Matt

2009

“Crap!” Matt looked round at his leg to see what was causing the pain. “What the…?” he stared for a full second at his predicament. His right hand was pushing on the shower room door whilst his right leg was still only half in. How could he be doing that? Had coordination entirely abandoned him? He managed to get his hand to let go of the door then allowed himself to vocalize a yelp of pain and rubbed his ankle fiercely. “Well they do say that self-harming is on the increase among teenagers.” He chuckled at his own wit, then looked across to the bathroom mirror and said, “Duh!” to his misted reflection.

Matt ripped his kit off and kicked it into touch in the far corner then stood under the shower rose, turned the taps full on and gasped at the rain of cold then relaxed into its gradual shift toward warmth. His last day of school before Christmas had been full on. Early morning swimming followed by a full morning of lessons – French, English, Biology – before the boys were finally allowed half a day of pre-Christmas “fun” in the form of a surprise organised by the teachers. “Fun” today had turned out to be the latest Bond movie screened in the main hall, with the whole school sitting on the floor. Constant banter, jostling and ribaldry interspersed with regular wolf whistles aimed at the hot Bond girl, had resulted in very little of the film being audible. Matt didn’t mind really, he just relaxed his tall frame against the back wall of the hall and chatted with a surfing buddy.

After school he’d had rugby training – their coach didn’t believe in holidays – and had then trudged home along the sand-strewn beach road, watching his breath materialize in the frosty air of a raw-edged dusk. So now, hot shower then eat, eat, eat, then some crap telly, then bed with music plugged into his ears. Oh and he’d probably have to help Mum tidy the house. 

The two of them had lived in happy harmony together since Dad died twelve years ago in a stupid, pointless car crash. Aged only just three at the time, Matt had dim memories of a tall, dark, smiling man, but reckoned he could just have got that image from photos. The warm fuzzy feeling edged with loneliness he got when he thought of Dad though, that was real.

Still, he and Mum had a great life really, in a big old house on the edge of a seaside village on the south coast of Suffolk. She wrote mushy romantic novels that sold in millions and in dozens of languages. These she called their bread and butter (although they provided for a lot more besides these days). On the quiet she wrote much more interesting (to Matt anyway) sci-fi stories. He couldn’t think where her ideas sprang from; her life was filled with growing veggies and walking the dogs on the beach as far as he was aware. She must have a whacky imagination.

Every Christmas they invited various bunches of relatives to share their home and beach life for a few days. Matt’s Grandad had been the youngest of four siblings and five double-cousins, who had all kind of grown up together in Edinburgh during the war and who had all gone on to have big broods of children. So although Matt was an only kid, he got to meet up with a host of cousins and second cousins and cousins once removed. There were so many of them that he often got muddled about who was who, but it didn’t really matter.

This Christmas Mum had persuaded her brother Jerry to bring his chaos of children (Matt liked to think up new collective nouns for things and ‘chaos’ for ‘children’ struck him as especially fitting) down from Edinburgh. Jerry and Marie had split up three months ago. Nobody in the ‘Greater Family Wisdom’ (or the GFW as Matt and his Mum referred to their extended family) seemed quite sure why, but Marie had simply walked out one day with, in Jerry’s estimation, no forewarning at all. Matt suspected that the whole sorry tale might come tumbling out over Christmas, but as he’d have five younger boy cousins to keep entertained whilst also trying to keep them from drowning, Mum would bear the brunt of the tears n’ tell sessions. She had broad shoulders, she’d cope. And various details would no doubt find their way into next year’s novel.

This last thought reminded Matt of the nudibranch he’d just been studying in Biology. Glaucus atlanticus*, or the Blue dragon, was a weird little mollusc. With his eyes closed against the foam of shampoo he visualized these spiky little blue and silver animals floating upside down on the surface of the world’s oceans. The amazing thing about them was that they preyed upon really poisonous things like Portuguese Men o’ War and ate them and then stored and concentrated the poisons in their own bodies for use as defence. Neat. As school subjects went, Biology was Matt’s clear favourite and anything to do with the ocean was a double whammy. Of course overall he’d rather be out on the beach than in school – surfing, boating, swimming or fishing – he didn’t really mind what he was doing as long as it involved the sea.

