by Fiona Shaw
He found his mother where he’d hoped to. The greenhouse door was shut, but he could see her in there, head down, intent at something. He watched her. She must have come straight here from the garden; she wore an old tweed jacket of his father’s over her mourning dress, the cuffs bundled roughly, and as she worked, they dipped in the soil. Will shivered and rubbed his arms. He was cold. He opened the greenhouse door. It was warm inside with the steamy fragrant warmth of so many plants, so much green.
Briefly she looked up. He saw that she’d been crying, and wondered who it was for. For him? Or his father? For herself? He spoke to her profile.
‘I’m sorry for what I said earlier. About Father.’
She nodded slightly.
‘Well, it’s done now,’ she said, though he couldn’t tell whether she said it about his words, or hers. But he saw something relax in her face, and so he sat down in the old wicker chair.
‘And the soldier,’ he said. ‘I had rather know than not know.’
‘Yes.’ Gently she took a plant from its pot, seeming to cradle the mess of roots in her hand. ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I do know that.’
‘But do you know the strangest thing, Mother? The strangest thing is that already I’m not so surprised.’
He watched her fill round the roots, pressing the soil firm with her fingers. She was so gentle and he remembered how she used to put her hand to his head sometimes, stroke his hair to reassure. He looked away, stared at all the green. There was something on his mind that was hard to broach. His mouth was very dry and he licked his lips.
‘Here.’ Meg handed him a small lemonade bottle. ‘But careful,’ she said, as he tipped it up. A blast of alcohol lanced his throat.
‘You don’t like whisky,’ he said.
She gave a small smile.
‘George didn’t like me drinking it. Not a female drink. So I’ve always kept it in here.’
The whisky warmed him; he felt its Dutch courage. He watched his mother with her plants. Her hands were busy but she was waiting. He could see it in her.
‘Do you remember what you told me the day Benjamin died?’ he said.
The question had come unbidden. It had come from deep inside, forming as it rose and when he spoke it, it took him by surprise as much as his mother. She didn’t reply immediately. Just carried on with her plants. Will uncrossed his arms and laid his hands on the chair arms, as if an easier position might give him an easier spirit. The chair wicker was brittle under his fingers and he caught at a piece, lifted it till it snapped. Placing it in his palm, he closed his fist around it till the sharp ends pressed into his skin. Then he waited, as he had waited when he was a boy, for his mother to help him out here.
‘I told you a lot of things then,’ Meg said at last. ‘Too many, perhaps.’
‘But you do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’
‘I told you to live your own life.’
But he pressed her, because he had to now. ‘And you knew, didn’t you? You knew what he was to me.’
She spoke slowly then, and carefully. ‘You’ve kept your secret very close all these years, just as I have mine,’ and he saw her flinch at her own words.
‘Too close?’
‘I don’t know. But I do know that I was frightened to do otherwise. Don’t make the same mistake. You’re a father as well as a son, Will. You need to think about Cassie.’
Cassie ran along the field full-tilt. Her hair was loose from its clips, streaming out behind her. Behind her, Will came more slowly. As he walked, he pulled off his tie, coiled it round his fingers and put it in his pocket, and he opened the neck of his shirt. At the end of the field the woods began and the path dipped deep between the trees to the beach. Down here tree roots lurched across so you had to watch your footing, and branches reached down to clip the unsuspecting. When Cassie was little, Will used to carry her. He’d tell her stories of serpents rearing up, and twig sprites that might dandle their fingers in her hair, and she’d clutch his shoulders harder with her small hands and bury her face in his neck.
By the time Will reached the trees, Cassie was out of sight and he walked down the path on his own till he came to the beach.
The sea was calm and smooth, and the sun was low by now, throwing long shadows where it could. On the far side, some children still played in the stream, building castles, spading the water into tributaries, organising against the tide. He looked out to the thin lip of horizon, and back for his daughter. In the middle of the empty beach, Cassie stood with her arms out. She whirled them up and round, making a windmill, and stood still again. She looked happy there and then, not a care in the world.
‘Perhaps I should leave it for today,’ he said to himself. ‘Enough gone on already.’
He walked over the sand, passing the little heap of shoes and socks she had left. Now she ran, kicking up the sand, flinging her arms and legs around her, and her shadow flung itself even further. He thought how she was still a girl, and nearly not.
‘Dad!’ she yelled out. ‘The sand’s warm. Take your shoes off.’
He shook his head.
‘Come on,’ Cassie called. ‘Just this once.’
‘I’m fine as I am,’ he called back, and she shrugged and turned away.
Will crouched and laid his hands on the sand. He dug his fingers in and through, down to the knuckles, down to the cold. He wanted nothing better than to play on this beach for an hour with his daughter. He wanted to fling his shadow about like her, and watch her dance. He looked around. She was crouched down now making a desultory castle. He punched the sand hard. The impact jarred through his arm, into his shoulder. He punched again. All those years, all that time, his visits as a young man, then married, a father, divorced: all that time Meg had known about Benjamin. Perhaps she knew why he split up with Barbara. Perhaps she guessed why he’d never met another girlfriend.
He picked up a small stone, placed it in his palm. It was smooth and flat, edges worn by the sea. Once it would have been part of the slate rocks that sliced either side of the beach. But it had probably been tumbled in the tides for years, and now here it was, adrift on the sand in its own shadow. He made a fist around it, clenching to make it hurt. Slipping the stone into his jacket pocket, he looked around for another, and another, and when his pockets were full, he walked back towards his daughter.
