Invisible River

by Helena McEwen

  We caught the bus there, and bought the flowers from the woman at the top of the Tube steps. I picked the freesias out of the bucket. And we’d walked along the street by the river. It was a cold misty damp day and everything was dripping. There was no one there. It seemed like a miserable little alcove; a stone corridor leading to some steps. There was a piece of red and white tape lying on the paving stones, maybe the police had left it behind and I thought of dad there all curled up, and held him in my mind. We put the flowers in the jam jar and lit the candles and Cecile told us a Buddhist chant and the sound echoed off the walls. She said it would make it peaceful for him, and with the songs and the flowers and the flickering candles, I think it did. Rob said it was good it was by the river, because it was a holy river and it would take him home. We walked down to the riverside and I threw in some of the flowers and they floated along on the surface of the water to St Paul’s.

  And I was certain I could feel him with me; that feeling of being enfolded in something warm. He must have known we were trying to help the part of him that might get left behind, confused.

  But I don’t have that feeling now. I feel alone. Oh dad, I whisper to the cold window, now it’s me who’s left behind, confused.

  When the train pulls into Penzance I step out on to the chilly platform and smell the sea air. I walk into the cold wind outside the station.

  Magda is there, waiting.

  She takes my bags, wraps me in a blanket, and puts me in the car. The red and black tartan blanket smells of cows. Straw and cows. We drive up the lanes and through the trees to her farmhouse on the hill.

  Some people might say it was a coincidence she phoned when she did. I think it was a miracle.

  She was so glad to get the letter from me, she said, and she was so sad to hear what I had to tell her. I could hear her sigh down the telephone, a long sad sigh.

  When I get out of the car into the wind it’s pitch black and I smell the slurry.

  ‘There now,’ says Magda. ‘In you come.’

  She sits me down in front of the woodstove, and it reminds me of being little, when I’d come into Magda’s kitchen with my teeth chattering and she’d wrap me in a blanket so my arms were trapped and put me in front of the woodstove with the door open, and by the time she brought me hot chocolate I’d be warm enough to unwrap my arms. And that’s what she does. She goes over to the stove and makes me hot chocolate.

  ‘Thanks, Magda!’ I say, taking the steaming cup from her.

  ‘There now!’ she says, and sits down beside me and pokes the fire so the flames flare up and sparks fly up the flue.

  Chapter 2

  The day of the funeral is quiet and still. One of those days when you can hear the sea lapping at the bottom of the cliffs, and the sky is clear and the hills are lit up with sunlight.

  I sit by the coffin in the cold dark and look at the twisted ropes that loop around the brass handles while the vicar, with his eyes closed, murmurs prayers.

  I think of my dad lying inside it. I was surprised when I touched his forehead. Surprised by the cold. Magda waited outside the undertaker’s when I walked up the long narrow room with dad laid out at the end next to an urn of false flowers, and when I leaned to kiss his forehead it was cold. Cold as marble.

  The vicar is saying, ‘He’s at peace now,’ and everyone is standing up. The sound of the organ fills the stone church. Magda looks awkward in her black dress, and we sing a hymn with words about finding rest, and peace at last, and I walk behind the coffin in a kind of trance and out the door into the light. I breathe in the scent of the flowers and feel like dad is holding me, as though I’m swathed in something soft. My mother’s grave has been opened up for dad’s coffin to be lowered into, and I realize his pain is over, the longing he always felt for her is finished, and I throw in a handful of earth that drums on the lid. I close my eyes and hear the skylarks and see the river of light.

  Some people shake my hand and look solemn but I can’t seem to focus my eyes properly. Magda says, ‘Sit down on the wall.’ I tell her, ‘No, I’m all right, really, Magda, I’m OK.’ But I can’t get in the car, and have to walk along the cliffs with the waves crashing below and listen to the seagulls crying over the sea.

  And as I walk along the narrow path through the tall yellow gorse I think, ‘I’m glad it’s over for you, dad.’

