How To Be Brave

by Louise Beech

  But now, hours later, I sat in the grim afterglow of buzzing Christmas lights, sausage roll crumbs and empty bottles, and thought about Jake.

  I remembered our early, childfree days, times when we only had to think of ourselves. I worried that he would come home to a woman he didn’t recognise. To someone who only slept for an hour at night before waking to go and check Rose, then do her midnight blood test. Someone who paced the house, worrying about hypos, jumping at every phone call, old while she was still young.

  ‘Mum?’ Rose stood in the doorway, hair tousled and eyes red like she’d rubbed them. She came into the living room, squinting at the light.

  ‘What are you doing up?’ I went and touched her forehead but she swiped my hand away. ‘Are you okay? Do you feel low?’

  ‘Just can’t sleep.’

  Rose fingered leftover sausage rolls and cheese bites, perhaps imagining how it could feed the lifeboat crew for a whole day. I hated food waste now. I’d recently become obsessed with portion size, not only to keep Rose’s blood sugars stable but because I’d imagine how long each uneaten morsel might sustain Colin. I couldn’t discard pieces of chicken or potato without guilt.

  And I’d never spill a drop of water. I followed Rose around the house with her cups of it, checking the bath didn’t overfill, using half the amount I usually did for washing pots.

  ‘Did our noise keep you up?’ I asked. ‘Sorry we got a bit loud. They’ve gone now. I’m about to go to bed.’

  ‘It wasn’t you,’ said Rose. ‘Though you were very silly singing Lady Gaga like that. You shouldn’t sing, Natalie. Ever.’ She paused. ‘I can’t sleep cos I keep thinking about Colin – about all of them. I can hear them crying out on the boat when I close my eyes. I can hear Fowler.’

  On the twenty-second day, which we’d shared on Monday, Young Fowler had woken unable to move. He sat with his back against the mast, incapable of eating breakfast but eager for his water ration when it came. I’d wanted to gloss over his end, make pretty the pain, and did so by telling Rose that when he passed away in the afternoon the men were surprised. But Rose had interrupted my flow and insisted I tell her how it had really happened.

  Being pulled out of the story made me more factual and I listed the events preceding his death, how he had spoken only when approached by Colin, who asked if Fowler needed anything.

  What could he have done if the boy had asked for water? Food? His mother? Instead Fowler said, ‘Just sleep. Let me sleep. I’m so very tired. No pain now – just need sleep.’ Afraid of what the boy really yearned, Colin encouraged him to share lookout duty in the late afternoon and they sat back to back against the mast, too weak now to be without its support.

  Colin fell asleep, even in this awkward position, and when he woke the crew were standing around Fowler. He had passed; his eyes were open, watching for a ship that never came. Colin could not accept his death and gripped the boy’s limp arm until Ken prised him away. He’d been such a cheerful creature, hardly grumbling. And Colin had punched him.

  Now he’d never make it up to him.

  The wasted body was cast into the sea with a prayer. I didn’t tell Rose how the men likely covered their ears to the swirl of waters as sharks tore him apart; I told her he sunk to the bottom, like the ship, like Scown, where there was only peace.

  Now Rose said, ‘They’re all starting to die, aren’t they?’ She squashed a handful of the cake Vonny had left on her plate. ‘If only we could go to the boat with all this food. Don’t seem fair that we have all this and you don’t even want it. And I can’t have it, can I?’

  ‘Doesn’t,’ I corrected. ‘I’ll cover it up and we can have some tomorrow.’ I paused. ‘Maybe we should take a break from the story if it’s keeping you awake.’

  ‘No! You can’t stop now.’ She wiped the crumbs from her hands in a violent motion and held my waist, eyes pleading. ‘It’s like totally inside me. You’ll ruin everything if you stop! Why do you keep saying it?’

  ‘I don’t mean we should stop altogether.’ I put my hands over hers and she let go. ‘I just mean we could take a break and carry on again after Christmas.’

  ‘What’s Christmas got to do with it?’

  ‘We’re supposed to be happy, aren’t we?’

