Róisín is surprised at how slowly it happens, although she shouldn’t be. A scientist should have known that the comet’s broken pieces would take time to travel through the atmosphere; that they would disintegrate in a lonely death that would be less beautiful than the imagining of it. She was expecting fireworks, a series of bright explosions like timpani in light, but she should have realised that destruction takes time; that damage lingers on the surface before leaving a lasting impression.
She remembers a moment, in their childhood hut, by the river, a moment when she walked away and didn’t realise.
SEVERINE GASPS; HER GRANNY’S VOICE, she’s sure of it. She was here. It’s a shiver of warmth that takes her back to a time when she felt protected, when she could allow herself to feel like a child pretending to be a grown-up.
Hello? she whispers.
Her voice will hardly make a sound. She imagines her granny’s face, the crinkles around her lips, her laughter. Her eyes search every corner of the room, behind the door, between the cupboards at the end of the bed.
Granny?
She can’t see her anywhere. And then it hits: this terrible thought she can’t shake; what if they all leave now and don’t come back? Is this her last chance?
She walks to the window, peeking out through closed curtains so as not to wake François; searches the sky for a comet, but sees only cloud cover and stars reaching through to edge them in silver, an orangey tint to the darkness from the city lights. They come with the comet and they leave with the comet, she thinks that’s how it works. So there must be a comet somewhere up there, if she could only find it.
Open your eyes, mon petit, she whispers to François, who stirs in his sleep but doesn’t wake up.
It’s unfair, to do this to him, but she has to. What if her granny has gone and she’s missed her chance to speak to her again? She couldn’t stand it.
She touches his shoulder, lifts him out of his dream.
I’m sorry to wake you, François.
Mama?
We’re going up to the hill; it’ll be an adventure.
Why?
We have to see a comet tonight. I need to know if it’s still here, I don’t want to be too late.
She makes him put on layer after layer of clothes, like she is protecting him from a cold that he hasn’t experienced yet. She wishes she had brought hats and scarves despite the mild weather and now her son is looking at her like she has gone crazy.
Even to an eight-year-old boy she seems like a madwoman.
But he does as he is told and soon they are creeping down the stairs of their old-fashioned B&B and closing the heavy door quietly behind them and walking hand in hand through the deserted streets of Morningside towards the unlit hill in the south of the city.
François doesn’t really know what’s going on but he’s enjoying it. He’s overheating in his layers but enjoying the fresh night air, the excitement as they clamber up a muddy path towards a big building with turrets and elaborate stone.
What is that?
I don’t know, his mama says.
They have reached the observatory – the strange out-of-time tower with shadows down its walls, with brickwork at once crumbling and glorious, when the voices reach them on the wind.
He runs around behind it, his mama calling to him in shouted whispers, telling him to stay close beside her, but he doesn’t listen; there’s no danger here, just a new world to explore. It’s dark, the ground gravelly and uneven, but there are lights twinkling in some of the windows and silvery moonlight catching the glass of others. And there are voices – over the other side of the tower, sitting on the grass, there are people laughing outside the observatory.
They are grown-ups, François sees that, but not really grown-ups; they’re pointing at the sky and laughing and drinking and chattering, using words he doesn’t know, long-sounding words that have the ring of something far away and mystical – interstellar space, galactic tide, hyperbolic trajectories.
He finds another path that leads from behind the observatory round to the summit of the hill.
Mama, he calls, not afraid of being heard.
They don’t hear him though.
He runs up the path.
When François gets to the summit he looks back for his mama; he cannot see where she’s gone. His fear doesn’t come immediately, there is a moment of calm – she is on her way, of course. It is dark, that’s all, hard to see; soon she’ll appear. And then, after a minute, when she’s still not there, a panic sets in but he stands quietly waiting, because his mama wouldn’t leave him, not his mama.
And then something strange happens. He sees someone else. She is sitting on her own over the crest of the hill, hidden from the view of anyone except François standing at the very summit. She has her head resting on her knees; he can’t see her face, she is more of a silhouette. Her loose hair blowing in the wind. It looks black, but that could just be the dark. And he has this strange feeling like she knows he’s there but she’s not going to turn around – like she’s chosen to look the other way and nothing will change her mind now. He looks in the direction she is looking, and forgets to be scared. All there is that way is sky; night sky and stars. He’s so intent on watching her that when he feels a hand on his shoulder he nearly cries out with the shock.
You got here first, smiles his mama – her voice is coming from behind him, so he thinks he can hear a smile.
He turns. She is not as calm as he thought, she looks different; he was wrong about the smile.
That’s good, that you’re quick, she says. Now there’s something we have to find.
What do you mean?
There’s something happening in the sky tonight. There’s a comet that we need to see. It should be visible here, away from the street lights.
And Severine searches the sky without knowing that the comet has already fractured in the atmosphere of a red planet and burned, and disappeared into the storm.
