The Coordinates of Loss

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘No, Vick. It’s how I feel and how I have felt since that moment and I have this knowledge that this is how it will be. I resent him, I blame him.’ She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘It’s hard to justify or explain. I know deep down it’s not his fault, but I can’t help it! He was the reason we had the boat. He was the reason I wasn’t out of the cabin, why I wasn’t up earlier.’ She shook her head. ‘And the craziest thing of all is that it was me who initiated sex that morning, me who delayed us and yet . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It’s like everything we had before – the whole ten years leading up to that morning – has shrunk to nothing, and every single thought and feeling I have towards James is from that morning, and I can’t move past it.’

  ‘What’s the other thing?’ Vicky asked. ‘You said there were two things you couldn’t shake?’

  Rachel swallowed. ‘It sounds stupid, but I keep thinking about this one night, a month or so before that day; James was late home and I ate with Oscar. I cooked spaghetti and he was fidgety, playing with his supper, but not eating it. I was impatient, he was making a mess and I snapped at him and told him to eat nicely. He asked me if he could have some ice cream instead and I shouted. I was tired and I yelled, “This isn’t a restaurant, Oscar, you don’t get to reject your main course and go straight for pudding! If you don’t eat your pasta you don’t get ice cream, it’s that simple!” And he cried and I sent him upstairs and then he fell asleep.’ She bit her bottom lip. ‘I can’t stop thinking about that night, the fact that he might have gone to sleep hungry, and what would the harm have been in letting him have a bowl of bloody ice cream?’ She rubbed her hand over her face. ‘I didn’t know we were on a timer, didn’t know how little time I had left and I wish . . . I wish I hadn’t shouted at him and I wish I had taken him up a bowl of ice cream.’

  Vicky nodded with a look of pure anguish.

  ‘You know, Rach, you said you were worried that you had been a bad mum and that has bothered me. You weren’t; I saw it first-hand. You were attentive and interested and patient, you loved him.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Christ, we all get tired, we all snap! But even now, after he’s gone, you are thinking about the tiniest detail, worrying over his bowl of ice cream and the fact that he might have been sad, hungry. Do you think those are the actions of a bad mum? Of course not! You knew him. You loved him and you were a bloody good mum.’

  Rachel stared at the road ahead, quite unable to express just how much the words of this woman, whose opinion she valued, helped ease the guilt from her shoulders, scratching at the miserable surface of self-doubt and recrimination and allowing a flash of pride to peek through.

  The two walked on in silence, each digesting the futility of her worry and noting how these small things could become big things simply by a twist on the dial of fate.

  The café, oddly named ‘rewer’, was great. The lighting was low and the walls covered with a variety of pictures and ornate gilt mouldings with aged mirrors and numerous dark-framed, Edwardian floral images that looked like the etchings from a botanist’s catalogue. The tables were honey-coloured, gnarled and pitted wood with jam jars on them full of cutlery, next to other jam jars with sprigs of wildflowers in them, and the chairs were mismatched. A long, dark-wood bar ran down one side of the room and glass shelves were fixed to the exposed brickwork on the wall behind an elaborate, shiny coffee machine.

  The two staff she saw – a man and a chic, older woman with dark-grey hair wound on top of her head in a loose bun – both wore denim, with industrial-looking aprons with leather detailing.

  ‘Hi there.’ The woman smiled and pointed at the rather clunky-looking, leather-topped iron stools positioned along the bar and then to a collection of smaller, empty tables at the back. ‘Where do you fancy?’

  ‘I think the back today.’ Vicky made her way through the café with the confidence of a regular patron. Rachel followed in her wake.

  ‘Apart from travelling over here, which is a blur, and walking with my dad, which I don’t think counts, this is the first time I have properly been out.’

  ‘You are doing great.’ Vicky reached across the tabletop and squeezed her hand.

  ‘No little one today?’ The man appeared by the side of the table. He had a close-cropped dark beard, and hair that was too long so he had to keep pushing it behind his ears.

