A Present From Torcombe

by Maggie Bevan

My name is Angela Green and I'm a monster. If I could just stand up and confess it at a support group - but I can't: we monsters lurk in grisly places and never disclose ourselves. We really are anonymous.

I'm thirty-seven years old, I work at the NatWest in Eastbury High Street, I live with Mother, whom I love deeply, and I have a lovely life - except I hate Mother, I hate my life and I hate myself. I sit behind the NatWest counter cheerfully cashing cheques and seeing hopelessness in the beam of sunlight angling past my head. I lie in my narrow bed with Mother snoring next door in her wide one, and I wish her dead. Or that I would die. But I can't: I'm all she's got.

I wasn't born a monster. Mother and Daddy called me "Angel", and I practically was. "Don't go near the edge, Angel," they'd say; "don't speak to strangers. Don't wander off. Don't get chilled. Don't forget your inhaler. Don't play with those rough children." I was delicate, they said, and my thready limbs and wheezy breath proved their point. What's more, I hadn't the slightest intention of going near the edge or wandering off, and I never forgot my inhaler - I carried it around years after I'd finished with asthma. As for children, I never played with any, rough or smooth; I was met after school each day, I was too delicate for Judo Club or Swimming Club, too fatigued for music or ballet. Daddy and Mother preferred me not visit or be visited by schoolfellows for fear I'd eat unhealthily or learn rough ways. Daddy was always in when I got home. He was a Risk Assessor for Fortress Insurance and arranged his days as he pleased. "We want you all to ourselves, Angel," he'd say, stroking my hair, and I kindled and glowed in his fondness. "And we do have fun, don't we?" Mother would add, and I'd reply, "Yes, we do!" because that's what they wanted to hear. We did go out a lot: museums, silver band concerts in the park, walks on paved paths by shallow streams. I kept clean and didn't scuff my shoes and never sat on the seats of public lavatories without covering them with paper, and Mother and Dad beamed on me. I was no expert on fun. If they said this was fun, I believed them.

We went on holiday, too: Frinton, Broadstairs, Torcombe, Torcombe, Broadstairs, Frinton: clean places, safe places without drunks or litter or glitter. "We're here to enjoy the Beauties of Nature, not a load of old seaside tat," Dad would say. "What do we want with funfairs and amusement arcades?" We enjoyed the Beauties of Nature from deckchairs on the promenade every fine afternoon, glancing up from our books and magazines lest they escape us. Mornings were spent combing souvenir shops for a ceramic cottage for Mother's collection. We ate all our meals at the hotel and never bought fish and chips or ice cream or candy floss because they were unhygienic. Mother got goose pimpled arms at the bare mention of them.

But Dad and I did go in the sea if the day was warm enough. He taught me to swim by supporting me under the stomach while I flailed. It took several holidays, because the day rarely was warm enough, but I learned in the end, to their amazed consternation. Mother and Dad were terribly proud of me, and of Dad's success at teaching, but they were also taken aback and troubled, just as they'd been when I won a place at Eastbury Grammar: it was an accomplishment too far, it could lead to danger. Dad said, "don't go out of your depth", but there was never much chance of that as he swam after me wherever I went and kept on the seaward side of me. He preferred towing me round in the big inflatable yellow ring, on which I sprawled like a starfish. It was even safer than the hand under the stomach.

I was thirteen when I ruined it all for ever. We were on holiday at Torcombe. We'd bought Mother's ceramic cottage and were sitting in deck chairs on the Esplanade admiring the Beauties of Nature while out lunch went down. Mother had dozed off over "Good Housekeeping". Dad said, "I'm just popping to the loo." He looked at his watch. "We'll have a swim at about half past three if it doesn't cloud over."

I had never, not once in thirteen years, talked to strangers or gone near the edge or got chilled. I don't know what came over me. But it was hot, windy and hot: people, even old people, bowled along the sea front licking ice creams, laughing as melting dribbles ran down their arms, or as breezes billowed their frocks and showed long pink knickers, or as gulls cackled and fought over discarded cornets; children sploshed in the shallows, shrieking, chucking a ball about; tots, smeared to the eyebrows, guddled in wet sand; boys in long shorts and backwards caps roller blade-jumped a stack of deckchairs, alert for cops and busybodies. And for the first time, the Beauties of Nature were not just a family litany; they struck me like a fist in the face: white gulls floating like feathers against red cliffs, dense green woods foaming above, blue sky with clouds like torn muslin, and the smell and surge and thunder of the sea. My blood fizzed like ginger beer. My heart thumped with the sea's rhythm. I wanted. I wanted to be sticky and sandy and windblown and wet. I wanted to eat candyfloss and laugh if my skirt blew over my head and laugh if it didn't. I wanted to be part of it - not a girl in a tidy frock and white socks and Clark's sandals. I wanted to go near the edge.

