Contraflow

When his son screams in the night Sam finds a way to wake him, carries him round the soft blue nursery. "Timmy, it's daddy, it's daddy." Outside, animals slip across their front yard. When Timmy shits the bed in fear, Jackie carries him to the bathroom, bathes him in pink bubbles, and Sam rolls up the filthy sheets, goes downstairs and puts a wash on.

Sam comes back to bed, but not before looking out across the yard, at the yellow of streetlights, at the dull fat backs of houses, their secrets, the dirty world. Now Sam knows what lies beneath its surface, what seethes in the silences, the undercurrents.

Then Sam goes to his wife and between them they cuddle their son back down. They rarely speak, but sometimes they briefly hold hands while below them in the dark house they can hear the washing machine rumble.

Sam knows he will never forget - they have told him Timmy will forget - because he has become someone else. For now Sam can sense the padding foxes, hear a small animal die in the trees behind the house, feel the tunnels beneath him, entrails.

But the boy's nightmares stop, at least the screams do, and he no longer soils himself. Slowly Sam and Jackie imagine other lives, kiss again, and they become other people.

***

Years later, Helga rings him, a surprise fortieth for Zoe, will they come? Of course, Sam says, Helga needs to ask? He'll sort something out with baby-sitting and get right back to her.

"Oh, no," Helga says, "Bring the kids and stay over. There's a surprise for everyone in the morning."

Sam and Jackie drive down late, after a day tiring the children out, timing their trip to perfection and shouldering their two blond dead-to-the-worlds through the party, straight upstairs to be top 'n tailed in a bed alongside theirs. He lugs suitcases in, washes, comes down to cold white wine already poured by Jackie, kisses Helga and Zoe.

"I don't know how you do it," someone says and Sam tells them, it just takes peace of mind, the ability to be calm.

The party is filled with academics and moves in a complex mathematical exchange between gnat-filled garden and kitchen, the population controlled by wine position and temperature. Later, as it dissolves, Sam talks seriously with an English teacher and a man called Pierre who seems more than usually interested in his writing, or him, he isn't quite sure.

Jackie wilts at one-thirty. Sam stays up until two, until Pierre leaves him and Helga. Sam drinks a polite glass with her before a hushed goodnight. He feels his age, dry eyes, creeps through the tinkling house, kisses his children, and crawls into bed. His wife sleeps heavily, her hair still faintly perfumed but with the taint of someone else's cigarette smoke. He kisses her freckled back, listens to the night, thanks God for his children, and closes his eyes.

***

They go in convoy from the cottage, along soft English lanes to the coast. He tells Timmy and Clare yes, a big surprise, maybe the biggest one they've ever had, but when they arrive at the marina, the surprise, owned by a sister's new boyfriend, is bigger, and far better, than they could have imagined.

It's called Contraflow, eighteen metres long, eighteen tons, an Azimut 52, styled in Italy, gleaming white, stainless steel, the kind of thing they could only imagine, and even then moored off Cannes, a plaything for starlets.

Inside is rosewood luxury, downstairs bunks and beds, and under them, two six hundred horsepower caterpillars capable of pushing them across the sea at thirty-five knots. In the lounge, ready, Buck's Fizz, and orange for the children. Behind, someone says, "That'll do nicely."

They sit in a semi-circle on the flybridge as the motor yacht putters from the harbour, the adults up top, lording it, pretending this is normal, the kids in the cabin, divorced from flare guns, the radar or a quick flip over the side. It's a glorious day, unreal.

The trip to the island is fifteen miles in a straight line, a little more when cruising, having fun, grown-ups taking turns to roar the boat from wave-top to wave-top, children sat between the captain's knees, spray bouncing, the wind sharp in their faces.

Later they mellow, and the captain takes it slow. The slipstream dies, and they let the sun work on them as they go gently up a river to a sailor's pub. The kids are below. Once or twice Sam hears a squeal or laughter. His eyes close and his guard drops.

