A Map of the Sky

by Claire Wong

  “What’s Dad scared of?”

  There was a pause, so long he wondered if she had heard him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you were on the phone, you said something. I think you said Dad would be here, with us, if it wasn’t for something he’s scared of.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s rude to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.” She was right, but she was also changing the subject.

  “Please, Mum.” He had worried, ever since he overheard that conversation, about what could be so terrible that it frightened even his father. His dad wasn’t scared of anything; that’s why he was in charge of getting rid of spiders at home. Catherine sighed.

  “All right. Your dad doesn’t like seeing a problem he can’t fix. He’s especially bothered if he thinks he might have had a hand in making something go wrong in the first place. Like… imagine if Grandma Fisher was ill. She’s not, of course, but imagine. Dad would be a bit concerned. But if he had knowingly sent her into a room full of ill people where she might catch their germs… well, in that case he might feel so bad he would be afraid to even visit her and ask how she was doing. You see, we weren’t talking about anything dangerous. Nothing for you to be anxious about.”

  It was maddeningly cryptic, as usual. Before he could probe any further, they pulled up at the guest house. Both paused to take a deep breath before getting out of the car. Apparently his mother was as nervous as he was.

  “Here goes,” she said, with a smile at Kit that was unusually confiding. She put a hand on his shoulder and they walked together up to the building. Sean was at the reception desk, and looked surprised to see them. Behind him on the wall hung a large slate tile, on which chalk letters informed guests that today’s low tide would be at two minutes past one, with high tide at seven o’clock this evening, and that the weather would be mild and cloudy.

  “I just wanted to say thank you for all your help over the last couple of weeks,” Catherine said, placing the card down on the counter top. “And these are for Beth, to apologize for my tone with her.”

  Sean nodded an acknowledgment of the gesture, but it felt a little formal. “You didn’t need to do that.”

  He looked down and shuffled some papers on the desk. It might have been the effect of the grey shirt he was wearing today, but Kit thought he looked tired. Catherine persisted, forcing him to look up and engage her in conversation.

  “Is she… available today? I’d like to give them to her in person. And I know Kit would like to see her again, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Sean looked from the woman in front of him to the bouquet of orange and pink lilies, and then down to Kit. He did not appear overjoyed at the thought of letting them see Beth. “Let me see how she is first. Wait here, please.”

  The time they spent waiting in the hall might only have been a couple of minutes, but it felt unbearably long. The anticipation was tearing Kit in two directions: on the one hand, he hoped to have a chance to see Beth again, to ask after the map and explain why he had suddenly abandoned her without saying goodbye. Then again, he was afraid of what Catherine might say. She had made it clear she thought Beth was lazy and selfish to sit in a chair most days rather than rush around in a whirlwind of activity. He wished that he had spent more time on the car journey explaining Beth’s illness, so that his mother might be more sympathetic now.

  When Sean returned, his grave face gave nothing away until he stopped in front of them and said, “You can go in now, but Beth’s tired, so I’d appreciate it if you kept it short.”

  “Of course, I completely understand,” Kit’s mum reassured Sean, though Kit was fairly certain that she did not understand at all. “And don’t worry, we won’t stay long. Juliet’s at home by herself so I’ll need to get back to her soon.”

  At the door to Beth’s room, Catherine hesitated.

  “Why don’t you go in first, Kit?” she suggested, and he gladly took her up on this.

  Beth was waiting for them in her usual spot by the window. He studied her face and her movements for any evidence supporting his theory that she was being poisoned. But if anything, she looked healthier than when he last saw her. Her skin was full of colour and warmth, her eyes alert. It seemed as though her bump had grown since they first met.

  “Mrs Garsdale,” Catherine began, but Beth interrupted her.

  “I think we’re rather past those niceties. Don’t you? You’d better call me Beth.”

  Kit’s mum faltered. Politeness was one of her fail-safe ways of winning people over, but Beth was having none of it. Kit could see why. You couldn’t very well use your first conversation to shout at someone and accuse them of all sorts of things, only to jump back to formalities on the next occasion as if you were just meeting for the first time. Catherine held out the flowers instead.

  “A peace offering. I’m so sorry for how I spoke to you before we left.”

  “They are very pretty colours,” Beth said, but she made no move to take them. They were too garish, Kit realized suddenly, and completely the wrong sort of flower. Not that he knew much about flowers at all, or about Beth’s particular tastes, but he felt that his mother should have brought Beth something that grew wild and windswept near the sea, rather than the obviously expensive lilies she had chosen. They just didn’t look like the right sort of gift.

  “It has been pointed out to me that I made some unfair assumptions about your health and your influence on Kit. And the way I articulated that was equally unacceptable. I want you to know that I understand not all illnesses look the same; I should know better than anyone that some of them are all but invisible.”

  He had not heard his mother try to apologize to someone before. He didn’t think she was doing a very good job of it, but at least she wasn’t shouting this time, or accusing Beth of sitting around and being waited on by others. She was still holding out the bouquet. Kit spotted the wrist supports on Beth’s arms and realized that the reason she was not moving had nothing to do with rejecting the gift.

