by Tara Heavey
‘Peter rang again,’ he said at last. ‘Will I tell him to come? Would you like to see him?’
She looked a little sad. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve said my goodbyes to everyone, really. I think the time for visitors is over. I have you and I have Helen and I have Maia. That’s all I want now.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘I am.’ She reached out her hand and stroked his hair. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Thank you, Aidan. Thank you for the countless things you’ve done for me. You’re the most wonderful man. Trust me to meet my soul-mate when I only have a few months left to live. My timing’s always been lousy.’
She smiled at him again and he tried to smile back. His smile was weak. Watery.
‘But I feel like the luckiest woman alive to have known you at all.’
There she was, calling herself lucky again. Aidan could hardly bear it.
‘And to know that Maia will be well cared for. And safe. And loved. It’s the only thing that really matters to me now. And you’ve made it all right. You’ve made everything all right. You’ve made my last months on earth so special. You’ve made it possible for me to die at home, on my own terms …’
‘Don’t go, Sarah.’ The emotion spilled out of him. He was trembling with the force of it. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her chest. She stroked his hair and kissed his crown and murmured sweet nothings. As if he were a child.
Later that evening, Sarah’s body became as parched as the desert. Her lips were cracked, her bedclothes kicked to the floor. Aidan and Helen took turns to wet her lips, cool her brow. They met each other’s eyes helplessly across Sarah’s restless body, both wishing her peace, of one form or another. She woke from time to time, her mumblings nonsensical. Then, shortly before midnight, she opened her eyes and it was clear that full lucidity had been restored.
‘My feet are cold,’ she said, before closing her eyes again and returning to that strange netherland where neither of them could follow. They had both leaped up, so eager to help her. Helen won the race to the sock drawer – to find the cosiest, most comfortable socks there were to encase her sister’s feet. She stood at the side of the bed and held them in front of her. ‘Will these do, Sassy?’
Sarah opened her eyes and looked directly ahead. Unseeing. Helen suddenly remembered something she’d read. That people who are dying can lose their peripheral vision and can only see straight ahead, as if down a tunnel. She moved to the foot of the bed. ‘Are these socks all right?’
Sarah looked straight at her, for the first time in hours, it seemed. She nodded and closed her eyes. Helen moved her chair to the end of the bed and began to put them on for her.
She didn’t really believe her sister was dying. She still expected her to sit up and start talking again. Be the Sarah she’d always known. She’d done it before. Why not again?
Aidan remained where he was, stroking Sarah’s hand, not even knowing if she was aware of his touch any more. He began to talk urgently, as her breathing became ragged. ‘I love you, Sarah. I don’t regret a single moment that we spent together, you and me. It was worth it. All the pain. It was worth it.’
Should she leave the room? Helen wondered. Give them some privacy? But she didn’t want to leave. And Aidan seemed barely aware of her presence. No more so than her sister was.
She closed her hand around Sarah’s cocooned foot and rested her head against it. Sarah didn’t flinch. Sarah of the oversensitive feet. Sarah who could be tortured with tickling. Her little sister was trickling away. She could feel it. And nothing she could do would bring her back. No words. No force of will. No wishing. Sarah’s breath was terrifying now, rasping. At times she seemed to skip a breath. Helen squeezed her eyes tightly shut and prayed that her sister would live. That her sister would die. That this torture would be over soon.
As she opened her eyes, so did Sarah. She stared straight upward and her face melted into smiles. ‘Daddy,’ she said. ‘Helen, Daddy’s here.’
Helen and Aidan looked up at the empty space into which Sarah was staring. They saw what she saw only through the expression on her face. Sarah held out her arms, as if awaiting an embrace. Then her eyes closed again and her arms fell by her sides.
Helen was on her feet. ‘Is she …?’
‘She’s still breathing.’
Helen came to where Aidan was sitting. She leaned in and listened. Sure enough, Sarah’s chest still rose and fell, barely discernible beneath her white cotton nightdress. Helen returned to her seat and reflected on the strangeness of it all. How the separation between this world and the next was nothing but a breath. As fragile a thing as a breath. That if we stopped breathing, we stopped living. It was as simple and as final as that.
‘Do you really think my father was here?’ she said.
‘I don’t know, Helen.’
