‘Tomorrow we will go back into the boat. We will be away for a week, maybe for more. We hope to see something they call the Ayer Puti, which means the milk sea. It is a phenomenon that happens two times in a year – not in every year, but in many. Two months ago they had a small milk sea. Then the whole sea is not white – it is streaked with white, like a spill of white oil. When that happens, you should get the big milk sea two months after. The wind is from the south-east, which means it is very likely. They say it’s amazing: the whole sea has a moony glow and the sky becomes the same colour with the reflection off the water, so you cannot tell where the water becomes the sky. In daylight the sea looks normal, but at night the soft glow is everywhere, like the light off snow on a dark night. It happens in other places too, not just here. Charles Darwin saw a white sea near the Rio Plata. A milky train he called this phosphorescence, and he thought that it was caused by the decomposing of organic particles, which is not what it is. Other people thought that it was a gas leaking from the seabed, so it was staining the water, like the vent of a volcano under the sea. But this is not the cause either. The milk sea is caused by things called Polycystines. They are protozoa, with spiky skeletons of silica. They are useful for studying the history of the sea, because they have existed since the Cambrian period. When they die the skeletons make a sediment at the bottom of the ocean, a sediment that lasts for ever. This sediment can tell you the story of the ocean, like fossils on the land. So this is what the milk sea is – billions of bony cells in the water. Billions and billions and billions of them,’ she yawns. ‘I am sorry, Edward. I am very sleepy,’ she says, and the tape is finished.
six
It went wrong right at the outset, when he entered the restaurant and his mother called out his name as if there were a risk that he would blunder across the room if she didn’t get his attention straight away, even though Charlotte was one step behind him. ‘Sit down beside me, Edward,’ she said, in a way that made it clear she had decided to make every effort to ensure that this would be a more successful occasion than his last visit and hoped that he would do likewise. He had made an effort, but the business over Lucy’s birthday had set him back. ‘We all lose track of dates. One year I almost forgot Charlotte’s birthday, didn’t I, dear?’ she said, cupping a hand over his. He might have flinched visibly.
‘Wasn’t terrific, was it?’ he asks.
‘It wasn’t,’ Charlotte agrees.
‘Is it them or is it me?’
‘It’s you,’ she tells him flatly. ‘Mum’s afraid you’re going to snap her head off every time she says something.’
‘Not every time. Only when she does the Lady of Sorrows routine.’
‘That’s not kind, Edward.’
‘And what about Dad?’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, he might as well not have been there.’
‘Dad’s Dad. He’s never been much of a talker. You know that.’
‘Not much of a talker. He’s practically mute.’
‘See what I mean? You’re so grumpy. And you’ve become such a snob. You’re not going to find the Ritz out here, you know. It’s a nice, simple, small-town pub, but you carry on like you’re the man from Michelin.’
‘I hardly said a word.’
‘Didn’t have to. You should have seen your face.’
‘Yes, well.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘The food was grim.’
‘It was OK.’
‘Charlie, it was vile. That steak was deep-frozen in 1967. My jaws are still aching.’
‘The salmon was very nice.’
‘And I had no idea what vegetables I was eating. Everything had been steamed and microwaved and boiled, to eradicate all traces of taste.’
‘Mine were fine.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘OK.’
‘Everything tasted white. Was there anything green on the plate?’
‘It’s over, Edward. Stop complaining.’
A car passes at a junction behind them, and then he can hear their footsteps again, striking the pavement softly. When Charlotte stops to look in a window the only sound is a wire jangling against an aerial, high on the opposite side of the road. An empty can, hit by a gust, skitters a yard or two in the gutter. Ahead, a shop door opens with a squeak of wood on wood. ‘Where are we exactly?’ he asks. ‘I haven’t been paying attention.’
‘Priory Street. Coming up to Challoner Street.’
