A Year of Marvellous Ways (26 page)

53

H
e retreated so far into himself he couldn’t see
out. The women became shadows, faint and mute, and he shunned their company, shunned their food, smashed plates and bowls and walked barefoot on the shards of his rage and it was a relief to finally bleed.

His world was upside down. Day became night and he took to his bed when the sun sweated but wandered out to the call of owls, and the women knew he was out because they heard him howl like a dog.

It’ll blow through, said Marvellous, like a storm. And it did blow through but left little in its aftermath. A red-eyed mass, that’s all. Not moving, not caring. But hurting.

He woke to the sound of another person moving through the boathouse. He opened his eyes and saw the halo of spindrift curls above him. Felt himself being lifted, carried out into the briny warm light.

He lay across seat slats, followed the drift of clouds buoyant in the blue, and the gulls above him hovered, swooped in play. The engine reverberating through his spine and ribs and lungs, shaking out the pain, making him breathe again. Deeply now, deep slow breaths. The sun came out. Disappeared. Warm and then not. He closed his eyes. The boat veered left, he felt it slow down. Felt it stop. Arms under his arms. Up now. Words gently spoken.

Up the hill. Breathing deeply again. A cottage built at the end of granite steps. He followed him in. Wildflowers in a vase on the table. A photograph too. Brothers with the same unruly mop of bleached hair before it was cut regulation style.

He sat on the bed next to a towel and soap. Say something. Anything. But he couldn’t. The door closed and he rammed the heel of his hand into his mouth to muffle the only sound that wanted to come out.

He slept through the night and woke to sunlight and a new day. He felt hungry. On the chair next to the bed was a plate of cold mackerel and potatoes. He ate slowly. Gratefully.

He pulled back the curtains and light fell into the room. He went over to the dresser. Inside he found the life of a brother packed neatly away.

He heard the front door close. He stood at the window with its view of the sea and saw Ned Blaney walking down the steps, a Thermos in hand. He lost him behind rows of fisher cottages but caught sight of him again by the harbour climbing down into his boat.

A speck now, no bigger than the top joint of his little finger. He watched him anchor by a buoy. Watched him haul crab pots. Methodically. Slowly. Alone. Watched him.

He joined him the next morning. He surprised him at the door and knew that he had, but he was glad of the company, he said so twice. Together they walked down the cool sunless steps towards a sea pressed flat by a low grey sky. They said little. Didn’t have to.

They stacked the crab pots on to the bow of the boat, sat away from the dustbin full of stinking, rotting bait. They lit cigarettes as the boat carved easily across the glinting surface, skimming like a slate stone. He had his sea legs now and baited the pots standing up. Fish oil marked the surface where the pots were sunk and gulls fed frenziedly on the floating scraps. He leant over the gunwale to wash his hands and saw himself reflected in the mirrored surface.

Ned called for Drake to take the tiller. He clambered across and the tiller felt good in his hand. Ned reached down to his feet and picked up the Thermos. He unscrewed the lid and the liquid didn’t steam and when Drake took the cup he knew it was Scotch.

There was no grand gesture, no loud pronouncement or toast. It was a quiet acknowledgment barely heard. To life, was all Ned said.

Ned signalled portside and Drake turned the boat towards open water, and the engine purred and the warm southerly breeze clung to him. He looked at the gunmetal sea and sky, a matrimony of sorts, and he set his sights on the bright silver line that shimmered in between.

He knew she was out there somewhere. Living. And to know that was everything.

V

54

A
utumn fell once again, and the air was rich with
leaf mulch and saltmud. Marvellous stood outside her caravan. The breeze stirred and lifted her hair, she looked up to the sky. Night was closing in on her, the moon impatient for the fall of sun. She looked at the bunch of hanging keys and tenderly prised away the smallest one. She held it up by its ragged aquamarine braid and brought it close to her eyes: it was the key to understanding. She smiled, remembering why she had ever called it that, and she put it in her pocket and climbed back up the steps.

Inside was warm. She closed the curtains for the last time. She thought she was prepared but the simple act choked her, the drawing time on her life. She opened them quickly to relieve the unexpected panic that she felt. How beautiful to see again the familiar outline of her world on earth!

She noted the falling sun and the burnished treetops ablaze, and the emptying nests, and the shells placed in the chimes clacking in the wind, once silent by the shore. She noted the useful things of her life: smooth stones resting by the stove, ready to be heated and placed in her pockets, in her palms, and the clothes that had draped her – nothing fancy – for warmth or to spare nakedness, vanity long gone. She ran her hand across the sheets that would cradle the last of her nights. I have waited for this moment and yet I am unsure what to do. She picked up a pen and attempted to write, but there was nothing to write, for everything to say was really what was to come.

She took off her clothes and hung them carefully on a hook. She heard Drake singing in the boathouse below. Marvellous felt scared, but she wouldn’t disturb him, not tonight, not her last night on earth.

Was that the door? A shaft of light ran across the threshold and fell across her bed. The air became hot.

You again!

Me again! Said I’d come back.

I didn’t believe you.

Budge up, Marve, said Jack, as he sat next to her on the bed.

You look well.

I’m young again.

Well don’t look at me, said Marvellous. I’m not who you left.

He leant over and touched her cheek. His eyes never left hers. He began to undress. His skin was white and youthful. Measles scars dotted the top of his buttocks and Marvellous lightly placed a finger on the furthest left. Jack leant in to kiss her.

