by Gillian Best
I hardly noticed that the door was open. I was in a rush. I had other things on my mind. I called hello as I walked into the foyer but got no answer. There had been no time to register the emptiness of the house because my phone rang and I had to take it. It was an urgent work matter. It had to take priority.
From the depths of the old tartan sofa, I dialled the number I had memorised years ago, and it rang and rang until the answerphone picked up.
‘Hello, this is Beth. I’m sorry to have missed your call, but if you leave me a message I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
Then there was a squealing beep and silence. I held the handset to my ear, listening to nothing and wondering if I stayed on the line long enough if it was possible to reset history. The dull, electrical buzz in my ear continued until I was satisfied that there was nothing I could do to change things.
The call I had received from work meant that I had to go back to the office and so without giving it any more thought I had got back into my car and retraced my steps from that morning. Round trip and including the time it took for me to resolve the issue, which could have waited until morning except for the fact that I wanted to look good to our new client, I was gone for less than an hour.
And in that time, without my knowing, my daughter sat in A&E suffering from an allergic reaction. Anaphylaxis, I learned later. Brought on by exposure to shellfish, which was strange because my Ellie wasn’t keen on seafood of any kind.
Sometime that night, once I’d caught up with them, once the unanswered phone calls had been answered and I had got in my car again and driven across town to the hospital to find Beth shaking and weeping in a corridor with flickering fluorescent lights and the stomach-churning smell of disinfectant and urine, I learned that there had been a special class at the school that day that had been intended to broaden the children’s tastes. A chef had been brought in specially from town to tempt the students into eating something other than cheesy chips and brown sauce.
Beth said, ‘I found her upstairs, unconscious.’
‘I didn’t notice anything when I got home.’
‘I saw her rucksack in the corridor, her jacket on the stairs.’
I didn’t know if I had seen those things too, all I remembered was that the phone had rung.
‘I called out, to see if anyone was home,’ I said.
‘She couldn’t breathe. How could she have said anything?’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You didn’t think to check?’
‘I didn’t think anything was wrong.’
‘Nothing seemed out of the ordinary?’
And then I remembered that the door had been open. Ajar more like. A tiny crack, which, had things turned out differently, would have been one of those things that become family in-jokes after a while. Our Ellie, always leaving doors open. It was true: the cupboards in the kitchen were always slightly ajar. The things on the stairs and in the corridor didn’t even tug at the corners of my attention because ours was not an overly tidy house, it was a home full of people coming and going, leading busy lives, and as such there were often things on the floor.
All it would have taken was one minute, possibly less, for me to have gone upstairs and looked in her room. But I didn’t.
The doorbell shattered the silence and I jumped when I heard it. When I opened the door to find Martha standing there my heart was pounding in my chest.
‘Have you got a passport?’ she asked.
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say but it wasn’t that.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Is everything alright?’ It was a stupid question to ask, too vague and general, and in almost every way I already knew that the answer was no, but it felt important to ask.
‘Go and get it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you won’t be able to get off the ferry without it.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘France.’
‘Why?’
‘We don’t have time for all these questions. The next ferry leaves in forty-five minutes.’ She adjusted the strap of her handbag on her shoulder.
She made quite a strange character standing there on my doorstep demanding I accompany her to France. It was certainly the first time anyone had demanded I go anywhere and something about the way she held herself, back straight, chin up, not breaking eye contact for one minute, made it clear that she would not be taking no for an answer.
‘What about Webb?’
‘He’ll be fine. We won’t be long.’
We managed to make the ferry and were standing on the deck as the wind whipped up around us and I stole a glance unnoticed at Martha. It was hard to say exactly how old she was. Her skin was weathered by her time spent in the water but it didn’t age her as it might have done if she had worked on a farm her entire life. The sun, wind and sea had got into her face, etched delicate lines around her eyes and mouth, but they hadn’t stolen her youthfulness, which for me was held in the tan lines that lurked in unexpected places, like the back of her neck and her temples. When she had her hair cut after the summer season a line, like a water line, was revealed on the back of her neck and it was the same on her temples where if you knew what you were looking for you could make out a faint line left by the strap of her goggles. Her laugh was the most youthful thing about her though. It was a girl’s laugh, high-pitched and full of surprised delight.
‘Martha,’ I said.
She turned toward me and the wind scattered her hair across her face.
‘France?’
She grinned. ‘Mais oui.’
‘Could you be more specific?’
‘Bistro de la Cap,’ she said, before turning her attention back to the water.
I’d learned in the years we had known each other that if the sea was in sight that’s where her eyes would be drawn. Some days it was impossible to have a conversation unless it related to the tides or swell or wind. Her body was the only part of her that ever came onto dry land and everything else – everything that mattered – did not.
