The Playground (22 page)

The tree house was on fire.

‘Oh God, Ben! Billy!' I shouted as I ran towards them.

They had both got down the ladder; Billy was yelling ‘Stop, drop, roll. Go on do it. I seen it on TV!' Ben was beside him, utterly silent and still, his little arms outstretched, his white hair illuminated by the flames climbing his legs. He was too shocked to move. Before I could reach them, Billy shoved Ben, the flames dying as he hit the ground and rolled over.

‘Mama!'

‘Stay away, Addie. I mean it! Billy, get Sophie!'

Billy ran, Sumita rang 999. I lifted Ben and carried him across the path, away from the burning timber falling from the tree house behind us. He was quiet in my arms; he didn't cry or scream as I lay him on the grass. His Superman costume was charred and had stuck to him on both legs from the knee down.

Now everyone around us was shouting, running, coughing through smoke in the darkness. Donal and Dylan doused what remained of the tree house with saucepans full of cold water. ‘What's after happening? Ah, Lord, you poor little man!' Belinda got down beside us and poured a bottle of water over his legs, her bulbs for Addie upturned on the grass beside where she knelt. ‘I'm going to try to cool you down, honey.'

‘Jesus Christ!' Sophie screamed, trembling, sobbing, when she saw what had happened to her son. ‘My poor, poor baby.' She sat on the ground, nestled his head in her lap and rubbed her hand across his forehead again and again.

Sumita tried to provide the ambulance despatch with directions to the playground and to answer question after question about Ben; twice she'd had to tell them to hold on so that she could ask Sophie herself. ‘Christ, I don't know. Why can't they just hurry up!' Sophie
said, still rubbing her son's forehead. I imagined its halting progress along the narrow approach road into Bray, cars mounting the pavement to let it through. Joy was standing by the gate ready to flag it down. Everyone wanted to shine in the crisis, wanted to be the one who acted quickly, thought quickly, who was logical and helpful, the one who saved the day. I seemed to be doing nothing logical or helpful that night – I wasn't logical or helpful by nature, however much I tried to be – and all my suggestions were nodded at but largely ignored. I had my child in my arms and that at least gave me a role and an excuse of sorts. She had become silent and angelic, the way kids do when they aren't the one injured or in trouble. Sumita asked Dylan to take Rashi home and to put on a cartoon. Addie just gripped me harder when he asked if she would like to go too.

Joy was like an air traffic controller, doing huge two-armed waves as the ambulance approached, the sound of its siren both alarming and a relief. Mr Norman told everyone to ‘stand back' and ‘make room' as they came into the park, not that anyone was in their way. They came towards us, a strange, torch-lit procession, the paramedics in their bottle-green uniforms, yellow reflective jackets, regulation boots, Mr Norman earnestly leading the way. Belinda and I got to our feet simultaneously as they approached and we both began to explain what had happened when they asked for information. ‘Could just one person answer, please?' they said. I stopped talking and let Belinda continue, irritated by her dominance, especially as she hadn't even witnessed the event.

‘He doesn't seem to be in pain, isn't that a good sign?' Sophie asked, all snotty and shaking as one of them cut away what was left of Ben's polyester costume. The skin on his legs looked leathery and translucent white; it smelt like bacon in a frying pan.

‘No pain's not a good sign, love, it means there's probably some
nerve damage because the burns are so deep and these are flame burns – the worst type. Can you tell me what happened?'

‘I've no idea; I was at home. You were minding Ben, Eve. Can you tell him? It must have been one of those lanterns.'

‘We were playing Hide and Seek,' I said, watching as they applied water gel to the burns. ‘He was absolutely fine and—' I looked down at Sophie, tried to explain, but she'd turned her face away.

I sought out Sumita for support. ‘I'm sorry, Eve, I didn't see anything. I was hiding behind the slide with Rashi,' she said, looking at me apologetically.

‘He was in the tree house. I got him out and told him to do the stop drop and roll thing that I seen on TV.' Billy said.

‘That was pretty brave, Billy, what you did.' Juliette said, arms wrapped around herself with fright and cold.

I waited for him to tell the full story, to tell everyone – his mother, the paramedics, Sophie – the truth. But he said nothing else. He looked down at the ground, embarrassed but proud, dug his foot into the soil.

*

We stood at the gates of the playground dazed by the seriousness of a real-life ambulance: the startling white of its interior, the whirring flash of its beacon, the primary yellow of the handles, the easy-wipe bed. Ben was carried on in the arms of one of the paramedics, Sophie by his side gripping him with her hand, chewing hard on the thumbnail of the other, her cardigan hanging off her. Joy climbed in behind them, her hands heavy on Sophie's shoulders.

‘I want to stay with Mama! Mama, wait!' Addie screamed, as I reversed out the gate. Belinda held and tried to shush her.

‘Sweetheart, I have to go to the hospital,' I said, through the rolled-down window. ‘Be good.'

‘How about I be Doctor McStuffins? That's why because I have my new set. Please, Mama?'

‘No, just stop it now, Addie! Sorry, Belinda, you've got my keys?'

