Bright and Dangerous Objects

by Anneliese Mackintosh

  After draining the dregs of his fourth pint, he looks at me, hazy-eyed, and says: “Not thirsty tonight, kid? Ah well. Fancy a moon walk?”

  “Moon walk?”

  “Yeah, you know. A night-time stroll. Clear away the cobwebs.”

  “Oh, right. Sure, Dad.” My voice is softer and more childlike than it was earlier. “As long as we can get chips.”

  My dad gets up unsteadily and ruffles my hair. “Blimey, Sol, when did you last wash this mop?”

  We head out of the pub. The sky is layered with dusky pinks. The tiniest slice of moon is showing. It’s a waning crescent. In a couple more days, it will surrender into oblivion.

  Dad whistles. “Impressive, innit?”

  “Always,” I say, looking up.

  “Red sky at night, I guess.”

  We go around the corner and get ourselves chips in polystyrene cones, then start walking along the harbour.

  “You probably don’t remember this,” says Dad, skewering several chips at once with his wooden fork. “But there was this one holiday we went on. Me and you and your mum. Your mum passed away that winter, but this was the summertime. You must have been two. Your mum, she let you have a battered sausage. It was at the beach, in Skegness. You picked up the sausage like this, with your fingers in pincers, and after licking it for a bit, you dropped it in the sand. You were so upset that—”

  Dad does that awkward dance with someone for a few moments, where you’re trying to pass each other, but you keep looking like you’re about to butt heads. Finally, they pick different directions and walk on.

  “People everywhere tonight,” he says.

  There’s a group of women heading towards us, all wearing purple T-shirts saying “Night-Time Memory Walk” on the front. They’ve got purple wigs on, too, plus glow-stick necklaces and bracelets.

  “Bet they’re cold,” says Dad.

  “What happened after I dropped the sausage?”

  “You buried it. Dug a grave in the sand so the seagulls couldn’t have it. Made me and your mum say a few words.”

  I smile. “What did you say? Can you remember?”

  “Oh, something like, ‘Goodbye sausage, you were loved. May you rest in peace. Mushy peace.’”

  “Very funny.”

  “It was sweet, though, seeing how much you cared. We asked if you wanted another and you burst into tears.” He puts a greasy hand around my shoulder and kisses me on the forehead with salty lips. “Love you, pup.”

  We zigzag through the cobbled streets, towards home. There’s a group of women in purple T-shirts lighting candles and laying them down around a stone fountain. Some of them are clasping hot drinks. One or two of them are laughing. Many of the candles have photographs next to them.

  “Dad?” I say, reaching into the bottom of my chip cone and collecting the crispy bits.

  “Yes, Sol?”

  “Thanks for looking after me.”

  Dad squeezes my hand. He doesn’t say anything else all the way back home. When we get in, I see how tired he looks.

  “I’d better hit the hay,” he says. He looks so much smaller than me these days. When did I overtake him?

  I give him a glass of water and make him a hot-water bottle, and then I sit at the kitchen table. I listen to the clock ticking for a while. Reminds me that I’ve got my Mars interview coming up. Reminds me of everything.

  I creep upstairs; then I sit on my bed and take a folder out of the bottom drawer of my bedside table. This is the folder that Dad gave me: Mum’s stuff.

  I pull out the top few sheets of paper and look again at the computer game my mum was designing. “Blue hall.” “Weapons deck.” “Outskirts of village.” “Broken cage.” “Metal floor.” Her handwriting really is manic.

  I look again at the letters she wrote beside the lines connecting boxes: P, S, A, F, U, D. Port and starboard, I think suddenly. Aft and fore. I know my nautical terms. But U and D? What could they be? Up and down?

  I switch on my phone and go to Safari. In the search box, I type in some of the phrases on the page. The first result that comes up is entitled “Game Solution: Starcross.” The second is a Wikipedia entry. I select that.

  It tells me that Starcross was a computer game released in 1982. It’s set in the future, and the player’s character is a lone space traveller on the lookout for treasure in black holes. One day, he finds a mysterious spacecraft and climbs on board looking for answers . . .

