The Comet Seekers

by Helen Sedgwick

  As each snowflake falls, it carries air between its frozen crystals.

  He likes the idea of frozen crystals; he thinks Severine will like it too.

  Together they compress to form ice with air pockets of atmosphere trapped in bubbles.

  He can imagine her, reaching out a palm for a bubble to land on, snapping her fingers to see it pop.

  We’re drilling into the ice, to find the layers from thousands of years ago. That’s how we can learn about the worlds of the past, Mama, he writes, then thinks better of it, scribbles out the line and then scrunches up the page, begins again.

  He describes the lakes and rivers beneath the ice sheets of Antarctica; how they had lain, unknown, for millennia and more: for the length of humanity. He describes what they mean, the movement of the vast ice sheets of a vast continent that they make possible.

  The world is moving beneath our feet, he writes, can you feel it, too?

  For days he writes, and folds the pages after they are written, places them carefully in an envelope and stores it in his suitcase. It is a one-sided conversation, but there is nothing new in that; he has been having one-sided conversations with his mama all his life.

  He goes to the central pod of the base to find some company, to find someone who will listen to what he’s saying and want to reply, but he finds himself standing outside Róisín’s room. If she’s in there, she makes no sound.

  He sees her when he steps outside, a splash of colour against the snow, coat zipped up over her mouth and hood pulled down low against the cold, almost covering her eyes.

  Can I just stand with you? he says, but his words are lost on the wind; it is howling tonight. The winter is settling in.

  They think it’s unstable, she says. The comet.

  How do they know?

  The way it’s rotating. Unbalanced.

  He looks up to the sky but it seems brighter than ever; more determined.

  That means it might fracture.

  What then?

  She shrugs. Its trajectory would change. Might burn up in the sun. Collide with a planet. Just disintegrate.

  The thought of this comet, so beautiful in the dark sky, destroying itself in such a meaningless way makes François feel hopeless.

  I hope it will, she says, surprising him. I hope it will fracture into different pieces. She turns to look at him. It’s been trapped on this path for millennia. Don’t you think it deserves a change?

  François feels something return that he thought was lost.

  He reaches out a hand but thinks better of it, instead turns his eyes to the sky and lets his arm brush, softly, against hers.

  Something strange happens to him every time he sees her; walking around the base, taking off her snow boots by the entrance, glancing over at him while they all have dinner together – their eyes finding one another’s across the busy table, across Zach’s loud voice. A subtle quickening of his pulse that brings a rush of blood to his face. The involuntary movement of his hand towards her, as if wanting to hold hers, to feel the warmth of her palm and the soft touch of her fingers. He tries to hide it; she already thinks of him as young, and this – this blushing – would only emphasise it, as if he were a teenager, giddy with first love.

  He wants to tell her that this is not first love, that he has known this before, but that would be a lie. Love is different with different people, he thinks, perhaps that is why he never felt a tremble in his hands and a knot in his stomach when he was with Hélène. There was desire, certainly, and laughter, and common ground; a comfort in knowing her body and knowing that she knew his. Holding on to that simplicity meant keeping things back, though. He’d thought it was just him, but now he remembers the way she looked at Stefan and he thinks he understands.

  It is not about comfort, with Róisín, it is something else; a tugging at his chest that he never asked for but that he cannot ignore, that almost makes him guilty with what he feels. It is not unlike homesickness. Perhaps that is why this rush of emotion makes him think of home every time he sees Róisín. Both are pulling at his heart. Both are out of reach.

  He tries calling Severine again, wants to ask her, now that he is unable, for the stories of their ancestors.

  Róisín is behind him. The phone rings out; he has not spoken to Severine since he left.

  He passes the handset to Róisín, who places it down and follows him out towards the kitchen.

  François? she asks, touching him gently on the arm. Why doesn’t she answer?

  He is surprised that she’s here, showing concern for him. Perhaps it is her way of asking if his mama is still alive.

  She’s probably got company, he says, angry at the thought of Severine ignoring his calls to talk to her ghosts. But Róisín’s silence makes him reconsider. She is being thoughtful, and he wants to think about his reply.

  I think she wants me to be free, he says.

  Her hand slips into his.

  SEVERINE CLIMBS THE STAIRS, PULLING François’s old childhood stepladder behind her. She doesn’t have the strength she used to; her arms feel frail now, although in her mind she’s still young, still alive.

  It’s going to be a beautiful sunset tonight. She’s learnt to tell from the sky, the clouds, the smell in the air. It is crisp and clear. The comet will be visible, high over the horizon, as soon as the sun starts to dip – its full name is Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák, this comet that has been discovered and rediscovered and rediscovered again over the years as new generations of people searched the skies.

  On the landing at the top of the stairs she positions the stepladder below the door to the attic, climbs to the top step and even then has to stand on tiptoes to reach the latch and push the horizontal door up and over onto the attic floor. There’s another ladder now, one that pulls down from inside the gap where the trapdoor was, an ugly clanking metal thing that springs when it’s least expected, threatening to trap young fingers.

  Don’t go up there, she always used to tell François – he was so boisterous, as a boy, always wanting to explore, to see, to know more.

