The Sing of the Shore

When he got bored he styled the baby’s hair into a Mohican.

At lunchtime, someone drove up near the house. The engine revved, idled for a moment, then finally stopped. Jay glanced out. There was a dark blue van parked by the side of the road, in the lay-by in front of the terrace.

He strapped the baby in her chair and put her food in a pan to warm up. ‘Mashed peas and potato,’ he told her. ‘A classic choice.’

‘Forofoo,’ the baby said. She’d twisted her bib up into her mouth and she was chewing on it.

‘It’ll be ready in a minute,’ Jay told her. ‘I just want to make sure it’s warm.’

He went over to the sink to wash his hands. He washed them twice, then scrubbed under his nails. He’d read something somewhere about how easy it was to contaminate a baby’s food and since then he’d started washing his hands more and more every day. The skin around his nails was sore to the touch.

He dried his hands and filled the baby’s bowl with food. He sat down next to her and blew on it to cool it down. ‘I just heated this up, now we have to wait for it to cool down,’ he said.

‘Forofoo,’ the baby said, trying to grab the spoon. She took a handful of food and aimed at her mouth, but most of it ran down her wrist and back into the bowl.

After a while the voices started up behind the wall. They were louder this time, closer, although he couldn’t make out any actual words. One was deep, the other sounded like a woman’s voice. There was a lot of low, drawn-out laughter.

Jay spooned the food into the baby’s mouth. He wiped around her lips, then hooked his finger gently inside her cheek to make sure she wasn’t storing any of it in there. She’d gone through a stage of doing that – he would find bits of food that she’d kept hidden all night.

She squirmed and sucked at his finger.

‘I’m only checking,’ he said. ‘You have previous, remember?’

The voices came again through the wall. He got up and went over to the window. The van was still there. ‘I’ll be back in a second,’ he said.

He went outside and knocked at next door. He waited, checking his hands for mashed-up peas. What would he say? He didn’t know. All he wanted was to speak to someone and not have them say forofoo, or whatever the hell it was, back. But there was no sound from inside. Nothing moved. There were no lights on. Upstairs, the curtains were all drawn. Downstairs, there were net curtains that were frayed and yellowing. He would have to go right up and stare in to see past them. He turned round and looked at the road. The mist had almost covered the dishes. He could only see the one closest to the fence. The metal was dripping. The antenna was tilted towards the road. It almost looked like it was pointing at him. Was it pointing at him? He took a step towards it, then stopped and shook his head. It was pointing upwards, above the houses, like it always did.

He knocked once more, then turned and went back into his own house.

He sat down at the table, spooned up the last bit of the baby’s food and put it in her mouth.

The voices started up again, and someone laughed.

He got up so quickly that his chair tipped over. He went back outside and stood there, looking around. There was no one. The van was still parked by the side of the road. It was dusty and there was sand on the tyres.

When he looked out again later, the van had gone.

At night, he watched his wife sleeping. She slept straight away, as soon as she’d checked the baby and got into bed. There were dark smudges under her eyes, as if soot had gathered in a fireplace.

Sometimes she murmured and rolled away from him to the other side of the bed. Sometimes she rolled onto his chest and buried her face in his ribs. She mumbled things he couldn’t really hear. ‘What?’ he would ask her. ‘What?’ He smoothed back her hair and rubbed her shoulder blades to settle her back into sleep.

‘What do you do over there all day?’ he asked, but he knew she wasn’t allowed to answer.

Often, the pillow would have creased the side of her cheek, and the creases would run into the fine lines that had started to gather around her eyes. When her nightdress rode up, there were lines across her stomach and the tops of her legs, the skin puckering like clay. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

Finally he would fall asleep, but after a few moments he would jolt awake and freeze, sure that he’d been muttering, talking. What had he been saying? What if Lorna had woken up and heard him saying something?

It was only once, it had only happened once. The doorbell had rung and he’d opened it and Lorna had been working, she was always working, and he’d been on his own for such a long time.

The baby had been in the other room. He’d put music on, and afterwards he’d checked and she was deep in sleep, her arms and legs flung outwards, her hand clutching her rabbit, and that warm, sour, milky smell clinging to her which reminded him of the corridors of school many years before; how he used to get lost in the twisting maze of them.

He pressed his ear closer to the kitchen wall. The van had arrived at midday, while Jay was changing the baby. There’d been no sound from next door all morning, and he’d started to think that the van was probably there to do repairs to one of the houses further along the row. Now and again, drilling and hammering would reverberate down the terrace like a heartbeat.

But then someone had run up the stairs. The banister had creaked. A door somewhere further back seemed to shut softly.