  I know that it shouldn’t matter that Mum didn’t design this game. I know it’s okay that these are only notes she made for a game that she was playing. A game designed by someone else.

  It’s just: I really did think she was a genius. A pioneer. I thought she had grand plans. But the mother I’ve been dreaming about is a mythical creature. My actual mother, the mother I can see here, the mother my dad told me about tonight—she was as confused and scared as I am.

  I put the paper back into the folder and hug my knees. I bite my right leg through my jeans. This is a position I’ve adopted ever since I was a girl. I could sit like this for an hour at a time back then. Now it’s not so comfortable.

  “Argh,” I say quietly, to my knee. “Argh.”

  I sit up straight again and look out of the window at the waning crescent. There’s an urban legend that all twelve men who walked on the moon went mad upon their return to Earth.

  At least they were able to return.

  33

  James has agreed to meet me for a walk along the promenade. A promenade in Penzance. The reality is not as splendid as it sounds. B&Bs, a petrol station, and an enormous Lidl don’t do the seafront any favours. Nor do the Christmas decorations hanging over the roads. Pale Santas and ghostly wreaths loom unlit in the November sky.

  For a moment, I don’t recognise him as he approaches. His hair is scraped back into a bun. He’s got a neck tattoo—a neck tattoo! Most remarkable of all, he’s wearing glasses. They’re thin and round, in the “John Lennon” style. As far as I’m aware, James has twenty-twenty vision. But with the glasses and everything else, he looks like a different person, and I imagine that’s the intended effect. If I’ve transformed this much on the outside, imagine what I’m like on the inside. My feelings about you have changed irrevocably.

  I didn’t even consider my appearance before leaving the house. I’m just the same old Solvig. Short, unkempt hair, old jeans, faded sweatshirt, parka, frown.

  James isn’t wearing a coat. He’s in a navy fisherman’s jumper with the sleeves rolled up. He looks so huggable that I have to keep my hands in my pockets.

  He stops before he reaches me. “Good morning, Solvig. Shall we walk?”

  Why yes, Mr. Darcy, I think sarcastically. Let’s perambulate.

  “I thought you found neck tattoos too full-on,” I say, as we begin to stride.

  “It’s the god Khepri.”

  “Not a dung beetle, then.”

  “He pushed the sun across the sky.”

  “Like a ball of dung.” I thrust my hands into my pockets, listening to the sound of the waves. This too shall pass.

  “Look, Solvig, I’ve got some stuff I need to talk to you about,” says James. I know it’s not that long since I last saw him—less than two months—but I’d almost forgotten about the way his hands jerk out when he’s building up to disclosing something. I’ve seen him do it a thousand times before, but it seems so intoxicating when accompanied by the threat of never seeing him again.

  “I was the one that asked to meet up,” I say. “I need to talk to you. But you go first if you like. I’d like to hear what you have to say.” Actually, I don’t want to hear a word of it. I want to say my piece, and then I want James to hold me until I stop hurting.

  “Let’s head onto the beach,” James says, pointing at some steps leading down to the sand. “Don’t tread on anything that looks like a plastic bag. Portuguese man-o’-wars have been washing up lately. Their tentacles—which are venomous, by the way—can be over thirty metres long.�
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  Even at a time like this, James can’t resist explaining something to me. He must have told me about the Portuguese man-o’-war’s venomous tentacles at least half a dozen times since we met. And how the creature is not even technically an it but rather a they. A colony of organisms working together.

  I’ll be sad if James never explains anything to me ever again. I used to see his lectures as a little conceited. Maybe he’s just interested in things, and he wanted to share those interests with me. I wish I’d shared more with him in return.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” James says as we walk towards the sea. “About what happened in Liverpool. On your dive. About you cheating on me.”

  It stings to hear James get the facts wrong. He’s getting them wrong because I haven’t been honest with him.

  “I’m angry with you, Solvig,” he continues. “You should have talked to me. Relationships need communication. And given your job, and you having to go away so often . . . I need to know where your mind is. I don’t want to hear about where your body’s been once it’s already too late.”

