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The sun is high, the air smells of chlorine, cut up, cold spaghetti with tomato sauce miss a toddler’s pink mouth. A man searching a large bag for a tissue to wipe them off, mutters something but the noises from the pool drown it out. The toddler squeaks, delighted by the gooey mass on his shirt and grabs it to stuff it into his mouth by hand, but all he achieves is an even bigger mess on his shirt.
“Oh no Charlie, no, there’s enough here, let me get this off…”
A few picnic tables over, two old men have arrived. Both still tall and broad-shouldered, but bent, with loose, deeply tanned excessive skin over their bones. They’re wearing bright shorts and muted baseball caps.
The father at the table doesn’t notice them, the toddler demands all of his attention and he has his back turned to them.
A few metres away, over burnt spots of grass and dozing pool guests, a woman is washing chlorine off a 5- or 6-year-old boy, his dark hair blackened by the water and his pale skin turning pink despite the thick layer of sunscreen she has applied before. His mouth is set in a sulk and a tantrum is brewing in dark eyes over the fact that he has to leave his new friends behind in the water. The woman can’t quite hide her amusement over her son’s quick attachments, but she good-naturedly listens to his reasoning and begging.
“You can go back to them after lunch.”
“I’m not hungry, I ate all the porridge this morning, why can’t I go back to the pool while you eat?”
The woman smiles at her son, runs her fingers through his wet hair and grabs him by his shoulder a little too hard.
“When you’re older.”
“How much older? Next year?”
“Yes, next year, definitely, you’ll get your certificate and you can stay in the pool.” She pulls the boy with her and walks towards the man feeding the toddler.
One of the old men stretches out on a towel, the other seems yet undecided, a book on Leonardo da Vinci in his right hand, a folding chair in his left. He has his back to the people at the picnic table, but not for long.
“Where did you put the sandwiches?”
“In the blue box, they’re still in the cooler.”
The woman unzips a large, metallic bag and searches for the sandwiches while her older son stands close by, still sullen, but judging by the way his eyes light up, the porridge wasn’t enough after all.
His mother is efficient, cups and plates clutter, her red sarong slides lower on her hips when she leans forward over the table, the man notices the exposed skin absentmindedly as he keeps feeding the toddler. There’s an easy understanding between them, light touches to his shoulders and he moves to make room for her, a warm and contented familiarity in the way they work together and he leans into it like a flower to the sun. They are happy and beautiful, joined in their small world.
The old man seems no part of it. He stands a few tables away, his craggy face still searching for a spot to put down his chair, when he hears the voice.
“Could you please give me the yoghurt, love?”
It’s a soft voice, a gentle voice, but the old man freezes. He turns and sees the woman in her red sarong, a little boy burrowing his face into a sandwich, a toddler flicking spaghetti around and… him.
The man looks different, he is older than he remembers, of course he is, but then he always remembers him as the skinny Irish boy his daughter brought home one day.
That is not true, he remembers him another way too, from that day and from the ones that followed. Hollow, terrifying and broken.
This man he sees now, this Alex, is closer to the one the old man knew, with his shy smiles and unkempt hair, but his eyes are drawn to the red sarong and the woman wearing it isn’t Helen; she’s taller, younger, she smiles, she’s not his Helen at all. The toddler isn’t… and the dark-haired boy isn’t…
The old man doesn’t move, his eyes glued to the family and the woman catches him looking. She nudges her husband who has successfully managed to get three full spoons of spaghetti into the toddler’s mouth and is visibly pleased by the achievement. The shine of success disappears off his face in an instant.
He looks back at the man. It’s not hostility but the lively face turns into an unreadable mask.
It has been eight years. Eight years since he cut off the torn limb off and freed himself of the necrotic tissue. It’s not fair to think this way, he was the necrotic tissue, he poisoned them, he knows it and Helen knew too. But he did it, he left and he’d never seen Arthur since. And now he’s there, more wrinkled, more cracked, but alive and in front of him, a figure so closely tied to someone who will never be in front of him ever again. Someone to remind him of something he will never be again.
“Isn’t that?”
She doesn’t know. Sophie knows photographs, but she doesn’t know. Alex told her, they’ve talked about it early on, she knows of the day, of the beach, of the sea wall, but she doesn’t know yet. This is something he can’t share with her. He wouldn’t ever want to, it broke Helen and him, would break anyone and Sophie doesn’t know what he did either. Alex steps in front of her as if blocking her from Arthur would keep her from seeing it, keep his pain and guilt from being exposed to her. It’s no use. Even Charlie realises that something is going on and he turns his dark little head towards the old stranger.
Two children. Two boys and a wife in a red sarong. Arthur watches. He can’t tear his eyes off the four of them, the perfect picture that is so wrong, missing something, missing someone and erasing his own child like she never was a part of this plan… Arthur drops his book. He doesn’t notice, keeps looking at the boys’ dark hair, at how the childish features remind him of her, at how the same features in Alex’ aged face fill him with deep, earth-shattering shame.
He wants to say something but he doesn’t know what, how is he supposed to know after all this time? He drops the chair too when he raises his arm in a beaten gesture and is finally able to look away. His eyes fall on the jumbled heap of aluminium and yellow canvas. Like it was set-up but not set-up right. He bows down and when he comes up again, he doesn’t look back at the family at the table. He can’t.
“Oi, where’re you going? Will you bring me a Ribena?”
He ignores his friend’s voice as he packs his things. He could easily go over. Say something. Hello. Alex could do so too, but they won’t. Everything has been said and done and cried about and buried deep. He packs his things but desperately wishes to look at the little boy again, who is still watching him, sandwich raised to his mouth, confused by what’s going on. Arthur picks up the last of his belongings, a laborious movement, as if his limbs were filled with lead and Alex, watching, understands that it isn’t just age slowing him down.
The mask on Alex’s face has fallen and he looks at Arthur, bone-tired and sad. He used to have an answer for everything, Arthur. He used to talk and talk about things no one really could explain, as if he alone had a clue or a key. Alex of course understood how wrong, or dubitable most of it was and told him often too. He teased him and Arthur offered more explanations, a light-hearted circle, it was their way of communicating. But who could explain what happened? It was so far beyond their communication, beyond the way they talked, how does one talk about this in their words? So, they said nothing. They couldn’t when they should have, when they had to, when they still had hope to survive as the people they were before. But they didn’t and now it’s too late.
The old man leaves under the curious eyes of his friend. The family keeps watching until the toddler demands attention and more spoons of spaghetti. The woman strokes the man’s shoulder as he sits down again and shovels more food into the pink babbling mouth.
“Are you ok?”
He isn’t, they both know it when he turns back to her and says ‘yes’ with the forced smile he’s given his son still on his face but his dark eyes empty. Yes, it is a lie, but it’s one he’s told himself for too long to change it now. There are tears welling up in his eyes, maybe they will drop in a few minutes, maybe during the night, but for now the man grabs the woman’s hand, says ‘really’, and pulls out a napkin for his older son, who has a big yellow dot of egg sandwich on his nose.