Challoner Street leads to Fisher Street, and Fisher Street is crossed by Gillon Road and Tilsley Road, which goes down to Byron Avenue and Warburton Road, the streets along which he used to walk to school. They never presented a vista to him, these streets, nor a scene with any depth, but were rather a succession of foregrounds, which became ever more ambiguous as the years passed. And now, imagining the route he used to take to school, what he sees is something like a reef, a deep reef walled with shadows, more dark than light. Yet if Charlotte were not here he could still find his way, without error, to the gates of the school, and when he repeats to himself the names of the streets, considering each one in turn, he finds that definite localities appear, distinctly defined, floating out of a void. In Priory Street there is the hairdresser’s salon, which emitted a ceaseless hum of dryers and air that smelled of sweet chemicals and damp towels. One of the shops in Priory Street has a huge window, a single pane that vibrates in its frame whenever a bus or lorry drives past, and on the same side of the road there is a wall that has decayed so much that the bricks in places are concave and the mortar stands proud of them, in a raised grid. If they are near the Challoner Street end, the door that is opening and closing with such regularity might be the door of Barrett’s, the newsagent’s, where a Saturday assistant once told him to stand away from the rack by the fridge. ‘Get away from them magazines,’ she ordered, furious because he had laughed.
‘What’s funny?’ Charlotte asks, taking his arm as she turns away from the window.
‘Is Barrett’s open?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Would you mind getting a paper?’
‘There’s someone at the hotel who can read to you?’
Touching a cheek to Charlotte’s shoulder, he gives her a winsome smile. ‘Possibly,’ he says. ‘But –’
‘Ah. Of course. Silly me.’
‘Just the headlines.’
‘So I’ll take you back to the hotel and hang around to read you the paper? Is that the plan?’
‘No plan. But we could always stop off at the Bridge. I could do with a drink. Couldn’t you?’
‘I’m driving.’
‘Just a half.’
‘Not exactly stopping off, is it? It’s not on the way back.’
‘Only a little detour.’
‘It’s seven or eight miles.’
‘That’s little, isn’t it? Thirty miles an hour, fifteen minutes.’
‘Times two: half an hour, minimum. It’s a terrible road.’
‘It’s a lovely evening, Charlie. Go on,’ he pleads, wringing his hands under his chin.
‘Stop it, Edward.’
He stoops lower, cringing humbly. ‘Please,’ he wheedles.
‘Edward, stop it.’
‘Please, dearest sister.’
‘People are coming.’
‘Please?’
‘Stop it,’ she snaps, and stamps a foot.
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ll stay an hour at most, all right?’
‘Angel,’ he simpers, stroking her arm with a hand which she swats away. ‘I’ll wait for you by the lights,’ he tells her.
He walks to the corner, trailing a hand across glass, brick, wood, glass, wood, brick. At the junction he goes left, and stops ten paces on, to rest his back against the wall of the post office. To his left Challoner Street slopes down towards the war memorial and to his right it climbs in a shallow gradient to meet the High Street at a complicated junction, one element of which,
Goreham Street, is the road that led to his father’s showroom. And opposite the post office, more or less, is Mortimer’s, a shop to which his father was attached as strongly as other men were attached to their favourite pub. While his father chatted with whichever Mortimer was working that afternoon, he would wander up and down the aisles, dabbling his fingertips in tubs of tacks that tingled like gorse, scooping nails the size of pencils out of thick cardboard boxes, tracing the threads of bolts and screws, which he might touch to his tongue to distinguish steel from brass. There were reels of chains, some as slender as necklaces, others with links he could squeeze fingers through, and small buckets filled with hooks and bolts and objects designed for purposes he could not guess. On the walls hung dozens of tools, divided by type, like species in a museum of natural history. He could never use any of them, but he relished their names: the fretsaw and the jigsaw, the ball peen hammer and the claw hammer, the soft face hammer and the brass head. The air by the counter had a light and dusty smell that was peculiarly like birdseed, but towards the back it became richly mingled, the odours of rubber and emulsion blending with vapours of thinners and glues that smelled of rotting peaches. The vinegary aroma of fresh sawdust prevailed in the furthest corner of the shop, around the tunnel of planks and boards and lengths of timber that was the lair of Paul Mortimer, who would shout to him over the shriek of the circular saw, and talked loudly even after the noise had stopped, the way some people talk to the deaf. ‘Be right with you, prof,’ he would yell, as if there were something they had to discuss, and he’d turn off the saw and bring him over to sit on a trestle. Whenever they listened to the football scores on the radio Paul would react to almost every result, groaning, cackling with mischief, letting out a jubilant whoop, to make the list of names and numbers in some small way dramatic.
