Wonderboy Read online

  Tod shrugs uncertainly.

  “I fell out of it once—must have been about your age. Crawling along a branch that couldn’t take my weight. Four stitches in the forehead at Lexley General.”

  I wheel Daredevil into the shed.

  “Show me,” Tod says, pulling off the cycling helmet. Joe pushes an abundant fringe away from his forehead. There’s a small scar, pearly against darker skin.

  “Did you cry?” Tod asks.

  “Oh, buckets, until the doctor gave me a barley sugar. I was okay after that.”

  I point to my forehead scar. “I got mine,” I tell him, “from running away from a rat.”

  “Let me see,” Joe says. He touches the scar very lightly.

  I step back quickly.

  “What’s your girlfriend’s name?” Tod asks. He’s in an inquisitive mood. Once, when I told him to stop asking the librarian how her bleeper machine worked, he announced: “I am a question gun.”

  “Vicky,” Joe says. He hasn’t put his fringe back in its proper position. It sticks up in peaks, like badly cut grass.

  “Never seen her,” Tod says.

  “She’s in Dorset now—decided to move near her parents.”

  “So why—” Tod begins.

  “We split up,” Joe says.

  I had planned to offer him coffee but the Kangol hammer is still screeching and Tod is revving up for a full interrogation. When he asked the librarian “But how does it read the bar code?” she slammed her gadget on the desk and snapped, “It just does.”

  I wish Joe would leave now, before Tod starts on the really personal stuff.

  “Like your mum and dad,” Tod continues, turning to me. “They fell out, so they left each other.”

  “That’s right,” I say, smiling tightly.

  “Will that ever happen to you and Dad?”

  Joe turns to leave. “See you again, Tod,” he says, “for more bike practice.” Tod grins and bounds toward the house.

  “Of course not,” I say after him. “That’ll never happen to me and Dad.”

  I have cleared up Mr. Leech’s debris and acquired a fine coating of pale gray dust. I can feel it clinging to my teeth. Now I am pairing up Tod’s socks, ensuring that they are inside out, as he cannot bear the sensation of seam against toes.

  “I’m not that late,” Marcus says.

  “Tod waited up for you. He stayed up till half-past nine.”

  “Why, is something wrong?” Marcus pulls off his tie and drops it on the bed.

  “He watched a video and had popcorn and we waited and waited. Where were you? Didn’t you get my messages?”

  “I just missed the train.”

  “You missed lots of trains.”

  He lands heavily on the edge of the bed.

  “Tod rode his bike,” I add, “if you’re interested.”

  “Of course I’m interested. That’s fantastic.”

  Now I feel stupid for blowing up Tod’s achievement into a major event. It’s a mother’s trait; we lose perspective. We wake up at four a.m., panicking that we don’t have a non-embarrassing T-shirt for our child to use as an art overall at school. Before Tod, I was normal. I worked normal hours, barely thought about Anna’s Archives at weekends, and never babbled to strangers in parks.

  “My mobile battery’s flat,” Marcus says quietly. He stands up, wipes dust from the seat of his work trousers and strides out of the bedroom, leaving me with my seething bad mood and the stupid Boxed Brainwaves scattered all over the bed.

  “Brainwave number 49: sensual bathtime. Surprise your lover by stepping into his bath. Have your own foam party!”

  He’s running a bath now, and when I look into the bathroom he is lying flat out, gazing at the shelf where Betty kept her toilet-roll doll. “Marcus,” I say from the doorway, “Tod wanted to show off to you. These things are really important.”

  “You’re saying I’m a terrible dad.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean that.”

  “I do everything I can for him, Ro. Those fish—do you know how much trekking about I had to do to get them?”

  He can’t help it that Tod hasn’t connected with the fish. He can’t help being late. He’s been working, that’s all. He reaches for me with a wet hand and grips my fingers. I squeeze his hand back. I remember being in my old bathroom with him, that first evening, feeling trapped but not wanting him to leave. When he’d gone, I stared at his card for a long time. I picked up the phone several times and started to dial, but slammed it down before anyone answered. Then I forced myself to speak. My lips had dried out and my mouth had taken on a startling new shape, so when I spoke, it sounded like I didn’t have any teeth. He said, “I’m so glad I came to the wrong flat.”

