Uncle B in PB

(Here's another piece from Port Brokeferry. Remember that Rose is here in PB to recover from some sort of 'breakdown' and that she is a writer trying to get back to writing, and she has been to PB before, as a child with her sister Carrie and her mother and a mysterious other that she knows only as Uncle B.)

INVENTING UNCLE B

The back door was open and Rose was already writing in her notebook. On the table in front of her and propped up against an empty sugar bowl, just where she could see it, was the photograph her sister had sent her, the one with ‘Uncle B’ written on the back but the man himself cut from the picture.

He was neither old nor young. Neither tall, nor short. But to the girls he filled a space as big as any hole can be. He was all the father they knew so that they did not understand why they called him Uncle B.

B for Brian or Bob or Ben.

And Uncle B loved the woman who was their mother, said he did over and over, so much that she protested sometimes, her protests all bright-eyes and smiles. He wrote it in the flat wet sand and the frothing sea made of it a secret again when it came in and washed clean what he’d written.

Their mother’s name was Kate and, laughing like it was a joke, ‘Kiss me Kate’ he whispered to her, and Uncle B whispering was never so quiet that they didn’t hear and his kisses never so concealed that they were not seen by the two girls. And all their sunshine days were measured out in those kisses, and in the dark of storybook nights they compared notes on the kisses that Uncle B gave, tasting of ice-cream sometimes and other times of mint or cigarette smoke or beer. The ice-cream kisses were the best.

Rose drank from her cup and looked out at the day. Brighter today than yesterday and all the clouds chased from the sky. She felt lighter somehow, like it was doing her good being back in Port Brokeferry. And she was writing again. That was something. She set her cup down and returned to her notebook.

B for badger or bull or bear.

And Uncle B loved them, too. I love you Rosemary, he said, and I love you Caroline. And he carried them on his shoulders, taking turns, seeing the world from the highest high, and his hands holding their legs kept them safe. Like riding an elephant, they said, afterwards, and his shoulders rolling and their hands wrapped about his head like they’d made a turban out of their fingers.

And he built castles out of sand with sea-shells for windows and a cigarette packet for a door. And he invented a prince and a princess for the castle he’d made and a whole kingdom of frog-legged courtiers and maids-a-milking and a witch with a black sea-weed dress.

And Uncle B filled their heads with happy-ever-afters, and the summer seemed neverending and all their tomorrows promised to be the same as today.

Rose could not see where this was going. Something of the story she knew, for it came from her own head, and something mixed with memory is what it was, this Uncle B and his one-swallow summer. But they’d never talked about why he left, not Carrie or Rose or her mother.

Came a day that was not expected, a day when the sun dipped behind a cloud and the sky was bruised and the wind whipped up the sand on their beach. The mother and her girls still smiled for the camera – smiled only in black and white – and a man called Uncle B crept out of the picture, out of all their pictures.

They packed away their buckets and spades, the gingham cloth they’d spread on the sand, and the swim suits with matching sun-hats. They returned the shells to the sea, and walked barefoot up the sand one last time. There’s a picture of them then, just the three of them, and they are wearing coats and the street is wet and it is not Port Brokeferry anymore. On the back of the picture there is writing in pencil worn as thin as smoke. It says ‘And the sunny time was over’, and Uncle B was forgotten, like he had never been.

Rosemary asked her mother once, or maybe she thought she did, and she asked where he had gone and why, and her mother said that B was for brute and beast and bastard. And her mother swearing was the last word on the matter.

'B is for brute and beast and bastard,' Rose said out loud, and she looked again at the picture that Carrie had sent, at the man's hand reaching into the photograph and the grey shadow laid on her mother's cheek. 'Bastard,' Rose said again.