by Anna Hope
She is aware, in the moment, that an invitation has been extended. Aware of a conflicting set of emotions, the answering leap of desire.
Is this how it was? With Lissa and Nathan? Was it spoken or unspoken? Did they think of her, before they crossed the line?
‘Is that your wife?’ she says.
‘Where?’ He looks startled.
‘There.’ She reaches in, takes his phone, turns it over and presses the button on the side. There she is, a young woman, squinting into the light, a child of four or so before her.
The man looks down at his phone, back up at Hannah. ‘That’s her,’ he says.
‘So what are you doing here?’ She is furious now, hissing her words. ‘Talking to me?’
He takes the phone from her, looks at the photograph briefly.
‘She’s dead,’ he says. ‘She died a year ago.’
‘Oh.’ It is as though he has kicked her in the stomach. ‘God.’
‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘It’s not your fault.’
He looks away, to the rain-washed harbour, then back again.
‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘I didn’t come here to talk about my wife.’
She is silent. And then, without anything more being said, something is agreed.
They ride up in the lift. She watches his hand press the button for the second floor. His thick fingers. His wide palms. He leads the way down the corridor and she follows, half a step behind. He opens the door, then steps back to let her enter, and for a moment she feels a sharp slice of fear – he could be anyone – but then the fear dissolves. He goes to put the key in the socket but she puts her hand on his wrist. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Keep it dark.’
The visitors’ centre at the Tomb of the Eagles is staffed by a soft-voiced woman. The woman speaks about the tomb, about how it was found on her father’s land, a mile or so from where she and her family live today. About the human remains that were found there – no skeletons, only jumbled bones, thousands upon thousands of them. About the eagle talons found in amongst them. About the theory that the bodies were left out to be eaten by the birds. Like the sky burials of Tibet. How only the clean bones were saved.
‘Excarnation,’ the woman says in her soft voice.
‘Excarnation,’ says Hannah, tasting it. A new word.
When the small tour has finished, the woman tuts at Hannah’s jacket and boots, and kits her out in proper waterproofs. When she is ready, Hannah laughs.
They go to the window and the woman points the way to a hunkered mound in the distance. ‘Come back along the cliffs,’ she says, ‘that’s the best way. You might see the seals then.’
The track is muddy and rutted with puddles; Hannah walks through them, not around them. When was the last time she wore wellington boots? A scrap of song comes to her and she sings out loud. A dog bounds out of one of the farm buildings, weaving through the fence ahead of her, trotting back to make sure she is keeping up, then running ahead again, chasing the swallows, who skirl and dive, loving the wind. Primroses stud the path and she bends and picks them, and then is unsure what to do with the picked flowers, stowing them in the pocket of her coat.
The chamber looks like nothing so much as a heap of rocks, almost indistinguishable from the shelved rocks around it. The entrance is covered with a trolley. She feels a tremor of fear, but moves the trolley away and gets down on her hands and knees, crawling along the tunnel before emerging into a small, chambered space. It is not dark – small skylights have been built into the ceiling – nor is it cold, or eerie, even; it is simply rock and earth and a deep insulated quiet. Outside, back through the tunnel, she can see the wind in the grass, the white spray on the sea.
She sits there for a moment, uncertain what to do. There is a scrabbling in the tunnel and the dog appears, coming close to her, panting. She holds him to her, feels his heart, the warmth of his flank. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Hey there.’
Ahead of her, leading off from the chamber in which she sits, is a smaller, darker space. From here it is impossible to see just how far it extends. A torch lies on the ground and she reaches for it and switches it on, flashing it into the chamber, which is revealed to be small, but big enough for a person to lie within.
She turns off the torch, crawls under the stone lintel and lies on her belly, her cheek on the cold ground. It is strangely comforting – lying like this, she can feel her heart beating in her belly, her chest, the rush of her blood. The distant thump of the sea on rocks. The soft sound of the dog, breathing close by.
She thinks of the bones that were piled in here for so long, thousands upon thousands of them.
Soon enough her flesh will be no more.
