Chasing the Sun with Henry

by Gary Brockwell

‘What is the dog called?’ I blurted out, ready to project my anger to an even higher level, to prove he was a fake, he must have noticed dog hairs on my trousers I thought, an easy connection to make. ,

  ‘Say again please, Rebecca?’

  Ignatius McKenzie nodded slowly, his eyes still closed.

  ‘She says he is called Henry. ‘She is showing me a doll now.called Mandy,it’s her favourite.’.’

  Again, this information must have come from Sally;, –We bought the rag doll, Mandy, when Rebecca had chickenpox when she was three; she carried it, ate with it and slept with it for the rest of her life.

  At this point, with no self-control, the anger dissolved painlessly from my mind. I started to want to believe he really was in communication with our dead daughter. Maybe, I reasoned, those times Henry looked up suddenly from his slumber under the breakfast bar, it wasn’t actually a distant noise I couldn’t hear that forced him to stare into space.

  ‘Clown? Is that correct, clown?’ asked Ignatius.

  I looked down at the empty space to my side and felt a cold chill run down the entire side of my body. Imagination is a powerful thing.

  ‘She is scared of a clown with ginger hair. She really doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Is the clown there with her?’

  ‘No, no, she sees it with you. She is telling me it makes you sad, it makes you cry. She wants you to stop being sad, she wants you to stop crying.’

  I didn’t reply, afraid of what I would hear if I did.

  ‘Rebecca wants to know why you don’t use the fairy bouncy castle any more, why you always look at it before you turn off the light,’ he stated, drawing out my fears anyway with or without my input. ‘Does that mean something to you, Eddie?’

  I didn’t reply. How could Sally know about this? She never came to the lock-up in Clifford’s yard, never saw me load the van using the sack truck, had no idea that the pink fairy castle, Rebecca’s favourite, had sat unused and collecting dust for all these years. It broke my heart to see it every day in its packed-away state. I had no idea what emotion would be unleashed if I brought it out again into the world, inflated it.

  ‘Eddie, I sense someone else is with her now.’

  ‘Here in the room?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not in the room, they are with her.’

  ‘I don’t follow. Has she left?’

  ‘Someone has joined her in the spirit world.’

  Ignatius McKenzie suddenly laughed out loud. A genuine laugh that caught him off guard.

  ‘Eddie, Rebecca has clambered onto a bouncy castle,’ he said, his eyes still closed slightly. ‘She has been joined by someone. A man, a huge man – she has taken his hands and they are bouncing together. Up and down, up and down. He is an older man, but he is giggling excitedly like a child!’

  I sat, stunned, believing this man, in a way I couldn’t understand, had made more sense of my grief in a matter of minutes than I had achieved in seven long years.

  ‘What is your name please, sir?’ Ignatius probed.

  I wanted to shout, ‘Clifford, I am here, it is me’, but I remained silent, a sense of peace and fear flowing equally into me.

  ‘He doesn’t want to speak, sometimes they don’t. I think he is too interested in bouncing!’ he said with a smile.

  Suddenly, his face changed, a slight frown appearing on his brow, indicating puzzlement.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Rebecca is showing me something, but it isn’t clear,’ he answered. ‘Try again, please. Bless her, she is so good, she keeps showing me a car. A blue car, over and over and over, does that make any sense to you?’

  I replied no, and kept my real thoughts to myself.

  ‘She is telling me it is important, over and over, but they are not to blame.’

  Still I did not answer.

  ‘Whoa! One at a time, please, one at a time,’ Ignatius blurted out.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked again, completely drawn in now, speaking without choosing my words.

  ‘There are lots of people around her who have suddenly joined her. All wanting to speak, to come through – the problem is, they are all talking at the same time, but I can make out that they look after Rebecca. They are all very excited to make contact. It’s just a wall of noise – think of an audience before a concert performance, it’s like that.’

  I looked on, trying to understand what he had heard inside his head, in contrast to the quiet and calm of the room.

