by Paul Burman
‘Lustrous’ is the word I want to shout to the sea and the sky and Elin, but the wind whips down and, with the playfulness of a kite, steals both syllables.
Elin places a hand on my arm and laughs, and is about to say something too until I hold a finger to my lips.
All the same, she shouts a string of three words into the day and I cover my ears.
“Don’t!” I shout back. “You mustn’t! Everything vanishes!” But the wind whips down and snatches, and Elin carries on laughing and is laughing as she strides from rock to rock.
This is her home. She glows by the sea. It’s her belonging-place. Her skin shines, her eyes sparkle, she lives with a smile. For her, it’s the antithesis of London, and I learn from that.
She crouches and picks up a shell; she strokes its contours with one finger, turns it over and drops it in her coat pocket.
She’s wearing her dad’s old herringbone coat, which blends with the colour of the clouds and the crashing of the waves. And it’s cold. The air’s so cold.
A pair of oystercatchers wheel through the morning ahead of us, stabbing at rock-pools, flying on when we get too close, and I stumble and scramble over each slab of rock to keep up with them, but it’s not an easy task. There’s something wrong with my balance; a middle ear thing, perhaps. The rocks appear a tad further away than they really are and the shadows more substantial than they should be, so I’m teetering like a drunk, afraid that if I fall and take my eyes off the beach for an instant, it’ll shimmer and vanish, and Elin’ll vanish too. Forever.
Noticing something caught on the rocks, she points and calls me over, except there’s still no sound to the words. Snagged in a crevice is a bundle of black, sodden fabric, and I imagine it must be a blanket or a dress, or a dead seal or seabird or something.
“Don’t,” I try warning her, and reach for her arm to stop her, but miss and she tugs it out and unravels it until she finds its shape. After all, she knows this beach.
Heavy and dripping, she turns it and holds it up by its shoulders for me to see. It’s a full-length Abercrombie overcoat; the sort with a black felt half-collar, which someone with a bowler hat might wear. What makes me shrink from this bloody coat I don’t know, and I wonder if there’s something I should know, something that’s in the pocket or close by. All the same, I guess it’s a good find and, as Elin holds it against the sky, I turn to look for the missing hat, and lose my footing, slip and am sucked backwards into darkness.
It’s only as I’m falling, to the alarmed cry of the oystercatchers, that sound breaks properly into this world. Bigger than any rock-pool, the darkness is cavernous, and the birds’ calls are echoed, amplified, distorted, until they fade into a persistent and chirruping ring.
“Phone,” I say, pushing a blanket down, reaching out wildly for the phone sitting on our bedside cabinet, only to find a larger piece of furniture in the way by crunching my knuckles against its sharp edge. “Fuck!”
I’m bound in seaweed – wide belts of dried kelp – and the phone scares the oystercatchers away, and then my mother’s answering machine cuts in.
Unwrapping the sheet from my shoulders, I make another grab for the sound and press the Talk button several times before she shuts up.
“Yeah, hello,” I say.
“Tom? Is that you, Tom?”
“Hello, Elin. It’s me.”
“Are you alright? You sound like you’ve just woken up.”
“What time is it?”
“Well, it’s seven in the evening here. It’ll be eight in the morning with you.”
“Shit. I keep sleeping. And –”
“What?”
“I keep falling asleep.”
“It’s jetlag,” she says. “We thought you’d ring when you got there, but figured you were out for the count. How was the flight? How’s your mum?”
“Everything’s fine, I guess. I think.” Leaning over, I tug at one of the closed curtains with a hand that’s still half-asleep. “It’s so dark here. I thought it was night. It feels like night. And cold. Bitter cold.”
“But you’re alright? You are alright?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“You sound distant.”
“Well, I am.”
“And half-asleep.”
“That too. I was gonna phone yesterday evening, but… can’t remember going to bed.” (I’d intended phoning Kate’s parents again too, and not hanging up this time.)
There’s a slight pause and I hear Elin saying something to Daniel; then Tamsin and Elspeth shouting in the background: “Hi, Dad.”
“You can speak to him in a minute,” Elin tells them, and returns to me. “Did you get to see her yet?”
“Who?”
“Your mum of course.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How was she?”
For a moment, I’ve forgotten. It’s completely gone. Then it comes back, like retrieving a distant memory, even though it was only yesterday. “She seemed okay; older perhaps, a little frail, but as sharp as usual and ready to shred. Annette took me straight from the train to the hospital.”
“What was that? There’s an echo on the line.”
“I think she’s having problems breathing at times, but isn’t half as bad as I expected.”
“But she’s not uncomfortable?”
“They’re waiting on results, but apparently she was better than the day before. She’s keen to get home.”
“Really? That’s good.”
“Yep. And she’ll give the nurses a hard time until they let her out, poor buggers.”
“She hasn’t changed then?”
“No – still the cutting tongue. Some people never do.”
“And Annette’s okay?”
“The same. Although I don’t know why she doesn’t tell Mum where to go at times. She cops a bit of flak, just for Mum’s amusement.”
“She’ll appreciate that you’ve travelled so far to see her.”
“Maybe.”
