Mother

She stops when she reaches the grass. ‘Go play on the toadstools,’ she says, unstrapping her son from the pushchair.

He clambers free, runs clumsily in rubber boots and trips over his own feet. Without so much as a murmur, he picks himself up and clumps on. He is dressed in a red all-in-one waterproof that makes a rustling noise when he moves, it sounds like wind blowing through dry leaves. He has a clear destination, the wooden toadstools, made smooth from having been climbed and sat upon on over the years. He manages, with effort, to reach across the cap, hold onto the other side and pull himself up so that he is balanced on his belly with his arms and legs splayed.

It is Monday morning, and the park is quiet. It is a walled park with picnic tables, benches, tended flower beds. Low ornamental box hedges mark off sections of lawn. The box is two feet high, so when he wanders off, like he is doing now, he can be seen by his mother, just.

For a moment, her eyes rest on an older couple seated on one of the benches, their knees inclined towards each other as they chat. Her eyes move back to her son; he has slid off the toadstool and is running towards a teenager on a skateboard. The skateboarder flips the rear of the board with one foot, grabs it, puts it under his arm, ruffles the child’s hair and walks on.

She takes off her coat and, although the grass is dry, she lays it onto the grass, smoothing it out before lowering herself down tentatively, as though she might be recovering from a back injury.

The child runs in the direction of a flowerbed filled with pink cosmos then changes direction to the play section with swings and climbing frames where the grass has been replaced by softwood chippings. He drops, gracelessly, and rummages through the woodchip with silent intent. She sighs and pushes herself up with as much effort as it took her to sit down. She walks to him in long strides, moving faster with each step.

‘No cigarette ends!’ Her voice is impatient, as though she has said it many times before. She takes both of his hands and unpeels his fingers. A cigarette butt drops from his hand to the ground. His mouth is closed so tightly that his lips have disappeared. ‘Open your mouth,’ she demands. She grimaces, puts her forefinger into his mouth, and fishes out a cigarette butt. ‘You will be sick. That is dirty.’ She says it slowly and deliberately, holding his face between her hands, each cheek clamped between her palms. ‘Dirty. No more. Dirty.’ She lets go of his face, raises a finger, and keeps looking at him until he shakes his head free.

She walks back to her coat, emitting a loud exhale from puffed cheeks, but her sigh is interrupted when she sees a feather and picks it up. It is beautiful. About seven inches long, striped in regular horizontal lines of dark chocolate brown and toffee gold. She looks at it for the longest time, holds it up to the sun and turns it, smiling, frowning, smiling again. She slips it into the shopper basket under the buggy seat; she rummages there for something else, and when she straightens, she is holding a bag of mini rice cakes and a keep-cup with a sealed lid. She drinks from the keep-cup and calls to the infant.

‘Snacks. Time for snacks!’

The child has returned to scattering woodchips, they are in his hair, in the hood of his coat. He is wearing only one wellington boot, the other is in the mouth of a spaniel that is dashing about, wagging its tail. No one comes to retrieve the spaniel or reprimand it.

She stops calling and simply watches. She opens the bag of mini rice cakes and puts three in her mouth at once. Her mouth is so full that she struggles to chew.

The dog drops the boot in front of the child and the child, cross-legged, bends forward with rubbery ease. With a look of pure delight, he throws the boot in the air. His exuberance outstrips his ability, for, although the boot gains height, it doesn’t go far and it almost lands back down on his head. The dog barks. The child laughs. The game begins all over again.

She helps herself to more rice cakes, two this time, then she lies back onto the grass, stretches her arms above her head, points her feet, feels her hips click, and looks up into the sky.