The Soul Room

by Corinna Edwards-Colledge

  I sat down on the shingle and watched them, transfixed. Even people up on the promenade were stopping – a group of cyclists turned and rode up to the railings, leaning forward in their saddles. Two tourists started to take photos. The Starling's displays were always best at this time of year - when the home colony was joined by others that had migrated here for the winter.

  I don't know if there was a purpose, or whether it was just joie de vivre, but this flock were putting on a show the like of which I hadn't seen before. They seemed to be engrossed in some kind of silent air-born act of ecstasy. At first they formed a giant comma, then half the group split off and created another as if putting the sky in parenthesis. Then they converged again and became a pair of Dali-esque lips; which stretched into an enigmatic smile, osmosed into a giant hammer then, loosening, split into three undulating shapes like cells viewed through a microscope. For their grand finale, they re-formed into a giant doughnut, which, after holding for several seconds, they majestically dissolved by falling off at the edge and flying up through the centre. I heard someone above me on the prom gasp; another said ‘it’s fucking insane’ admiringly under their breath.

  I felt my own heart beating faster, and remembered, with a strong sense of nostalgia, a science experiment from primary school. We were given a tray of iron filings and a sturdy red magnet with silver ends which we moved about under the tray – watching the metal dust gather and chase hungrily. So what moved the starlings? Was it pre-ordained? Was it loaded with meaning? Or was it a conscious-less act of instinct - some kind of phenomenon explainable through mathematical equation. Maybe it didn’t matter why, maybe all that mattered was that it was beautiful. It occurred to me then that I was stuck. Stuck between a need to think Sergio’s death had happened for a greater reason and the hope that I was just a victim of chance. If it had happened for a reason, it was hard not to believe that I was being punished for not loving him enough. And yet, hadn’t I had enough grief and loss in my life? Hadn’t I had my share of misery by now? How much more did God, or Gaia or Buddha or Allah or whoever was up there (if there was anyone up there) think I could take? Or maybe that was the point. Maybe they wanted me to fail, to give up? It was hard to face the idea that there was something nameless and malevolent out there, working against me. Yet, if his death, my mother's, Alan and Stephanie's were just chance, it made my life little more than one long accident. Was it possible to make beauty and form out of accident? Is that what the starlings were doing? Accident didn’t explain Nonna. If accident was something you could ‘read’ like she could, didn’t that make it fate? And could accident really still exist in a world that was increasingly scarred and traversed by limitless connections? People, blood-lines, conversations – the real and the digital kind, messages; the world was crammed. It often occurred to me how even just a hundred years ago the air – though not necessarily physically clean – was at least organic. Now it was polluted by millions of radio-waves, satellite transmissions and electronic impulses. I put my head in my hands, overwhelmed.

  And at that moment, sitting on the beach surrounded by that great pale sky, I felt my baby kick. I didn’t believe it at first. It was so faint, like someone gently flicking their finger against the inside of my skin. But there it was again – unmistakable this time. For the first time in weeks I pictured the child in my belly. What would Sergio have thought of my cowardice? I felt horribly ashamed. All those things I had said to myself about how I was going to look after this child – and then – at the first hurdle – I’d failed.

  With a sudden surge of adrenalin I got up and started up the shingle. I had to read that letter. A steep bank had built up from the night’s waves, but I scrambled up urgently, digging in with my feet and hands. When I got to the prom, I ran all the way home, my heart beating fast and shallow.

  To you, filio

  Maddie says you are a boy, how she knows is mystery to me but I have learnt to not argue with mothers about these things, they are nearly always right! I have to write this just in case we never meet. It is strange and crazy thing to have to do, believe me. Every day is like a gift to me, but also makes me scared because all the time I think, maybe this is my last day. I wanted to give you the world, but all I can give you is a letter in case the last day comes. A letter, I think, is something you can keep with you, even if you can not have me. It is just un piccolo parte del mio amore of the big love I wanted to show you.

  A letter like this could be many many pages, but I will try to make it just one. I am more happy to leave you a poem not a big novel. I think a novel would become too heavy for you.

  I won’t say to you how you should live, or what you should be. I will say only that for me, I wish I follow my own hopes and needs in my life, not always the hopes and needs of other people. I think I have been a coward, and now I wish I had talked about how I felt inside.

  I hope you will know Italy – some things here are not so good, but it is beautiful, and it will always be part of you. You must also meet Nonna, she will give you very powerful benedizioni.

  The last thing I say is be good to your Mamma. I love her very much. She is a strong and beautiful signora, who sometimes does not believe that she is these things. I hope, one day this will change.

  Now I must finish, or my letter get too long, and I will end it by saying my love will always be with you. If I get to live a whole life I will prove it to you figlio. If I don’t, you will just have to believe. I hope this letter will help you do that.

  Con tutto il mio amore

  Papa

  I started to cry then. I went into my bedroom and climbed wearily into bed. I cried and cried, tears mingling with mucus from my nose, until my face felt like it was melting into salt water. Why did my little boy have to grow up without his lovely father, and how was I going to do it all without him?