  ‘I won’t be if you stop.’ Rose sat on a cushion in the book nook. ‘Anyway we have to finish before Dad gets back.’

  ‘Do we?’ I joined her, in the flickering lights.

  ‘You don’t get it,’ she said, miserably. ‘When he’s back you won’t be bothered about it. You’ll have him again. You won’t need me or Colin.’

  Did Rose really think I’d abandon her when he returned?

  ‘I’d never do that,’ I said. ‘If we’re not done by then, we can come to the book nook like this and I’ll tell Dad he has to keep out, it’s our time.’

  Rose shook her head. ‘If you stop now, you’ve broken your promise. You said if I gave you my blood you’d give me a better story than Harry Potter or War Horse. I’ve done my bit. Have you forgot? Just because I get a bit sad about Fowler dying doesn’t mean we stop. Why do people think you have to avoid that stuff? You have to know how to be sad to know how to be happy and if you know both of those things you’ll know how to be brave.’

  I had no words. My beautiful, wilful daughter had said them all.

  ‘Also,’ she added, ‘I want to be able to do my own injections and stuff when Dad gets back and I can only do that with the story.’

  Since her first clumsy attempt at finger pricking last week, she’d been preparing it but letting me draw blood. The same with her injection; she’d screw on the lancet and measure the dose while I’d push the needle into her flesh.

  ‘There’s no pressure,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to do any more than you are. Dad will be overjoyed at how you’re coping with it all. He won’t expect you to be able to do it yourself.’ I paused. ‘He’ll be as proud as I am.’

  Rose looked at the clock and her eyes grew like saucers. ‘It’s Christmas Day,’ she said, suddenly a child again. ‘Can I open some presents?’

  ‘Santa hasn’t been yet,’ I said, thinking of the bag of gifts I’d yet to carry down and put under the tree.

  ‘Why don’t you just get my pressies from the airing cupboard and let me have one?’

  ‘Rose!’ I laughed, unable not to. ‘Not until morning. Come on, we should go to bed or we’ll both be shattered.’

  She got Colin’s diary from the bookshelf. ‘Can’t we just do one page? It’s Christmas Day. If you won’t let me have a pressie, read me a bit.’

  I sighed. ‘Okay, a tiny bit. But that’s all. It’s bedtime and Santa won’t come if you’re awake.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  I sat next to Rose and without words we agreed that she let a page fall open. Again, I found it startling that we opened it in a spot I’d not shared with Rose, on a page that spoke so perfectly to us in that moment. I might have questioned the miracle of this in more everyday circumstances, but something happened when we held this diary, and I doubted I could ever fully explain it. I’d been reading it myself, privately, along with letters, newspaper pages, and the photocopies of Ken’s sail scrap log. But the diary was magic when I shared it with Rose.

  My first Christmas being home and Mum went to extra trouble. She had been saving housekeeping money for months to give us a veritable feast of choices. We got a good fire going and it crackled and spat while we ate. All I could smell though was the sweet, tart satsumas in the bowl on the cabinet. Oh, how we’d have devoured those at sea. We left a chair empty for our Stan, as we have done the last two years. None of us said anything about it – just like last year – and no one sat in the seat either. I couldn’t stop thinking that there might have been two empty chairs for my mother to fill with her memories. But I’d made it. I’ve always found Christmas to be rather melancholy but that one I quite found the jolliest. Curious, really. I expected the cheer to grate on me. But the tot of sherry and seeing
my brothers together – even Stan really, in spirit – had me quite grateful for my lot.

  ‘Poor Stan,’ said Rose. ‘Lots of people died in that war didn’t they?’

  I yawned, stroked her hair. ‘Come on – it’s bedtime.’

  ‘Would you keep my chair out if I died?’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ I shook my head at the thought.

  ‘But would you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Bedtime!’

  I made sure Rose was tucked in and stood on the landing for ten minutes until I was sure she’d fallen asleep. Then I took her bag of gifts down and put them under the tree. When I got into bed I expected to lie awake for a long time but exhaustion had her way.

