The Last Wave

by Gillian Best

  ‘Sorry?’ I said.

  The priest didn’t look me in the eye, focusing instead on some invisible mark on his desk, picking at it with his index finger. ‘There were some outbursts, some behaviour that made some of the other parishioners uncomfortable, which is to be expected in his condition, but even so…’

  I looked at Iain in disbelief.

  ‘Such as?’ I said.

  The priest was flustered. ‘He forgets himself, interrupts the service. Generally inappropriate behaviour. I have to think of the greater good, you understand.’

  ‘Surely the church is meant to provide a place for every member of the congregation? Surely the church doesn’t discriminate against members who are suffering and need to feel they are part of their community?’

  ‘As I explained to your dearly departed mother, it is inappropriate for your father, and certainly now, if I’m honest—’

  ‘Oh yes, please. Do be honest,’ I said.

  Iain put his hand on my arm and I shrugged it off.

  The priest gave me a placating smile. ‘I doubt very much that he gets anything from the service. In his condition.’

  ‘His condition? His condition is bereft widower.’

  ‘I mean his medical condition.’

  I stood up and Iain followed my lead.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the priest said. ‘What was it that you wanted to speak with me about?’

  Iain took me by the hand before I could say something I might later regret and dragged me out to the car.

  ‘That’s been their church, our church, since before I can even remember,’ I said.

  ‘She said to me, a while back, that some of their friends had been a bit stand-offish, that she didn’t like doing the shopping anymore. Whispers, stares.’

  ‘Typical small town, small-minded and completely incapable of understanding,’ I hissed.

  ‘I didn’t think though, to this extent.’ He gripped the steering wheel. ‘Who gets kicked out of church?’

  ‘What do you think he did?’

  ‘I hope he ran through the place naked,’ Iain said.

  I laughed. ‘Serves them right. After all the time and energy they put into that place.’

  Iain sighed and rested his chin on the steering wheel. ‘Now what?’

  We went home to re-group and see how Iris and Myrtle were faring with Dad, who, it transpired has spent most of the morning sleeping, rousing himself sometime after lunch to take up his place on the sofa where he stared off into space. He seemed hollow sitting there, as though he were just a shell now, waiting for something to happen, though I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge what that might be.

  I wondered how Mum had coped with it. The practicalities were exhausting: making sure he’d eaten, helping him get dressed, helping him bathe – which was a job Iain took on without having to be asked. In all that time Mum hadn’t reached out for help, preferring to go on quietly as they had always done. Iris thought it was due to stubbornness but I disagreed because there was part of me that understood it. If Mum had asked for help it would have been completely real, and by not asking, by keeping it confined, I suppose she let the rest of us keep him for as long as we could. She bore the brunt of his disease to save us from it. It was heroic and it was selfish and it was exactly the sort of thing that only she would’ve done.

  Dad seemed to be caught up in the pictures Iris had brought over the years, which I had only just learned about, and instead of blowing up at her I was pleased that she had done it because I regretted the way things had turned out.

  My parents had always kept themselves to themselves and I wondered what had happened here, in their world built for two. What had taken place that Iain and I hadn’t seen? Those evenings spent watching television or reading, eating dinner together, what were they like? There was so much I didn’t – and couldn’t – know about them, that it felt as if they were destined to remain strangers. And it wasn’t possible now to talk about that awful Boxing Day lunch.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, sitting next to him on the sofa.

  He didn’t move or appear to have heard me. I looked at how he’d aged, the skin around his eyes had grown paper thin, there were age spots on his neck and cheeks, and his posture, which had always been so rigid and formal, was lax as his back curved forward and he appeared to be retreating back into the foetal position. He looked helpless, pathetic and lost. I looked up at the ceiling and caught my breath.

  ‘Dad,’ I said again, placing my hand on his knee.

  He turned to me, his eyes cloudy and rheumy, and stared at me as a smile slowly grew over his face.

  ‘Martha,’ he said.

  I smiled as I felt the tears hot in my eyes.

  ‘No, Dad, it’s me, Harry.’

  ‘Did you see the sea today?’ His wrinkled hands with the long fingernails that needed cutting reached out for my face.

  I took his hands in mine and said, ‘Dad, it’s me, your daughter.’

  He took the information in slowly.

  ‘Where’s Martha?’ he asked.

  I looked over at Iris who was sitting at the kitchen table, hoping that she would know what to do, desperate for her – or anyone – to fix this, but she didn’t say anything.

  I took a chance and said, ‘I love you, Dad.’

  They had spent their last days together like this, I imagined. When he couldn’t be counted on to be in the right time or place, and she had been lying and dying in their bed upstairs, and the whole thing was so cruel I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to scream.

  Iain and I had left the church, and without discussing it he had driven us to the sea, where my mother had started her swims. We went out and sat on the cold, damp pebbles. The sea was flat and grey, with a cloud cover hanging low as though the water had joined us in mourning.

  ‘Let’s skip it,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s not have a service. Why can’t we just do it ourselves?’

  ‘What about her friends?’ he said.

