Rise and Shine, Benedict Stone

by Phaedra Patrick

  She peered at the base of the chest. “What’s this piece of paper stuck under it?” she asked, plucking at something. “OMG. It’s an old photo.”

  “A photograph?”

  Gemma giggled.

  “What’s it of?”

  “It’s you, Dad and Mom. But you all look so young. Look at your hair. You look like a woolly mammoth.”

  Benedict’s heart beat faster at the mention of Charlie and Amelia. He nonchalantly reached out and took the photo from her.

  The colors had faded to browns, mustard and pale pink. Charlie laughed and pointed at the camera. Amelia’s eyes were closed and she rested her head on his shoulder. Benedict’s mouth was open and his eyes shone red from the flash. The three of them looked like they were sharing a joke. “Oh, yes. Funny,” he said lightly, but there was an iron-like taste of regret in his mouth.

  “That is so ancient.” Gemma grinned but then her smile fell away. “I suppose they were really young when they had me. Probably too young and that’s why things didn’t work out. Maybe they shouldn’t have had me at all...”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. Less trouble for everyone, huh?” She pressed her chin down toward her chest.

  Benedict wasn’t sure what to say and he looked at the photo again. “You said that your parents split up? Where is your mother?”

  “Oh, Mom met someone else. He’s a bit of a dork, but okay really. I don’t wanna talk about it.” She peered through her curtains of hair. “I want to find out more about my other family. What happened to my grandparents?” Gemma asked. “I mean, my dad told me, but will you tell me, too?”

  Benedict took a deep breath and let his hands drop into his lap. He swallowed and it hurt his throat. He hadn’t shared this story for a long time and he still found it painful. However, Gemma should know her family history.

  “They went to buy gemstones overseas,” he said. “Charlie got it into his head that the school football team couldn’t win an important match without him, so we stayed behind.” Benedict closed his eyes, remembering. “I was half watching the news on TV at teatime while Charlie played football outside. The report was about a tsunami in Sri Lanka. I didn’t have the sound turned on, but I watched these huge gray waves sweeping houses and cars away, as if they were twigs in a river. People were running and screaming, clutching children to their chests. The sea even swilled around houses inland, reaching their second-story windows. Mum and Dad were out there, and I just knew that things weren’t okay.”

  A lump formed in his throat and he gulped it away. He pushed his hand into his hair and stopped talking, unable to continue for a while. “Charlie was only ten.”

  Gemma sat still, listening.

  Benedict looked down at the floorboards, watching as a spider scuttled toward his knee. “I made Charlie his supper and tried not to worry,” he continued. “But then, the next morning, one of my parents’ business associates phoned the house. They said that Joseph and Jenny Stone had drowned. They were identified from documents in their rucksacks.”

  “Oh, god, Uncle Ben.” Gemma clasped her hands to her mouth. She shifted around the chest and sat next to him, the top of her arm pressing against his. “That sucks.”

  “The worst thing was telling Charlie,” Benedict said. “He probably thought I was getting him up for breakfast. Instead I told him that both his parents were dead. He cried out and I can still hear the sound.” He shook his head as if to get rid of the noise. “I felt numb and I can’t remember anything else of that day, except me and Charlie huddled together on the sofa. We just stared into space.

  “After that, friends and distant relatives offered help, but they couldn’t bring up two orphaned brothers. I took charge of everything.”

  “You became, like, my dad’s parent?”

  “Yes, sort of. Our parents’ rucksacks arrived back at the house a few weeks later. They were all white and crusty from sand and seawater. There was a small bag full of gemstones in the front pocket of my mother’s rucksack. They’re the ones you brought with you.” He gave a bitter laugh. “They died looking for pretty-colored pieces of rock.”

  He felt Gemma’s fingers creep on top of his and tightly hold the back of his hand.

  “So now you know what happened,” he said.

  “And why don’t you and Dad speak? You sounded so close when you were younger. You went through a lot together. What happened?”

  Benedict shrugged. “Your dad found a different life, in America, with your mum.” He could make it sound so simple.

  “But why would he want to move away and never come back? Why couldn’t he visit or something? He could have brought me to meet you.”

  There was nothing that Benedict could say without thinking back to what had happened between him and Charlie to break their friendship and family bond. “I don’t know,” he said, tight-lipped. “Why did you come here from America?”

  He felt her fingers tense and she pulled her hand away from his.

  “I told you. I came here for an adventure,” she said frostily. “Not to escape or anything.”

  “Escape?” Benedict frowned. “Who said anything about that?”

  Gemma shuffled away from him, back into her own space on the opposite side of the chest. “You’re twisting my words, Uncle Ben.”

  “I’m only asking you a question. What do you mean by escape?”

  “Nothing. I picked the wrong word, that’s all. Stop prying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “You barged into my shop and listened in while I was trying to reconcile with my wife,” Benedict said, exasperated. “That’s what I call prying.”

  “Like you were doing such a great job there.”

  “You didn’t give me much opportunity.”

  “Your great master plan to get her back is to do, well, zero.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Unlike Operation WEB, or whatever it is you called it?”

