Crustaceans Read Free Page B

them. When I loaded my kiln you’d insist on playing with the props, stilts and cones; any clay I prepared would be decorated with gouges, lumpy additions, your name. But I didn’t much mind this. It was enough to have you around, for those few hours of my week, in the place where I worked. I liked you to see me, busy at something, your father, and when you wandered away, as you regularly did – down the white plasterboard corridors, looking for places to hide, other studios to visit – I would find that I missed you, the work that you caused me.
    My neighbours, mostly painters and printmakers, gave you sandwiches, crisps, crayons and pastels, strips of bubble-wrap, postcards. You were, everyone told me, no trouble at all. You called them your friends, even remembered their names, and often when you came back you’d be carrying another clutch of scrap paper, some more paintings and drawings to add to the sheaf in your corner. But that afternoon you didn’t want to go out, and you didn’t once interrupt me. You cut a ball of red clay into pieces and carefully arranged them in order of size, then planted a tool in each one. You lay on your belly and drew a picture for Ruth, another for me. You sat for some time with your drink, staring at nothing, and then decided to empty my bowls of pebbles and shells onto the floor, my bucket of grog and my sand, and pretended you were alone at the seaside. My 260 square feet of studio became our caravan, our beach. At home in yourself, I might not have been there. For half an hour then, all my other chores done, I sat up at my wheel – where I’d been working all morning – and though I switched on the motor, and slapped some more clay on the disc, I did nothing, but watched you. Miming and talking, and constantly moving, you were, I gathered, an orphan. You picked through the mess at your feet, looking for objects of interest – treasure and crabs, imaginary creatures – and you explained them as I would, to another just like you. I heard my voice in yours; and Ruth’s, her exclamations. I slipped down from my seat and squatted beside you. Pretend you’re a daddy, you told me, and nodding, I laid a small shell on my palm. It’s a periwinkle, I said; is it a good one, Euan? Not so bad, you said, and dropped it back on the floor. You shuffled closer. You asked to look at my hand, and studied it closely, tracing your fingers over the bumps, the clay that was etched in the creases.
    It was always my habit to use too much water when throwing. The clay became liquid, a wet glove to each wrist, and as the moisture evaporated it left behind a grey sediment, pallid and papery, which broke as it dried along the grain of my skin. Even after I’d washed, the grey would remain. And as you looked now at those lines, something occurred to you. What is it? I said, and you asked me my age. You were by then not merely four, but four and three-quarters, and age was important. Just as each house must have a number, so too must people, and mine was a three and a nought. Did that mean, you wanted to know, that I was going to die soon? No, not for a long time, I promised; not till I was very much older. But I was already old, you informed me, still holding my hand. You offered it up to me. See the lines, Daddy, you said. See the grey? Your voice was concerned, but consoling, and I wasn’t to worry. It’s only quite old, you told me, not really old. I think you’re right, I smiled, and cupped both my hands round your face. My mother was twenty-five when she died. It was only a number. I patted your arm and said we ought to clear up: Ruth would be expecting us home soon.
    More than a year has now passed since that afternoon, half a year since I last worked in my studio, and my hands are once again empty – idle, redundant – but for this one simple routine: I reach for my tobacco and papers. I hold the pouch in my left palm and