Apart from my garden and my cat I had very little company. I met Sophie every now and then, but not very often any more. The whole idea with our shared surgery had always been that the one of us who was not on duty should be genuinely free. She was much younger than I and she had three young children. We had shared our surgery for several years and it had worked well. I had enjoyed my work, and perhaps the social side of it, the contact with my patients, had been a replacement for the private life I largely lacked. But then there had come a day when I had decided to retire. Spend more time on my creative work. We had changed our arrangement and I served as a locum from time to time. It seemed to be less and less frequently. My life became lonelier in a way, but also richer. I had very little in the way of human intercourse but I enjoyed the sense of freedom. I had arranged my life as it pleased me and it had felt like a state of being I would enjoy until the end of my life. But it hadn’t quite worked out like that.
My nearest neighbour was a farmer up the hill on the other side of the road. George Brendel. I didn’t know much about him but I had always been aware that, like me, he was not a local. He spoke with a slight accent that was evident only occasionally. He owned a substantial piece of land but he kept no other animals than a flock of sheep. Like George and me, they stood out too – they were not quite right in this environment. Firstly, sheep did not really belong in this part of the country. And also, George’s sheep were small and had black legs. I had only seen such sheep once before – in Gotland in the Baltic Sea. It was a mystery where George’s flock came from. They grazed under his olive trees – another oddity, as nobody grew olives here. Like their owner, the sheep had slowly claimed their right to exist here, not as proper locals, but as a tolerated oddity.
George’s shortcomings as a farmer seemed to have one main cause: he had money. I had no idea where this notion had come from, but it seemed to be a common assumption: George Brendel was an incompetent farmer because he had money. He had lived here much longer than I, and over the years he had come to earn a kind of respect, if not as a farmer, then as a person. He was active in the community and he was on the board of the local council.
I had been to his farm, but never inside his house. I didn’t think he had a family, but I didn’t really know much about his private life. He kept saying he admired my art and when he bought something, he paid for it in meat, olive oil or favours. Always too generously. I regarded it as charity. Perhaps it was something entirely different that I was not keen to analyse. As we had slowly got to know each other a little, he sometimes lingered on my doorstep when he came to visit, as if there were something he wanted to say. Oddly, it didn’t worry me, but I didn’t encourage it either. I had never asked him inside. There had been a time when I wouldn’t have been able to accept his gifts. And certainly would not have allowed him to linger. But over time I had come gratefully to accept his offerings, material and otherwise. It happened that I caught his gaze occasionally and held on to it for the briefest moment. But there had been no obvious response. He had taken no initiative, no action. Just that uncertain lingering on my threshold.
There were a few other neighbours who occasionally would give me fish and sometimes a crayfish. Even oysters and scallops. I suspected they pitied me and didn’t think I was quite equipped to manage on my own. They were probably right. For many years my house was just a place where I slept after work. And a monument to my relentless grief. Years that had become a blur. It was only since I had taken early retirement and begun to invest more time in my art that I had started to live here properly. But even after all these years I had not become one of them – someone who could rightly lay claim to this place. To them I was still a temporary visitor. Someone they needed to look after.
And it suited both parties.
2.
For some time I had been filled with a growing sense of urgency. It hadn’t happened suddenly, more like a slow progression of steps so minute I had not taken notice. But one day I became aware of a feeling of restlessness. As if there were something I urgently needed to address. I felt a strong need to put aspects of my life in some sort of order. It didn’t concern anybody else, but even though it was something I needed to do just for me, it did feel acutely important. Why, I couldn’t quite understand. My life had been the same for years, and I didn’t expect any dramatic changes. Nothing had happened to prompt this shift. This sense of urgency.
But something had changed. And it must have been me, because everything around me was the same. Perhaps it was all just a natural consequence of ageing, a growing awareness of the finiteness of my existence. And it was inexorable – an inevitable process that I could not escape. Not that I felt a need to. In fact I embraced it with something close to anticipation.
When I say nothing around me had changed, it is not quite the whole truth. There was the boy. Ika. He had entered my life, and I didn’t know exactly what to make of his presence. How it would affect me. Had already affected me. I took it one week at a time. But I had to admit to myself I had begun to look forward to Thursdays.
The space where I lived had undergone a subtle change too. Perhaps the sense of unease had something to do with this. There seemed to be a change in my perception of myself and my place. Although I suspected it must be the result of a long process, it was only recently that I had come to realise what constituted the difference: suddenly I had a sense of a view. A perspective that I had previously lacked. For the first time in my life I began to see myself in some kind of context. And in a strange way I felt as if others saw me differently too. Not in a real sense – there were very few people in my life – it was more that I had become aware of the potential. It felt as if I had always lived in closed spaces before. Until now there had been no view – from the inside looking out, or the outside looking in. But something seemed to have abruptly ripped open. It surprised me that I didn’t feel exposed. Instead, I was filled with an inexplicable sense of anticipation. As if this opening of doors and tearing away of layers was a positive thing. Perhaps I was hoping it would help me to put the events of my life in some kind of order, help me see it as a whole. It was difficult to understand why this suddenly felt so important, when in the past the ability to close the door behind each segment of my life had seemed vital to my survival.
