The Comet Seekers

by Helen Sedgwick

  Guess what, his mama interrupts. He’s not sure if it’s because she thinks it’s wrong of him to be spying on the lady with the telescope, but he puts the binoculars down just in case.

  What is it, Mama?

  She pauses – she hadn’t meant to do this – but she feels a need to share their family, wants him to understand, now that she knows there’s no risk of him being haunted by them. She never was much good at keeping secrets.

  Your great-great-grandpa Paul-François is here, she says. Your namesake.

  François looks around the empty park and forces a smile.

  François isn’t quite old enough to know that he thinks his mama is a bit embarrassing, but he will be soon. He has been resisting her stories of magic and ghosts for years, and now she is trying to pretend they are actually here.

  He stares at the stars. He can’t see anything very much without the binoculars; the sky has become smaller, somehow. There is no comet, and he can barely even make out Jupiter – it’s just a star no brighter than some of the others. If he squints he can almost believe it’s red, but even then, not really.

  There’s no one here, Mama, he says.

  Oh, Severine, says Great-Grandpa Paul-François, he looks just like me – don’t you think he looks just like me?

  Your great-granny is here too, Severine says.

  Where?

  She’s wearing a black dress, sitting next to Great-Grandpa Paul-François. She’s very beautiful, with her dark hair, don’t you think?

  That’s not Granny, that’s the woman in the window.

  What?

  For a moment Severine is shaken, her faith questioned by a child.

  She takes the binoculars and looks up to the window; there is a telescope but no woman, no one watching the stars.

  There’s no woman in the window, she says to François harshly, but then smiles at him because it is not his fault she is suddenly terrified that he might see things, but different things to her.

  Well, maybe not now, he says, stubborn and sure of what he saw. But she’ll come back. She’s real, I saw her. Wait and see.

  But soon he’s forgotten about the woman in the window because the evening is getting cold and he wants to go into the tent; it was his birthday present and he wants to feel like he’s really camping.

  In the tent he says, you do know they’re not real, don’t you, Mama?

  And it hurts, to see that look in his eye.

  You’re right, she says, I’m sorry. I was only playing.

  Were you trying to be funny?

  She smiles. It wasn’t funny, was it?

  He shakes his head.

  There are no ghosts, she says. There’s no such thing as ghosts.

  She tucks him in and leaves the flask of hot lemon beside him, and goes outside to sit in front of the tent and watch the comet and talk to her ghosts knowing that he’s safe, and asleep, and that nothing will scare him tonight.

  We met on a night like this, says Great-Grandpa Paul-François.

  No you did not, says her granny. Ma mère told me it was overcast and damp, and you were in a bad mood.

  There was a war on, what d’you expect?

  I expect you to tell her the truth.

  Severine pulls her shawl around her shoulders, hugs her knees to her chest; she’s been looking forward to this for so long. Last time things were wrong, she’d left Bayeux and they were like shadows, and the first time Ælfgifu had told her a story so full of horror and love she could hardly believe it was happening. She’d wondered if it was the trauma affecting her brain, her granny’s death and François’s birth, too much life and death in quick succession for a mind to process.

  But still – she’d stayed. She could have left, travelled the world like she always said she would; she chose not to. And now they have arrived again and she feels like her heart is full to bursting point. Perhaps it is worth staying for, if it will always be this way.

  I was in the navy, he continues, we were on shore leave.

  He was in the papers once, her granny chimes in, your hat at that jaunty angle, remember?

  We were on shore leave, and we came to Bayeux for the Friday-night dance.

  Enough of that, interrupts Brigitte. I built our home, my story’s the start of it.

  Severine glares at her, annoyed at the interruption from the only ghost who has tried to scare her, and Brigitte goes quiet again.

  No, says her granny softly, Ælfgifu was the first, you are just the angriest.

  But where is Ælfgifu? Severine says, suddenly feeling her loss.

  Her granny puts her finger to her lips. Listen.

  So Severine does, and she hears the voices of a girl and a soldier boy playing by the stream behind the trees – splashes of water and laughter.

  Why didn’t you come, she asks her granny, when we looked for the comet in Scotland? Was it because I couldn’t find it in the sky?

  No, sweetheart, she says, it’s not something you find in the sky, it’s about having the right patch of ground beneath your feet.

  I’m home now.

  And I’m here.

  Severine closes her eyes, lets her head rest on her granny’s knees.

  Is there no one else here for you to visit? she asks.

  But her granny just strokes her hair as if she were a child.

  Severine tries to think – of all the distant cousins, great-aunts, new babies, relatives she only sees at funerals, at weddings – and she realises that hardly any of her family are left in Bayeux. It is just her mother, who won’t see the ghosts, and herself. And François. Who doesn’t believe in ghosts.

  You said Ælfgifu was the first.

  That’s right.

  How come?

  Her daughter refused to leave. And then there was the comet, and the tapestry . . .

  It’s an embroidery, not a tapestry.

  That’s true, her granny chuckles.

  Severine feels her body relax as the voices get quieter, one by one, until there are only three left.

  Things are different now, her granny says. She will be the last.