  ‘Eddie, I am losing her now. All I can say to you is that she is surrounded by love and is very safe.’

  And with these words, I felt my eyes fill with hot tears and my vision blur.

  ‘She’s gone. She’s cocooned in love,’ said Ignatius McKenzie simply.

  He opened his eyes, blinking quickly with the look of confusion of someone waking from a dream.

  He smiled at me and I smiled back. I felt as if I too had awoken.

  ‘Is she still here?’ I asked.

  Ignatius shook his head. ‘Do you understand what has happened? She was here because of your sadness, Eddie – she couldn’t move on until you had a level of acceptance in your heart. Does that make sense?’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘What now?’ I asked.

  ‘I think our time together is over. I think you can move on, content with the knowledge that Rebecca is safe. When you think of her now, it will be positive, happy memories, just as it should be.’

  ‘I have one question,’ I said.

  Ignatius nodded.

  ‘Who are the people with Rebecca?’

  ‘The crowd at the end?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I couldn’t say for definite, there were so many of them all speaking at once. But within that group will be relatives, multiple generations of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends with a link to you or Rebecca.’

  The knowledge of family members I had never met, or others I could barely remember from my past, actively supporting Rebecca welled up as contentment, a sense of relief inside me. Equally, Clifford’s death seemed acceptable. To imagine him not as a weak shell, with a tube full of oxygen forcing his body to inhale, but instead bouncing, carefree, too busy to know I was there, made me smile inside. And my beautiful, beloved daughter at peace, surrounded with love, showing me it was all right to let go. In my mind, she had taken hold of my hands which had been closed tight in fists for so many years, and one by one coaxed the fingers to extend outward, to splay them out to their full extension, and with that action, had released tension, fear, grief and guilt. I understood it was all right to move on; it was the thing to do. Yes, still remember, always remember, but don’t live with your mind in the past. Nothing stays the same, we need to adapt and we need to accept change. If we do not, our entrenchment will collapse upon us and smother our future that is there to grasp, forcing us to focus with ever-greater concentration on events that have come and gone which we cannot undo. Events that cruelly sever the link forward, bury it so it can no longer be found or seen, however much we try.

  Ignatius McKenzie stood up.

  ‘Please forgive me, I can feel extremely tired after a session like this, it can be very draining,’ he said. ‘I feel I need to rest.’

  ‘Certainly, I understand,’ I said, standing up.

  We walked out of the room and into the hallway in silence.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said at the front door.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For doing this.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ replied Ignatius McKenzie, unbolting the door. ‘Rebecca did all the work; she sought me to speak to you. She must have a reason for doing so at this time, but that is for you to understand, not me.’

  ‘Well, I still want to thank you,’ I repeated, stepping out of the door.<
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  ‘Just one thing, though,’ said Ignatius. ‘Rebecca was insistent about the blue car. She kept showing me it over and over. Try to think in the coming days – hopefully this means something to you.’

  As before, I denied any recognition and felt sure that for once, he wasn’t able to read my mind.

  ‘Well, it’s strange, people from the spirit world would not pass on information without a reason,’ he stated, his eyes boring into me once again.

  ‘I’ll have a think,’ I answered.

  Ignatius McKenzie thrust out his palm toward me. ‘Goodbye, Eddie.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said, shaking his hand.

  I crunched across the driveway toward the van and heard the door close and lock behind me. I took my phone out of my pocket. I had lost track of time and was surprised to discover I had only been in the company of Ignatius McKenzie for thirty minutes; it seemed a lot longer, hours in fact.

  I drove away with my mind at last full of memories and no regrets.

  I remembered Rebecca learning to ride a bicycle. Her determination to succeed fuelled by her best friend, Abby, flaunting her pink, sparkly and tasselled bike on the pavement outside the house, her deliberately slow ride by, intended to draw attention to the sudden lack of stabilisers on the rear wheel. Each time Rebecca fell, she got back on, even when she had to bite her lip to stop herself from crying. I told her many times I could put the stabilisers back on, but each time she shook her head. With each practice, I ran beside her, my hand held strong against her back, until suddenly she got it, my hand lessened the pressure on her back and I ran with her, ready and prepared if she need my support.

