A Good Enough Mother
Page 29
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It’s two days after my return from Greece that the card arrives. I see it on the mat from the top of the stairs. It’s a bright colourful picture of a mountain and some trees. From a distance, it looks like junk mail. A promotional advert for a car, or an insurance policy. It’s only when I’m closer, reaching down to pick it up, that I see it is a postcard.
The moment slows right down as the picture comes into view. It’s a view of a dense rugged pine forest. There’s a river cut between the trees, racing through the woods in a cascade of crashing water. A big sky with snowy mountains in the distance. The sun is coming up. A glint of gold on the water. High above the trees, there’s a bird with wings outstretched. A bird of prey. A black hawk perhaps. It shoots like an arrow across the big wide cloudless sky.
There’s a thud in my chest. I can barely breathe.
Alaska.
I flip it over. The card is blank. No message. Unsigned. Just Mum, Dad and Carolyn, and our address written in his familiar neat slanting handwriting. A postmark dated nine days ago. The tears come instantly, sliding down my cheeks as I drop to my knees. I don’t know how long I sit there on the mat by the door. The card pressed against my body. After nearly three years, I hug the news to my chest as if it was his very head cradled in my arms.
When I phone David, then Carolyn, we cry across three countries. He’s alive, is all I manage to say.
Later on, I’m at the computer, Googling a map of the area. I’m poring over the terrain, astonished by the vastness of Alaska. Somewhere, I think, in that huge wildness is my son. My son. Of course, I have the urge to track him down. To go and find him. To wrap my arms around him. The computer mouse moves over the screen, slowly and carefully around the vast and uninhabited landscape. My fingers walk the paths, as if to trace his steps. Into the wild. A thought filters up. I could take a plane. A trip up from Seattle. But as quickly as it’s formed, I fold it away. I look again at the card. At what he is trying to tell me. Going to find him is not what he would want. Instead, I go to the bookshelf and find his copy of the book he fell in love with. The book that touched his soul. The book I didn’t read properly before. There are lots of passages that he has underlined in pencil, extracts from the diaries of travellers over the course of history, but there is one that catches my eye. I write it out and pin it to the fridge.
As to when I shall visit civilisation, it will not be soon, I think. I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled life to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me?
He’s now a twenty-year-old man. I think of him in the splendid isolation that he so often craved. When I picture him out in the wilderness, in that immense wild landscape, I think of that week we all spent in the cabin in Devon, and it makes me smile. I think of his joy as he whittled sticks, built a fire, and carved our fishing rods. That week when he showed the best of himself. That week when we all showed the best of ourselves. I think of his determined resourcefulness. His sense of self-sufficiency. His love of wild places.
The postcard has a home in my bag, I carry it with me always. It sits with the small sketches that Carolyn drew of us in the cabin in Devon, and the small tin rectangle with the beating heart.
I think of Tom all the time, but it now feels different. It’s a less frantic and desperate kind of thinking. Before, my thoughts were formless and anxious, a search for an image that might give me some kind of answer. Now I have the luxury of a picture, of some certainty, and I can make a frame around his life.
There are bad days, when I’m gripped by how far away he is. When I get frightened by his smallness, out alone in the wilderness. There are days when missing him feels like a hole in my chest. When I have days like this, I simply try to breathe.
On a good day, I think of him happy and fulfilled. And I wish him love. I see him in my mind’s eye: tall and lean, his skin weathered by the wind and sun. I imagine him moving with a confidence. Hacking his way through the undergrowth. A scarf pulling back his hair from his face. His hair is long now, uncut for weeks, hanging in golden spirals to his shoulder. He has made himself a dwelling, somewhere in the woods. He has blended into his environment. He has built a shelter. I know he will have visited the abandoned bus, the place where Christopher McCandless died, but I don’t imagine him lingering there. It has become a mecca for tourists, a symbolic place for travellers. He would have left at dawn. Surveyed the empty shell of the bus, read the messages from fellow travellers, and would have gone on his way, silently and alone. I see him seeking out paths that have not been trod before. Making his footsteps on new unmarked soil. He stops to watch a bird overhead. It swoops and soars, high in a sky that is a deep dark blue. I watch him as he looks up and smiles, his face turned to the sun.
This is how I like to picture him. And imagining him like this is my way of trying to let him go. In the hope that if I do, he might one day find his way back home to me.
Acknowledgements
Throughout my career in the NHS, I’ve had the privilege of working with exceptionally talented clinicians and colleagues. Particular thanks go to Mary Burd, Jane Gibbons and Yvonne Millar who have been inspirational in shaping my thinking and approach to my work. I’m also very grateful to William Halton for his ongoing care, wisdom and insight. I’d like to thank all my colleagues at Tavistock Consulting, and Brian Rock and Laure Thomas at the Trust for their support.
I wrote a lot of words before this book, and I’ve had the pleasure of being part of many different writing groups along the way. From Tufnell Park to Taos, I’d like to thank all my fellow writers for encouragement, a sense of belonging and the shared love of words and stories.
Writing can feel like an act of blind faith, but it’s one that’s been helped by the support of many lovely friends. I am indebted to all those who have either encouraged or read my writing over the years, or offered commiseratory drinks in the face of rejection; particular thanks to Vicky Browning, Fliff Carr, Isanna Curwen, Maggie Greene, Sara Holloway, Nat Hunter, Anna Jones, Rebecca Lacey, Emma Lilly, Shirley McNicholas, Megan Meredith, Chris Murray, Sally Norton, Carey Powell, Liz Stubbs and Kay Trainor. Extra special thanks to Sam Cook, for endlessly reading my writerly offerings, and for keeping the faith when I came close to losing it.
I’m also grateful to Christopher Wakling, whose unequivocal words on a Shropshire Arvon helped me to the finishing line. A big thank you to Sean Larkin QC for help with all my legal queries; all errors or liberties taken are entirely my own. I’d also like to thank Jon Krakauer for Into the Wild, which unexpectedly found its way into the pages of this story.
I am beyond grateful to my fantastic agent Karolina Sutton, for her energy, joy, curiosity and excellent matchmaking skills – but also for seeing something in my early chapters that kept me going to complete the rest.
A very big thank you to my brilliant editors – to Louisa Joyner in the UK and Pamela Dorman in the US; to their assistants Libby Marshall and Jeramie Orton and the whole teams at Faber & Faber and Penguin Random House respectively, for looking after me so well – and thank you, too, to Anne Collins and Amanda Betts in Canada. Their collective enthusiasm from the outset was amazing – as was the editorial care, insight and thoughtfulness over the months. It has been a real delight to work with them all, and I feel so incredibly fortunate to have found a home with these publishing houses. I’d also like to thank my copy editors Tamsin Shelton and Jane Cavolina for forensic work on timelines and the rest.
Finally, this is a book about family, and it would not exist without my own. Love and gratitude to my parents for instilling a passion for books, a spirit of persistence, and for the stories we are given that make up who we are. Huge love and thanks to Paul, f
or many things, but most especially for coming to the Hackney writing group which sparked our best creative endeavours – our gorgeous boys, Joe and Nate. My love to them, such wonderful travelling companions on this unexpected journey; have faith, work hard, dream big.
About the Author
Bev Thomas was a clinical psychologist in the NHS for many years. She currently works as an organisational consultant in mental health and other services. She lives in London with her family. A Good Enough Mother is her debut novel.
Copyright
First published in 2019
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2019
All rights reserved
© Bev Thomas, 2019
Cover design by Faber
Cover photography: © Getty/David Oxberry
The right of Bev Thomas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–34840–4