‘Go on, go on, we'll be fine. Now, you have to help me sort out these bulbs,' she said, gripping the soil-covered polystyrene and turning to bring her indoors.

It was the paramedics who said I should follow them in, so Sophie could get a lift home with me ‘to get supplies, the child's favourite toy, that sort of thing'. I couldn't check with Sophie, she was already in the ambulance. I told him I'd go, I didn't know what else to do.

I drove behind them at speed, not at all confident of finding the hospital myself, the siren terrifying in its volume and proximity. I wasn't sober enough to be driving. I tried to concentrate on the traffic but my mind was filled with images of flames, the tattered remains of the Superman cape, Ben's brave little face in his Hallowe'en costume.

We careered over ambulance ramps down to the children's entrance, outside which parents were smoking, butts all over the ground. Disney characters beamed down at us, Tigger, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, as we rushed along brown-painted corridors, past limp Hallowe'en decorations, Virgin Marys, a single wheelchair, framed photographs of children who hadn't made it.

I stood outside their cubicle in A&E and listened to the doctor trying to talk to Sophie over Ben's screams. He was now alert, terrified, clinging to his mother. ‘We have to replace fluid to stop these getting infected. You're all right, you poor little man, lots of big, deep breaths for me now,' and then to Sophie ‘we'll get the play specialist down to distract him once he's been assessed.'

He was admitted to the burns unit, put on an intravenous morphine drip and fluid. His little legs were cleaned and bandaged and when Joy suggested I leave them to it, he was heavily sedated and sleeping.

It was as I sat at a wobbly-legged table in the cafe, grease in the air, the TV just below audible, waiting for more news that I understood two new things. Joy and Sophie were now sharing a home – the creative family she'd described had been Sophie's – and both of them were blaming me, not Billy, for Ben's accident.

‘I have all the Superman stuff, so why am I not Superman?' It was one of the saddest things I'd ever heard.

‘Oh, it didn't work out for you? That's such a shame,' said Shauna, proprietor of the loveliest and most expensive children's clothes shop in Dublin, once so full of women you could smell the oestrogen. Today she was having a closing-down sale. She could no longer afford the rent and mothers couldn't afford her clothes any more. I handed her back the pink chiffon tutu, still in its wrapper. All I needed to do was get my refund and leave.

The last time I was in this shop, a week earlier, Shauna had shadowed me round the room, picking up and refolding clothes as she kept a subtle eye on me. I'd known as soon I'd opened the chiming door that I shouldn't have been there and had only lingered out of a mixture of politeness and embarrassment.

‘That one also comes in pink gingham,' she'd said in her Californian drawl.

And ‘Isn't it just adorable?' when I'd picked up the tutu.

‘Don't you think every little girl should have one? India wears hers all the time, don't you, baby?' she'd said, gliding over to where her child was standing, picking her nose, by the till.

I had somehow been seduced by her, by Bing Crosby on the stereo, by the scent of vanilla in the air, by the bobble hats and star-spangled tights hanging off pegs across the frosted windows. I'd bought the tutu and a heart-shaped decoration for the tree. But the tutu alone
cost one hundred Euro and Addie had nothing to wear with it and if I returned it I might have enough money to replace the Christmas tree which I'd bought two weeks too early and was now dry as a crisp and drooping. I also wanted to buy a gift for Ben.

He had received third-degree burns to the front of both legs from the knee down. Forty-eight hours after the accident he'd had to undergo a skin graft. They'd taken some skin from his back – the donor site, as they'd referred to it – to replace what had burnt off in the fire. It would take at least two years for the scarring to heal.

I hadn't seen Sophie since the accident; she had been living in the hospital, sleeping on a mattress beside Ben's bed. And I'd only seen the backs of Joy and Irenka in fleeces and trainers power-walking their way up to Bray Head. I'd heard about Ben from Belinda, who couldn't avoid me at the library.

‘He has a tube down his nose into his tummy and splints behind his knees at night to keep his legs straight, the poor little lad,' she told me on our shift the other evening.

‘When do you think he'll be coming home?' I asked, too afraid to question whether she also felt I was culpable.

‘Maybe around Christmas, but they'll only let him out when the dressing doesn't hurt too much – his mam will have to change it for him every four days after that. Lord knows, I don't often get a chance to say it but I'm very proud of Billy, he probably saved that child's life.'

Some of the children in Addie's class had asked if her mother had hurt Ben. She hadn't wanted to go in one day and had cried when I'd tried to leave. I promised her I'd wave from the window when I got outside, like we'd done in the early days. And somehow in the minute-long journey between her classroom and outdoors I'd forgotten my promise to her. She had stood by that window waiting
to wave and blow kisses, instead she saw her mother hurry by without so much as a glance. And she had stayed there, patient and hopeful, waiting for me to come back until her teacher had led her away. ‘Hello, head, is there anybody even in there?' she'd said when I'd collected her. Then I'd shouted at her for not eating her lunch before realising that the roll I'd given her was covered in mould.

*

Shauna put the tutu back on its hanger, then stood at the till, leaning on one hip, the fingers of her ringed hands touching the material, as she waited for me to find the receipt.