François stares and stares at the sky. It is the first time he’s stood looking up like this but somehow he knows it won’t be the last. He’s never looked at anything this closely before; he realises now his view of the world has been small. Layers of stars appear, each one on top of the other, stretching back further into the night.
There are lots of stars here, he says.
It sounds childish, but it is true.
His mama says he’s right, but that somewhere among them there must be a comet. It’s no use though; she can’t see one. Why don’t they help her? Look for the comets – that’s what her granny said – so they should at least guide her gaze, help her to find the right direction. If François wasn’t here she would shout out to them, demand they stop their comings and goings and tell her when she can see her granny again. She’s always been quick with emotion – her worry turning to anger to regret. If François wasn’t here she wouldn’t shout, not really, she would call, she would wait for her granny all night. But François is here, so after a while she stops staring at the sky.
François, she says, it is not only the stars you can see. Look down on this city and think about how big the world must be. Learn to love the heat and the cold, learn to get up in the middle of the night and see what no one else sees. And then learn to walk away.
She’s talking to herself more than to him, thinking of the travels she never had and the life she can already see slipping out of reach.
What François wants to see is the woman with the black hair who was sitting over the crest of the hill. But, for some reason he doesn’t understand, he keeps that to himself.
It’s not fair, Severine decides, as she looks down at the lights of the city spread out below them, the shadows of the seven hills darker than the sky; when she turns she can see one of them, a reminder of the volcanic land they are standing on. It is not fair that the comet has left so soon. It’s not fair that she has to stay in Bayeux. She deserves to live the life she wants, to explore the world and see jungles and rainforests and
deserts of ice. When she was a girl she had so much energy, was so determined to see everything there was to see. And now?
And now she just wants to talk to her granny. She has so many questions. But it’s not only that. Her granny, who everyone thought was crazy, who made the world come alive, whose smile made Severine feel special, and loved, and grown up when she was still a child – she misses her granny and Severine finds that she has to sit down on a rock at the crest of Blackford Hill and rest her head on her knees and hide her tears from the boy beside her, and she knows that in the morning she will return to Bayeux, and hope, and keep searching the skies, and that’s where she will stay until a comet comes again.
RÓISÍN DOESN’T MEAN TO PHONE; she can’t help it. If she could see him instead she would.
Liam answers with Hello.
It’s me.
Róisín.
It’s almost a whisper, when he says her name. Why’s he whispering?
Her breathing is too fast.
She wants to hold him. She wants to say that she was wrong.
She hears him swallow, he is breathing fast too.
There is another voice.
Someone’s with you?
He doesn’t reply.
She feels sick.
I didn’t think.
Sam looks over at her. She’s using the phone in the observatory.
Now Róisín is the one who whispers.
I’m sorry, she says, I’m sorry for calling so late.
And she hangs up the phone.
Liam cannot sleep, not for hours. The want he feels makes his cheeks burn; his skin is on fire. She phoned him. Why did she phone him?
When Rachel wakes he gets up, afraid she might think any of this is for her.
When she leaves, unhurriedly, with promises to see him soon – though he knows he will never see her again – with a warm hand on his arm, a look of kindness, and he is left alone, he reimagines the phone conversation. He rehears her voice, closes his eyes, knows her smell, her skin, her smile, her sounds.
Years of this, of stilted conversation, of glimpses of each other across rooms, of reserved Christmas cards, of having to listen to news of her life elsewhere. She’s moved on again; she’s in a new country, with a new man, has found a new life. This endless moving of hers, is that what she needs? Perhaps it is better than his version of life; staying, waiting, clinging onto a hurried glance and seeing meaning in her eyes as she turns them away, playing over and over in his mind the way it would be if they were together again, on the farm; the way her presence could recreate his home.
He reaches for a tissue.
He’s not ashamed, not of this.
He wants more.
He wants Róisín.
The group camping out on Blackford Hill don’t go home that night. They lie on the grass and talk about the things that drunk people talk about at four in the morning: past centuries and the vastness of the universe; what makes love true and whether or not the world is becoming a better place.
Róisín lies with them, but doesn’t talk; she’s too busy staring up at the sky and waiting for the faintest stars to appear in the voids between the bright constellations. She was disappointed in this comet, she thinks, in this night; perhaps that’s why the pull of home feels so strong. She shouldn’t have phoned him. Why did she phone him? But the longer she looks, the more stars she can see appearing, layer on layer, between constellations as familiar as her own dreams. It is not too late to make a new decision.
She leaves the group. The morning is early; there’s no hint of light yet but the sky is changing, there’s a shimmer to it that doesn’t exist in the depths of night. She climbs the last peak of the hill and descends the other side, sits on the ground that is damp from dew and rests her head on her knees. There is a stream that runs behind the hill, beyond the trees and along through Morningside. She runs there, once or twice a week, in bright daylight; runs so fast her lungs ache and her breath burns in her throat.