  “Are your arms hurting again today, Beth?” he asked. “I can put these in one of the jars for you.”

  He took the flowers from his mother, who looked relieved not to be brandishing them any longer. There were a number of old glass jars by the watercolour set, already filled with water to clean Beth’s paintbrushes. He picked out the sturdiest one to support the weight of the lily stems.

  “Thank you. I’m not very mobile today, but the painkillers should kick in soon enough. And you are not the first person to misunderstand my illness, Catherine. Still, I accept your apology. Shall we move on?”

  Catherine gave a nervous, grateful laugh. Kit placed the lilies on the windowsill where the light would shine through them. He glanced around the room and was relieved to find that the easel was empty today, the unfinished map stored away somewhere. He was not sure his mother would have appreciated it fully, and he did not want it to be seen by anyone who could not understand its value. Still, he hoped its absence didn’t mean Beth had given up now that she would have nobody to help her with it. He could not think of a subtle way to ask her about this.

  “So how do you like your new home, Kit? Have you unpacked all your games and books?”

  “Not quite. There are boxes everywhere. We have a lot of stuff.”

  “It only looks like a lot when it’s all clutter and cardboard,” his mum interjected hurriedly. “We haven’t accumulated too much. Our last house was really quite small by comparison. Living in the city is so expensive.”

  The bit about the house was not true. The Fisher family home in London had been spacious, with four bedrooms and a study, not to mention the workshop in the garage. Kit was not sure why his mother would lie about it.

  “It must be a big adjustment for you all, moving up here.”

  Adjustment implied that it was possible to get used to the change. It presumed that one day Kit would wake up in their quiet house by the sea and not mind that his fat
her was miles away, or that he couldn’t get anyone to tell him once and for all why they were there. Kit had not yet considered the possibility that he would adapt to this situation and accept it, rather than fight it, and he did not much like the idea now. Adjusting was the sort of thing Juliet probably excelled at, slipping chameleon-like from one situation to the next and knowing just how to behave, but to Kit it sounded a lot like giving up.

  “Kit, I’d like to speak with Beth alone now. Why don’t you go and read your book by the fireplace in the guest lounge?”

  Kit dragged his feet behind him as he left the room. He clicked the door closed before pacing up and down the hallway, but there was no sign of Sean now at the reception desk or in the guest lounge. Perhaps he was in the kitchen. With the rooms so deserted, Kit felt safe to loiter in the hallway for a while, so he sat himself down in a corner, still technically following his mother’s instructions to read his book, just somewhere near enough to overhear snatches of the conversation.

  “…I’m not sure what else to do,” his mum was saying, as he came back to within earshot.

  “Well,” he heard Beth reply, “maybe it’s not enough to simply take someone out of their environment and expect all the problems to melt away. Maybe it’s just as important to connect with the new surroundings, to be distracted from all the old worries.”

  “What do you think would help, then?”

  “Everyone’s different. But if it were me, I’d want to get outside and go for a long walk over the moors or down to the sea, every day. I’d want to fill my head with the changing moods of the sky and be so consumed with following the nesting of the gannets and counting the starfish in rock pools that what someone somewhere had said or thought about me once upon a time just couldn’t matter any more. If I could, I’d be out there right now, clambering up barrow mounds to imagine what the world was like thousands of years ago.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve read some recent studies on how being outdoors lowers cortisol levels. Do you think managing stress hormones is something to focus on?”

  Beth replied that this was not something she knew much about, but she knew that being in the open air made a difference to her. Kit had always known that Beth missed being able to walk around whenever she liked, but hearing her speak like this about the countryside made him feel even sadder for her, that she was missing out on something so beautiful. Perhaps it was only the lack of it that helped her see the poetry in the landscape. He could go out whenever he wanted, and he was not sure he had ever appreciated it enough until now.

  “Out of interest,” Beth continued, “what made you change your mind about me? A few days ago I wouldn’t have expected us to be having this conversation.”

  “It was my husband’s idea, to be honest. He thought that, given your… situation, you might be more understanding than most towards someone in a different but equally complicated predicament. And he and I – well, we could use the advice.”

  “I hope I’ve been able to help then.”

  Catherine sighed. “I need to find a way to get this family back on track somehow. The normal channels haven’t worked, and at this stage I’ll try just about anything.”

  “Me too,” Kit said aloud to himself, sitting alone in the corridor where no one else would overhear. He sighed and stomped down the hall, tired of being inside with his ear pressed against a door. The sky outside had brightened, and even the gravel on the driveway was heating up under the sun’s rays. He dragged his feet through the stones, ploughing furrows from the front step out towards the sea.

  Up ahead, the gravel crunched under a pair of shoes that sounded heavier than Kit’s own footsteps. He watched a stranger approach Askfeld. There was a parked car some way down the track behind him, blocking the way in or out for other guests. He wore an old shirt tucked into his trousers, and a pair of dark sunglasses, which he removed when he saw Kit in front of the house.

