by Louise Beech
‘You hear it?’ said Colin.
‘I do, lad.’ Ken pointed. ‘Look, there. Seagulls. I think three of ’em. How lovely they are.’
The birds circled the boat like white kites. Colin pitied them – what morsel did they hope to find here? Nothing here but tins and wood and two wasted seamen. Still it was nice to have a different creature to look at; how soft their feathers were, how bright against the sky. So long since he’d seen a bird. His father could name most types, just from a flash of wing or beak. He had often taken Colin and his brothers bird spotting in the nearby woods.
‘If only we had wings and the land instinct they have,’ said Ken.
Colin slapped the deck next to him.
‘Now what are you grinning at?’ Ken was not in the mood to be mocked. ‘Have you gone stark raving mad? Am I to throw you overboard myself?’
‘Birds!’ said Colin. ‘What chumps we’ve been. Their sound woke me this morning. Neither of us realised they were here. And now we have we’re just sitting and saying how lovely they are. What a pair of bloody fools! Don’t you realise – those are the first birds since we’ve been at sea.’
‘Of course!’ Ken grinned too. ‘The seagull is never far from land.’ ‘We must be closer, Chippy.’ Colin held onto his mate’s arm.
‘We did right to up the rations last week else we’d not be here now to see the gulls.’
‘Thank God.’
The water from the barnacles, their small evening meal, and the sight of birds gave the two men immense hope. They watched the gulls swoop and dive, looking for fish, as the sun sank beyond. Scarface surfaced about fifteen feet away but didn’t stay for long. The sea calmed, the boat stilled, and night fell.
‘Maybe we don’t need a ship,’ said Colin. ‘Maybe land will come first. Maybe tomorrow land? I just hope we can last it out.’
‘We must,’ said Ken. ‘We simply must.’ He sighed, his breath barely enough to move a leaf. ‘The excitement … has left me … tired…’
‘How curious it would be if happiness was what killed us,’ said Colin, still mad with joy at seeing the birds. ‘After all this time we die in joy.’ He paused. ‘It’s what’s left when the excitement passes that concerns me. It’s too bleak to bear. That’s why you’re tired. Hope’s just as cruel as despair when it lifts and then drops you again. But without it, we’re done for. No, you rest, lad.’ He looked over at Ken, a thin shape half-lit by stars. ‘Those birds mean summat. They do. More than just land. They’ve come to … well, to give us hope.’
Colin lay back and counted stars. He recalled that first night on the lifeboat, when he’d thought he might be the only one and it had seemed the stars laughed at his efforts to survive. They had not changed – but he had. Now he only managed to count twelve of them and knew no more.
25
A NEW SNOWFLAKE
Great hopes today. Hope it will soon end.
K.C.
And so, with another Christmas done, Rose returned to school.
She got dressed in her customary manner, leaving a trail of items in her wake. She cleaned her teeth and chose the bobbles she wanted for her ponytail and then let me brush her hair, as if the last few weeks hadn’t happened.
I looked out at the small patches of grass where the snow had melted. New snowfall if it came would look identical. But its invisible-to-the-human-eye design would mean it was unique. Rose did all the things she’d always done, but I knew she was different.
She now did the majority of her injections, mostly so I’d not have to go in to school at lunch.
‘It’s just embarrassing,’ she’d said last night. ‘Everyone will say to me, oh, why does your mum come in, are you a baby, are you like stupid?’
‘I doubt anyone would say such things,’ I’d said, sad.
Now she pulled away as I finished her hair and then packed her Hello Kitty bag. I’d bought her a gaudy spotted make-up purse to keep all the lancets and insulin pens safe during lessons. If only the pretty colours could lessen the severity of the accoutrements inside. She put them in her bag and zipped it up. I’d just hoped to make the diabetes less obvious to others, but Rose told me she didn’t care about that anymore.
‘It’s just me now isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Diabetes. It’s me, full stop.’
‘I suppose,’ I agreed.