It was with Paul’s help, he recalls in the garden of the Bridge, that he learned to identify woods by their smoothness, by the resistance of the grain to his thumbnail, by their weight and suppleness. Paul would tell him to look up and would place a piece of willow, or ash, or pine, or oak on his outstretched palms, and he remembers that Paul would occasionally read to him as well. ‘These’ll make you laugh,’ he’d say, and he would rummage in his overalls for cuttings he’d taken from the week’s newspapers and magazines, tales of lunatic behaviour, incredible coincidences, ridiculous mishaps that were made even funnier by Paul’s retelling, by his squeaks of incredulity, which made it seem as if he were hearing each anecdote for the first time, even though, like his exclamations at the football scores, his hilarity was to some extent artificial, a performance for the benefit of the boy whose eyes were failing. ‘A daisy, ain’t it?’ he would remark after a particularly juicy story. Only from Paul had he ever heard this phrase. There was a story about the bank robbers whose getaway car was stolen while they were in the bank, he remembers, as Charlotte touches his arm and asks if he’s OK.
‘I was thinking about Paul,’ he says.
‘Paul who?’
‘Paul Mortimer. I wonder if he’s still there.’
‘Gone.’
‘He’s left?’
‘Mortimer’s has gone. It’s a phone shop.’
‘A phone shop? A shop selling phones?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing but phones?’
‘Yes.’
‘Christ. When did that happen?’
‘Years ago. Two years. Three years,’ she says, turning a page and flattening it with a sweep of her hand.
The Mortimers’ shop has gone from his mind, as if it were a fantasy abruptly destroyed by the truth of what Charlotte has told him. He sits beside his sister, hearing the rise and fall of voices at the tables around them, but not listening. A crisp packet rips; someone is smoking a cigar. The air is cooling now, and the breeze within the confines of the garden’s hedge barely disturbs the pages of the newspaper. He thinks about what he might buy Lucy for her birthday. He’ll ask Charlotte for ideas on the drive back to the hotel, he decides, and then a burst of noise startles him, an amplified jangle which resolves at once into a tune, ‘Greensleeves’, blaring from an ice cream van in the road beyond the hedge. Prematurely the tune ceases, and after a lull it resumes, dwindling with the van’s retreat until it sinks below the hubbub of voices, and in its wake a sadness rises, a complex sadness that has something to do with the tune itself, and something to do with the mechanical gaiety of the sound, and with the gradualness of its departure, but is also a product of memories that began to stir before the music had gone and now are converging to form an episode that belongs to no single day. He is with Charlotte, sitting in the long grass above the weir. The overspill flows incessantly down the mossy stone, and to their left, downstream, there are boats on the river: hulls knock against each other, oars chop the water, people shout and laugh, feigning alarm. They have been here for hours, enjoying a summer’s day that is almost over. The foliage hangs above him, a green smoke in the sunlight; the field across the water is like a smooth beach, curving away to the edge of the housing estate, which appears as a thick dark rim. As it tours the streets of the estate, an ice cream van plays the tune it always plays, a little nursery jingle that is sprightly and cheerful at first, but soon, with repetition, takes on a wistfulness that becomes an aspect of everything: the shifting of the leaves, the voices of the rowers, the trickling water, the din of the rooks in Maryon’s Wood, the bells of St Edmund’s church, whose song changed constantly yet stayed always the same, like breaking waves. Often it was pleasant, the melancholy of these evenings, but sometimes a pain of loneliness came out of it, a pain from which a sense of resolution, of resolute isolation, might follow. But sometimes what came was terror, and he would look in despair towards the hill where St Edmund’s church was standing, its tower visible to Charlotte but invisible to him.
