“Let’s take a day at a time. We’ve a lot of thinking to do.”
He leaned back. She could see he was not entirely happy with that but he said nothing. She watched his face become thoughtful again, his eyes unfocussed. She had got to know this look and kept quiet.
“Tim said Fraser was buried yesterday.” He looked sideways at her, watching for her reaction. There was none. “He said there were only three people there. One of them was the Head.”
After a moment, she said: “That’s sad.”
He leaned forward. “Yes, it is sad.”
“But do you care?”
He looked round. “Do you care?”
She flicked her fingers round her ear, a vestige of the old gesture. “I think,” she said carefully, “that it’s sad that there are people whose lives are twisted and wasted like his was. And Penny’s.”
He extended his palm. “It puzzles me. Why can some people come through hell and find heaven? And why do some people stay in hell?”
“Maybe it depends on who they meet when they’re in hell. You had your own strong personality and a loving family.” She took his hand. “As for me, you took me by the scruff and dragged me out.”
“I wonder where Fraser came from? What made him what he became? It’s not just what people do. It’s why they do it. Understanding makes forgiving easier.” He was quiet for a while and she leaned against him, stroking his fingers where they had settled back on her shoulder. His thoughts surfaced again. “It reminds me of the main thing I learnt in the year after Abi died. I was sent back to school, but it seemed pointless to me. It didn’t matter what I knew. That just seemed so one dimensional.”
“Knowledge is breadth. Reason is depth.”
He went on. “So I began to look for the how and the why in knowledge. That way I found heights and depths, peaks and bunkers. And life wasn’t lukewarm any more. It wasn’t grey.” He gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “That’s when I found the colour again.”
“Finding it’s one thing,” she said. “Becoming a prism that can make it dance on others is very special.”
She had hit a chord. “Yes! That’s it, exactly!” He let her go and stood up, agitated, pacing to the window and back again. “This world matters.” His eyes were sparkling, alive. “Being there. Reaching up to heaven and bringing a piece of it down to earth. Bringing eternity into time for people who badly need it here and now. It’s like the roses in the park. It really stuck with me what you said that day. We need to leave an impression in the air around us. Otherwise we’re pointless.”
His mood flipped again and he pulled her to her feet and into a tight, smothering hug. Then he found her lips and kissed her deeply, confident and happy with her now. Familiar responses tingled through her. He pulled back, leaving her dizzy.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“What?” she breathed, her eyes still closed.
“When’s dinner? I’m starving.”
They were trying to compose themselves for sleep. They weren’t succeeding. Robyn lay across the rumpled sheets, her head on David’s stomach, her fingers drawing little circles on his chest. His eyes were closed, his hands relaxed across her back.
“David?”
“Mmm?”
“How are you going to do your exams?”
“College, I hope. Where I should have gone in the first place.”
His eyes were still closed. She eased herself over him a little. “What are you thinking?”
He opened his eyes. They were clouded, far away. “I was thinking about a cherry tree.”
“A cherry tree?”
“One you’ve seen, but you wouldn’t remember.”
“Where is it?”
“In my back garden. When we moved to Belfast, my parents planted it specially. We call it Abi’s Tree.” He moved one hand to the back of her head. His voice was unsteady. “Dad died beside it. It’s a weeping cherry. And it’s all alone at the moment.”
Robyn stayed still, quiet. Then she rolled to his side. She opened her arms and he turned into them, urgently, desperately, his composure fracturing at last. She stroked his hair gently. In the middle of happiness, grief hooked in from the side, abrupt and crippling. She moved a little to ease him on her shoulder and cradled him until finally he slept. And for a long time afterwards.
They woke together. Just by the way he looked at her, Robyn knew what was in his mind.
“It’s time to go back.” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
As the ferry ploughed back across the waves towards home, they sat side by side at the prow window, looking ahead. When the first smudge of land blurred the horizon, they reached out at the same moment to link hands. David lifted her fingers to his lips and held her gaze.
“So do you think we can make this work?” he asked.
“Yes, David, I do believe we can.”
Contented, he turned his eyes back to the window, to the sea, to the land, and to the future.
