Hedley ignored the question. "Bring some kind of contraption for your cigarettes with you. I don"t want cigarette b.u.t.ts all over the garden."
"Are we talking about an ashtray?" Ellis replied.
He watched the frogs do nothing, read an account of Cornish wreckers and pored over a book of Cornell Capa"s photographs that inspired him to buy a Kodak Retinette camera from a junk shop in Swalecliffe, in which his first film became irretrievably jammed. On three occasions in the fortnight he walked alongside a frog as it made an excursion on to Medina Avenue and back. Ellis couldn"t be sure whether or not it was the same frog each time but he liked to think it was. A lone voice of dissent. A troublemaker.
Hedley paid him a hundred pounds in cash on his return and the remaining six hundred pounds he wrote out as a cheque. "You do have a bank account, I take it?"
"A Post Office book."
"Fine. Just pay it in and use it steadily. And eat something healthy from time to time, I implore you."
It was a fortune and nothing could convince Ellis that what he had done was deserving of it. In fact, he wasn"t convinced that it had been necessary to have him, or anyone, babysit the frogs at all.
"What do you normally do when you go away?" he asked.
"Don"t worry about that. I"ve got you now," Hedley said.
In the winter, Hedley found Ellis a succession of small and largely unnecessary tasks, for all of which he was overpaid. Occasionally, Hedley would be sitting on the sea wall outside Jed"s place and Ellis would join him and they would look at the estuary together and have a chat. Hedley would always ask Ellis if he was all right and in good health before leaving.
"You can turn to Mrs Wilkinson and me if you are in trouble," he once said. "Any sort of trouble, or no trouble at all. Turn to us for anything."
A towering sky arched across the coast, revealing the earth"s curvature to those who cared to stop and look. Far out on the low tide the noises of the town were distant and mottled, as if the world were underwater. The houses on Joy Lane Beach seemed no more than a raised scar on a muddy skin. Ellis roamed amongst the stooped bait-diggers and nervy oystercatchers as thin streams of seawater trickled across the bay, painting the estuary floor with silver streaks of reflected sky. Then he saw a man crossing towards him.
The first blow was graceful. It flew not from an isolated fist, but from Tim"s entire, momentarily airborne, body. Ellis peeled himself out of the mud and up on to his knees, where he received the second blow. Thereafter, he made no attempt to defend himself as Tim kicked and punched him to the edge of consciousness. His only retaliation was to show nothing. When it was over, Ellis rolled on to his back. His ribs contracted and groaned and he felt his eyes closing over. Tim pressed his boot down on Ellis"s head, inviting the earth to swallow him. A mussel sh.e.l.l, lodged in the mud on the sole of Tim"s boot, pierced Ellis"s skin and made a tear in the vein on his temple.
"That wasn"t about her," Tim said. "If it was about her, I"d keep going till you were dead and then I"d bury you. That was just about you and me."
The redeeming quality of being kicked half to death, it occurred to Ellis, as ice-cold water trickled from the mud around him into his clothes and his ears, was that so much pain invades your body so quickly that the rest doesn"t hurt at all. It damages, but you barely feel anything.
Tim had gone. Ellis was deaf and almost blind but he knew that he was alone. He stared at the sky through slit eyes and felt his way through rolling a skunk reefer. With short, sharp breaths he lured himself to the threshold of comfort and became oblivious of the freezing bed of mud he could not rise from. It occurred to him that spiders the size of pylons might be advancing towards him across the flats. He plastered the ash-coloured mud over his face, and they pa.s.sed by without seeing him.
Some time later came the chugging of a diesel engine and the sensation of being lifted. His body was laid down on to something hard and he wondered if he was dead.
"h.e.l.lo, Mr East," he heard himself slur, from somewhere beyond his own body.
Baldie East, the whelk-man, peered down at him. He was old and shrunken. His face was lined and his eyelids were creased and his head was crowned with thick, snow-white hair. The smell of mussels and whelks streamed into Ellis"s nose and he lay blind again as his body jarred and rattled with the movement of the trailer on which he lay as Baldie"s tractor dragged it back to sh.o.r.e.
Still caked in mud, Ellis found the Welsh boys in the Rose In Bloom pub on Joy Lane. There were seven of them and they lived together in a two-bedroom flat above the sweet shop on Harbour Street. They drank heavily every night and impersonated Richard Burton whenever they were close to pa.s.sing out, which was often. Four of the seven were called David Jones. They were distinguished as Dave, Davey, Jonesey and DJ. All seven men were mighty drinkers.
"You"re looking pretty this evening, O"Rourke," Skip Williams said. He was the calmest of the seven.
"You look like a corpse covered in c.r.a.p," Davey said.
"Lowering the tone, you are, O"Rourke ... lowering the f.u.c.king tone!"