  Chapter 3

  But for me, it isn’t over.

  In the next few weeks my thoughts don’t fit together, and I walk around Magda’s kitchen and the farmyard, trying to piece together my broken mind.

  I felt it splinter apart when I walked into dad’s cottage and saw the chaos of broken plates, empty bottles, piles of dirty clothes mixed up with books and letters and unpaid bills; and in the study, the stacks of paper that would never become a book.

  I sit at the kitchen table feeling dislocated and unreal and no matter where I look I can’t seem to find myself. There is an empty place where the colours used to be, and I look at the white page of my drawing book and the blankness says, ‘There’s no point to anything.’

  I see puddles in the muddy farmyard that turn into faces and their eyes have the sky in them.

  I go for a walk in the woods and put every feather I find in my hair so when I get back to the farm, my hair is so tangled and twisted into fifteen feathers that Magda has to cut them out.

  I can’t sleep at night and every morning I hear Magda crunch across the gravel under the window before it’s light, on her way to milk the cows.

  ‘Am I going mad, d’you think, Magda?’

  ‘No, you’re just exhausted. It’ll work itself out,’ she says, and sure enough I fall ill with a fever and feel like I am fighting a battle in my dreams.

  I open my eyes a tiny crack and see a piece of light.

  Where am I? I open them and see the window. Or is it a picture?

  There is St Michael’s Mount a long way away.

  I reach out my hand to touch it. Maybe it’s a picture. I lean back on the pillows and close my eyes.

  I see dad’s face under the sheet and the trellis of stories he wove across the room.

  ‘There’s his study to clear,’ I say with a shock, ‘and his face is so cold and so are his hands.’

  Images keep swimming away from me like fish.

  ‘Have a spoonful of soup,’ says Magda’s voice.

  I feel sweat, clammy over my body and dripping down my neck, and a liquid heat behind my eyes.

  ‘Did we bury him, Magda?’

  ‘Yes, love.’

  ‘Why’s my hair short?’

  ‘I had to cut the feathers out . . . Just a spoonful. It’ll do you good.’

  ‘I have to clear the cottage, Magda.’

  I see the mess of broken crockery and the empty bottles on the floor.

  ‘We’ve nearly finished it, Eve. I’ll give you another pillow, then you can sit up.’

  But I push her hand away. The sea of images crashes over me like waves; buildings that implode inwards, splintering bottles, dirty clothes, dark tunnels lit by yellow light. I am pressed down by the weight of the sea.

  I want to tell her, underneath all this, deep down, there is a little sound. It is my sound, but I have to be quiet to hear it.

  Then one morning I wake up and look out the window and see the sun rising behind the Mount, and the sea is pale yellow and turquoise and glows as though the sea itself is the source of light, and I lie in bed listening to the sound of the birds, and my mind is calm, pale blue and still.

  Chapter 4

  ‘My God, Evie, it’s been weeks! How are you? How have you been? I want to hear everything!’

  ‘Oh, Cecile, it’s so lovely to hear your voice!’

  ‘We didn’t know how to get hold of you, even Miss Pym didn’t know. The number we had for you didn’t work.’

  ‘The phone was cut off, I know.’

  ‘At your father’s place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where are you, then?’
/>
  ‘I’m at Magda’s, she’s got a new phone now.’

  ‘Are you OK, Eve?’

  ‘Magda’s been amazing, Ces, I don’t know what I’d have done without her. She helped with everything.’

  ‘But are you OK, Eve?’

  ‘Yes, well now I am. Think I went mad, Ces.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You’ve been through it, Eve. It was hard all that time he was lost, never mind the shock at the police station.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Was it OK, the funeral?’

  ‘Yes. He’s buried with my mum. It was quiet, you know.’

  ‘How did you feel?’

  ‘Dazed, really. But like he was there with me. It was afterwards.’

  ‘What happened afterwards?’

