Read Canvey Island for Free Online Page B

stretched out his arm, waved it up and down, and snapped his fingers.
    â€˜He wants paper,’ I said.
    Martin fetched a pad and watched his uncle draw, shading the sky and then the sea. When he had finished, George took a black pencil and started to make small dark marks at the bottom of the page, first horizontal, then vertical, stick men and crosses piled on top of each other, hatch-marked bodies that almost ripped through the paper, lying at the bottom of the ocean.
    â€˜That’s nice, dear,’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’
    Then he started to shake. What a way to spend Christmas.
    I went over and found some music on the wireless. It was playing ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’, which only made it worse because that had been one of our favourites.
    George sat in his chair by the two-bar fire and rocked slowly, weeping for the man he once was, and for me, I think, for the love that he had lost, and for the future of his life.

Martin
    On my eleventh birthday, Dad said he wasn’t going to go out fishing but gave me a model boat and said he would bake me a cake.
    He rolled up his sleeves and set out the tools and utensils he needed on the kitchen table: the mixing bowl, the scales, the sieve and a cup to check and separate the eggs. I think he wanted to show me that he could be as good as Mum. He drew the line at wearing an apron and he had a bottle of brandy by his side to ‘make it special’, but apart from that there would be little difference between the two of them.
    â€˜I’ve never made a cake before but it can’t be that hard,’ he said. ‘Who needs women, eh?’
    He began to whisk up the egg whites while I stirred the yolks into chocolate melting in a glass bowl balanced over a saucepan. The steam escaped round the sides and scorched my hands.
    Dad took a swig of the brandy, set out two tins and then began to beat the butter and sugar in a Pyrex mixing bowl.
    â€˜Pass me the oven gloves.’
    He took the chocolate mixture from the stove and folded it into the egg whites. Then he added this to the butter and sugar and sifted in the flour so that there were three bowls smeared with chocolate and two tins waiting.
    â€˜Is the oven on?’ he asked. I hadn’t lit the gas and I was worried he was going to be angry with me.
    â€˜Never mind.’ Dad struck a match and turned the oven up high. ‘There we go. Now we can do the icing.’
    He eased the cake mixture into the tins and placed them in the oven. He took out a pan, poured in some milk and then crumbled cocoa powder and chocolate squares into the mix. He had forgotten to add the brandy so he poured it into the icing, saying: ‘You won’t be able to tell the difference.’
    Dad was using every bowl and utensil in the house. Already the smell of scorched flour filled the kitchen. I didn’t like to point out that we had forgotten to line the cake tins – or even grease them.
    Within twenty minutes, he was standing at the table with an upside-down cake tin trying to lever out its contents.
    â€˜This bloody thing. It’s stuck or something.’
    I opened the kitchen drawer. ‘You cut round it with a knife.’
    â€˜It says in your mother’s book, “Wait until cool and turn out on to a rack.” Well, I have waited and it won’t turn out. Give me that.’
    He took the knife and shaped round the edge. Half of the cake slewed out, its burnt sides and base remaining stuck to the tin.
    â€˜Oh bugger it, never mind.’
    He took another slug of brandy and smeared the sponge with raspberry jam. Then he cut round the cake from the second tin, placed it on top of the jam centre and began to plaster over the icing.
    â€˜This’ll cover it all up,’ he promised, ‘then we need a candle.’
    â€˜It’s all right, Dad.’
    â€˜We’ve got to have a candle.’ He rummaged in the drawer and found the stump of an old