A Year of Marvellous Ways (17 page)

34

T
he tearoom was warm and full of chattering
couples. The sounds of china and teaspoons and gossip competed in her ears, a rare symphony she seldom heard. But Marvellous felt so alive and smiled at everyone and spoke to no one. She had taken off her hat and it sat with the newspaper stuffing on the chair beside her, in front of the window framing the sight of Truro Cathedral. The waitress placed the bill down on the table and looked at her. Everybody watched. Marvellous laid a crisp one-pound note next to the sugar bowl – a one-pound note! somebody whispered – and she said, Thank you, dear, the cakes were lovely. My compliments to your chef.

The flush of a toilet. The feeling of hot running water through his fingers. Hot running water at the turn of a tap! Drake closed his eyes to savour the luxurious feel of convenience. He dried his hands and smoothed his beard in the grimy mirror. He opened the door and stopped suddenly. He saw, for the first time, what other people saw: a small old woman with large broken-framed glasses in a grubby yellow oilskin, with a man’s trilby two sizes too big. He felt his fists fizz, as he saw their snatched glances, and better-than grins as Marvellous gathered up her hat and newspaper stuffing. He marched into the room and pulled out the chair for her. He offered her his arm, she looked so proud. Thank you my boy, she said. She put her change into her pocket and said goodbye to everyone around. No one said goodbye back. She was oblivious to the eyes that watched her leave, but he wasn’t. He glared at the comments that fell in her wake. She had always been talked about, she was like the weather: a constant source of speculation and disappointment. When she left they found a small mound of mud under her chair.

Where are we going? she asked, on the way out. But Drake felt too protective, too angry to speak.

They wandered up River Street, the old woman and young man. Now and then she stumbled on cobblestones because she refused to look down at her feet, there was just too much of life to see. Drake slowed and said, Here we are, and Marvellous said, You’ve brought me to the bank? And he said that it wasn’t a bank any more. Then what is it? she said. You’ll see, he said, and he took her arm and led her past the columns through the large wooden doors into the sonorous surround of the grand room. There was no one else about, all was quiet. Just the faint sound of an old woman’s heart beating in wonder.

Drake led her up the staircase to the small gallery above. He told her to take as long as she liked, he’d be waiting downstairs, and when he left he didn’t dare look back because had he looked back he knew the something in his chest might shatter.

And so it was, that in her ninetieth year, Marvellous Ways saw her mother’s face for the first time.

She said nothing in those first few minutes, but Drake would later say that a sigh could be heard throughout the corridors and the displays of the museum. The old woman stood as close as she possibly could and in the dingy light she introduced herself. Soon words tumbled over words. And as those secrets passed from lips to ears, she would later remember carols being sung outside and the first fluttering of snow falling past the arched windows causing tiny shadows to flicker down her head then down her face like tears, on to the gallery floor. And when the attendant called time, she didn’t protest but quietly said, Goodbye. Said, See you again soon, and left through the heavy doors back to the wintry present.

Once outside, the snow fell heavily and settled. Perfect flakes of symmetry. The choir sang ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, and she put money in the tin. And she sang loudly,
Snow is falling snow on snow.

That would be her memory, because it was magical. For others, however, it was the previous winter that snow had fallen so. And Marvellous would remember a brass band playing with the carol singers, even though for others the dark streets reverberated with nothing more than the frantic pace of pre-Christmas shopping.

And she would remember that she and Drake walked all the way home that night and she wouldn’t remember the vans and the ferry and the carts that had picked them up and put them down, because she remembered walking down familiar lanes and for her there was no moon that night (even though there was) because her eyes were now so clear she could see everything that she had ever wanted to see. And she would remember that her pace was brisk because her feet walked on elation, and that was in fact the word she tried to remember but it had long-gone so she settled for happiness.

The snow fell deep around them. Hedgerows were covered and soon they walked through a white landscape like two shadows playing truant. Silence greeted every crunch underfoot and a smile never shifted from the old woman’s lips.

Hours later, they reached the High Road by the meadow and Drake said, Stop here, because he could never fail to do so now. So they stopped there. Thick misting breath swirled from their mouths. He stamped his feet hard on the road, banged his hands against his sides.

Here, he said, and he handed her a small badly wrapped present that he took from his pocket.

Wrapped it myself, he said.

It’s not Christmas yet, the old woman said.

Think it might be, he said.

So she peeled off her mittens, untied the ribbon and unwrapped the paper until a small black tube sat in her palm. She held it up to her face and twisted slowly until a perfect finger of pillar-box red emerged into the white tumbling sky.

And the snow fell. And the snow fell. And the snow fell. And it was beautiful.

35

J
anuary came and dug in like a stubborn mule
.

