‘Look!’ he yelled as he pointed towards the harbour. They all ran to the boats, many of them surveying the sea, Mia’s uncle surveying the shore. And rightly enough, where the space lay was a knot of severed rope and their very own kitchen knife. ‘Mia!’ he yelled out over the waves, but the storm pushed the sound right back. ‘Quick, we need to get someone out there. Mia is out there!’ Mr McKendrick was one of the party, a retired fisherman who had lived here his whole life.
‘Are you crazy, man?’ he yelled, ‘There’s no way anyone can go out in this!’
‘But Mia is out there. Look! She’s taken this boat.’
‘Why would she take this boat?’
‘I don’t know but she has done and we have to get her back.’
‘You have to see sense. No one has a chance on this water. This storm would tear through any of these boats sooner or later. All you’d be doing is getting more of us killed!’
‘If you’re not going to help me, I’ll do it by myself.’
‘I’ll go with you, uncle!’ said his nephew who came and stood by his side.
‘Listen to me, Jack,’ said McKendrick, ‘you nor your uncle have ever been out on the water. It would be murder to let you and your uncle do such a thing! It’s a death trap!’
‘But we have to find Mia!’ yelled Jack.
‘The best we can do is wait for the storm to pass. The best thing we can do is wait for the light. We would not be able to see anything in this darkness. They could be anywhere by now.’ Mia’s uncle knew in his heart that there was no way he himself could take any of these boats out onto the water, and there was no way he could endanger Jack. All he could do was wait.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but keep searching. We’d be fools if she hasn’t left here and is somewhere hiding.’
‘You’d better go check the house. I’ll wait here,’ said McKendrick.
The house was empty, just as they had left it. There was nothing they could do, but both Mia’s uncle and her brother waited at the harbour with scarves, waterproofs and binoculars. They walked along the coast in case they could see anything elsewhere. The lighthouse ran its lights over the surface of the water. But it was all in vain. And as the sun came up and the sky began to brighten the following morning, the sky was filled with purples and reds as though it had sensed the danger overnight and was now in sympathy with the crowd on the shore. Emily’s mother had become hysterical and it was up to the other townspeople to calm her down. By dawn, she was merely shivering with fear.
But as the new year brought in its first morning with all its spectacular colours, the sea lay perfectly still. McKendrick was out with Mia’s uncle and brother at the first sign of light. The boat went out as far as it could and all eyes darted around in every direction. But nothing could be seen upon the empty horizons that faced them from all sides. Mia’s uncle could feel his heart sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He turned to McKendrick.
‘Would we see the boat? Would it be floating?’
‘It could be. But it’s possible it capsized or got a hole punched in the side. It could be down below us right now and we’d have no way of knowing.’ Mia’s uncle looked down over the side of the boat but all he could see was his pathetic reflection distorted on the contorting surface of the water.
The sky seemed to engulf the sea as it spread right across the horizon. The sea was calm, almost sinisterly so. A little further along the coast, where the pebbles became sand, a man was jogging. This man could always be seen jogging so early in the morning, all year round; if anyone was ever around to see him, that is. He liked to be the first to spoil the unadulterated sand and to look out over the empty vastness of the sea. But this day the water was not as clear as he had expected it to be. Today it was interrupted by a small vessel that seemed to be floating very easily upon its surface. The man stopped jogging and looked out at what looked like a rowing boat. It must have come free from the dock during the storm, he thought. And even as he watched it for that very short moment, it already looked much larger than when he had first laid eyes on it. It was coming closer to shore. The man walked into the water and waited until it was close enough for him to pull out onto the sand. He grabbed it and dragged it back to shore, but only when it was firmly on the sand did he take a look inside. And to his great surprise, the boat had a passenger. A little girl was curled up on the floor of the boat, fast asleep.
When she awoke, her brother and her uncle, as well as Mr McKendrick the fisherman and other members of the search party, were sitting around her bed. She first saw her uncle who was sitting closest to her.
‘Mia,’ he said, ‘Can you hear me?’ Mia’s eyes looked sleepy as she blinked them open.
‘Uncle,’ she said, grabbing his hand but not rising from the bed.
‘It’s all right Mia, you’re home now.’
‘Oh Uncle, it was wonderful.’
‘Wonderful?’ he asked as he turned for a glance at the rest of the congregation.
‘Yes, we met everyone there and they were all so kind and we had so many adventures.’
‘Where, honey?’ asked her uncle.
‘In Oz.’
‘Oh, honey you’re in shock. It must have been very scary for you.’
‘Only for a little while, until we got there. Then it was warm and colourful and all the animals talked, they really did.’
‘Okay, honey,’ he said checking her temperature again with his hand, ‘you just rest now and everything will be okay.’
‘And then, when we reached the Emerald City, the Scarecrow was King and we were made into princesses.’
‘Princesses? Who were?’
‘Me and Emily.’ Her uncle looked up with sad eyes at the other people. He turned back to Mia.
