The Hand That First Held Mine

by Maggie O'Farrell

  Robert climbs the steps on to the Cobb’s high wall. He races along the sloped stones, Theo clutched in his arms. Halfway along, he comes to a stop.

  ‘Where’s Mama?’ Theo says again.

  ‘She’s . . .’ Robert looks. He looks and looks. His eyes ache with looking. He cannot remember ever seeing anything other than sea, endless, puckered water, unbroken. Every few seconds, his heart leaps at something – a buoy, a particularly peaked wave. But there is nothing. She is nowhere.

  He scrambles down off the wall, to the lower part of the Cobb, and runs towards its end. The water here is deep, sinister green, dipping and snatching at the wall. Theo begins to cry. ‘I don’t like it,’ he says. ‘That sea is too close. That sea there.’ He points at it, in case Robert hasn’t understood.

  Robert turns, rushes back along the wet Cobb as carefully as he can, to where several fishing-boats are moored. In one of them a man is standing, his arms full of knotted nets.

  ‘Please,’ Robert calls down to him. ‘Please. We need help.’

  Then there is a long stretch of time when Robert is sitting on a bench on the Cobb, with Theo in his arms. Beams from the lights of trawlers, the lifeboats, the coastguard sweep over them from time to time. He has wrapped the child in his coat. Only his hair is visible. Theo shivers rhythmically, gently, like an engine in low gear. Robert rocks him back and forth, sings a song he used to sing to his own children a long time ago, his voice cracked and hoarse. Someone – he doesn’t see who, one of the policemen, perhaps – brings a woven bag and places it next to him. He doesn’t recognise it for a moment. At the top of the bag is a loosely folded piece of fabric. Then he sees that it is Lexie’s dress, Lexie’s bag, that someone has collected them from where they were sitting on the beach. Without letting go of Theo, he picks up the dress. It unfolds in his fingers like something sentient, like something alive. He almost drops it but doesn’t, and then he is puzzled by the weight of it. How can something of thin cotton be so heavy? It swings back and forth like a pendulum in the stiff breeze. Then he remembers the ammonite. She put it into her pocket just before—

  He puts the dress down quickly, stuffs it back into the bag. And then he sees the toy Theo loves, the stuffed cat, among a tangle of beakers, spare shorts, buckets and spades, a green rake. He lifts it out, places its nonplussed face at the gap in the top of his coat, where Theo’s bright, golden hair can be seen. For a moment nothing happens. Then fingers appear, clutch at the cat and pull it down inside the cave of the coat.

  And then two policemen are running down the brow of the Cobb towards the dock. The other police, seeing them, start moving too. Robert stands, hoisting Theo up. He hears someone mutter, ‘They’ve got her.’

  And he is moving forward. A boat is rounding the tip of the Cobb, a small trawler, its lights blazing, a man at the helm and another standing at the stern with a rope. Robert strains his eyes and sees, unbelievably, a shape crumpled at the bottom of the boat, half covered with tarpaulin and he finds he wants to shout, to cry out to her, but then a policeman is standing between him and the docking boat and he is saying, stand back, sir, please, get back, take the child, take him away.

  This is how it ends. Those words were running through her head. So this is how it ends. She knew what was coming. There was a stretch of time, out there beyond the reach of the Cobb, several minutes long, where she was flailing against the cold, muscular clutch of the current. And she saw. She saw what was coming. She knew the struggle had begun and she knew that she was losing.

  She didn’t think in that moment of herself, of her parents, her siblings, of Innes, the life she left behind when she stepped into the waves, the moment when she could have changed everything, when she could have stayed on the beach, turned her back on the sea. She didn’t even think of Robert, who was sitting there with her clothes, who would soon be calling her name into the restless wind.

  As the waves thrust her under, she could think only of Theo.

  They heaved her up and heaved her under, and every now and again she could struggle to the surface, she could make the waters part so she could take a breath, but she knew, she knew it couldn’t be long, and she wanted to say, please. She wanted to say, no. She wanted to say, I have a son, there is a child, this cannot happen. Because you know that no one will ever love them like you do. You know that no one will look after them like you do. You know that it’s an impossibility, it’s unthinkable that you could be taken away, that you will have to leave them behind.

  She knew, though, that she would not see him again. She would not be helping him cut up his dinner tonight. She would not be folding the kite or airing his damp clothes or running him a bath at bedtime or taking his pyjamas out from under the pillow. She would not be rescuing his cat from the floor in the middle of the night. She would not be able to wait for him at the gate at the end of his first day at school. Or guide his hand as he learnt to shape the letters of his name, the name she’d given him. Or hold the seat of his bicycle as he did without stabilisers. She would not be nursing him through chicken pox and measles; it would not be her measuring out the medicine, or shaking down the themometer. She would not be there to show him how to look left, then right, then left again, or to tie his own shoelaces or brush his teeth or manage the zip on his cagoule, or to pair his socks after a wash or to use a telephone or to spread butter on bread, or what to do if he got lost in a shop, or how to pour milk into a cup or catch a bus home. She would not see him grow as tall as her and then taller. She would not be there when someone first broke his heart or when he first drove a car or when he went alone out into the world or when he saw, for the first time, what he would do, how he would live and with whom and where. She would not be there to knock the sand out of his shoes when he came off the beach. She would not see him again.

