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Authors: Graham Swift
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the best times of my life,’ when she wasn’t even there, without inflaming her jealousy? Girls. But how many girls did he know? He only knew Ellie. How could he have said it by the time they were having those private sessions at Westcott Farmhouse, without getting into even hotter trouble. What, not
these
times, Jacko?
Let alone say it when they were sitting up like that, each cradling a mug of tea, stark naked, in the Big Bedroom.
So he’d shut up and pretended it was all forgotten and had never been so important to him. For Ellie’s sake. He could be good to Ellie.
But Ellie would have known he was only covering. He had a wall of a face, he was born with it, but Ellie was trained in seeing through it. And she’d have known, that afternoon, what a tender spot she was still touching in him and how it couldn’t fail to put a seal on things when she said that word. Caravans. As if it was the password and the key to their future.
And the truth still was: those weeks had been fantastic.
When Jack was thirteen and Tom was not yet six Vera had taken them both for the first of two holidays atBrigwell Bay, Dorset, not far from Lyme Regis. And what had made them particularly fantastic was that they’d stayed in a caravan.
They’d gone on their mother’s instigation and insistence. She must have said to Michael, with perhaps more than her usual firmness with him, that she was going to give those two boys a holiday, a seaside holiday that when they’d grown up they’d always have to remember. They weren’t going to go without that. And Michael must have relented—for two years running—though Jack would have counted then, even at thirteen and fourteen, as full-time summer labour on the farm.
So they’d taken what was for them an epic journey, part bus, part train, to the south coast of England and (if only just) across the border into another county. And they’d stayed in a caravan, in a small, three-acre field, with hedges all around it, a little way back from the cliffs and the beach below. There were only six caravans, positioned any old how, and compared to the snazzy, lined-up giants Jack can see in the distance now, they were like rabbit hutches on wheels. But they each had a name, and theirs, both years, had been ‘Marilyn’.
Those two stays in a caravan in Brigwell Bay were, by the time Jack sat up in bed with Ellie on that July afternoon, the only two holidays he (or Tom) had ever had, and he still might have said that during each of them he’d never been happier. So much so that during the first one, finding himself suddenly so clearly and unmistakably happy, he’d wondered if he’d ever, really, been happy before.
When he sat down at the tiny pale-yellow Formica-topped table in the caravan and wrote his postcard toEllie, it was with a mixture of honesty and guilt. Yes, he really did wish she was there. But if he really wished that, how could he be so happy in the first place? Wishing she was there was like admitting he was happy without her. It was like saying he was writing this postcard because he’d betrayed her.
And in Ellie’s case, on that July afternoon, the total number of holidays she’d ever had was nil. And ‘holidays’ was another word she’d invoke and let ring that afternoon, like the word ‘caravans’.
How strange, to have been born into a farmhouse, into a hundred and sixty acres, yet to have felt so happy, perhaps for the first time ever really happy at all, in a tin-can caravan in a little grubby field, with in one corner a standpipe with some rotting sacking around it and a dripping tap.
Yet so it was. Jack knows that, at thirteen, he might very well have taken the view that he was too old for it all, it was kids’ stuff, buckets and spades—he should have been above it. But the truth was he knew he was only getting these holidays now because of Tom. And those two years, he later realised, would have been his mother’s only realistic window of opportunity. So he
these
times, Jacko?
Let alone say it when they were sitting up like that, each cradling a mug of tea, stark naked, in the Big Bedroom.
So he’d shut up and pretended it was all forgotten and had never been so important to him. For Ellie’s sake. He could be good to Ellie.
But Ellie would have known he was only covering. He had a wall of a face, he was born with it, but Ellie was trained in seeing through it. And she’d have known, that afternoon, what a tender spot she was still touching in him and how it couldn’t fail to put a seal on things when she said that word. Caravans. As if it was the password and the key to their future.
And the truth still was: those weeks had been fantastic.
When Jack was thirteen and Tom was not yet six Vera had taken them both for the first of two holidays atBrigwell Bay, Dorset, not far from Lyme Regis. And what had made them particularly fantastic was that they’d stayed in a caravan.
They’d gone on their mother’s instigation and insistence. She must have said to Michael, with perhaps more than her usual firmness with him, that she was going to give those two boys a holiday, a seaside holiday that when they’d grown up they’d always have to remember. They weren’t going to go without that. And Michael must have relented—for two years running—though Jack would have counted then, even at thirteen and fourteen, as full-time summer labour on the farm.
So they’d taken what was for them an epic journey, part bus, part train, to the south coast of England and (if only just) across the border into another county. And they’d stayed in a caravan, in a small, three-acre field, with hedges all around it, a little way back from the cliffs and the beach below. There were only six caravans, positioned any old how, and compared to the snazzy, lined-up giants Jack can see in the distance now, they were like rabbit hutches on wheels. But they each had a name, and theirs, both years, had been ‘Marilyn’.
Those two stays in a caravan in Brigwell Bay were, by the time Jack sat up in bed with Ellie on that July afternoon, the only two holidays he (or Tom) had ever had, and he still might have said that during each of them he’d never been happier. So much so that during the first one, finding himself suddenly so clearly and unmistakably happy, he’d wondered if he’d ever, really, been happy before.
When he sat down at the tiny pale-yellow Formica-topped table in the caravan and wrote his postcard toEllie, it was with a mixture of honesty and guilt. Yes, he really did wish she was there. But if he really wished that, how could he be so happy in the first place? Wishing she was there was like admitting he was happy without her. It was like saying he was writing this postcard because he’d betrayed her.
And in Ellie’s case, on that July afternoon, the total number of holidays she’d ever had was nil. And ‘holidays’ was another word she’d invoke and let ring that afternoon, like the word ‘caravans’.
How strange, to have been born into a farmhouse, into a hundred and sixty acres, yet to have felt so happy, perhaps for the first time ever really happy at all, in a tin-can caravan in a little grubby field, with in one corner a standpipe with some rotting sacking around it and a dripping tap.
Yet so it was. Jack knows that, at thirteen, he might very well have taken the view that he was too old for it all, it was kids’ stuff, buckets and spades—he should have been above it. But the truth was he knew he was only getting these holidays now because of Tom. And those two years, he later realised, would have been his mother’s only realistic window of opportunity. So he
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