  I could hear sobbing as I descended. I knew it was him and the sound tore at me. I floundered, trying to will myself to the ground faster but it didn’t work. As soon as I felt the tiles press up against my feet I ran over to the window seat. He was huddled in the corner, his back against the glass, and his face buried in his knees. His little back shuddered as he cried. I dashed over to him and tried to hold him.

  ‘No!’ He shrieked, staring up at me, horrified.

  ‘I’m sorry! I just….’ I collapsed on the floor in front of him in agony.

  ‘You mustn't touch me!’

  ‘I’m sorry! I forgot!’ I said wildly. ‘But you can’t imagine how much I want to hold you. To make you feel better!’

  ‘I needed you Mummy. I called you and you didn’t come!’

  ‘Oh God, sweetheart. I’m so sorry’. I sat down next to him. ‘It’s just been so hard, and I’ve been so scared about going under again, and I so desperately don’t want that to happen. I want to be the best Mum I can to you; that’s why I went into hibernation, to protect us.’

  ‘You mean you hid Mummy.’

  With an effort of will I turned myself to look into his face. He looked back at me composedly, his tears drying to a soft sheen on his dark cheeks.

  ‘Yes.’ I said finally, turning back and hiding my face in my hands. He was silent for a while and then I heard him shuffle down the sofa towards me. Eventually I felt the warm, tingling stroke of his breath on my neck. It was the closest he had ever got to me.

  ‘I love you mummy.’ He said softly, and I felt goose-pimples flush down my arms. ‘I love you and you’re all I’ve got. I know you can do it, but if you don’t start to believe it too, I’m lost.’

  ‘I know.’ I managed to whisper. ‘I won’t ever let you down again, I promise you with all my heart and soul.

  ‘But you will Mummy! However hard you try you will if you don’t believe!’

  ‘I’m going to try sweetheart. I’m going to really really try to do that.’

  I heard him start to sniffle again so I turned back round to face him, he looked up at me, his eyes full of fresh tears.

  ‘My Dad was a re
ally nice man wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He was a wonderful man with a wonderful heart.’

  ‘I wish I could meet him.’

  ‘Me too.’

  He wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve and seemed to collect himself. ‘Mum.’

  ‘Yes sweetheart.’

  ‘You need to look in the envelope.’

  ‘I did, I read it today, that’s what brought me back to you,’

  ‘No, the other envelope. The one John brought.’

  ‘That…I’d forgotten about that.’

  ‘You need to look, remember, John said, just in case.

  Dad held my hand tightly. The radiologist squeezed a line of cool gel across my belly then started to move the scanner gently but expertly over my skin. There were a few taut seconds where there was nothing, just shifting layers of black and grey as if the scanner was travelling though space, and I held my breath. But then he appeared, magically, from the pixelated darkness; his tiny arms waving, diving and somersaulting so vigorously that I wondered how it was possible that I couldn’t feel it. My eyes prickled. Sergio should have been here to see this. This was his son, his flesh and blood. It was wrong, all wrong. I turned away from dad for a moment, trying to collect myself. As I did, I sent the image of our child into the ether, maybe to Sergio, wherever he was. I turned back and allowed myself to feel the flush of joy too – that he was there, my child, he existed. The Radiologist was talking to the doctor who was sat at a computer behind her. She turned to me and laid her hand on my arm. Everything looked OK, but she had to check the development of the nasal bone and measure something called the nuchal transparency at the back of his neck. I was only half listening. I was imagining my son alone in the warm dusk of my womb.

  ‘From the scan I’d say your about twenty weeks. Ms Armstrong?’

  ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  ‘From the scan I’d say you’re about twenty weeks pregnant, half way!’

  ‘So everything looks OK? I thought it probably was – I’ve felt him kick.’

  ‘Yes, this is later than usual for a first scan but your measurements look fine. For your age, your risk of having a child with Downs Syndrome should have been about one in 200. With odds like that you might have wanted to consider an amniocentesis, but that is an invasive technique and carries a one percent risk of miscarriage. However, that’s a decision you won’t need to take, the scan looks good, and put together with the results from your blood-test your risk has gone down to about one in a thousand. It’s the same for your risks of other chromosomal abnormalities, which have gone down to about one in two thousand.

  ‘So everything really is OK?’ I wanted to embrace the sonographer, as if she was personally responsible for the health of my baby.

  ‘Because of your age I’d still recommend you have a follow-up scan at about thirty weeks locally. It’s good to keep an eye on the baby's development and they will be able to tell you the gender then if you want them too. I could have today considering that you are later on than most, but baby was very mobile.

  ‘I know that already. It’s a boy.’

  She smiled. ‘Mum’s are often certain they know the gender, and funnily enough they’re usually right too.

  Brighton 1988

  Mum and Dad are acting really weird this morning. They keep looking at each other but not saying anything, and Dad keeps taking hold of mum’s hand. They’ve said we’re going on a walk, up at Castle Hill. I said I was supposed to be seeing Jamie and Roz today, to shop for the Year 11 disco, but they just wouldn’t give in.

