The Extinction of Snow

by Frederick Lightfoot

  I tell myself to get on. Time might be short. I have to stop acting like a child let loose in a play area. Already a security guard might be looking for me, alerted to my snooping. At the same time I think it highly unlikely. Who am I, after all, just a woman with a day-return ticket. Of course, I’m not so naïve not to realize that I have been let out for the day and despite myself discovering ways to enjoy it. The thought brings me up cold. I pull away from the door and begin to trudge down the stair. To hell with demon and damask, devil and woven cloth, my purpose is serious and pious; Sara is right, serious and pious. I’m better like that. I go downstairs, remove my coat and lay it across the steps so that I look less like a visitor, an intruder, push my fingers through my hair and loosen it, as if that too will make me look plausible and then I go to investigate.

  Rennstadt occupies the ground and first floor. The ground floor is restricted access for authorized staff only. The first floor is a quiet maze of offices, a space of filtered, subdued light and hush. The floor is laid with plain, heavy carpet, the walls smooth and lilac, the doors wood grain. All the doors are closed. In Rennstadt people must work privately. I am learning something. Within the same building, the same risen from the ashes economy, there are many ways of working. In Rennstadt everyone must be deserving of their own unique space; maybe scientists like artists work better confined. I never explored it with Joseph. It was only very occasionally that I ever witnessed him at work in a laboratory. He was happy among experiments, with equipment. He got like me. I reside in my makeshift, domestic studio and engage with gouache, silk-screen and weave, yearning to recast reality in a new and startling way, though hopelessly failing time and again, persevering without understanding why.

  Perhaps Joseph was always like me, more like me than either of us knew or would have admitted. Because of it we sometimes fell out, too alike to attract, but could never dispense with each other, too alike not to attract, two basic elements that together made something more complex. I’m sure he could have told me so much more with all of his knowledge of particles, compounds, elements, catalysts and the rest. Somehow in all of that we fitted. Now I don’t know; now I’m breaking down into dissolvable salts, my basic shape at risk. I am lost. Even the taxi driver could see that.

  Each door is labelled either for person or function: store-room, photocopying-room, Mr Davidson. He might be in London but his office remains. I try the door but it’s locked. At that moment someone comes out onto the corridor. I call out that I’m just going to get a drink, as if I’ve just come from someone’s office, a guest, comfortable in the role. I step back along the corridor and pour myself a glass of water from an iced drinks dispenser. I say hello to a girl who passes, a tall, slim girl wearing a patterned jumper and jeans, her expression dreamy or maybe suspicious. Her reply is inaudible and she carries on. I resume where I stopped. Two doors later there is the office of Dr G. Gate. I consider it but move on. A further three doors and I come to Dr A. Tomlin. I reason that a woman will be more understanding, despite the fact that I’ve never met Amy, whereas Gareth I have, umpteen times. He has stayed in my house, our house, the house of John, Louise and Joseph, currently occupied by Louise alone.

  I try the door and it opens, but the light isn’t on and there is no one inside. I go in anyway and close the door behind me. The room isn’t particularly spacious but is comfortable. It consists of a desk with a computer, a number of filing cabinets and two bookcases, one stacked with books, the other with box-files. The wall above the desk has been decorated with cut out pictures of men, in the main part naked but not explicit, with humorous captions. If you want to sleep tonight ask him to marry you. The trouble is he only had eyes for Bob. Bob looking in a mirror. Little boy: Mummy when I grow up I’m going to be a man. Mummy: Don’t be silly darling you can’t do both. I suppose Joseph has been in here. Sara was jealous of Amy. Did she have good cause? Amy seems as if she might know what she wants. Did that include Joseph? So what went on in this room, this cosy space? But more to the point why am I thinking like this? Am I so insanely jealous of any woman being in contact with my son that I have to paint them in any bad light I can. Straightaway I need Amy’s forgiveness and I haven’t even met her. If I carry on like this I will end up as disturbed as Frank. I am guilty of taking a serious and pious view of humour.

  I ruffle through a few papers on her desk, without really taking much notice. I don’t expect evidence of anything, reasons why my blemished son should uproot and go to France, leaving wife, daughter and career. I just want to be in the same spaces as he was when the momentous decision was made. I am pleased to have come close to Amy. I have decided to like her.

  I let myself out and go directly to the office marked Dr G. Gate. I go straight in without hesitating. Much to my surprise he is sitting at his desk studying his computer screen.

  “Gareth!” I utter, taken aback. “I was told you weren’t available,” I add quickly, as if that confers on me a moral high ground, justifies my breaking in.

  He looks embarrassed and actually blushes as he says my name, Mrs Tennant. Of course, I am the parental figure in this exchange. I begin to tell him to call me Louise – he has always called me Louise before – but correct myself. Let him call me Mrs Tennant; at the moment that is what I want.

