by David Haynes
“Boo!”
He jumped a little and spilled wine down his shirt.
“Good party, Dad?” He hadn’t seen or heard Ollie approaching but he was standing right beside him with a huge smile on his face. His best friend Jake was with him.
“The best. You two enjoying it?” He put his hand on Ollie’s shoulder.
Ollie shrugged. “It’s okay. Is Lollipop Joe coming?”
Joe was his great-granddad but acted like a granddad, and according to Ollie was the coolest man on earth.
“I don’t think he could make it but we’ll see him again soon.” There weren’t many people he could stand to be at this party with, but Joe was one of the select few.
“Okay.”
There was a moment of silence between them before Jake pushed a card forward. “This is from my family. Happy birthday.”
Ollie snatched it away instantly. “It’s not his birthday until tomorrow and I’m in charge of putting the cards and presents in the kitchen. You can help me if you like.”
The two boys ran off without another word. Chris watched them.
He hadn’t asked Lou about Joe but he didn’t need to. Joe wouldn’t want to be at something like this any more than he did. He didn’t blame him. There would probably be a phone call from him tomorrow to wish Chris a happy birthday. Joe had been more like a dad than a granddad afterwards and he loved him like one. He looked over at his mum. She’d kept him away from Joe’s for a long time afterwards and that had created some bad feeling between them.
“Chris, come and tell us about your next book.” He recognised some relatives he hadn’t seen for about two years. He smiled and topped up his glass. They would be easy to talk to. There wouldn’t be any difficult questions about... well, about his dad.
*
“Everyone, can I have your attention please!” Lou’s voice carried above the hum of conversation. “There’s someone here who wants to say a few words.”
Ollie was standing on a stool and in his hands he clutched a sheet of paper. He put his hand to his mouth and coughed theatrically. He’d always been just the right side of confident but he looked a little nervous.
Everyone had a glass of champagne in their hands but Chris had two. Surely as the guest of honour he was allowed that? His head was spinning more than it should but he’d held it together for the past three hours and hadn’t sloped off to sit in his office, as much as he wanted to. That in itself was a triumph.
“I wanted to say a few words about my dad.” Ollie sounded grown-up as he read from his script. Had he written it himself, Chris wondered?
“My daddy’s very clever. He’s a very clever man. He does all sorts of things like clever daddies can. He can swirl me, he can twirl me. He can swing me round and round. He can hold me high and fly me. He can swoosh me to the ground...”
Chris recognised the words immediately. They were from a book he’d read to Ollie when he was little more than a baby. The first time Ollie had said the word shoe was when the illustration showed the little boy’s shoes flying off as the daddy swung him around and around.
Ollie carried on reading and Chris could feel a mist drop over his eyes. His vision was becoming blurred, not from the wine but from the tears that were pooling in his eyes. Lou had bought him the book when Ollie turned one. Although he hadn’t heard the words for years, he remembered them perfectly and mouthed them in time with Ollie.
“He hugs me and he cuddles me and tucks me up with Ted. Night night, Daddy. Night night, sleepy head! Happy birthday, Dad!”
It was no use, he couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. A great stream ran down his cheeks and fell onto his shirt. Everyone was clapping and through blurred vision, Chris started walking toward his son.
And then he stopped dead in his tracks.
“You?” He wiped the tears away from his eyes and blinked. “Why are you here?”
Right behind Ollie, he could see her standing with her hands on his shoulders. Her hair was a tangle of seaweed and her skin was white, too white. He thought he was about to vomit. He’d seen her every night for the last year but only in his dreams.
“Get away from him!” he screamed.
He was aware of the hush and of the expressions of the people either side of him. It seemed like they had parted to make way for him.
“Chris, stop it!” He heard Lou’s voice come from somewhere out in front but his vision had narrowed and all he could see was his son and her, one in front of the other. She looked hellish and water rolled down her face in a continual sheet. It hid her expression but he knew what was beneath the water. He’d looked into those eyes before, he’d looked into those holes and it had nearly killed him.
He started walking again. It wasn’t possible, of course it wasn’t, and yet she was there. She was there.
“Dad?” Ollie sounded frightened. It was the voice he used in the middle of the night when a nightmare woke him. It was the voice of a scared little boy. It sounded like his own voice had when the lady had looked at him. The lady whom nobody had ever found.
“Please, Dad.”
“It’s okay, Ollie. I’m coming to save you!” He sprinted toward his son.
There was a collective gasp from the crowd and then Lou screamed at him. “Chris, stop it. Just stop it!” She grabbed his arm and he turned.
“But she’s there. Look!” Chris turned and raised his finger. Ollie was frozen to the spot and his eyes were wide in shock.
But there was nobody behind him now. Ollie was on his own and tears were rolling down his cheeks. Chris stepped toward him but Lou pushed him to the side.
“Don’t,” she snarled.
“She was there. She was there,” he muttered weakly.
And then all at once he was aware of everyone looking at him, staring at him. In their minds, they were thinking he was crazy; a bona fide lunatic of the highest order. He turned a full circle and stared back. Some of them actually had their mouths open. Under his stare, they turned away and started walking toward the house.