She thinks of the night before. The shock of his body: the difference of it, the shape of it. His smell. The places where she put her mouth. And she was different. Her body different. The way they moved together. The strange animal noises they made. Afterwards, lying in the dark with this familiar, unfamiliar man, she thought of Nathan. Of how she had forgotten to see him as separate. Forgotten to feel his unfamiliarity. Forgotten to acknowledge the animal inside him. Lissa would have kindled the animal in him. And with this thought comes something else: a sort of grief, for her own animal nature, for its own wild desires.
She turns on to her back, switches off the torch, and there is only the darkness – the low, intimate sound of her breath.
After a long while she crawls back out to the main chamber, and then pushes herself out into the brightness of the day. The dog follows her, and they walk along the rocks back to the car. The clouds have lifted, the wind has stilled, the day is clear.
She drives back up the island, past a strip of white sand, the sea gentle beside it, and she is seized with a desire so strong and immediate that she stops the car. She climbs down and walks back along the sand until she is no longer in sight of the road, takes off her clothes and runs into the sea. She lets out a sound, a shout – of cold, of joy, of exhilaration – as the water lifts her off her feet and slaps her skin.
Cate
Spring arrives early, and the city turns green. She takes her bike out of storage and cleans and oils it, and then she cycles up the hill to work – watching the trees come into bud and then leaf, the candles of the horse chestnuts that stand by the side of the wide road.
At first it makes her breathless, the climb – she has to stop and wheel her bike several times to make it up the hill. But soon she is feeling fitter, feeling her muscles respond, the air flood into her lungs.
The ride is lovely, but it is when she is driving that she sees it most – out on the B roads, between Canterbury and the coast, the radiant springtime sweep of the land.
Dea was right; the job fits her – two days a week in the office and then a day a week visiting schools. Sam has dropped a day at work, and so they manage the childcare between them, she and Alice and Sam. She likes the teenagers she meets – their attitude, their sass. They give nothing for free. She is working on a scheme to get kids from a school in Sheppey to visit the campus, working with the Creative Writing department to publish an anthology of the teenagers’ work.
Tom is almost walking now. He likes to pull himself up to standing, cruising around the living room in his tights, delighted at his new-found mobility. Cate watches him, fascinated. It is extraordinary, she thinks, this urge to stand, to walk; extraordinary to watch the human animal evolve before her eyes. Everything he comes across he puts in his mouth: pencils, elastic bands, scraps of food from the floor. He becomes enamoured with putting pencils in holes. She buys plastic guards for the power sockets. It becomes imperative to get out of the house.
On a sunny Sunday in March, a week before his birthday, he takes his first steps across the living room; one, two, three and then he sits on his bottom. She applauds, calling to Sam, where he sleeps upstairs, and he rushes down, rubbing his eyes and blinking. They coax and wheedle and Tom manages another few steps. Sam brings out his phone and manages to catch it, sending it immediately
to Alice. Cate sends it to her dad.
Often, at the weekend, she straps Tom in the buggy and walks over to the allotment, where he and Nora toddle on the ground, amateur naturalists investigating stones and eating earth, while she and Dea dig over the beds for the new season’s planting. She likes the work, likes the way it makes her sweaty, likes the sweet smell of the soil.
She goes for walks. Sometimes she goes with Dea; sometimes, if she is alone, while Tom naps in the buggy, if the weather is fine she simply sits on a bench in the sun. When he wakes there is often a short gap of time in which he comes to himself, in which he looks out at the world from his seat, not looking for her, not looking for anyone. She sits behind him, letting him have this moment, a minute when she is not immediately there hovering over him. It occurs to her that it begins so early, this process of letting go – of not inserting yourself between your child and the sun.
They are tentative with each other, she and Sam, but they have grown easier, grown closer. Still, they give each other plenty of space, as though whatever small fire has been rekindled will be smothered with too little air. But Tom sleeps in his own bed now, and sometimes, in the quiet of the night, it is easy to turn towards Sam, curling into his frame, waking with her arm over his chest.
She texts Hannah every day, just a single line to check in.