Soapy water sluiced down Matt’s body. He sashayed to and fro under the deluge provided by the foot-wide shower rose until the water finally ran clear and suddenly also switched to freezing. Damn! The hot had run out. That meant that Mum must be home and had had a shower before him…. hence the steamed mirror….which meant she’d be upstairs cooking by now. Yippeedeedooda! Matt leapt from the shower, whipped a towel round his waist and took the stairs three at a time.

When Hilda had inherited the old home of her in-laws ten years ago she had only made one change, but it had been fairly comprehensive. She’d made the upstairs into the downstairs and the downstairs into the upstairs. It was a lovely old house, but why live downstairs with a view of the sand dunes and the local beach road and sleep upstairs, shutting one’s eyes to a stunning view over the ocean? So Hilda had knocked out the wall between the two upstairs front bedrooms and created a huge kitchen. With no money to hand at the time, this had involved getting a friend to install the essential plumbing then searching Suffolk’s auction rooms for old kitchen dressers, tables, chairs and sofas. The result was a higgledy piggledy of mismatched furnishings and not a kitchen unit in sight. Hilda adored it. 

She was also wont to call it, with a grin, her fitness room, because it was so huge and so inefficiently planned (or unplanned really) that she reckoned she walked the equivalent of a marathon each day, just getting from the sink to the cooker to the fridge to the table. A few years back Matt had bought her a pair of roller skates for Christmas. Inspired! For that whole year she had skated around the kitchen until one stormy day a fulmar had flown into the left hand window just as Hilda whizzed past it. She was so surprised that she forgot to take the final turn and slammed straight into the wall instead. Since then, and the hospitalization that followed, the skates had been hung up on the wall to gather dust.

The two back bedrooms and bathroom were left in their antiquated state and have become known, over the years, as the guest wing, though they are neither grand nor out on a wing. Downstairs, Hilda took over the old formal drawing room as her bedroom and Matt slept in what had been his Grandparents’ “den” – where they had lived out their days watching telly, nattering, eating and snoozing in front of the log fire. He loved this room, it was cozy. 

The dogs had taken over the old back kitchen and from there could run to and fro into the garden. In all but the worst of weathers Hilda left the back door propped open with the boot scraper. She figured that any burglars, should they make it past three miniature but ferocious sausage dogs and two huge but secretly soppy otter-hounds, would be mightily disappointed at the lack of anything of monetary value in the house. All Hilda and Matt’s belongings were old and tatty.

The other room at the back of the house downstairs had originally been a creamery. It was hard to imagine now, but Grandma used to keep a Jersey cow in the back garden and use the copious production of milk to make butter, cheese, yoghurt and of course just as milk. In the good old days before Health and Safety Regulations it had been quite acceptable to make such things in one’s back room and sell them out of the front porch. Once a year the cow was put to a local bull and subsequently produced a darling little calf who would be loved to bits by all, but be named T-bone or Gravy or Sausage, just so that no one forgot his or her eventual destiny.

Now the creamery was the shower room. Already tiled from floor to ceiling and with a floor that sloped imperceptibly toward a central drain, it had not taken much converting. The old sink and wide tile work surface were perfect for all Hilda and Matt’s beach and ocean gear and a shower rose in the centre of the ceiling meant they could hose down wet suits and surf boards with a minimum of fuss.

Hilda and Matt were united in their hatred of housework. Hilda’s maxim was that she cleaned something once the dirt interfered with her pleasure in using it, or with its ability to function, whichever came the sooner. So floors had to be swept weekly because she liked to walk barefoot, but shelves could gather dust for as long as they wanted and unused bedrooms were left to themselves until within 24 hours of their next occupation. 

When the time came, Hilda and Matt set aside an evening (daylight hours were far too precious to waste on such mundanity) and went at the task with gusto, music blaring through the house and a bottle of cider tucked into the side pocket of each of their overalls, for regular swigs. The old Hoover was pressed into action, dusters were dug out from a dresser drawer and the dogs were evicted to the garden. As a team they could have the house sparkling within a couple of hours.

“What’s cooking Mummsy?” Matt gave Hilda a bear hug. At fifteen he already towered over her.

“Spag Bog and salad, with housework for pudding and a car full of cousins for breakfast!” Hilda did a twirl. She did look forward to the annual family visit, whichever part of her extended clan it involved.

©Julia Welstead