The Comet Seekers: A Novel (34 page)

AT THE FAR END OF
the attic – there, now – beyond François’s old bike and a pile of dust sheets that Severine can’t ever remember using, is another ladder, the final set of steps that lead up to the roof. Their roof, with the unusual flat top, is so unlike the others in Bayeux. They’re all triangles and spires, angular splashes of brown and white, whereas her own rooftop is serene as a lake but for the breeze whistling over it.

Severine climbs up and stands in the middle of the rooftop, from where she can see all the way from the canal to the hills of Normandy. Someone must have brought plant pots up, but it was so many years ago that nothing remains in them but pebbles of
soil. Perhaps it was her granny, she thinks, that is the sort of thing her granny would have done. Overhead, the sun is starting to sink, but it will be a few more minutes until it reaches the horizon. She tips some of the plant pots upside down, creates a sort of bench of her granny’s flowerpots in a row, and allows herself to sit down for a minute. She is tired. Her legs don’t have much strength any more, but it’s her lungs that are the problem; it feels like she can’t get oxygen, not enough to keep her going, to fill her with wonder like she used to know, when she was a girl.

A first star appears over to the north, so bright and so alone she wonders if it is some kind of satellite. But others begin to cluster around it as the sky dips to purple fringed with terracotta. The sinking sun is like a bulb today, she thinks, its shape perfectly rounded above the horizon; a child’s drawing of the way the sky should look. She stands up again, having rested enough; takes a few steps away from the flowerpots and towards the edge of the roof.

You didn’t think we wouldn’t notice, did you?

Her granny has arrived by her side.

I knew you would, she smiles.

Severine doesn’t turn; she knows the others are here too.

Brigitte takes her right hand, and next to her Ælfgifu is peering over the edge of the roof, a silk scarf wrapped around her hair and the soldier boy beside her.

We wanted to say goodbye, Ælfgifu says, we both did. We started this, after all; the least we can do is be a part of the ending.

The soldier boy reaches for her left hand and kisses it.

Ælfgifu got my eyes wrong when she embroidered them, don’t you think?

Severine looks into his eyes and tries to remember the soldier in the tapestry.

Hmmm, she smiles – he is playful, this boy, he reminds her of François when he was younger – I think, on the whole, she captured you rather well.

The twin sisters are looking in the flowerpots, lifting them up and shaking out the remnants of soil so Henri can balance them on his head; Great-Great-Grandma Bélanger looks like a little girl now and Severine’s mama is here too, not young any more but middle-aged, greying and gracefully lined. And Antoine is greying now as well; her mama has stopped growing younger for him and he has grown older for her, like he would have done, had he lived. They are holding hands, and behind them, there’s Great-Grandpa Paul-François, with a sailor’s cap worn at a jaunty angle over his thick dark hair. They stand together on the rooftop, looking over the hills and spires of Bayeux, like in that embroidered quilt she made when she was at school; all the faces of all the family she has ever known.

François though – for a minute she stops. She sent him away to the furthest reaches of the world, the remotest continent, to a land of snow and ice so he wouldn’t have to see this, wouldn’t have to be the one to come home and find her, wouldn’t have to answer the door to police bearing the news. He is missing from the roof, and she feels guilty for that but she hopes it will spare him some of the pain.

And it is as it should be; she knows that too. These ghosts of ancestors are not the living, and she’s not either.

They stand and wait, patiently, as she thinks through what she is about to do; tries to imagine the days she has left, increasingly frail, dependent. Incarceration in hospital – that is where she’d end up, if she doesn’t take control. And doesn’t everyone deserve the chance to choose their own way out?

The sunset in Bayeux has been and gone, and the town now is lit from starlight and the strange ethereal glow of a comet that is brighter than the moon. On the roof Severine steps forward, her toes pointing, just, over the gutters. She looks up; holds her breath as she counts. She is waiting to see it move, wanting to see the sky
change on this, her last night; wanting to witness the speed of a comet. It appears to be still.