  He didn’t listen though, he would do what she’s doing now – he would pull down the metal folded steps to climb again; his head, like hers, disappearing into the darkness of the attic, feet dangling behind.

  She climbs, one swaying metal step at a time, breathes in dust and silence and the smell of a place not lived in. On the final rung, she lifts herself up to kneel on the floor. She’s not ready to stand yet, she needs time to rest before looking for the light switch.

  She would race up after him, when she was younger and François was a child, shouting his name, trying not to let her concern sound like anger. Once, he pulled the metal steps back inside the attic, peered down at her from the darkness, a grin on his face as he refused to come back down. It was a game, to him; it was a wilderness to explore.

  But in truth there is nothing much kept up here, she thinks to herself now, looking for family keepsakes to make her nostalgic but seeing only shadows of old chairs that should have been thrown away and dusty piles of games and clothes that could have gone to charity. Things, belongings, do not make her sentimental. It is the people – it is their words, their laughter – that matter. She walks into the room and trips; the further away from the hatch she moves the darker it is. She glances around, momentarily unable to remember where the light switch is. How long has it been?

  But there it is, on the left-hand wall. She flicks it, and the bulb stutters to life.

  François always used to bring a torch up with him.

  It’s like being in the tent, Mama.

  Like when we went on an adventure?

  Like in the park!

  FRANÇOIS TESTS IT OUT, THOUGH he doesn’t go far from the base. It’s not seclusion he wants, just a night under the stars in a tent that glows like firelight when the torch is pressed up close to the fabric; like when they camped out in the park when he was a boy, when he forgot about the comet and watched a sunrise seep through the
sky like dye into silk.

  From above, the tent is red ink on a page; a single drop, curved into a perfect hemisphere under surface tension.

  From inside the tent, the world is an orange glow and shadow; the torch a single beam of light that can seem like the only bright moment of a lifetime.

  It is startling when, about 2 a.m., he hears the zip of the tent being pulled open. In his dream his mama had been outside, thinking he was asleep, talking to her ghosts and watching for the comet; it made him ache, to know that she had imaginary people who were more important to her than he was. He had never said that out loud, though. Perhaps he was a private child, but he’d never thought of himself that way. I’m an open book, he’d said to Hélène, three weeks in, and she’d laughed without making a sound. Is that true? she’d said with a wink, as if she knew him better after three weeks than he knew himself. Maybe she had a point; he’d never told Hélène about his mama’s ghosts. She would not have understood. Not like Róisín, who knows what it is to be haunted.

  Are you sleeping? she says.

  Yes.

  That’s good.

  He thinks she’s smiling as she crawls inside, though he can’t see her face with the torch off.

  I’ll just talk, she says, and you can sleep, and we’ll both feel better for it.

  So he closes his eyes again and gives Róisín the time and the space to talk. He listens to her descriptions of a night from her childhood, when she camped out under the stars with her cousin and taught him to watch for the speeding flight of the comet. Of how he took his toy panda with him – I had a tiger, he wants to say, but doesn’t – of how they kissed, as children, an innocent kiss on his lips that changed everything as they grew into teenagers and innocence was replaced by secrets.

  I think my mum knew, she says, though she never told me so, not exactly. But she was pleased when I went away; do you think that’s strange? Perhaps it sounds worse than it was. She missed me, I think, she wanted to see me more often, but when I moved home, that year on the farm with Liam and . . . I’m sorry, I’m skipping ahead, but there was this look in her eye, at times, when she asked me if I was going to stay and I said I was; I think it was disappointment.

  François remembers Severine’s face, when he swore he would stay with her in the hospital, be there at the end.

  I don’t know if it was all about Liam, Róisín says, though some of it was. I think she wanted me to be free.

  And he is glad of the dark; he can keep the sound of his tears silent, but he can’t hold them back. Severine has never answered the phone, not once. She has chosen to be alone.

  I think . . . I go round in circles, you know? Thinking I did the right things, the only possible things, thinking it would never have worked, had I stayed. I couldn’t live like that, too much was missing – one person can’t be enough, can they? You need more. Everyone needs more.

  There is a gust of wind that makes the taut fabric of the tent resonate like a string; ripple with harmonics.

  But then, on nights like this, I think . . . should I have stayed?

  She curls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, rests her head on her knees.

  You remind me of some things, she says, her voice muffled now through the fabric of her coat, and in other ways you are so different. Your hands – she takes his, forgetting to pretend that he is asleep, and he is glad – your hands are the same.

  They’re rough, from the kitchen.

  His from the farm.

  Why did he do it? he asks.

  I don’t know why. Nobody knows why, she says. I don’t think you get to find out why.

  He closes his fingers around hers, knowing she must have heard the break in his voice, but there is only a second of this closeness before she pulls away again.

  I think I need to say goodbye, she says. I’m sorry.

  François doesn’t know if she’s saying goodbye to him, or to Liam, or to them both. He doesn’t understand why she is sorry either, not really, but he feels it; there are things that he is sorry about too, and there are times when he wishes there was someone to hear his apology.