  I pull off my clothes now and step into the bath. Marcus gives me a surprised look, then pulls up his knees to make space for me. I stretch my legs around his hips, and lower my shoulders into the water. Now that I’m here, I’m not sure what to do. It doesn’t feel like the right moment for a foam party.

  From Tod’s room comes a sharp, dry cough, an old person’s cough. Marcus has started hacking at his toenails with the silver clippers.

  “I’ve got a job,” I tell him.

  “Have you? Where?” He stops clipping.

  “At the bookshop in the High Street.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I just walked in and asked. I start in May, when their temporary girl finishes.” It had been too easy. Julia checked that I didn’t keel over at the sight of a computer, and listened politely as I blathered on about managing Anna’s Archives and creating my own range of greetings cards. Then she offered me Monday to Thursday, school hours. “It’s just a shop job,” I add.

  “It might be good for you. You’ve been—”

  “What?”

  He grinds a fingernail into my apple soap. I feel jammed in, like Tod in that racing car seat at the hairdresser’s. We used to fit into a bath, Marcus and me. On our wedding night, when we’d drunk the minibar dry, he filled the tub so full that the suds clung to our shoulders. Our kisses tasted of gin. Space wasn’t a problem then.

  Now my knees are too close to my face. My legs are sprouting hairs again. Lucille keeps offering me a discount, and told me about a new seaweed body-wrap treatment, which she can do for half price, as her therapist needs the practice.

  “The cold tap’s dripping on my back,” Marcus says.

  “We could swap places.”

  He leans forward, and I think he’s going to kiss me, but he climbs out and grabs a towel from the rail. “You seem tense, Ro,” he says, roughly drying his back. “Maybe you’ll feel better when you’re working and have something to do.”

  “Smother each other with kisses and sweet-smelling bubbles.” Another time, maybe.

  chapter 10

  More Treasure

  Marcus owns the king of car stereos. It takes six CDs that you insert into a box in the boot. The box is covered in carpet, like the rest of the boot, so you wouldn’t even know it was there. He usually listens to light jazz, the kind that’s played in wine bars or shops selling expensive plain vases, but right now it’s not on, because Tod is playing a story tape in the back, on a yellow plastic tape recorder with pointy buttons like the tips of wax crayons.

  I love Marcus’s car. When I’m being driven by him, I can easily slip into a fantasy that we are en route to a country wedding or garden party where Pimm’s will be served. I’m not a mother—or, if I am, my child has been spirited away to my fantasy parents’ house where they are still married, and Tod is not being whirled by a man with an oblong moustache, and there’s no story tape playing.

  Apart from the stereo, Marcus’s car boasts many pleasing features: it’s never too cold, nor too hot. Nothing is sticky. In my old Mondeo, Ribena pools quivered on the dashboard and the car stunk so bad—a rank blend of molding Mini Cheddars and festering apple cores—that Tod, chief litter-lout, would retch on entering the vehicle. This car smells only of
vacuumed upholstery. We are in Marcus’s car because mine never recovered from Golf Club Day, and was towed away for scrap. Marcus hinted that I might be charged for the safe disposal of its battery and Mini Cheddars.

  He has allowed acres of time to catch the three-twenty ferry from Southampton to the Isle of Wight. The story tape is Danny the Champion of the World, borrowed from Lexley library. Tod insists on a tape for journeys of more than forty minutes. Danny’s dad, who has raised the boy by himself, is a wonderful man. He smiles a lot, not with his mouth but his eyes. Danny is glad that his dad is an eye-smiler. You can’t fake that sort of smile.

  “Looking forward to your holiday, Tod?” Marcus asks.

  Tod is lost in the story, lolling on a bunched-up sweater against the window.

  “Playing on the beach, learning to swim?” Marcus continues.

  The narrator says that Danny, a child of nine, can drive a car all by himself.

  “Well, I am,” says Marcus. “Will you speak to me, Tod?”

  “Dad, I’m trying to listen.” He nudges up the volume.

  When I booked the chalet, I tried to picture the three of us laughing and running on beaches, like a proper family who do things together. The chalet is set in an arc of similar properties and was the only vacant place I could find. I am hoping for basic amenities, but not somewhere intimidatingly posh. Can’t have Tod expecting a similar standard of fixtures and fittings—like a Jacuzzi bath or a shower that blasts you from all angles—at home.