  “You’re right,” I say, stepping over a crushed Coke can.

  James stops gesticulating. His arms fall limp by his side. “This thing that occurred, between you and the woman. It’s indicative of a much bigger problem between us.”

  I wait for James to say more, but he doesn’t. I want to beg him to explain something to me, whether it’s how the Portuguese man-o’-war’s digestive system works, or how to save our relationship, but there’s only silence.

  That time we were in the Lake District, when our relationship was a fragile bud, James shared something. “I’ve only ever been broken up with,” he disclosed, as we watched our campfire’s dying embers. “I’ve never been the one to end a relationship.” At the time, I found his words comforting. If I ended up breaking up with him, I figured, I’d be one of a long line of women who had done the same. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I know what James’s confession really was. It was a warning.

  When we reach the sea, we stop and look at the waves. I dip my toe in the water. James presses his shoe into the wet sand and draws a line in it.

  We turn and start walking along the beach.

  “James,” I say, launching into the piece I’ve been practising all the way here. “When I’m on land, I want to be in the sea. When I’m happy, I’m waiting to be sad. When I’m here, I’m looking over there.” I point towards the far end of the beach, towards Newlyn, but really, I’m thinking about Mars. “It’s a way of trying not to feel trapped.”

  “You felt trapped with me? Because I never—”

  “It’s a trap of my own making. I’ve always had one foot in and one out. But I don’t want that any more. When I’m here, I want to be here. And when I’m gone . . .”

  “Gone?”

  “I mean, in the future. If my work takes me, you know, far away.”

  “Further than the North Sea?” James sounds wary, and weary.

  “I’ll give up diving,” I say, as though ripping off a plaster. “Being shut away for a month at a time probably isn’t good for me. I used to think I could stay locked in that chamber forever. Recently, I’ve realised how much I need the stuff on the outside too.”

  “Right,” says James. I know that look. I saw him doing it after a regular customer started spreading rumours about him using unclean needles, then came into the studio one day, tail between his legs, asking for a new tattoo. It was a look that said too late for that now.

  I stop walking. I taste the salt and smell the seaweed and feel the breeze. “James,” I say. “I’m pregnant.”

  James looks at me blankly. Then his eyes flash with a series of emotions, like I’m watching them tick along on a zoetrope. Confusion. Disbelief. Horror.

  “It’s from the last time we . . . I haven’t known for long.”

  James turns away from me, towards the town. I think he’s looking in the direction of his parents’ house. When he turns back, his voice is almost inaudible. “I’ve been trying to break up with you.”

  I look down at my hands, tinged blue in the cold, and I take off my eternity ring. The flesh is indented where the ring used to be. It’s worn me away.

  I hold it tight in my fist; then I offer it to James. Automatically, he takes it, and I catch sight of the ouroboros tattoo on his forearm.

  “The relationship isn’t healthy for either of us,” he says.

  “Not at the moment.”

  “How do you feel about the pregnancy?”

  “Scared.”

  We sit down on the sand, even though it’s damp and it’s going to stick to our clothes. Feels good to be grounded. I wonder if James is going to put his arm around me, but he doesn’t. We stare out at the horizon in silence.

  At last, I say: “I’ve got an interview next week, in America. I entered that competition you told me about. To be one of the first people to go and live on Mars.”

  James stares at me. And then he begins to laugh.

  I laugh too.

  Soon, we are laughing uncontrollably, shrieking and roaring and grabbing fistfuls of sand, then watching the grains fall between our splayed fingers.

  •

  In the car, I scream behind a closed mouth.

  “I’ll support you whatever you decide,” James said after a stiff hug on the promenade. “Whatever you decide”: it’s obvious he was referring to an abortion. “We’ll make it work whatever happens,” he said after that. “Whatever happens”: he meant it’s over.

  “Whatever,” I say now, under my breath, before I start the car.

  I’m not proud of myself for the way I drive back to Falmouth. I get beeped at three times, and I have to do an emergency stop at a roundabout.

