Tallis House

Summer had always seemed to me to be without a doubt the best time of year. The cold and darkness of winter always carried with it a creeping depression, that I couldn’t shake off, well into the spring. It was only when the sun’s rays became powerful enough to warm, and not just brighten, that I finally acquired the good humour that a child was supposed to have. That is, until one summer, many years ago now, when the hot glare of the sun became a creeping accusation, rather than the purifying glow we had once known it to be. Since then the word ‘summer’ has tasted different on my tongue; synonymous with a different vocabulary than the picture-book dictionary it once comprised of. Most of the summer was spent in the same, delicious monotony I had grown used to through all my childhood holidays. Summer was spent with the family. There were six of us – my father, his new wife and former secretary Serena, and four children.  I, John, was the eldest. Mary and Elsa, the twins, were only a year younger than me. Peter, the youngest, was only really half one of us. Our mother had died when the twins were born, so Peter’s mother was Serena.  This meant there was a long gap between the twins’ birth and Peter’s. By the time Peter was born, a small pink smudge smothered in a white towel far too large for him (the nurses had nothing else; he was so tiny and premature he drowned in anything they put him in), I was 6 and the twins were both five. Peter never seemed, from that point onward, to acquire any features – he remained a pink smudge, glued to the lap of his mother where I first saw him, for quite some time afterwards. 

            ‘Summer’, for the Brooker family, meant Tallis House. I don’t know if we owned it, or merely, out of habit, rented it every year (for we never returned there after that summer, and I never dared mention it in my father’s presence) but every holiday, through all of August, the six of us would bungle into my father’s car and drive to the coast. Tallis House was a tall, imposing, red-brick structure. Father would sit everyday inside the drawing room in a light linen suit, flipping through the Telegraph with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Serena pottered about the kitchen, producing pies and cakes and salads on which we children gorged ourselves on all hours of the day. I never quite warmed to Serena; though the twins eventually began calling her mother, I stood my ground, politely, but coldly, sticking firmly to the name ‘Serena’, or even, if I was particularly annoyed, Miss Smith. I would pretend this slip (for her real name, of course, was Mrs Brooker), was an honest accident, force of habit. But we all knew I had never known Serena when she was my father’s secretary and not my so-called mother. 

The house itself was, to my mind, cold and gloomy. If we fought through a thicket of holly and nettles, clambered down a twenty-metre stretch where the cliff face had crumbled so that it formed a kind of path downwards, we reached the coast. This was our own, private patch of beach. Looking back, it was tiny, and distinctly unimpressive. It was a small pebble beach only about five metres wide. The water it led to was so deep and so cold we had been absolutely forbidden from entering it, and, had we ever come back with even the tiniest droplet of water upon us, revealing we’d entered the water, we knew we would never be allowed to return to it again. It was not the beach itself, however, but the journey to it, that for us held the appeal. Every morning, before either father or Serena had arisen, the twins and I would head out, basket of buns in tow (Serena’s baking was the only reason I made any effort to tolerate her) and begin our expedition towards the beach. Each of us would grab a large stick and beat our way through the thicket which encircled the house like a kind of protective moat. 

But it was the cliff where all the real danger lay, and it was in this we relished most. We would tie the basket to a thick rope which was wrapped loosely round a tree and slowly winch it down until it rested a couple of metres above the water, where one of us would wade in to collect it. To a stranger, it looked as if there was no way down the cliffs, and the prospect would have seemed entirely undesirable anyway; peering over the edge all that could be seen were the muddy, restless waters murmuring softly to themselves about twenty metres below. However, behind one of the great patches of thicket which lined parts of the cliff face a part of it had caved in, forming a kind of rocky slope onto the patch of land we called our beach. On either side the cliffs stood tall and protective round it and in front of us stretched the sea, a broad expanse which, to our twelve-year-old selves, seemed an endless expanse. We would spend the day there, munching on buns and building rough-looking sandcastles with the mulch that surrounded us. Those days were all the same, glazed over with the same searing heat and golden light. As the sun set, turning the brown sea a dark, glowing amber, we’d return, clambering back over the pile of rocks which led to ground-level twenty metres above us. 