I realised it could all prove a futile exercise. I was not at all sure there could be order in the life of any human being. Life is irrational and illogical, and we have to accept that, and try to arrange our lives around it. But perhaps we do need to try to understand our own history. See it as a coherent whole.
There is a timeline to our lives. One event leads to another. One act produces a result, which becomes the basis for our next action. Looking at it like this we give our lives a kind of causality. I am not sure if this is an illusion, but I can understand that it is helpful.
Now I wanted it for me.
There seemed to be so many storylines though. So many characters acting independently in the dramas that made up my life. And they all seemed to influence each other in ways that were impossible to fully grasp.
Then, as now, I knew that there is no absolute certainty about anything. I once believed that science offered certainty. That there were scientific rules that were immutable. This might have been why I loved science at school. And why I chose to study medicine. Once I believed that science offered a world with absolute truths. But the deeper I delved, the less absolute it appeared. There were inconstancies there too. New research made previous truths obsolete. And always, beyond every answer and every explanation, there was another unanswered question. It was like plotting my way through territories that gradually became familiar, but with a constant growing awareness of another unknown or unknowable reality beyond. Every answer was followed by a question mark. Every step took me further into the unknown. And the unknown grew, while what I knew seemed to shrink.
I had lived in this small desolate place for nearly fifteen years. By myself, mostly. I didn’t mind. Absolutely not
. It was a self-induced state. But the isolation aggravated the uncertainty, I think, and my life had taken on a slightly surreal quality. For some time I had found myself wishing for a way of corroborating events, memories. I had started to yearn for some kind of confirmation that my memories were still intact.
I had nurtured my important memories and been careful not to wear them down or alter them in any way. I had tried to keep them safe, but they were not kept in order. I knew absolutely where each one was, and what it contained, but it existed in a kind of vacuum, separate from the others. I can’t explain why it felt like that. It was as if I carried them as an unsorted bundle, present only as a constant weight.
I had come to think that if I were able to take them out one by one and place them in the right sequence, then perhaps they would be easier to carry. The painful ones might become more bearable if I could see each one as belonging to what went before and what came after. I think I was hoping for some understanding. And forgiveness, perhaps. Not from others but from myself so that I could finally regard myself with a measure of compassion. Not love – I certainly didn’t expect that. Not pity, I absolutely didn’t want that. But empathy, perhaps. For the little girl that was me. For the young woman I had been. And for the middle-aged person I had now become.
I think I was hoping for the memories to merge, to become an understandable whole.
And ultimately make me whole.
3.
So, it was Thursday. I was hoping Ika would come. I could not be sure, but I was reasonably hopeful. He was getting older: it had been almost a year since we first met. I had estimated that he was about six years old then. He still had his baby teeth. We stumbled on each other down on the beach. Or rather I stumbled on him. And where else? It was on the beach that our lives were enacted, whether tragedies or comedies. I found him lying face down in the sand with his feet touching the edge of the surf. It wasn’t as if he had been brought ashore on it. No, I could see his footprints in the sand and knew he had deliberately placed himself there. His arms were outstretched and his hands dug into the sand. He looked like a stranded starfish, but for a split second I had a vision of the slim little body being crucified. The sea kept lapping at his feet. He didn’t move, though I was sure he had sensed my presence. Had anticipated it, even. There was something about him that made it clear he was certainly alive. He just wasn’t capable of playing dead, if that was what he was doing. So, after the initial instinctive ocular check, I just stood and waited.
He can only hold this pose for so long, I thought.
I underestimated his perseverance. Yet he underestimated my patience even more. I was willing to wait for as long as it would take. So there he lay, and there I stood. I looked at the sky and asked if he was hungry. There was no response. The seagulls above were shrieking over the thunder of the waves. The tide was on its way out and each wave stopped a little further from the tips of his toes.
‘Are you hungry?’ I repeated to his immobile back. Still no answer. He didn’t stir. The only sign of life was the rhythmic slight lift as his ribcage expanded and contracted with each breath.
We waited.
Eventually he slowly rolled over onto his back. His face was covered in sand and he kept his eyes closed. I stood looking down at him. I was sure I had never seen him before. Never at the clinic, which was odd. If he lived anywhere near, I probably should have. Then without a word he sprang to his feet and ran into the water. When he returned he was rinsed of the sand and his shorts and T-shirt clung to his body. He was painfully thin. I noted that he didn’t seem to have many teeth, and those he had were baby teeth.
‘Are you hungry?’ I asked again.
He didn’t look at me, said nothing, just dug his toes into the sand, half turned away from me. I turned and slowly began to walk away and I sensed that he was following. He made little detours to pick up a stone and throw it into the sea, to chase a bird. If I slowed down, he did too. When I stopped, so did he. When I started walking again he followed. Weaving up and down the dunes on either side.