Marvellous looked out from her caravan on to the night. At first, she had thought it was a saint on walkabout, now that the evenings were so bitter. But when she looked through her telescope she saw that it was Drake down by the riverbank, looking over at the church. He had become restless again and she’d noticed that his shakes had returned, something he tried to hide. His appetite was scant and his words few, and the notion of living well had been replaced by a trenchant need to survive, nothing more. He turned and looked up towards her caravan. That’s when she saw the great big troublesome dream buzzing around his head, a dream as loud and dripping as a dragonfly.

She quickly locked her windows. Maybe it was the action or maybe it was the noise, but that dragonfly-dream turned right round and headed straight for her locked-up glass and the sound was like a pistol shot, and the sound threw her to the bed, shocked.

It had always been a matter of time, she knew that. From the night he had arrived when she had lifted him from the tree, the weight of his soul had left an indelible print upon her arms, and she had always known it was a matter of time before she began to dream his dreams.

Two weeks before, a little past midnight, a breathless exhaustion and dense black had fallen upon the wood. There was no sound. Nature had surrendered and even the stars had dimmed. The moon was the tiniest sliver and for most it went unnoticed. Marvellous couldn’t sleep. Truth be told, she
wouldn’t
sleep. Instead, she sat up drinking as the haunting ate at the periphery of her world. When she lay upon the mattress it engulfed her, when she sat in the chair and extinguished the light, it laughed. It was a dark fear, male. It wasn’t hers.

Then two nights after that she awoke to the sound of screaming. She went outside. All was still. Drake rushed from the boathouse disorientated.

I heard screaming, he said. Are you all right?

She froze. That’s when she knew for sure.

Probably a dream, she said. Go back, all’s well here. We’re all safe here.

And he turned to go. What woke you? he asked.

Bladder, she said. The usual.

And last night: a card game. She wasn’t playing, she was a card instead. There was laughter, and he was there, Drake was there. When she awoke, she was sick on the floor. She knew she wasn’t ailing.

And now night had come again. Marvellous got up from the chair and walked out into the freezing air. Fear made her colder still, and she had layered all her clothes upon her skin. She had tightened her trouser belt, had barricaded herself against the outside world and it was only when she reached the water’s edge that she realised how odd that was, that only the skin on her face touched the air.

Nothing felt familiar, the creek no longer felt kind. Bushels of dark knotweed suspended below the surface became black clumps of feeding shadow. It’s here, she thought looking around, slashing at the night sky with her stick. The dream is here. And she felt herself suddenly pulled to the ground, the air forced from her lungs. Oh my God the weight.

Drake found her the following morning. A small, motionless heap covered in mud and frost, and as he got closer, he saw that her clothes were ripped and dishevelled. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the caravan and placed her in her bed. He had never cared for anyone as he cared for her in that moment. Hot roundels of slate he put down her sides and upon her back and he tended a stove that he never let go out. Pans of kiddley broth awaiting only her appetite. And he held her hand and whispered words he’d last spoken as a child.

Two days later, Marvellous awoke. She looked frail, looked older. She said nothing for days, didn’t even swim, locked herself in and locked out a world that confused her. Drake left food on the wagon steps. He lit the church candle for her every night when he realised she hadn’t. He sat outside in the cold at both high tides waiting for a sign. It came a week later.

She found him downriver collecting firewood a little before dusk. She handed him a playing card. He turned it over. It was the nine of Diamonds. He looked up and began to shake. Tears streamed down his face.

He sat with her that evening, his back against the mooring stone, her legs to his side. He couldn’t face her, couldn’t face himself. Gulls swooped downstream at fish breaking the surface and the call of a sandpiper urged him on. The tide was almost in. He didn’t know where to start so he started somewhere.

36

H
e remembered the day as a perfect summer’s day
and the beauty of the day seemed so important, so unkind, looking back.

It was the last year of war. The last day of friendship for the men who had lived through horror, but not the last day they would all be together because that’s quite a different thing. But the last day they would all be able to look each other in the eye.

Four of them had been playing poker. Drake remembered it was good fun and he’d won a lot of money, which was rare because he never considered himself a lucky man. They heard laughter coming through the trees, and in the summer air it sounded pleasant and a good thing to hear. Scribbs and Johnno turned up with a woman. She wore a fur coat and carried a suitcase and looked as if she was going somewhere. She didn’t speak English so Scribbs didn’t have to be careful what he said. He said she’d been one of the women who had kept company with the Germans. He shuffled the cards and turned to the men and told them to pick a card. They all did. Then he said, Highest goes first, and they showed their cards and he cheered and said that’ll be me, I’ve got the King, and he flicked the King at the woman’s face and then he raped her. Johnno and Hunch were lined up ready to take over. It happened so quick. Drake was still holding the Nine of Diamonds when he lunged for Scribbs, tried to pull him off. Bloody hell mate you’re eager, I’ll be done soon, said Scribbs laughing. Drake shouted at the men but the men ignored him, just stood in a queue as if they were waiting for a bus.