One morning in early April, she cycles up the hill to the university, arrives in the office and opens her email. She sees it immediately. A message from Hesther – subject line Lucy Skein.
Cate begins to shake. She looks up and out at the room, but no one is watching her – the sun slants in through the window. It is still the same morning that it was.
She opens the email.
Hesther is sorry to have taken so long to reply; she has been away – travelling for work. It is lovely to hear from Cate after so long. Cate’s eyes travel hungrily over the words, down to the bottom two lines.
I haven’t seen Lucy for years, but funnily enough I bumped into her when I was in Seattle for work last year. She seemed really well. Seems she changed her name. I have her contact if you’d like it.
And below, an email address. A name.
She types it immediately into her search engine. And she is there before her. Dr Lucy Sloan. Dept of Int. Development. University of Oregon.
Her face. The way the lip curls up when she smiles.
A relic from a different life.
Lissa
You must bring Daniel, Sarah says to Lissa on the phone and, in the subject heading of the email that contained the exhibition invitation, she put in bold letters – Bring Daniel! Excited to meet him.
In the end, in desperation, Lissa texts Johnny: Got a plus one to an art opening. Don’t suppose you’d like to come?
I’d be delighted, he replies, almost at once.
They meet at the Tube. He is dressed as always in black with his black leather bag, but his shirt looks new, and he is wearing a smart jacket. He is freshly shaven and looks well. She is surprised by how happy she is to see him, to have him lift her hand in that courtly, gentle way he has. ‘Hiya, sweetheart,’ he says. She has forgotten the soft Scouse rumble of his voice.
‘You look good,’ she says. ‘Very natty.’
‘I’m working. Got a bit on Doctors.’
‘Ah ha.’
‘And,’ he says, half apologetically, ‘I seem to have scored a season at the RSC.’
‘Whaaat? That’s great!’
‘Don’t get too excited.’ He holds up a hand. ‘It’s small parts mostly, but then Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra. It’s set in Liverpool in the sixties. Don’t ask. They’ll probably mangle the fuck out of it, but hey ho.’
‘Johnny, but that’s proper!’ She finds she is unconditionally happy on his behalf.
‘You’d be a good Cleopatra.’
‘In another life.’
‘What about you? Any meetings?’
‘Not really. Actually,’ she says, ‘I’m thinking of giving up.’
‘Hush, child,’ he says.
‘No, really.’
‘Come, come,’ he says, taking her by the arm. ‘Less of that.’
‘When do you start?’
‘May,’ he says. ‘Apparently they’re all quite civilized, the Stratford lot. Voice classes together every morning – that sort of thing. A year’s worth of the mortgage too.’
‘Well,’ says Lissa. ‘You deserve it.’
‘So whose exhibition is this then?’ he says.
‘Oh,’ says Lissa. ‘It’s just my mum’s.’
‘Blimey,’ he says with a wink. ‘Then I’d better behave.’
The gallery is busy, thronged with faces she has not seen for years. Her mother is surrounded by people. It is a month or so since she has seen her and Sarah has lost weight, but she looks extraordinary – regal in a long red dress. It is she who should be Cleopatra, thinks Lissa, not herself.
The pictures are few; there are no more than seven. In each one the painted area takes up only a third of the canvas, then there is an expanse of white space around it. They are hung without frames, so the effect is of the image being suspended in space. As the eyes adjust to the canvas, objects emerge. In one there is a young girl wearing a cotton dress, half turned away, her face in profile; she is stooping to look at something on the ground, but the ground is not there, has disappeared into blankness beneath her feet. The face is smudged, but Lissa knows it is her.
In the largest of the canvases, which takes up most of one wall, a smudged line suggests a figure, or a creature, walking on the horizon, thinning to nothingness; it could be the Bolivian salt flats, it could be the surface of the moon. There are few distinguishing features, but Lissa knows the figure is Sarah – her mother with her back turned – walking away.
The canvases are not cheap – between two and five thousand each – but there are already three red dots on the cards tacked to the wall.
