The Last Wave

by Gillian Best

  I sighed heavily. ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s hard though.’

  ‘Make it easier then,’ Iris said as she got up from the table. ‘You better go and see what she’s sulking about while I go and sort out the washing up.’

  ‘I thought I heard Myrtle put everything in the dishwasher.’

  ‘Oh she did. But she won’t have rinsed anything, and I don’t want my breakfast to taste like last night’s dinner.’

  I stayed at the table and watched Iris move around the kitchen, re-tracing her daughter’s steps and let my mind wander back to the night before I had left for Oz.

  Harry and I had been drinking vigorously for several hours and it had begun to get the better of us: Harriet was propping her head up on her hand and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stand up when the time came, but somehow we managed to stumble out of the bar and lurch toward Liverpool Street station.

  Her arm was around my waist. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually going. That you’re really going to leave me here.’

  ‘Yep,’ I slurred. ‘I’m leaving you. You’ll have to find a stand-in little brother to wind up.’

  ‘Already got a short list. I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Do tell.’

  ‘Most of them are tall, slim, well off.’

  ‘They sound like trophy husbands.’

  ‘I have high standards. Someone has to pay for my bar bill, it’s not like journalism pays your kind of salary.’

  ‘How will you decide the ultimate winner?’

  ‘Easy,’ she said. ‘He’ll stick around.’

  She had intended the comment to be funny.

  ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly how I’ll know. My new little brother probably won’t even have a passport. But if he did, and it occurred to him that he might want to leave, he’d think about all the people he was leaving behind, you know,’ she said, hiccupping. ‘And how awful it would be for them.’

  Though her head was turned away from me, I saw her wipe her eyes, smearing her mascara. The station was up ahead, and the street was crowded with people in a similar state to us, tripping down the road with half-finished pints still in their hands. Last orders must have just been called.

  ‘I thought about those things,’ I said, steering us toward a quieter corner.

  ‘And you still left! Brilliant! That makes me feel so much better.’

  I leaned against a wall and propped her up next to me. ‘I’m not leaving you, I’m leaving England.’

  ‘You don’t get it,’ she said. ‘When you leave, that’s it. My family is gone.’

  ‘Mum and Dad are still here.’

  ‘They disowned me. You’re it,’ she said. She stared, daring me to contradict her.

  And of course, I couldn’t. It had been over a year since the Boxing Day disaster and her coming out and I knew my parents hadn’t made any attempt to contact her. I phoned every Sunday, like clockwork, and Mum always asked if she was okay, and I always replied that she was, and that was it.

  At the time I had thought that my sister was just angry at me for leaving and that she’d get over it. But after dinner, when I went through to the lounge and she was stretched out lengthwise on the sofa, flicking through the channels, I knew she’d spent the intervening years nursing her abandonment.

  ‘So what do we do?’ I asked, nudging her feet hoping she’d make room for me.

  ‘About what?’ she said, without looking up.

  ‘All of it.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t care?’

  ‘Move over,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Harry, stop it. I want to have a proper conversation with you.’

  She scowled. ‘Why? So you can go home feeling guilt-free? Back to your sunny life with your big house and flush bank account?’

  I sat down on her feet.

  ‘Iain!’ she screeched, sitting up so she could punch me in the arm.

  ‘You wouldn’t move.’

  She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her head against the arm of the sofa. Both of us stared at the telly, then I glanced over and our eyes met and we burst into laughter.

  ‘You’re still a dick,’ she said.

  ‘And you’re still a twat.’

  ‘You know, that first year I thought about moving back. I even went to the travel agent to see how much a ticket would cost.’

  ‘You did not.’

  ‘I did. I hated it. I had no friends, didn’t even know anyone outside the office. No family, nothing. I was lonely like you wouldn’t believe.’

  She muted the TV. ‘Isn’t that one of the benefits? Move halfway across the world to get away from your family.’

  ‘Not when it’s Christmas and everyone else has plans. Not when you don’t know a soul. Not on your birthday.’

  ‘Don’t even try bullshitting me. You have friends.’

  ‘Friends aren’t the same as family.’

  ‘And that means so much to you that this is the first time you’ve been in my house. Because you love us all so much but in the years since you moved away, this is the second time you came back?’

  I started straight ahead at the TV. ‘Come back a failure? I had to stick it out, I mean, can you just imagine what they would’ve thought?’

  She chuckled. ‘Mum would’ve said you hadn’t committed.’

  ‘Right. And Dad?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have said anything,’ she said, sitting up and wrapping her arms around her legs. ‘He would’ve just shaken his head and despaired because you would’ve been as disappointing, if not more, than me.’ She sighed. ‘And now we have to take care of them.’

  ‘How do we do it? How do we get him into a care home?’

  ‘It’s not easy. There are good ones and bad ones.’

  ‘Private or NHS?’

  ‘Private, all the way. And you’re paying.’

  ‘He gets the best.’

  ‘Agreed,’ she said.

  ‘I would’ve thought you wouldn’t have been that bothered if he didn’t get the best.’ I braced myself for an explosive reaction.

