The Coordinates of Loss

by Amanda Prowse

  Albert ran away faster than a monster hog fish off St Catherine’s Beach who has seen the glint of a spear in the water. I unfolded that single, crumpled sheet and read the words, scrawled with the stub of a pencil in a hand that had yet to develop decent penmanship, then shoved it into my dress front pocket. ‘Are you kidding me? What does it say?’ Clara yelled. Well, I tried to keep my reply casual even though my heart beat fit to burst right through my ribs.

  ‘It’s only Willard goofing around.’

  ‘Goofing around how? Urgh, Willard Templeton!’ She spat like his name was poison and pulled a face, sticking out her pink tongue in disgust like she had found a rock skink in her stew. I watched, more than a little perplexed, as she made her way up along the road on her way home. Standing at the gate, I heard her disgruntled mutterings float back to me on the sweet, hibiscus-scented breeze, coming up from the scrubland and over the South Road. Truth was, I was glad she had gone.

  I kissed Grandma Sally goodnight, washed up and said my prayers, going through my list of wants for everybody I loved, before crawling under the heavy, embroidered Portuguese shawl that was my top blanket. I fingered the piece of paper that lay beneath the flat cushion on which I lay my head. Not that I needed to read it again; the words were etched in my mind:

  I very much look forward to seeing you at the dance. Willard.

  That was it, nothing more.

  I could tell he was trying for polite and formal and that alone tore at my heartstrings. Sweet Willard with patches sewn on his britches and leatherless toes on his brother’s old shoes, which had to be at least two sizes too big.

  In truth, it would be hard for me to tell you, and do justice to, just how much that scrawled note containing no more than twelve words meant to me. But it meant a whole lot. Of all the girls in our class and of all the girls at our church, Willard Templeton had picked me. And to my knowledge, I had never been picked for anything before by anyone. I liked the way it felt.

  So, there we go, Rachel – that was the start of it. Waiting and thinking about all the possibilities and I marvel that something so small as a greasy ol’ scrap of paper could start a course of events that would change my life in so many ways. But it did. Not that I realised it at the time.

  Anyway, not much point in trying to over-figure it.

  Not now, anyhow.

  What would be the point of that?

  The dance became my every waking thought; I went through my lessons and chores in a daze! Now, I had never been that enamoured with clothes, never really given them more thought than was necessary. That was until I stepped into the dress that Grandma Sally had made me. I know I shouldn’t go boasting, but I felt like . . . it’s hard for me to know the words for just how I felt; I felt like . . . I felt like someone else – yes, that was it. I felt like the kind of person who could do just about anything she put her mind to. The kind of person a certain boy might choose to send a note to, over and above all the other girls he knew.

  I very much liked the way the long petticoat and overskirt swished around my ankles and I liked running my hand over the little bunches of embroidered cherries that sat proudly on that delicate skirt of white organza. Even my daddy looked up from his seat on the porch and nodded with a smile that split his face and my mom, she said I looked like something out of Paris – not sure how she’d know on account of the fact that she rarely left our parish of Warwick, even moaning if she had to travel all the way up to St George, and she had never, to my knowledge, left the shores of her beloved Bermuda, but I took it for the compliment it was intended anyhow.

  Clara, too, looked fine and I noted she had a slick of coral-coloured lipstick.

  There was so much I was excited about: the band, the decorations, the dancing, of course, and seeing Willard. Willard who I must confess managed to sneak his face into my other thoughts; Willard who had passed me a greasy note via Albert Romsey. In truth, I felt summoned, expected, and it wasn’t a bad feeling, no sir. I guess it was the beginning of starting to feel desired, and may the Lord strike me down if I am wrong, but I do not believe there is a soul living who does not wish for that.

  Clara and I arrived and were mightily impressed by the way the old wooden hall had been transformed into something real snazzy. Lights had been wound around the trunks of trees, paper bunting was strung across the ceiling in ten different colours, and streamers hung at the windows, blowing in the wind. We made straight for the large tureen of fruit cup that was dished out into paper cups with a glass ladle.