‘Honey... I’ve some bad news...’ Mia was silent with apprehension. ‘Emily didn’t make it.’ Mia smiled.
‘I know she didn’t make it. She didn’t make it back here because she stayed in Oz. She wanted to. She liked it so much being a princess that she wanted to stay and reside over her Kingdom. I chose to come back home because I missed you all so much.’
Everyone was silent. There was nothing that could be said. They were all just glad that Mia was home, and they all watched over her for so long that they saw Mia’s eyes sleepily shut themselves as she fell asleep. She would now only visit Oz in her dreams and there she would check upon Emily who had become the most loved princess in all the land. Mia would often ask her if she would like to return home to visit her mother but Princess Emily felt that she could never return to the grey landscapes of home because her people needed her and in Oz she had a thousand friends. Every now and then she would ask Mia to send messages to her mother telling her that she was doing well and that she would be proud if she could only see what she had become. Through Mia, Emily attempted to reassure her mother that she was more than alive and well. As long as she had the love of her people, she would never have to live through another day of unhappiness, and as long as she was happy, she would never have to die.
Catherine looked up from the page, exhausted. Her eyes were heavy yet her mind sparkled-busy with the tale she had just been told. She flicked through the other pages. She had no intention of reading on but instead, resting her eyes. She could not help the words that caught her, the words that sent her back a few pages, that tied her eyes to the page.
His shadow crept around her every night, dragged her back into the darkness of the little wooden house where she had lived with him. She awoke every night to find herself breathless and tearful. She would leap out of bed, check my cot to see if I was still there. Her nightmare: waking and finding an empty space where I should be. She would cling to me during waking hours, move from house to house whenever possible, zigzagging around the country in order to save Edward Rose from harm. He would catch up with us sooner or later, she would say. She could feel him. Her eyes were wide open, darting about from window to door, peering here and there, waiting for his face to appear. He never did appear. B
ut he might as well have, because he was all she thought about. He was practically in the room there with her. And when I grew a little older, when the world began to make some sense, I would mistake the shadows of the swaying branches of trees for his outstretched hands. I would bury my face into my pillow and not look up until morning. But that would not help because he would take over my dreams. This shadow would enter my dream. I could never see his face, only a misty haze. But, like the branches of the trees, his fingers were long and outstretched. And I would run, but I would be tied to my place. And I would wake up crying. I would wake afraid. It haunted me for many years, as it did my mother. And I’m sure it was the memory of this man that eventually killed her. She never stopped talking about him, telling me what he was like: and he sounded like a real-life monster with sharp teeth and piercing eyes and I saw him in my mind like a heavy-breathing, violent beast that did not look human at all-that was part human, part animal. A strange, twisted creature that headed towards me at all times. Any moment sitting still was another moment for him to have come a little closer. And I would pray every night that he would not find us, that he would not harm my mother and me. And the one night that we heard glass smash, that my mother grabbed me and hid me in the cupboard, she almost died from panic. She wanted to scream from there in the darkness. And we heard the footsteps as it passed us, as it tore apart the room. I looked through a slit in the door, and I could see a big man passing by. I was sure it was him. But we waited, sure he would open the cupboard and find us there. But time passed, and all became still. When I emerged from the cupboard, I found the room up-turned. Mother didn’t leave the cupboard. She had fainted from the fear. I actually thought she had died from the fear, but she woke almost as soon as I had thought this. She then tried to convince me that it was not him that had come, but another man. Just a man who wanted our things. Strange, because we didn’t have anything to take. They managed to find things to take anyway and for a while I had to go around in the same clothes. I was convinced, however, that the man had found us, had thought we had left before him and gone on somewhere else. He took things for evidence, for clues as to where to find us, and continued on his journey. We hid from him that time, shook him off, but next time I knew we wouldn’t be so lucky. If he found us once he would most certainly find us again. And so we moved. Within the next week we were already on the road to another part of the country. The next place we moved to, some woman came round and told me I had to go to school. But I never saw her again. We moved soon afterwards, and I didn’t have to go to school. But it was no loss, because mother taught me. She taught me to read and write. And look at me now, look at these words words words. I can write them all, see. No need for school or anything. And I read books. Any book that I could get my hand on. Of course, most of them were far too difficult. But I started off with easy ones. One is one and two is two. The bus is bigger than the car. I read all those. All the words and all the pictures. And now I know all the words. And if not all, enough. Enough to write this, to write about Mia Rose. And even if I didn’t know some words before I know them now. They come to me, fully-formed. Words out of nowhere that force themselves down onto this page like disgust and siege and paragraph. Does it make a difference if I do not know what they all mean? And I have stopped running. I am here now, and he can come and find me. I’ll be ready. I’m strong enough now to fight back, to tell him what I think. In fact I’m waiting. I’m waiting for him to come. Any day now. A knock at the door and there he will be. And he will no longer be a monster because I am older now and I understand. He is just a man. A man like other men. A man like I am a man. But no man at all. A nothing man. A no-man. Tiny and small and with no words to fill his mouth. I could crush him with my little finger, crush him with these pages I am writing, with the words that spill. I will find him and crush him. He will have to fear Edward Glass.