  The next I knew was my phone ringing on the bedside table. It was so early that the heating hadn’t even kicked in and daylight would be an hour yet. A first Christmas morning with Rose still asleep; a first Christmas morning with Jake not there; a first Christmas morning with injections to be done.

  I picked up the phone, croaked, ‘Hello’ into it.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Natalie.’ It was Jake.

  I smiled. ‘Happy Christmas.’ Now it felt special. ‘What a lovely surprise.’

  ‘They’ve let us all make quick calls home.’ He sounded distant, strained. ‘Sorry to wake you early but I knew Rose would be up. Is she there? I bet she’s opened half her presents already. Did she like the sewing machine?’

  ‘She’s not awake,’ I said. ‘She was up late and had a sleepover the other night so I bet she’s tired.’

  ‘Is she okay though?’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine.’

  ‘Injections okay?’

  ‘They don’t bother her so much now.’ I thought about telling him of Rose’s pledge to be able to self-administer for his return, but didn’t. ‘So it’s just us for once. How are you?’ I hadn’t stopped thinking about the young soldier who’d died with Jake at his side, not unlike Young Fowler passing on a final lookout with Colin. ‘You don’t have to edit anything,’ I said softly. ‘Tell me how you really are.’

  ‘I’m sad not to be there today,’ he admitted.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘But we’ll have a hundred more Christmases,’ he said.

  ‘A hundred?’ I smiled. ‘How long do you plan on living?’

  ‘Forever,’ he said.

  ‘You’d better,’ I told him, never forgetting the dangerous place he was in.

  ‘Natalie, I’ve some news you won’t like.’

  I closed my eyes as though this would shut out sounds too.

  ‘I hate to tell you – it’s about my R and R. I don’t think I’ll be home in January.’

  I sat up in bed. ‘What?’

  ‘I might make it, I just can’t say for sure. It just might not be January now. You know I can’t talk in detail about these things but some of our helicopters are being tasked elsewhere and…’

  ‘I don’t want the details,’ I said, deflated.

  ‘You know there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘I know.’ I tried not to be sulky or difficult. It was so much harder for him. At least I was home with our daughter at Christmas. ‘It isn’t your fault. When will you know for sure?’

  His silence answered me. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Please kiss Rose for me. And remember, I will be home, soon.’

  When he hung up I sat for a long time, trying not to cry. I hadn’t in a long time; I bottled up tears whenever Rose was around, not believing a child should be saddled with adult trouble. So much that I wondered if I’d forgotten how.

  Now I remembered.

  I buried my face in Jake’s pillow, his smell both comfort and hurt, and cried as I had that morning after the hospital. Though I’d washed the bedding since he’d been gone, I’d left his pillowcase alone, and his memory lingered there, only just. I barely noticed that Rose had come in until the bed gave under her slight frame and she was patting my head, awkward but well meaning. I had to stop and get a grip, or I’d alarm her. But I was a broken tap, gushing salty water.

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ said Rose.

  I couldn’t say that her dad wouldn’t be home yet. I couldn’t say that I didn’t even know when it might be or that sometimes I was terrified he’d be killed and never get home at all. I couldn’t say that I wasn’t sure I could get up and do the things I must. I couldn’t speak.

  ‘Is it cos I called you a coward?’ she asked. ‘That day I was grumpy. I didn’t mean it, you know.’

  The bed moved again and her feet pitter-pattered to the landing and back. I tried to breathe. To get up. To be a mother. The bed gave again at Rose’s return and I heard lancets rolling around in the diabetes box, like stones on a beach.

  ‘Let me make you better,’ she said, putting her finger pricker together.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I was the storyteller; I was the magician.

  ‘Let me do the words,’ she said, and pricked her finger end.

  Blood flowed, thick and rich. She caught it in the strip.

  ‘It’s only fair I do some story,’ she said. ‘Listen to this. I went on the lifeboat again last night. I snuggled down between the sleepy men and stroked Grandad Colin’s hair and whispered right in his ear how proud I am of him. Just the way you said it to me last night. I always know who he is, even in the dark. He just smells right. Even though he looks like a scarecrow now, all hairy and ragged, he still smells like us. I said I’d think of a story to stop his nightmares and make the wooden floor more softer. It’s dead uncomfortable. Not even a sheet. I said I bet he misses spider webs in rain. And butterflies. And birds. He used to go bird spotting with his dad. On the ocean a bird means land and safety, you know.’