  It was Clara who got asked first, by Thomas Outerbridge. There was nothing fancy about his asking; his actions, like him, were large, confident and without a hint of self-awareness. He more or less walked over, as if he might be going to ask directions or if we had seen someone, but instead of talking, he reached out and took Clara by the hand, pulling her into the middle of the dance floor.

  The band upped the tempo and I can tell you with certainty that you would have thought it was her and Thomas Outerbridge who had been twirling around on Grandma Sally’s floor practising, having shifted that dusty rug and the sofa! They were perfect, in time and in sync, as if they were made for each other. Clara smiled like I hadn’t seen before, a different smile – like she had a secret – and I felt a leap of joy in my gut for her, my best friend who had gone rather quiet if you can believe that! Thomas was a big-boned boy and she slipped in and out of his arms like a waif and I could tell that she liked it very much. I watched how her dress flitted this way and that and thought I must tell Grandma Sally how the fabric moved to the tune of them horns and strings.

  And it was while I watched my friend dance, laughing with joy and swept up in the moment, that Willard Templeton appeared by my side. I had been looking for him and even figured he might have changed his mind about attending, so to see him there made my breath stop for a second and I felt a little dizzy because of it. He reached for my hand. Oh, Rachel dear! I feared my heart might leap from my chest or at the very least that folk would hear it beating! Willard had lost some of his bluster and he walked me to the middle of the crowd where we swayed from side to side with our arms locked together. Now, I don’t want to paint you a false picture; Willard was a boy with a reputation. I had heard folks mention him in the same sentence as many a girl from Sandys to St George and every parish in between. I studied him, this boy with the bad name, and looked up at his smooth skin that had yet to feel the scrape of a razor, his hair, cut neat, and the slight fray to the point of his right shirt collar which made my heart wilt. I didn’t know it at the time, but as I moved against him and heard his voice whisper softly in my ear, ‘You look mighty pretty,’ I began to fall in love. Whatever I knew or thought I knew went right out of the window. I was convinced that we were unique and that things would be different for us. He was fascinating to me, every bit of him: his skin, voice and the curve under his chin, a place where I wanted to lay my head and kiss the space above his heart. We danced slow and long, and on my honour, I am convinced even now that I would never have needed another thing if that were how I could have spent my days. Hand in hand with Willard and with the slow music filling my head and the twinkle of lights all around and the bright array of bunting.

  I have never forgotten a single detail of it: that special night when my spirits and hope were lifted higher than I knew possible; when it felt like the whole wide world was at my feet and I was anything but ordinary.

  It was nearly ten o’clock when the music came to an end, the big overhead strip lights were switched on suddenly and we blinked and leaped apart. Chaperones started clapping in corners for people to leave sharply so that Mr Whittaker could sweep the hall and his team of volunteers could rip down the bunting. That was when Willard looked at me – not in a regular way, but in a way that told me that the night might be coming to an end, but this was just the beginning; like we shared a secret. It was a look full of promise and I won’t ever forget it. That feeling! Oh, Rachel! There was no feeling like it on earth. Cross my hea
rt that it was the best feeling anywhere! Do you know this feeling? I am sure you do.

  Clara and I walked home followed by a big, full moon that lit our way, chattering like we hadn’t seen each other for a month.

  As we had predicted, Grandma Sally was sitting out on the veranda waiting to hear all about it. We sat on the step and gabbled some more with our beautiful long skirts gathered into our laps, loath to remove them and step into dull old nightclothes. We wanted to prolong the magic. Grandma Sally wanted to know all about the decorations, the music and of course what the other girls were wearing. I could hold my head high and tell her with no word of a lie that we were the best-dressed. ‘We were princesses,’ Clara surmised, and I smiled at her with something like a gut full of hope in my stomach, not only filled with thoughts of Willard Templeton and how he had looked at me, but also because she was right: we were princesses. I didn’t know at the time that this was not enough for Clara. She wanted to be queen . . .