  ‘The women bearing casseroles?’ I asked.

  Iain nodded. ‘We’ll never hear the end of it. Disgraceful children. Leaving her all alone to cope with John in this state.’

  ‘That’s what they’re saying?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘They say that in our house?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I picked up a handful of pebbles and flung them at the sea.

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Are we what?’ he asked.

  ‘Disgraceful.’

  He ran his fingers through the pebbles. ‘Maybe. A bit.’

  ‘Here,’ I said, holding out my arms. ‘Why can’t we have it here? If she wants the ashes scattered in the sea.’

  ‘And the reception? Late October’s not really picnicking weather.’

  I looked around and then at the very far end of the promenade that skirted the shore, I saw it. ‘White Horse Inn.’

  ‘That’s disgraceful!’ he said. ‘A common public house,’ he said, mocking the tone of the women who had invaded our home.

  ‘I don’t really care what a bunch of gossipy old ladies think.’

  ‘She told me, before, the last time, she told me that some of them wouldn’t come to visit anymore. Because of Dad.’

  I shook my head. ‘This place fits.’

  ‘It does.’

  We looked out at the sea and I asked, ‘Did you really think she would just go back in? Like a mermaid?’

  ‘I was a kid.’

  I looked at him in disbelief.

  He stared out at the water, and threw a couple of pebbles in. ‘The first memory I really have of her is watching her walk into the sea. It was hazy, you couldn’t tell where the water stopped and the sky started. I thought she was swimming off the edge of the world.’

  The morning finally came when we officially said goodbye to my mother. It was a miserable late October day: windy, cold, bleak and when we got to the water’s edge the sea was in a frothing rage, all rollers and
white horses.

  We had decided to hold it right next to the water but we had not counted on the tide being in and covering the small beach, so we had been forced to relocate to the outcropping on the cliff above, distancing ourselves from the water.

  We formed a circle, huddling in close to keep out as much of the weather as possible, and took it in turns to speak, but no one knew what to say so we were a silent circle. The few phrases that we managed to mutter were short of the mark, but then how could we have possibly summed up her life in a few words? There was no way to adequately describe her or her life and what she had meant to us.

  Dad was ushered into the middle of the circle but he refused to speak, shoving his hands in his pockets he looked to the ground, avoiding all eye contact with the rest of us. He looked only at the sea, his feet shuffling in the way I had come to learn meant that he was anxious and that his brain was trying to tell him something important. Abruptly, he turned towards the path that led down to the water’s edge and when Iain raced after him, to bring him back, Dad shoved him away and kept moving forwards.

  There was nothing to do but follow him as he clutched the urn and headed to the shoreline and when the waves were lapping at his feet, the water covering his shoes, he paused and bowed slightly. Worried that something might happen, that he might lose his balance and fall, or worse that he might keep walking, we followed him and everyone’s shoes got wet, which I thought must have pleased my mother a great deal.

  Dad took the lid off the urn and waited for a wave to come close, and then he flung the ashes out, and as the wave retreated it took my mother out to sea. Iain was right: though she hadn’t walked into the water herself, she had returned to it in the end.

  Baptism

  At the end of August, just as I was getting up to clear the plates, my Mum asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday.

  ‘Sixteen is a special birthday,’ Iris said.

  And in my mind, I said: Yeah, I know because it means I’m allowed to swim the Channel and all this training won’t be for nothing.

  Instead, I said, ‘You say that about every birthday.’

  ‘We can go to a nice restaurant? Somewhere in town maybe? You can invite Robin if you like,’ Harriet said.

  I had to give them credit: they hadn’t mentioned my newfound chubbiness. I had always been slim, verging on ropey, and I was sure the change in my body had not gone unnoticed.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking it might be nice to go and visit Granddad.’

  Harriet poured herself another glass of wine. ‘That’s sweet honey, but is it really what you want to do? I know you love him and we do too, but if you don’t want to go out for dinner, maybe you could have a party here?’

  I shook my head. ‘I want to go to Dover for the weekend.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  I saw them exchange concerned looks, as though they couldn’t understand why a normal teenager would want to spend her birthday with her grandfather. Maybe they thought I was making up for lost time.

  So we agreed and on the Friday before my birthday – which actually fell on the following Monday – we went to go and see Granddad.

  His care home was up near the castle, and from the dining room there was a view of the port where he would sit for hours, watching the boats and ferries come and go.

  We didn’t leave London until after rush hour so it was too late to visit Granddad by the time we arrived, but we did meet Henry at the White Horse Inn. He was waiting for us when we walked in and after a round of hugs and hellos, he asked me to help him bring the drinks over from the bar.

  ‘You haven’t told them, have you?’ he said, while we waited for the pints to be poured.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Myrtle, you promised.’

  ‘What makes you think I haven’t?’

  ‘Because I haven’t had any angry phone calls.’

  The barman smiled at me as he placed a glass of wine on the tray.

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  He frowned at me.

  ‘I’m telling them tonight.’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ he said. ‘They’re going to hate me.’