  “Hello, young man,” the stranger said with a broad smile. Do you know where I can find Sean and Beth Garsdale?”

  Kit did not like that smile. It stretched right across the lower half of the man’s clean-shaven face, but no higher. He would have been better off keeping the sunglasses on and concealing his flat hard stare. A real smile should crinkle up around your eyes and make them sparkle just a bit. The lie of this stranger’s expression put Kit on edge, and he found he did not want to be helpful for once.

  “No.”

  “All right. Suppose they tell you to say that to people you don’t know, right? Say no to strangers and the like – very good. Don’t you worry. I just want a little talk with them, nothing to be anxious about. I’ll have a look around and maybe I’ll bump into one of them. What do you think?”

  Kit decided to give nothing away, and instead blocked the doorway to the house by making a great show of retying his shoelaces right there on the doorstep. When he looked up again, the smile had vanished from the man’s face. The stranger shrugged and strolled off towards one of the outbuildings. Kit watched him from the step, guarding the way into Askfeld until his mother came and told him it was time to leave.

  “You seem very quiet.” Catherine glanced over at her son when they had driven halfway back to Utterscar without a word. “You know, that might not be the last time we visit Askfeld. I had a long talk with Beth and she’s not at all how I expected.”

  Kit vaguely registered this as good news, but his mind was racing away with the mystery of the cold-eyed stranger.

  “I can’t imagine how worrying it must be for her, living with so much that’s unknown. To go to bed and not know if you’ll wake up unable to walk the next day! And adding a baby into that mix too. She seemed so calm about it all.”

  Beth was a peaceful person; Kit had seen that about her when they first met. But she might not be if she knew about the man who had been creeping around Askfeld. What was he doing there and what did he want with Sean and Beth? Perhaps it was a clue to whatever Sean was up to, and this stranger was a part of the plan.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SKIMMING STONES

  DAY TWENTY-FOUR

  Mum let us get takeaway fish and chips for dinner AGAIN last night. That’s the third time in a week. She says it’s part of the adventure of moving house that you get to do things like that. I’m not sure she fully understands what an adventure is.

  Catherine poured a dollop of Greek yoghurt over her cereal and selected the ripest blueberries from the punnet to scatter on top.

  “I have to go into town today to run some boring errands. But you don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to. And no, Kit, I’m not going to Askfeld this time, if you were hoping for another visit there.”

  “I’ve still got lots to get through on my reading list for next term.” Juliet did not look up from carefully dissecting a banana into bite-size pieces on the plate in front of her. Their dad would have told her she looked as though she was training to become a brain surgeon.

  “You’ve been working all summer, love, and there’s weeks to go until school starts. Why don’t you take a break? Go out into Utterscar for a bit. Did you have a look at what’s listed in the local newsletter that got posted through our door?”

  Juliet rolled her eyes. “Did you? It was so boring it was almost funny.”

  The Utterscar News was an A5 black and white publication that looked to have been created and printed from someone’s home desktop shortly after they learned how to add borders and unusual fonts to a document. But alongside the Utterscar events diary, it contained personal stories from local residents that Kit had enjoyed. It was fun to imagine the authors behind the anecdotes, and to hope for a chance to meet them one day.

  “There must be something that interested you.”

  “Tragically I may have to miss the judging of the Utterscar Cauliflower Show this year. Maybe next year will be my turn to win a prize.”

  Kit pictured a stage populated by tap-dancing cauliflowers in top hats and grinned to himself.

  “Don’t y
ou go laughing at her sarcasm,” Catherine chided him. “It’s bad enough having one child who answers back all the time. And you mock, but I honestly think some fresh air will do you good. If you won’t join in with anything organized, why don’t you and Kit go out for a walk today?”

  Kit nearly dropped the cereal box he was emptying into his bowl. He had grown so used to his mother keeping him indoors and under her supervision ever since the day he went looking for the albatross that this was the last thing he had expected. Juliet must also have picked up on the surprise, because her next words were: “Seriously? I thought you wanted us cooped up safely in here, where nothing bad can ever happen.”

  “There’s no need to take that tone with me, thank you. I don’t mind the two of you going out together, if you’re sensible. You’re old enough to keep an eye on Kit, and you can phone me if you run into any trouble. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of going out for summer walks with my parents. I’m sure it made us healthier than all the staring at screens you do.”

  Juliet looked unconvinced at the idea of walking instead of revising, so Kit interjected with, “It doesn’t have to be a boring walk, Jules. I know loads of cool places we can go see.”

  “Fine. I guess I could do with getting out. I thought Askfeld was quiet, but this… I couldn’t get to sleep last night without music; it’s just eerie lying awake listening to nothing. Don’t either of you miss the sound of traffic?”

  Kit could not remember when he had stopped being bothered by the change in background noise. Now he rather liked it. Besides, if you opened the front door when the wind was from the east you could hear the comforting murmur of the sea, even from here. Beth had learned to love the stillness of Askfeld, but he suspected that might be beyond the abilities of the busy Fisher family.