  SIX

  Rachel made her way downstairs for the family dinner with a feeling of dread in her stomach. ‘There’s another letter for you, love. I’ve popped it on the shelf in the hallway. It’s the same as before from Gee-Gee. I recognised the stamp and the writing.’

  ‘Cee-Cee!’ It irritated her that her mum could so easily misname this wonderful woman who had helped her get through the darkest days of her life.

  ‘Did you have a nice time with Vicky?’ her mum asked as she lifted the saucepan full of peas from the hob and tipped them into the slightly misshapen plastic colander over the sink, filling the space with a plume of pea-scented steam.

  Rachel nodded, not quite sure if it was a nice time; she felt no inclination, however, to try to describe how her capacity for happiness had been all but destroyed; every encounter, every event now filtered through the sediment of grief that removed any potential joy from it. It had been good to see her friend and a lot of what she’d said made sense.

  ‘Did she have her little one with her?’ Julie asked a little sheepishly, having decided it was still too much for Rachel to have to deal with her nephews and therefore leaving them with her parents every time she came over. Rather than take comfort from their absence, Rachel actually felt it was some sort of punishment and it hurt more than she cared to admit.

  ‘Yes, he slept most of the time. He’s a lovely baby.’ She watched the way her brother looked down and swallowed the awkward lump in his throat.

  ‘Vicky said she thought I should maybe get out of Yate and go and stay with her for a bit.’ She spoke her thoughts aloud.

  ‘Really?’ Peter snapped.

  Rachel looked at him, unsure where this tone had come from or why.

  ‘Yes, really. She has a spare room and she thought—’

  ‘Oh, well that’s nice,’ Peter interrupted. ‘After all Mum and Dad have done for you.’

  ‘Peter!’ her mum called with a slight tut from the sink, her tone the same one she had been using since he was a small child. Rachel felt her pulse quicken; she had forgotten how snipey he could be, how spoiled he sounded and how much she detested it.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Mum.’ He looked at his wife and jutted his weak chin, and she wondered if this display was as much about showing off in front of the gormless Julie as it was about his petty, misplaced jealousy. The irony wasn’t lost on her. Yes, she had a life in a warm climate, but he had his wife by his side and his two kids to tuck up in their beds in a matter of hours. She would, of course, have swapped the house, the pool and the view of the sea for what he had in less than a heartbeat.

  Peter continued, ‘I mean, I know you’ve had it rough, Rachel, but you’re doing what you always do: pitching up here and disrupting everything – it’s typical. I know you’re going through shit, but just be aware of what this means to Mum and Dad and to all of us. And now, after they have made room in their lives for you, you’re talking about upping sticks and going to stay with Vicky!’ He shook his head like a disappointed teacher.

  ‘I don’t have to make room in my life for her or you; you are my life!’ Her mum spoke with more than a hint of emotion.

  Rachel smiled at her.

  ‘Well, I knew you’d defend her!’ Changing position, he kicked the supporting leg of the table and it juddered. Rachel stood, the little appetite she might have been able to summon now gone entirely.

  ‘You might think you know what I am going through, Peter, but you don’t.’ She pulled her sweatshirt sleeves over her hands to hide their trembling. ‘And I am glad, because I would never want another person, let alone my own brother, to feel this way, ever. But if you were to find yourself lost or sadder than sad, I really hope that I would be kind to you, because it’s a fine balance for me right now between keeping calm and managing to wake up each day, and fucking losing it!’ She shouted the latter and her breath came in short bursts; her nostrils flared and her eyes darted around the table. She was certain that had her mother put water glasses at each place, as they did at home, she would have grabbed each one and hurled them against the wall. Even imagining the act brought her some small sense of release.

