always him that came, but often it was.
‘You’re a hard taskmaster,’ he said, but not angrily, and had lifted her out of bed and carried her downstairs.
Now they were in the park. She loved him bringing her here. He let her do things her mother didn’t. ‘Go on,’ he’d encouraged, ‘water won’t kill you,’ and she’d splashed down the slide, leaving behind her a trail through the condensation. It had made her leggings wet and the cold air against them as she whooshed back and forth on the swing made her shiver.
One thing her father didn’t let her do was what she had started doing a minute ago. But he hadn’t been watching then. That other man had started talking to him and he’d gone over to where he was standing. She had sat down on the hump of a tyre at the foot of the slide and waited for him to finish, but he’d taken too long and she’d grown bored – bored and jealous. She got up and crossed the playground unnoticed. The metal stairs of the climbing frame were slippery with dew. They had lines on them, short lines pointing in all directions. They stuck up in a way that made her think of her grandad’s tummy after his operation. She held the handrails tightly and put her feet down carefully, climbing all the way to the top platform before looking back at her father. He still wasn’t paying her any attention. In front of her the monkey bars crossed the gap like a fallen ladder, like a dare. She put one hand on the first rung, and then the other. Ruby took a big gulp of air and then swung off the ledge.
Ben had a habit of being nostalgic for things that were not yet over. He would catch himself doing it, yearning for moments he was still living through, or for places where he still was, but although he recognised this flaw in himself he was, nevertheless, unable to commit fully to the present. He was in the park. He was dressed in his running shorts and shoes but was not running. He had taken a few tentative strides when he’d first arrived, given up irritably, and was now sitting atop one of the small rises. He wondered why he was refusing to run, if it was some sort of statement to self, an attempt to reinforce the promise he’d made and to turn it from a grand, chivalrous gesture (God, is that what it was!) into a physical act, a fact that couldn’t then be unfacted. He hadn’t slept the previous night, after the club and the field and Madeline’s odd revelations and his own unbidden, unexpected oath. ‘I’m not going.’ He’d heard himself saying these words.
He had lain in bed watching objects appear in his room as the light filtered in. There was the bookshelf, there the poster with the dog-eared corner, there – if he rolled onto his side – the letter in a tight ball beneath the desk. When he could stand it no longer he’d dressed and let muscle memory bring him back here. He leant back on his hands and looked about him, taking in the scene as if it were already a memory. There are places, ordinary places, that take on such significance when we’re growing up, that resonate through the rest of our lives. Oftentimes it’s only in hindsight we recognise them, but Ben knew already that this patch of communal land would always be with him. He looked at the overgrown tennis court with holes in the wire mesh fence, at the line of trees. Behind him, he knew, was the playground where he met her.
She was quite proud of how long she’d been holding on. It must have been as long as it took Mummy to make her dinner, and definitely longer than it took her to eat it. But her hands were hurting now. She had expected Daddy to have appeared already, grabbing her around her legs and pulling her away to safety, patting her bottom and calling her silly names. But he hadn’t come. If she could have, she’d have turned her head to see where he was – what did grown-ups talk about? – but her stretched arms squashed her ears and pinned her face to the front. She could’ve called out, but that wasn’t part of the game, it wasn’t in the rules. She began quietly to count to ten. One. Two. She’d fallen off the bed once and bumped her head, but not very badly; the bed wasn’t high and there was a big, fluffy rug on the floor beneath it. She thought this was probably as high as ten beds though. Three. Four.
Ben was surprised to see two figures already in the playground. He’d expected it to be empty at this time of the morning. He watched them for a while. They were on the swings. One of them got off and ran, tottered, to the slide. He stood up and began walking towards them. Halfway there he recognised the larger figure as the slogger he had seen here before. It was something in his gait, that same shuffling motion. He arrived at the low railings and stood there watching. Almost immediately the slogger stopped playing with the child.
‘You need to lift your knees,’ Ben called, almost surprising himself.
‘What’s that?’
‘When you run. You drag your legs from your hips.’
The man looked down his body. His hips moved ever so slightly as he imagined himself doing it. He looked up. ‘You’re right.’ He patted his thighs through his jeans. ‘But my legs are heavy these days. It’s easier to shuffle.’
‘No, it just seems easier. It’s not actually a very economical motion. It makes your legs go out to the side, and anything not moving forwards or backwards is wasted energy. Also, you increase your chances of injury.’
