‘Paul, just tell me what happened. Please!’
‘A policewoman came round, asking for you—’
‘Don’t give me context,’ she said with growing urgency. ‘Just tell me what they know.’
‘He had gone for a walk along the cliff. The tide was up and it was a foul day. They think he slipped and fell and the sea pulled him aw…’
‘Go on.’
‘His body was washed up a bit further along the shore. You know, where the proper beach starts.’
‘But how did they know he had gone for a walk?’ Even though Rusty had never been replaced by another dog, Chala knew her uncle had stubbornly kept to his habit of walking, regardless of the weather, and yet she looked for holes in the story, as if that might bring him back.
‘He mentioned where he was going at the village store. When the police asked questions, old Mrs – what’s her name?’
‘Mrs Vale?’
‘Yes, she said she’d told him he was incorrigible, going out for a walk on a day like this.’
‘But what if he was murdered?’ Chala was struggling with a notion that she would not allow into the active part of her brain.
‘Che, the police have no reason to suspect murder. There’s no evidence of anything except an accident. They ev…’ Paul hesitated for a second and Chala’s fear filled her head. ‘They don’t think it was suicide, Chala. They searched the house. There was nothing – no note, nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, they want to talk to you, but they are treating it as an accident.’
Chala stared at Paul. He could smell her fear. ‘Che, it was an accident.’
Of course. Just like the pillow in the yellow room. No, Chala reasoned, this was a real accident. How could the police be wrong? They had experience of stuff like this. They had even done a post- mortem. It was a shitty, pointless, accident. Philip had been expecting her to go and play chess with him on her return from Australia. Everything had been normal. He had simply lost his footing on a blustery day.
CHAPTER 9
There is no crying now, just still, yellow silence. When Chala lifts the pillow up, her sister’s eyes look a little like Rosie’s, as if they are made of cloth. She prods her sister, trying to nudge her flesh back to life with an animal-like intensity, but Emma seems closer to Rosie now. They stare back at her, both of them, as if in possession of a secret from which Chala is excluded.
At this moment, Philip walks into the room. Chala is kneeling beside Emma, holding a pillow and staring. As he approaches the cot, Philip sees the open eyes of his baby. This is the image that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Poor Philip. Sound breaks through the barrier of shock around Chala. She screams. Philip starts to reach out to her, but his legs give way underneath him and he drops to his knees in front of the cot, as if he has been playing musical statues and got stuck in a funny position.
Suddenly Denise is tumbling into the room. No one had realised she was back, but she heard the screams as she opened the front door. She tries to take in the meaning of the picture in front of her: Chala sobbing wildly and Philip inert on his knees in front of the cot. But the picture doesn’t make sense. Philip doesn’t look at her as she sweeps past him to the other side of the cot. She is about to scoop Chala into the kangaroo pouch of her mother’s arms when she stops short. What’s wrong with Emma? She’s too still, and pale, and her eyes are open. What is wrong with her baby? Her face sets into grooves she has yet to grow into: a pinched mouth with tiny symmetrical lines pulling the lips taut beneath her nostrils, a deep furrow in the middle of her forehead contracting her eyes inwards into their sockets, so that the gently emerging crow’s feet seem more pronounced. Then, in a split second the lines melt and her face contorts unnaturally.
‘Emma! What have you done to Emma? What have you done?’
* * *
Chala stared at the plate of pasta in front of her as if she didn’t know how to eat it. In the past, she had made vain attempts to summon up some kind of authentic memory of the events that had shaped her life. She had even visited a psychotherapist briefly, but had given this up, feeling a vague sense of guilt and abhorrence at the sense of being centre stage.
Paul had been good for her, had grounded her, made any attempt to reconstruct her past seem rather pointless and irrelevant. But now, as she grappled with the fear that her childhood act had driven Philip to a belated suicide, the essence of what had really happened seemed to matter in a more urgent way than it ever had. No wonder Denise had left. How could she possibly bring Chala up as her daughter when her own baby had died because of Chala? And Philip, oh yes, she must surely have blamed Philip too – the one who wasn’t watching.
And yet Philip had been there for Chala, had managed to accept her as his own daughter despite what had happened. This was such a fundamental facet of her existence that Chala had never thought to question it. But maybe it had taken its toll after all. As if, with Chala finally settled in the world, married and confident enough to travel across the globe for her work, he was released at last from a duty that was his penance for his own share of guilt in what had happened.
Chala felt a surge of anger flush through her and looked up at Paul sitting opposite. ‘He did it, you know. He fucking committed suicide.’ She saw the impact of her words, the deep frown as his pupils shrank. She knew he had grown fond of Philip, that somewhere inside, he too was grieving, and one of the chorus of Chalas watching in her head felt obscurely, helplessly, sorry for him.
‘Che, why are you doing this to yourself?’ Paul couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. ‘You’ve spoken to the police, you’ve spoken to the coroner, you’ve seen the report. It was an accident.’
Chala looked for patterns in her uneaten spaghetti. She had grown up with this statement. Slowly, words materialised. ‘But they didn’t know Philip. I knew him better than anyone else in the world. You don’t know what it did to him.’