She looks round at the faces of her ghosts, knowing each one of them, sharing a last moment of understanding.

Brigitte has gone already?

Her granny gently kisses her forehead like she used to when she was a child.

Brigitte has another goodbye she has to say, whispers Great-Grandpa Paul-François, already fading in and out of view. She’s finding it hard to let go; she never found her own family, and François is the last of ours.

Severine nods; she did what she could. Then she looks down, thinks, fleetingly, of how she must have those gutters cleaned, they are blocked with leaves from last autumn, leaf mould now and grime – they’ll overflow soon if she doesn’t sort it out. What a practical thing, how stupid to think that, and she laughs at herself, glancing back up to the sky and that is when she understands how to see a comet flying. You cannot watch it, cannot expect it to perform while your eyes are locked on it, but look away, and while your eyes are fixed on the ground it is possible – and what a possibility it is – for the sky to change.

And then, just as quickly, she steps off the roof and all the ghosts of all her family follow her. So much company, she thinks. What a beautiful thing, to have all this family.

FRANÇOIS POURS HIMSELF ANOTHER GLASS
of red, stolen from the base supply. He is ashamed, a bit, but not enough to stop drinking it. He is on his second bottle already when he sees Róisín in the kitchen, filling a flask and a mug with what seems to be boiling water. They haven’t spoken since her goodbye last night, and in a way he wants to leave it like that. She has chosen: not him. That’s all he needs to know, and besides, she didn’t really listen. He has
listened to her; that is what he thinks as he silently lets her step out of the room. He has listened to her and she hasn’t listened to him. It seems like the story of his life.

He doesn’t want to blame anyone, it’s not in his nature, but thoughts are crowding into his mind now he is alone, with no company and so much time to think. It is becoming too familiar, this feeling of being pushed away.

But that is not fair. His mama didn’t choose to be ill, she never wanted this, she’s only dealing with it in the best way she knows how. Although there were times – when he was a child, when he would be woken in the night to hear her talking; when she would run through the house laughing with family but not notice him sitting there, on the top stair, sometimes, for hours. Would life have been different, he wonders, would it have been easier for her, if she had not had a son on her own? All these stories of ghosts and staying in Bayeux and longing to travel; why did she not go?

He stands by the window in the supply room, looking out – he wishes she had seen this. Been beside him to witness the ice cloud rising from an avalanche of white on snow on white. Watched the sun rise in a sky so wide, so all-encompassing, the Earth felt as small as the tip of a needle.

All those years ago, he thinks, lying back on his bed, had she stayed in Bayeux for him? When she was supposed to be out in the world following her dreams, was she stuck at home with a baby? She never went out dancing, staying instead in the kitchen, pretending to love dancing with him; never fell in love, never explored the worlds of ice or sand or rainforest. And then, that night, when she woke him before dawn, when she stood in the airport next to a boy not understanding why his mama had tears streaming down her face. Why didn’t she leave? He should have dragged her onto a plane, insisted that he wanted adventure not Bayeux, and certainly not ghosts.

It wasn’t about you, François.

François sits up, head spinning from too much drink and the room spinning with him.

The battle was taking place inside her, Brigitte says. It doesn’t mean she loved you any less.

François turns away, takes another gulp of wine, and lies back down.

Brigitte sits down on the end of his bed.

You don’t mind if I sit here a while, do you? Then she smiles to herself. Well, of course not, you have no idea that I’m here at all.

Róisín is greeted by a blast of wind so cold it makes her eyes sting. She’s not sure what she’s doing out here, she only knows that she needs to be alone; perhaps she needs to push herself to the edge of what her body can handle and scream into the wild emptiness of Antarctica. She smiles at the memory, that first impression she had of François staring up at her, the wild wonder in his eyes, but too soon it is replaced by an image of Liam, eyes down, drawing the farm when she’d wanted him to admire the sky.