They told him to fuck off, and by God he should have picked up a gun and forced them to stop. But he didn’t. He did as he was told and he walked away and left something behind that would be for ever lost.

The woman stopped screaming after the third and he kept walking. Kept walking until he came to a village and there was a church there, and singing came from the church, and an old man sat on the front steps drinking from a bottle of wine. He looked up and offered Drake the bottle.

Drake sat down next to him and felt soothed by the young voices and the full sweetness of the ink-dark wine. A young woman walked past and the old man smiled and raised his hat and the woman swished her skirt and she smiled too, both at the old man and Drake, and Drake almost forgot that just over the crossroads in the lay of the forest a woman was being raped by five men.

The choir sang and the old man sang and Drake couldn’t sing, and suddenly he began to cry because of the music, because of the sound of the boys’ voices, because of what they might turn into. What
he
had turned into. And he wanted to be comforted and the old man patted his arm before getting up to leave. But Drake wanted to be held. And most of all he wanted his father because somewhere he knew that his father would forgive him and his father would make the indescribable pain go away. That was the moment he felt his father’s death. When he finally grieved for a man he had never known. That was the moment he longed for his father to tell him that it would be all right.

The choir stopped singing and he sat on the steps with an empty bottle of
vin rouge
between his legs. The heavy oaken doors creaked open and a handful of boys ran out, and the birds sang and the sun cast deep shadows that sprang out from the boys’ heels. But when Drake stood up he had no shadow and that’s how he knew that something had died.

He stumbled back through the trees and the woman came towards him on the way. Her lipstick was smeared and she was limping but it may have been because she carried her shoes in her hand and there were twigs on the forest floor. He stood aside and wanted to say something, but his French wasn’t that good, didn’t know the words for
wrong
or
ashamed
. So when she passed by all he managed to say was,
Je m’excuse
, and she spat in his face, which he knew he deserved.

She pulled that fine fur coat tight around her and walked on tiptoe as if she had heels, and in the dappled light that fell through the trees she was a goddess – for a brief moment a goddess – because three days later as the village rounded up collaborators she wore tar and jibes and her golden hair was shorn and burned with the locks of others, and the smell – fuck! – the smell. And she was marched into a crowd of men and they kicked her and he never saw her walk out the other side.

The battle moved east into Belgium towards Germany, but the others never watched his back after that because they couldn’t trust him any more. He wasn’t one of them, he was a fucking poof-nonce-commie, take your pick, they gave him other names too.

And then war was over and streets were lined with cheering and gratitude. Soldiers marched by and collected a woman in one arm and a drink in the other. Battalions were reassigned, some headed home, most stayed, demob was achingly slow. But what did Drake care? He had nothing to go back to.

Thirteen months passed before kitbags were packed in bitter silence and soldiers headed for troopships waiting at the coast. And amidst the chaos of departure Drake quietly slipped away. He never got his discharge papers, would get them later from a man who knew a man and they’d be as good as real. Never got his ration books either or shitty little suit. Slipped away instead, he did, and headed back to France. Down to the south where he was told the sun stayed high and stayed high for hours on end, and where he hoped the warm sirocco wind would melt those frozen, irretrievable years.

Dusk was falling when Drake finished the story. He felt light but it was becoming dark. He heard Marvellous sigh but he couldn’t look at her, felt his face tight with shame and guilt. He felt her warm hand rest lightly on the top of his head.

The sound of the river filled the silence. Two gulls called to each other from bank to bank. In their cry he heard his name.

Listen, said Marvellous. And he listened beyond their call and that’s when he heard it, really heard it.

Tide’s on the turn, she said. He knew what he had to do.

They stood on the shore and he climbed down the bank and waded into the river. The ice-cold water reached his chest and his shirt and trousers clung to his limbs. And where once was a dark life-long fear, was nothing now: an absence filled only with sorrow and the past. He crouched down and the water flooded his nose and ears and he was overcome by a pressured silence. His shirt billowed and his hair rose and broke the surface like weed, and he felt an overwhelming peace as he lifted his feet off the bottom and floated with the tide and fish, lungs full to bursting.

He surfaced downriver by Old Cundy’s boat. And he held on to the slats as he took in great mouthfuls of air and he was aware that he felt different. His hands looked young against the vibrant green moss that coated the hull, and he leant his head against the boat and closed his eyes, and amidst the hush of nightfall he heard the boat say, It’ll be all right, and he heard it say, It’s over now.