21 years before
Andrew Jenkins, aged 15
East Midlands, 1973
When I was younger, I would burn butterflies. Holding Dad’s magnifying glass at arm’s length on a hot summer’s day. The scent of cut grass and wild mint in the warm, unmoving air. It was important to catch the sunbeam just right.
My parents should have known.
It took me several minutes to rinse out the peanut butter jar. I wanted it clean.
I hid the jar under their bed this morning. I placed their room key inside the jar. Maybe they will find it in time?
These past months Dad has treated me like a fungus growing inside the walls of his house. One punishment after another. Ma hasn’t put a stop to it. If anything, she’s encouraged him.
Not my fault, see.
I can hear him snoring in their bedroom. It is a familiar sound. Ma never complains. I open their door as quietly as I can. Striped sheets. Matching curtains. Dad’s jeans and thick leather belt draped over the chair in the corner. I am all too familiar with that belt.
Ma stirs.
I watch her.
They had their chance.
I stare at their bodies in the bed. The sheets rising and falling. Their breathing seems synchronised. As if they are one.
They can still save themselves.
The key’s right there. It wouldn’t take much.
I don’t say goodbye or anything like that. Dad would think that soft. I close the door gently and leave them to their slumber.
It is done.
I use the spare key to lock their bedroom.
Click.
The petrol can is green. Dark green. Dad keeps it in the garage with the mower and his saws and hammers.
More snoring from their room. I work carefully. Don’t want to wake them. I splash the carpet, the curtains, the walls. The smell is pleasing. Sweet, and electric. I breathe in the fumes and then I soak the upholstered chair – a sibling to the one his jeans and belt hang on in their bedroom – and wedge the chair under their door handle because Dad has taught me you can never be too careful.
Retreating down the passage, I remove my wellies and raincoat and place them on the saturated carpet.
Almost ready.
I hesitate, lifting my chin, breathing it all in, taking note.
I can’t fail now. This is my one chance to alter my fate, or at least to nudge it in the right direction. There are certain decisions in life that determine which route you’ll take at a crossroads. This is one of them.
The Slazenger tennis ball is one from a tube of four I found in the garage with his tools. I push it into the wet fibres of the carpet, careful not to dampen my pyjamas, and then I walk down a few stairs and turn to face their door. I can only see the top half, and it is as if the chair isn’t there under the handle. I set fire to the tennis ball with dad’s lighter and then I throw it, gently, towards the door.
I turn around slowly.
Heat at my back.
Light.
Relief, and a sense of overwhelming calm. Revisiting summers past. The magnifying glass and the butterflies. Peace, descending like a heavy blanket. I wait downstairs, their voices muffled, their bangs short-lived. I had planned to go back to bed for a while, I’m not sure why. I had imagined it, I suppose: the scene, the poetry of that action, but there is too much smoke.
I take my duffle coat from the hook.
And then I walk outside to watch it burn.
PART I
Robertson’s Marina
East Midlands, 1994
1 – Peggy
My name is Peggy Augusta Jenkins.
As of last month, I live with my husband and son on a forty-year-old narrowboat. I do not possess a birth certificate. My bed is damp from condensation and my husband is sat with his back to our log-burning stove at the far end of the vessel, naked, save for his socks, writing his novel.
This is our last chance.
A train passes in the distance. Fortunate souls leaving this town to venture north or south. Others, misguided, arriving.
My son sleeps on the converted dinette sofa at the centre of the boat and I worry every day that he may not make it to adulthood. Mothers profess how they would kill for their offspring, but I know I would go further still.
I would not hesitate.
Moonlight splinters through swaying alder branches. The boat sways gently in the water, almost imperceptibly, as the moorhens and plovers outside our walls ready themselves for their nests.
The creak of wood over steel hull. Is he coming?
Another creak.
My breath clouds in front of my eyes.
The door to our cabin opens.
The man I married fifteen years ago steps inside. He shaved his head before his writing session and now his porcelain skin glistens with sweat.
‘Too much noise.’ His face is as expressionless as a pebble worn smooth in a river.
I frown.
‘Tell me why,’ he says.
I swallow. Offer a shallow, insipid smile. ‘Drew, I don’t think I made a noise, I swear. Not a sound.’
He closes the door gently, unnaturally slowly, and positions himself next to the bed, looming over me.
‘It wasn’t the boy. I just want to know why. So we can move on.’