  Great-Grandpa Paul-François shakes his head. It’s not a disaster, he thinks, more an inevitability. The proof that ghosts are no better or worse off than the rest of the population; they too need others to survive.

  But she can’t be the last, says Brigitte to Paul-François. My family needs more time to find their way home.

  You could try being nicer to her?

  She doesn’t want to hear my story.

  You haven’t given her the chance.

  I tried, but what’s the point? She can’t help—

  Brigitte’s dress catches fire but the flames shimmer into starlight.

  Let’s leave quietly, says Severine’s granny. We don’t want to wake her.

  When Severine wakes up the ghosts are gone, and she is lying barefoot on the grass in the middle of the night, a golden shawl around her shoulders. There is a red glow coming from beyond the trees; it takes her a moment to realise that it’s the beginning of a sunrise.

  She wishes they were here to watch it with her, and she is stabbed through with loneliness. This is how it will always be, she knows, they will always have to leave, return and leave – and every time she will grieve for them all over again, but never be able to let go. She is trapped. She puts her head to her knees, misses the sound of the tent being zipped open.

  Mama, look, François says, putting his hand on his mama’s shoulder. Look at the sky. The sun is coming up!

  He doesn’t need the binoculars for this; he wants to see the whole sky with his own eyes as it turns into the richest, deepest, most golden red that he has ever seen.

  He pulls his mama up from where she’s sitting on the grass, leads her to the slope that rises from beyond the trees, drags her running – come on, Mama, faster – and laughing now, up to the top of the slope where they can stand, together, and stare at the glowing tapestry of colours in the sky.

  RÓISÍN’S FLIG
HT LEAVES ON TIME at 9.50 a.m. and she lands in Ireland ninety minutes later with hand luggage only and a return flight booked for Sunday night. There are posters in the airport trying to advertise something through a pretty but airbrushed red-haired girl and a four-leafed clover. She doesn’t know when the world became so cynical, when people became so airbrushed.

  Today they’re meeting at the farm. The funeral is tomorrow. She’ll stay with her mum and Neil, unless Liam . . . Unless Liam. She doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

  She’s filled with dread, softened by a desire to help, to hold him. This isn’t her tragedy.

  The hire car is cheap and tinny and an inappropriate bright yellow but she doesn’t have the energy to argue. She parks it before the curve of the lane that leads to the farm and walks the last half-mile. She tries to quicken her pace, but each step takes longer than the last.

  She finds her mum in the crowded front room with Neil and an array of cake and wine and black fabric.

  I’m sorry I’m late.

  You’re not, people have been arriving all morning. Anyway, you’re here now.

  Her mum holds her in a hug for longer than usual, and then Róisín does the same for Neil.

  Have you spoken to Liam? he asks.

  Róisín shakes her head, brushes gently at her eyes.

  She wants to see him, wants to help him more than she can say.

  He sees her from the hallway, backs away from the door. He wants something that makes him feel ashamed. She left; he won’t ask her to return.

  A distant relative shakes his hand. It leaves a smudge of butter cream on his thumb.

  She checks each room, one by one, scanning the faces for Liam’s. Someone gives her a hug; someone shakes her hand. She’s passed a glass of white wine, a plate. She stands by the back door, remembers being outside looking in. She remembers waving at Liam through the glass. She tries the door. It opens.

  Liam is leaning against the back wall of the farmhouse. He is shaking. She reaches out her hand – an offering of more.

  It’s about to rain, she says.

  I don’t want to be in there.

  There’s the barn?

  They don’t run; this is nothing like childhood.

  She waits for him to speak, trying to give time, space, not knowing how he feels but knowing his face, his eyes – he looks at her in a way that makes it difficult to breathe. He shakes his head as if there is nothing else to do, then he does the only thing he can; takes her face in his hands, kisses her as if the years in between had not existed, or had been a lifetime that he wants to erase.

  It is fast and desperate, against the creaking walls of a barn no longer in use; the smell of the damp hay that lies in patches on an otherwise bare wooden floor. He holds her like his life depends on it, like she is the only thing left in the world. It is not gentle, not after all these years.

  Afterwards they readjust their clothes. A shirt button is lost; neither of them mentions it. They don’t smile, not today. Róisín knows that she has never felt what he is feeling. She is scared to interrupt his silence. So they stay standing where they are, both of them alone. Eventually, Liam clears his throat.

  Did you get my message? she asks him, hoping that talk of something else might help.

  Liam has to pause, rewind his mind to a time before these last two days, before everything seemed to exist in these stumbled moments. He’s not sure if his voice even works any more.

  About the comet, I mean?

  Yes.

  I’m sorry, do you . . . We can go for a walk or something?

  He looks out over the field. It is grey and muddy. The fence to the left of the barn has blown over in the night, is hanging down in the mud. He has to tell himself to breathe.

  Did you see it? he asks.

  I did, yes, of course – her words come out as a jumble, she is so relieved he has spoken – I mean, I wouldn’t have missed it. I watched it from my attic. It’s fast, this one, she says, remembering their childhood, holding her breath. You could see it moving – really see it moving. Flying against the stars. It was one of the most beautiful things . . . You should have seen it. Maybe . . . Your dad would have . . .