  It’s a terrible responsibility, propelling your family into an unseen house. You wonder what they’re not mentioning on their slick Internet site. Enclosed garden with mature fruit trees? Adjacent to bubbling septic tank. I was tempted to book a cute cottage adjoining a working lighthouse, but spied a warning: “Foghorn activates automatically, so guests may wish to bring earplugs to minimize discomfort.”

  There is a crunching sound in the back. “Are you eating?” Marcus enquires. Cracker crumbs fly out of Tod’s mouth. “Is that biscuits?” he asks. “Please, Tod, we’ll stop when you’re hungry. You can’t be hungry yet. We’ve only just set off.”

  “I can’t hear the tape,” Tod complains.

  “So no one can talk until your story tape’s finished?”

  “Shush,” mutters Tod.

  I study Marcus’s profile. His jaw juts proudly, and his hair shows no sign of graying or falling out. His nostrils have become hairier with age, but with regular attention from the nasal hair trimmer, no one would ever know. If he were alone in this car—if Tod and I were catapulted out by convenient ejector seats—women might glance over and flirt at red traffic lights. He’s still looked at, still noticed. The girl in the grocer’s, who wears a Margaret badge and slams my purchases into a carrier bag, assumes a more sparkly demeanor whenever Marcus is with me.

  “You sure Lucille will remember to feed the fish?” he asks.

  “Yes, don’t worry, I’ve given her a key.”

  “Did you leave the food out?”

  “Right by the tank.”

  He exhales loudly, as if he’s been fretting wildly about those fish.

  The tape player’s batteries are failing. The narrator’s honeyed voice has slumped to a sinister growl.

  “Turn it off,” I tell Tod. “We’ll get new batteries at a garage.”

  Tod employs his selective-deafness technique. “Give the tape player to Mum,” Marcus says.

  “It’s still working,” Tod protests.

  “That was the end of the story.”

  “No, Dad, it wasn’t.”

  “Give it to Mum.”

  Tod clicks off the tape player and hands it to me. He sits rigidly, his pale face set hard like the jouster model he made from plaster of paris in a rubber mold. “Are we nearly there yet?” he asks.

  We have been driving for twenty minutes. We could hardly be less nearly-there-yet. “There’s hours to go,” I tell him. “Weeks, years. You’ll be an old man by the time we get there.”

  Tod is making a noise, an unappealing blend of whine and groan, designed to infiltrate parental brains, cause the cells to vibrate and ultimately self-destruct. Before I had Tod, my mind worked efficiently: I could remember the name of all of my primary school teachers and the first postcode we ever had, when postcodes were first invented. Now I am wondering if I’ve brought all our swimming things and Tod’s spout cup and directions to the chalet.

  Marcus is smiling now. It’s an eye smile. He’s somewhere else, somewhere he likes better than being trapped in a car, which is slowly being polluted by a whining six-year old with a mouthful of crackers.

  Much later, when Tod wakes from a doze, I check that the batteries have made a partial recovery and pass the tape player back to him. He presses Play.

  “My father was in a sort of poacher’s trance. For him, this was it. This was the moment of danger, the biggest thrill of all.”

  Easter Sunday, six-thirty a.m. I am up at this unearthly hour to put my plan into action before Marcus and Tod wake up. Yesterday, when we arrived on the island, I asked Marcus to stop at a garage, supposedly for bread, milk, coffee and batteries, but really to buy treasure. I spotted net bags of chocolate coins—I thought they were only sold at Christmas—and bought six, stuffing them deep in my coat pockets. I hoped Tod wouldn’t sniff them out. Children can detect a mere rustle of foil wrapper, smell confectionery on adult breath.

  My plan is to hide the coins on the beach and have Marcus and Tod do a treasure hunt. Until Tod was born, and our lives were engulfed by feeding and changing and trips to the doctor’s, Marcus would hide surprise gifts all over the flat. He would watch, with an eye-smile, as I searched every room. One birthday he gave me a note bearing the clue: “I think you’re grate.” Finally, I located my perfume inside the cheese grater, at the back of the pan cupboard.