  ‘Oh Ces, d’you really want to hear all this?’

  ‘Course I do, Eve! I’m your friend! I want to know what you’ve been through!’

  I smile at her down the telephone.

  ‘Well, it was after the funeral, really. I went to his cottage with Magda. Oh Cecile, it was a shambles, stuff everywhere. We took all the rubbish to the tip and loads of stuff to the charity shop, and Mr Tremethick’s.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s got the second-hand shop in town. He took most of the furniture.’

  ‘D’you mean you had to clear out the house?’

  ‘Yes, it’s going back to the landlord.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Not till the end of the month.’

  ‘Evie, listen, that in itself. Your whole childhood, everything going.’

  ‘I know, I know, but it wasn’t really that, it was when I went into the study. Oh Ces! I could just feel his despair. It went right through me. I couldn’t breathe. The pain of it was horrible. I felt it somehow. Felt how he felt. All the pages of the book he’d never finish all scattered everywhere. I just couldn’t think straight after that.’

  ‘Look, Eve, it was pretty heavy what he was feeling, it’s bound to leave an atmosphere, but he’s free of it now.’

  ‘I think he had lots of stories in him, Cecile.’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’

  ‘But I don’t know, he got stuck somehow, then he just went down and down. I thought I had to find out why. Now I realize, I just have to know not to do that.’

  ‘Well, it’s good you know you don’t have to follow him down there.’

  ‘D’you know, Ces, I think that’s what I’ve always done. Part of me got lost along with him.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now I don’t have to.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that!’

  ‘I think I’m free now, Ces.’

  ‘Evie, I’m so glad.’

  ‘I think he’s been helping me somehow. I mean just knowing . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t say it, it sounds daft.’

  ‘Well, say it quickly.’

  ‘There are two realities, Cecile, and one of them’s invisible.’

  ‘I know,’ she says.

  A silence falls between us.

  ‘We went back down to the river, you know, Eve, and took flowers, me and Rob.’

  ‘Oh thanks, Cecile, thanks so much.’

  I look out the window and down over the fields to the bay and the Mount shrouded by mist, and the Lizard beyond, only just visible along the horizon of the sea.

  ‘So where are you now? I want to imagine you.’

  ‘Sitting by the window at the kitchen table, next to the stove.’

  ‘Sounds nice and warm. What can you see out the window?’

  ‘One looks on to the farmyard,’ I say, looking out the rain-spattered window.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The barn, the big blue door to the cowshed.’

  ‘What’s the weather like?’

  ‘Wet.’

  ‘And the other one?’

  ‘Down over the fields to Mount’s Bay.’

  ‘The sea? Can you see the sea?’

  ‘Only just. There’s mist today. But I can see it. Then in the far distance, there’s the Lizard.’

  ‘What colour is it?’

  ‘Grey.’

  ‘Have you been painting it, Evie?’

  ‘I can’t, somehow. Everything’s gone blank.’

  ‘Well, maybe it has to do that for a bit. But it’ll be back, Evie.’

  ‘How’s your work going, Cecile?’

  ‘Well, I like it. I’ve got into green. Everything’s green. But the terrible tutors are just the same.’

  ‘Oh no, how?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know. They all troop in and stand in front of the pictures and something in me just curls up and runs away. They don’t even have to say anything.’

  ‘Yes, I know the feeling.’

  ‘But you stood up to Sergei.’

  ‘Sort of, I was at the end of my tether, more like. It’s funny, I can’t really remember now. It seems like another life.’

  ‘Well, it’s like that, isn’t it, when you’ve been through stuff. Eve, have you got friends down there?’

  ‘Not any more. They’ve all moved upcountry now.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘What have you been doing today, Ces?’

  ‘We were drawing with Karl.’

  ‘Three-second poses?’

  Cecile laughs. ‘No, they’re five minutes now.’

  I feel a pang, remembering the classes, remembering charcoal and rubbers and dust and the struggle to put the model on the page.

