The Last Wave

by Gillian Best

  ‘I don’t want to be the person who makes dinner and cleans the house and does the school run and goes to school plays and takes care of people when they’re unwell and hosts dinner parties.’

  ‘And I don’t want to go to my job day in and day out to support this family,’ he said, seething with anger. ‘But I do. Life isn’t about doing what you want. It’s about doing what needs to be done.’

  ‘John,’ I said, looking up at him, all six foot four inches of him, with his squinting eyes and clenched jaw. ‘I want to do something extraordinary. I want to swim the Channel.’

  ‘What has that got to do with any of this? Did you not hear me? None of this is about want!’ He gestured wildly, his arms drawing in our kitchen, our house, and our life. ‘What in the hell has got into you?’

  He turned to look at Charlie through the glass doors. ‘There’s no way he’ll give me that promotion now. How can I control an entire department of men if I can’t even control my own wife?’

  ‘A wife isn’t for controlling,’ I said. ‘I have to do more than laundry. I want to do something bigger.’ I stepped forward, intending to change out of my dripping clothes, but he would not let me pass.

  He looked furious – with me or himself I couldn’t tell.

  ‘I’m going to put some dry clothes on. Then I will come down and cook you and Charlie your dinner. And then, John, I am going to swim the Channel.’

  ‘What is so bloody important about swimming the Channel?’ he shouted.

  ‘My life depends on it.’

  I had read years ago about the tsunami that had destroyed most of Hawaii in 1946 and had marvelled at the idea of a wall of water rising up from the Pacific as high as a thirteen-story building. The sea has a multitude of faces and once you know what to look for you can tell when it becomes enraged. John’s expression was similar to the pictures of the waves that destroyed Hilo and Haena: boiling with rage that had gathered speed and energy over time and distance. That energy had to go somewhere.

  But the sound is what you remember. The Hawaiians told reporters the approaching waves sounded like a freight train. The sound of his hand against my face sounded like the crack I made when I fell off the pier and into the sea as a girl.

  He stared at me as if he couldn’t believe what he had just done and there was a moment that passed between us where I touched my face and the spot where he had hit me was hot.

  I went upstairs and changed into dry clothes. In the mirror I thought I saw the beginnings of a bruise and wondered how he would explain it, briefly I thought of covering it with makeup but then reconsidered because we were past that point. We were not Victorians wading into the sea hidden in bathing machines, we were naturists parading around, warts and all.

  Once the wave had gone, dragging half of Hilo with it, the people rebuilt and life carried on. That change was not incremental, the sea wearing down the cliffs until they became sand. Nor was the change incremental in our house, where the cliff had fallen into the sea in an instant.

  I went back to the kitchen. I took the cutting board out and by force of habit started chopping potatoes and onions, whisking eggs and lighting the flame on the gas hob. As I was pouring the eggs into the hot pan John came into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  ‘There’s no need. He’s gone.’

  I kept my back to him. ‘I’m hungry. I expect you are as well.’

  I brought the food over to the table and sat down next to him at my usual spot.

  ‘Shall I say grace?’ he asked.

  I shook my head no as I dished up the meal. ‘No one’s here to see.’

  When my mouth was full I realised how hungry I was and barely chewed as I shovelled and swallowed in the awkward silence that hung between us. The silence in a kitchen isn’t absolute, there are background noises: the hum of the refrigerator, the boiler clicking on and off and the sound of forks scraping across plates.

  Halfway through John cleared his throat. ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  ‘Myrtle,’ I said. ‘From the garden.’

  He brought it close to his face. ‘It looks familiar. Why do I recognise it?’

  ‘It grows by the seaside.’

  I had hoped he might remember. ‘The day you proposed and lost the ring to the tide. You tore off one of these branches, from where I hid my towel.’

  The faint smile appeared. ‘It was hard to break.’

  ‘It gets its strength from the sea.’

  He twirled it between his fingers. ‘You’ve never said anything about the Channel before.’

  I pictured myself in the water and felt my expression soften.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  I leaned back in my chair and sighed, the food had warmed me and the heaviness of sleep was creeping through my limbs. ‘Because I miss it.’

  ‘You can swim without having to cross the Channel.’

  ‘I used to not mind the sea wall in the harbour. I thought it was protecting me. But today, I went to the bay and swam straight out. There was nothing in front of me but water, right on to the horizon.’

  He picked at the grit under his fingernails. ‘Free? You’re not being held captive here you know.’

  And I had the strangest sensation, that he and I were if not the same, then similar. That he had found a saving grace in me.

  ‘Ten years ago I got out of the water for you. That was my choice. But I need to go back now.’ I picked up the dinner plates. ‘I can’t go on otherwise.’

  It was not my intention to frighten him, though I believe I did. It was difficult to express my needs in words because it wasn’t something I thought, it was something I felt but when I looked at him I think he understood, if not the reason then at least the fact that it was going to happen with or without his support.

  In the morning the usual routine played out and when the children were finally dressed and at the table, I served them their breakfasts.

  ‘Mummy,’ Iain said. ‘What’s happened to your face?’