  She loved the recorder. We loved her enthusiasm, but the noise was dreadful; when her fingers moved into the position for middle C we winced, knowing what was in store!

  I took her to her first movie, just her and me. It was a cartoon, lots of colour, simple story and songs. She never took her eyes off the screen for the duration of the film, even when searching for her oversized (and overpriced) fizzy drink held in the armrest of her seat; instead of sight, she used her hand and mouth to locate the protruding straw. I believed the experience would prepare her for later the same year and her first live stage show of her favourite TV characters.

  It didn’t prepare me, though. I already had an idea that a theatre full of sugar-saturated preschool children can become very excitable, but I was not aware that the central character, when appearing onstage, would whip them up into a frenzy with his cheery ‘Hello, girls and boys!’

  The shrillness of the children’s collective ‘Hello!’ back surprised me and forced me to adopt a look of pain as the decibel count increased.

  I then looked on in disbelief as from the stage, he shook his head and said, ‘I can’t hear you – I said hello, girls and boys!’ and encouraged them, with his hand cupped to his ear, to shout even louder and harder. Upon reflection, he may not have been acting and actually was unable to hear them, as performing this show twice a day for three weeks could have perforated his eardrum!

  Rebecca loved it, loved the shouting out, loved the songs and the actions she, along with the others, was encouraged to repeat, and she adored telling the hero character that the villain was in close proximity to him.

  She wiggled and pulled her first wobbly tooth at every opportunity for two weeks, before the wide-eyed look of shock crossed her face and she removed her hand from her mouth and held up the tiny pearl between her first finger and thumb for inspection. That bedtime, on instruction, she placed the tooth under her pillow in anticipation of the tooth fairy’s arrival and cuddled up to Mandy the rag doll. At our bedtime, it became apparent that she had moved the tooth from underneath the edge of the pillow, as we had shown her, and instead placed it in the centre, directly under her head. Trying to locate, extract and substitute the tooth with coinage without waking her proved challenging and I froze on a number of occasions, my hand under her head as she stirred.

  In the morning, she came into our room early to show us the coins, but didn’t behave as excitedly as we expected. We quizzed her and asked if anything was wrong. She replied she had moved the tooth so the tooth fairy would wake her up when she took it and she was disappointed she hadn’t seen her. To see her, we learned, was everything to her. I kept all the subsequent teeth I could as they were discarded, a total of eighteen, kept in a matchbox in my wardrobe. We know for certain that one was lost in a park, when Rebecca tripped and fell and the tooth landed in undergrowth, overrun with brambles and nettles. To her relief, the tooth fairy came anyway, tooth or no tooth to take. The other we presumed she swallowed in her sleep, as it had become loose and as before, we saw her fingers encased in her mouth, moving and wiggling the tooth, willing it to dislodge during her bedtime story. The next morning, we noticed the vigorous probing had stopped. We looked inside her mouth but couldn’t be sure which tooth, if any, had been lost, as by this age she had multiple gaps and loosening teeth in her mouth. We asked her if her wobbly tooth was still there, but received the answer an eight-year-old would present – a shrug and a skip away.

  For Rebecca’s first Christmas, we bought her a push-along pony, set on wheels and with a handle at the rear for her to grip, to aid learning to walk; she had started to toddle in the October. We had to actually wake her in the morning. We carried her downstairs; she rubbed her eyes and was extremely grumpy on being woken. Sally sat her on her knee, while I tore the wrapping paper off the enormous box, hiding the toy inside. As the paper rustled, Rebecca stopped crying and looked on in interest as I withdraw the pony for her. She clambered off Sally’s lap and patted the flank of the toy with a giggle, looking at Sally and me. Yet, within moments, she had tired of this and instead picked up the ripped wrapping paper and began to drop the pieces into the now-empty box. Each time we lifted her behind the pony, she crawled back to the box and continued to place objects inside – once all the paper had been picked up, she added Christmas tree decorations, the TV remote, magazines and her other gifts, which Sally and I had helped her to open. This activity continued until mid-morning, when she fell asleep, leaning against the side of the box.