She shivered, as another bodily function grabbed her attention. ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Aidan couldn’t tell if Helen was talking to Sarah or him. He doubted she knew herself. Alone with Sarah, he could feel her slipping away from him, as if she left her body at intervals, then came back. As if she was as yet uncertain. Dipping her toe in the water. He whispered into the shell of her ear, ‘It’s okay, you know. You can go. I’ll be fine. Maia will be fine. It’s safe to let go, Sarah. It’s safe to let go.’ He stroked her hair, then leaned back in his chair. He blinked as he looked down her body: her feet appeared to be lit from the inside. Was it his turn to have hallucinations? He watched transfixed, as the light travelled upwards, through her shins, past her knees and upwards to her thighs. Her pelvis now. Her belly. Aidan thought of someone going around a house at night, turning off all the lights. That was what it was like. The light was on her breast now, her neck, illuminating her ever so beautiful face. When it went out through the crown of her head, Aidan knew she was gone. The Sarah he had known and loved was gone, and all that was left was this husk. This casket for her soul. And that was what he had seen leaving her body. He was sure of it. He had seen the soul he didn’t believe in leave the body of the woman he loved. He felt no sadness, only wonder. The door opened and Helen walked in. Unaware.
‘She’s gone,’ said Aidan.
Helen clasped her hand over her mouth and approached the bed. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Sassy. No.’
Then she started to sob and it was as if her tears activated Aidan’s sadness. He lowered his face into his hands and felt the depth of his despair, its heaviness descending on him. She was gone and he was still there. He would gladly have taken her place. Gladly. And at that moment, his dearest, most heartfelt desire was to go with her.
Neither heard the door open. Aidan’s first awareness of Maia’s presence in the room was when she pushed his hands away from his head to gain access to his lap. She climbed in and turned to Sarah’s form.
‘Mama sleep,’ she said.
‘Yes, Maia. Mama sleep.’
Chapter 52
It had been a conundrum while Sarah was still alive but once she was gone the answer seemed obvious: of course she must go to the funeral. How could she not? She owed it to everyone involved, not least herself.
Closure.
Sarah’s coffin wasn’t closed. Not until the very last. With looks like hers, it made sense. Fiona hadn’t gone to see her, hadn’t gone to the ‘viewing’. What an odd term. As if Sarah were some swanky apartment you were aspiring to move into.
Fiona’s presence at the funeral caused quite a stir among the locals. She couldn’t help that. They had come to gawk anyway. Between her and Robert Mitchell and the various illuminati of the Irish showbiz community, they were well served. She sat midway down the church, flanked on either side by her children, her eyes fastened on the back of Aidan’s head.
He had come home to collect his one and only suit. She had bought it for him when his mother had died and it had languished in the back of the wardrobe ever since. He wore it now with sandals and n
o socks. His hair stood up in an odd peak on his crown. He reminded her of a homeless person who had just got a suit from a charity shop, one that had perhaps belonged to a dead person.
Maia sat sandwiched between Aidan and a blonde woman. Must be the aunt. The little girl looked impossibly small, impossibly vulnerable, incomplete without Sarah by her side. Was it a tragedy or a blessing that she couldn’t fully comprehend what was going on?
Robert Mitchell sat at Aidan’s right hand. He wore dark glasses and looked profoundly uncomfortable. Sarah’s crowd were there – a colourful lot. One woman’s hat sported shocking pink plumes. The effect was defiantly festive: I may be sad but at least my hat is happy.
Aidan didn’t cry in the church. Not visibly. His head remained erect throughout. He didn’t cry at the graveside either. His expression was of bewildered desolation. Fiona and Alannah exchanged a glance and Alannah went to stand with him while they lowered the coffin.
Sarah had chosen to be buried here, in her final home, her daughter’s future home, in a windswept graveyard commanding magnificent sea views.
It was an odd, disjointed feeling, watching your husband act as chief mourner at a funeral that wasn’t your own. It was as if she were being offered a glimpse of her own funeral from the other side. A rare opportunity to appreciate his subtle dignity.
The afters were a relatively humble affair, given Sarah’s status – tea and sandwiches in a room in the local hotel. Just outside the entrance to the room there was a display of photos of the deceased. That was unusual. The stand had drawn quite a crowd but Fiona was uneasy about being seen studying images of the woman who had stolen her husband. On second thoughts she decided that, since she’d already confounded everyone’s expectations, she might as well give in to her curiosity. So she waited for a parting to reveal itself. In due course a woman stepped aside to let her in. The woman was one of the Dublin crowd and smiled warmly at Fiona. ‘And how did you know Sarah?’ she said.
Fiona paused briefly. ‘I was a friend,’ she said.
Some of the photos were old. Sarah as a young woman – couldn’t have been more than twenty – her hair thick and lush, her expression warm and vibrant. There was one photo of a child, whom Fiona initially mistook for Maia. Yet it had to be Sarah. It wasn’t only the seventies garb that gave her away. It was the eyes. Alive with promise, mischief and life.
Engaging as they were, these early photographs didn’t affect Fiona. But the more recent ones, of which there must have been about fifty, got to her. She could see that her husband had taken them and they created an intimate portrait of his, Sarah and Maia’s life together, a life that had been built on her pain. She felt the first stirrings of jealousy since the night she had been called to Sarah’s bedside.
