Seahorse (33 page)

Isn't consciousness memory? Myra had asked. Last night, on the sofa.

Even if we concentrated on merely one thing, we wouldn't be aware of it without memory, since in each instant we'd forget what we were thinking the moment before.

I tried to cleave it before it was born…
Philip may have no memory…
but the thought arose, dissipated, and, like smoke, lingered.

For lunch, Mrs Hammond brought us tea and sandwiches. Egg and watercress, ham and mustard. The tea milky and strong.

“Any news?” she asked. Her usually formal aspect disarrayed by worry.
She was a tall lady, a little stooped, as though to always apologize for her height. Her hands, clasped neatly before her, were large, and elegantly slender.

“I'm afraid not… not yet. I'll let you know if Myra calls,” I added gently.

She nodded. “Well, they say no news is good news.” For a moment, she stood there, wavering, and then abruptly turned and left the room.

The afternoon passed slowly.

Elliot, I could tell, was growing restless, tired of his drawings and toy soldiers, of being trapped indoors. It was still raining, and we couldn't step out for a walk, or for him to cycle around. “I'll watch TV?” he asked. I didn't see why not.

He skipped to the set in the corner, switched it on, and settled on something colorful and animated. A jingle rang through the room, followed by the sound of something falling, a dramatic crash. Elliot chuckled, immediately entranced.

Despite the feeble signal, I checked my phone, and then again. But if Myra called, she'd do so on the landline. The phone in the foyer, black and archaic, stayed silent.

We had a quiet, subdued meal of mutton and barley stew, bread, and cheddar. Then Mrs Hammond took Elliot up to bed.

“There wasn't much I could do really,” Myra told me later in the letter room. “I waited, by his bedside, but he was too weak to talk… I don't think he even knew I was there. I noticed,” she added, “he had a stubble and needed a shave. It was strange to see him like that.”

I asked her why.

She drew her feet up on the sofa; framed within its leathery depths. “Because as far back as I can remember, my father has always been… immaculate. As though the face he wore for all of us every single day must be as perfectly presented as it could ever be. I used to always wonder what it was like… when I saw my friends' families… or their family
pictures… how much more casual their fathers seemed… in their attire and affections. Today, I saw my father unshaven, and I thought how that might be what would upset him most…”

My glance fell on my shoes, the rug. I remained silent.

The phone call came while we were still sitting there; Myra drowsy, reclining against my shoulder. I'd forgotten how it sounded, the shrill, pompous ring of a landline. For a moment, we didn't move.

“I'll get it,” she said quietly, and walked out of the room.

Should I follow? That would be rude, I thought. I couldn't assume it was the hospital calling.

“Yes, Myra speaking… his daughter.”

But it was.

She was strangely calm. Her voice precisely poised, her words falling like polished stones. “I see… yes… I understand. I'll be in tomorrow morning. Yes… will the doctor be in touch with the coroner? Alright, thank you… thank you.”

The funeral was held two weeks after Christmas.

So I watched as the priest blessed the ground where Philip would be laid to rest and saw the coffin being lowered—
Whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.
The grave filled. The flowers carefully arranged on top. It was too wet to light the candles. Myra, black-clothed, pale but dry-eyed. Elliot, too young to comprehend this, standing beside her in a little black suit, looking up at her in bewilderment.

It was my fault.

The rain fell as hard cold pellets.

At the reception there was little relief.

I lingered at the fringes, picking at cucumber sandwiches and drinking cup after cup of tea. Not from hunger or thirst, but to keep my hands occupied. To seem as though I was somehow part of this communal ritual. I didn't know if it was true, walking through the house, everyone's eyes on me, watching my back, whispering about my role in
the tragedy.
He was there. Philip was trying to save him.

Sometimes, when Myra passed by, she'd grip my hand, gathering something from me—strength, perhaps, some warmth.

I knew no one, apart from her and Elliot, and mostly I sat with the boy in his room.

“Will grandpa come back if I practice the piano everyday?”

“But it will make him happy, and if it makes him happy, he'll come back.”

“It's my fault,” he said, his eyes bright with tears.

No, I said, trying to reach for him… no, it isn't… but he slipped from my grasp, and ran out crying for Myra.

By the time everyone left, late that afternoon, she looked pale, wrung out by the hours. Mrs Hammond had left soup and sandwiches in the letter room, and bolstered the fire. She'd also placed a bottle of brandy on the tray, and a flask of warm water.

“I don't know what I'd do without her,” said Myra, pouring herself a drink. She swirled the dark golden liquor, drank it neat, and then joined me at the hearth.

“Will you sleep here tonight?”

The past few weeks she and Elliot had slept in the hay loft. She couldn't bear it, she said. To be next to a dead person's room. We'd made up a bed for me on the floor.

I gathered her, my arm around her waist. Whatever she wanted…

The silence filled with the crackle of wood, spitting out their secrets.

She looked at me, her eyes edged with firelight. “And you. Thank you for staying.”

I shifted on my feet, uneasy. I said it was alright, that after everything that had happened, I couldn't possibly have left.