‘Such a shame. It's
so
darling.'

‘I know. It is. If only it had been fifty Euro cheaper. Oh, sorry, and can I take this as well?' I handed her the snow globe I'd chosen for Ben: three silhouetted children, one on a sleigh, one pulling, one running behind, playing in a wintery park.

I watched her wrap it in tissue. Joe loved snow globes, knick-knacks, dust collectors of any sort. During the months he'd had no work he'd come home with tat – ornaments, carved animals, religious iconography – from charity shops on the high street and present them to me, always adding how little they cost to justify the purchase. One Christmas, he decorated the tree with redundant surgical implements from the Royal College of Surgeons; another year he covered it with gollywogs – I'd take them down whenever we had visitors; Joe would put them straight back up. Now he would be spending Christmas in Amsterdam. We'd been there together once, in the early days and I'd loved it: the houses, all squished together and higgledy-piggledy set, the mist over the canals, people riding back and forth over bridges on upright bikes; it was like the lid of an old-fashioned biscuit tin. I stopped myself from imagining him there with someone else but I knew I didn't want to be there with him
either; Addie and I would have Christmas together and I would make it special for her.

‘Sorry,' I said, scrabbling around my bag, trying to find the receipt. ‘I know it's in here somewhere.' I emptied everything out onto the counter top.

‘Please. Take your time. And
relax
a little. You're upsetting India's energy.'

I glanced up to see if she was being serious to find her taking a bottle of Bach's Herbal Remedy from her shirt pocket. She opened her mouth, put a few drops on her tongue, then turned to her daughter, who stuck her own tongue out, while her mother administered the potion.

‘Shall I move away from the desk?' I said, joking.

‘You know what? Would you mind?'

I apologised, blushed. Fumbled about again for the wretched receipt.

‘You know you're better than you used to be, before you were pregnant you weren't here at all.'

‘Really? Where was I? What do you mean?'

‘I'm just saying that you could sure do with some healing. I could do it now, if you have twenty minutes?'

‘God, no not really, my mother's minding my little girl and she's going to a carol concert at five.' We checked our watches simultaneously.

‘Five? You have oodles of time. Colette? Can you watch things here for me for five minutes?' Colette appeared from the store room – a skinny girl in black-and-green leggings that reminded me of Rumpelstiltskin.

‘I'm not sure about this. What does it involve?'

And even as I was saying these words she was leading me by the
hand into the white picket-fenced play area. We sat opposite one another on tiny children's chairs. She rested her hands on my knees, told me to close my eyes.

I did what she asked. I closed my eyes; tried hard to concentrate. What the hell was I doing? How would I get out of this? I'd been suckered by yet another mad American and now I was trapped.

I was aware of movement around me; of customers entering and leaving the shop. I wanted to look up. ‘Keep them closed,' she whispered, as if she knew just what I was thinking.

And there we sat together, Shauna's hands on my knees, in silence, for several minutes. Nothing was happening. When I could no longer resist, I opened my left eye, just a fraction, and saw her face. It was screwed up, her eyes squeezed tight with concentration, as though she were trying to pass a difficult bowel movement. I wondered if it was all a joke, if at any moment she was going to jump up, howling, ‘God, you Irish are so damned gullible.'

I closed my eyes. I saw Ben's face in the window of the tree house, his unheard screams. I tried to think of other things. I thought of Nathan. I'd received a personalised Christmas card from him in the post that morning. It was like something out of
Hello!
. Him in a navy sweater and jeans, holding a huge Christmas wreath over his shoulder, his hand solidly around the waist of his Spanish-looking wife (swept-back hair and huge gold earrings, big boobs beneath a festive red sweater – you get the picture). Each of them had one hand on the shoulders of their two little girls, who were standing in front of them in satin dresses and tights and black patent shoes, grinning with missing teeth.
Merry Christmas from all the Lyons!
it said. I saw Ben's little face again, the flames around him. Billy's face lit up by the lighter under his chin outside the window of our flat that night, Billy helping to clean up the lighters, Billy the hero, Billy pushing Ben.

‘I know, it's
too
cute, isn't it?' Colette was talking to a customer behind me.

‘I love it. I mean it's like an antique. And it's such a bargain at fifty per cent off.'

The tutu. They were talking about Addie's tutu. They were wrapping Addie's tutu in pink tissue.

I heard the ting of the till.

‘Goodbye, happy Christmas.'

Why hadn't she told me it was fifty per cent off? I could have bought it. It could have been Addie's. Jesus, how long did I have to fucking sit here? When was I meant to start feeling something? This was ridiculous. I was full of rage.

‘I'm sensing a lot of rage,' Shauna said. I opened my eyes to find hers wide open too, staring at me with intensity. She looked extremely concerned. ‘I'm sensing vast amounts of rage deep down inside of you.'

‘Really?'

‘I dunno, I think you were about seven. You were looking for your parents' attention but they weren't listening? And you needed someone to listen.
Listen to me!
You were shouting but no one heard you. You need to take charge of it. Your little girl needs her mother's attention. She needs you to get rid of some of that rage.'