She put on her coat. ‘If Dad comes home when I’m at school,’ she said, ‘will you get me straight away?’
‘No, because he’ll be here when you get in.’
I’d still not told her that I wasn’t sure when he’d be home. Jake hadn’t called since our Christmas morning conversation and I had no clue when he next would. It could be February; it could be Easter for all I knew. The sadness that our ocean story would end with no Jake grew fatter and heavier. I carried it around, unable to share it with Rose, not knowing if he’d even get back at all.
‘He’s going to be dead proud of you doing all your injections,’ I said. ‘He won’t expect it at all.’
Almost at the door, Rose dropped her bag and let her coat fall to the floor. Had I upset her?
She went back to the book nook where crumbs from breakfast were still scattered across the cushions, tiny clues that we’d been there. Kneeling, she took Colin’s diary from the shelf and held it to her chest. I realised it was a goodbye. Though we were not yet quite at the end of his story we had agreed last night that I should today give the diary to my father. We had read all of Colin’s words; we had opened every page; we had heard every syllable.
‘We can still borrow it anytime,’ I said as Rose continued to hold the book. ‘It’s not like a goodbye forever.’
‘I don’t want to read it again,’ she said. ‘That’s why I just want to remember it – what it looks and smells like.’
That morning, with breakfast, we had shared day forty-two. So little happened aside from Ken and Colin sleeping that we talked mostly of previous days. Rose told me she had dreamt she told Grandad Colin to look for barnacles on the trailing rope the night before we did day forty. She’d been reading a story at school where sailors had done this and had hoped she’d dream of Colin so she could tell him – and it happened.
Now Rose put Colin’s diary back on the shelf and headed for the door. ‘If only I still dreamt about him like I used to,’ she said, halfway down the path. Three snowflakes landed in her hair, sticking to it and looking like frosted hair slides. ‘I’d be able to close my eyes every single night and see him. I’d tell him off for saying he’d jump over with Ken that time. I’d say – you can’t talk anymore about jumping in the sea! Do you hear me? You’re not allowed!’
I went towards her, my feet bare on the icy path but she shook her head, said, ‘I’m fine, I’m just saying,’ and went off to school, her bobbly scarf flying behind her like a barnacle-covered rope.
I closed the door, got dressed and took Colin’s diary from the shelf. I wondered about keeping it to show Jake when – if – he finally came home, but Rose had said last night that even though she loved her dad, he wasn’t the dad who needed this book. She said it belonged to my dad now.
So I went to him.
My father lived alone in the house where he’d been born sixty-four years earlier, a life come full circle. It had changed less than he had and seen much. The cool larder was still home to a variety of cordials, the kind I’d nagged for as a child; the high-backed chairs were those my grandma had favoured, sitting with knitting on her lap; pictures of my dad’s brother Peter and sister Jane lined clean surfaces and flock walls; and the kitchen floor tiles had witnessed many years of muddy shoes, wet Wellington boots, and worn slippers.
That day, when he came in from the garden, flushed from chopping wood, I saw more of Colin in my father. It must have always been there, but now I’d relived almost all of his story, I could see details I’d overlooked. My father is fairer haired and skinned than Colin was but something in the eyebrow, in the jaw, made them alike today. He washed his hands and put the kettle
on.
‘I have something for you,’ I said. ‘It might be a bit of a shock.’
He doesn’t like fuss or melodrama so I simply handed him the soft, brown diary and said no more. For a moment I paused, not wanting to give it up, and the lifeboat and Scarface and the ocean flashed before me, a cliché turned on its head because it was not my life I saw but Colin’s.
‘Well, well,’ said my dad, studying it, then turning it over and looking at the inky C.A. initials. ‘I know what this is.’ He didn’t open it though.
‘You do?’ It was I who instead experienced shock.
‘Of course. It’s my father’s notebook.’
‘You … but…’ I could not seem to get any coherent words out.
‘I recall that it was tied in two thick ribbons,’ he said, frowning.