“I saw her!” Chris shouted. “I saw her.” But his was the only voice now and he collapsed to his knees on the grass. He had managed to destroy the party in the most spectacular of fashions and had scared the hell out of Ollie in the process. Then there was Lou and her last words to him. “Just don’t ruin it, that’s all I ask.”
Oh, but he had ruined it. He had ruined the shit out of it. He watched Lou put her arms around their weeping son and lead him away with everyone else. He was alone where only five minutes ago there had been a throng of people chatting away in the early autumn sun.
He allowed his body to topple forward and fall face-first into the turf.
“I saw her,” he said to the grass.
*
“You need to go, Chris.”
He watched Lou bundle his clothes into the suitcase. Tears had caused her make-up to run and black streaks ran down her cheeks in smudged zigzags.
“You need to get your head straight.”
There was no use in fighting it. She was right. He needed to go so he couldn’t hurt them anymore.
“Is this for good?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “Just get your head straight, Chris.”
He nodded and took a step toward her. “What about Ollie? Can I see him?”
Lou straightened. “You frightened him this afternoon and it isn’t the first time you’ve done that, is it? Do you know how proud he was to read that story? He’d been practising it every night for the last two months. He didn’t need the paper to read it from, he knew every letter off by heart.”
“I loved it. I was crying.” He felt ashamed, utterly ashamed.
“And you ruined it. You ruined everything.”
“But I saw...”
Lou held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it.” She closed the case and held it up for him.
He took it from her. The hangover had started almost as soon as his head hit the turf and his tongue didn’t feel the
right size for his mouth.
“I’ll go, Lou, but I want to see him before I do. I’m not leaving him like this.”
She nodded. “He asked for you a while ago.”
Chris lowered the case and walked into Ollie’s room. He had no idea what he was going to say but an apology was a good place to start.
Ollie had his Batman torch on and was doing his best to read a comic. Chris could see his lips moving as he spelled out the words.
“Hey, big man.”
Ollie snapped his head round and grinned. “Dad!” He stretched his arms out for a hug.
Chris felt tears try to come but he clenched his jaw together as hard as he could and they stayed away. He pulled Ollie toward him.
“Careful, Dad, you nearly dragged me out of bed.”
He could tell by Ollie’s voice that the boy was still smiling. That was good. He pulled back and kissed him on the forehead.
“I’m sorry I messed up earlier. I loved what you said. It was... it was...” He realised he didn’t have the words. Nobody would.
“It was awesome!” Ollie laughed.
“Yep, that about covers it.”
Ollie wriggled back under the duvet and picked up the comic again. It made Chris want to cry.
“Listen, I’ve got to go away to work on my book for a while.”
He didn’t look up. “Are you going to Lollipop’s?”
He hadn’t thought about where he might go but Ollie’s suggestion was a pretty good one. “Yes, I might just do that.”
“How long for?”
That was the million dollar question. “I’m not sure at the moment but I’ll phone you every day and maybe when I’m... when I’ve nearly finished the book, you and Mum can come down and stay for a few days. How’s that sound?”
Ollie looked up but his eyes weren’t full of the excitement a trip to Lollipop’s usually instilled. “You scared me, Dad. I didn’t like it.”
Chris swallowed hard. “I know and I’m sorry, Ollie, I’m so sorry. I just drank too much wine. Stay away from that stuff, it makes you behave very badly.”
Ollie nodded and went back to his comic. The damage was already done, though, and Ollie would probably remember this day for the rest of his life.
He leaned over and kissed him again. “Right, I’ve got to go now. I’ll call you tomorrow. Okay?”
Ollie jumped up. “If you’re not going to be here tomorrow then you’ve got to open this!” He reached under the jumble of old teddy bears at the foot of the bed and dragged out a square about the same size as a netbook. It was wrapped in brightly coloured paper.
“I wrapped it too,” he said proudly. “Mum! Dad’s opening his present, come and watch!”
He heard Lou behind him but he didn’t look at her. He didn’t trust himself to look at either of them without turning into a blubbering idiot and that would complete the day perfectly.
He picked at the tape on either end of the parcel and slid the present out. It was a simple black frame and inside was a black and white photograph.
“Grandma let us have it and Mum sent it to a special shop where they made it bigger.” Ollie was touching the frame. “That’s you, isn’t it Dad? And that’s Granddad next to you. He looks loads like you.”
Chris stared at the picture. Or more correctly, he stared at his dad’s face. This was how he remembered the man, not the ghostly apparition he saw in his dreams or in Ollie’s drawings. This was his dad. It had obviously been taken on a family holiday, not that he could remember which one. Both of them were smiling and in the background was the familiar outline of the Cornish coast, just down the lane from Lollipop’s house. Chris had his arms folded and his dad was making bunny ears behind his head. It looked like they were both wearing rain jackets.
“I want to do that to you, Dad.”