  When I switch off the engine outside the doctor’s surgery, I notice how loudly I’m breathing.

  “Fuck. Shit. Fucking arse shit.”

  I get out of the car and head for reception. “Appointment, please,” I say, wiping sand off the back of my coat.

  The man behind the desk takes my name and date of birth and asks whom I’d like to see. “Computers are down,” he explains. “Got to do it the old-fashioned way.” He opens a diary and licks the tip of his finger every time he turns the page. He finds an appointment for two weeks’ time.

  “I was hoping for something sooner,” I say.

  “Ah.” He looks over his glasses. “It’s an emergency appointment?”

  I think about heart attacks and appendicitis and gangrene. “No. It’s not an emergency.” I take the appointment and leave.

  I sit in the car, still breathing heavily, and I pick up my phone.

  “Are you at home?” I ask when Anouk answers.

  “I’m just coming out of Tesco,” she says. “Solvig, what’s up? I haven’t heard from you in ages. You won’t answer my texts. James has gone AWOL too. Did he find out about Mars?”

  “James and I split up,” I say. “I nearly slept with this woman. Then I had a miscarriage. Now I’m pregnant again.” I look at my reflection in the rear-view mirror. “I hate myself, Anouk. I hate myself for bringing a child into this terrible mess.”

  It annoys me that Anouk doesn’t agree with me. “You poor thing,” she says. “Why didn’t you tell me? Do you want to come round for a cuppa? I’ve just bought a multipack of Kit Kats.”

  “I need some alone time,” I tell her. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I sit in the car park for a few minutes, waiting for my heart rate to decrease, and then I drive home. I’m sensible and generous, letting cars out in front of me wherever I can. Each time someone raises a hand to thank me, I feel like a slightly better person. If two more people thank me on the drive home, I’ll keep it.

  I let three more cars out in front of me, but only the first driver raises his hand.

  When I get home, I climb the stairs and go straight to bed. I’m surprised to find Cola lying on James’s side. His eyes are open, unblinking.

 
I lie down and spoon him.

  “Hello, baby. You’re all right now. It’s over.” I stroke his velvety ears, his shaggy muzzle, his rigid body.

  34

  I must have fallen asleep with the bathroom light on. It’s giving my skin a bleached, otherworldly glow. My dead dog is in bed with me. His lank fur is pressed against my shoulder. He smells of the juice at the bottom of a bin.

  When I lie on my back, my stomach becomes a hammock slung between my hip bones. Tonight, though, there’s something different about it. Just below my navel, and slightly to the left, there’s a bulge. Looks like I’ve swallowed a lump of moon rock.

  I need to get up.

  I put on something warm; then I go downstairs and down two glasses of water. I slip my feet into my laced-up trainers and head into the garden.

  In spite of James’s attempts to get me into gardening, it’s been ages since I’ve been in the shed. It’s so tidy in here. I grab the spade and begin to dig smack bang in the middle of a flower bed. “Cyclamen are a great food source for caterpillars,” James told me when he planted them last year.

  I’ve never buried anything before. I’m not sure how deep you’re supposed to go. I can make out only basic shapes using the light from the kitchen window—but no doubt I’m digging up worms and grubs. I wonder what they think is happening, suddenly being thrust out into the cold air.

  The hole becomes so deep that in order to continue digging, I need to climb in. I dig until the ground is level with my knees; then I sit in my man-made crater as though it’s a bathtub. I rest my head on a pillow of dirt and look up at the sky. I can see the Big Dipper and, using that, the North Star. I’m pretty sure that one of the other bright objects in the sky is Betelgeuse. You can tell by the reddish tint.

  It’s time to bury my dog.

  I leave a trail of soil all the way up the stairs and into my bedroom. When I put my arms around Cola, I hear him exhale.

  “You alive, boy?”

  He looks like a taxidermy animal, like an imitation of a dog I once had. He’s definitely not alive; his carcass must have released air when moved. I carry him downstairs carefully, nervous that he’ll leak something dead onto me.