  She leaned back against the couch and was quiet.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—’

  ‘No, no you’re alright. I didn’t take offence. I probably deserved it,’ she said. ‘Just because he was a crap father doesn’t mean he deserves to suffer. Even I have a hard time staying mad at him when he’s like this.’

  ‘He wasn’t always a crap father.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t.’ She leaned forward and refilled her glass of wine. ‘Do you want some?’ I nodded and she went to get me a glass.

  As I scanned the room I noticed there was evidence of Iris’ calming influence everywhere, from the candles to the soft throw pillows and even the colour scheme – earthy and woodsy – as opposed to what I imagined Harry would have chosen on her own. It was nice to see that someone had managed to smooth out her sharper edges over the years.

  There were pictures, too. Family photos, of Iris’ family I assumed, since I didn’t recognise their faces. But when I’d got up to take a closer look, wedged in the back was a picture of our family, on the beach at Dover, Mum in swimming costume, Harry with her arm around her, smiling proudly, Dad with his arm around me and Mum, and all of us looking, in our own ways, every bit the content, close family we had been in the beginning.

  I took it off the shelf and brought it back to the couch and when Harry returned with a glass and another bottle of wine I held it up to her.

  She seemed embarrassed to be the sort of person who would keep such a sentimental thing.

  ‘Why d’you keep it?’ I asked.

  ‘Still family, innit.’

  ‘For someone who hates them, it’s an odd thing to have up in the lounge.’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t hate them anymore. Hate’s too strong. I don’t understand them, but…’ She took the picture from me and looked at it. ‘Myrtle changed things for me. It’s hard you know, you try to do your best… They
aren’t the best parents, but they’re the only ones we’ve got.’

  ‘But you never went to visit, until now.’

  She shook her head. ‘My daughter changed things, she didn’t make me perfect. Anyhow,’ she said running her hand over the frame. ‘I’m trying to get over the bad bits by remembering the good bits.’

  ‘Is it working?’

  ‘It’s not easy.’ She handed me my glass. ‘Are we terrible?’

  ‘Generally or more specifically?’

  ‘Both maybe? I dunno, it’s just… it took this,’ I swept my arms open, hoping to encompass everything that had happened in the past few weeks. ‘To get us to notice them. They’ve been up there, ticking away all these years, and we haven’t noticed they were getting old, and needed help.’

  ‘We probably are terrible, but they don’t make it easy.’

  ‘I hate that this is happening to them.’

  She nodded. ‘I hate that it happens.’

  That night I slept on a blow up mattress in Myrtle’s room and I thought about how strange it was that my parents were the ones who needed my help now. I had known it would happen, but the difference was in the details.

  I thought of my father, who had helped me with my multiplication tables in school, who had taught me to polish my shoes, to always walk on the outside of the pavement with a woman, and had spent a long time teaching me how to whistle. I pictured his face when I graduated from university, filled with pride and astonishment, and that cheeky wink he’d given me when Daphne Rogers – a girl who was completely out of my league – had agreed to go out with me, even though it was only to irritate her ex-boyfriend who hated me. I tried to fill in the blanks in the years I’d been away.

  It occurred to me quite suddenly that, even though I knew a lot about my father, I didn’t know everything – I didn’t know anywhere near the full picture and the time to do that, to find out who he was, was slipping away.

  ‘Uncle Iain?’ Myrtle whispered.

  ‘Yeah?’ I rolled onto my side and saw her face lit up by the glow of the phone. ‘You still playing that game?’

  ‘No,’ she said, holding it out for me to see. ‘Have you seen this?’

  I looked at the website and smiled. ‘No, but that’s your grandmother.’

  My mother’s picture was there next to a list of all her Channel swims.

  ‘I made it because she didn’t have a Wiki page and I thought, you know, she should.’

  ‘Did you show it to her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll love it.’

  ‘How come Mum doesn’t talk about her?’

  ‘That’s a long story.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What did she say when you asked her?’

  ‘Nothing really. Iris said Grandpa didn’t like them, but…’

  ‘You want to know them, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They’re a strange old pair, and whatever Harriet tells you about what happened, just remember this: they love her.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  I chuckled. ‘It’s not my question to answer.’ I looked at her and her face was so young and curious. ‘Do you know how come your grandmother was able to swim the Channel?’

  ‘She’s a good swimmer.’

  ‘No. She is, but that’s not how she did it. She’s strong-willed. Stubborn even.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She said to me once, that when you get in the water you have to know that you’re not getting out until you reach the other side. Simple as that.’

  ‘I wish I could’ve known her better.’

  ‘She’ll be around for a while longer.’

  ‘It makes them fight,’ Myrtle said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My mums. Iris thinks we should visit more often.’

  ‘She’s stubborn too. And you are too, I think. In a good way.’

  ‘What was she like when you were growing up?’

  ‘Who? Harriet?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Not a whole lot different than she is now. But her hair was different though. She got the world’s worst perm once.’

  ‘No!’