            Peter never joined us on these journeys. For a long time, he was too sickly, unable to beat bushes with sticks, or use his frail, scrawny limbs to pull himself up across the rocks. Serena kept him close, sitting him in a chair in the kitchen while she baked all day and putting him to bed for long naps after she had given him his soup. Peter was not allowed to eat the buns Serena made, or the ginger beer she always gave us to have with them. Peter was too weak, she said. He needed his vitamins. I don’t suppose the rest of us really cared – it left us with more than we could ever eat. We were doused in a warm sticky heaven from the end of July until the start of September and none of us ever really minded that Peter couldn’t share in our pleasure. That is until that particularly fateful summer. I was twelve, the twins were eleven. Peter was only six. That year, the doctors had tried something new with him – perhaps it was physiotherapy, or some new medication. Serena had told us proudly many times at the dinner table that whole year, but I had never really listened. By summertime, Peter could walk without tiring himself out, eat buns, and was even nearly the size of a normal boy.

            It was in the car journey on the way to Tallis House, I recall, Peter squashed into her lap on the front seat as usual (though this was now a significantly more impressive feat, given that he had nearly doubled in size) that Serena turned to the three of us in the back and said:

“Perhaps you can take Peter along to the beach one of these days?”

By the look of my father’s face in the mirror I was given to understand that that the answer ‘no’ was not an option. I glanced at Mary and Elsa. They looked dour-faced and far from delighted about the prospect. 

“Yes” we all mumbled in a surly union, giving each other glum looks.

By the end of the car journey, however, Elsa and Mary were already casting Peter in a dozen different potential roles for the games we always played once we landed on shore. I was the only one who remained concerned about the impact this might have on our summer. Serena kept Peter with her the first few days of the holiday, so we had the beach to ourselves. I don’t think he wanted to go. Perhaps he had noticed the little hints I gave him; the pointed glances when Serena’s back was turned, the exaggerations I made about the length of the journey, the stories I told him about how boring it all was. 

            On the final, full day of our holiday, the sun came out in full force, drenching even the gloomiest corners of the house in its golden light. Mary, Elsa and I came tumbling down the stairs, ready to grab our hats and breakfast and scurry out into the thicket, which had been transformed into a sweltering jungle in the summer heat. Rather than an empty kitchen, we were greeted by the rest of the family, all tucking into Serena’s baking. 

“Hottest day of the year today” father informed us, glancing over the top of his newspaper, on which large photos of the previous day’s crowded beaches had been printed. “Suncream on kids!”

Grudgingly, Mary and Elsa slathered themselves with the sticky white cream, then handed the bottle to me. I made a pantomime of putting it on so father wouldn’t complain, careful to demonstrate my compliance with my father’s whims. Just as I was shoving into the hamper, as per my father’s instructions, Serena said:

“Pass it to me” and to my astonishment, began slathering Peter with it. Peter was so sun-starved he looked anaemic; I had a vague idea he’d simply evaporate in the sun – I had never so much as seen him stick an arm experimentally out the window. 

“Peter’s going outside?” I asked.

“Yes” She replied. “With you, like we talked about.”

I looked to Mary and Elsa misgivings returned but no such luck; they seemed preoccupied with their own preparations for the trip and didn’t seem too concerned by the idea of dragging Peter along. 

“Peter’s your responsibility John, as you’re the eldest” Serena said, looking at me seriously now. “I want you to make sure he gets through the thicket and over cliffside without trouble.”

She said something else, about Peter’s legs still being somewhat weak, but already I wasn’t listening. 

            It wasn’t the journey through the thicket that was the problem. Peter complained that I kept letting the nettles, which I was clearing with the aid of a large stick, hit him as he passed behind me. I screened out these complaints, fixing him with a hard stare if they become too persistent.