‘So, of course it’s all your fault, is it? After thirty years, he suddenly can’t live with it any longer and trots off to commit suicide without telling anyone? Look, I’m sorry, Che.’ Paul’s voice was softer now. ‘I know this is devastating for you, but you need to let yourself grieve for his death and not wind yourself up into a frenzy of blame over some imagined plot in your own head. You’ve got to keep a sense of—’
Don’t, thought Chala, don’t say perspective.
‘—perspective.’ He reached out across the table to touch her hair, but she recoiled.
‘Fuck your perspective, Paul! Have you lost a mother or a father? Do you have to figure out a way to live with yourself, knowing that the one person who’s been there for you all your life has killed himself because of an act that you committed?’
‘It was a fucking accident, Chala!’
She didn’t know whether he meant the death of Emma or the death of Philip, but a part of her hardened like a stone inside a piece of dried fruit. She said nothing. She got up, threw her uneaten meal into the bin and walked out of the kitchen.
Paul rose slowly, put his own half-eaten plate of spaghetti into a plastic container, washed the dishes, sat back down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands.
After a while, he got up again, boiled the kettle, stared through the window at the back garden and made two cups of tea, which he carried upstairs, guessing that Chala would be lying on the bed.
She was curled up in a foetal position, facing away from the door, and she didn’t move when he entered the room. Paul wished that life was a canvas and that he could simply paint over the words that had passed between them downstairs. He approached slowly, put the cups down on the bedside table and gently lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. He turned her slowly towards him and buried his face against her wet cheeks.
‘I’m sorry, Che, I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.’
She put her arms around his neck. She knew that sorry was not a word that came easily to Paul. ‘It’s OK. I know I’m not easy to live with at the moment.’ She
held him still. ‘Why can’t we just be there for each other?’
Paul sat up and took her head in his hands. ‘We are there for each other, Che. I am there for you. I will always be there for you.’
An image of herself naked under Bruce shot through her and she pulled Paul closer to shut it out.
‘If on…’ She was speaking into Paul’s ear. Her voice was low and trembling and she didn’t know what she was going to say. ‘If on… I had been there. If only I had been able to talk to him, it might have been OK. I knew he sounded odd when I spoke to him on the phone before I went to Australia. I should have pushed him to find out what was wrong. I should have gone to him. I should have—’
‘Enough, Che. Enough.’ Paul’s voice was soothing now. He held her to him and let her sob.
CHAPTER 10
Chala is dressed in cream silk, her face is tanned and her hair is on fire. Inside she is nervous – she has told no one, not even Philip, that she has taken a beta blocker – but to the rest of the world right now she is serene.
Paul Hutchings is waiting on the grassy slope above the cliff to give her his name. When he sees her step out of the car and walk across to him through the long, soft sunlight of a summer afternoon on Philip’s arm, he feels as if he is inside a painting. He is overcome by how beautiful she looks and by the surreal feeling that a few words spoken in public on the edge of a Devon cliff are going to change his life. They have already done the registry office this morning, so technically they are already married, but this is the part that matters. A few carefully chosen words in front of a small group of family and friends and the sea.
Chala walks towards the man she has decided to share her life with. He looks nervous, but happy. She feels calm, as if she is moving in water, and side-steps the notion that while her nerves are all hidden on the inside, Paul’s are on his sleeve, brandished honestly for all to see. Philip is by her side and they walk hand in hand. He, too, is nervous and smiling. She can feel the light sweat in his palm.
Paul Hutchings and Chala Bryan stand face to face and offer the words of Kahlil Gibran to each other and the universe. Paul’s parents look on with barely concealed awkwardness. Chala knows that, for all their strained politeness, she is a disappointment to them. They would have chosen some high-achieving, power-dressing woman who would have propelled their son further into the limelight of success and gone on to multi-task and produce a bunch of perfect children. Not someone who would tempt their son with the promise of a future in painting; not someone who would choose to get married on the edge of a cliff.
After the vows, Philip reads a poem and Amanda sings a short Irish ballad in a pristine, soulful voice that raises the hair on people’s arms. The couple kiss and it is done. Champagne bottles are popped to hide the tears in people’s eyes.
Later, as the sun is setting and barbecue coals are finally glowing, Chala notices Philip standing at the edge of the cliff looking out to sea. She goes up to join him and links her arm through his.
‘Are you happy, Philip?’
‘I am happy for you, Chala. Paul is a good man. He’s good for you.’
‘Gosh, that sounds a bit solemn.’
‘It’s not meant to be.’ He hesitates and then puts his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to his side, so that they are both facing towards the sea. ‘I just think you need to hold on to what you’ve got and I’m glad that it’s someone like Paul.’
‘Do you still miss Denise?’ This is not a question Chala would ever normally ask, but it slips out, responding to the moment.
Philip looks suddenly old and wise. ‘Miss her? No, not really, not after all these years. I got used to being without her a long time ago, but sometimes I just wish she’d given us all more of a chance.’
