by Gillian Best
I stared at them in my palm and they were the same as the rust-coloured ones I was standing on, whirls of white combined with a slate-grey. I traced my finger over them as Webb rushed toward me, bounding out of the sea.
His fur, which was the same colour as some of the pebbles, was drenched and when he shook himself off sandy water covered everything. I pushed him away as he tried to lick my face, but he sensed something wasn’t right and kept nudging me until I spilled the pebbles.
I shouted at him and tried to pick the right ones up again, but there was no way to tell which ones were hers and which ones weren’t.
I looked in the case. It was all that was left of her now. It was everything and nothing. Webb barked at me from the shoreline and with the case in my hand I chased him into the sea. It was the only place left where we could find her and the only place we could be with her.
The water was so cold it burned. The sea was in motion. It was a living thing, she used to say. More alive than any of us.
It was unsettling. The rocky bottom shifted with each wave and the currents pulled me forwards and backwards until I lost all balance and plunged underwater. My arms and legs flailed as I tried to right myself and I lost my grip on the case trying to get my head above water. I cried out when I saw the case floating away, unsure why it couldn’t get wet but certain that wasn’t right.
I opened my mouth and tried to gasp for air but got a lungful of water. I couldn’t swim. It was foolish to live so close to it and never learn but it was my personal superstition: for her to swim well, I could not.
It felt as though the sea would take me back to her if I let it and then I felt arms around me and barking. I was being dragged to shore and once I was on land again I sat with my head between my knees, coughing, gasping, spitting out water. The girl was beside me, soaked through.
‘What are you trying to do?’ she said. ‘Kill yourself?’
I saw someone else dragging the case back.
‘No! Leave it. It belongs to her.’
‘Who?’ she asked.
‘There’s no one out there,’ she said gently. ‘There is,’ I said.
I turned away and looked at the outcropping and bits came back to me. She had requested a burial at sea and I had promised. I pictured my daughter or my son, and remembered something about danger, about wandering off, things being close enough.
I had thrown her ashes into the waves shining like mackerel scales.
The girl sat on my right and Webb settled himself at my feet and we looked out across the Channel.
I thought of Martha’s voice, the way she used to say my name. The words had all become crumpled in my mind, heavy like wet towels. I tried to remember the first time I had heard her say it. Was it when she stood straddling her bicycle when I had introduced myself? I wasn’t sure, but I could picture it as though it had happened. John. It was like so many other things that I couldn’t remember, I just felt. I knew exactly what it felt like to hear her say it. I had never thought hearing my own name could have thrilled me so much, but it did. How her different tones told me everything I needed to know. Short and clipped when she was cross, lengthened in the middle when she was being tender.
The harder I tried to hear it again, the further away it receded, like the tide.
‘Did she ever get there?’ the girl asked.
‘Where?’
‘Across.’
‘Cap Gris Nez,’ I said.
In the boat I had poured chicken broth into a cup attached to a long pole and tried to hold it steady for her while she struggled against the waves. She had trod water, propelling herself up above the chop. No good drinking the sea, she’d said. The power in her legs was undeniable. I saw the sores on her shoulders, around her neck and under her arms, chaffing from the salt. She had joked that if the officials wouldn’t have been upset she would have swum naked.
‘Why’d she do it?’ she asked.
‘To see,’ I said.
Webb lifted his head as though he were about to bark, but instead managed a muffled ruff and I looked over toward the cliff where the girl’s friends were motioning to her.
She squinted into the distance which, given the weather, wasn’t far. There wasn’t much to look at: the muddy water sloshing in and out, the white horses on the edge of the horizon line, everything in motion, frothing and churning.
She stood up and walked towards it, head held high and her chin up against the weather. She didn’t hesitate when she stepped into the water. She took a few steps out, only up past her knees and reached down, fishing the case out before turning back.
The distance between us was ten feet, maybe fifteen and my eyesight was not bad. It could have been anything: the way she walked, her purpose, her confidence or just seeing her holding the case. It could have been so many other things besides.
There are moments when why no longer matters. Why do we fall in love? Why do we live and why do we die? There comes a moment when we know the point is simply that we are: in love, alive, or even dead. The young are gifted the luxury of why, the old the wisdom to realise why doesn’t matter in the end.
‘You can’t leave it. No littering,’ she said as she placed it next to Webb.
‘How was the water?’ I asked.
She blinked. ‘Wet.’
I smiled despite myself and thought of the bathtub, the cold water and the salt I’d brought for her. You can’t deny me this, Martha had said.
Shouts came from her friends in the distance and she turned to look at them. Her hands were jammed into her pockets, her teeth chattering and stray pieces of hair stuck to her cheeks.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I told her, releasing her from her perception of obligation, but she didn’t leave.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
I wanted to say that she looked like my wife. The way she stared out at the sea, squinting slightly when she scrutinised something intently, and the way her wet hair was plastered to her cheeks blurred together and somewhere in my unravelling mind she gave me the sense that I was back again on the shore sitting beside Martha. I wanted to say that she was unintentionally teasing me and that through no fault of her own she was making the hollow feeling I kept with me now grow. I often forgot the cause of that feeling and when I was reminded of it, it was as sharp as the first time. It was a feeling that sucked the breath out of my lungs, a feeling that felt like drowning.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Please.’