  Dan is leaning against the living room doorway, he’s already got his walking boots on. He’s suddenly looking really lanky, and like he’s morphing into a man but stuck somewhere in-between. His chin is getting broader and he’s loads taller, but his cheeks are still smooth and plump like a little boy. ‘Something’s up Sis’.

  ‘I know, I wish they’d say what it is. Then I might just get back in time to get to town by lunchtime.’

  ‘You know them. They love a bit of mystery.’

  ‘God you don’t think mum’s pregnant do you?’

  Dan snorts.

  ‘Its not that crazy an idea, she’s only forty six.’

  ‘Don’t women’s parts stop working when they’re forty?’

  ‘God Dan, have you paid no attention in sex-education at all?’

  ‘I have to the bits that interest me.’

  ‘Hmm, I won’t ask what they are.’

  We can hear mum and dad talking in hushed voices behind us in the kitchen. Dan leans round into the hall, his arms crossed, and shouts. ‘Shall we get in the car or what?’

  ‘Yes…’ mum’s voice is faint, agitated. ‘…good idea, go and get in the car.

  It’s a mild day but the sky is muddy and flat. Some wildflowers have started to come up, studding the banks with dots of yellow and purple. We came here with school once and one of those park rangers, or something, told us that it’s chalk grassland here and all along the Downs. That means the soil’s really poor, but that’s actually a good thing because it means that only rare and delicate things like bee orchids and wild violets grow here and the big weedy plants don’t because they need more goodness than the thin chalky earth can give.

  We’re walking in the gully between two great grassy hills, a route that we’ve done a hundred times before. The banks loom over us, beautiful and a bit scary at the same time. Once, millions of years ago, this was probably full of water – then the ice-age came, and all the earth was pulled apart. It’s hard to imagine now, it’s all smooth and gentle; like a sleeping Goddess whose curves have slowly been covered by grass and flowers.

  Mum and dad stop short ahead of us, Dan and me run to catch them up. They’re looking at something on the ground. Dan breaks away and gets there ahead of me.

  ‘Cool, hey look Maddie, it’s a fox skeleton!’

  There’s a perfect set of bones embedded in the grass. They’re clean and white like they’ve been washed. I can see a jaw, skull, spine, ribs, even little paw bones as thin as needles. It’s so perfect and undisturbed, it’s as if it’s just dropped dead on the spot. It’s weird no other animal has come, the whole time it was decomposing, to rummage in it, knocking the bones across the grass.

  All of a sudden Dad starts crying. Not just a little bit, a few tears out of the corner of his eye, but proper sobbing, his nose even starts running and he’s snotting into his hand, and not even caring. Dan looks scared, mum goes over and holds him. I can’t move. ‘What is it Dad? What’s the matter?’ My arms are limp by my side. Dan finds one of my hands and holds it tightly. We both know something really bad is coming.

  ‘We wanted…’ Mum breaks away from Dad but is still holding his hand, Dad has his head turned as if he’s embarrassed, but he’s still crying. ‘We wanted to bring you somewhere beautiful to tell you. Somewhere you’ve known since you were little.’

  ‘Mum! What’s going on?’ Dan’s crying now too and goes over to Mum and she hugs him tightly. His head fits just under her chin. Watching them makes me feel really old, like because I’m 16 now it can’t be me hugging her, like I’ve got to be strong, whatever’s coming. Mum keeps holding Dan really tight, wisps of her silky dark hair are blowing across her face. She looks beautiful and sad. I’ve been giving them a really hard time all morning about not being able to go shopping with Roz and Jamie. I feel so bad about it now, even though I don’t know what’s coming, that I just want the ground to open up and swallow me. I’ll never go shopping again, I’ll never want anything again, just don’t make it really bad, whatever it is, please God don’t make it something bad.

  Brighton 2006

  Excitement and impatience bubbled inside me as I watched John walk up the hill. He looked tired. As he sat down beside me on the bench - his jacket straining at the seams – he reminded me of an old bear; carrying his bulk wearily, but with the potential for sudden and ferocious action.

  I had to grab him in his ‘lunch hour’ – somethin
g that I imagined he never normally took – so we met just down the road from the main police station on John Street. We sat on a bench set in a small patch of green at the feet of several red brick tower blocks, built like giant's steps up a steep hill. The city vista spilled away in front of us, icy clear in the sunshine after a night of rain. He looked at me closely.

  ‘You’re starting to show.’ He said, nodding towards my tummy.

  ‘Yes!’ I laughed happily and laid my hand on the taughtness of my belly, strangely flattered.

  ‘So what can I do for you Maddie?’

  ‘Dan is in Italy.’

  He shifted towards me, putting his arm over the back of the bench. The low winter sun back-lighted the green of his right iris and made it glow. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The passenger lists for the days around when Dan went missing. I looked through them as you suggested. I think I’ve found him. There was a Danilo McCarten. Danilo is an Italian version of Daniel, and McCarten is my Mum’s maiden name. It’s too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  John put his chin in one of his giant hands and looked out across the rooftops, frowning. ‘He could have changed his name by deed poll. If you do that you can get a new passport. I can check it out easily. I’ll do it this afternoon.’