“She will, even if she doesn’t tell you.”
“I guess.”
“Elspeth wants to talk. They’ve got some news for you, but
Elspeth wants to tell you first.”
There’s a quick shuffle at the other end, and I imagine my family gathered in the lounge or on the verandah at the end of a bright summer’s day. The smell of ozone will be drifting in on a south-westerly breeze, taking the edge off the heat, and the shrill lorikeets will be flying in and out the gum trees, dangling upside-down from the slenderest of growth, feeding on the nectar of red and yellow flowers – a raucous cacophony of high-pitched calls punctuated by the angry growls of the resident wattle birds trying to chase them out.
“We saw two whales today, Dad. Me and Tamsin.”
“Whales? Where? It’s the wrong time of year.”
“At the end of the jetty.”
“Are you sure they weren’t dolphins.”
“They were whales, silly. Lots of people saw them. They were massive and we got sprayed when they spouted water out their heads.”
“You were that close?”
“They were almost next to the jetty. We could hear all their snorting noises and see the barnacles growing on them. They were ugly, Dad, but sort of beautiful too.”
“Wow. I wish I’d seen them. That would’ve been magic.”
“Mum’s taking me down in the morning to see if they come back.”
“I miss you,” I say. “I miss all of you.” But the truth is more that I feel they’re my anchor and I’m cut adrift.
Daniel is given the phone next. He’s late for a game of cricket with some friends, he tells me, but has been made to wait until after Elspeth, his youngest sister, has said her piece.
“You’re a good brother,” I tell him. “Who are you playing with?”
But he doesn’t want to talk about this it seems. “Will you be back for Christmas?” he asks.
“I’m not sure. It’s only ten days away, Dan. Everything dep
ends –”
“That’s crap,” he says. “Won’t we get a proper Christmas this year then?”
“We spoke about this before I left, matey. You’ll have a great –”
“I don’t see why you have to stay so long. You don’t even like it there.”
“That’s not the point, Dan.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
There’s a moment’s pause, then he switches into a different tone altogether. “Anyway, I’ve got to go now. I’ll speak to you next time. See you. Here’s Tamsin.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, Tamsy. How are you?”
“Good. How are you?”
“Stuffed. Jetlagged, I think. I don’t like sitting on planes for twenty-three hours at a time. So you saw two whales, did you?”
“Yeah, it was great. They were so close – much closer than that other time. Their spray reached where we were standing, they were that close. There were some Wildlife and Fisheries officers talking to us, and one said they were probably a mating couple. It was brilliant. You’d have loved it.”
When the call ends, I’m surprised to find that I’m still in an English winter with the curtains closed. For a moment I was back in Dungarvan, and Britain a distant memory. I could’ve easily slipped from one place to the other.
At the village bus stop, it’s half-an-hour or so before the bus arrives and the number of people waiting grows from four to nine. An icy wind cuts round the shelter, and we’re crowding to one end to avoid a patch of pavement where a dog has crapped. If it weren’t so cold it’d be pissing with rain, and the sky is only propped up by telegraph poles and cement-tiled shop roofs.
I try to catch someone’s eye to say “G’day” and pass the time, but everyone makes a point of staring away from one another – at the crap on the ground, at the sky or across the road. Not only does no one talk, except for the hushed tones of a mother and daughter, but even the elderly married couple have nothing to say to one another.
The real problem, though, is that things aren’t much different between Mum and me. We exhaust a few superficial pleasantries within five minutes, and the ensuing silence confirms that, even on her sickbed, she isn’t going to let me past the barrier she’s spent a lifetime constructing. There’ll be no sharing of intimacies or confidences here, thank you very much, no talk of regrets or missed opportunities, no discussions of dreams, hopes, aspirations. The past is dead and gone, the future a predictable routine, and the present a vacuum.
“I’m tired,” she says. “I hope you don’t feel you have to come and sit with me. It’s going to get tedious if you do, and I can do without it.”
“You can read your magazine or watch TV if you want. I’m just here if you need me.” And I wish she’d begin gasping again, so I might at least pass her the oxygen mask.
“I can’t think why Annette asked you to come. She’s always made big dramas out of everything, even as a little girl.”
“Well, I’m here now,” I say, “and I’m sure she meant well. I might as well sit with you here as sit in a chair in Nenford.”
“Aren’t there places you’d like to visit, people to catch up with?”
“Yeah, I’ll do a bit of that, perhaps. But it’s the wrong time of year to play the tourist. I’m here to keep you company and see if you need anything.”
“I don’t. Just peace and quiet.”
“Fair enough.”
“As long as you don’t think I’m gonna be curling up my toes any time soon.”
“I don’t.”
“Then you’ve had a wasted journey.”
“Not at all.”
“How can I rest with you sitting there like a blooming vulture?”
“Then I’ll read your magazine and you close your eyes.”
“I will. Didn’t get much sleep last night. This place is too noisy. You don’t mind if I close my eyes?”
“Be my guest.”
“I’m somebody’s guest,” she says, “but I don’t think I’m yours.”