  “I don’t think I can help you,” he says, as if I’ve sneaked in here in order to seduce him. The thought doesn’t do me justice. This is Gareth, Joseph’s good friend, a young man who has slept under my roof. In fact he’s always had something of a slightly startled, perplexed look, his carefully disarranged fair hair adding to the effect, as does the curious, penetrating gaze, the rapid dark eyes and the stiff, square jaw muscles. He is handsome, with a troubled, vulnerable veneer, a match for Joseph, who was handsome in a similar, easily masculine way, but with a confident, amused outer-coating.

  “But you don’t know what I might ask,” I say, reproving him as a parent might.

  “No, of course not,” he mumbles, and clicks the mouse of his computer, closing down the screen as if it were something to be kept secret. Maybe he was viewing pornography in work time and that’s why he seems so shy and nervous, but I don’t think so. On the other hand he could scarcely consider me an industrial spy. Whatever the cause, the screen goes blank, producing a slight acoustic ping.

  “I didn’t mean to interfere with your work,” I say, apologizing for myself, for the foolish invasion I’ve created.

  “No,” he mumbles, waving away the need for apology, “it was nothing, I was through really.”

  “Why was I told you were unavailable?”

  “Because, well . . . I don’t know. Because I can’t tell you anything.”

  “So, you knew.”

  “Knew?”

  “Knew that you were unavailable. You took part in that statement. I only want to talk about Joseph.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “But you were his friend. No, no, let me say that again. You are his friend. Isn’t that right? Because someone dies it doesn’t stop you being their friend. I’m still his mother so you must still be his friend.”

  Gareth shrugs, embarrassed and perturbed by my rambling, grief riven utterances, at a loss as to how to respond. I must appear a mad woman to him. And maybe I am. Surely the whole point of madness is that the victim is unaware, beyond insight, apart from occasional troubling evidence, like Munch’s scream and Frank’s mirror. For me it is the look on Gareth’s face. It is indisputable. He has been confronted by a mad woman. He is shaken by the encounter. It will stay with him a long time, the day a dead colleague’s mother cornered him in his office. But I don’t care. If this is madness then there is no other way. It seems the one great insight given to the mad is to know that everyone else is insane. Why on earth would staff at Rennstadt not talk to a grieving mother unless the world was mad?

  “You see, Gareth,” I continue, my voice lowering, indicating confidentiality, “as his friend you can tell me so much.” He is about to protest
, actual anger sparking in his expression, but I go on. “I mean, you must have shared things: ideas, stories, jokes. You must know things that gave him pleasure and pain, made him frustrated and optimistic. You must have seen him excited and mad, morose and happy. I can’t bear not to talk about him, act as if he didn’t exist. He hasn’t done anything wrong, so why is it that he is treated like a criminal? I want to talk about him all of the time, and struggle to understand why that isn’t right. You see, my child grew up Gareth and moved on and spent very little time with me and stopped confiding, so his life became hidden.

  “I know it’s the same for all parents, all of our children grow up and stop confiding but I’m finding it hard. You see Gareth, I don’t even know what his favourite things are anymore. His favourite foods, favourite books, favourite views – landscape, political or social. Do you see my dilemma Gareth? Do you see why everything hurts so much? And yes, maybe it’s all my fault. Maybe I should have kept tabs on him and known what he was becoming, known that his favourite colour remained red, but that’s too hard and isn’t the done thing. So I need to ask, and it’s bad enough needing to ask but when people refuse to answer then it all goes crazy. Do you understand Gareth?”

  He looks at me in silence, as if cowed and then quietly says: “I didn’t know his favourite colour was red.”

  I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or scream and inwardly do all three. “Yes,” I say, aware of the insufficiency in my voice, its trembling and fractured nature, “red and green. It brought to mind holly and Christmas and his birthday. Holly was his favourite tree. You see, I know a lot Gareth, remember how he loved things. He loved Christmas. Well, it was his birthday as well. I’ve just said haven’t I? He used to get sad when it was over and sometimes angry. Sad tantrums really. He wanted the pleasure to go on and on. That isn’t a bad wish really, is it? We should all wish that the pleasure goes on and on.”

  Gareth looks at me with pity. He must feel safe, comfortable enough to allow himself to feel that, though he doesn’t know what to say. But how could I expect anything else. John and I used to smile about the fact that Gareth spent his life looking down a microscope, as we saw it, because he was always tongue-tied and shy. He used to laugh a lot, edgy and loud, at the most ridiculous things. Joseph was never tongue-tied and would entertain us with stories of Gareth’s mishaps – in front of Gareth – usually with girls, which Gareth always laughed at, but I wonder if he really found them as funny as he made out. It wasn’t an equal friendship, but I never questioned that. I probably let Joseph down by not questioning that. Eventually Gareth manages to suggest that I sit down. I am immediately struck by the absurdity of our two positions, my standing over his desk, he protected behind it. It isn’t really an equal relationship either. I smile and sit. Gareth looks pleased. I can’t decipher that.

  “I’m sorry Gareth,” I say quietly, penitently, “I haven’t asked how you are, and that wasn’t right of me.”

  “I’m very well Mrs Tennant.”

  “Good, I’m pleased to hear that. And are all your family well?”

