It was no use, though. The water had me in its freezing grip and after five minutes or so I realized that I wasn’t going to warm up and I wasn’t really enjoying myself. ‘This is too cold,’ I said. ‘I’m freezing to death.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ Chris answered, but then he saw how violently I was shivering. ‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get frostbite or something,’ and I started to walk back to the shore. Chris came with me, and we waded back side by side. Max was waiting on the beach with our towels but I realized now that he had been joined by his father as well. Mr Sim was standing on the beach looking at us both, but before we’d had time to reach dry land he shouted out: ‘Stop!’ and took his camera out of that leather carrying-case. ‘Hold it right there,’ he said. ‘That looks absolutely perfect.’ So we both remained stock still, up to our knees in freezing water, while he stood there, fiddling with his lens and getting us into focus.
I felt a little bit uneasy about it, even at the time. I don’t know why that should be: it was just a family friend, taking a picture of me and my brother on holiday – what could be more innocuous? But there was something about the deliberation with which he took the photo – making us stand shivering for ages while he got the composition exactly right, and something about the commanding (almost bullying) way he had shouted, ‘Stop!’ that gave me a nasty feeling. For one thing, he didn’t normally take this kind of photograph: arty shots of dandelions and tree trunks, yes, but not people – so why me and Chris? Why now? And for another, all of a sudden I really wished that I hadn’t been wearing that bikini. It was skimpy enough to start with, but with the wet and the coldness it had gone almost see-through and my nipples were probably standing out like cherries. It was all very well Max seeing me like that, but his father … Well, that was quite creepy, in my opinion. So as soon as he’d taken the picture I dashed back on to the shore without meeting his eye and grabbed my towel from Max and wrapped myself up in it. I was shivering uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering so much I could barely talk. Meanwhile, Mr Sim packed his camera away in a manner that was almost too casual and said, in a tone of forced joviality, ‘That one’s going to come out really well. So – who’s coming with us all to the pub tonight?’
It turned out that we weren’t going to have supper round the fire that evening after all – the grown-ups had booked a table at the local pub instead. But it also turned out that the chill in my body wasn’t going to go away any time soon. I really had allowed myself to get far too cold, and nothing seemed capable of warming me up – not even the two or three cups of boiling hot tea my mum made for me when we got back to the tents. After I’d drunk the tea, I went into our tent and snuggled down into my sleeping bag and just lay there, shivering. My mum told everyone that I wouldn’t be coming to the pub and there followed a short conference about what should be done. I could hear Max saying that he didn’t want me to stay behind on my own and that he would stay too, to keep me company, and of course that made me feel really happy. Whatever else you might say about him, Max had always been like that – thoughtful, I mean, and considerate. One of nature’s gentlemen. Then Chris said that he would stay behind too and I thought, Oh no, What a nuisance. But somehow Mr Sim managed to talk him out of it. I remember thinking how sad it was that Mr Sim went to such lengths to persuade Chris to come to the pub with them, and yet he was perfectly happy for his own son to stay behind. But I suppose that was just typical of the relationship between Mr Sim and his son. Anyway, I was very pleased with the outcome, as you can imagine.
After they had all gone to the pub Max popped his head around the flap of my tent and asked if I was feeling OK. I said I was fine but he could see that I was still very cold and asked if I wanted some more tea or some hot chocolate or something. I agreed that would probably be a good idea, and said I would put the kettle on the Primus stove and also make a few sandwiches or something for us both to eat. ‘OK then,’ Max said, rising to his feet. ‘I’ll get the fire started.’
Well, those were famous last words if ever I heard them.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Max’s attempts to light a fire that night, and keep it going, were nothing short of disastrous. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. The kindling was too damp (thanks to the rain earlier that afternoon) and he didn’t collect enough of it. The logs he collected for fuel were far too big, and he had no tools to cut them up with. He kept trying to hold them still with his feet and break them apart with his hands, but all he succeeded in doing was injuring himself: somehow he managed to tear half the skin off his left hand, and you should have heard the swearing when he did it! From then on he was trying to do everything with one hand wrapped up in a handkerchief, and of course that just made things even worse. I kept saying to him, Max, it really doesn’t matter, sit down, drink your cocoa, eat your sandwiches, for Heaven’s sake relax, let’s have a nice evening together while everyone is away – but it was no use. He wouldn’t sit still. He’d got it into his head that I wanted a fire – the kind of fire that Chris would have built – and a fire was what I was going to get. And then at first, after he’d created this ‘thing’ that to me just looked like a random pile of twigs, grass, logs and bracken, he couldn’t even get a match to light. It took him at least three or four matches to get the kindling started, after which the whole thing began giving off so much smoke that within a couple of minutes our whole corner of the campsite was smothered with the stuff, and people were coming over from their tents to complain and tell us to put it out. It was at this point that I started to laugh, but actually this was the worst thing I could have done: it just made Max look more miserable than ever, and he redoubled his efforts to make the thing work by running off to find even more damp firewood. When he came back I had been planning to say something overtly flirtatious to him, like, ‘There are other ways we could keep warm, you know, Max,’ but when I saw his face the words just froze on my lips. To say that the moment for saying that kind of thing had passed would be an understatement. I could tell that the evening was now completely ruined, for him and for both of us. There were tears of frustration in his eyes as he threw yet more useless damp vegetation onto the smouldering pile, and started fumbling with the matchbox and the matches through his bloodstained handkerchief. I knew this had started with a generous impulse – he was worried about me, and wanted to keep me warm – but it had gone way beyond that now. Maybe this sounds silly, but I thought I could tell what was going through his head, or at least through his subconscious. This was not about building a fire any more. This was about Max’s relationship with his father. Chris had been taught how to do this: Dad had made the time, and found the patience, to pass that lesson on from one generation to another: that was how their relationship worked. But Max didn’t have any of that. His father had abandoned him, years ago – perhaps never even made a connection with him in the first place. And that left him clinging to this placid, benign mother who also had nothing to teach him, nothing to pass on. He was alone in the world, and already he was struggling. It became too painful, watching him throw spent match after spent match on to that fire that was never going to take. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said, ‘I’m going inside. Call me when you’ve got it going.’ But when I looked outside again, about half an hour later, there was nothing but a faintly smoking heap of wood where the fire was meant to be, and Max was nowhere to be seen. He had gone off somewhere by himself.
That’s not quite the end of the story. I wish it was, in a way, because I don’t like the actual end of the story very much at all. Nevertheless, I’m aware that I haven’t really addressed the essay topic yet, and in order to do that, I have to briefly describe what happened round at the Sims’ house a couple of weeks later.
I was feeling guilty about Max, I have to admit. That last evening had been such a fiasco, when it could have been so different, and I couldn’t help blaming myself, to a certain extent. True, he had behaved like a total idiot, but I could probably have made the situation better if I hadn’t lost my temper with him so quickly, and the truth of the matter was that I still felt fond of him, for all his uselessness. So I’d decided to give him one last chance.
I didn’t want to ask him for a drink, or anything like that, so in order to keep things casual I thought I would simply call in at his house one Sunday afternoon and suggest going for a walk somewhere – maybe on the municipal golf course, which was just across the road from where they lived. I didn’t call him on the telephone or anything: I wanted just to pretend that I was in the area anyway, and had dropped by on the spur of the moment.
It was a nice sunny afternoon, in mid-September. I walked up their little drive and rang the front door bell. It didn’t seem to be working but the door had been left on the latch and I was able to push it open.
The first thing I would normally do would be to shout, ‘Hello! Is anybody there?’ – but today I didn’t, because I could tell straight away that the house was quite empty and silent, apart from a gentle rhythmic snoring coming
