The Comet Seekers: A Novel (30 page)

Yes, I’ve been reading the blogs, says Tylissa. Last year’s lot had to wear white-out goggles. And she grins, two coffee cups held up to her eyes to mimic them, pretending to stumble around, searching for what cannot be seen.

Róisín drives north every weekend, from the cottage she’s renting to the mountains of the Lake District. She climbs to the peak with a heavy rucksack on her back and a camera, hand-held and portable, durable – like the one she will have in the snow.

She doesn’t fear the dark, although mountaineers are supposed to. What does it matter, really, if the sun’s rays are blocked by the shadow of half a world? It is not sinister. It’s just the way it is.

Róisín knows that she has seen much of the world, so many places filled with people, and now she is going to see the remotest land on Earth. But she still wonders what would she have had, if she had chosen differently, if she had stayed on the farm. Would they have had a child of their own, as she always suspected Liam wanted? Two cousins with a child – would that have been so wrong? She did look it up once, although she never told him that. She never felt she needed children. But it would have been possible. A risk that they could have taken. If you look closely, we are all related to one another. You don’t have to go back far to find it – that connection that joins every human being to another.

On the moors, they are joined by ropes as they stumble, searching for a pretend-lost member of their team in conditions meant to mimic the hostility of a snowstorm: they are wearing the
white-out goggles Tylissa mentioned and filled rucksacks on their backs, and they’ve chosen the right day for it. The wind is howling over the land with no prospect of shelter and the rain, thrashing against their faces, is sharp enough to sting. It is brutal, thinks Róisín, as she stumbles over a rock, almost trips as her foot slides into what might have been a rabbit hole, but the snow – if this were snow it would be biting into their lips, making their fingertips too numb to hold the ropes that are supposed to lead them.

Róisín feels the rope tug but doesn’t understand what has happened, the pull comes before the shout, and then she realises: Tylissa has fallen. The lack of vision means she can’t tell, immediately, if it is serious – should they take off their goggles, forget the training and help now, when it is needed? Another pull on the rope, and this time the cry of pain is deeper, as Tylissa must have tried to stand up and fallen again.

She pulls off her goggles.

I fell, says Tylissa helplessly, eyes bloated with tears, the hole . . . my foot twisted. I think . . .

The first-aid team comes running as Róisín is kneeling beside her, feeling useless despite her training.

Tylissa is lifted onto a stretcher.

She is taken to hospital.

Róisín goes with her, then returns to their hostel for the evening.

Zach asks how she is coping.

She’ll be OK, Róisín says. But it’s a broken ankle. It’ll take time to recover.

He looks down, as if checking his own legs are still in one piece, still fully operational.

She’s upset that she’s not going to be able to come to Antarctica, adds Róisín.

I guess that means we’re going to need a new chef, he says, and Róisín can’t decide if she dislikes him for his lack of empathy or for the fact that he said what she was already thinking but not wanting to say out loud.

FRANÇOIS SAYS
:
I’M NOT LEAVING
, Severine.

But you must.

We’ll get through this. I know it’s going to be hard—

I’ve planned your journey for you.

So we’ll see the new specialist on Thursday—

Do you want to spend time in the desert?

Have you even read the latest letter?

It was addressed to me.

François lets the letter drop from his hands.

There are other things they can do now, Mama.

There are things
you
can do.

There are new drugs, and—

Foreign lands, jungles, waterfalls . . . You could go to Malaysia – the Bukit Lagong Forest has a canopy walkway thirty metres high in the trees.

And there’s surgery, if it comes to that.

I found some information for you, she says. Here, you can travel round the Norwegian fjords in a fishing boat for six months.

But there are more things we can try first, he says. Mama?

Look at this, she says, handing him a piece of paper that he automatically takes. It says they need a chef urgently, to go to Antarctica.

For a moment François stops speaking. He is not interested in a holiday – he needs to talk to her about the possible treatments. But despite himself he looks down at the job advert that his mama
has printed out. This is not tourism that she is suggesting for him, it’s a whole different life.

Severine sits up, taller in the bed, realising she’s on to something; tries to think of the aspects of Antarctica that would be different to any other experience he has had.

You would stay all through the winter, she says, twenty-four hours of darkness for months, but the sky, imagine what you could see in the sky – the stars would be brighter than the world!

And it would be cold, he smiles.

The kind of cold that turns the landscape into sheets of frozen satin.

He laughs. Less romantic, I think, though he’s imagining it now, the way it would feel to stand alone on a plateau of snow that stretches to the horizon, to be reminded of how small we are, in a world of such extraordinary contrast.

But how could he, when his mama is ill, when she needs support?

You need me here, Mama.

No, François. What I need is for you to leave, while you still can.

She remembers her granny’s words: François won’t be able to see the ghosts. Not yet anyway, she’d said, he hasn’t lost anyone yet. So it is now that he needs protecting from them. She will not lose her son by sending him away, she will save him. François, the world – her hands are wide, outstretched, as if holding the globe – there is so much world for you to see.

He looks at the space between her cupped hands, imagines a globe revolving between them, lit with sun on one side and dim with starlight on the other.

I’ll have whatever treatment they suggest while you’re away, she says. But please.

Please what?

Please go and see the world for me. Before it is too late.

François has been doing his research. He doesn’t want to give false hope, but he doesn’t want to give none either. He’s been to talk to doctors he knows, friends from university who are practising now, his own GP, surgeons at the hospital; at first it was frantic, a search for information as if there was an answer he could find, some way that he could save his mama.