Epilogue
IN DRIVING RAIN, Robyn stood beside David on an isolated hillside in Fermanagh. On his other side a little whine escaped Manna as he checked his master’s face with his good eye. The flowers on the grave were faded, windswept. It added to the sense of desolation. The white headstone still bore just one name:
“Abigail Elizabeth, aged three years and six months.”
David stood hunched against the wind, his hands deep in the pockets of his coat. Robyn put her hand on his back where the rain was making dark patches across his shoulders.
“They gave you their forgiveness, David.” She stepped back. “Accepting it once and for all is up to you.”
She clicked her fingers and Manna slipped round to her heel. She walked away to the car, leaving David alone. He would come back to her when he was ready.
This cemetery was different. An orderly town graveyard with headstones in neat rows. David parked the car outside the gates and Robyn led him to the black marble of Matthew Daniels’ impressive surround. Manna stopped ten feet from it and sat down obstinately. His head was low; his eye followed them anxiously. He would not go any closer.
In the centre, on top of the white pebbles, was the flower urn. It was empty. David stood beside her.
“Can you lay the ghost?” he asked gently.
A tremor went through her, from her head to her toes. David left her briefly. When he came back, he was holding a stone the size of his palm. He held it out to her.
“You could still hit him. Do whatever you have to.”
She took the stone and turned it in her hands, looking from it to the headstone with its proud lettering.
She raised the stone. Took aim. Flexed her wrist. Took aim again.
Then she lowered her hand slowly and opened her fingers. The stone fell to the ground with a dull thud. She walked away to the hedge where some dandelions flowered amongst the nettles and brambles. She tugged a few stalks and came back. Lifting her arm high, she threw them at the headstone. The golden flower heads bounced off the marble and fell across the white pebbles beneath. Robyn’s lip curled.
“There you are, you pathetic bastard. I forgive you. But where you are, I’d say that’s the least of your worries.”
Then she walked away. David didn’t follow her until she sat heavily on another grave surround, further down the path. She heard him stop in front of her.
“David,” she said.
He dropped to his heels. “I’m here.”
“I think, “she said slowly, “I’ll go and see my mother soon.”
A moment of quiet stillness. Then they stood, turned and walked side by side down the path and out through the cemetery gates. Manna followed, his tail rising happily. They would never return.
Never again.
Author’s Note
Telling the story of David and Robyn has been a labour of love for me. I hope I have done justice to their rocky passage towards a future that could be better than the past.
They struggled with s
o much that cast a blight on their lives from their earliest years. Perhaps, especially from Robyn, there is a message here that vicious circles can be broken, that the past need not define us forever. As David says at one point: “When you get blown off course, you can choose to stay lost — or you can reach for heaven and steer by the stars.”
Sadly, there are also those, as in David and Robyn’s story, who do not make it out of the vicious circle, those whom society lets down or even worse, just simply doesn’t notice. There must be many who, from their conception, have life’s odds stacked against them.
As in this story, there are too many bad people alive today. We hear about them, their deeds and ideologies every day. But I reflect on the undeniable truth that there are many good people too, celebrated and uncelebrated, famous and anonymous.
And I take hope from that, hope in all the people who, like David, are persistent and patient, with an inextinguishable spirit of goodness and kindness. They do exist and I am privileged to be related to a few!
On a less serious note, if you have enjoyed this story, it would be massively helpful if you could leave a review on Amazon. It all helps work those mysterious algorithms! Thank you!
Sheila Turner Johnston
September 2020
Also by Sheila Turner Johnston
“This is one of those rare books that touch the soul – a story of irrevocable change, tragedy and indestructable love.”
Meeting him was easy. It was knowing him that burned bone.
Paul Shepherd is dangerous. He crashes into Jenna’s life like an asteroid into an ocean. Willful and exhausting, he stirs feelings that make her confront all that has kept her safe – and bored.
Relentless and determined, he needs Jenna with a desperation she does not understand. Jenna discovers that, although she can try to hide from Paul, there is nowhere to hide from herself.
But he is married…
What do you do when you discover you are not the person you thought you were?
Visit https://bit.ly/2RKwlfu to hear the author read from Chapter 4.
www.sheilaturnerjohnston.com
@SperrinGold @sperringold
Healer of My Heart Page 29