When she was sleeping next to François, Liam had forced his way into her dreams, into her consciousness, into her room to stand by the window and pull her back to what she wanted to leave behind. And now, having calmly packed her survival bag, having let her toes cross the threshold, peering from one world into the next, as she steps out into the blistering cold and starts to walk away from the safety of the base into wild howling evening of ice and wind, where is Liam? Not here.

Perhaps he wants her to find an isolation more complete than the one in the research base, where it will be just her and him. Perhaps that was what he always wanted.

She’s walking fast now, away from the base, away from François and his second bottle of wine – she could see he was battling his
own ghosts tonight. She was surprised to learn he had them too, but she wasn’t able to help either of them. Although, when she told him to stay asleep, perhaps she should have asked him to wake up. But it is done. He will be OK, he doesn’t know what it is like to be left behind with such spiteful finality.

Perhaps it was not spiteful. Perhaps Liam didn’t think about her at all.

Her steps have turned into a run inland, towards the mountains, away from the coast and the promise of a world still revolving. She has said one goodbye, now it is time for another. Sometimes you have to leave people behind.

When François wakes from strange dreams, the room is empty, as it should be, but the feeling is so strong he can’t deny it. He was not really alone before, but he knows that he is now. He knows, somehow, that a world away from here his mother has died.

He is surprised by the conviction of it – it is not logical, but undeniable nonetheless. He’s been waiting for news even though the news couldn’t reach him. He doesn’t know what else he can do so he drinks, and cries, and lets his heart break.

But later that night, dizzy from the red wine, he finds a cup of cocoa on his shelf, half hidden behind his bobble hat. It has gone cold, developed a skin of milk that is marbled, patchy; less perfect than the snow. It is undrinkable.

He holds the cup between his hands, closes his eyes. Imagines his mama’s ghost is approaching.

Róisín’s running slows; her strength should be conserved if she’s going to make it to the mountains.

Her backpack is heavy this time – not like when she went out with Liam, jumped the river that sloshed over rocks and old tree
branches, the water soaking her feet through her trainers – and it makes her visible. It is a splash of red in the white wilderness. She is not trying to hide or to die; that is not what she wants to experience in Antarctica, miles from any other human being, on the night the comet will be at its brightest. But she needs something; wants to leave the past behind and wake up, alone, as untouched as the perfect fresh snow, and she knows that sometimes, if you hold your breath and look up at a comet for long enough, the sky can change.

She marks her way by the stars, though they disappear behind clouds soon enough and she has to trust her senses in a world that has no direction, that has lost its sense of forwards and back.

The cliffs help. Their shadow is still visible, and so she heads towards the mountain range with its tunnels of caves excavated by ice. She hasn’t been there before but she’s read about these mountains; she felt drawn to them, the descriptions reminding her of other caves from around the world, prehistoric homes and hidden lakes that lie undiscovered for millennia. She loves the idea of what water and ice can create when left alone, to flow, to freeze or thaw.

She gets into a rhythm. One foot after the next is all she needs to do, and she will get there.

There is something liberating about making a decision and walking straight towards it.

Cave is the wrong word for what she finds; it is a scoop into the ice, a satin-smooth concave structure, like a cupped palm, near the base of the mountain. Looking up, she can see the comet, bright and determined, and the clouds moving in from the coast. She undoes her backpack and takes out a notebook, like the one she used to carry as a child. Her sketch of the night sky is amateur at best, made
worse by the difficulty of drawing in padded gloves, but this is not for publication, this is for something entirely different. She marks on the constellations she can see, flattening the dome to show the swirl of the Milky Way at the horizon, and through the upturned horseshoe of stars she marks the comet, drawn like a bigger star with a triangular tail sweeping out behind. She has seen a drawing of a comet like that before, but can’t remember where. If she had colours, she would shade it in gold and red, but she only has black and white. When her eyes turn back to the sky, though, that’s how she sees it – bright gold, like a child’s drawing of a shooting star.