His jandals have been removed – relocated. Their flatfish contours sprawled on the portico caused offence, as he knew they would.
Paul once noted how rubber jandals possess a patience that waits outside of time, but he never spoke that thought aloud. As a youngster, Paul rebelled at the moments of patience that were forced upon him, but later he became accommodated to them, as befits an adult. He does not rail now at the elsewhere jandals but finds them in the first place he thinks to look, precisely positioned just inside the washhouse door. He squirms the rubber between his toes. His heels slide into homely hollows. When he runs upstairs, the jandals slap like backhand clouts against the boards.
In his stripped-bare room he flickers his fingertips, magician-like, over a memory. He doesn’t hold to any illusions that this house will retain the marks he’s made, and as tit for tat, he resolves to take nothing of it with him. When Paul realises that there is something he wants after all, his father is not there. They said their goodbyes some time ago; they shook hands and then there was a swift clasp.
His mother is hovering with a tight-packed lunch. She’s not a hugger.
“I’d better get going,” he says.
Her voice clips around the edges. “You can’t wear those to drive in! They’re dangerous!”
The jandals, having oft sought the thrill of gravel slopes and slime-coated rocks, are delighted to find that danger has been within them all along. Paul flings them into the footwell. He pulls his seatbelt across, clicks himself in and almost laughs at the irony.
Later, when sand seeps between the sandwiches, the jandals become impatient for Paul’s return. When the waves come, they too get up and leave.