by Alice Jolly
I want to insist that I do believe. I want to fill him with confidence, create a dream of a brilliant future. But I must be honest, above all else, I must be that. ‘I don’t really know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I think we had better try and believe it.’
He shrugs his shoulders and wipes snow from his hair. ‘Maybe.’ He puts out his hand to me. ‘Come on, let’s not stand around out here.’
As we walk back, Rob takes off his coat, and tries to give it to me, but I don’t want it. No, no, I don’t want it, I say. All of my life people have been trying to put coats on me. Why don’t they just let me get wet, for God’s sake? Put it on, Eva, just put it on. No, I don’t need it. You keep it. But he’s still trying to put it around me. I push it away. Put it on. No, you put it on. Will our first real row be about this coat? Just when we’re about to start yelling, Rob puts his arm in one sleeve, and I put my arm in the other. We shuffle along, clutched together, like people who can’t do ballroom dancing.
And then we’re laughing inside the coat as we bump against each other. Rob’s cheeks are red and wet and we’re both out of breath. We kiss and press close against each other. We take three steps, kiss, laugh, shuffle. Four steps, kiss, laugh, shuffle. But then for a moment we’re still, staring around us at the wilderness of white and grey. It seems that even the traffic is silent, the streetlights dim. We’re suddenly alone – alone together – in a way we’ve never been before. And we grip each other tight, suddenly taut with fear, daunted by the future. It’s in this city that we’ll make our longest journey.
I pick up Jack’s pen for one last time. I do so hate a happy ending. But perhaps this is one. Except this is the beginning of a story, not the end. I stare down at my pile of scribbled pages. Jack said once that writing is just a bad habit. By watching life you avoid it. He was right and he was wrong. I don’t want to turn into my Uncle Guy – a man obsessed with words and yet devoid of all ability to communicate.
My hands flick through the pages. It may happen that someone will read these sentences long after they have cooled. And if they do, my words might lead them out on to those parts of their mind where the ice is thin – and who knows what lies beneath? And if that happens, then they may recover some part of themselves, lost long ago, which might weep or sing or dance. That is the most I can hope. It is everything.
And as for Jack, I should say that I’ll never think of him again. But, of course, I will. And I’ll feel him, imprinted in my flesh. Time is not measured in minutes, hours, days. Beyond what we see, there’s a place of certainty, of silence, of union. It is a place words can’t reach. And there we are together. Just as we were that day at the dacha when we sat together looking out at the garden of yellow flowers.
Propped on the windowsill is the picture my father gave me. By now he will be at Marsh End House. Will my mother be overjoyed to see him? Or will she be shocked, as I was, by what time does, as it passes? I try to imagine them together in the kitchen, sitting at the table, but the image won’t form. It occurs to me that I could ring them up, but I won’t do it now. Tomorrow, perhaps. Maybe they’ll go out and walk across the marsh, despite the cold. Yes, I think they will. My father would want to go there. That I can imagine, the two of them walking down the lane in the darkness, as the wind sweeps across the flat land and out towards the sea.
My eyes are still held by his painting. All day I’ve found myself drawn back to it. There seemed so little on the canvas but, as I look, more appears. My father hasn’t just painted a stretch of coastline, instead he’s painted what lies behind it. Perhaps that’s what he found during all those long years on a beach in Mexico.
I stand up and put the lid on Jack’s pen, then go to the bedroom door and watch Rob sleeping. Light from the uncurtained window falls on his face, the pillow cradles his head. I could stand here watching him a long time. To me the scene seems perfect – the whiteness of the pillow, the tender way in which the light fits itself to the shape of his face. In the silence, in the stillness of the night, I’m back again in that world where something quite ordinary seems beautiful. Except that world is only this world. It’s the place my father painted, and which Jack knew, and wanted me to know as well. That place which I used to think was lost in the past, or hidden on some distant beach. But is here – now – if only you can find it.
First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 2006
An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Alice Jolly, 2006
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ISBN:978-1-912618-99-6
EAN: 9780743450720
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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