  The question had made Rachel’s heart leap; for a split second she had thought he was addressing her and felt the usual surge of panic at how she might respond.

  ‘No. He’s with his dad. We officially have half an hour of grown-up time.’

  ‘Quite right too.’ He smiled. ‘Right, let me guess’ – he pointed at Vicky – ‘soy latte with hazelnut shot and a slice of carrot cake?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  He turned to Rachel. ‘And for you?’

  ‘Erm, is there a menu?’

  ‘Only in my head, so what would you like first, drinks or specials?’

  ‘I don’t want anything to eat – drinks.’

  ‘Hot or cold?’ he fired.

  She felt a flicker of irritation and glanced at the door, considering bolting. ‘A coffee, please, I’ll just take a coffee.’

  ‘Latte? Americano? Cappuccino? Regular? Large?’

  ‘Why don’t you just print it on a menu?’ She was curious.

  The man leaned towards the table and lowered his tone. ‘Standard answer, we think it builds a relationship between customer and staff. Look at us’ – he touched his chest and then pointed at her – ‘here we are chatting! All ice broken, so it clearly works, but unofficially’ – he leaned further in – ‘we have so few items on the menu that I think it might lose us customers.’

  ‘Why do you have so few items?’ Vicky asked quizzically.

  ‘Because there is only my mum and me out here and my dad in the kitchen, and he can make four or five things really well and she can only remember four or five things really well and I am only good at ordering stock for four or five things really well.’

  ‘Okay, then.’ Vicky linked her fingers, resting them on the tabletop. ‘Now we know.’

  ‘I’ll take a black coffee, please,’ Rachel said, keen for him to leave them alone.

  ‘Coming right up.’ He rushed to the back of the bar.

  ‘I am right, you know.’ Vicky held her eyeline. ‘I don’t think there is a person on the planet who hasn’t lost someone and felt guilt or remorse over one small word, one insignificant incident or one missed opportunity. You need to not fixate on the ice-cream thing.’

  Rachel wished it were as easy as letting the thought go.

  Vicky continued, ‘When my nan was ill a couple of years back, I went to sit with her every day, just for an hour or so after work. She was in St Peter’s Hospice and sometimes she just slept; I don’t know if she knew I was there all of the time.’

  ‘Yes, I remember when she was ill. It was one of the many times I wished I was closer to you.’

  ‘I worked late one night and called Gino to say I was exhausted and he suggested I go straight home; he knew it was a lot – juggling work hours and sitting with Nan into the evening. So I did. I went home, had a bath and fell into bed. My mum called in the morning to say my nan had passed away that night. And I know it’s different because Ivy was old and she’d had a long life and it wasn’t a tragedy.’

  Rachel felt grateful that Vicky knew the difference, validating her own terrible sense of injustice.

  ‘But it was still awful for me because I loved her.’

  ‘Of course.’ Rachel pictured the cantankerous old Bristolian lady who used to moan at them when they had their music too loud or stomped on the floorboards as they learned a dance routine in Vicky’s bedroom. She thought Ivy had always been very old.

  ‘My point is that I have never thought about the hours and hours I spent by her bedside, the thousands of cups of tea I made her over the years or the lovely moments we shared . . . I only think about that one night and how I let her down; one night that
was my chance to say goodbye!’

  Rachel looked at her friend and understood her point, but took no comfort from it.

  ‘It’s true, Rach, no matter where or when or who we lose, we all have those things that beat us up from the inside out.’

  ‘One soy latte with a hazelnut shot and one black Americano and one large slice of carrot cake with two forks, just in case you change your mind.’ The man unloaded the round tray and was gone again.

  ‘He’s chirpy today.’ Vicky nodded after him, as she sipped the froth from her drink.

  ‘What does “rewer” mean?’

  ‘I have no idea, ask him.’

  Rachel shook her head; she wasn’t curious or bothered enough to do that.

  ‘What will happen, Rach, if they don’t find Oscar?’ Vicky’s words, albeit softly spoken, were still a sharp knife to Rachel’s breast. ‘Will you have a service or some kind of funeral? And would that be here or in Bermuda, do you think?’