‘What noise?’
He sniffs.
‘I’m out there trying to write something of merit, for the good of this family, sweating next to the fire for you and him, and you’re back here wrecking my concentration. Was it on purpose?’
I shrink into myself and shake my head.
‘Accident?’
I have been here before, so many times. Lost in his maze of backwards logic. There is no escape. I have tried. There is no winning with him.
I cringe.
A bulge beneath his lips. His tongue moving slowly over his teeth.
‘Night of work down the pan but you owned up to it, Peg. There’s that, at least.’
‘I don’t think I made any noise,’ I say.
‘You don’t think you made noise but I know you did. That’s the difference we’re dealing with. Plain as day. Thinking versus knowing.’
He sits down lightly, slowly, softly, on the bed.
‘Who was that fella you were yabberin’ with earlier?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Fella with a push bike. Beer gut.’
‘Oh, he has the next boat over, the blue one. I was just talking about the fridge.’
‘That right?’
‘He was a qualified electrician, Drew. Before he retired. It just came up.’
‘Just came up.’
More sweat from his pores. I can see the brackish liquid emerge, oozing from within him.
‘I thought he could fix it and save us some money.’
‘How come he can fix a fridge and I can’t?’
‘He was an electrician.’
His nostrils flare. ‘This boat’s not perfect, but if there’s things to fix it’ll be me who does it. Boy can watch, learn something useful. I won’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry waltzing in here, looking at my papers when I’m at the yard working.’
‘He never came inside, Drew.’
‘He never will.’
I am so tired.
‘What did he say, this electrician?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘That right?’
‘He said that he’ll take a look if we need him to. That he’s out of date but he can look at our wiring too, our batteries.’
The scent of soap and sweat. Engine oil.
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said . . .’
‘Word-for-word.’
‘I said I’ll talk to you.’
He grits his teeth. ‘I’ll move us back a bit tomorrow morning. Give us some privacy. We can’t afford the marina anyhow, not with the lad’s school blazer. It’s time we were off, you said so yourself, and you were right.’
‘I never said that, Drew. I like it here. And Samson’s starting to make friends.’
‘Lad doesn’t need friends here, he needs to learn how to work for a living. Do you want tea?’
I take a moment.
‘I said, do you want tea, Peg?’
‘Please.’
He stands up and wipes his face with his rough palms and walks out, his footsteps deliberate and noiseless.
The moonlight reflects off the canal surface and shimmers on the ceiling.
We would not even have this decrepit boat if it wasn’t for Mom, but he does not see it that way. She died fifteen years ago, six months before our wedding, a year before Samson arrived, and it still breaks my heart that she missed those two events. She would have walked me down the aisle proudly. She pined for her family in Utah, what was left of it – my cousins, her old friends, her childhood town – but I thought she was content. She seemed to be as besotted with Drew as I was. She had read his short stories and said encouraging things. And then on the night before my twentieth birthday she swallowed pills when we were out, and she never woke up. That’s how we came to live in her bungalow. When we could no longer afford the bills, we sold it for this and now all our money, her money, what little was left, is tied up in this floating barge.
This, here, now, is our last chance.
I am determined to make it work for Sammy’s sake.
I hear him fill the kettle and place it on the gas hob. Life isn’t too bad in the marina. Propane bottles for cooking, and mains water, and coal for the black stove at the far end of the boat by his bureau desk. Between the stove and the desk sits Mom’s pale grey rug we took from the bungalow living room. We have electric from a cable. It is easy here in Robertson’s Marina and, more importantly, there is some minimal sense of safety, of community.
The kettle begins to boil. That’s the thing with living on a boat six-feet wide and forty-feet long. You always know what’s happening. There is no privacy or distance or personal space. The godsend is how Samson manages to sleep through almost anything. He has the worst of it in many ways: right next to the kitchen on a bed that only comes into existence at night-time. And yet he sleeps the sleep of the dead.
Drew takes out milk from the well deck at the front of the boat. We have a box out there which serves as our fridge thanks to this reliable November chill. A minute later he brings through two stained mugs half-filled with beige tea.
We sit side by side listening to the silence between us.
The tea is hot.
‘I do it for you and the boy.’
I nod.
‘Not out there writing prose for myself, far from it. Doing it for the family. But a man needs the right conditions, Peg. I need this book to be . . . spot on.’
I place my hand down on his.
He flinches.