One picture kept pulling her back. It was in the centre of the display and slightly enlarged. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Sarah was sitting at her kitchen table, the light shining through her sparse white curls. A jar of bluebells stood alongside her, dating the picture to late April or early May. So it had already started then. She hadn’t known for sure.
Sarah was looking right into the lens and directly at the person behind the camera: Aidan. Except now she was no longer looking at him but at Fiona. Her eyes contained no subterfuge; her expression was frank and open. Her beauty, as always, was effortless.
‘What are you trying to tell me, Sarah?’ Fiona spoke softly and unselfconsciously. The people on either side of her glanced at her and then at each other. Subtly, they moved away from her.
She stood there for several minutes longer, trying to work it out. At last she got it.
‘Goodbye. Goodbye, Sarah.’
Fiona left shortly after.
It was a week after the funeral. Everyone was gone. Helen had flown back to the States. Maia was back at school. And Sarah was still dead.
Aidan walked along the beach alone. The beach that had never felt so desolate. The autumn wind rang hollow in his ears. The sea was empty. Empty of life. Not a single surfer. Not even Tommy.
Aidan felt lost, so very lost – on this stretch of sand that he knew so intimately. But everything he’d once thought he’d known, he saw that he no longer knew. He didn’t belong here any more. Didn’t belong anywhere. He had no home in this life, on this earth. So he wandered. He stared out to sea at the ceaseless waves and wanted to go with them.
Another figure crossed the beach towards him. She was small. Her arms crossed her chest. Her steps were rapid.
‘What are you doing?’
He stared at her, not knowing what to say.
‘You’ll catch your death out here in a T-shirt. Come with me.’
She linked him and ferried him along with her. He offered no resistance.
Back to the house they went. Up the worn stone steps and onto the deck. Through the back door, the black dog frenzied. Aidan stood in his home and looked around him as if he’d never seen it before. He found the sea through the window and fixed his gaze on it. Fiona steered him towards the sitting room. ‘When’s the last time you slept?’
When her husband didn’t reply she walked him to the couch. ‘Here. Lie down.’
He kicked off his sand-caked boots and did as he was told, curling up his long body to fit the limited space.
Fiona laid the throw over him, placing it beneath his chin and tucking it up under his feet. Aidan drifted off into nothingness.
Tommy got up half an hour later. He thundered down the stairs and stood stock still at the entrance to the sitting room. The figure on the couch snored deeply and evenly. He walked into the kitchen. His mother was at the table, sipping her morning coffee. He didn’t say anything, just made the first move towards getting his breakfast. Then he turned from the fridge to her. ‘Is Dad staying?’
‘I don’t know, Tommy.’
Epilogue
Aidan and Maia were out in the dinghy. Star had been gone for a year now, since the week that Sarah had died. She had disappeared, just like that. How could a presence that filled your life to the brim just go, never to be seen again? He sometimes wondered if Sarah would have been so keen to leave Maia in the harbour town if she had known Star wouldn’t be there. But those thoughts only came upon him in his darker moments. In saner times, he knew she would have done.
He turned off the engine and they started to drift. He had found that the motion of the water calmed Maia, made her less agitated. Fiona was good at doing that too, but it was to the sea he turned as always.
A splash. A rush of breath somewhere close by. Aidan and Maia turned their heads in unison. It could have been anything. A fish. A nothing. A wish. But it wasn’t nothing. It was Star. He recognized her instantly from the distinctive nick on her dorsal fin. No other dolphin.
Maia laughed, the enchanting sound bubbling up her throat and out through her mouth. Aidan laughed too and then his laughter caught in his throat as he saw the other creature. Star was not alone: a baby dolphin swam at her side. Their over-water under-water dance one of perfect synchronicity, as if the baby was still attached to its mother by some invisible umbilical cord.
Pure elation filled Aidan’s soul. She had come back to him. She had come home.
‘Mama,’ said Maia.
The dolphins stayed for the longest time. Then the ocean took them away and they never saw them again.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the following:
Patricia Deevy, my excellent editor at Penguin, for making me and my novel look better; all at Penguin Ireland, Michael McLoughlin, Cliona Lewis, Patricia McVeigh and Brian Walker; Keith Taylor at Penguin UK and all in the London office who worked on my book; Faith O’Grady, my fantastic agent; Hazel Orme, copy editor, another woman who makes me look better; Keith Talbot and Thomasina Quirk, for their invaluable insights into autism; all at the Irish Society for Autism, especially Denis Sexton, for sharing his story with me; Sara Phelan, for her legal advice; Dorothy Allen, for her medical advice; Ger and Margaret Kirwan, for telling me ab
out the dolphin; Frank Callery, for sharing his experiences with me; Winnie O’Keane, for her recollections on fishermen and their ways; Rachel, for lending me the book about the pink dolphins; my family; my parents; Leo and Marianne, the funniest double-act I know; Rory, for everything.
Thank you, everyone.