  Two Christmases later, when Rebecca had a fuller understanding of the whole experience, we got creative. We purchased some fake snow and when Rebecca had finally drifted off to sleep on Christmas Eve, I brought in my wellington boots from the garage and stepped into them at the fireside. Sally sprinkled the substance around the outside of the boots as I stood there and we giggled as I walked a step and saw the imagined effect of Santa’s footprints outlined by snow materialise. Sally repeated the process until I was standing by the sofa, where we would distribute Rebecca’s presents before we retired to bed.

  The reaction in the morning was as expected, with lots of squealing and laughter from downstairs waking us up. We repeated Santa’s footsteps from the fire to the sofa for the next five years; it became a Christmas tradition and was received with the same excitement, time after time, although Rebecca never questioned why Santa’s boots were covered in snow when it had never snowed on Christmas Eve in her lifetime.

  However, in the year that she died, she didn’t mention Santa at all, didn’t write a letter to him and didn’t ask, ‘I wonder what Santa will bring me?’ Perhaps her maturing mind had finally worked out, along with her peers, the flaws in the myth spooned to her from her earliest memories, and perhaps she was now too grown-up to speak about such childish notions. Whatever the case, we would never know the real reason behind her silence.

  The driveway was empty when I arrived home, and I heard from inside Henry’s claw-clips on the tiled hallway floor as I found the lock with my key. I opened the door and was greeted with his frantic tail-wagging; so severe was the movement that his entire rear end moved in his excitement. The house was void of human presence; just Henry circling around my body, his tail never ceasing its swinging; as always, his unconditional greeting made me sm
ile. I patted his head and tickled his ears and moved into the kitchen to allow him out into the garden to relieve his bladder.

  He ran outside and I watched as he performed his doggy ritual of sniffing and examining particular areas of foliage and grass, before moving on to another area and urinating immediately, without any requirement to check its scent.

  I gazed out and wondered, as I has been prone to do before, what was actually running through his mind. I leant against the door frame and felt comfortable in this safe, familiar environment. I could manage the recent events – the conversation with Cerys, Mary’s phone call and the revelations of Ignatius McKenzie – here in this space.

  I turned back into the kitchen and noticed the envelope sitting on the worktop, in the same place as Sally’s note had been the previous week. On the front she had simply written, Eddie.

  I picked it up, ripped it open and began to read.

  Dear Eddie,

  This is the hardest thing I have ever had to write. I don’t really know where to begin, but by the time you read this, I will be gone. I have known you for so long, from that wide-eyed youth that spilt those drinks down me, to the middle-aged man, set in his ways, I lived with for years.

  You have been a constant in my life for all of this time, Eddie. When I first met you, I knew I wanted to spend my life with you, to grow up and then grow old with you. To live out our dreams, to share many, many, moments of laughter and happiness when we would be blessed; the best side of life shown to us. Equally, I truly believed we would comfort and protect each other in times of stress and sadness.

  But reality is so different; we had no idea our world would be shattered, destroyed so clinically that dank, rainy November afternoon seven years ago. For years I have held this to myself, but I now have to say, you let me down, Eddie.

  That first night, when I tried to make sense of the initial knock on the door from the two constables, the removal of their hats as they sat down in the living room and the pained expressions on their faces as they prepared to speak to me. I thought something had happened to you; that you were injured or hurt, that they held some news so terrible they had to visit me in person to explain. But then you walked into the room, confused and startled, moments after they had torn out my heart with their words and you just stood there – you left me in the arms of a policewoman, a stranger, when it was you I wanted to take all the pain away, to tell me it was going to be all right, to tell me our angel was safe and well.