‘Why did she go? I mean, really. Was it all about Emma? Why could you cope and she couldn’t? And why didn’t you ever meet anyone else?’
‘That’s an awful lot of whys in one …’
Chala can almost feel him drifting away beside her, his gaze travelling out to meet the sun on the watery horizon. She wonders fleetingly what kind of a woman Denise had been and had become. ‘Come on, Philip,’ she says, tweaking his beard affectionately. ‘Why don’t we have another glass of champagne?’
‘Now, there’s a why that’s easy to answer.’ And they turn away from the sea, smiling, to join the crowd.
* * *
Why, why, why? Chala strained to see through the tears that blurred her view of the road. Amanda had offered to come with her, but Chala was adamant. She needed to do this alone, to have the chance to simply be in his house, around his things, without needing to care about how she looked or behaved. She didn’t want to be observed in the sanctuary of the home she had grown up in, even by Paul or Amanda.
She ached at the memory of the words that came back to her from the cliff top of her wedding. ‘You need to hold on to what you’ve got.’ Was he trying to warn her even then? Did he already know that he wouldn’t always be there? Is that why it was so important to him that she was with Paul? So many unanswered questions. There had always been unanswered and unasked questions between them, but n… now there would never be an opportunity to ask him anything else ever again. That simple fact thudded and thudded inside her. She remembered the fox on the side of the road and how desperate Philip had been to save it. That’s how people should live their lives, being faithful to themselves and never passive, never letting a moment pass that might turn into a regret. Always ask the question that’s inside you.
The blurred hedges gave way to open fields and Chala swung the car into the lane that led past the big farmhouse and on to their little cottage. It was not all that long since she had last been there, but she paused to take it in before getting out of the car, as if some change must surely have taken place on the outside to reflect the change inside. Ivy scuttled up the walls and the magnolia tree was sprouting tiny, eager spring shoots. No, of course nothing had changed.
She got out of the car, firmly wiping her nose dry, and marched up to the front door. Unable to rid herself of the sense of being observed, she let herself into the house and moved quickly, almost theatrically, from room to room, as if her physical appearance in each would banish whatever karma lay in wait for her. Her face had a set look about it. She had stopped crying and her eyes darted this way and that, assessing, taking in everything around her as if for an exam. To an outsider at this moment, she would have looked more like a policewoman at a crime scene than a bereaved daughter.
Everything around her looked normal, no more or less tidy than normal, nothing to indicate that the person who walked out of this house had any idea that he would never return. This is exactly what the police had said. They had looked in every room, in every drawer and, finding nothing, left everything as they found it. Now, oddly, all this belonged to Chala. How could there be so little of him in it? There were slippers by his bed, an unfinished novel on the bedside table, pictures on the walls, a few photos on a mantelpiece, impersonal paperwork on a desk, a Ray Charles CD in the CD player, a few scattered newspapers on the living room floor, but all this seemed to belong to the house rather than to him. How could a man be so self-effacing as to leave no real trace of himself after a life on this earth?
Chala rifled through drawers and cupboards, even jacket pockets, in the frantic hope of finding some clue to his departure. Then it hit her. Of course. Their phone conversation just before she went to Australia. He had said he was going to sort out the old boxes in the attic. She had no idea what was in those boxes, but whatever past he had chosen to save would be there. And if he hadn’t gone through the boxes, then perhaps the police were right after all. The only way into the attic was to use the ladder in the shed, so perhaps the police hadn’t even thought of looking there.
A few minutes later, armed with a torch, she hauled herself up the soiled ladder and pushed open the hatch to hoist herself in. What she saw didn’t answer any questions. There was an old shop dummy, draped
in orange. God, what was that – something to do with Denise? There were cobwebs, bare floorboards with old rolls of insulation spilling over them – and one box. Just one box. Did that mean he’d cleared the rest out? Or was there only ever one box? She was the one who’d referred to that heap of old boxes in the attic and she strained to remember what Philip had said about what was really there. Shit, he was already a ghost.
So, with the help of a torch and the light filtering up through the open hatch, she sat and worked her way through the contents of the one and only box. There was a picture of Denise, beautifully framed, and Chala looked at this long and hard, holding it to the daylight from below. She was young in the picture, younger than Chala now, and there was a ripe glow about her. Her thick, chestnut hair bounced around her face, her lips were red and almost parted in a smile, her eyes were long-lashed and soft, greeny brown. So he did still miss her after all this time; he couldn’t bring himself to throw this one out.
‘Fuck you,’ she said aloud to the picture. ‘Why did you walk out on him? Why didn’t you support him? Why weren’t you there when he needed you?’ A faded half-recollection of the woman whom she had once assumed to be her mother stirred in some distant part of her brain – and was then displaced by a twinge of panic at the thought of their imminent reunion. The police had located her, and Chala had agonised over whether to invite her to the funeral. In the end she had bowed to convention, but Amanda had been the one who phoned her. So, suddenly, impossibly, as the father figure in her life retreated, the spectre she had thought she would never see again was to appear before her in the flesh. She had less than a week to prepare herself, but how did you prepare yourself for a thing like that?
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