  “Yes they are. In fact, I’m getting married in the summer.”

  “Oh, well done, good luck,” I respond, which even to my ears sounds hollow and absurd, but such good luck cuts and sears me. Of course the world will carry on, a place of luck, good and ill, whether I participate or not. “Are you marrying Amy, Dr Tomlin?”

  He looks decidedly shocked. “No, certainly not.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know why I asked that. It just came to mind.”

  “Me and Amy, Dr Tomlin, would be the last people to be suited.”

  “What is she like?”

  He ponders for a moment, clearly unsure what to say, and eventually opts for the single word: “Forthright.” It is obvious he means strong, capable and ambitious. I like her, though can’t imagine what she would make of me.

  “Is she here?”

  “No, she really is in London.”

  “I think I would have liked to talk to her.” Gareth looks uneasy. “You don’t seem too sure about that Gareth. Would I not like to talk with Amy?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t say, can I?”

  “You seemed to be suggesting something.”

  “Amy was quite sore at Joseph.”

  “Sore?”

  “I think she’s still sore at Joseph.”

  Sore. It seems such a strange word for Gareth to utter. There is something quaint and yet powerful about it. I suppose there is something quaint and yet powerful about Gareth. He is at once young and otherworldly, a scientist and man, theoretical and marriageable. I should be pleased for him. Despite not wanting to see me, his is a pleasant nature. I like to think that Joseph was fond of him. I can’t bear to think that their friendship really wasn’t equal, or worse, wasn’t a friendship at all. I want Joseph to have had friendships, not just alliances and fellow-travellers. Friendship demands human qualities. It might not be useful, but I can’t believe that Joseph would only have had a mind for people being useful, which I suppose is what I suspected Sara of doing. Everything seemed so calculated, their identity contrived. Identity should be accidental, maybe even accident-prone. Gareth strikes me as accident-prone. And I didn’t think Joseph was. You see, Gareth, I know so little; nothing in fact.

  “Were you good friends Gareth, you and Joseph? You always seemed like good friends. You giggled like good friends.”

  He looks me right in the eye, letting me know he is not embarrassed by the question. “He would have been my best man. I was his best man.”

  “I remember your speech, funny and touching, antics.”

  “I miss him.”

  “Sore?”

  “Yes, I’m sore. I don’t mind admitting it. We talked about everything, work things naturally, but other things as well, real things. I miss that, the chats we had.”

  He falls silent and shrugs, unable to say more, remembering, I suppose, a style of conversation rather than particular ones, because that’s how memory is, fragments and hints that one tries to piece together, a knitting and matching that refuses to cohere and keeps falling apart. Yes, Gareth, I too miss the chats we had. He was good. His voice glowed with enthusiasm and confidence. The things he had seen, the things he understood, the strange world revealed to him, scientist and son.

  “He was good at making connections,” I say, trying to summons his chats.

  “Yes he was,” Gareth concurs. “That’s why he was so good at research. He’d remember a paper, often on something completely different, and fit it with what he was doing and come up with something startling and new. And he’d have the right questions to ask, just instinctively know what needed more thought.”

  “Why is Amy sore?”

  “Because he walked out on their research and it’s never been finished.”

  I frown at him. The Amy I have constructed would never be that petulant. Sore seems so much stronger than disappointment over a work project. But of course the word is Gareth’s. Gareth is sore. He has lost a best man. Having a best man is quite a boast. I can feel for his soreness. His loss consoles me, slightly. I will have to recreate Amy, remove the irony from her collection of posters and replace it with something else, possibly chagrin.

  Gareth smiles vaguely and says: “She’s sore that he isn’t here. She liked him here. She liked him.”

  “Were they having an affair?”

  “No, no, I don’t think so.”

  “And she is forthright.”

  “Confident,” Gareth says, as if correcting an earlier opinion.

  “In a bad way?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know.” He smiles at me, comfortable with me at last, possibly entertained by me, pleased with my ways.

  “Why did he leave?”

  He immediately looks troubled again. “I can’t say Mrs Tennant.”

  Troubled and formal. “But you had chats. You spoke of things. He would have said something to you.”

  “I don’t mean that. It’s just .
. . I don’t know.”

  “You mean you’re not allowed to say. That’s what you’ve been trying to tell me, and I didn’t get it. You’re not allowed to say.”

  “It’s just company policy.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a lot of secrecy in drug companies. There has to be. There’s a lot of money involved, so research is well guarded.”

  “Who told you that you can’t talk to me?”

  “You need to talk to Mr Davidson.”

  “But I’m talking to you.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Are you frightened?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just rules, company regulation.”

  “But surely you can talk to a friend’s mother.”

  “No, I really can’t.”

  “Well, talk to a friend. You’ve stayed in my house. We’ve been friends.”

  “Look Mrs Tennant, all I can say is that he was unhappy when some research was withdrawn.”

  “What research?”

  “I don’t know. Look, it happens all of the time. Some things get the money, some things get chopped. I really don’t know why Joseph was so bothered.”

  “Do you think Amy will talk to me?”