Behind the man his daughter – Ben assumed she was his daughter – had sat down by the slide and was watching them with a scowl. She was wearing pink leggings and a white jumper. She looked tiny compared to the big metal things around her.
‘I’m already one big injury,’ the man said. He was walking towards Ben. Even when he walked he dragged his legs, particularly his left one. It pulled his shoulder down slightly with each step, and Ben imagined he could see the bands, tight and short, resisting in their sockets. There were stretching exercises he could think of that would help. Suddenly the man stopped walking. ‘It’s you,’ he said. Something passed behind his eyes. ‘From the other morning. I didn’t recognise you from back there, without my glasses.’
Ruby was very angry at her father. She was looking forward to letting go. She hoped she would hurt herself a lot, or at least enough to leave a bruise and a nasty graze. He would get in trouble with Mummy then. Even if it didn’t hurt very much she would act like it did. Five. Six. Seven.
The man was talking to Ben about his numerous aches and pains. He looked tired. Old and tired. There was sleep in the corner of his eye and he kept yawning. It made Ben want to yawn as well but he bit down on it. Every time the man yawned Ben could see where his teeth were brown. ‘But it’s lovely this time of morning,’ he was saying. Is this, Ben wondered, what growing up does to you? He felt full of something. He didn’t know what it was or how to express it. He wanted, even in a small way, to make this man’s life a little easier. He looked down and was surprised to see that he was stretching, pulling his heels up behind him and leaning one way and then the other. He stopped. He didn’t want the man to think he was in some way mocking him. He would tell him about those stretches. They would help. He waited for a chance to speak. What was he saying now? He was telling him about his wife, who was at home in bed. He was saying that she needed her sleep and that, anyway, as he’d mentioned, he liked this time of day really. He dabbed a finger at the gluey ball of sleep but succeeded only in shifting it from his eye to the bridge of his nose.
‘Everyone hates my girlfriend,’ Ben said suddenly.
‘Oh,’ the man said, surprised.
‘Especially my parents.’
‘Oh,’ the man said again. ‘Well, it’s just as well they’re not the ones going out with her then.’ He smiled, and Ben could tell he was pleased with that. He assumed that it made him feel younger in himself.
‘They have their reasons,’ Ben said. He hadn’t told them yet that he wasn’t going to America. He could imagine their faces, his mother’s. He looked away from it. The sleep was still on the man’s nose. He willed him to wipe it away. ‘Her name is Madeline,’ he continued. ‘I like her name, but some people call her Maddi.’ He looked at the climbing frame where the graffiti was. Suddenly his mouth dropped open and in one movement he hurdled over the rail and began sprinting across the ground.
Eight. Ni– Ruby was surprised when she suddenly let go of the bar before she’d even got to ten. She saw her open hands like two starfish against the sky. She could scream now if she wanted. The game was over.
She had still been hanging there when Ben noticed her, but he was still a few yards away when her hands let go. He lunged forwards and caught her when she was waist high. He was bent double and expected her weight plus his momentum to drag them both down, but there was almost nothing of her. It was like bracing to lift a heavy box only to find it empty. He collected her in his arms without breaking stride, trotted to a standstill and then placed her down gently on the grass.
‘That was a close one,’ Tim said to Ruby, as they walked back across the field. ‘He’s a very fast runner, isn’t he? I can’t believe he got there in time.’ They were holding hands, but Ruby was sullen and she didn’t answer him. She hadn’t been afraid when the bar had twisted out of her hands. He had always come for her before and she had just assumed he would again. But even before those arms that caught her had settled her down safely she’d known they weren’t his. They didn’t have his smell, and when she had turned around and looked at the other face that was staring at her it had made her burst into tears and run past him to her father, who was still panting and red-faced by the slide.
‘It’s okay,’ he had said, thinking it was the fall that had scared her. ‘You didn’t hurt yourself.’
He’d picked her up and walked over to the other man to thank him, and her whole body had gone rigid and she’d stuck her head into his shoulder and refused to look.
‘She’s shy,’ her father had said.
He’d finally taken her away again and now they were out of the park and nearly at the stairs that would lead them home. ‘We won’t tell Mummy about this,’ he said, but Ruby wasn’t listening. She was scared. Not because of the fall, or because of the man who had saved her, although he did scare her and she wasn’t sure why; she was scared because her father, for the first time, hadn’t been there for her, like he promised he always would be.