  ‘No they won’t. I’ve been preparing them for it.’ Which was a total lie.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Easing them into the idea, you know?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Just leaving hints and stuff.’

  ‘This was part of our deal. You are not getting in that water unless they approve.’

  I picked up the tray of drinks and as I walked back to the table, I said over my shoulder, ‘Don’t worry, Henry.’

  One Saturday the November before, I’d told my Mums I was spending the day at a friend’s and took the train to Dover. I went to only other place I knew, and knocked on Henry’s door.

  ‘Myrtle,’ he said. ‘Is everything okay? Is John not answering the door? Do you need the key?’

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t been over yet.’ I looked next door and then back to Henry. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, stepping aside.

  He led me through to the lounge, which was a bit of a tip, but a bunch of old newspapers and magazines scattered all over the place didn’t bother me. I sat on his couch and he brought me a cup of tea before sitting down on the other end of the sofa.

  ‘So, how are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ I started at my drink.

  ‘Harriet and Iris?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re good.’

  ‘School?’

  ‘S’fine.’

  ‘Swimming?’

  I nodded and blew on the hot tea.

  Henry leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs. ‘Myrtle?’

  ‘You know how my grandma was a swimmer?’

  He nodded slowly.

  ‘Well, it’s like, I was thinking…’

  Henry looked at me and I could tell he knew where I was going with this.

  He shook his head. ‘Not a good idea.’

  ‘You don’t even know what it is!’

  He scowled at me. ‘I don’t need to hear you say the words, I can see it on your face.’

  ‘Because I look like her?’

  ‘No because you look like you’re about to do something stupid.’ He set his tea on the coffee table, and while rubbing the back of his neck asked, ‘Have you spoken to your parents about this?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I see. Have you started training?’

  ‘I swim six days a week, Henry.’

  ‘Yes, I hear the currents in a pool can be quite treacherous.’ He looked at me and I must have looked really disappointed.

  ‘I’m a strong swimmer.’

  ‘You need to get used to the cold water.’

  ‘I’ve swum in the sea before.’

  ‘You need to be prepared. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘I want to do it for her. In her honour.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart, I know. But it’s dangerous.’

  We drank our tea in silence and I wanted to go – Henry was as bad as my mothers, though in a totally different way.

  ‘You don’t understand. Why would you? What’d you ever do that was extraordinary?’

  I got up and stormed to the door. I grabbed my bag and when my hand was on the door handle, Henry put his hand on my shoulder.

  I turned around. ‘What?’

  ‘Clear it with your parents, and I’ll see what I can do to help you on this end,’ he said.

  In the pub, Henry hung his head as he watched the barman pour the drinks. ‘I wanted to have a nice birthday meal with you and your parents. And they’re going to be in no mood for it once you’ve told them.’

  ‘So I’ll wait until after dinner.’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ll do it now.’

  He took the tray of drinks from me and I had no choice but to follow him back to the table.

  Iris held up her glass of wine after we’d all sat down again, and said, ‘To our
lovely, wonderful daughter Myrtle. Happy birthday my darling, your mother and I love you very much.’

  We clinked glasses and just as the conversation had turned to Henry and catching up with him, the bartender brought over half a pint of cider. He set it on the table in front of me and said, ‘For good luck tomorrow.’

  ‘What’s happening tomorrow?’ Harriet asked.

  Henry kicked me under the table and I glared at the barman.

  ‘She hasn’t told them?’ the barman said.

  Henry shook his head and I stared at the half pint of cider.

  ‘Hasn’t told us what?’ Iris asked.

  I took a drink, gulping it down in the hope it would give me courage. ‘I’m going to swim the Channel tomorrow,’ I blurted out.

  Harriet nearly spat her beer all over the table. She coughed and her cheeks went red and Iris patted her on the back.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t think I heard you right,’ Harriet said.

  Henry stood up. ‘This is obviously a family discussion. I’ll be over there at the bar.’

  ‘Sit,’ Harriet barked. He did as he was told.

  ‘Explain,’ she said to me. Iris put her hand on Harriet’s shoulder and squeezed.

  ‘What’s to explain?’ I said. ‘I’m going to swim the Channel.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ Harriet said. Iris kneaded her shoulder.

  ‘It’s already sorted.’

  ‘What is?’ Iris said.

  ‘Everything,’ I said. ‘Charlie, the boat. Henry got the federation to waive their fee, and so did Charlie. In honour of Grandma.’

  ‘Henry did?’ Harriet said, as her eyes bored a hole into Henry’s face.

  Henry blushed and took several gulps of his ale.

  ‘That’s why you wanted to come up here and visit your grandfather?’ Harriet said to me.

  I nodded.

  She turned her attention back to Henry. ‘And you,’ she said. ‘You organised this whole thing? And didn’t think that maybe it was worth a phone call to let us know our daughter was about to throw herself into the sea, intent on certain death?’

  ‘Mum, you’re being way too dramatic.’

  ‘Am I? Am I really?’

  I curled my hands into fists and just as I was about to start shouting, Henry put his hand on my shoulder.