  Gemma’s lips twitched into a small smile and, oddly, he found one, too. It sounded so ridiculous.

  “Yep, like that,” she said. “Now can we look in this freakin’ chest?”

  Benedict was relieved to stop arguing. He placed the key in the lock and turned it. Together they heaved the lid open. He caught his breath, unprepared for the wave of emotion that hit him as he saw the green-handled pliers his mother used to use and his father’s rusty hacksaw. There was a battered wooden mallet and a roll of wire.

  He stared and a memory came into his head, as vivid as the day it happened. His mother sat by the window in the dining room, the sunlight in her hair. She laughed as she heated and made delicate curls of silver wire. She always laughed—at birds hopping around the garden, if she burned their dinner, at her sons and their antics. As time went by, he recalled less and less of what his parents and Charlie looked like. He could look at photographs, but they were two-dimensional, a moment frozen in time.

  “You’re quiet,” Gemma said. “Say something.”

  He delved inside the chest, scooped up a handful of gemstones and held them out on the flat of his palm. Most were already polished and cut to shape, smooth or with their facets glinting. Others were dull. They looked like ordinary stones dug out of the ground, their potential not yet unleashed. Some had holes drilled through them, ready to hang in the gem tree. For a moment, Benedict wished he could be small again. Innocent. “You’re right. It’s a treasure chest,” he said.

  Gemma reached out and touched the gems. “Cool. Can you use these in your jewelry?”

  “Stone Jewelry has survived for long enough without gemstones.” He shook them back into the chest. Next, he pulled out a large ball of tissue paper. It looked like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. This was something he hadn’t seen for a long time.

  “What is tha
t?”

  Inside it were separate bundles of soft tissue paper. Benedict took one out and peeled it apart. A silver clamshell brooch nestled in the folds. It was a test piece he had made with his mother. Benedict was about to say that it was nothing, to crumple the tissue back up and hide it away, but Gemma snatched it from him.

  “This is so cool.” She placed the clamshell on her palm. “Did my grandmother make it?”

  “No, I did,” Benedict said. “It was a long time ago, when I was learning. You can see that it’s clumsy.”

  “It’s different to the jewelry in your shop.” She turned it over in her hands. “That’s all kinda boring.”

  “Thanks for your kind words.”

  “I mean, compared to this.”

  “I’m not sure that’s any more complimentary.” He took it back off her. “I was probably only sixteen or seventeen when I made this.”

  “My age,” Gemma sighed. She shook her head. “You know, everyone at home keeps asking what I wanna do next. All my friends are going to college, but I don’t know what I want. I mess up everything I do...”

  Benedict ran his finger over the edges of the silver. His niece’s confidence seemed to have melted as quickly as an icicle in the sun. “You’re being too tough on yourself,” he said. “What have you messed up?”

  Gemma stared at him. She opened her mouth and slowly tilted her head from side to side, like a metronome, as if considering whether to tell him something. Benedict waited for her to speak, but her head came to a stop. “Nothing,” she muttered finally. “I was just saying, that’s all.”

  “When you’re younger, things can seem worse than they really are.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” She gave a sharp short laugh. She reached out and took hold of another ball of tissue. Inside this one was a silver blossom brooch and a pendant set with a large round yellow sunstone. She lifted the necklace over her head and patted it against her chest. “You should display these in your shop.”

  “They’re not good enough.”

  “Things don’t always have to be perfect.”

  “What’s the point if they’re not?”

  Gemma tugged off the sunstone necklace and thrust it back out to him, at arm’s length. “Here. Take it.”

  Benedict dangled the necklace back into a piece of tissue. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” She folded her arms firmly. “You only like perfect things, and I’m not one of them.”

  Benedict wasn’t willing to be drawn into another confrontation, so he pulled out all the balls of tissues and placed them behind him, unopened. Then he saw the item he’d been thinking about. “My father’s journal,” he said as he took it out and set the heavy burgundy leather-bound book on his lap.

  The cover was faded and cracked. It creaked when he opened it. Inside, the paper was as yellow as citrine, stained around the edges from age and thumbs wet from coffee and oil. The front page said Joseph Stone’s Book of Gemstones and Crystals.

  Benedict swallowed as he saw his father’s adolescent handwriting.

  Gemma’s eyes widened. Her arms slipped out of their tight fold. “It looks like it’s from when Jesus was alive.”

  Benedict moved closer to her and opened it up.

  Around a third of the pages featured sketches and photos torn from books and magazines, as well as notes and figures. His father started every few pages with a large italic letter of the alphabet. Some of the sections were full—A for agate, aquamarine, amethyst... J for jade, jasper and jet. Other sections had hardly any entries.

  “Even as a boy he was interested in gemstones,” Benedict said. He opened to a page on peridot, and he and Gemma read the words.

  PERIDOT

  A rich green stone, sometimes called chrysolite, peridot is widely known as the birthstone for August. It can often be found in volcanic landscapes. It was used in ancient times to ward off evil spirits. It can assist us to recognize negative patterns in our lives, override unwanted thought patterns, help let go of the past and ease fear and anxiety. It can lessen stress, anger and jealousy in relationships, and also helps us to find what is lost...