He turned away from the wall and back to the baby, who was tipping herself backwards in her chair, trying to get out. She’d been restless all morning – crying whenever he went out of the room and throwing down toys, but if he picked her up she would go rigid and try to twist out of his arms. Her cheeks were hot and she kept scratching at her belly, and when he rubbed it for her, she just cried again. He offered up her favourite toys – the rabbit, the jangly ball – but she batted them away.

He looked around; saw only the road, the mist, the cliffs, the dishes.

He slumped down in a chair and rested his head on the table. It had not been possible, before, to know that this kind of tiredness existed. He could hardly even lift his head. When he did manage to look up, the baby had slumped down too, in her chair, and she was watching him with her head cocked sideways.

He sat up, then covered his eyes with his hands.

The baby did the same.

He waved his hands, and the baby waved her hands.

She watched him, without blinking, to see what he would do next.

Then someone said ‘Ssshhhh’ suddenly and loudly from behind the wall.

The baby opened her eyes wide. ‘Ssshhh,’ she said.

‘Ssshhh,’ the voice came again from behind the wall.

The baby looked around the room, then back at Jay. ‘Ssshhhhh,’ she said.

Jay shook his head. ‘You don’t need to do that,’ he told her.

‘Ssshhhh,’ the baby said again.

Jay got up and went over to her. ‘Don’t do that.’

She looked at him with her wide, dark eyes.

The sound came again from the wall.

Jay went over and knocked on it, once, twice, loud and hard.

Above him, on the roof, a tile slipped and grated in the wind.

‘Sshhhh,’ the baby said, quieter this time.

There was a swing tied to a branch of a tree at the back of the house. It was small and sturdy, with high sides for a child. Jay had tested it, and tested again, pulling down with all his strength to see if anything gave.

He put the baby in her coat and opened the back door. The misty rain had finally stopped. It was good to feel the wind against his face.

He put the baby in the swing and pushed gently. The chains creaked as they moved against the tree. He pushed and pushed and it was cold and quiet and he thought of nothing except pushing the swing and the wet, salty smell of the fields behind him.

When he looked up at the house, there was someone standing in the window.

He fumbled with the swing, missed the middle of it, and ended up pushing the baby sideways. The swing lurched outwards, rocked, then righted itself.

Jay steadied the chains. It was just his wife, wearing her coat and carrying her bag ready to leave for work. He didn’t know how long she’d been standing there; he thought she’d already gone. She was wearing the green scarf he’d bought for her just after they’d first met. He hadn’t seen her wearing it for a long time. He raised his hand and waved. Lorna’s mouth moved but he couldn’t tell what she was saying.

He realised he’d been pushing the swing quite high, and probably harder than he should. The baby was laughing and kicking her legs with each push but now he slowed it down, keeping it low, feeling himself making a show of how careful he was being.

The baby screamed indignantly, but he kept pushing the swing very gently. The next time he looked up, the window was empty, except for the blurred reflection of the swing moving backwards and forwards slowly across the glass.

A phone rang next door. It rang, then cut out, then rang again. No one answered it.

Jay strapped the baby in the pram and pushed her hat further down over her head. She looked up at him and her face creased. Her eyes were exactly the same as Lorna’s – sometimes it seemed like she was right there, staring out at him. When Lorna and the baby looked at each other, it was as if something secret passed between them, something that he wasn’t allowed to know.

‘Ha fa ma?’ she asked. Her cheeks were already red in the cold.

‘We need to get out of the house,’ Jay told her.

‘Bada shlam.’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s bloody cold, but we need to get out of the house.’

He put another blanket over her. She stared out sternly from under all the layers. He tucked the blanket in, then started walking down the road. The pram’s wheels sent up spray from the wet tarmac. The road was steep and narrow, with high hedges on both sides. If a car came, there would be nowhere to go. They would have to turn and walk all the way back. But he needed to get out of the house. It had rained for three days in a row – heavy showers that didn’t stop. The gutters had spilled over and poured down the windows. They’d stayed in and turned the heaters up high. Small noises had come through the wall: murmurs, footsteps, low laughter. Sometimes he was sure it was just the pipes, or the rain.

There was a thin, raw mist, as if the ground couldn’t absorb any more water so the wetness had moved into the air itself. Soon his nose was numb and dripping and his fingers were stiff against the handle of the pram. The road sloped down and small trees twisted on either side, their trunks bright with moss.

It got colder the lower he went into the valley. He could hear the sea somewhere in the distance. Water ran down the road and splashed up his legs. It looked orange, like it was leaking through rusty iron.

