by Louise Beech
‘I’m not odd,’ I said. ‘I’ve got Rose.’
‘She’s only nine. You can’t look to her for companionship or support. It’s not her responsibility to be your friend is it, lovey?’
‘Of course not,’ I snapped.
‘I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. I’m just trying to watch out for you both. Look, anyway, I hope you enjoy the cake. I got a bit carried away with the brandy so maybe just a small bit for Rose?’
‘Thank you.’
The words surprised me; they came out so easily. It was a thank-you for helping me find Rose weeks earlier, and for the sugar-free apple pie she’d made then, and for not asking why Rose had been in trouble at school. I said it spontaneously, the way we try and get our children to and never can. The way it happens when we’re suddenly overcome with gratitude.
‘It was nothing, lovey,’ April said, both belittling and elevating my simple sentence. She disappeared around our hedge.
People were kind with their cakes and offers, but they didn’t know that Rose and I weren’t alone. Fourteen men joined us each day. I laughed when I imagined telling my mum we’d be sharing the season with a gang of young seamen. Sometimes I’d wash the pots and hear their voices in the gush of water; or during a shower the rush of bubbles merged with the ocean’s melody and Colin whistling.
There was a week until the big day and still all the last-minute Christmas jobs to do, cards I’d forgotten to send that might not make it their destination now and items to take to the charity shop.
On the last Saturday before Christmas Rose and I headed into town for some final gifts. I’d already bought her stocking-fillers and wrapped them weeks ago and hidden them in the airing cupboard. Her main gift, a sewing machine so she could make bags and other knickknacks out of scraps, was under my bed. But I needed to buy April a little something for being kind and had forgotten to get a box of chocolates for Rose’s teacher.
‘Can we go to McDonald’s for dinner?’ asked Rose as I finally found a parking spot in the main shopping centre.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘It’ll be packed. I just want to buy what we need and go home. The queues will be down the street.’
‘You’re no fun,’ she pouted.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I don’t reckon Colin’s diary will sound right in MacDonald’s. Do you?’
‘You brought it?’
‘Of course. In case.’
She smiled. ‘People might look at us a bit crazy.’
Eating out could be difficult; nervous about doing her blood test and injection where others were, Rose always insisted we squeeze into a toilet cubicle. Hardly ideal, but few places had anywhere else to do it. On the rare occasions we’d done it at our table because the toilets weren’t suitable, it never failed to surprise me how much people stared. No attempt was made to hide mild revulsion or blatant curiosity. Once a woman leaned over and asked if we should be doing such a thing in public, to which it had taken all my strength not to say sarcastically that normally my daughter did heroin in a derelict house.
‘We could read a page in our heads for once.’ Rose got out of the car. ‘Together so we’re getting the same bit at the same time, like loud reading.’
We were at day nineteen on the boat already. Where had the time gone? While it flew for us, I imagined it was quite the opposite for the men at sea. So little had happened since day fifteen that each chapter now was like an old-fashioned record playing again and again, crackling with dust and scratches. Meals merged into one, sleep and waking had no pattern, with the men hardly knowing if they were conscious or out. The sun rose and fell. And between this only monotony, agony, thirst and no ship.
Rose pursed her lips. ‘But it might not be the same if we read the diary in our heads. Like does a spell work if you don’t say it out loud?’
I locked the car door and fastened her coat; within five minutes she had unfastened it again. We weaved through crowds of shoppers who banged us with bulging bags. I tried to hold Rose’s hand but she roughly pulled free.
‘Have you got your medical bracelet on?’ I asked, eternally afraid of losing her and having something happen in my absence.
‘Yes, Natalie.’
‘Don’t start with that again,’ I sighed. ‘Have you got your phone?’
‘Yes, Na– Mum.’
I decided I could get all I needed in one store; Rose nagged to go a shop she liked because she had five pounds to spend and insisted that was the only place she’d be able to afford anything. I said we’d maybe go later and her fierce glare indicated she didn’t believe me. Looking back afterwards, I can say it all started there. Not with the undoing of coat buttons or the rejection of my hand but with her scowl after the amiable conversation in the car.