She’s too young, he wants to scream, she needs to see the world; and that is when the guilt comes, crippling him into a ball as he hugs his knees into his chest. Perhaps she would have gone herself if it wasn’t for him, he thinks, if it wasn’t for having to raise a child. All these ghosts that she sees, imaginary conversations that she has had, inventing a world around her, all because she wanted to be free and couldn’t be, because of a mistake she made when she was young. Her hallucinations make sense, in a way – it
was
family keeping her here. It was a baby.

Hélène cries when he tells her, making him weaken despite his resolve to be strong, to show there is hope. She holds him, but not for long enough; she doesn’t know what to say. She knows she has to keep other things secret.

I’m here, she says pointlessly – of course she is here, but she can’t always be, and she knows it, and he knows it too.

He sees signs around her apartment, an extra toothbrush in the bathroom where he goes to splash cold water on his face, to pull himself together. He doesn’t ask her about it – what does it matter now? But it changes something nonetheless; makes him believe that he can’t stay here, that this is not the place to find help.

After he leaves, Hélène allows herself to cry more, full-bodied sobs that she’s glad no one is there to hear. She doesn’t understand why it went wrong, she only knows that it wasn’t right for her.

In the night, she holds Stefan as if he is her only connection to the world, holds him so tight she knows he will never sleep, and
the guilt of having him there makes her cry harder and the gratitude of having him there eventually allows her to rest.

You can write me letters, says Severine; amazing letters, letters describing things I have never seen. Tell me about snow crystals and white cliffs stretching up beyond the clouds.

She is propped up with three pillows in a private room of the hospital, and François is by her bedside.

She looks the same, he thinks, her eyes still have their sparkle as she talks about faraway places, describes her imagining of layers of snow so thick it’s hard to believe there is solid ground underneath. But when she takes his hand, he feels his body begin to shake; he will never leave her, he wants to stay, he will sleep here and she will see him as soon as she wakes, every day, until she is better.

François, she says, it is wonderful that you are here, but don’t you see?

You need to get some rest, Mama. Please.

I don’t want you to watch me die.

He feels a knot in his throat, cannot make his voice work to reply. The doctors moved fast, so fast there was no way to deny how serious it was. And then they stopped.

There’s not much time, believe me, I know about these things – I too have sat in a hospital room, refusing to leave, and I know what followed.

He shakes his head.

The ghosts will come, François, I know you don’t believe me but they will, and that will be your life.

There are no ghosts.

His voice is a whisper now.

I might even come too, though I will try not to. I don’t want you waiting for me, year after year.

I’m not leaving you.

It would make me happy.

If she could lead him onto the plane she would. She knows he loves her, that is enough.

But he’s not even listening now; he is bent double, his head resting on her hand over the bedclothes.

It’s OK, she says.

He doesn’t know why he goes to Hélène’s instead of to his own apartment, but that is where his feet lead him and he doesn’t have the will to disobey. And there is Stefan at the door, not even a surprise, not really. Their words glide over his head like sheets of ice and he stumbles backwards, away from the front door.

François—

Hélène calls out in a voice that is kind and sorry and wants to help, and she follows him outside, closes the door behind her, tries to apologise though there is no reason to, nor any need. She wants to explain, she says, then can’t find the words to do it. She shivers in the cold.

And there are things that he doesn’t say, as well. It would be pointless now to tell her that he was restless, not for a different person, but for a different kind of life.

You’ll be OK? she says, at last, as he stands beyond the door.

His smile surprises her, as he steps closer again, kisses her on each cheek before stepping back from the threshold of her home.

Don’t worry, he says, I’m going to be OK. And you’re going to be OK.

And he turns and walks away, and doesn’t look back.

It’s the right thing to do, don’t you see? Severine is sitting up. I don’t want you here watching the end, I want you out there – in the world.

The determination is back in her voice, and for a second he allows himself to believe that she will recover, that this is not the end – that she will be home again, cooking, singing, quarrelling with her ghosts.

Then another second passes, and François knows that it is true; his mama doesn’t want him to watch her die. She was always so proud, he thinks, and however much he wants to be with her, she wants him to remember her alive.

Severine sees his expression and knows what he’s thinking – he is listening to her at last, and she is grateful. Perhaps she is being selfish, perhaps she should let him stay with her, for the time she has left. Perhaps it is important to be with someone at the end, but there is something more important: she wants him to have the chance of a new beginning.

They say I can go home, she says. Help me go home. And then . . .

OK, Mama.

So you’re going to go?

They need a chef, in Antarctica, he says, just like you told me they did.

Oh, François!

I’d have to leave for the training course next week. Then fly out straight away after that.

Her smile lights up her face, and she swings her legs out of the hospital bed with the energy of a girl.

François is making dinner; slicing onions, frying aubergine in olive oil. They play music while they cook, sip red wine. What does it matter now? she says. I can have all the wine I want.

You have always had all the wine you want, he says.

Now that is true. And I don’t regret it a jot.

His last days at home will always come to him in snippets of jokes, her boisterous smile, the smell and scent of the kitchen – basil and
ripe tomatoes, hot lemon cordial, his mama’s perfume, coffee with cinnamon and a fleeting memory of rosemary. He will travel across the world and take all this with him, share it with others. This, and not the other things he has seen – not the smell of disinfectant and hospital food and the hum of the machine that dripped clear fluids into her bloodstream. Those memories he doesn’t want to keep.