The mist thickened into drizzle and he shivered. He crouched down and tucked the baby in tighter. She was making cooing sounds at the gorse, trying to reach out and grab it. He showed her the prickles but she grabbed at it anyway. There was gorse everywhere, like lamps in the hedges. It gave out a sweet, heavy smell.

The drizzle came in waves, sweeping across the tops of the trees, and hanging there like curtains. The road narrowed again. Something moved in the dead leaves under a tree. He walked slowly, checking every bend before carrying on. He came to the bottom of the road and it forked: one way turned into a track that followed a stream, the other seemed to bend inland. He took that one and kept going. There were no road signs, just hedges and fields and the valley below him: the trees huddled like a herd of animals escaping the weather.

‘Sa?’ the baby asked.

He stroked her damp cheek with his finger.

There was the sound of a motor in the distance, coming closer, and he walked forward to find a wider bit of road. Whatever it was, it was moving fast, the engine revving. He smelled the petrol before he saw it. There was no wider bit of road. He walked back quickly, away from the bend. He crammed the pram in sideways against the hedge, mounting the wheels up on the bank and pressing it in as far as it would go.

It was a dark blue van. It came careening round the corner of the lane and revved past him before he could see who was in it. The wing mirror brushed against him as it went.

Jay jumped out and shook his fist at the back of the van. ‘You arsehole,’ he shouted. ‘You irresponsible son-of-a-bitch arsehole.’

He got the pram out of the hedge. The baby had a handful of dried leaves in each fist and was chewing on a stick. He took the stick out of her mouth and crouched down to check she was OK.

‘Don’t ever repeat what I just said,’ he told her.

The baby looked at him, then back down at the leaves she was holding.

He stood in the middle of the road. No one else went past. He saw no one except a farmer, small and faint, walking through a field in the distance. The baby went to sleep. Her hand slackened and the leaves fell out. He turned and started walking back. Soon the dishes rose up in front of him. One of them was pointing down at the valley. It stayed like that all night.

His wife hummed low, monotonous tunes in the shower. She used to sing pop songs, ballads, those deep, soulful ones where she used the showerhead as a microphone, but now she just hummed the same thing over and over, quietly and without stopping, like static on an old radio.

While she was in the shower, music started up behind the wall. It was slow but with a heavy beat that thrummed through the floor. It was coming from somewhere near the kitchen, then it faded and seemed to move into the living room, then down the hall, as if it was in the pipes or the wires.

Jay’s heart gave a strange lurch. He banged on the wall. ‘Stop it,’ he said. He banged again. ‘Stop it.’

The music didn’t stop. He followed it through the house. It was louder near the bathroom. When he went in, it sounded like it was in the room, low and slow and echoing off the tiles.

He could see Lorna through the steam. She was washing her hair and there was soap and bubbles all over her head. She was humming and her eyes were closed.

There was a thump near the door, and then the sound of breathing only a few inches from where Jay was standing. A cold draught came under the door. Any moment now Lorna would rinse off the soap and take her hands away from her ears and then she would hear.

The breathing got louder. The music surged. Lorna ducked her head under the water and shampoo ran down her neck and onto her shoulders.

He stood in the middle of the room, clenching his hands. His nails dug into his palms. He could tell, even behind the music, the particular way the body would be pressing against the wall.

Stop, he said silently. Stop it.

Lorna shook her wet hair and turned off the shower.

The music stopped.

She opened her eyes and when she saw Jay she let out a faint cry and put her hand on her chest, looking at him for a moment as if she didn’t recognise him at all.

The phone rang from behind the wall. It rang and then it cut out, then it rang again. Still no one answered it.

It was lunchtime and Jay was cleaning up. The baby had woken him every few hours in the night and he kept knocking things onto the floor – cups, bits of food. The baby would lean down out of her chair and try to help him pick them up, then almost topple out, so he would straighten her, and then she would do it again, clapping her sticky hands.

Soon Lorna would be home and he would start cooking something for dinner.

He ran the sink full of hot water. It was cold in the house, his hands were cold and he was looking forward to dipping them in.

An engine revved suddenly and he looked up just in time to see the van speed away past the window. The tyres left a burning smell on the air.

He picked up a plate and put it in the sink. He washed it and stacked it on the draining board. Bubbles ran down and pooled in the grooves. He started on another plate.

A door slammed and someone shouted from behind the wall.

He fumbled with the plate, dropped it in the sink, and hot water splashed over his feet.

There was a bang, then voices. ‘Why did you?’ someone said. ‘Why did you do it?’ There was another bang, and a long silence.

