Battleships

On account of his recent growth spurt Robert gets the front passenger seat for the drive home from church. Leaving Elizabeth scrunched between the women in the back, with the itch and torment of their autumn tweeds and talk of sleepless nights.

Elizabeth is studying the yellow-headed spots on the back of her brother’s neck, his jagged shoulders, the way he clenches the family umbrella like a musket between his knees. A giant orange leaf slaps the windscreen, flash-dances between the wipers then flips out of sight. And summer feels so very long ago, day trips to Millport in the Austin, when Robert held Elizabeth screaming above the icy waves and buried her in sand. They had played Yellow Car and I-Spy for the entire journey, hysterical with their limericks and songs.

But that was the other Robert. The Robert from before. Not the Robert now who shuts his bedroom door, who pushes past Elizabeth on the stairs, and tells her to buzz off when Peter Dray comes over. Peter Dray who plays with Robert in the scrum on Saturdays and brass band on Tuesdays. Peter who used to be a friend of Elizabeth’s too. Who gave her his best Emerald Shooter and beat Robert at Battleships three times on the trot.  

It's a game of wits, Peter had explained to her kindly. Deduction and surmising. All words that Elizabeth had been unable to find in her Collins Picture Dictionary but that she made a note of all the same.

‘Dr MacPherson says I’ve the worst case of it,’ sighs Mummy, tugging at her coat from under Elizabeth’s bottom. Nana Boyd pulls her handbag to her chest turns her pointy nose away towards the drizzle. It’s a thing they often to do. Go silent with each other over invisible things; a forgotten condolence, a missing thank you, a knitting pattern not returned. It’s the same at school with Susan Blair, who is sometimes Elizabeth’s friend and sometimes not. Though Mummy says Elizabeth should be thankful not to have a mother in the hospice like Susan does, with a trolley of wires and tubes that follow her to the lavatory.

‘How about we play a game of Battleships after lunch?’ Elizabeth suggests brightly, though she’s still a little unsure of the rules. ‘Or maybe Go-Fish? The best of five. And I don’t even mind not winning.’

Robert doesn’t bother to reply. Neither do the grown-ups. As if now, on account of his greasy neck and gangly new legs, Robert can do as he pleases.  

The monument at Battlefield Rest is coming into view. Beyond it, looms the newspaper kiosk, sitting squat and glossy in the rain. Daddy turns the wheel sharply, sluicing the kerb with a silver-brown splash.

Bruce! Mummy barks, gripping at her roof handle.

Clunk-click, ladies, says Daddy, patting his shiny new seat belt.

Nana Boyd’s eyes flicker like moths as Robert flings open his door. Armed with a pocketful of coins, he unfurls the umbrella like a giant bat and dashes into the spitting rain,

‘Can I not go with Robert to choose a different comic today?’ says Elizabeth remembering how the stories in Bunty have started to bore her. Especially Lisa, the Lonely Ballerina who should just give up ballet and try another sport.

‘I’ll not have you skipping and skedaddling along a busy road,’ says Mummy. Which Elizabeth might have guessed she’d say, given that Sunday is Mummy’s headache day, her heartburn day, the day-she-agrees-to-nothing day. Earlier in church, she very nearly smiled, mind you, when Mr Moray leaned across the pews to whisper in her ear.

‘Fresh as a fruit salad, if I may say so, Mrs Boyd’, Elizabeth swears she heard him say. Although now, with the trials of Daddy’s driving and the task of lunch ahead, Mummy has more the pinched and waxen look of something over-ripe.

           Robert returns, pink-eared and damp, loaded up with their magazines and papers, luxuriously thick, one trouser pocket bulging with butter mints for Nana.

Ach, no. On the Sabbath day, Nana blushes, as he passes the white paper bag between the seats.

Best thing since sliced bread, says Daddy, tapping the smooth brown trim of the steering wheel as he sets the engine purring. Mummy closes her eyes. She has heard more than enough about the virtues the Ford Cortina already. While Robert these days seems strangely interested in what Daddy has to say about advanced suspension technology, the economy of a 1.3 litre engine.

Susan’s sister will be having driving lessons as soon as she turns seventeen! Elizabeth  chips in. But Robert has got in first with a clever question about fuel injection.

Elizabeth breathes in the smell of leatherette, feels the lurch of hunger in her belly. That and the injustice of being ignored, the murky green colour of shame. She shifts her feet on the gear hump and tries to think about later, after lunch, when the chewing is over, when Robert has polished off the meat and gravy and she has scraped the last of the jelly.

Why not play a little of the old euphonium for us, lad? Daddy will say, leaning forward in his chair.

Slowly, Robert will rise from the table to open out his music stand and steady his book of tunes. Mummy will serve coffee for the grown-ups from the long silver pot, as he lift out the great brass beast from its leathery tomb, dazzling the room. Cream will be poured, and Nana Boyd will wrap her tiny mouth around a shortbread finger, and with one mournful blast Robert will let a dreary melody unfold.

It used to have Elizabeth off her chair and marching on her toes, imagining the silver trumpet of her own that she planned to have one day. Highlight of the week, it used to be. That and the chance of a board game later by the fire. Though Robert seems far more interested in his book of Scottish Kings these days. That and the torn-out pictures of lady parts that he keeps inside the covers.

The traffic is crawling now, brick by brick, along the back of the old infirmary where, on brighter days, patients come like ghosts to the window to wave at the Sunday traffic. It makes Elizabeth think of needles and snapped bones, though at least today the windows are just empty black squares so she need not look away. At this very moment, motherless Susan will be at home helping Daphne with the lunch. Daphne, her great bosomy sister, who has started her time of the month and has a vanity table in her bedroom and an entire wall covered in pull-out posters of boys with feather cuts and dreamy smiles.

They reach the Maryhill Parade at last. Daddy takes a left, reverses elegantly into their driveway, and already Robert is unfastening his seat belt and pressing the umbrella and papers to his chest.

‘I bet you anything Robert’s got something extra from the kiosk,’ blurts Elizabeth, blissfully giddy at horror of her words as they drop out of her mouth. ‘Another of those magazines he likes, you know, with pictures of naked ladies inside.’

Not a sound from the women in the back, not even a wince, as Daddy wrenches up the handbrake. And already Robert is charging across the crazy paving, his great ears burning red.

Will we not play a game of Boggle later, Robert? calls Elizabeth up the pathway.