He closes his eyes and stares behind his eyelids, as if he could stare away his blindness and open his eyes to see what Charlotte saw, and later, in the hotel garden, he recalls how he would strain his eyes at the watery leaves that shimmered over his head or at the field across the river, which at dusk could no longer be distinguished from the sky. At night, after his parents and Charlotte had gone to bed, he would go out into the garden and stand on the path, his eyes fixed on the glimmer that was all that remained of the moon, as if by this observance he could keep the darkness at bay. Now, alone in the garden of the Oak, unable to see even the blackness into which the moon was falling, he does not feel the anguish, the agony of loss that used to attack him with such ferocity that his howling brought Charlotte down from her room, and she would wrap a dressing gown around him and sit with him in the kitchen for a while. The rage and bitterness of those years have abated, yet still he yearns to see the moon and the stars. Directing his face to the sky, he longs to experience the illusion that the moon and the stars allow, to gaze at the roof of the constellations, the mask of the infinite nothingness that extends above him. He listens for what is there. A car is moving through space in a low arc, its passage traced by a fading trail of sound. Far away, the limping beat of a slow-moving train appears and disappears in the same place, like a dim star revealed and covered by a cloud. The silence congeals over the garden. He walks to the edge of the grass, groping towards the vegetation that is thickening the air. His fingers find leaves: the serrated leaves of a hornbeam. A small animal is rooting around beneath the bushes. He hears it trampling the bare earth, close to his feet. He hears its tiny snorts and sniffs, then the wipe of its belly on the grass as it hurries away. A telephone is ringing in the hotel.
Holding the photograph of Stephanie on the bench in Amsterdam, Malcolm recalls the beach where they were going to spend the day. They often went to that beach, he and Kate. On their first weekend, before they had unpacked all the boxes, they took the train to the sea. Mid-November it was, and the beach was as bleak as Saltburn at its worst, but when they stopped for a meal at the seafront café she looked out at the wide brown sea with an expression of satisfaction and
determination. It rained heavily in the afternoon, but they did not go back to Amsterdam until long after nightfall. In every street, however dreary, she seemed to read a guarantee that a new life had begun. Coming across a concert poster pasted to a wall, she scanned it avidly, as if it bore instructions which she had to memorise. Before returning to the station they took another walk along the promenade. They were confirming a pact as they walked together, surveying the sea and the town’s seaward face. Eventually, certainly by the time of this photograph, she would look at that horizon and at those buildings as if she saw in their monotony the image of her life. Holding Stephanie’s hand as she paddled, she turned her head to look at him and smiled defeatedly, at him, at the town, at the beach. Stung by this recollection, he looks at his watch. He has been at home for more than three hours, and still Kate has not called. He turns the television off and seizes the phone.
After the fourth ring, the last before the machine would start, the phone is picked up and a woman recites a number, pertly, like a confident contestant on a TV quiz. The number is Kate’s and the voice, he knows, must be hers, but he is so surprised by it that he does not immediately respond. She repeats the number, less rapidly. ‘Kate,’ he says. ‘It’s Malcolm.’
‘Hello, Malcolm.’
‘I called you,’ he says, laying the picture aside. ‘I left a message.’
‘I know you did.’
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Why didn’t you call me back?’
‘We got back late,’ she says, as though dealing with someone of lethargic intelligence. ‘I didn’t realise it was an emergency.’
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