Wait, said Marvellous, and she turned her back and opened a small drawer next to the bed. The clutter slowed her search, but finally she found what she needed. She nervously coloured her lips with rouge.

What do you think?

You’re beautiful, he said, and he kissed her over and over until his own lips glistened red, and he whispered beautiful, so beautiful till she almost believed him.

Marvellous pulled back the covers and patted the sheet.

Better get in, she said.

55

D
rake stood on the shore by the sandbar looking
over at
Deliverance
. The late afternoon air enveloped him, and he felt the passing sands of time hot between his fingers. Something was different. He could sense now, changes of nature, of time and tide, both potent and slight. Something important was in the air.

He raced through the trees and called out for her, his hand tight around his heart so that nothing should spill. The whispered sound of words like prayers rolled across the landscape, coming towards him as they did that first night and every bright night thereafter, a comfort now, nothing to fear, silly old words, clutter of his mind. There was no plume of smoke at the caravan and when he entered it felt cool.

The bed was made and she had laid out her life upon the sheets: a gorse flower, a starfish, a penny and a lipstick. A postcard from America and a small shell box that once hung around her mother’s breast. Her house was in order.

Bottles were lined up on the floor, messages answered, his answered ten times ten and more. Sloe gin, brown packets of herbs to heal, all laid out, he knew for him. Her yellow oilskin hung on the back of the door. And there on the ledge above the bookcase, her book –
The Marvellous Book of Truths
– caught in a perfect shaft of sunlight for him to see. From the lock, a tiny key hanging on a ragged aquamarine braid. There was nothing, no one to stop him this time.

He sat on the bed and rested the book upon his knees. He unlocked it, opened it, and scanned the pages until a lightness, an effervescence almost, entered his chest. For there was nothing within those crumbling leaves except dust and a dead fly. He flicked the pages, front to back, front to back again and laughed. Nothing. No truths at all. He stood up and went to place the book back on the ledge when all of a sudden, a curled edge dropped below the page line. His heart thumped. How could he have missed it? He pulled it out. Two words on the back of the photograph:
Your father.

He didn’t turn it over straight away because he sensed the truth before he saw it. By the strange beat of his heart, he sensed who would stare back at him. And when he finally turned the photograph, there he was: with the same eyes, nose, beard and mouth that he had cut out from his mother’s magazines, when life without a father muddled his small world. It had always been him: the man who had encircled his life like a moat. It had always been him.

Marvellous was saying goodbye to everything. It took time because she knew every corner of the wood and river and she didn’t want to miss anything, for that would be rude. She had started down by the willow saplings. She gave thanks for her life, for every flower and tree and shrub that had held an imprint of her time, her youth, her middle age, her longing, her body, her sorrow, her laughter, her plans, her tiredness, her fate. This was the scene of her theatre. One last bow for the lady on the rock. The leaves rustled, some fell, and a flock of gulls soared in formation towards a hazy, milky west.

She sits down upon the mooring stone for the final time. Her breath is scant. Things – time – are running out. The pinking light coats a seagull in flight. Time is standing still. Marvellous knows this moment is everything because it is her last moment, the lush-textured moment, and she knows this moment is love.

Drake sees her. And the clenched fist that resided in his chest opens and reveals a life, and in the middle of life, sits her, Marvellous Ways. And he has known her his life long and beyond, and now he knows why.

He waves to her, she waves to him. The seagull stalls mid-flight, frozen in a lick of aspic. He reaches for her hand. She feels cold. Her breathing is shallow.

What’s happening? he asks tenderly.

Come, says the old woman.

She takes his hand and it becomes his mother’s hand and the riverbank becomes the cobbles of London, of Fleet Lane where she leads him towards his childhood pub and the smell of beer that was as good as a meal when he awoke starving at night. And they cross creek bridge and he feels he is walking up the stairs to that cold room, the room that is home, where he asks his mother questions until all colour has drained from her face.

What colour were his eyes, Ma? What colour were my father’s eyes?

The colour of longing.

What colour’s that, Ma?

The colour of the sea.

He stops at the midpoint of the bridge that gives him a view down the river towards the strapping pines and the sandbar. The tide is racing in, wavelets crested by spume and glistening fish backs. He knows time is running out.

Come, says Marvellous.

On the other bank she reaches now and then for tufts of grass either side, and as she passes the Dearly Forgotten, the sun quite rapidly loses its warmth. She stops and looks up, looks into the piercing orb, and she doesn’t blink. She looks into it and sees beyond it. Almost there, she whispers, and she takes his hand and leads him over to a gravestone he has never noticed before: a stone of simplicity, of pink granite, of two words:

Jack Francis

Here he is, says Marvellous. Your father.

The murmur of words becomes loud, Drake looks around. He kneels upon the moist grass and leans his cheek upon his father’s grave. Marvellous places her hand upon his back.

Listen, she says.

I can hear, he whispers.

It’s your story. It’s only ever been your story.

He turns to her and reaches for her, but she is already moving away. She walks towards the rippling waves in the soft evening light, and she can feel her clothes fall away, can feel her skin fall away and this time it is different. They are all waiting for her and she sees them, there on the crest, and she is running now for there is no more old, and she dives, and breathes her first breath, and her body floods. And she is home.