‘Bathroom,’ I say. ‘Won’t be a minute.’
I slide the dark wooden bathroom door and lock it and breathe out. A blessed moment of escape. The porthole window is cracked open against the condensation and I close my eyes and worry that the dream I have had all these years, of a real family, each of us leaning on one another, may morph into what finally sinks us. His head is inches from mine on the other side of mildewed plywood. Can he read my thoughts? Or does he seed those himself and water them till they set roots, ready for me to one day stumble over?
I wash my hands and tiptoe into the main room of the boat. In the warm glow from the stove I take in our home. Three folding camp chairs by the log-burner at the far end. His writing desk locked up. Steel boat doors, also locked. Our kitchen with its broken fridge. And then, closest to me, the dinette sofa and table converted into a bed containing the most precious and faultless thing in the whole world.
I watch him breathe.
Stardust, manifested.
I stare at him.
All the abstract love in the universe distilled into one deceivingly ordinary-looking human.
Tufts of red hair like sparks on the pillow. I bend down close to his cheek. He smells different to how he smelt as a small boy, but the base notes remain. His essence. The purest scent, an aroma so powerful it makes me want to shield him from the world.
I kiss his beautiful forehead and he does not stir.
The room is warm.
Sleep well, my boy.
2 – Samson
I wake to the smell of smoked bacon being expertly fried mere feet from my head.
‘Thought that’d rouse you, boy. Don’t hear us banging about but I start frying back bacon and you soon perk up.’
It sizzles and spits.
My bed is warm.
Dad’s smiling to himself. Paint-splattered overalls and a plaster on the back of his head where he shaved last night before writing. One of his many rituals.
‘Up with you then. Catch a worm, lad.’
I can’t move because it’d be obvious I was woken mid-dream, and that the subject of said dream was private in nature.
‘When Ma’s finished in the bathroom.’
‘So you can put your lipstick on, is it?’
I check my Walkman’s still in its place, and then I carefully manoeuvre myself off the bed.
‘Turn it back into table. Your mother might want to sit there in a minute.’
I hear the bathroom door slide open and then the bedroom door shut. I scamper into the bathroom and lock the door behind me.
My belly rumbles.
I wash my face with Imperial Leather hand soap and spike my hair with the gel I received for my birthday. It makes my hair look darker, I think, almost brown, and, in theory, in my head at least, that might mean I’ll encounter less hostility today at school.
Dad always fries our bacon. The only other thing he cooks is beans because he claims Ma overcooks them. Only need heating up, cook ’em too long and you ruin it. Everything else is woman’s work according to him. I know Ma wouldn’t agree but she does it anyhow because of how he can be.
I put my bedding away and pull on my school uniform.
‘It’s wet again,’ I say.
‘Won’t hurt you, bit of damp,’ says Dad as he places crispy strips of bacon on sliced wholemeal bread: always wholemeal, always Hovis.
The eight o’clock train thunders by in the distance. Pigeons erupt from the gnarled oaks on the towpath and beat their wings above our boat. Ma told me once how both pigeon parents care for their young, and how they mate for life. She said that was important. They manage to stay together come what may.
‘Diseased pests,’ says Dad glancing up at the roof. ‘Be better where we’re moving to. Less tree vermin.’
‘Moving?’ I say.
‘Breakfast, Peg,’ he booms, ignoring me.
She emerges with wet hair and a towel wrapped around her head. Looks like a movie star from the silent era.
‘Smart mother you’ve got making the most of amenities while we’re still in the marina. If you had any sense, Samson, you’d take a leaf out of her book. Won’t be much water where we’re headed.’
‘Leave him,’ says Ma, cupping my cheek with her palm, and taking the plate of bacon sandwiches.
The other boys in my class don’t have these conversations. Eyebrow – so-called because of his one panoramic eyebrow – has two bathrooms in his house and his cousin Mickey has a Jacuzzi bath. Eyebrow doesn’t talk much anymore. At primary school we’d play football and British Bulldog but now he’s wary to be seen close to me. The other lads would say to him why you hanging around with that ginger prick, you two going out or what? Why you chatting with Noodles, mate?
They call me Noodles because of my arms.
Because they’re thin.
Breakfast is very good. Better than Ma’s bacon cobs, even. Dad uses plenty of butter and fries the bacon until the fat crisps. I reckon he could have been a chef.
‘Are you serious about moving the boat?’ she asks.