  ‘P . . . peaches and cream,’ she managed. ‘Peaches and cream.’

  CEE-CEE

  Oh Rachel,

  It was some treat to speak to you the other day on the phone. I am filled with joy that my stories bring you back to Bermuda. I feel a connection to you as if we were kin. To see your pain raw and exposed takes me right back to certain days and nights of my youth. Once or twice when you had fallen asleep while I was working, I came and sat with you and watched you sleep. You would stir, cry and I would whisper, ‘Go back to sleep, go to sleep, child . . .’ And in truth it brought me peace to watch your face lose its tight angles and your brow smooth in slumber. I knew from my own heartache that there was nothing I could do, apart from offer words of solace where I could and keep the house and everything in it as neat and tidy as it could be.

  I know that I would have liked someone to do the same for me in my hour of desperation. Ah, but you don’t know how I reached that point, do you? I should explain.

  It all started immediately after the dance. The author of my much-famed note and I, we didn’t make a formal plan, and as my daddy liked to remind me there wasn’t much permission asked, but Willard Templeton used to crop up like a bad penny. A penny I was always delighted to find! I remember him sitting in the pew opposite mine at church and loitering in the street near Grandma Sally’s and thinking it curious that he often had business within feet of where I lived. I didn’t dare hope that the reason for his proximity might be anything other than coincidence, I didn’t dare! But now, of course, I know it was. And truth is, had I known for sure, I fear I might have burst with joy. He then started to do a thousand little things to let me know that, even though we hadn’t discussed any details as such, we were progressing. And it made me happy. Happier than happy!

  One evening after school Clara and I caught the bus down to Horseshoe Bay and as was our habit, we raced through the pine woods, along the path and across the soft sand into the sea. Now, as I might have mentioned, I was always a good swimmer, making headway, pulling against the current, but kicking strong. It came natural to me. I’d look over my shoulder and see Clara shrieking fit to burst, ‘Cee-Cee! Help me! I’m gonna drown!’ as she crawled about on all fours with a clump of sticky seaweed on her head, hanging down like a sea witch’s fringe.

  Clara never quite made it out to the calm and it was the same spectacle every time: her being tossed around in the foam and yelling so loudly that folks would stop their bikes and get off to see what the hollering was in aid of. I was always the timid one and I have always thought that as a pair we probably put out the right level of noise into the world. It was just one of a million ways that we compensated for and complemented each other.

  It was the most wonderful time of day when the sun started to dip, and the world took on that majestic pink hue – the colour of a conch’s lip – and shadows crept from the soldier-straight pines out over the sand. Clara and I lay at the water’s edge, bobbing on the salty crest, letting the shallow sea drag us out and push us in.

  Friday night was always the best time of the whole week. No school the next day and apart from church on Sunday and a whole heap of chores, our time was pretty much our own. Clara stood and raised her dress to show me her cotton panties, full of sand and hanging down like a baby’s diaper at the back. ‘I’ve got half the seabed in here!’ Lord, she waddled like a cowboy along the beach with the white cotton fabric stretching down her thighs and filled with wet sand! ‘Help me, Cee-Cee!’ she hollered, as she tried to shake it out right there and then. I could only laugh and clutch at my stomach; laughing so hard I could hardly take a breath and feared I might pee.

  And the next time I opened my eyes, she had gone a little quiet and Albert Romsey was walking up the beach with Willard, my bad penny, by his side. I felt my heart go boom-boom at the sight of him and sat up straight with my shoulders back. Grandma Sally told me if there were two things a man wanted in his future wife it was the ability to make a decent Bermuda fish chowder and good posture. I couldn’t yet make decent chowder, but my posture was better than most. And yes, I was, after no more than one measly dance and a couple of brief exchanges, thinking along these lines. Clara slunk back to where I sat and dropped down by my side. Our dresses clung to our wet forms and I guess my underwear might have been a little insubstantial. The boys stood by our side and the four of us looked out towards the horizon as the sun sank, almost in reverence and with the same hush we adopted when Pastor Raymond was preaching and it felt like he was speaking directly to us.