  I laughed, remembering how she looked like a clown. ‘It was horrible. She’s probably burned all the pictures. She’d begged our parents. Did chores around the house, like big ones: painting, cleaning, gardening. Washed Dad’s car so many times we joked the paint would come off before she could afford it. Then one Saturday afternoon, when she finally had enough money saved up, off she went. And when she came back a few hours later she was inconsolable. Absolutely sobbing, saying things like she wasn’t going out until it washed off, that she wanted to shave it all off. Mum tried to calm her down, told her it wasn’t the end of the world, but Harry wasn’t having any of it.’

  Myrtle was leaning over the edge of her bed, loving it, and I made myself a promise that I would get Harriet to tell her daughter more stories about back home. Not everything that had happened was awful.

  ‘So two days later, she cut it off and it looked even worse. Your mother does not suit short hair. It looked like… Boy bedhead, sticking up all over the place. Mum took pity on her and they went back to the hairdresser together to see if there was anything that could be done. But, of course, there was nothing they could do. Your Mum bought a hat in a charity shop on her way back and refused to take it off. Our Mum insisted she take it off at the dinner table, but Harry was so mortified she made an exception. In fact,’ I smiled, picturing how silly we’d all looked, ‘our Mum got up and after a few minutes came back and passed the rest of us a hat. We must’ve eaten dinner with hats on for a week.’

  I hadn’t thought of that in years and remembering the first dinner we’d had after it had happened with everyone sitting there trying to continue as though everything were perfectly normal struck me as particularly sweet.

  In the morning, Myrtle got up for practice before it was light. She stumbled over my mattress and I mumbled something about seeing her later. When I heard Iris and Harriet get up, I got up as well and as I was about to open the door I paused. I heard them talking and I listened, not for the words but for something else, the timbre of their voices maybe, or just to have it as a memory later on, to prove I did know them in their hidden moments.

  I eavesdropped on them and remembered weekend mornings in front of the telly with Harry and I wished for those days to come back. When the most difficult questions we had faced had been who would make the bacon sandwiches and who would get the first crack at a hot shower. Back when we had had no real problems to solve.

  Unwitnessing

  That morning, as we sat in our usual spot – third pew from the front, on the right hand side of the aisle – it was the buttons on his waistcoat that flummoxed him. John buttoned them and unbuttoned them. It was part nervous twitch and part something else. Sometimes he got them done up properly, other times the buttons missed their corresponding holes and he had to start all over again. The whole process made him jittery, so I tried to focus on the priest as his voice filled the old stone building. It reminded me of a time when I – and by extension John – had been the beneficiaries of the sort of kindness and generosity that the church attempts to inspire in people.

  After my first unsuccessful swim I promised myself that I would try again and that I would not fail. Swimming the Channel required extreme amounts of training and dedication, which I had or could muster, but it also needed funding: a thousand pounds at least, per swim, for the pilot, the petrol, the boat, the official, the food. It was money we could not afford and when I swam every day I thought of how I could raise it. But I had wanted to be there for the children when they were younger, and John had wanted to be the breadwinner, and with nothing beyond swimming and mediocre housewifery skills, France had seemed further away than ever.

  One Sunday morning after the service, Edward, the priest, asked if I could stay behind, so I left John to talk with our friends outside and went
to the office in the back of the church. I sat opposite him across a large oak desk where John and I had sat years ago before we were married.

  ‘Martha,’ Edward said. ‘I wonder if you might be able to help.’

  I had expected him to ask me to volunteer to organise a cake sale or an outing for the children.

  ‘I need an assistant, a secretary of sorts, someone who would be available in the middle of the day.’

  ‘I’m sure someone like that shouldn’t be hard to find. You might mention it next week before the service.’

  He leaned forward, his NHS black-framed glasses slowly sliding down his rather obvious nose and lowered his voice. ‘I had someone in mind, but it might be difficult to convince her. I was hoping you might be able to help.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll do what I can. Who do you have in mind?’ I couldn’t think of anyone who fit his vague description and I didn’t see how it would be difficult to find such a person, given most of the congregation was made up of housewives like myself.

  ‘I have you in mind, Martha.’

  ‘Me?’ I unconsciously sat up straighter.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, hesitantly.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but why?’

  ‘I need someone with tenacity.’

  ‘I’m quite sure I’m not the only person with that.’

  ‘Martha, I’m offering you a job.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I understand. But I’m not clear on exactly what it is that you need my help with.’

  ‘The accounts, mainly. Dealing with the builders – the boiler is on its last legs.’

  ‘Edward, the boiler gave up months ago. Have you not noticed everyone keeps their coats on? It’s not out of respect you know.’

  ‘You’re already aware of some of the challenges I’m facing.’

  ‘Everyone is aware of the boiler issue, Edward.’

  He sighed as he leaned back in his chair. ‘Martha, I understand you want to swim the Channel.’

  ‘What has that got to do with this?’

  ‘I understand it’s an expensive proposition.’

  ‘It’s certainly not inexpensive.’

  ‘I’ve seen you swimming in the harbour.’

  ‘I expect most people have.’

  ‘You’re there every day.’