  I put my hand to my cheek and realised that looking in the mirror was something that, if I did it at all, happened much later in the day, after they were gone.

  ‘Eat your eggs and soldiers before they get cold,’ I said.

  ‘Your mother went swimming yesterday,’ John said as he took his seat. ‘There must have been a piece of driftwood that she didn’t see.’ He didn’t look at me when he spoke and I thought less of him for it.

  But then he got up from the table and stood beside me, his arm around my shoulders. ‘And she’ll be going again today.’

  ‘But it’s cold,’ Harriet said.

  ‘It is,’ John said. ‘But your mother will not let anything stand in her way.’

  The children looked at him, utterly baffled.

  ‘Your mother,’ he said with a mixture of pride and fear. ‘Is going to swim the English Channel.’

  Their eyes grew wide. They had an idea of what that meant, having seen others training in the harbour during the summer break.

  ‘Aren’t you, Martha?’ he said.

  I nodded in reply; his encouragement caught me off guard and I wondered if it was guilt speaking, or an apology, or if it was his way of saying he loved me.

  As I took my swimming costume out of the bottom drawer in the dresser – where I kept the things I no longer had much use for but couldn’t bring myself to throw away – I wondered if it was even possible. The navy costume I had worn when I was a young woman had lost most of its shape and what was left of the elastic fabric was sagging. My second skin had lost its strength, as had my arms, shoulders and legs. Seeing it in that sorry state blew a whiff of fear through my resolve. Once I started I would have to finish, there would be no stopping until I reached France.

  Coming Out

  There are secrets in every family, stories that are held tightly to your chest, spirited away into the recesses of a house or a life and not thought of until years later. Some fade and soften, becoming almost unbelievable to the point where they
float somewhere between the truth and make believe. But some grow sharp, their facts maturing into perfect points: kitchen knives, blades up, lying in wait in the drawer.

  ‘I’d like to meet them,’ Iris said, as she passed the salad across the table.

  I reached for the salt, shaking my head.

  She moved the shaker just out of reach.

  ‘They don’t approve of…’ I opened my arms wide to include our home, our life and everything else that mattered.

  ‘Time heals.’ She wiped up a spot of oil from the salad so small that I hadn’t noticed.

  I moved the brown rice and lentil stew around on my plate hoping she would drop the subject.

  ‘Are you ashamed of me?’

  ‘Yes, deeply, that’s why I married you and am carrying our baby.’

  ‘You’ve met my parents.’

  ‘Your parents are lovely.’

  She stabbed a spear of asparagus and chewed slowly without breaking eye contact, which was her version of the silent treatment.

  ‘Are you ever going to give up on this?’

  She swallowed and did not blink. I knew she could outlast me and I looked down at my food.

  ‘Iris,’ I said. ‘It won’t be what you’re hoping for. They won’t change and can’t admit they’re in the wrong.’

  ‘I’m your wife, in-laws are part of the deal.’

  I leaned back and put my hand on my belly.

  ‘I want them to know who I am,’ she said softly.

  We went to bed at different times and when she climbed under the duvet I waited for her arm to wrap around me, her wrist settling into its favourite spot between my breasts, but she turned her back to me and the space between us remained.

  Later as the night worked its way toward morning, I had the unnerving feeling that I was dreaming but unable to wake up. It wasn’t exactly a nightmare but it was frightening. I thought I was moving my mouth and speaking to someone though who that was was not clear: myself in the dream, my mother and father or all of us together. The feeling was familiar: I was being dragged away and under into the dream by the currents I was trying to escape.

  It was Boxing Day and my brother Iain and I had come up from London together on Christmas Eve. We were awash in the hope and happiness of just starting out in life: I had managed to edge my way into a junior position at the Guardian, and Iain had wormed his way into a promising role at HSBC. The atmosphere in the car as we drove home was one of victory, we had made good, had given our parents reasons to be proud.

  Iain had wanted to stay in town and go to the pub but I had insisted on spending it at home because it had been a few years since I’d been to visit and I felt guilty. The distance had given me space in which to reinvent my parents and their rigidly held views, but what was more pressing was that I had met Iris.

  Iain made no secret of feeling put out but once we were in the car we turned the music up loud and sang along, just like the old days, which had only fuelled my determination. It was Christmas, I reasoned, and everyone would be happier than usual, ready to make an effort and be welcoming so what could possibly go wrong?

  That I even had those thoughts shows how wilfully naïve I was. To think that I could swan into my parents’ home and announce that I was in love with a woman and be greeted with affection and acceptance was a desperate fantasy.

  We were finishing lunch and I had fortified myself with the liberal application of wine. I took a deep breath and as a natural lull in conversation presented itself I blurted out the words lesbian, girlfriend, living with, and some time now. I paused briefly and before anyone could speak I finished with, can’t change and it’s who I am.

  In my deluded vision this was the moment when my mother should have thrown her arms around my shoulders and proclaimed on behalf of the entire family that I was loved regardless. To make my imaginary family more realistic I had pictured my father grumbling for a few moments before my mother shamed him into acceptance.