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘It was.’ I paused. ‘You’ve seen it before? I thought no one ever had because the ribbons were so knotted up. I thought perhaps it had got mixed up in the box of things Grandma left me, forgotten until we…’ I wondered how to describe Rose finding it and said simply, ‘Until we came upon it.’
‘Your grandma knew about the notebook too,’ my dad explained. ‘She knew Colin had written in it during the months following his lifeboat rescue. But he never wanted to talk very much about it and always kept it hidden away in a desk – so she felt she might have been intruding if she’d opened it.’
I wondered if maybe she’d been afraid to, knowing more than anyone what he must have gone through. I also began to worry that I had done the wrong thing in undoing those difficult knots to get to it.
It occurred to me for the first time that Colin had been in this house. So long ago now, he had slept here, been a father here, written in his diary and remembered the lifeboat here. How had I not sensed him more? Do we go when we die to the place we were born, a place we love best, the place where we lived longest, or some other faraway place?
‘When did you decide to look for the book?’ my dad asked. ‘It’s been…’ He thought about it. ‘It’s been seven years since your grandma passed.’
‘I never looked at anything in that box,’ I said, watching him make tea in the flowery china teapot that was probably older than I was. ‘I felt too sad. So I just put it away and never went back to it. Until Rose … a couple of months ago.’
‘Have you read it?’ he asked me.
‘Yes.’
‘What made you read it now?’
My father was a pragmatic, no-nonsense man of rigid opinions. Would he think me now a little silly – slightly crazy – if I told him of Colin talking to me at the hospital and to Rose in the night, and also appearing in dreams?
But I did not want to lie.
‘After Rose was diagnosed,’ I said. ‘I began … thinking of Colin. No, more than thinking. At times it was as though he was here, somehow. When Rose was fighting her injections she came across his book in the shed. More than came across really. Rose had dreamt about Colin and he told her to go there. So I’ve been telling her his story to get her … well, really, us through the injections. It’s been … quite incredible. She’s loved it.’
While I talked my father sipped tea and took in the information, and his eyes never showed surprise or disbelief or judgement. I could not tell anything from his even gaze but that was the way of my paternal family. Colin had viewed me similarly at the hospital. I wondered, did I look at Rose like that? Was I as difficult to read?
‘We’re almost done,’ I said. ‘We’re at day forty-three and I know the rest. I know how it will go. I’ve finished the diary.’ I paused. ‘So you should have it now.’
‘Thank you.’ It was all he said.
Then he went into the back room and I followed, watched him stoke the fire and put a stray book in its proper place. We drank our tea and looked out at the frosty garden, at the tangled, leafless bushes behind it and the factory beyond that. He told me about the ridiculous grammatical errors in a local newspaper article last night, and I said I’d decided to go back to work now that Rose was gaining independence. I’d called my boss Sarah and she’d agreed that I could return in two weeks. My time off had not been even half as long as maternity leave but I worried that I’d forgotten what I did there.
‘Won’t it be difficult without Jake at home?’ asked my dad. ‘What about evening work? Weekends?’
‘Vonny helps,’ I said.
‘I will too. When will Jake be back?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
He put Colin’s diary in a drawer, separating it from the numerous other hardbacks on his shelf. ‘I’ve always thought solitude is good for a person. If you’re not contented alone then you’ll never feel secure in partnership.’
I agreed. I had always found peace in being alone. But also we need companionship. Would a person survive for many days on a lifeboat if they were there alone?
‘I’d best get back,’ I said. ‘Rose will be home from school in half an hour.’
‘Story time?’ asked my dad.
‘Yes,’ I said, a half-smile shyly emerging.
He walked me to the door and saw me to my car. The front garden was neatly kept. In only a few months I knew daffodils and crocuses would burst through the soil; suddenly I longed for spring. This winter had been far too long.
‘I think I have a few books that belonged to Colin,’ said my dad as I started the car up. ‘Dickens and such, from when he was a boy. Rose might like them.’
‘She would,’ I said.
‘Good. I’ll find them for her.’