‘She’ll sell the lot at this rate.’
Lissa turns to see Laurie beside her. The older woman threads her arm through Lissa’s. ‘I think she knew when she started these, don’t you?’
‘Knew what?’
‘How ill she is.’ Laurie gestures at the paintings. ‘It’s as though everything inessential has fallen away.’
And Lissa feels something falling away from her – the ground, her stomach. She looks down at her hands, which Laurie is squeezing.
‘And you, Liss?’ Laurie is saying. ‘How are you? How are you coping with it all?’
‘Fine,’ Lissa hears herself say softly. ‘I’m doing fine.’
By the time the gallery owner climbs on to a crate to stand above the crowd and speak, the place is packed. Lissa has walked around the block, decided she will leave – decided she will come back again. She has smoked four cigarettes, drunk four glasses of wine. She has lost Johnny, found him and lost him again. She hangs back as the crowd makes a tight circle around Sarah and the gallery owner, silent while Sarah says a few brief words, but Lissa hardly hears above the hard thrum of her anger, and when the crowd parts, she pushes her way towards her mother and takes her by the arm.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Laurie told me. She thought I knew.’
‘Oh,’ says Sarah. ‘That.’
‘That?’
‘I didn’t want to concern you.’
‘You didn’t want to concern me? How ill are you?’
‘Fairly ill.’ Sarah wipes a hand over her forehead. ‘I have stage four cancer.’
It is hot – hot everywhere, inside and out. ‘And how long have you known?’
‘Since Christmas.’
‘Christmas?’
‘I refused the chemo.’
‘Of course you did. And you didn’t think I might have something to say about that?’
‘It’s my body, Lissa. My life.’ Her mother looks weary, cornered, and Lissa senses the people behind her – knows they are being observed.
Sarah’s face changes. ‘Is Daniel here?’ she says quietly. ‘Did you bring Daniel?’
‘No,’ says Lissa, her voice rising. ‘No, he’s not. Do you know why? Because he doesn’t exist. Or he does – but he’s Nathan. Hannah’s Nathan. I fucked Hannah’s Nathan and I told you he was someone he wasn’t and now he doesn’t speak to me. And nor does Hannah. Because my life is a mess. Because you never taught me how to love.’
Sarah reels as though she has been hit. Lissa steps in for more, grabbing her mother’s arm. ‘You’re so selfish,’ she says to her mother. ‘So fucking selfish. You know that? You always have been and you always will be.’
Sarah steps away, a small, elegant parry.
‘Goodness me,’ says Sarah. ‘And you say I’m selfish? Dear me, Lissa, I know you wish you were more often on stage, but for once, please can you spare me the drama?’
‘Hey.’ There is a steady hand on her arm. ‘Hey, love.’
Lissa turns to see Johnny beside her. She sees Sarah surrounded, Laurie between them. ‘Time to go home, Liss.’
‘Come on,’ says Johnny, as he beckons her into his arms.
Hannah
It is, apparently, the warmest spring in years. The cherry trees on her walk to the bus stop are in full blossom. The Georgian cafe on the corner has its tables and chairs on the street.
She gets up with the dawn and crosses the park to the lido. It is fairly quiet at this time of the day. Only the serious swimmers in their lanes. She goes into one of the small changing rooms, puts on her costume. Takes her cap and goggles. The morning air has a chill but the water is warm. She swims, long fifty-metre lengths. She takes pleasure in her strokes. She watches the light ripple and refract on the water. She remembers Orkney, the horizon, the light. As she swims, her thoughts change. They become less jagged. In the water there is no past and no future. By the time she comes out of the pool her body is tingling and her mind is clean.
She takes to walking everywhere. She walks to work. She walks back along the canal in the afternoons, savouring the light – the changing sky. She sits outside on the terrace, feeling warmth on her skin. She buys herself flowers, each Sunday at the market. One Sunday morning her eye is caught by some plants, which she buys and puts in terracotta pots and arranges on the windowsill in the little room, where it is sunny and they will receive the light. The evenings are lengthening; it is light now at seven o’clock.