  I’m hoping that a treasure hunt will remind Marcus of how we used to be. He and Tod can do it together, father and son.

  I follow the steep path that leads from the chalets’ shared garden to the beach. The chalets are in darkness; no one gets up this early on holiday. Some are starting to peel, shedding their skins, and one has hardboard and polythene instead of glass at its window. Ours is one of the neatest. It’s tiny—just a shower room, two bedrooms filled by their beds, and a living room–kitchen in one—but feels plenty for three, which makes you wonder why adults are so keen to acquire utility rooms, sheds and conservatories.

  I hide chocolate coins under damp knobbled rocks, making sure they stick out and are easy to find. I hope they’re not stolen by gulls. There’s a sign in front of our chalet that warns: Please Don’t Feed Gulls, They Can Be Aggressive. By the time I’m back indoors, Tod has come through from his bedroom to ours and is dozing in Marcus’s arms.

  Down there on the beach, along with my treasure, are fossils. This is dinosaur land. Bones are found, pieced together with fake bits to fill the gaps, and displayed at the Dino Experience museum, which we plan to visit. The oldest bones are 132 million years old. This makes me feel quite youthful and sprightly.

  We might even find a fossil. Our guidebook warns: “Sadly, as they belong to the Crown, you’re not allowed to take fossils or dinosaur remains home. Please hand them in to a museum instead.” This seems grossly unfair, as the Crown has enough treasures already. Who would gain more pleasure from owning a trapped, coiled creature than a six-year-old child?

  Tod could take it to school. That would get him into Miss Cruickshank’s good books. She sent a note home that read: “Fridays are show-and-tell days! Could parents help children to find something of natural interest to bring into class! No live bugs, please!” We discovered an abandoned wasps’ nest, glued to the eaves of our shed, and carefully wrapped it in loo roll. Tod took it to school in a shoebox. When he opened the box at show-and-tell time, the nest had crumbled to dust, and Miss Cruickshank told him to tip it into the bin. A genuine fossil would win him Good Work stickers and house points, and his house would win the end-of-year troph
y, thanks to Tod’s ammonite.

  “Treasure hunt?” he yelps, catapulting himself out of bed. “Let’s go.”

  “It’s not even morning,” Marcus protests, pulling on jeans and a sweater and following me and Tod—who’s still wearing his rocket pajamas—out of the chalet.

  While Tod hunts, Marcus perches on a rock and fiddles with his mobile. “Found one,” Tod announces. Soon he has amassed handfuls and starts to rip off their foil. “Want one, Dad?” he asks.

  Marcus accepts a coin and peels off its wrapper. “They’re all spotty,” he says.” Tod, don’t eat them. They’re disgusting.” Tod stretches his mouth, exhibiting its molten chocolate interior.

  We head back to the chalet and Marcus drives off in search of proper breakfast, something more substantial than toast, to minimize any damage caused by decaying chocolate.

  While he’s gone, I promise to read to Tod if he’ll get dressed and clean his teeth properly, not just suck the toothbrush. It’s all deals. You do this, I’ll do that. And I start reading: “‘City mazes provide a welcome diversion from life’s hustle and bustle. At Warren Street tube station, a two-dimensional maze on the wall gives…’ Are you listening, Tod?”

  It has finally happened. He has gone off this book. I will not have to resort to hiding it, like I did with Guess How Much I Love You, dripping with guilt as he tore his bedroom apart in search of the story, which I had slipped down the back of the storage heater.

  But Tod’s not sick of the book, he just feels sick. I make him sip water, which he spits back into the cup. Frothy dribble slides down his chin. Marcus arrives with too much food to pack into the tiny fridge.

  “We don’t want anything else going off,” he murmurs, carefully arranging cartons and packets to make best use of space.

  “Sorry about the treasure hunt,” I say to his back. “I thought you’d have fun.”

  He turns, and his eyebrows scoot upward. “I am having fun,” he says, bravely.

  Instead of swimming, Tod does this sand-batting thing. He lies flat on his belly, flapping his limbs as each wave hits him. He is being Salmon Man.” Salmon Maaan!” he shouts. Flap-flap-flap. This is why he likes the sea and not swimming pools. Pool water is too deep for him to be Salmon Man.