I pulled away; he waved as I did. That he had made no comment was his way of saying he accepted that some curious, unexplainable link had been formed between my family and Colin, crossing more than sixty years, a bridge built of imagination and memories and DNA. I wanted to stop and ask him if he would now read the diary too but decided he might not even know yet. And if he did, maybe that journey was one he would take privately.
Weren’t all books supposed to be like that?
Back home, I prepared chilli con carne for tea and when Rose came in from school we took a portion to the book nook.
‘Will I have to eat at the table again when we’re done?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You know how your dad is about meals at the table, so don’t tell him how bad we’ve been.’ I paused. ‘How was school? What was it like doing your blood and injection without me?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me every bloody day, will you?’
‘Language, seriously, Rose. No need at all.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but you’ve got to stop asking and watching and fussing like all the time. It’s just all normal. Diabetes is just my life.’
Rose was right. Only I held her back now.
She prepared the finger pricker as ably as I’d learnt to do so. Her hands moved like they’d always been meant to do this. Mine, however, faltered. For a moment I felt lost without Colin’s dairy. I reached to touch the soft leather and found nothing but smooth, colourful paperbacks. Even when we hadn’t actually opened it I’d always known it was there, like an actor with his script in case of forgotten lines. I panicked, feared I wouldn’t know the story.
‘You don’t need the diary,’ said Rose.
I had kept the one string of lights up at her request and she shone gold and red and purple in the glow.
‘I’m scared,’ I admitted.
‘But don’t you know?’ she said. ‘It was never the diary or the newspaper bits or what anyone else told you. It was always you. Just you. You’re the storyteller and I love you.’
26
GET UP AND KEEP LOOKING
Good news at about 10.30 this morning.
K.C.
Once away from it, the ocean’s many colours fade. No paintbrush or pen can ever quite recreate their intensity. And yet, while on the lifeboat and surrounded by them, Colin dreamt of otherworldly tones and tints, of unnatural shades manufactured by companies wanting to lure children
into their pages.
During those final nights at sea he saw a shelf full of books. The place he’d been so often now. Some were neatly placed in alphabetical order; others were piled high more carelessly. They were as real as though Colin could have taken one and read it. But when he tried to it melted like snow.
Then he wasn’t alone; he never had been.
Sitting on two cushions were a woman and the beautiful girl with her sunlit hair, her eager, imploring eyes, holding a box full of tiny needles and other strange things. Seemingly unaware of him, they shared a story. It must have been one they loved for they barely stopped talking, taking turns and then interrupting in excitement.
Colin didn’t want to disturb the moment. Yet he also wanted to reach out and let them know he was there too. On and on they went with their story, their sentences flowing, building, bouncing. He couldn’t hear what they said but, as with the other curious dreams, the words were somehow familiar.
It began to fade and he panicked.
Don’t leave me, he tried to yell.
But darkness stole the books, their faces.
Then he heard it: You have to get up and keep looking, Grandad!
The girl. His great granddaughter. Where was she?
He could hear the sea’s current. Her watery hands rocked and tipped the boat. No, he didn’t want to wake. He knew what awaited him there.
Do you know the story of Noah, said the girl. Remember what the bird meant. Get up and keep looking, Grandad!
Colin woke to find Ken staring at him. His eyes were lifeless, hopeless, apathetic, shrunken into their sockets. After the dream, Ken’s face shocked Colin. Having watched forty-three days of deterioration he rarely noticed Ken’s gaunt appearance, but that morning, after the fresh faces in his dream, Ken looked like him. He looked like Death. Colin realised then how ill they were and knew that without land or a ship they wouldn’t last longer than another two or three days.
Ken bravely tried to smile at his chum and Colin attempted to return the effort. The sun was already halfway across the sky – how had they slept so long? Never before had Colin missed dawn; and when had he last said to Ken, Maybe today a ship? He tried to say it now but his tongue filled his mouth, trapping the verbs and muffling the nouns. The effort he anticipated would be needed to reach the final water tin kept him from moving.