The ferry crossing would take an hour and a half, so I left Martha to her thoughts. I went inside and took a seat away from the excited tourists and holidaymakers. I hadn’t brought a book with me, which rendered me at the mercy of my own thoughts and the shapes on the carpeting under my feet plunged me back to that awful night in the hospital.
I had spent a long time examining the pattern of the flooring trying to outsmart it and discover where it repeated itself in the wrong order. I scrutinised a one-foot square area until I knew it by heart: a series of blue, grey and green diamonds, all touching and fanning out in circles. I searched for the rules to the pattern, devising them as quickly as I rejected them. I did this because it was easier than talking to Beth about what had happened.
We were waiting because that’s what hospitals are for. Everyone in them is waiting for something: a doctor or nurse, to get well, to go home. It was horrible of me, but I was cheered slightly when I saw another family leaving in tears because I figured that there was only so much bad news to go around and that if these other families bore the brunt of it then there was still a chance we might escape – not unscathed, but still in one piece.
Would another dreary NHS corridor be in my future? Would I be the one to take Martha to her appointments, as John’s unravelling mind could not consistently be counted on for the mundane basics of life like driving and the days of the week?
When the ferry arrived, we got back in the car and drove through Calais awkwardly. Martha navigated from a memory that was over twenty years old because I was without a relevant map.
‘Head towards the sea. Follow the road that hugs the coast,’ Martha said, by way of directions. I did as I was told and thought that her instructions to me then could have easily been the motto she used for every situation life had ever thrown at her.
It felt strange to drive on the right hand side of the road and I was grateful the motorway wasn’t busy. The Chann
el stretched out on the passenger side like an oil slick and Martha rolled down the window and the sea air swept in, filling the car with its distinctive smell of summer holidays and ice cream picnics.
From time to time I glanced at the water. It lapped onto the shore here too and I wondered if somewhere out there, in the middle of the Channel, it parted like a schoolboy’s haircut. Was there a line down the middle where the water was given its orders?
Her eyes were still shut when we reached the little village.
‘We’re here,’ I said softly.
She looked around and pointed to the left. ‘Down that road just there.’
She adjusted her position in the seat, sitting up taller and leaning forward as though she couldn’t wait. ‘You know, I only swum from France once. It’s not allowed anymore.’
‘Why?’
‘We had to wait for the weather.’
‘No, I mean why isn’t it allowed?’
She shrugged. ‘The French authorities made a decision.’
‘Based on what?’
‘Who knows? It’s a shame, it gave you an advantage. The currents are miserable here. Better to get them out of the way at the beginning of a swim, when you’ve got the most energy.’
The village was not that different to a small coastal village back home: there was a butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer, hardware store and a handful of cafes and bistros. It also gave me that slightly sad end of holidays feeling as we drove through the half-empty streets. It was a summer town and we were at the end of the season, so the day-after-the-night-before atmosphere was heavy in the air.
I parked and followed her down to the shore, which was completely different to ours on the other side. Where ours was formidable with the white cliffs standing guard, looming over the sea as though to remind it that they had risen above its depths, here there was a sandy beach, windswept and rugged, with dunes to hide away in that stretched along the coast as far as I could see. It was a difference in national identity: the English coast buttoned up and formal, and the French coast relaxed and ready for a bit of sunbathing.
I held out my hand to steady her as we tripped down the dunes, but she didn’t take it. The sand shifted under our feet and I wasn’t prepared for it, but she was. Her body must have remembered it: this place, these dunes, and this sand. I hoped the place remembered her as fondly as she did it.
She made a beeline for the sea. Once she was at the water’s edge she crouched down and put her hands in, cupping up a handful of water that she then splashed on her face.
‘What are you doing that for?’ I asked.
Seawater dripped off the tip of her nose. ‘If we were Catholic, and went into church, we would bless ourselves with holy water.’
‘We’re not Catholic and we’re not in church.’
‘Only one of those things is true, Henry.’
She daubed the drips off her face with the cuff of her jacket as she stared out at the deep.
‘What are you looking at?’ I asked.
The wind blew the spray onshore.
‘Myself,’ Martha said.
She stayed like that, crouched at the foot of the sea, while I looked on feeling very much like an unwanted intruder. She touched the sand, ran her fingers through it, drew lines and circles in it, and rinsed her hands over and over again in the cold, grey water. Eventually she stood up and we continued walking south.
‘You swam from this beach?’
She pointed in front of us at a point that jutted out into the sea up ahead. ‘Further down, past that marker. The currents are a bit easier.’
‘When was this?’
‘I was planning to go on the 30th of August, but there was weather. I waited here until the 3rd of September.’ She brushed her fringe off her face. ‘All my successful swims were in September.’
‘What do you mean, waited?’
‘Your pilot gives you a week-long window. You go when he says it’s time. I didn’t get the green light immediately, so I waited.’
‘I bet John wasn’t happy about that.’