"Nose suits you, spread over your face like that."
"It"s been there once before," Ellis said. "I"m only stopping for one. I"m freezing cold. And I need crisps, loads of the f.u.c.kers."
By ten o"clock they were drunk. The roar of their laughter and foul language carried to every part of the pub, intimidating the regulars and provoking two warnings from the landlord. If Hedley and his wife had been pubgoers, this would have been their local. It served the gentlefolk who inhabited the sea-view bungalows on the hillside above Joy Lane and the gentlefolk were not happy.
Two empty pint gla.s.ses fell from the table and smashed across the floor.
"Put those anywhere you like!" Jonesy cried out.
The boys roared and the landlord stormed over.
"Another broken gla.s.s and you"re barred, the lot of you! Last warning! And you can cut out the swearing as well or I"ll be down on you fellers like a ton of bricks!"
Ellis climbed on to the table, stopping halfway to steady himself, with his b.u.m stuck out like a novice surfer. He regained his balance, stood atop the table, looked down on the clientele and beamed them a smile.
"f.u.c.k! b.u.g.g.e.r! w.a.n.k!" he announced, raising his pint gla.s.s to them before draining it and smashing it on to the floor.
They went quietly.
Ellis woke lying star-shaped on the beach. The morning sun levered his swollen eyes open as far as they would go. He heard footsteps on the shingle and squinted to see the silhouette of someone standing over him, their hands rammed into the pockets of a long, fashionable-looking winter coat. He raised his hand to the sun and as shadow covered his eyes he saw his sister. She winked at him, as if they"d seen each other yesterday, and he laughed to himself, which hurt his ribs.
"How did you get here?"
"I got a lift. You look like a shipwreck."
They sat shoulder to shoulder on the breakwater letting the sun soak their faces. Ellis suspected that pneumonia was lurking somewhere beneath his hangover. Two of the Welsh boys were pa.s.sed out on the beach. At some point in the night they had cuddled together against the cold and they were still stuck to each other, like sleeping lovers. Ellis wished he had a camera.
"I"m surprised we never came here with Dad on one of our days out. It"s pretty nice," Chrissie said.
"How is Dad?"
She looked at his bruises and didn"t answer. She ran her finger across the scab on his temple.
"Tim?" she asked.
He nodded and his lips trembled.
"So its true you k.n.o.bbed his wife?" she said.
His shoulders slumped and he bowed his head. He walked a few paces away and looked out to the sea forts on the horizon. For a moment, he thought he was going to throw up.
"Yes," he muttered. "It is true. It"s the truth. It is a true fact. Coming to you straight from the planet Truth, after a quick stopover in the galaxy of Unforgivable f.u.c.k-up."
He watched the waves and she watched him and they didn"t move and they didn"t speak. The tide was turning. Baldie East would be preparing his nets and cages in the harbour before moving out to the whelk and mussel beds as the receding tide unveiled them.
"You are so useless with women, Ellie-boy," Chrissie said affectionately.
"Don"t call me Ellie-boy," he whispered.
She lobbed a pebble towards his feet.
"It is unforgivable," she said, without reproach. "And you look so awful."
In the fish and chip shop on Harbour Street, in the restaurant area at the rear of the shop, amidst the Formica tables and the wood-panelled walls, hidden at first by the clutter of sugar shakers, ketchup bottles and mustard pots, was Mafi. Ellis sat beside her and kissed her. She gasped at the bruises on his face.
"Who did this?" she asked.
"I did," Ellis said.
She gripped his hand.
They sipped tea and then Ellis excused himself politely and walked outside. He crossed Harbour Street, hurrying to the corner of Sydenham Street, and threw up on the Jubilee rose bed. He returned to the table and nothing was said about it. In the silence, it occurred to Ellis that they might have come with bad news.
"Is Dad all right?" he asked.
"Yes," Mafi said.
Ellis looked at the familiar contours on her face and the liver spots on her skin and thought how much he loved her.
"That"s not why you"ve come? Nothing bad has happened?"
"Nothing bad has happened," Mafi a.s.sured him softly. "It"s just a day out for me. I wanted to see my boy."
They sat in silence for a while. Ellis"s mind wandered and he thought of the spiderlings pouring out of his arm and taking his mother.
"Did I do something to harm Mum?" he said.
Mafi and Chrissie looked appalled.
"What would make you ask that?" Mafi said.
"Just ..." He was distant. "Just a thought ..." He rubbed his eyes and smiled brightly. "And, you know, Chrissie"s been reminding me how useless I am with women and it"s probably true, I am c.r.a.p at most things. I suddenly wondered if I did something. That would be why no one will ever tell me what happened. If it was my fault."
"If what was?" Mafi asked.