  Rose patted my head, gentler now.

  ‘I said, If you don’t live I’ll disappear, Grandad. Can I call you Grandad? You’re really my Great Grandad, but I like Grandad better. If you don’t live, Grandad, I won’t be able to come back and stroke your hair. I’ll just dissolve like a salty ghost. So then I got a bit of the canvas logbook and drew us all in there; you and me and Dad. I wrote above it that I was learning how to be brave, and he was making it a lot easier. I wonder if he’ll find it? This morning when I woke I thought of him and Ken having their tiny bit of water and horrid dry biscuit and milk tablet with the others. I saw them looking out at sea for sharks and dolphins and birds and a ship.’

  Rose showed me her blood meter; she was six-point-two.

  My tears dried and I touched her face. ‘Let’s get breakfast,’ I said.

  ‘Can I have chocolate cos it’s Christmas Day? I don’t care about my blood sugars today. Go on, go on!’ She was a child again and so I easily slipped back into my role as mum.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said.

  ‘That means no. Oh, please! Can I open some pressies before I eat?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said.

  She danced around the bedroom. ‘Two we’ll see’s means a yes! It’s the law!’ On our way downstairs she said, ‘I’m going to do my blood test from now on. And I’m going to help you do the story too. We can take turns. Think how good it’ll be if I do it?’

  ‘No, you don’t ha…’

  ‘I want to – I can’t wait!’

  ‘But I’m supposed t…’ I tried.

  ‘You’ve got to learn to share,’ she said.

  So no more trading her blood for my words. No more blood friends forever. What kind of exchange was it going to be if Rose did so much of the work, bringing the blood and the words?

  I’d kidded myself all along that the trade was to help her but I realised it had been for me too. So I could keep her for myself. But she didn’t belong to me; she belonged to the sea and the sky and the past and her future.

  And I had to let her go.

  21

  STITCHING TRUTH AND MEMORY

  But we have greater hopes now.

  K.C.

  Before Rose learned to read – and long before we created the book nook – I used to read stories to her
at bedtime like most parents do for their pre-schoolers. She once asked me, ‘How do words in books know where to go and who to be friends with?’ I can’t remember how I answered, but her question comes to me every time I read my newest paperback. How carefully did the author think about which words they put together?

  Rose and I ate our Christmas dinner at four so she could have her teatime injection just after. I carefully served us a medium portion, not wanting to waste the slightest bit. We hadn’t been to the lifeboat yet; she’d been wrapped up in opening gifts and testing out her new sewing machine on scraps of material and watching festive cartoons and pulling all the crackers in the box, one after another. I was glad. She should be a child on Christmas Day and I didn’t want to break the spell with talk of hunger and thirst and insulin.

  Watching her fashion a small purse from an old pillowcase, I forgot how upset I’d been earlier. How unhappy I was that Jake would be away for longer. I just enjoyed Rose’s creative activities. While she pinned bits of ribbon to silk and chose a brown button from the many coloured ones and slowly stitched, her cheeks coloured pink. Now that she’d regained most of her weight, she looked a picture of health. I think she actually forgot about diabetes for a magical moment.

  But she hadn’t forgotten about helping with the story.

  I found a radio station playing old-fashioned hymns and began washing the pots while Rose finished her purse. The swish of soapy water and the sound of Silent Night had me for a moment at sea, so acutely that I smelt salt in the bubbles, heard soft groans, felt a hand grip my arm, and heard Colin asking how long now.

  ‘Let’s go to the book nook then.’ It was Rose’s hand on my arm. I looked at the clock – suppertime, already.

  ‘Did you get the diabetes box?’ I dried my hands.

  ‘Of course. It’s my turn to do it.’ Rose bounced off.

  I followed her and sat on the cushion opposite where she’d flopped. ‘You mean your blood?’ I asked.