  ‘Will you say hello to the other two?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And tell Miss Pym I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Otherwise they might throw me out.’

  ‘Not with Miss Pym in charge.’

  ‘Oh Ces, I’m so glad you’re there.’

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Evie, and I’m so glad you’re there too. But I’d prefer you here.’

  ‘I’m coming back.’

  ‘Well, come back soon. Karl says he’s going to get a shed in Regent’s Park to store the materials, and do a painting project in the park now the weather’s getting warmer. You have to be back for that, Eve, all the flowers will be coming out.’

  ‘Oh Cecile, it sounds lovely.’

  ‘Yes and we can have picnics, you know. It’ll be fun. I miss you, Evie!’

  ‘I miss you too, Ces.’

  ‘Evie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you should burn all those papers. He doesn’t need them now. It might set him free too, you know. Build a bonfire and burn them, Evie.’

  ‘Yes, I will, Ces, I think you’re right.’

  ‘And give your sketchbook a chance.’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  Cecile laughs. ‘See you soon.’

  When I put the phone down, I take out my sketchbook to face the blank page, but when I look at the white, I see the white sky and the line of the horizon barely visible, and the Lizard pale blue in the far distance along the horizon of the sea. And within a few strokes the blank page has turned into the sea, the sky and the far-away land.

  Chapter 5

  The sack of potatoes is in the shed by the back door. The potatoes are muddy, and as I pick them out, the grit gets under my nails. I put them in the colander one by one. The sack is nearly empty and the potatoes have begun to sprout. I take them into the kitchen and wash them in the big square sink under the window.

  I can still smell the smoke in my hair.

  I did what Cecile told me, and burned the papers. I sat by the bonfire and fed the pages into the flames one by one, and watched them licked and swallowed by the fire, and the smoke coiled and billowed round me. All except a slip of paper that was whipped out my hand by the wind. It flew into my face so I caught it against my cheek. I want to keep it to show Cecile; it’s a quote from William Blake.

  I peel the potatoes slowly and plop them in a pan of cold water.

  It was written in dad’s hand
writing so I felt like he was saying it to me.

  ‘Everything in the Universe is lit by its own inner light,’ and I folded it up and put it in my pocket. I look out the window into the farmyard and see Magda coming through the blue door in the corrugated iron barn that glows in the evening sunlight against the dark grey sky.

  She opens the back door, bringing a blast of cold air into the room that makes the flames flicker in the stove.

  ‘Well now,’ she, says taking off her coat, ‘there’s quite a wind!’

  She goes to the fridge and takes out the package of fish she bought from the fish van.

  ‘All ready for tomorrow, then?’ she says.

  I dry my hands and lean on the kitchen table and watch her unwrapping the fish.

  ‘I think so, Magda.’

  ‘Come now, you can help me,’ she says, lifting down the big black pan.

  I place the pieces of fish in the pan; the white flesh is bluish, the skin is striped silver.

  I spread them with butter and Magda pours the milk over. She lights the gas and lifts the pan on to the stove. The butter melts into yellow puddles in the milk, and simmers gently.

  ‘It’ll be a different place without you, Eve.’

  I look up at her, but she is busy weighing out the butter.

  ‘Now get the flour down for me, love.’

  I take it off the shelf and weigh out two ounces.

  ‘So you’ll be going straight to your little flat?’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘My friend Bianca’s cousin has been staying there.’

  ‘Well now, that’s good.’

  Magda puts the weighed-out butter into a smaller pan to melt and hands me the wooden spoon.

  ‘There now, love. Mix the flour in and mix it so that it’s smooth.’

  I pour the flour into the hot yellow liquid and stir. The mixture smoothes into a paste and begins to change texture.

  Magda pours the milk off the fish into a jug and hands it to me.

  ‘Now you can add the milk the fish cooked in,’ she says, ‘but slowly, so it doesn’t go lumpy.’