"Mum."
"No!" they replied in unison.
"I"m a woman and you"re not useless with me," Mafi added.
"He did trick you into signing his inter-rail ticket," Chrissie reminded her.
Mafi ignored her. So did Ellis.
"He just thinks that there"s a lot of her in you," Mafi said.
The words hung before him. It was nice for him to replay them in his head. A brief sentence, unannounced and unheralded, but explaining much and promising more.
"What happened to my mum?" Ellis asked.
Mafi smiled to herself in a way Ellis couldn"t fathom. Absent-mindedly, she stroked Ellis"s arm, as if she thought it was her own. Three plates of b.u.t.tered toast were placed on the table. Chrissie looked affectionately at Ellis but didn"t say anything. Ellis pushed his plate away calmly.
"What happened to my mum?" he repeated. He placed his hand on Mafi"s cheek and gently turned her to face him. He nodded at her and whispered, "Now"s the time ..."
Mafi took his hand. "One day, all of a sudden, your mother panicked that she could see the rest of her life stretching ahead of her with no more surprises. You were four years old. She was subdued for a long time, for months, then she admitted how she felt. Your dad believed that she should do something about it sooner rather than later. He was scared that if she didn"t, she"d tell him something worse one day, when you and your sister had grown up and moved on. He didn"t want to be left alone. Your mother and you were great together. She loved you. There were no problems with you. She just had an accident and if she hadn"t had an accident she"d have come back home to you all. You had a mother and she loved you and she died. It wasn"t your fault at all."
Mafi sipped her tea. Ellis glanced at Chrissie. She smiled innocently back at him and took a piece of toast, concentrating on it exaggeratedly. He stretched out his leg and tapped her shin with his foot. Without looking up, Chrissie said, "Keep going, Mafi."
Mafi licked the tip of her index finger and used it to wipe away the tea stain on the lip of her mug, something she had never done before and would never feel the need to do again.
"She went on an adventure with a girlfriend from school. Your father saw her off and she wrote to him often. She swam in the Arabian sea. She went to the holy lake of Pushkar. She was young and she was confused and she felt that she had missed out on a whole way of living and that soon it would be too late. She wrote long detailed letters to your father about what she was seeing and feeling. And she went to a place called the Golden City and she met a man. She liked the man and she fell out with her friend over him. The man liked her too and they had an affair ..."
Mafi faltered. She had resolved to talk through this moment, to downplay it as far as possible, but had been brought to a halt by the words "they had an affair". She needn"t have worried. Far from being crushed by the revelation of his mum"s infidelity, Ellis welcomed any detail about her. He felt particularly unselective and non-judgemental about it. He just wanted to know anything, everything, there was to know.
"It lasted a week and then she left him. She set off alone to escape him and return home. She missed you and your sister dreadfully. She wanted to be with your dad again. She took any lift or bus she could and headed for a place called Jaipur because she knew how to get home from there. She wrote to your dad. She told him everything. She apologised and told him the truth and she said she was desperate to come home to him and the two of you. And ..."
Mafi"s voice trailed away.
Ellis smiled at her. "And?" he asked.
"And ... she took a ride in some old truck on some rotten old road and it crashed off the road and that"s where she died."
"In India ..." Ellis whispered.
"In northern India," Mafi confirmed.
"Northern India," Ellis repeated, to accustom himself to the idea. "That"s a long way from home."
Chrissie leant across and held Ellis"s hand. He felt fine and he gave her a wide-eyed smile to let her know. His priority was to take in his surroundings and to create a snapshot in his mind"s eye, so that he would never forget the moment when he found out. As for the details of what he"d been told, and how he felt about them, well, he had the rest of his life to think about that. All that mattered for now was that he had been told. Finally. On 2 November 1985, in the Harbour Street fish and chip shop.
"Poor Dad ..." Ellis said.
"Do you remember when Mafi first came and stayed with us in Orpington?" Chrissie asked him.
Ellis shrugged. "Sort of."
"That"s when Dad went out there. He scattered her ashes in a place she had written about in a letter to him because she said it was the most beautiful place she had ever seen."
"The reason you"ve no relatives on your mum"s side of the family," Mafi said, "is they"ve not spoken to him since he decided not to bring her body back home."
"We should go there, one day?" Ellis urged his sister.
"Maybe. But when we"re older, after Dad"s gone."
But that, Ellis knew, was a time so distant that it needn"t exist.
"We"ll be too old then. We should go, now, with Dad."
On the sea wall, alongside the Red Spider cafe, Ellis stared at the waves. He shut off his mind and the storm of thoughts within it and filled his head with the colour of seawater. He lost his bearings and drifted, anchorless, for a while until Mafi broke the silence.
"Any day you see the sea is a good day," she said.