And they were back on the South Bank of the river. Edward had his arm around Catherine as they sat on the bench overlooking the Thames and talked about the film they had just seen. The night was like any other night: the Thames still flowed, and it was still bitterly cold. They soon got up and took a stroll along the bank, an exercise to warm themselves up. Edward clutched Catherine tightly to keep both of them warm, and even though they were not speaking for this short while, their focus never strayed from one another. If it had done, however, if they had looked back, they would have soon noticed that someone was following them. They had already been followed that night, before they went to the movie. The trail was resumed as soon as the movie was over.
Edward and Catherine entered a little pub to get out of the cold. Catherine ordered a glass of warm mulled wine and Edward sipped a beer. They sat right at the back of the pub, in a cosy spot in the corner. From there, if they wanted to, they could get a full view of the pub. Soon, they were locked in conversation.
‘So you drove all the way to London?’
‘Yeah,’ said Catherine.
‘Just filled your car up and drove?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t know what I was going to expect, didn’t even know how to get here, where I was going to stay. I even had to sleep in my car for a while.’
‘How long did it take you to get here?’
‘I drove through the night. It was early morning when I got here. I just parked somewhere and went to sleep.’
‘How did you find the apartment?’
‘I basically had to drive around with my car full of my things for a while. Quite a few weeks in fact. Parking’s so expensive in London!’
‘It must have taken up most of your money.’
‘It took some, yeah. But eventually I found the apartment and moved in straight away.’
‘What happened to your car?’
‘Sold it. Didn’t get much for it though. Was a battered old thing. Was my dad’s.’
‘Were your parents okay with you just leaving like that?’
‘We didn’t really talk about it.’
‘You ran away?’
‘I’m not a child. You can’t run away if you’re not a child,’ she snapped.
‘But the car. You just-’
‘Stole it? My dad never used that car. He just left it in the garage to get rusty. I was surprised it even worked.’
‘Do you ever talk to your parents anymore?’
‘I try.’
‘When was the last time you talked to them?’
‘Look, I... I’ll speak to them when I want to speak to them.’ She was starting to get a little annoyed with Edward’s persistence.
‘It’s just that you’re parents are there, you should just be able to go see them or speak to them on the phone whenever you want.’
‘Well I don’t want, okay? I’m sick of them.’
‘You’re sick of them?’
‘Yes, all their rules and all their things. I just couldn’t take it there anymore.’
‘And it’s better here?’
‘Yes, it is better here.’ She took Edward’s hand suddenly. ‘I like it here. I’m my own person here. I can do what I like.’
‘Do you want me to speak to them?’
‘What? No!’ She let go of his hand. ‘No, of course I don’t. How do you think they’d feel if some guy just called them up and started to talk about their daughter. I mean, what would you even say?’
‘I don’t know. That you’re okay. That you’ve got a place here, that they can come visit.’
‘No! No.’
‘We could take them to the zoo.’
‘Dad hates the zoo. He hates animals.’
‘How can you hate animals?’
‘I don’t know. But he does it very well.’
‘I don’t know how anyone can hate animals. I wonder if Amigo’s okay.’
‘Amigo?’ asked Catherine, absent-mindedly.
‘The penguin! Our penguin.’
‘Oh yeah. I’m sure he’s fine.’
‘We should really go see him again soon.’
‘It’s expensive,
you know.’
‘I’m sure he misses us.’
‘He doesn’t even know we exist!’
‘Yes he does! I saw him looking straight at me. He knows exactly who I am.’
‘I think they lend out the same penguins to millions of different people. Hundreds of people are walking about right now talking about the same penguin that they all think they individually adopted,’ said Catherine sharply.
‘That’s not true,’ said Edward, a little disheartened. ‘No one wanted Amigo, that’s what the man said.’
‘He probably says that to everyone to make them feel sorry for him.’
‘Well I do feel sorry for him! You saw how he was, standing out there all on his own. I bet he’s lonely now.’
‘I’m sure he’s loving the winter. They prefer it when it’s cold.’
‘I should really go see him soon.’ Catherine didn’t reply. Her mind was on something else. Edward looked at her.
‘Catherine?’
‘That man’s staring at me.’
‘Which man?’ said Edward, his eyes darting across the room.
‘That man there.’ A cloud of smoke came from the bar. From that cloud came a man, as though he had only just appeared from that very puff of smoke. His greying hair was greasy, shining in the light of the bar. His skin was rough, bearded, his clothes, tattered and worn. He wore a suit: shirt, tie, jacket. His boots were scuffed. Next to his barstool, a cane lay up against the bar. And true enough, every now and then, he turned between sips of his drink to stare at them. His eyes were dark. The man turned away and continued to smoke his cigarettes.
The Glass Book - A London Love Story Page 13