It was a Thursday, the first one.
I could never be certain that he would come, but he came most Thursdays. He never explained his absences and I never asked. He never appeared on another day of the week.
He had become a source of information for me, though he didn’t speak much. But for someone like me, even minute snippets of information about what went on outside my sphere were valuable. I often thought of myself as naïve. There had always been matters that other people seemed to consider normal and natural that I hadn’t been able to understand. On the other hand, I had always felt there were matters that were familiar to me that would seem strange to others. Perhaps naïve was not the right word but I couldn’t think of a better one.
He was also a source of profound wisdom. I worried that this capacity of his would pass. That he would grow out of it. I hoped not, but I could not be sure. As he was, he was an extraordinary human being. Non-judgemental. Curious. Funny sometimes, though I never knew if it was intentional. I couldn’t believe he would ever lose those qualities, but I knew it was likely to happen. Time would rob him of them, or life would teach him how to suppress them. I cherished him. And I took one week at a time. One Thursday at a time. Inevitably he would change. And inevitably I would lose him one day.
I foolishly thought I could prepare myself for that.
It was a white day with little wind. As wintry as it gets here. It wasn’t particularly cold, not by my standards. It was the light that made it clear it was winter, not the temperature. That peculiar west coast white winter light. It was as if the colour had been drained out of everything: the sky, the sea, the vegetation. Even me. I walked back and sat on the doorstep, let my eyes rest on the sea. The string of paua shells blew in the wind, occasionally rattling against the weatherboards. There was no sign of him but it was early yet. And the soup would take a while. I wasn’t sure if he had a favourite, not even now after almost a year. He never commented on the food, but ate with the same constant diligence whatever I put in front of him. I made bread on Thursdays too. I used to make the dough in the morning before I set out, then bake it when I returned. It had become a weekly routine, just like the soup. There had been a time when I lived without routines, but I had come to depend on this one. Far too much, really.
Wintertime, I sometimes cooked yellow pea soup. Like my grandfather used to. It never came out quite like his as I remembered it, but I kept trying. In spite of my attempts at consistency, each time it somehow became a unique composition. Although I used the same ingredients: a hock of salted pork, onions, a bay leaf or two. A few peppercorns. Some marjoram, fresh when there was some in the garden, otherwise dried. Dried yellow peas that I soaked overnight. If I poured them into the cold water to cook with the pork they became soft and mushy; if I added them to the boiling water later, when the pork had cooked for a while, they came out firmer and the skins translucent. That’s how I preferred them. But, as I said, it seemed to make no difference to my guest. I always used the only large pot I had and the leftovers lasted me several days. But no Thursday turned out the same, no soup the same as any other, and the pea soup never like my grandfather’s. But that winter Thursday it was Greek fish soup.
One hot summer Thursday I had made a salad instead of soup, but it didn’t go down well, I noticed, though he didn’t say anything. So, soup it was. He seemed to like them all. Some were experiments, not always successful, but he never complained. And never complimented me either. Perhaps he was just too hungry to be discerning.
I thought his name was Mika, but ever since that first day when I had misheard him I had called him Ika and he didn’t seem to mind. He told me it meant fish and I thought it suited him. Even before I saw his hands.
I had started when I first heard what he called me. Mama. It became his name for me. His very own. It wasn’t that I was a sort of mother to him, I think. No, he told me it meant light. I wasn’t sure if he meant light as in not heavy, or the o
pposite of darkness. I thought the former, but sometimes I liked to think he meant the latter. Whichever it was, I liked it.
‘Why did you come here, Mama?’ he asked one day, instinctively knowing that I had come here. From somewhere else.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s a long story.’ He looked at me. Or rather, in his usual fashion, he looked not quite at me, but at some point just beyond me. It seemed like a changeable point, with the sole purpose of being close to me but not quite at me. He didn’t look as if he expected much in the way of reply, but his gaze remained on the same unspecified point.
‘I first came here many years ago. On a holiday. And something happened to me here.’ I hesitated.
‘Was it happy or sad?’ he asked.
‘Sad,’ I said. ‘It was very sad.’ I looked at him and added: ‘At first it was happy though. As happy as anything can ever get.’
‘It had to be happy first,’ he said, and it sounded like a private reflection, not a piece of conversation.
I looked at him, but again could not catch his eyes.
‘You’re probably right. Perhaps nothing can be sad in itself.’
‘So you left,’ he said. It was a statement, not a question, but I nodded regardless. ‘And then you came back.’
‘I did. First, I came here for a holiday. Then I went back to my home far away. But I couldn’t stop thinking about this place. I thought about it during the day, and I dreamt about it at night. Sad dreams. But also very beautiful. And this place became more and more important to me. One day I felt I had to come back here to live.’
Memory of Love (9781101603024) Page 2