  She fought like a crazed thing. She fought to live, she fought to come back. She has always wanted to tell him this, in some way. She tried. She would like to say to him, Theo, I tried. I fought because I didn’t see how I could leave you. But I lost.

  What she would have given to win? She could not say.

  It’s nightfall by the time they reach London. Elina sits in the back, her hands squeezed between her knees. Jonah sleeps in his car seat. Ted has stared straight out of the windscreen for the entire journey. On the Westway, he says, ‘Take me to Myddleton Square.’

  Simmy glances at Ted, then his eyes meet Elina’s in the rear-view mirror. ‘Ted,’ he begins, ‘don’t you think you ought to—’

  ‘Take me to Myddleton Square, Sim, I mean it.’

  Elina leans forward. ‘Why do you want to go there, Ted?’

  ‘Why?’ he snaps. ‘To talk to my parents, of course.’

  ‘It’s quite late,’ Elina ventures. ‘Won’t they be asleep? Why don’t we wait until—’

  ‘Either take me,’ Ted says, and his voice sounds near tears, ‘or let me out of the car and I’ll go by Tube.’

  ‘OK,’ Simmy says soothingly. ‘OK. Whatever you want. Why don’t I drop Elina and Jonah off at home first and then—’

  ‘I’ll go with Ted,’ Elina cuts in. ‘It’s fine. Jonah’s asleep. I’ll go with you,’ she says, and lays a hand on Ted’s shoulder.

  When Simmy pulls up in Myddleton Square, Ted is out of the car and running up to his parents’ front door before either Elina or Simmy have taken off their seatbelts. Elina releases the catch on Jonah’s seat and opens the door.

  ‘Are you coming?’ she says to Simmy.

  Simmy turns round and they look at each other. ‘What do you think?’ he says, in a low voice.

  ‘Maybe you’d better,’ she says quickly.

  Simmy takes the car seat from her and they go towards the door, which is now opening, a slice of light appearing and falling over the pavement, and there is Ted’s father, whisky glass in hand, saying, ‘Good grief. Hello, old chap. Didn’t know you were coming.’

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Ted says, and pushes past him.

  In the
kitchen downstairs, Elina sits at the table with Simmy and Ted’s father. Ted strides to the back door, to the window, to the table, to the cooker.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ted’s father says, looking at them all one by one.

  Elina clears her throat, wondering what she should say. ‘Well,’ she begins, ‘we were in Ly—’

  ‘Answer me this,’ Ted shouts, from across the room, and Elina whirls round to look at him. He has his wallet in his hands and is struggling to pull something – money? A credit card? – from it. She stares at him, appalled, as he bears down on them. He hurls something, something white, a piece of paper or card, on the table in front of his father. ‘Who is that?’

  There is a long silence. Ted’s father glances at the piece of paper, then glances quickly away. He reaches into his shirt pocket for his packet of cigarettes. He extracts one, puts it to his mouth and leans sideways to get a lighter from his back pocket. His hands, Elina notices, are shaking. He gets the lighter and then places it square on the table. Instead of picking it up and lighting his cigarette with it, he picks up the piece of card, the postcard, again and holds it near his face. Elina leans over and looks at it too. It is a black and white shot of a man and a woman, leaning against a wall. She thinks she has never seen it before and then she thinks that maybe she has, and then she realises it’s one of the John Deakin photos from that exhibition they went to see. It is bent and creased from being folded inside Ted’s wallet. She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it again.

  Ted’s father puts it down. He props it with great care against a salt cellar. Only then does he light his cigarette. He inhales, blows out the smoke, inhales again.

  And then he utters the following incredible words: ‘She’s your mother.’

  ‘My mother?’

  ‘Your real mother. Lexie Sinclair,’ he rubs his brow with an index finger, ‘was her name.’

  Ted leans both hands, curled into fists, on the table edge. He has bowed his head, like a supplicant, like a man about to receive communion. ‘Then would you mind telling me,’ he says, his voice muffled, ‘who that is asleep upstairs?’

  Felix takes a deep draw on his cigarette. ‘The woman who brought you up. From the age of three.’

  ‘And you?’ Ted says. ‘Are you my father?’

  ‘I am. Without doubt.’

  ‘And something happened to her. My mother. In Lyme Regis.’

  Felix nods. ‘She drowned.’ He circles his cigarette around his head. ‘A swimming accident. You were there. It was a week or so after your third birthday.’

  ‘Was it . . . ? Were you there?’

  ‘No. There was a . . . friend of hers with you both. I came to collect you that night. I brought you back here and . . . and Margot looked after you.’

  Ted picks up the postcard. He looks at his father, whose face is wet. He looks at Elina. Or, rather, his eyes pass over her as he turns away, towards the windows to the garden.