While I tried to look at flowered make-up bags for April, Rose huffed and puffed and said she was so bored she could die. I suggested she sit on a chair near the changing rooms so I’d get done faster and we could maybe go to McDonald’s after all. With a grunt she flopped into it and I wandered the aisles looking for April’s thank-you gift. Lost in choices – and some half-price earrings I liked – I forgot for a moment that Rose was even with me.
Then a commotion drew my attention to the changing room area. Above the reindeer jumpers and yuletide scarves, a row of heads bowed, watching an event unfold. One or two faces turned to scan the store. I realised who they wanted – me. Dropping the purple earrings, I ran to the crowd, dreading what I knew awaited me.
On the floor, Rose glared at the shoppers. She’d overturned a rail full of fake fur and they surrounded her, covering the ground as though she’d prepared a bed to collapse in. When an old woman with blue hair bent to ask kindly where her mum was, Rose threw a fur at her.
I pushed through the throng, said, ‘She’s my daughter, please let me past,’ and knelt down and tried to calm her.
‘Fuck you,’ Rose spat, eyes wild and skin shimmering with damp.
Disapproving murmurs surged through the crowd the way surf does from the wave machine at our local swimming pool. It must be a hypo. I’d only read about the symptoms – the clammy flesh and pale skin and extreme stroppiness – but nothing could prepare me for the reality of it. For how it changed a person. This wasn’t my child.
‘She’s diabetic,’ I told the crowd, ‘She’s having a hypo. Can’t you give us some space?’
I’d have to do a blood test, make sure of it. Had I brought Coke to treat it? I surely couldn’t have forgotten today. Every time I left the house with Rose now I did the checklist in my head: glucose tablets, Coke, snack, blood meter, lancets, emergency GlucaGen pen.
Talking gently to Rose, who barely registered my words and babbled in nonsensical language, I searched for the plastic purse I kept her implements in. Thank God, it was there, with a small bottle of Coke.
It must have been almost eleven – we’d missed her ten o’clock snack. What number had she been at breakfast? Four-point-four. Not a hypo, but low. No wonder she’d crashed – an empty tummy and busy shopping and a distracted mum. I’d just begun to feel more confident. Now I fell apart.
‘Can I help?’ asked the blue-haired woman kindly.
‘No.’ I opened the plastic purse. ‘I have to do her blood.’
I reached for Rose’s hand but she snatched it back and shook her head, skin ashen. Her eyes lolled back into her head, like marbles rolling in a child’s hand. There was no way I’d be able to prick her finger. I’d have to presume this was a hypo and treat it. I unscrewed the Coke bottle and held it to her lips. Rose spat it out and said, ‘fuck off fuck off fuck off,’ over and over.
What if I couldn’t get the sugar inside her? Unconsciousness? I couldn’t face that again. She’d have to have it, one way or another.
‘Let me help.’ The blue-haired woman took the bottle.
So I gripped Rose’s face, turned her towards me and spoke firmly, ‘Drink it. You have to drink it.’ Then the woman tipped the sugary liquid to Rose’s mouth and I held he
r face as still as I could while she swore at me. But the Coke trickled into her mouth. She swallowed between words. I imagined the sugar reviving, sparking like electricity, regenerating.
Having lost interest, the crowds dispersed. Once we’d got the Coke into Rose and her swearing slowly gave way to less angry get-off-me’s, the blue-haired woman went to find a store manager. I helped Rose back into the chair and knelt before her.
‘Look at me.’ I held her face. ‘Look right in my eyes.’
The clouds across her irises dispersed, allowing those hazel flecks to shine again. I thought of Colin assessing eyes for life. Hers were reawakening; the sugar was taking effect. I found the diary in my bag.
‘It’s just us,’ I said. ‘Just us and Grandad Colin.’