Dad puts down his sandwich and slowly turns his head to her.
‘You asking me that?’
‘It’s just that . . .’
‘It’s just that . . .’ he says, mimicking her. ‘I told you we’re moving. Maybe if you weren’t gallivanting off with some electrician with a push bike we wouldn’t need to. We reap what we sow, Peggy.’
We finish breakfast in silence. Mugs of sweet tea and the sense that moving from the bungalow, Nanna Ruth’s bungalow, to this boat, was one thing, but moving from Robertson’s Marina to some distant empty stretch of canal is quite another.
As soon as the bacon hits my stomach it begins to curdle. Cooked pork and fear and congealing butter. Soggy clumps of bread floating in gastric juices. The familiar sense of dread that comes with every weekday morning.
They’ll be there, see. Waiting.
‘How will I know where to walk home to from the library tonight,’ asks Ma. ‘And Samson, from school?’
‘You’ll manage,’ he says. ‘The Lady Brett Ashley is a forty-footer, woman, you can’t miss it. Name’s painted on the side, clear as day. Use your eyes, both of you.’
Other boys my age don’t have to contend with this. School is challenging enough without having to go search for your own home each night.
‘Just don’t moor it up too far from the road,’ says Ma. ‘We need the bus stops handy.’
He ignores her.
Ma goes to the bedroom to finish getting ready. She works at the library as a volunteer. Dad doesn’t want her to have a paying job because he says it’d be too much stress on her. Because of her nerves, and what happened to Nanna Ruth.
‘You training later, Dad?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Thought we could do some together, once I’ve finished my homework. Maybe back and chest.’
‘Back and chest,’ he mutters, shaking his head, glancing at my white shirt, grey in places, hanging off my shoulders like it’d hang off a coat hanger if we had any. ‘You’ve got Mr Turner tonight, you daft apeth. Make sure he pays you in full.’
One day we will train together. I’ll be more like him by then: strong and uncompromising.
I drag on my school coat, three sizes too large, and my shoes, also several sizes too large. Hammer Adams says I look like I’m wearing my grandad’s clothes. I told him I don’t have any grandads and he said it’s a good job because they’d be bloody ashamed of a scrawny ginger like me.
The walk to the bus is alright as it goes. Radio One on the Walkman radio, my foam headphones stopping most of the wind from reaching my ears. REM, Depeche Mode and two songs by Oasis. I keep my hand loose around the plastic shell of the Walkman in my coat pocket in case I stumble and fall. I would rather fracture my wrist than lose my Walkman.
No lads from school on the bus. Sometimes there are older kids. They don’t bother me but they’re aware that everyone in my year hates me. They see what happens in the quad and playing field each week. They don’t interfere with me directly, but I can see a mixture of pity and dismissal in their glances, and this morning I am relieved not to witness it. Window seat to myself. A call-in game on the radio followed by Nirvana. The raucous drumbeat of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ echoes in my unsettled stomach as we approach the bus station. This is not a good place. There is no supervision, no teachers to help.
I disembark and walk fast with my head down, avoiding the main street, heading round the back of Oxfam. A pair of girls from the high school approach so I cross the street.
They are probably laughing at me.
They probably know.
I turn off my Walkman, wrap it in a football sock, and stow it safely in my Head bag. There are boys from my school everywhere now, swarms of them. My throat tightens. I’m sweating as I pass the church and head to the sweetshop. I am sick with the anticipation of what this day will bring. I can never predict exactly what it’ll be, that’s the worst of it. This school year is a series of life and death challenges, one after the next. I have done nothing to them; I haven’t hurt them or called them names. And yet they despise me.
In the queue a boy behind me, I think he’s in the year below, steps on my heels. I ignore it. He does it again.
‘Eighth of midget gems, please.’
He kicks the back of my knees. Nothing hard but it causes me to stumble forwards and the lady tuts.
She measures out an eighth of an ounce and then removes one midget gem, a green one so no great loss, and slides them from the gleaming steel scales into a paper bag, and with a flick of her wrist, she twists the bag to close it.
I pay her and the boy behind me steps on my heel again.
Just ignore him.
My palms are damp and the day hasn’t even begun yet.
While he’s paying for his lemon sherbets I walk out quickly and then I sprint towards school. I need to put distance between us. It’s not easy to run in these long shoes.
I approach the gates by the geography block, the set of gates I consider to be the safest at this time of day.
They are waiting.