  ‘I don’t think there is any need to talk to Peter like that.’ Julie spoke through a mealy mouth and placed her hand on her husband’s thigh.

  ‘Please shut the fuck up, Julie!’ she fired.

  ‘Don’t talk to Julie like that!’ Peter banged the table.

  ‘Come on, poppet, it’s our walk time.’ Her dad’s voice came from behind her. She looked over her shoulder and he was already in his jacket with her waterproof in his big hand.

  ‘Oh, Brian, really? I am just dishing up tea!’ her mum whined, as she spooned cooling peas on to five plates set on the countertop. The equal measuring out of the fiddly green vegetable was seemingly more important than the tornado of disquiet that hurtled around the breakfast nook.

  ‘It’ll keep.’ He gave a single nod in conclusion.

  They walked the first mile or so in silence and Rachel felt her muscles unknot and her heartbeat settle.

  ‘She means well. Your mum.’

  Rachel nodded, deciding not to comment on how she found it beyond infuriating the way the woman disgorged all that sat in her head, the muddled soup of emotion that flowed without filter or discrimination, seemingly oblivious of the storm brewing around her.

  ‘I know and I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t want to argue with Peter, I don’t have the strength. And I shouldn’t have sworn at Julie. And it’s so unfair on you and Mum. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Peter is . . .’ He spoke without lifting his eyes from the pavement. ‘Peter is a complex lad. I think he feels a little trapped by life, and so to see a free bird like you flying high has always been a little hard for him to swallow. Not that I am justifying his behaviour or condoning it, but I hope it might help explain it.’

  ‘God, Dad, we have invited him and Julie over numerous times, offered tickets, and James tries calling him every time he’s over here to see if he fancies a beer, or if he’s got tickets for the football, but he has always sniffed away our efforts to get closer.’

  ‘I know, and as I said, he’s a complex fellow, but not a bad one, not really. He just needs to cut his mother’s apron strings and the ones that now tether him to Julie.’

  ‘I get it.’ And she did.

  ‘And for the record, I think Vicky is right. You do need to get out of Yate. It’s no good being holed up in your old room day in and day out with only Treacle for company. You need to be with your friends.’

  ‘Are you asking me to leave?’ she asked with the wobble of rejection on her lower lip, the prospect almost more than she could handle.

  Brian stopped walking and turned to face her; he reached out and gripped her shoulders with his hands where the working man’s ring of grime sat under his fingernails. He held her gaze. She was further distressed by the glint of tears in her dad’s eyes. ‘If I could have a wish, it would be to see your face every single day of my life over that breakfast table.’ He swallowed. ‘Or
it would be to turn the clock back to when you were small and you would wait for me on the wall to come home from work, waving like crazy when you saw me come around the corner. Rachel, I want you by my side. You are my little girl! My little girl . . .’ He paused and gathered himself. ‘And because I love you so much I only want what is best for you, and right now what I think is best is being somewhere where you are not surrounded by memories that drag you down and people who don’t necessarily know what to do or say for the best. That’s what being a parent is all about: loving you no matter how far away you are.’

  She took a step forward and rested her head on her dad’s heavy work coat that smelled of petrol and glue. And this was how they stood under the glow of a street lamp. She closed her eyes and thought of her one wish, and that too involved turning back time.

  Rachel stamped her feet on the welcome mat and unzipped her jacket, thankful that Peter and Julie had left. She picked up the letter from the back of the shelf and took it up the stairs, carrying it like a fragile thing. The letters were something she treasured – a link between the world she had left, but where her heart remained, and here, where she was hiding out. She lay on the bed and opened it, getting lost in Cee-Cee’s tales of Clara and descriptions of another time.

  . . . Yes, we were sisters in every other sense. Although sisters I now know should look out for one another, help and support each other. And there weren’t nothing sisterly about what she did to me in my time of need, my time of distress.