  ‘Now, old chap,’ Felix says, getting to his feet, ‘I’m sorry, of course I am. Perhaps we were wrong – to hide it from you, I mean – but we—’

  ‘You’re sorry?’ Ted repeats, turning to his father. ‘You’re sorry? For lying to me my entire life? For passing off someone else as my mother? For pretending this never happened? It’s – it’s inhumane,’ he gets out, in a hoarse whisper. ‘You realise that? I mean, how did you manage it? I was three, for God’s sake. How did you do it?’

  ‘We . . .’ Felix’s shoulders slump. ‘The thing is, you sort of . . . forgot.’

  ‘I forgot?’ Ted hisses. ‘What do you mean, I forgot? It’s not something you forget – seeing your mother drown. What are you talking about?’

  ‘It sounds odd, I know. But you came back here and—’

  ‘What’s going on?’ a voice trills from the doorway. Everyone turns to see Margot, her hair flattened on one side, a dressing-gown tied tight around her middle. A confused smile lighting up her face. ‘Ted, I had no idea you were here. And Simmy and darling Jonah! What are you all . . .’ Her voice trails away. She looks from face to face. Her expression fades into uncertainty, then mistrust. ‘What’s the matter? Why is everybody . . . ?’ She sidles into the room. ‘Felix?’

  Felix reaches out and takes the postcard from Ted’s fingers. He hands it to Margot. ‘He knows,’ he says, and comes to stand beside her or, rather, alongside her, puffing at his cigarette, as if he is in a queue with her, waiting for a bus, perhaps, as if she is no more to him than a stranger who just happens to be travelling in the same direction.

  Felix and Margot and Gloria sit at the table in the kitchen of Myddleton Square. Opposite them sits the boy. He is perfectly still, his hands resting, upturned, one on each knee, his head slightly bowed. He has a ragged cat toy tucked into one armpit. He doesn’t even seem to blink. He stares at the plate of sausages in front of him. Or perhaps he is staring past it, at something he sees in the tablecloth. He is like the wax model of a boy, an effigy, a sculpture. Boy, At Table.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Margot says, in a bright voice.

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘You need to eat up,’ Gloria joins in. ‘Then you’ll grow big and strong.’

  The sausages have cooled and are set in gelid puddles of grease. The boiled potatoes next to them have a floury, dry appearance. Margot puts up a nervous hand to fluff out the hair at the sides of her head: her mother’s always told her that flat hair makes her face look thin.

  ‘Listen, old chap,’ Felix says, ‘I’m going to go into the garden in a minute and do you know what I’m going to do?’ He pauses to see if the boy will reply. When he doesn’t, Felix presses on: ‘I’m going to light a bonfire. You’d like to come and help with that, wouldn’t you? A big bonfire? Eh?’

  Margot hasn’t spoken to Felix directly this morning. She hasn’t forgiven him for putting the boy to sleep in the nursery last night. The nursery that had once been hers and which she had decorated two years ago with a frieze of rocking horses and jack-in-the-boxes and a matching coverlet in primrose yellow.

  ‘Well, where else should I have put him?’ Felix had said, when she’d objected.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she’d cried. ‘The spare room!’

  ‘The spare room?’ He’d gazed at her as if he didn’t recognise her. He was slumped against the landing wall, still in his raincoat, still wearing his driving gloves, and his face was ashen and hooded in the dim light. Something told her she should curtail this conversation; she ought to take him down to the drawing room, give him a whisky, take his coat for him. But she couldn’t. He’d put that boy to sleep in there, under her primrose coverlet.

  ‘It’s my nursery,’ she’d tried to explain but she heard the bleat in her voice, and saw the flare of anger in his eyes. He’d pushed himself away from the wall and stepped up very close to her. For a moment she thought he might strike her.

  ‘That child,’ he began, in a quiet, frightening voice, ‘has just lost his mother. Do you understand that? He’s seen his mother drown. And all you can think about is yourself. You . . .’ he hesitated, choosing his words, as he sometimes did when she watched him on television, when he was faced with something moving, a flood perhaps, a famine of vast proportions, the collapse of a valued building ‘. . . you disgust me.’

  Then he’d turned and walked down the stairs. And she’d known she should leave it, she’d known she should say nothing more but she somehow couldn’t stop herself and she’d shouted after him, ‘You’re upset because it’s her, aren’t you? You can’t bear that she’s dead. You love her. You love her and you – you despise me. You think I don’t know it but I do. I do!’

  At the bottom of the stairs, he turned and looked back at her. In the light coming from the hall lamp, she saw suddenly that he’d been weeping. ‘You’re right,’ he said softly. ‘On all counts.’ And then he went into the study and shut the door.

  In the kitchen, Felix gets up and goes to the sink. He drinks a glass of water; he leaves the glass on the side; he co
mes over to his son. He places a hand on top of his head. ‘Shall we make a start, old chap?’

  The child still doesn’t move. Margot isn’t sure that he even knows Felix is there. She hears her mother, next to her, let out a sigh.

  ‘On the bonfire?’ Felix prompts. ‘What do you say?’

  He says nothing. Felix stands there, clearly at a loss to know what to do.

  Margot clears her throat. ‘Why doesn’t Daddy go and start’ – she addresses the child in the high, brittle voice in which she seems to have been talking all this long morning – ‘and when you’re ready you can go and join Daddy? How about that?’