When she was far enough down the beach I turned to where she had been sitting and dug a small hole in the sand underneath the pebbles. When it looked big enough I opened the case and took what was left, the biscuits, the maps and charts in it. I poured the remaining pebbles on top and then at the last minute reconsidered. I gathered up the ones I thought were hers and added a few more so that there were ten.
Ten for as many swims.
I looked at the handwriting on the map. There was a note about the currents and she had added the words “Straight of Dover” at the narrowest point between England and France.
Our kitchen table was often covered in these maps. Martha had traced the route she would swim endless times with her finger – small grains of sand caught under her nails lent them an egg-speckled veneer – running over the course, adding the smallest details gleaned from frequent chats to fishermen. Rocks here, seaweed blooms there. Everything had been noted in plain blue biro and her precise joined up script, the same writing that was on the cards she gave me on birthdays, anniversaries, occasions and as surprise reminders of her affection. Her cursive was on the endless lists and reminders, notes scribbled on the backs of envelopes or left on the table and when I thought of them what I saw was Dear John. John, dear.
I clawed at the sand and the pebbles and threw handfuls at the hole in the ground. I kicked more sand and pebbles onto what was left of her, blocking her out.
‘You have to stay here,’ I said.
When I stood up Webb followed my lead and we walked home together.
I didn’t bother to tie the rope to his collar, we were two old men trudging home in the rain.
It was nearly dark when we turned onto our street and Webb barked impatiently as I stood in front of the door, searching for the keys. They weren’t in my coat or trouser pockets and I wondered how I had managed to go out without them. And then I looked down and saw that I was still in my slippers.
Slippers: slippery, slipping.
I looked next door and prayed that the lights would be on and that Henry would have a spare set. The idea of having to engage in conversation exhausted me but I had no other choice, it was that or I would have had to sleep in the garden.
The pale blue flickering light of the television was on accompanied only by a faint glow from somewhere in the kitchen.
I rang the bell and when he answered the door all I said was, ‘Keys?’
‘Come in out of the rain,’ he said, stepping aside. ‘Go through to the lounge, John, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’
I did not want to sit down, nor did I want a cup of tea, but Webb seemed keen on the offer of a warm, dry room in which to settle and he pushed past me into the dark. Though our houses were laid out in the same way, there was a lightness in our house that was not shared with Henry’s: his lounge gave the impression that even on the brightest days it would still feel dark. It was that kind of place: cramped, cold and uncomfortable.
I looked but found no pictures of a wife, children or other proof of familial ties. There were no photographs at all. Martha made sure that the faces of our family were never far away. Henry had a large mirror over the mantelpiece where I caught sight of myself. I was more hunched than I had remembered. If I thought of myself, I pictured my face as a combination of when Martha and I were first married and when the children were still in school, but the reflection told me otherwise: my eyebrows had taken on a life of their own, springing up over my spectacles like unruly hedgerows, the few hairs left on my head were plastered down on my scalp from rain and the natural slimness I had always had now made my face look gaunt and hollow.
Henry came into the room with a tray full of tea things and set it down on the side. He looked at me expectantly.
‘Let me take your coat,’ he said, moving towards me as though to help me out of it.
‘Leave it, I’m fine.’
‘It’s soaked right the way through.’
He was right, but I didn’t have the strength to take it off myself and I wasn’t about to let him help me. I sat in an armchair and he sat on the sofa.
‘I take it you made it to the seaside then,’ he said.
I must have looked puzzled because he pointed to my slippers, which were covered in sand. It is one thing to embarrass yourself, but quite another to do it in front of someone like him.
‘Done it myself,’ Henry said. ‘Walked to the little shop during halftime to get a couple more cans. Wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t stepped in gum. Nearly ruined the carpet, but at least Arsenal won.’
The way he laughed made me think he’d made it up. I did not want to sit there in his lounge. I couldn’t. I had the feeling that there was something pressing that I had to do. I gripped the arms of the chair as the room closed in on me.
‘Stay,’ he said.
‘I have to go.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘There’s something I need to do.’
‘Which is?’
I sputtered, searching for the right words that would release me from his clutches. ‘Martha needs me.’
Henry poured two cups of tea and added milk. ‘Sugar?’
I made no reply and he offered me a mug.
‘John,’ he said. ‘She’s not…’ He sighed and leaned back on the sofa. ‘Drink your tea.’
‘I’m sure she’s got our dinner on the stove by now.’ I straightened my tie. ‘I’m needed at home.’
‘I don’t want to have to tell you again.’
‘Tell me what? How dare you speak to me like this.’
He put his tea down and rubbed his face with both hands as though I had given him a headache. As if I was hard work.