  I saw Willard glance at me more than once and I watched his gaze lower to my chest. His eyes widened and I felt his longing. At the same time, I could feel the swell of something in my stomach that matched his expression and felt a lot like laughing, but on the inside. Now, I had never been proud of my body, never fully realised that these swells and bumps covered in skin had any function other than supporting all the soft and important bits that God created. This was something of an awakening and I liked the way it felt. I liked it very much. Six years before when, walking the railway track near Baker’s Hill, Moses Furbert had said, ‘That ain’t no bosom much worth considerin’’ when I’d let him peek down my frock and he let me look inside his shorts. We’d laughed then, at the absurdity of the fascination, deciding silently and I suspect mutually that the world of bodies and bits and pieces, and the mystery of what went where, could wait until we was much older. And it occurred to me right there and then on Horseshoe Bay, with every inch of my being aware of the proximity between me and Willard, that much older had indeed arrived.

  And I guess this was the essence of all that pulled me towards and bound me to the boy with the reputation, the boy with an eye for the girls and a name that people spoke with a sneer. It was a powerful force, a physical thing that to this day I cannot entirely explain, but I say without shame and in front of the Lord who might be listening: it was physical and wonderful and something like magic.

  The four of us walked home together, keeping to the raised inside bank along South Road. Willard hung back and I did too and, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he reached for my hand. I won’t ever and could never forget the way it felt to have my palm safe and warm against his. I could have walked a thousand miles. I was light as air and happy as a white-eyed vireo chirping day and night. But if I was surrounded by sunshine, Clara was the opposite; mired in a dark, brooding cloud, the likes I had never seen before. She went quiet, surly even, her shoulders sloped downward and her mouth set thin.

  This was the beginning.

  This was the first sign I had that she was going to change or maybe it was me that was changing. It doesn’t matter which, not now.

  It didn’t happen overnight, but it might as well have. It was more than sulking; it was like Clara had decided that there wasn’t enough of me to go round and that if I chose Willard then I couldn’t have her too. I tried to reason, tried to coax, I believe Grandma Sally even tried scolding her over it. Until one day I realised that there was no amount of apolo
gising or pleading that could change things. And when I stopped pleading, stopped fretting over how to fix it, that was when Eliza-Jane Clara May Brown, my Clara, my best friend in the whole of creation for more years than not, more or less disappeared from my life. Just plain cut me off like I had never existed. How could a person do that? I often wonder. What lurks inside them that makes them think that is in any way okay? Why do they think they are so superior that they can?

  My questioning changes nothing – not then, not now. She holed up like a land hermit crab and retreated to that two-room shack where Momma Eula shouted at her for nothing much. My heart missed her. My arms missed her. Grandma Sally missed her – we all did. It shocked me. My world was much, much quieter. It was like some kind of grief to me; at least that was how I would have described it until real grief came along and then I realised how little I had ever cared about anything. Clara May included.

  But I am getting ahead of myself, as I am wont to do, dear Rachel.

  So Willard and I fell in love. I loved him. I truly loved him, longed for him, wanted to see him and, Lord forgive me, touch him too. He became everything. We married quietly in St Anne’s Church, Southampton Parish, when I was just seventeen years of age, and it was more than perfect. My daddy walked me up the aisle with a rare look of pride, my mommy cried throughout my vows and Grandma Sally wore her favoured white linen hat, but fixed fresh white oleander and purple Bermudiana to the band. They stood out to me, vivid and bright and beautiful, just like Grandma Sally herself, and truth is, if I picture that day, which I do from time to time, the first thing I see is those beautiful, colourful blooms the sight of which gladdened my heart.

  On the day itself, and on the days either side, Willard looked a little sheepish, his actions a little unsure, his voice quiet, and he had specks of nervous sweat on his top lip and spittle in the corners, but I didn’t mind none. I didn’t want no loudmouth. What I wanted was to be Mrs Willard Templeton – and I was!