He’d built his life around a secret. Sworn Barbara to silence, kept it from his child, pretended to something else. He shook his head. This was stupid. He was so fucking stupid. Something blew across his mind – an image, a memory perhaps: a man and a boy, bundled up against the cold, walking together, no more than that, and he wondered who his father was. He’d felt so angry with his mother, but now he just felt sad. All his life she’d kept his father secret from him, and it struck him that she had held her memory – her love, and her sadness – as closely, as jealously to her as he had held his. And he wondered what it had cost her, to keep her secret all these years. If it had cost her as much as it had cost him.
He had learned, as a boy, to skim a stone a long way; and in that boy way, he could have still told you the method of it, if he thought you might hear him out. Because if you hold a stone flat between thumb and first two fingers, draw your arm back behind you, keeping it parallel with the beach, then fling your arm forward, only making sure to flick the stone with your wrist and spin it at the last with your index finger, the stone will fly. It will kiss-kiss-kiss the surface of the sea, in unlikely, ineffable flight, seeming to defy both its own stony gravitas, and the sea’s, before dropping beneath. Sometimes, of course, you will pitch it badly, or it will catch a stony edge and sink immediately. Or the sea will be too choppy and unreliable to skim upon. But sometimes, if the sea is smooth and the stones are good, then they will walk on the water for you.
Rummaging in his pocket, he took out the stones and skimmed the first, throwing it as hard as he could against the surface of the sea, and counted it out till the sea took it in. He bre
athed and the air was salt and light. He thought about George, and their leave-taking. He skimmed a second stone, and just for a moment he remembered Ben, sleeping like a dancer. He skimmed a third. Each looked as if it would fly forever, and was gone.
Cassie came and stood beside him, out of breath and sandyfooted.
‘You want one?’ he said, and she gave him a look, as if to say: there’s a whole beach of them, but she held out her hand.
Side by side they threw stones at the sea, and his danced and hers sank.
‘Show me,’ she said, so they collected some more and she watched.
‘Bend so you’re nearer to the water,’ he said, ‘and make it spin with your finger.’
She threw again.
‘Do you miss Grandfather?’ she said.
The sea was sheer like grey silk, and imperturbable.
‘Yes,’ Will said. ‘I do.’
‘It was peaceful, wasn’t it? His death, I mean.’
‘Yes, it was peaceful.’
‘I don’t think I do miss him yet,’ she said. ‘Him being dead – it’s too new still. But next time I’m down here, then I will.’
And Will thought that she was more truthful than him. Because what he missed was a man he never knew. He pictured the two of them, father and child, as tiny figures caught between these planes of sky and land and sea.
‘Cassie?’ he said. ‘I need to tell you a story. About me, and your mother,’ and she rolled her eyes and groaned.
But she said: ‘Go on then. Tell me.’
So he did. He told her about Benjamin, his closest friend. About their perfect day, and about how Ben had died.
She didn’t move while he spoke, or say a word. But when he stopped, she walked to the water’s edge and he watched her stretch out her arm and take aim, closing one eye to line up her sight, pull her arm back and throw. She was trying to make the stone jump, but she was awkward, all elbows, and her stone didn’t bounce. She threw again and the stone sank again. Then she turned to Will.
‘So what?’ she said. ‘You, and your friend, and all of it. What’s any of it got to do with Mum? Or me?’
He took a breath, because this was it, this was the shadow. The thing he had to say. And he spoke again.
‘This is the story, Cassie. The reason it didn’t work out with your mother; the reason I’m not married. It’s because I’m gay. I was in love with Ben, with the boy who died. That’s who I really am, and I should have explained it before …’ He paused. ‘Cassie?’ he said.
But she had turned away. Now she threw anything, anyhow. She stood at the water’s edge and threw stones that had no chance of flight. Will stood at her back, his arms heavy at his sides. He wanted to leave; walk briskly up between the trees and get in the car, go back to the house, have a drink.
He thought: I shouldn’t have told her. I shouldn’t have said anything.
Cassie didn’t stop until she had thrown every stone around her, slinging and hurling and hefting them. Gently, smoothly, the sea came in, the gentle waves darkening her jeans. Will watched and waited. He wished he knew his daughter better. When she turned he saw anger in her face, and hurt.
‘Show me how,’ she said.
So standing behind her, he covered her arm with his, her hand with his.
‘Like this,’ he said.
Then he gave her a stone from his pocket and stood away a little. She threw it and it skimmed the sea once, twice, a third and a fourth time.
‘See?’ she said, turning to him.
And she took another stone from him and threw.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Mrs Drue Heinz and the Trustees of Hawthornden Castle for the residency during which a portion of this novel was written. Thanks also to the Royal Literary Fund and its Writing Fellowship scheme which has provided me with gainful employment and enabled me to continue writing.
Chris Holme gave me invaluable advice about electricity and voltage, but any mistakes made are mine alone. And David Attwell and John Greening provided useful advice and suggestions about African literature.
My thanks to John Baker, Karen Charlesworth, Frances Coad, Sarah Edington, Sandy Goldbeck-Wood, Anthea Gomez, Liz Grierson, Eliza Haughton-Shaw, Jesse Haughton-Shaw, Nicky Losseff, Sophie Mayer, Sara Perrin and Martin Riley for much and various support, inspiration and storytelling.
Many thanks also to Sam Humphreys for excellent and patient editing; and to Rebecca Gray and all at Serpent’s Tail.
And finally my thanks to Clare Alexander, from first to last a wonderful agent.