‘I didn’t demand to be dragged in here to keep you company.’
‘You weren’t dragged in here. You knocked on my door. You’ve locked yourself out again.’
‘If I have misplaced my keys, which is not at all like me, then my wife will let me in.’ I stood up and clapped my thigh signalling for Webb to follow. The room was so small and dark that it was difficult to see where the way out was, but Webb knew and I followed him down the path and back up again until we were at our front door.
I rang the bell and Webb barked.
‘I don’t think anyone’s home,’ Henry said from behind me in a smug tone. ‘There aren’t any lights on, you see.’
‘It must be late. She’s probably gone to sleep.’ I stepped back and picked up a pebble, which I threw at the bedroom window. It missed its mark. ‘Martha!’ I waited a few seconds and called again. ‘Martha!’
The windows remained dark. She didn’t come to the door.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked Henry. ‘Something must have happened. You were in. Did you not see?’ I looked around, searching for a clue, but all I saw was our house, our garden and our street standing empty and motionless in the night.
He put his hand on my shoulder and put his key in the lock, opening the door. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said.
We did and it was cold and dark. Henry turned on the lights revealing dirty dishes on the counter, half-eaten bowls of soup and a level of disarray that was unlike Martha.
‘Darling?’ I called.
‘John,’ he said. ‘She’s not here.’
I turned away from him and searched the ground floor rooms, turning on lights and calling her name. Henry waited in the kitchen until I returned empty-handed.
‘She died,’ he said. ‘She was ill, she had cancer. You took care of her. She passed away here, John, with you last month. There was a small funeral where she used to swim. You scattered her ashes in sea.’
‘Liar!’ I said, pushing him away. ‘Get out of here!’
‘It’s a hard thing to have to remember.’
‘You’re lying!’
He met my gaze and a moment passed between us and in my mind’s eye I saw the three dresses on the bed and tasted the Marmite and cheese sandwiches. I stumbled, pulling out the chair as it sank in again.
Henry helped me off with my coat. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘No.’
‘Have you eaten today?’
‘Where is Martha? She should be here, it’s late. She doesn’t swim after dark. What if something’s happened? What if she needs me?’ I went to the door and pressed my face up to the glass.
‘John, please. Calm down.’
‘It’s the middle of the night and my wife is missing. I will not calm down!’
He reached out for my arm and tried to guide me back to the table.
‘Let go of me!’
‘You’re getting upset.’
‘Where is Martha?’ I shouted at him as loud as I could.
He closed his eyes. ‘Martha passed away, John.’
I floundered backwards, into the chair. He opened the cupboard and took down a tin of beans. ‘I’ll heat this up.’
As he washed a saucepan I looked around the kitchen. How could she have passed? She’d been in the bath this morning. The door had slammed shut. The seashells were on the windowsill. The Marigold gloves hung over the side of the sink.
‘Martha must have gone out. Popped out to the shops for something.’
Henry was silent. The running tap was the only sound in the house until he turned it off and then there were only the faded, distant voices unfurling in my head. He opened the tin, emptied its contents into the pan and put it on the stove.
‘Toast?’ he asked.
I made no reply and as he turned around I saw that his eyes were watering. He turned back quickly and looked up at the ceiling.
; The sound of a ceramic dish moving across wooden floors broke the silence as Webb pushed his bowl towards me. ‘You’re out of water,’ I said.
Henry put the beans on two plates and brought them to the table, handing me a fork. ‘You need to eat.’
‘I’ll wait for my wife, she won’t be much longer.’
If she came home and he was still here there would be no getting rid of him. He would insist on saying hello, which would turn into a conversation around what had kept her out so late, what she had done and who she had been with. And that would follow on to the sort of banal chat that people had about gardens and other neighbours. Henry was a man who would do anything to keep from going back to his empty house.
He hung his head and stared at the beans. ‘You’ve gone to the seaside a lot recently.’
‘Martha is training.’
I pushed my plate away untouched and went to the window. I craned my neck to see down the road but the rain was coming down harder and I couldn’t see anything, least of all the figure I most desperately wanted to see.
‘It’s not like her to be so late,’ I said.
When I turned around, Henry was tapping away at his phone.
‘Will I call someone? Harriet maybe?’
I shook my head. ‘Martha won’t be with her.’
‘Would you like me to stay?’
‘What for?’
I felt his eyes boring a hole in the back of my head as I stared out the window, and I could not understand why he thought I was the one in need of help.
His mobile buzzed and I left him to read his message as I put the dishes in the sink.
‘Best to have these cleaned up by the time she gets home,’ I said.
Henry sighed and I knew I wasn’t a good host but I didn’t care about what he thought, all that mattered was for the kitchen to not look like a tip when my wife arrived home.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said as much to me as to the phone.
I put the Marigold gloves on. ‘It’s late. I’ll tell her you dropped by.’
Finally he went to the door. ‘Will you be alright?’
‘Of course.’ I worried about him alone in that house. It wasn’t right and he didn’t strike me as the most capable of men.