And there in the middle of a busy department store at Christmas time I read a random diary page. It occurred to me, in the midst of the drama and panic, that it was a miracle we’d never opened it in the same place twice. Surely the law of averages determined we should have done. Surely when a page had been opened already it creased in a way that made it likely to fall open again.
But no, always chance. Always a new story.
Be glad it’s not you. That’s what Ken said to me each time it happened. Be glad it’s not you. He said once, ‘I fear I’ll not go on if it’s you, chum.’ So I said, ‘Don’t talk that way.’ I used to shout at him to get angry! Fight, Ken! Anger sustains, sadness doesn’t. Sadness drains. I’m angry! Angry that I’m here, back home, and I can still hear Bott’s screams and Scown’s ranting. I’m angry that they’re louder than the silence of this room. I’m home and still that places haunts me. I think when you’ve fought so hard to survive it can be harder not to have that battle any more. What do you do when life is easier? What do you fill it with?
I paused when Rose smiled weakly at me, even through such sad diary words.
‘I don’t know yet,’ she said.
‘Know what?’ I asked.
‘What we’ll do with when we get to the end of the story. I’m not scared though cos I’ll know the end.’
The blue-haired woman returned with a bag of cookies she’d bought and a burly store manager. He took us into a back room where Rose ate a couple of biscuits in peace. I stroked her hair, meeting no resistance now. She looked exhausted though, like she’d run a marathon.
‘I was there,’ Rose said.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘On the boat.’ She munched noisily. ‘I could hear you talking but it was like you were the dream and the boat was the real.’
‘You couldn’t see me?’ I asked.
‘No, just the boat. I lay next to Colin but I don’t think he saw me. He was sleeping. He looked thin and hairy. So I whispered and he moved a bit. I said, “No, don’t wake up. Stay asleep.” And then I said, “Dream about nice things and you won’t be sad. But it’s okay to be sad cos that’s part of being brave. I just can’t remember the other part right now.” Then I looked around the boat. I wasn’t feeling all weird like when you made me sit near the changing rooms. I was totally strong. Stronger than they are. But there weren’t fourteen – someone was missing.’
I was so relieved to have her back that I hardly took in the account. Pink coloured her cheeks. Perhaps she’d had a vivid dream induced by the hypo. But hadn’t she said last week that she’d been to the boat. I’d asked her again about it but she’d shrugged and started talking about her motorway homework.
‘Do you feel okay now?’ I touched her forehead.
‘Yes, I feel good.’
‘Do you remember what you said?’ I asked. ‘While you were on the floor.’
‘I was on the floor?’
‘You don’t remember that?’
Rose looked genuinely surprised.
‘What’s the last thing you do recall?’ I asked.
She thought about it. ‘You told me to sit on the chair and went to look at something.’
I hadn’t the heart to tell her how she’d acted – she might be embarrassed and scared about it happening again.
‘The next thing I saw,’ she said, ‘was you reading Colin’s diary out to me.’
‘It’s my fault,’ I said. ‘I completely forgot to make sure you had a snack and then I went off and left you.’
I’d never do it again. In a rush of guilt I thought of Jake’s words, his concerns that Colin’s story was too much for Rose. Real life is hard enough, he’d said. He was right. It was. I was never going to get this diabetes right. I thought of Shelley’s suggestion that the story was a crutch. Maybe the weight of it had contributed to Rose’s hypo. Perhaps it was time to stop after all. Was it fair to continue reading a tale of dying men to a child recently almost unconscious?
I knew what was coming. Last night I’d skimmed newspaper cuttings and glanced at a letter Colin had sent to his mother once he was well enough. Could Rose handle day nineteen? Should I assess her bravery each day and miss a chapter if needed? Was it fair to exchange blood for pain in our trade?
‘Don’t look so gloomy,’ said Rose, clearly buzzing with sugar. ‘It’s Christmas soon. Can we go to McDonald’s? Please can we?’
I took her. I watched her devour a burger and slurp juice, determined I’d never stop watching her again. By the time we got home I was so exhausted from my constant watching that I could have gone to bed for the night then. Rose ran to her room and I went to mine. There I fell asleep for an hour, knew nothing, not a dream, not a sound, not a word.