Ben was sitting on the swing watching their shrinking shapes go up and down as they crossed the swells. He was rocking slowly back and forth, the way Madeline had that first time. He remembered her shoe bouncing along the ground. When he was fourteen a train had come off the rails near their town. Someone – they never found out who – had placed a rock on the line. The first four carriages had screeched through the hedges and toppled onto their side. Six people had lost their lives. Ben and a few friends had gone there soon afterwards out of morbid curiosity.
They had walked where the grass was still flat and searched among the broken branches for bits of debris left over. There wasn’t much to find, splinters of smashed glass, a square of yellow foam with half a seat cover still on it. But while his friends had picked their way through it with excited glee, like children climbing over the rubble of bombed-out houses, Ben had moved off to the side and sat down alone. ‘Don’t you think it’s weird that people died here the other day, I mean, right here, exactly where we are? Doesn’t that make you feel a bit strange?’ They ignored him, and soon afterwards he got on his bike and rode away as fast as he could. But that feeling of being so close to death had followed him. He had that same feeling again now. He stood up and walked to where he’d caught the child. Maybe if he’d not got there in time – maybe that’s what it was. What did her father say her name was? Oh yes. He didn’t say it though, not even in his head.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By the time Ben arrived home he’d worked up quite a head of steam. It was nervousness that agitated him. He wasn’t used to letting people down and the prospect of doing so, especially his parents, created an emotion that looked like belligerence but wasn’t. He burst through the front door and went quickly from room to room. The curtains were still drawn in the lounge. The back door was still locked. In the kitchen a carton of milk was on the counter and the stem of a teaspoon rose awkwardly out the top of the sugar bowl. The kettle, against his palm, was still hot. They were awake. Not that it mattered. He would have his say. They would hear it. He took the stairs two at a time and opened their door without knocking. They were sitting up in bed staring at him.
‘I’m not going to America,’ Ben said. Saying it felt like discharging a weapon, and the recoil jolted him back a step.
His father was holding a cup in front of his mouth, not drinking, looking at his son steadily over the rim. Slowly he lowered it and placed it carefully on the bedside table.
‘Benjamin,’ he said evenly, ‘under no circumstances do you come storming into our bedroom like this. Please close the door behind you, and we will discuss this when your mother and I are up.’
Ben looked from one to the other, saw her hand slide over the blanket and nestle on his, and then backed feebly out of the room.
‘Well,’ Ben’s father said, once he’d gone, ‘turns out you were right, after all.’ He squeezed the hand holding his, smiled a little. ‘But don’t be hasty.’
‘Don’t be hasty? Don’t be hasty? Honestly.’ She wrenched her hand away and was sat on the edge of the bed, pulling a pair of trousers up under her nightdress. ‘It’s that – that – that whore! I’m sorry. She is. There’s no other word for it.’
‘If you go down there now you’ll only make it worse.’
‘How can it get any worse? Oh yes. He’s going to tell us she’s pregnant, too.’ She had put on a jumper and was leaning down in front of the dresser, looking at herself in the mirror. ‘Good heavens,’ she said, ‘look at me.’ She picked a brush and held it above her head but her hand was shaking too much and she threw it down again. ‘I’m not waiting for you,’ she said, striding to the door.
Ben was sitting at the kitchen table when she came in and sat opposite him. It was Saturday morning. ‘Your father is on his way,’ she said. She sat back in her chair with her hands folded, or clenched, on the table. Light glinted on her wedding ring. Dust floated in a slanting sunbeam. Last night’s plates were in the sink and droplets formed on the end of the tap and then fell into the dirty water. She stood up suddenly and went to the kettle.
‘Tea.’
‘No thanks.’
A minute later she slammed a cup down in front of him and sat opposite. He watched the spilled liquid flow across the flat tabletop and then mopped it up with the front of his T-shirt. She glanced at him. ‘I’m trying to be calm,’ she said. His T-shirt was sticky against his stomach and he tried to fold the material away from himself. She watched him for a moment and then got up again and snatched a cloth, half dropping it, half throwing it at him. It came to rest against his forearm, and he slowly pushed it away and then continued fiddling with the hem of his T-shirt. He heard her tut, saw her through the top of his eyes glaring at him.
‘I’m just amazed though. Honestly.’ She simply couldn’t help herself. ‘What on earth are you thinking? This is what you’ve always wanted. And now you’re just going to say, pfft, and forget it? The mind boggles. It really does. What are you going to do instead? Have you even thought about that? Because you can’t stay here forever.’