“I don’t know why you got Serena to make us let you come if you’re going to keep complaining,” I told him, looking over my shoulder as he tried to shake off a bee that was buzzing round his head. 

“I didn’t!” He protested, looking up at me miserably (his efforts had been rewarded with a large bee sting on the end of his nose), “she told me I had to spend more time with my siblings.”

I trailed off through the last bit of the thicket, catching up with Mary and Elsa who had already begun their journey through the rocky obstacle course. The cliff wasn’t as hard as it looked – as long as you used your common sense, and stuck to the bigger boulders, the trip down was pretty easy. Mary, Elsa and I knew the route by heart, tripping down it in mere minutes as if we were dancing. I had already clambered over the first few mossy boulders, careful not to slip on the morning dew, when I heard Peter, peering gingerly over the top yell down to me.

“John! How do I get down? I need help!”

“You use your legs, Peter!” I replied huffily. “I can’t walk down for you, can I? You’re just going to have to figure it out yourself”

I caught up to Elsa and Mary, who were carefully arranging our buckets and spades in the sand. We pondered where best to set up the sandcastle, settling eventually on a patch in the corner which was still catching the early morning sunlight, despite the shade of the cliffs. Suddenly, there was a yelp, and Elsa pointed upwards with a gasp, wide-eyed. I looked up to see that Peter, in his eagerness to avoid the slippery moss-covered dew, had clambered onto one of the leftmost boulders, below which was a steep drop. 

“You have to go right! Jump onto the rock on the right!”

Peter looked uncertainly to his right, at the outcrop which was his only chance at making it down to the shore. There was a gap between the two rocks; he would have to jump to reach the other one.

“It’s too far John, I can’t do it. My legs aren’t strong enough. You need to come up and help me.” He whimpered, giving me a simpering look. 

“You’ll be fine, Peter. Stop whining – just jump!” 

Peter straightened up, digging his nails into the moss on the cliff face beside him. He glanced doubtfully at the rock, then at me. I gave an encouraging nod. Trembling a little, Peter bent his knees and made a valiant leap towards the rock jutting out towards him. It wasn’t far enough. His feet scraped against the rock’s edge, but he didn’t manage to grip properly onto its surface. Mary gasped with horror as he slipped into the gap between the two boulders, now gripping on only with his hands. He was suspended, almost as if in mid-air over the waves beneath. The oppressive heat had made everyone sweaty, and I could see that his fingers would not hold out much longer as they grew slippery under the heat of the sun. I scrambled for the cliff, leaping onto the rocks at the base. He was still a good fifteen metres above me.

“Hold tight, Peter, I’m coming to get you! Just don’t let go”

I wasn’t even halfway up when it happened. The chalky bit of rock Peter’s hands were clutching onto rejected his grip, crumbling in his fingers. With a small gasp of surprise, Peter fell, a small pink smudge, into the lapping waves beneath him. Within seconds, it was as if he had never been there; his tiny burnt face melted into the deep blue waters with only the faintest of murmurs.

            Father strode out the door and straight towards the seafront almost the moment he saw the three of us return without him. It was Serena who demanded the explanations. I don’t remember what me and the twins told her exactly; I only remember the creeping sense of guilt as I repeatedly assured her I had done everything to keep Peter safe. The twins drew back from the questions, but though they had not been given the responsibility for Peter which would weigh upon me for the rest of my life, I think, like mine, their impression of summer is irreparably altered. Father returned late that evening, accompanied by two local sailors. They had not found the body. We returned home the next day, sitting silent in the car, not minding the heat or the mosquitos that buzzed around us. 

Summer rolled around again the next year, ostensibly the same as it had always been. We did not go back to Tallis House, but the warmth and long evenings returned like a promise. Yet though Mary, Elsa and I played together, just the three of us, like we always had, we could not shake the feeling that something was missing.