When I woke the house was quiet. It was almost four and in the December evening’s half-light my bedroom appeared as depressed as I felt. Teatime, injection time and story time. For the first time in ages I wasn’t sure I could do it. Rose had had the hypo but I felt low. Still, I went to get the diabetes box.
It wasn’t there. Neither was Rose. The hint-of-pink door opened onto an empty room with a floor covered in cut-up Christmas cards and glitter. I panicked, ran downstairs.
There in the book nook, illuminated by the rainbow of lights, I found both Rose and the box. She was cross-legged on her cushion, and had prepared her finger pricker.
‘I’m keeping the box in my room now,’ she said.
‘Why?’ I sat opposite.
‘I want to be responsible for it. It is mine.’ She held it out. ‘It’s nearly empty by the way.’ Unlike on the lifeboat, our dwindling supplies could easily be ordered from the doctor and replaced.
‘I’ll look after it,’ I insisted. ‘You shouldn’t have to. I need t…’
‘Mum, I know you like to think you have to, but I’m old enough.’
‘I know that. But…’
‘What?’
‘I’m your mum.’
‘Colin kept going because of his mum and she wasn’t there, remember.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said softly. Perhaps she was worried I’d go to another country like her dad? Who knew how children thought?
‘I know that!’ she snapped. ‘I’m just going to have a go at doing stuff!’
‘Are we still doing the story?’
‘Of course.’ She looked at the finger pricker, anxiety dimming her eyes. ‘Maybe you do it now and I will next time. But if I do, I’ll still need a chapter.’
I took Rose’s hand in mine. Before diabetes I’d felt sad that I never got to hold it now she was nine and said handholding was babyish. This was the only gift diabetes gave – being able to have her delicate fingers in mine again. I pierced the skin. Nothing. Some days blood wouldn’t flow, no matter how we tried. Rose bore it well when we tried again. But on the third attempt I cried inwardly. How much should a child go through?
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Being sad is how you start to be brave. I’ll do it.’
‘No, you shouldn’t have to.’
Before I could stop her, she grabbed the finger pricker and clicked it into her flesh. Red gushed from the end and she squealed, ‘Ow, ow, ow.’ I harvested the blood and she sucked her finger.
‘Are you
okay?’
‘Yes,’ she insisted. ‘Just do the story.’
‘Were you really on the boat?’ I asked, before we set off.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘So don’t try and protect me. Tell me it exactly how it is.’
Rose would know if I deviated from the truth and doing so to cushion her wouldn’t be fair to either of us. We had begun; we would continue.
19
THEY DIED THAT YOU MIGHT LIVE
Scown. Mate.
K.C.
Maybe today a ship.
This prayer woke Colin on the nineteenth day. He wasn’t even sure if he’d said it or if it was merely the ocean singing her eternal song. He imagined the swish-swish-swish must be how mermaids sounded when they sang so beautifully that men leapt to certain death, just to get closer to the music.
‘I think you could be right, chum.’ It was Ken, at his feet.
So Colin must’ve said it aloud. He hardly believed there’d be a ship that morning though. Hardly wanted to open his cracked eyelids and look yet again upon the misery of his mates. Upon the now salt-caked lifeboat and the sparkling sea with its far away, ever empty horizon.
How many more mornings could he stand to see this? How long before the ocean’s song seduced and he too jumped?
‘I don’t feel so bad today,’ said Ken. ‘Wasn’t the night calm? What a relief to not have endless stinging spray. First time I think I really slept. Done me good, lad.’ He paused. ‘How about you?’
‘Not sure.’
Colin realised he must have slept a little because he’d dreamed. His sleep escapades were sometimes more real than daily existence on the boat. Certainly he preferred them. Last night he’d returned to the strange silver kitchen. Beyond the polished surfaces – in which he saw his face how it was before the ocean – was another room, one with a shelf from which he longed to pull the colourful books. Next to it sat the girl with hair like sunlit straw.