  He steps outside as she leaves, but not back to the base – he does not want to follow her, there is something else that he needs to see. He starts packing up the tent by the light of the stars, under the glow of the comet. A red survival tent is not what he needs any more.

  AT THE FAR END OF the attic – there, now – beyond François’s old bike and a pile of dust sheets that Severine can’t ever remember using, is another ladder, the final set of steps that lead up to the roof. Their roof, with the unusual flat top, is so unlike the others in Bayeux. They’re all triangles and spires, angular splashes of brown and white, whereas her own rooftop is serene as a lake but for the breeze whistling over it.

  Severine climbs up and stands in the middle of the rooftop, from where she can see all the way from the canal to the hills of Normandy. Someone must have brought plant pots up, but it was so many years ago that nothing remains in them but pebbles of soil. Perhaps it was her granny, she thinks, that is the sort of thing her granny would have done. Overhead, the sun is starting to sink, but it will be a few more minutes until it reaches the horizon. She tips some of the plant pots upside down, creates a sort of bench of her granny’s flowerpots in a row, and allows herself to sit down for a minute. She is tired. Her legs don’t have much strength any more, but it’s her lungs that are the problem; it feels like she can’t get oxygen, not enough to keep her going, to fill her with wonder like she used to know, when she was a girl.

  A first star appears over to the north, so bright and so alone she wonders if it is some kind of satellite. But others begin to cluster around it as the sky dips to purple fringed with terracotta. The sinking sun is like a bulb today, she thinks, its shape perfectly rounded above the horizon; a child’s drawing of the way the sky should look. She stands up again, having rested enough; takes a few steps away from the flowerpots and towards the edge of the roof.

  You didn’t think we wouldn’t notice, did you?

  Her granny has arrived by her side.

  I knew you would, she smiles.

  Severine doesn’t turn; she knows the others are here too.

  Brigitte takes her right hand, and next to her Ælfgifu is peering over the edge of the roof, a silk scarf wrapped around her hair and the soldier boy beside her.

  We wanted to say goodbye, Ælfgifu says, we both did. We started this, after all; the least we can do is be a part of the ending.

  The soldier boy reaches for her left hand and kisses it.

  Ælfgifu got my eyes wrong when she embroidered them, don’t you think?

  Severine looks into his eyes and tries to remember the soldier in the tapestry.

  Hmmm, she smiles – he is playful, this boy, he reminds her of François when he was younger – I think, on the whole, she captured you rather well.

  The twin sisters are looking in the flowerpots, lifting them up and shaking out the remnants of soil so Henri can balance them on his head; Great-Great-Grandma Bélanger looks like a little girl now and Severine’s mama is here too, not young any more but middle-aged, greying and gracefully lined. And Antoine is greying now as well; her mama has stopped growing younger for him and he has grown older for her, like he would have done, had he lived. They are holding hands, and behind them, there’s Great-Grandpa Paul-François, with a sailor’s cap worn at a jaunty angle over his thick dark hair. They stand together on the rooftop, looking over the hills and spires of Bayeux, like in that embroidered quilt she made when she was at school; all the faces of all the family she has ever known.

  François though – for a minute she stops. She sent him away to the furthest reaches of the world, the remotest continent, to a land of snow and ice so he wouldn’t have to see this, wouldn’t have to be the one to come home and find her, wouldn’t have to answer the door to police bearing the news. He is missing from the roof, and she feels guilty for that but she hopes it will spar
e him some of the pain.

  And it is as it should be; she knows that too. These ghosts of ancestors are not the living, and she’s not either.

  They stand and wait, patiently, as she thinks through what she is about to do; tries to imagine the days she has left, increasingly frail, dependent. Incarceration in hospital – that is where she’d end up, if she doesn’t take control. And doesn’t everyone deserve the chance to choose their own way out?

  The sunset in Bayeux has been and gone, and the town now is lit from starlight and the strange ethereal glow of a comet that is brighter than the moon. On the roof Severine steps forward, her toes pointing, just, over the gutters. She looks up; holds her breath as she counts. She is waiting to see it move, wanting to see the sky change on this, her last night; wanting to witness the speed of a comet. It appears to be still.

  She looks round at the faces of her ghosts, knowing each one of them, sharing a last moment of understanding.

  Brigitte has gone already?

  Her granny gently kisses her forehead like she used to when she was a child.

  Brigitte has another goodbye she has to say, whispers Great-Grandpa Paul-François, already fading in and out of view. She’s finding it hard to let go; she never found her own family, and François is the last of ours.

  Severine nods; she did what she could. Then she looks down, thinks, fleetingly, of how she must have those gutters cleaned, they are blocked with leaves from last autumn, leaf mould now and grime – they’ll overflow soon if she doesn’t sort it out. What a practical thing, how stupid to think that, and she laughs at herself, glancing back up to the sky and that is when she understands how to see a comet flying. You cannot watch it, cannot expect it to perform while your eyes are locked on it, but look away, and while your eyes are fixed on the ground it is possible – and what a possibility it is – for the sky to change.

  And then, just as quickly, she steps off the roof and all the ghosts of all her family follow her. So much company, she thinks. What a beautiful thing, to have all this family.