Ashore, they lunch on lamb shoulder laced with mint sauce, drink Cabinet Sauvignon, watch the kids on swings in the pub garden, joke about this and that, enjoy the good rare weather, soften.

On the way back to the boat the Frenchman says something to two of the boys, laughs at something else, waves a mock fist and stage-looks to the other parents for support. Those who see smile, perhaps Sam does. He won't be sure later.

The yacht flubs slowly back towards the sea, everyone on board fat like cats wondering what it takes to be this rich, what a man has to make, what a woman do, to be a part of all this. But the sun is too pleasant, the water too relaxing, and the slow accumulation of alcohol too seducing. They are kings and queens, drifting.

When they hit the sea, Pierre says he'll take a stint below. He's a father, so it's his turn. Other fathers, mothers, look at waves and try to remember jokes.

They are out to sea, three miles from the dancing yachts off Cowes, when one of the kids comes up for Timmy's father. Timmy is crying, he says, he's bashed his head. Sam gets up, walks to the stainless steps, slides down and heads for the noise. The Frenchman, Pierre, is there, flushed, nervous, and the father stops in the doorway. "What is it, Tim?"

He had been playing, Timmy says, they'd been playing, Jimmy, Maxine, him, Pierre. It was the pinch game, grabbing. He'd tried to get away when Pierre had gone to grab him. He bumped his head. It hurt.

"It's OK, little guy," Sam says, but then Timmy shits.

Sam calls for Jackie. They find clothes, another mother rinses out his shorts. Timmy drinks some orange, then goes upstairs with Mummy. Sam follows, but when Pierre is not there he goes back down to the cabin, then aft to where the Frenchman stands looking at the boat's heavy wake.

"What happened?" Sam says.

"It is as Timmy says. We play some game and he bang his head."

"Exactly, what happened?"

"I am sorry."

"Sorry?"

"That your boy, he bumps his head. He bumps his head when we play. He moves too quickly and he hurts himself."

Sam looks at the sea. He looks at the Frenchman who doesn't quite look back at him. "Did you touch my son?" he asks.

"Of course. It is a game. Four of us, we play. It is innocent."

"Innocent?"

The Frenchman looks, but he looks with dark eyes, not full of surprise or concern, but with a sick quick flicker of guilt which he recovers from.

"I mean. This is a problem with words. I am French. I mean the children have simple fun and I join them, make sure they are all right. I am a father, too. I have a son and a daughter. What are you saying?"

"You know what I'm saying."

Sam stands up. This man has a wife, children. But Sam's son has shit, and tonight he will scream in his sleep and not want to open his eyes. When Pierre stands up Sam grabs his face, a thumb in one cheek, fingers deep in the other, one touching a half-closed eye. The Frenchman is weak, limp.

"You think I can't smell you?" Sam says. "I smell you like my son's shit. I smell the trickery, the innocent look, the low softspeak. I've seen it before. I've heard it all before."

He looks with exultation at the throbbing sea.

"I saw it once before when the last animal took my son. They said he would recover unless…"

He pushes and the Frenchman steps back, two white flumes framing him.

"But if it happened again, they said. The pain would be tenfold."

The Frenchman tries to speak but Sam's grip is too tight.

"We couldn't prove it last time. My boy was too young, he couldn't testify, not even on camera. They told me it happens a lot. These animals are not casual, they told me, they plan, they take years, marry a woman with kids, get jobs in nurseries, as scout-masters. They told me how hard your type is to catch, harder to convict."

The Frenchman mumbles, still transfixed. He squeezes out that Sam is mistaken. He is making a mistake.

Sam glances behind him. Up top they are looking towards the coast. In the cabin someone makes tea. Left and right, nothing. With his left hand, Sam puts a finger to his lips. With a certain stare like the fox, he pushes, and in a step he consigns the Frenchman to the sea. There is barely a splash. He waits. He sees the head emerge, already ten boat lengths away, twenty, more. When he can't see the head any more, he goes in and to Zoe he says, "Hey Birthday girl, is one of those teas for me?"

---

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