by Sarah Winman
He knew she was out there somewhere. Living. And to know that was everything.
V
54
Autumn 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
Drake 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 h
e 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.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their support, generosity and kindness during the writing of this book:
My family, especially my mum, for being so inspiring, and my nephew and niece, Tom and Kate Winman, for being such enthusiastic early listeners.
Everyone at Tinder Press for their energy and commitment, most notably my editor Leah Woodburn for her guidance and for encouraging me to write the story I wanted to write, and Vicky Palmer for her marketing magnificence.
My friends, here and abroad, for everything we have shared and continue to share. Sharon Hayman for your wisdom and encouragement and for all that you are. Patricia Flanagan, David Lumsden, Sarah Thomson, Simon Page-Ritchie, Melinda McDougall, David Micklem, Andrew McCaldon, Vin Mahtani and Maura Brickell, for that perfectly timed phone-call or dinner or drink or walk, or for making me laugh when I often felt like doing the opposite. Selina Guinness for knowing the right thing to say. Thank you to The Gentle Author and the community that has grown around Spitalfields Life blog – you are a constant reminder of why we do what we do. Thank you to St. JOHN Bar and Restaurant, Smithfield, for always being there.
Thank you Nelle Andrew for looking after me so meticulously over that summer, and everyone at PFD for your unwavering support. Thank you to Samia Spice, Paddy Ashdown and Tim Fraser for your help with the last minute panic. My sincere thanks to Tim Binding for taking the time to help me see the story clearly. Thank you Graham and Sheena Pengelly for the starfish, Maureen for afternoons of tea and putting the world to rights, and Old Stan for evenings of whisky and tales.
Research is not something that comes easily to me and I find it sleep inducing at the best of times, frustrating at the worst, and a hindrance, always, to my childlike impulse to spontaneously tell a story. However, the following people, institutions and organisations have made this process enriching – even enjoyable, dare I say it – and I thank you all: The British Library, London Metropolitan Archives, Brian Polley at the London Transport Museum, National Railway Museum and First Great Western, Dover Ferry Photos, Angela Broome at the Royal Cornwall Museum, the Cornwall Record Office, Alison Courtney.
And finally . . .
Robert Caskie. My dear friend and agent. You have endured so many versions of this book and maintained a smile throughout that thanks hardly seem enough. But I am forever grateful for the way you have guided me through this process with such humour, loyalty and belief. In the words of Tina Turner, you’re ‘Simply the Best’.
Patricia Niven. I have you to thank for everything.