Sometimes, it is as if she can feel him here. Liam. She tries saying his name without making a sound, feels her lips form around the m and part again, longing for more. She could hardly look at him, when she was home last, for some anniversary or other; both of them had gone to the party for each other and left without exchanging a word. She thought his expression was an accusation, at the time, but it was not; she knows that now, somehow, on Blackford Hill, with another man’s taste still lingering, another man’s touch still felt. It is as if he is standing behind her, watching her, waiting for her to turn and say it is OK. That their love is real. That she will come home. But he is not here; he is lying in bed with someone else.
Perhaps that is her own fault. Hers, and his.
She doesn’t want to be haunted like this.
But she doesn’t want the Sams of this world either, the confident men with their city accents and easy conversation. She wants the whole world, a life full of different people, the bright lights dancing between her outstretched palms like she’d imagined as a child. And though nothing so far has compared to what she left behind she knows what she’s going to do. As the horizon blurs into a faded pink and she turns to see a child’s silhouette on the top of the hill, she knows; she is going to keep searching, because there is something more for her to see.
1858
Donati’s Comet
One minute the house was bursting with life and then the men were gone and the women, safe but left behind, feel the weight of silence as they wait. Crimea – not a place they had even thought of until it was all they could think of. And then there was no word. The war ended, but there was no word. The men did not return. Instead, a comet has appeared in the sky.
Mama Bélanger has not taken to her bed – that they would understand – she has taken to her bath and is refusing to get out. The comet is not here to hurt you, they say, but she has convinced herself it is poison invading her mind that only water can destroy. She scrunches her eyes closed, clasps her hands over her ears.
No! she shouts. No, I will not listen!
The doctor shrugs and says she is getting old, which she is, though what he means is that she must be going mad. Her eldest daughter disagrees. But that evening Mama Bélanger is calm again, and they can hear her softly singing a lullaby from when they were children.
Her eldest daughter brings her fresh hot water for the bath – if she must lie in there for days, she reasons, better to do it in the warm than in the cold.
Will you not get out tonight, Mama?
She pauses, wondering if she should go on.
This comet will do no harm, she smiles, reaches forward to brush her mama’s hair away from her face. I promise you that.
My sons are gone.
Yes, Mama, she says, glancing over, sadly, to the corner of the room. But your daughters are still here.
Mama Bélanger stands up and allows her daughter – who will one day be a mother and grandmother and great-grandmother – to help her out of the bath.
I want to show you something, Mama, she says.
Is there more I have to see?
Something more, yes, she replies, kissing her mama on the head.
She leads her out to the garden and they sit on the grass in the dark and gaze up at the stars overhead, and at the comet.
You see, Mama, she says. There’s nothing to be afraid of any more.
And she looks over to the ghosts of her brothers who are sitting opposite them in the moonlight and smiles.
Our family is changed, but will survive.
1996
Comet Hyakutake
FRANÇOIS’S MAMA IS FUSSING.
He takes the blackcurrant jam from the cupboard – they made it together at the weekend, fruit and sugar simmering in a pan for hours as they prepared the dough for the bread. He scoops out a teaspoonful, puts it upside down in his mouth as he watches her check there’s milk in the fridge for chocolat chaud, the book for his bedtime story, a list of emergency numbers pinned to the wall by t
he phone.
It’s OK, the sitter says. His mama told him she’s a student from the university. We’re going to have fun, she says to François, patting his blond hair as he pulls away and then, using a different voice to Severine: you too, enjoy your date.
His mama glances in the hallway mirror before she leaves. Her hair is loose, not tied up like it is when she’s working, and her dress is red and gold, her arms decorated with bangles.
Be good, she says to François.
You know, I don’t need a babysitter, he says, you could just trust me . . .
You’re only ten years old. We’ll talk about it later.
He scoops up another spoonful of jam and lets the rich flavours sink onto his tongue, waves goodbye.
In the restaurant, Severine starts telling lies and finds she cannot stop; the last ten years of her life have become a fiction for anyone who cares to listen. I spent a year in Vietnam, she says; the heat, the moisture, it fills your lungs, and the traffic – twelve lanes moving each way, criss-crossed, no separation between them, bikes, cars, buses, motorbikes, taxis, tuk-tuks, a mess of vehicles and if you want to cross the road, you just step out into it. It’s a leap of faith.
And where will you travel to next? he asks.
The opposite, maybe Greenland. It’s so empty, so big, you know? When you look on the globe it’s a mass of frozen land. What would that be like?
He’s leaning forward over the table, almost seems to be reaching for her hand.
I’d like to go to the desert, he says, to see sand dunes and hazy gold sky in every direction. I’d like to see a mirage.
Severine smiles.
A mirage of what?
Anything; an oasis, an iceberg, a civilisation.
I think I’d see the past.
But he shakes his head, not interested in that route; the past is done with, he says, I want the future. I’m only interested in what comes next.
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