Behind where I sit is a window, and beyond the window, in the foreground, a skeletal tree. The view wouldn’t be bad in spring, summer or autumn, when the tree is dressed in blossom or leaves, but at the moment there’s only the hospital car park to look at, and a busy intersection with traffic lights.
Annette arrives for ten minutes during her lunch break. She sees Mum asleep and has a whispered conversation with me.
“You’re here with her,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“That’s good.”
I smile.
“Thought you would be, so I didn’t take time off today.”
“You don’t need to. She’s fine. Just tired.”
“But I’ll come in after work, after they’ve served tea.”
“If you want.”
“Then she’ll have someone with her most the time.”
“She wants to be left alone.”
“She only says that. You don’t know what she’s really like.”
“That’s true.”
On seeing the magazine in my lap, she nods at the bedside cabinet. “I bought that edition for her the other day and she’s read it from cover-to-cover; even did the crossword.”
Glancing across at the cabinet, I notice a stack of magazines and one with the same cover as mine sitting on top.
“Buy her this month’s Home & Garden, if you want to get something she hasn’t read. And tell her I called.”
“I will.”
By two-thirty she’s awake and by quarter-past-three I’m on the bus back to Nenford. I don’t care if she’d rather be by herself. Not really. There’s little she can say these days – or fail to say – that’ll hurt. It’s all been said before, or failed to be said. I’ll go and see her tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, until they release her or she releases herself, because she’s my mother and that’s mainly why I’m here.
Moving through the house from room to room, I turn the lights on against the dying of the day and try sweeping the corners clear of shadows. In Mum’s bedroom, I drag open her wardrobe doors and drawers, but there’s nothing to find except twin sets, dresses, skirts, blouses, five pairs of clean shoes, underwear, a jewellery box… Every cupboard, shelf and drawer in the house is too bloody ordered too, and a quick glance in the attic tells me it’s been cleared for years. Even Brian’s ready-decorated, miniature, plastic Christmas tree no longer awaits its annual unwrapping. In fact, apart from his recorded presence in the three photo albums, there’s almost as little trace of Brian here, to confirm he ever existed and was part of her life, as there is of Dad, and I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard.
Even now, as an adult, I can’t accept that Dad wouldn’t have left behind the briefest note before he took his life, or that she’d have destroyed it. It’d only take a phrase or two to please me: ‘Let Tommo know I always loved him, and that I’m sorry.’
But there are no boxes stacked with diaries or old love letters, no mementoes in the way of Mother’s Day gifts we’d made at school or bought with precious pocket money; no concessions to nostalgia or sentimentality. Even the photo albums are a bland and edited selection of memories that give little away except changing fashions and hairstyles in various holiday locations. What’s she done with the negatives and unwanted photos? Burnt them? We’re so different to one another, my mother and I.
By the time I’ve finished searching, it’s dark outside. My father left nothing – except a wristwatch and a few memories. The process leaves me empty, purged and strangely at ease. In this respect, I’ve done everything I can expect of myself. The house is an empty shell, just a husk.
Standing at the French windows, I peer out at the bare and treeless winter garden until my breath mists the glass, and I begin drawing a smiley face, but then rub it out again. Already the grass is white with frost and there’s an almost-full moon rising above the roofline of the houses. A coldness is seeping into me, numbing me, so I close the curt
ains and set about making the heater work harder. Tonight, the sparrows and finches will freeze and drop from a brittle sky.
At six o’clock, with my address book open and several rehearsed dialogues running through my head, I pick up the phone and dial Kate’s parents’ number again.
After five rings, there’s no answer. I’ll give it ten rings, hang up, and never do another thing about finding her. On the twelfth ring, Kate’s dad answers. I recognise his voice straightaway.
“Hello,” he says. “Happy Christmas to you.” The first unconditionally friendly voice I’ve heard since arriving in England.
Silence.
“Hello,” he repeats.
“Hello, Mr Hainley. My name’s Tom Passmore. I’m an old friend of Kate’s – a very old friend. I don’t know whether you remember, but you and Mrs Hainley met me several times, years ago.”
“Tom? Tom Passmore?”
“Yes. Tom Passmore. An old friend of Kate’s.”
“Just wait a minute, will you, while I turn down the radio.”
I hear footsteps, a door shutting; no radio.
“I think I remember you, Tom. It was a long while ago.”
“The reason I’m phoning,” I continue, “is that… well, I moved to Australia a few years ago and never had a chance to keep in touch with Kate, and –”
“You phoning from Australia, Tom?”
“No. I’m in the country – back in Nenford actually. That’s why I’m phoning. My mother’s sick, so I’ve come over for a couple of weeks to be with her. She’s in hospital.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Remember us to her. We met her once, didn’t we?”
Did they? I don’t remember, but I say: “Yes. I’d forgotten that. Thanks.”
This is going better than I’d hoped.
“But it was a long while ago,” he says.
“About twenty years,” I admit.
There’s a pronounced silence at the other end.
“The reason I’m phoning,” I hurry on, “is because I was hoping to get in touch with a few old friends again while I’m here. For old time’s sake. While I’m in the country. And I wondered if you could give me Kate’s address or a telephone number or something.”