  He swallows, but doesn’t reply; just lets himself stand next to her without speaking for a minute. He didn’t want it to be like this, fast and rough. He didn’t mean it to happen this way.

  As they look out, a small flock of birds takes off from the trees at the edge of the field.

  How do they know to do that? Róisín says. To fly at exactly the same time?

  Liam wants to lie down, to close his eyes – he is so tired – but he can’t. Someone is calling his name. She reaches for his hand. He pulls away.

  I should go.

  I’ll come with you.

  Liam shakes his head.

  Don’t push me away. I want to help.

  You don’t belong here, Róisín. It’s OK.

  Her hand drops to her side.

  He turns his back; doesn’t say goodbye.

  Róisín stays where she is and watches him cross the field, his eyes fixed on the ground. He exchanges a few words with someone from the village by the front porch, wipes his shoes slowly on the front mat, and disappears back into the house. In a few minutes she’ll pull herself together. Go and find her mum and Neil, give Conall the chocolate she bought him at the airport, his favourite kind, in the shape of a pyramid. But first she sits down on the floor of the barn and rests her head on her knees. Nothing she said helped him. She doesn’t know how to help him.

  In the corner she sees something glimmer, catching the light. She picks up Liam’s shirt button, brushes off some hay and dust, holds it in her palm. She can feel it heat up from the warmth of her skin. She has an idea.

  They open a bottle of wine that evening, Róisín, her mum and Neil; make a toast to her uncle, and then talk about her dad. It’s funny how death can make some conversations possible that had seemed impossible before. Róisín can hardly remember her dad, if she’s honest, just a sense of someone who was there and then someone who was gone.

  Is he coming? she asks her mum.

  He phoned, she replies; he couldn’t get a flight in time from Sydney, so he’s going to miss tomorrow.

  How selfish, Róisín says, surprising herself by the words, and by her own anger. He’s not even coming back for his own brother’s funeral.

  It can be difficult, Neil says, to face the fact that you can never see someone again.

  What he means is that it can be difficult to face the fact that you’ve missed your chance, that there was a time when you could have made things different, but that moment is gone.

  It’s a terrible thing, he says, to realise that you’re too late.

  Yes, it is, Róisín says. And she means it, too.

  She walks to the other side of the table and puts her arms around Neil’s shoulders.

  I’m glad you’re here, Dad.

  He puts his hand on her hand; knows they are a family.

  Seventy thousand years. That’s how long it will be until this comet returns. Its orbit is long; it gets to see a lot of the sky on its way. Even though it is small – smaller than Hale–Bopp, its competitor, the one everyone was talking about. Smaller than Halley’s comet, the one everyone has heard of, the celebrity. But it is active; as it flies it spins, a curve ball of a comet, letting dust fly out, burn and soar, to create its own light on its lonely journey.

  That night, Adele tries to find a way to tell Neil how much she loves him, but can’t find the words.

  Neil doesn’t use words to tell her that it’s OK, that he’s here and he’s staying. He kisses the top of her head, sets the alarm for the morning, wishes her goodnight.

  I love you, she says, when the lights are out; I’m so lucky to love you.

  That’s my line, he says.

  I think we should share it, she replies.

  Róisín sits a few rows behind Liam in the church, watches the back of his head as he leans for
wards and straightens up, stands and sits. She doesn’t know the words for how she feels. There’s love there, but also guilt for leaving, and a particular type of blame, too. He could have come away with her, where no one would have known them, where they could live however they wanted. She knows it would be difficult to do that, here.

  He kneels again.

  And her eyes can’t move from the back of his neck, from the single shudder of his shoulder that tells her he is trying not to cry, and she wants to hold him; that is all there is, a need to hold him. Perhaps they can find a way.

  He stands outside, shakes hands, tries to do small talk – never something he wanted to do at the best of times. She stays back, makes sure he can see her but doesn’t get too close. They both remember caution. They keep catching each other’s eyes.

  There’s a hotel restaurant with crustless sandwiches and tablecloths of navy blue. There’s a moment at the bar when their arms touch, accidentally, but not – a moment when they both catch their breath and the need for more makes them ache – and they take their drinks back to separate tables. There’s Adele and Neil deciding it’s time to leave, offering help that is politely refused, needing to collect Conall from his new school that is encouraging him to talk more, helping him interact. There’s a car journey home and a kettle boiled, excuses made for an early night. And there’s the kitchen door opening from inside once everyone is asleep, and Róisín creeping out.

  You came.

  Of course I came.

  I don’t know what to do.

  I had to see you.

  We have to stop.

  Can you?

  Please.

  Me neither.

  I missed you.

  Voices muffled, murmured through a haze of need and warmth, a familiar taste, a longing for something out of reach, always, and the feel of his stubble against her chin, the urgency of his fingers. Something in him sounds like it is breaking, and he cries, not a single sob like in the church, gasp after gasp, tears hot and insistent, refusing to be held back any longer.