Jay picked up the plate. It had cracked down the middle. He stroked the baby’s cheeks. She seemed fine; she was pushing a bit of cracker around her tray, jabbing at it until it was wet and crumbly.

‘Ham nu for,’ she said, pointing to it.

‘It’s OK,’ Jay told her. ‘It’s OK.’

He dried his hands, sat down, then got up and opened the door. He went outside and paced around the front of the houses. There were no cars; the house next door looked empty. In another house, further up the row, washing billowed on the line; trousers and shirts straining against their pegs as if they were trying to get away.

Something moved behind next door’s window. Jay ran to the door and raised his hand to knock, his hand was in a fist, it was almost on the door, then he stopped and brought his hand down. He stood on the step for a long time.

The baby watched him. ‘Wayha do int?’ she said one morning. She looked at him carefully, as if she was waiting for an answer.

His wife got home late and they sat, almost asleep, on the sofa in front of the TV. Jay flicked through the channels – there were old programmes on that they used to watch, repeats that seemed half-familiar, the jokes coming in slightly different places than he remembered.

He put his arm round Lorna and she leaned her head back against him. He could see the freckle behind her ear. It was tiny, hardly more than a dot. He used to kiss her there.

She yawned and leaned in closer. Her hair was kinked from wearing headphones at work most of the day. Her eyes were dry and flecked with red.

The audience on the TV laughed raucously at something and he found the remote and turned it down.

He could hear her watch ticking. There was a phrase they used to say to each other when they’d first met – something about clocks or time, because she always used to be late, and he was about to say it to her, it used to make her laugh. But he couldn’t remember it.

He’d seen her earlier on his phone and he’d grabbed it, almost yanked it out of her hands, but she was just checking a friend’s number. His hand had been shaking and he’d gone upstairs so that she wouldn’t notice.

He turned the volume up on the TV again and Lorna sighed and shifted her head so that it was against the cushion instead of his chest, and her hips moved, just slightly, away from his. His hand started to shake again, but it was nothing, he’d deleted everything, there had been no more phone calls. Any moment now she would turn back and lean against him again.

He was putting away the washing up – the cups and plates and glasses – in the cupboards and drawers. Everything was clean. Dinner was cooking. He was ahead for once. He lined the cups up carefully, and stacked the plates on top of each other. The glasses caught the light and gleamed.

A glass fell and smashed against the floor.

He reached up automatically to the shelf to stop any more falling but nothing had fallen, there was no broken glass anywhere.

There was another loud smash from behind the wall.

He put his hands over his ears and waited for it to stop.

The dishes were moving. If he hadn’t been watching them every day, he might not have noticed, but he did watch them every day, and he saw them move. Soon they would be pointing straight in at the kitchen window.

The van was there again. He hadn’t heard it drive up, or any doors opening and closing. But it was there. Jay watched it out of the window. He checked on the baby. He went back to the window, waited a moment, then went outside. He walked over to the van and looked in. There was an empty plastic bottle under the seat, and a newspaper on the dashboard from a week earlier.

He circled the van twice in the drizzle, then thought about the number plate. What he should do was write down the number plate. He ran inside and found a pen, then crouched down next to the van to write. The number plate was covered in mud and he rubbed at it, saw an X and a 7, then rubbed again but the mud was too thick and wouldn’t come off.

When he looked up, there was a light in one of next door’s windows. It flicked on, then off. The curtains upstairs moved.

He walked over to the house. He glanced back at the road, then went closer, right up to the window. The rooms downstairs were dark. He pressed his ear against the glass but couldn’t hear anything. Something moved further back in the house – maybe it was an arm, or someone’s back, he just glimpsed something crossing into another room.

He ran round the side of his house, down the alley and through the long grass on the bank. He scrabbled over the brambles, dropped the pen, and scratched his hand on a broken bit of fence. There was a low wall behind the house next door. He jumped down softly. The back door was padlocked. The windows were shut and dark.

He stayed crouched against the concrete. The net curtains swayed against the glass.

Something rustled in the bank above him. The rustling got louder, and then a blackbird ran out towards him, scolding loudly.

He moved closer to the windows. They were smeared and dusty but he was sure there was something back there, in the darkness. He went closer. A voice murmured and someone laughed.

There was a shout behind him. He turned quickly. It was the farmer he’d seen in the field. She was walking towards him, calling out, asking what he was doing. He looked at her, then back at the window. He realised his hand was on the latch. His fingers were rigid and scratched, the nails bitten right down. It didn’t look like his hand. He turned and ran, disappearing into his own house.

He jumped at small noises. When the baby broke her bowl he brushed up every single piece with the dustpan. He picked out the tiny shards from the cracks between the tiles.