Once, Doctor Mahesar told us a story in class from Plato's Phaedrus,
in which Socrates compares the soul to a chariot pulled by a pair of winged horses. While a god was blessed with two obedient animals, a human drove a tame, immortal horse paired with one that was mortal and unruly. One pulled the soul upward, towards goodness and courage, and the other plummeted into darkness and chaos. Within us, they perpetually wrestled.

For the remainder of my winter break, I was at Wintervale.

A Christmas spent, not around the tree, but in drives to the hospital, appointments with the funeral director, and visits to the coroner's office—where I reiterated what had taken place that morning. There isn't a doubt about it, a lie often repeated becomes, for that moment, real. A fabrication woven so intricately it's impossible to unpick.

It set in, a vague discomfort, only after the formalities and paper work were over, and all we needed to do was wait for the funeral.

New Year's Eve was quiet, we stayed home. I cooked an unelaborate chicken curry that pleased them all, even Mrs Hammond, and in the evening, we watched old Lawrence Olivier movies from a pile of DVDs. On Myra's insistence, we opened a bottle of champagne. It was a time—didn't I remember?—of also looking to the future. Else Janus, the two-headed god, would be displeased.

The first week of January, windswept and snowy, saw us mostly holed up inside the house, venturing out only for the occasional walk. To an abandoned water mill, a giant oak tree on a hillock with long, sweeping views of white countryside, even the peripatetic ruins of a medieval castle. Each setting perfect for a confession. For a spilling of secrets. Somehow, I held it all back.

At night, I'd lie awake in the loft, listening to Myra and Elliot, their soft, even breathing. How could I ever sleep? I'd move, restless, on the mattress on the floor, perturbed by the immense silence, by the endless canvas on which I could paint troubled dreams.

On the night of the funeral we walked solemnly up to her room.
It felt like the ceremonial re-enactment of some ancient ritual. The undressing. My jumper, and hers, my belt, her dress, with its line of tiny buttons running from her neck down to the small of her back. The touch. Filled with swift, earthy urgency. The need. At this time, great and pressing, to reaffirm life.

“Do you have to leave?” asked Myra, when we lay later in darkness.

I had no choice. “Term begins on the seventeenth.” Santanu and Eva would have texted, or called by now, and been left wondering why I wasn't reachable.

“I'll come visit you…” She ran a finger down my cheek. To my chin. Like Nicholas.

“Myra…”

“Yes?”

I hesitated. “Never mind.”

Her eyes searched for mine. “Tell me…”

“I'd like it if you came visit…”

She lay back, and smiled, her skin, uncovered by the sheet, outlined in silver. “That's sweet… but it wasn't what you were going to say, was it?”

I insisted it was, even if, to my ears, my voice rang false. I listened to our breathing. The sudden mute sadness of the house. Somewhere, a pipe gurgling.

She didn't ask again.

She'd closed her eyes, fallen asleep.

On my last day there, I was audience to a private recital.

“Bravo! Bravo!” We applauded at the end. He stepped off the piano stool and bowed, beaming.

Then Myra took her place and said she'd play a movement from Brahms' Sonata in E-flat major. She clasped her viola close to her—“Usually, someone accompanies me on the piano… I hope I do justice
to this alone…”

The notes rose through the house, soaring, I imagined, as seagulls. Filled with their exhilaration, and loneliness. How it felt to be a bird in a cloudless sky. Suddenly dropping, swooping lower, bolstered by the wind. Lifted, swirling higher, climbing up to the edges, and then drifting further away, growing smaller, fainter.

Eventually disappearing.

At the end of the piece, her cheeks were wet.

Elliot clapped—breaking the silence—and I joined in, giving her a standing ovation.

“Now,” she said, laughing, “to the dining room… for a surprise.”

She'd requested Mrs Hammond to bake a cake, and she and Elliot had iced it. Loopy letters spelled out “Gool Luck Nehmiah” and a candle burned in the middle, which I permitted Elliot to blow out.

That evening, we feasted on cake, custard and wine, leaving dinner untouched. We played cards and snakes and ladders. Once again, Elliot fell asleep on a cushion.

After we put him to bed, we returned to the letter room. The fire cast a sunset glow on the furniture, deepening the color of the walls.

“Are you alright?” asked Myra.

“Yes… thank you… so much.”

She smiled. Her hair, falling loose over her bare shoulders. “I was thinking, if I could get Mrs Hammond to come in over some weekends, I could visit you in London more often… and when there's a concert, I'll have a place to stay. At least, until September.”

“Yes,” I reiterated, “until September.”

“But let's not talk of farewells…”

She walked across to the piano, and lifted the lid, running her fingers lightly over the keys. “Once, when Elliot had just started his lessons, I said… oh, something like, one day, you might play in a quartet like mommy. And my father, sitting there, where you are, said, “unless he's
good enough to join the London Symphony Orchestra”. It's strange… I walk around this house and it's full of memories of my father… and I try to catch a glimpse of something… happy, but I'm left mostly with this sense of… relief.”

She turned to me, “You must think I'm a horrible person.”

I reached over, taking her hand. Her fingers icy against mine. “He was a difficult person–”

“Yes, he was…”

“He was also terribly… sad.”

She laughed. “You mean he had time for things like that?”

The fire burst and crackled, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.

“Myra, I know something about your father that I think you don't… that perhaps no one else ever knew…”