I don't know what came over me. I slid out of my sandals and frock, seized the inflated yellow ring and crept along the front in my swimming costume, holding my breath in case Mother woke. Then I shot down the ramp and across the pebbles, barely feeling them, launched myself face-down on the inflated ring and paddled out with hands and feet. I paddled past the splashing children, past the swimming adults, past the end of the long boulder-island breakwaters, further by far than I'd ever been before, shouting to the voice in my head which insisted, "Don't swim on a full stomach", "I'm floating! I'm only floating!". I turned on my back in the ring and closed my eyes. It was like a dream I'd once had when I was feverish: floating on my back in tropic seas with the sun pouring down like warm butter and the cries of gulls in my ears - except when I woke I was in a sick and itchy bed again and feeling horrible. Now, with no awakening, with the wind gusting and the sun burning and the water cooling and the sea swelling beneath me like the bulk of great whales, I was blissful and incredulous, impossibly delighted and ecstatic.

I suppose I floated there just a very short time, though it seemed days. I was roused by a boom like cannon fire, and saw a ball of thick smoke to shorewards. I sa , too, that the shore was just a rim of sand and shrunken cliffs. The falling tide had swept me into the bay, past even the buoys marking the inner bay where speedboats weren't allowed. I had to get back.

I had no sense of danger, but it was slow work paddling against the tide, and I knew Daddy would be back from the loo and Mother awake before I gained the beach. They'd be beside themselves. Then the cannon boomed again and another ball of smoke rose and as I got back towards the buoys, a motor boat came roaring across the bay. It was the Inshore Rescue, a black rubber craft inhabited by men in hard hats and jump suits. Who was in trouble, I wondered. I couldn't have been more astounded when the boat curved towards me, and cut its motor and ran alongside. I and the yellow ring were hauled aboard. "You needn't have bothered," I muttered, scarlet with humiliation. "I was nearly back." They smiled but didn't answer. One patted my arm carefully, as if it might bruise. I sat hunched and humbly silent during the brief journey, mortified, fearful of Mother's panic and Daddy's anger.

Poor Daddy. "We'll have a swim about half past three if it doesn't cloud over." Not very distinguished last words. Daddy got back from the loo, saw the yellow ring way out, swam after it, got cramp and drowned. He took a risk. He swam on a full stomach.

I stopped being delicate after that. I didn't deserve to be delicate. I stopped being a child. I didn't merit a childhood. Of course I didn't mean to kill Daddy - but appalling events are judged by results, not intentions. I deserved to be shunned, to shun myself, to be dismissed from the human race. I knew how Oedipus felt before I'd ever heard of him.

Mother became a delicate child instead. She rarely leaves the house these days. She is nervous, headachy and fatigued. She suffers from heat, from cold, from damp. She has allergies, indigestion and nightmares. Her voice is fretful. Her mouth sags. She has no brothers, sisters, cousins friends or acquaintances. She has me.

I go to work, do the garden, do the shopping, call the plumber, decide when to have the gutters fixed. I make roast on Sunday, shepherd's pie Monday, fish Friday and cold meat and salad on washday. I put pillows behind mother's head, stools under her feet, rugs across her lap. I fetch her cups of tea, aspirins, handkerchiefs, hot water bottles. What choice do I have? I took Business Studies at the local college so as not to leave her. I got the job at the NatWest because that was what she wanted for me. I strive to please her in every action of my life, large and small. But what can you do, what can you ever do to bring joy to a life you've demolished? How can you make up for killing a husband? And how can you ever, ever stop trying?

If it hadn't happened I might have gone to Reading and done Archaeology, detached myself, learned to love them temperately and despise them tolerantly as children should, instead of loving and hating so intensely and chewing on perpetual remorse. One mistake! Once in all my life I went near the edge and, and mother's life and mine are gone for ever. I've grown fat. Mother says fretfully, "I can't understand how big you're getting, Angela. It's not as if we don't eat sensibly." Oh yes, Mother dear, we eat sensibly - but I don't. I eat ice cream, two cones, three cones, every lunchtime. Who cares if I bloat like a warthog? Who cares if bacteria leap down my gullet and slaughter me? I haven't got a life for them to take.

Mother's single voluntary activity is to wash her ceramic cottages every Sunday. I dry them (the task being too much for her alone) on a fine linen tea-towel kept for this ritual. As she dips them separately in soapy water and tenderly strokes them clean and passes them to me with warnings to take care, she sighs: "Frinton, 1979. We stayed at that place with the lovely tomato salad. Daddy said it was the best he's ever tasted. Do you remember? Broadstairs, this one. That man's boat, all covered in fish scales, and that terrible smell! It was nice of him to offer to take us out, though, even though we refused. We never went back to Broadstairs. It was getting rough, Daddy thought. Frinton again. That very hot summer. We'd have got burned if we hadn't kept to the shade. Torcombe. So nice and clean, and all those pretty gardens! Torcombe was always our favourite..." and here her voice stutters into tears and I help her to bed and fetch her tea and aspirins and cover her with a blanket. She weeps for the rest of the day...

I want to take a hammer to those bloody cottages and smash them to powder. I want to smash her memories of sunburn avoided and boat trips never taken. I want to smash her, whose every breath is a reproach. You can hate people for robbing you or bullying you or stealing your loved one or simply destroying you - but nothing, nothing can equal your hatred for a person you've destroyed.

Except she's my mother and I love her. I love her so much. And I listen to her snoring and I will her death. "Die," I urge. " What do you want with life, you useless old lump of woe? For Christ's sake, die."

My name is Angela Green. I'm a monster.