Chris could feel a smile breaking on his face. He wouldn’t have been much younger than Ollie was right now. In fact, the picture was probably taken a year before... His smile retreated back into the shadows.
“Do you like it?”
Chris grabbed Ollie and held him. “It’s perfect.” His voice trembled.
Chapter 4
The radio said one lane of the motorway was closed after junction 28 but it barely mattered at this time of the night. He didn’t have the radio on for the traffic news, only to keep him awake. It had been about five hours since his last drink, and his brain felt tight and dehydrated. He reached over for the water he’d bought at the petrol station and drained the last few drops.
As soon as Ollie had mentioned Lollipop, Chris knew it was the right place to go to try and sort his head out. Joe didn’t ask a lot of questions, not out loud anyway. There had only ever been an arm around the shoulder and a few words of comfort from him. They had a lot in common, not all of it particularly good.
Sometimes Chris had to force himself to remember that not only had he lost his dad but Joe had lost a son. This is what had brought them closer together and kept them tight. There was nobody else who had lost quite as much when Jack Kestle had died in the Atlantic Ocean. His mum had lost a husband and someone she had once loved but their relationship, had it endured past that day, would have ended in divorce sooner rather than later. That unspoken fact kept her out of the ‘Joe and Chris club’ and it set her apart from them both.
He had no idea what he was going to do when he got there or how being there would help him, but that’s where both his heart and head told him to go. He glanced at the passenger seat and saw the framed picture Ollie had given him. Leaving him was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life but it was necessary. Lou knew it and so did he.
The melancholy that had dominated his mind for the last year was now manifesting itself in hallucinations. That couldn’t be good news. There had been a lack of clarity to his thoughts, a lack of energy and creativity. He knew this was down to how he was feeling but the apparitions were something different entirely. They were invasive and destructive in the worst way possible.
He allowed the car to drift across the lanes and exited the motorway. He didn’t need a sat-nav to direct him, he’d made this journey hundreds of times. First in the back of the car and later as the driver. The route was as familiar to him as the short walk to Ollie’s school.
He hadn’t contacted Joe to tell him he was on his way, or that he had a suitcase full of clothes in the boot. That was a conversation to be had in person, not on the telephone in the middle of the night. Besides, Joe would open the door to him whatever the time, whatever the reason. He pushed the car up to seventy and switched on the cruise control. This stretch of road was straight, and at nearly two in the morning he wasn’t likely to be making any sudden manoeuvres.
Ollie loved it down here. They all did, Lou included, and they came as often as they could. The best times were before Ollie had started school and they could come down in the early autumn when it was quiet. If they were lucky, they might have an Indian summer and spend days on the beach eating picnics and paddling in the sea, but if the weather wasn’t so good then it didn’t really matter. Ollie would still dig about in the sand and build sandcastles. He’d just be wrapped up in hundreds of layers of clothes to keep the wind out. They all would.
The first time Ollie’s little toes had touched the sea, he squealed and thrashed his legs about like an Olympic sprinter. The second time he’d giggled and shouted, “Cold!” and then kicked at the ripples left by the dying waves. Chris had stood with the bottom of his jeans rolled up, holding onto his little boy as tight as he could. “Too tight, Daddy!” Ollie had said but he wasn’t loosening his hold, not for anybody. No matter that the water barely covered his own feet.
Not once had they gone down to Hawk’s Cove though. Chris had never been back since that day. He wasn’t sure he would ever have the strength to go there again. He certainly couldn’t take Ollie down there.
Just seeing the signpost in the village was hard enough. The dirty white letters on the faded green background reminded h
im that Hawk’s Cove had been there longer than any of them and would be there as long as the ocean permitted it to remain. It was permanence where other things were not.
On the first occasion he’d come with Lou, he simply pointed at the sign without looking at it and said, “There.” They hadn’t been talking about it at the time but she didn’t ask what he was referring to. There was no reason to, she just knew.
He checked the time. With one last stop for fuel, it would be another hour and a half before he reached Joe’s cottage. That would make it after three. He felt guilty about waking him. Joe was in superb shape but waking a ninety-one year old man at that time of the night was bad form. He eased down on the pedal to disengage the cruise control and pushed the car up to eighty-five. He doubted there would be many traffic officers about on this stretch of road. If he could shave twenty minutes off the time, he would be up to talk to Ollie before he went to school.
He bit his lip to stop the tears coming and pushed down on the pedal a little harder.
*
Joe’s place was the last in a row of fishermen’s cottages. As Chris pulled onto the unadopted lane, his headlights picked out the partially submerged rocks which formed the road. Usually he might have tried to pick his way through the worst of them but tonight he just wanted to get into bed. He turned around the side of the house and immediately saw that the kitchen light was on. It was a bit late for the old boy to be up.
He cut the engine and stretched his back against the seat. He wouldn’t bother getting the suitcase out of the boot tonight, it would just provoke questions. He opened the door and was about to climb out when he saw a figure standing at the back door.
He stepped out. “Granddad?” The kitchen light lit his face from the side but it was obvious he was smiling.
“Come in, son. Lou phoned and told me you were on your way.”