  “That last sentence isn’t complete,” Gemma said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  To Benedict it did. It was silly, he knew, but it was as if his father had written the words just for him.

  “You could so do with a piece of peridot, Uncle Ben,” Gemma added. “You need some harmony with Estelle.”

  Benedict was thinking the same thing.

  “There are a lot of blank pages in that journal,” Gemma mused. “If I stay with you for longer, I could fill in stuff about the missing gems...about my gems...”

  “Hmm.” It sounded like a long project. He looked at his watch and saw that it had already gone nine thirty. “Damn it.”

  “What?”

  “I said that I’d take Estelle’s paintings around for her tonight. It’s too late now.”

  “She also said that Lawrence would help her to collect them.”

  “I want to take them over. It will give us a reason to talk. I could perhaps take a small bunch of flowers, too.”

  “Flowers? You need to do more than that.”

  Benedict closed the journal. What could a sixteen-year-old girl know about relationships that he didn’t? But her insistence that he do something echoed Cecil’s words. “Like what?”

  “I dunno.” Gemma gave an exaggerated shrug. “Like, show her that you love her. Where is she staying?”

  “In her friend’s swanky modern apartment. It has a balcony, overlooking the canal...”

  “What?” Gemma interrupted. “Like in Romeo and Juliet or something?”

  “I suppose it’s a bit like that...”

  “Hmm. Well, that’s it, then.” Gemma gave a big smile, pleased with herself.

  “What is?”

  “If you don’t want this Lawrence guy sniffing around your wife, you’re gonna have to take action.”

  “I’m not really an action man. And I don’t know what you mean...”

  “Duh, Uncle Ben,” Gemma said. “You gotta try to be like Romeo.”

  7.

  TURQUOISE

  healing, friendship, communication

  BENEDICT CAUGHT THE bus to Applethorpe Hospital and hoped that Cecil was okay. He rested his hand on his chin and stared at the green hills rolling past, but his daydreams soon turned to more unsettling thoughts. I wonder if Lawrence Donnington has any children, he mused. He looks virile, like he only has to glance at a woman to make her pregnant.

  Benedict walked toward the rows of low stone buildings that reminded him of army barracks, through the entrance gates and past the maternity building. The windows of the middle floor were dotted with pink and blue helium balloons. They bobbed at the windows like blank faces. A baby cried out, and Benedict stood still for a minute and listened. A wave of sadness overwhelmed him and he dug his hands into his pockets. The cries were a sound he might never get to hear.

  He and Estelle had visited the antenatal clinic here often for their tests and scans. Many times they had gripped hands tightly as they pulled open the heavy glass doors, took a deep breath and prepared themselves to hear the latest results, delivered with ever-increasing somberness by the doctors and nurses.

  All the posters on the waiting room walls were aimed at women who were pregnant or who had given birth...don’t smoke when you’re expecting, breastfeeding is best, cut down on sugar, check your gums...but there was nothing for anyone who couldn’t get pregnant. That was like a secret, hidden away so as not to mar the happiness of those who could have children. It was only when you entered the realm of being unable to get pregnant that you heard the devastating stories of couples trying for years to have a baby, of miscarriages and of stillbirth. They were the tragedies that
you might read about in a magazine and think that they happened to others and that you were okay because you were one of the lucky ones. Then came the dull, creeping, painful realization that you weren’t.

  And so with every visit, each appointment, each consultation, each reassuring hold of each other’s hands, Benedict and Estelle learned that it was unlikely, very doubtful, they would ever be parents. What once was a possibility became uncertain and then improbable. And even though they sat with their fingers interlocked, Benedict felt very much alone, and suspected that his wife did, too.

  Estelle used to pore over leaflets and read out statistics to Benedict. Around one in seven couples struggle to get pregnant... That’s 3.5 million people in the UK, she said. It’s not just us. I feel like a failure, but there are others, too.

  Benedict often looked in the mirror and wondered what was going on inside his body. He was like a clock that looked simple on the outside, but inside was a multitude of cogs, tiny screws and workings, and if just one was wrong, out of place, then the clock wouldn’t work. Except that no one could ever find his bloody faulty cog to fix it.

  On the hospital car park, a man strode across, his face half obscured by a huge bunch of pink roses wrapped in cellophane. He grasped a bottle of champagne tightly around the neck. “I’m a dad,” he announced to Benedict. “My wife’s just had a little girl. It’s brilliant.”

  Benedict said congratulations. It was so easy to imagine that Estelle might be in hospital, in bed on the maternity ward, holding their baby. He could almost feel the curl of tiny fingers around his own.

  “I can’t believe it. Me, a dad,” the man repeated. “It’s the best feeling in the world.”

  “Well done,” Benedict muttered, his heart feeling heavy. He pressed on and looked for the sign for Cecil’s ward.

  * * *

  Benedict had expected Cecil to be loafing around in his lilac silk pajamas, entertaining the nurses with his stories about Lord Puss. He hadn’t considered how weak and tired his friend might look after his operation. It was as if Cecil had been replaced by a paler, skinnier version of himself, even though his hair was still coiffed into its budgerigar quiff.