‘No, but he and the children managed.’
‘He wasn’t with you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I travelled on my own.’
I couldn’t have been sure but it sounded like there was a hint of pride in her voice just then.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Why what?’
‘Did you swim it?’
She stopped walking and smiled. ‘Because I wanted to see if I could and I wanted to know what it was like, being out there in the middle of the open water.’
I looked at the sea. To me, it was a cauldron of froth, foaming at the mouth, ready to devour anyone foolish enough to tempt it. You couldn’t see the bottom, and you couldn’t see the end of it, it was cold and smelled like fish.
‘Weren’t you frightened?’
She traced a curve in the wet sand. ‘Only once, and only briefly.’
I waited for her to go on.
‘I fell in when I was a girl. Nearly drowned.’
‘And you went back in?’
‘The next day.’
‘Why?’
She put her hand on my shoulder and tucked her hair behind her ear as she looked at me. ‘Because…’ She paused and looked at the water as if it knew the answer. ‘Because it was one of the few things that made my father… feel better.’
We continued to walk down the beach while the tide came in and the surf grazed her shoes. I angled inland wary of the salt.
‘Must have been nice, to know you were swimming home.’
She murmured something that sounded like agreement.
‘When were you last here?’
‘September, 1985. It’s the only time I’ve ever been to France. For more than a few minutes.’ She stopped walking. ‘It’s the only time I ever left England.’
‘Apart from now.’
‘Apart from now,’ she said, and then turned around and walked back in the direction from which we came.
We walked into the wind. Our footsteps were lost to the incoming tide and the sand looked untouched, as though we had never been there. The scant markings we left behind had been erased, taken to the depths of the sea.
Further up ahead, there was a row of plain cottages overlooking the water that had obviously been built in a more modest time. Perched on the threshold of the sea, they appeared to stand guard as the water consumed the earth, inch by inch. Martha walked towards the buttery one with the red tile roof and once she reached the wooden steps, she climbed up them with the familiarity of someone who lived there.
‘Martha?’
I hesitated at the foot of the stairs.
‘The food is very good.’
She paused before opening the door, which was a sliding glass door similar to the ones commonly found in homes with nice back gardens and the primary reason I felt uncomfortable following her inside. But as she slid it open without so much as knocking and went inside, there was nothing left for me to do but follow.
The interior was small and was basically a large lounge that had been redecorated in the style of a dining room. There were a total of five pine tables, with one fresh flower in an identical vase in the centre. The décor was provided – primarily – by the sea: the entire back wall was one big window, and the rest of the room with its cream walls and tastefully generic artwork knew its place.
We stood on the edge of the entranceway, waiting for someone to appear and Martha seemed as comfortable there as she was in her own lounge. I expected to have an angry Frenchman chasing us down the dunes within minutes.
‘Are you sure about this?’
Before she could reply, a waitress appeared and we were told to take whichever table suited us. Martha chose the one with the best view.
‘I stayed here,’ she said, once we were settled.
She looked at the menu and fiddled around with the salt and pepper shakers, then it was the vase that was the object of her attention. She twirled it between her f
ingers absently, as she might have done with her hair had it been longer, while she looked around the room searching for something that felt just out of sight.
The waitress brought a bottle of white wine though we hadn’t ordered any. Martha went to the bar in the very back, which looked like a more tasteful version of the average Dad’s bar, and leaned over the counter.
‘Henry,’ she said. ‘Look!’
I followed her smile and there, behind the bar, were some old photographs curling at the edges and a few more newspaper clippings – some written in English, but most in French – that were yellowed with age.
‘Second from the bottom,’ she said, pointing.
I squinted. ‘Is that you?’ It was a picture of a woman on a beach in an old swimming costume, modest in cut, staring – almost glaring – at the camera.
She nodded.
‘He really did put it up.’
‘Sorry?’
She went back to the table and took a drink. ‘I promised I’d send him the article, from the local paper back home. And in return he promised to put it up.’
She rested her chin in her hand and her expression suggested that she was somewhere else.
‘How many times have you swum it now?’
‘Nine, successfully. Ten attempts.’
‘Once more?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’ll manage it. Not now.’
‘You don’t know that for sure.’
‘Henry.’ She looked at me gravely.
‘Other people have.’
‘I’m not other people.’
No, I thought. You aren’t.
Dinner arrived and we ate in a comfortable silence.
In the hospital, Beth and I had stood with Ellie’s hospital bed between us as we watched her, waiting for her to wake up. The silence that filled the room was tense and sharp. Our hope was that during the time our baby girl had been deprived of oxygen that her brain hadn’t suffered too much long term damage, but there was no way of telling until she woke up.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Beth ignored me.
‘I didn’t know.’
She wouldn’t look me in the eye.
‘I love her.’
Beth’s expression told me that she didn’t believe me.