  In reality, everything stopped. The silence was absolute. My words had created a vacuum that sucked everything out of the room. It was an awful period of shock, not unlike the moment you learn a loved one has died, when you need to process and digest, and during that time nothing can be said because silence is the only possible reaction – there aren’t words that can express what is essentially physical.

  My father broke the silence by saying, unnatural, disgusting, and wrong. His face grew red and spittle collected at the side of his mouth as he said, a real man, the right man and you’ll never be happy. He ended his diatribe with a choice selection: married, children and normal life, and then he looked at me with an expression I’d only seen once before.

  I must have been eight years old when Mum had ruined an important dinner. I remembered the day well because she wasn’t there when we got home from school and Dad, when he arrived home, was with someone from work. He had given Iain and I some toast and ushered us upstairs. He told us to be quiet and asked where Mum was. When I heard her voice in the kitchen I crept to the top of the stairs and listened, expecting some bit of gossip but getting instead a horrible row. What I saw from my vantage point was my father’s face and it was full of a cold judgement that I knew I never wanted to receive. But it wasn’t just his expression, it was everything about him: the way he held himself over my mother, unable to consider a different perspective.

  As he shouted at me across the table I looked to my mother for support or encouragement, anything that would have indicated a recognition of our mutual need to go beyond what was possible within the confines of these four walls, but she betrayed me that day too. She looked at the cold turkey, the day-old gravy and reheated sprouts while my father ranted until he reached the apex of his rage and pounded his fist on the table, shaking the glasses. ‘No daughter of mine!’ he bellowed as he stood up with such force that he knocked his chair over.

  In retrospect when I told Iris how it had all played out, with my head on her lap on the couch we had bought together, in the flat we shared, I had said that the truth of it was that in the moment I had felt nothing. Emotions are secondary in some situations, and my reaction to my father’s words was physical: I thought I would be sick.

  My father threw his rage at me as I remembered the night in the kitchen when he and Mum had fought, and I heard his hand hit her cheek, her head jerking sideways. His face was twisted into a scowl, his lips peeled back from his teeth, nostrils flared and his eyes were tiny little slits. It’s hard to say what he was most offended by: the fact that I was gay or that I had been so brazen as to announce it. I have wondered in the intervening years, if it had remained a secret, whether we could have carried on as we always had done.

  Shaking, I left the table and went to my room, which was unchanged. My belongings and what was left of the person I had been were museum pieces, covered in dust.

  Everything about the house was stale. Time had passed in the years since I had last seen them and nothing had changed, which was depressing and comforting, in unequal measure. Time had passed, nothing more and nothing less, and what was obvious was that life’s incremental changes were not welcome here. Progress was excluded and so was I.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and cursed myself for having gone further into this house where I was not wanted, when what I should have done was storm out the front door and gone directly back to London. The walls were closing in on me and I felt trapped. And I knew why my mother had fled to the sea.

  It took me a while to summon up the courage to leave but once I was ready I walked down the stairs with no intention of even saying goodbye. The creaky stairs that had given me away when I came in late as a teenager betrayed me again as I tried to creep out of the house, because my father appeared as I reached for the doorknob.

  With a calmness he said, ‘This is not easy to say, but if you insist upon continuing this lifestyle you give me no choice.’ He paused, and looked down at his feet. Then, meeting my stare again he said, ‘Goodbye. Leave your key on the table
before you go.’

  When he finished he simply turned his back to me and returned to his chair in the lounge. I was paralysed, my feet would not move and I didn’t know what to do. I was too stunned to react.

  I opened the door and lifted my bag over my shoulder and then I walked slowly down the path to the pavement. Before I turned into the road I looked back once more and saw my mother in the doorway, cardigan pulled tightly around her body, staring at me. I waited for her to say something and I hoped it would be that she loved me and always would even though we weren’t the sorts of people who said things like that. I wanted her to tell me that I was always welcome even though she couldn’t because it wasn’t her home, not really. A home, for us, was a man’s castle and in our home the women did the laundry. My mother had been granted one exception and whenever she had something important to talk about she insisted on a walk by the sea.

  My mother turned and went into the house and I thought that was it, that she was disgusted by me to such an extent that she couldn’t even say goodbye. Iain was already in the car at this point and he tooted the horn. I opened the passenger door and threw my bag in the back seat.

  ‘Harry!’ my mother called.

  I turned around and she had the garden shears in her hands and was trimming the bush at the end of the garden. I watched her clip off a branch and wondered what she was doing.

  She brought it over and handed it to me. It was a damp, brown twig with the remnants dotted with rotted blossoms.

  ‘Myrtle,’ she said. ‘It gave me strength when I needed it most.’

  On Sunday, we awoke to an unusually sunny day and Iris – a pathologically cheery, early riser – was bursting with plans.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling the duvet off me. ‘Let’s go somewhere. A drive in the country, nice pub lunch.’

  She stood there in a t-shirt and pants, in our bedroom and the sun streaming in from the windows made her skin glow. She noticed me looking at her and she smiled, letting me look for as long as I wanted.