The Library of Lost and Found

by Phaedra Patrick

  “I’m taking a bath,” she shouted out, cocking her head to listen for a reply.

  When she didn’t hear a voice, she assumed that Siegfried had heard her and she locked the bathroom door.

  Running the water, she poured in a generous amount of blue bubble bath and swished her hand through the froth. She folded her robe and left it on the floor. Then she lowered herself into the hot water. As she picked up a bar of soap, the scent of roses and vanilla reminded her of Zelda and she felt a familiar wobble of her bottom lip.

  Then she bit it away.

  She wasn’t going to spend time thinking about her family. For the first time in her life, she was going to think about herself.

  She washed her feet, and legs, and under her arms. When she slipped her head under the water, the hotness soothed her scalp. She couldn’t find any shampoo, so she used the bubble bath and her hair squeaked as she rinsed it through.

  She lay there, her ears submerged, until the water cooled around her. Goose bumps formed on her legs and shoulders. And she listened to the strange clack, clack, clack from the room below.

  35

  Typewriter

  Back in the bedroom, Martha wrapped her hair in a towel and got dressed in a purple cotton dress she remembered Suki wearing when she first started her job. It was a maternity one, a perfect roomy fit. She draped the white toweling dressing gown around her shoulders and made her way, barefoot, down to the kitchen.

  Siegfried sat at his kitchen table. He wore glasses and his gray woolen hat was pulled down low over his eyebrows. His face was almost obscured by an old black typewriter. His fingers danced across the keys, which rose and fell with a clack. There was a pile of paper next to him, all typed up.

  Martha watched, hypnotized, as the typewriter barrel traveled to the left, pinged, and then Siegfried swiped it back again.

  “You’re a writer?” she asked.

  He didn’t look up.

  Martha glanced around the room. Books and photos in frames lined rows of shelves, constructed to fit into the circular space. There was a wine rack carved from driftwood, and a large ship in a bottle on a sideboard. She reached out and picked it up, examining the models of tiny sailors on board, and the white froth on the tips of the blue waves.

  There was a photograph of Siegfried standing alongside author Lucinda Lovell. She smiled at the camera, while he stood stiffly by her side. The words Siegfried and Angela were written under it.

  “Isn’t that Lucinda Lovell?” Martha asked.

  “Hmm,” he grunted. “My sister.”

  “Oh,” Martha frowned as she tried to work this out. “So, Angela is your sister but she uses the pen name Lucinda?”

  Siegfried didn’t reply.

  Martha set the ship in a bottle back on the sideboard. “What are you writing about?”

  Siegfried reached out and straightened his pile of paper. He picked up a paperclip, stared at it and placed it down again. He tucked his chin into his chest and then raised his eyes at her for the briefest moment. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Me?” Martha’s voice wobbled.

  “Yes.”

  His small words of concern made her feel like she was melting. She would have liked to have heard them so many times, over the years. Just someone asking if she was okay.

  She sat down heavily on the bottom stair, her bare toes pointing together. She thought of Siegfried’s strong arms hoisting her from the sea and decided that he deserved an explanation.

  She told him about caring for her parents for years and what she’d given up to do that. She spoke of Blue Skies and Stormy Seas, reminding him that he’d admired the blackbird illustration. “The book led me to my nana, Zelda, after I thought she was dead. But I also learned that Thomas Storm wasn’t my real father, and my sister knew that. I just feel that everyone in my family lied to me...” Her body shrank as she talked.

  Siegfried didn’t speak for a while. He stared at his typewriter and shrugged with one shoulder. “It doesn’t mean they didn’t love you.”

  They were the most words she’d ever heard him say and, as she considered them, emotion rose in her chest. “I suppose not.”

  He nodded once.

  Martha rearranged her dressing gown. “I thought of the Pegasus, when I was in the sea. Thank you so much for saving me.”

  Siegfried sat motionless, his face a blank. He cleared his throat before he stood up. Walking over to a bookshelf, he picked up a photograph and handed it to her.

  Eight fishermen stood in a line in front of their boat, the Pegasus. The handwritten date on the bottom of the photo said 1964.

  “The year before the accident,” Martha whispered. She peered more closely at the faces of the young men and her eyes alighted on one stood on the far right. He had a mop of dark hair and piercing eyes. His hat was pulled down too far onto his forehead. “You?” she asked.

  Siegfried nodded. He took the photograph from her and pointed at the man standing next to him. “Daniel,” he said.

  Martha blinked hard as she found herself looking at her father. He had unruly hair and a too-large smile. He was stocky and young. Far too young. A tear rolled down her cheek and she suddenly felt a pointless urge to make him proud.

  When she looked at Siegfried, he flicked his eyes away. They were glassy, too. “You knew about him, didn’t you?” Martha said. “That he and my mum were together? Did you know about me, too?”

  He nodded once. “I tried to save him...” He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I couldn’t.”

  Martha tried to take in the magnitude of his words. She touched his arm gently. “The storm was so strong it swallowed a boat and its crew. You couldn’t have done anything. I know the power of the sea and you saved me from it,” she said.

  She thought of how Siegfried followed her out of the library, after her outburst. She pictured the shopping trolley appearing outside her house with her hair slide inside it. The other touches of kindness that he’d shown her over the years were too small at the time for her to notice. They weren’t the big hits of gratitude and appreciation that she sought from others. They didn’t give her a warm glow.

  But now they did.

  Siegfried set the photograph back on the shelf.

  Martha pulled her robe around her shoulders, suddenly feeling cold. “I used to tell stories when I was younger. It helped me to deal with things. Is that why you write, too?”

  She waited for his reply, though it didn’t come.

  Feeling that their conversation was over, she took a step back up the staircase. A wave of exhaustion surged over her and she grabbed hold of the handrail. “I’ll get my things and leave you in peace.”

  Siegfried glanced at her. He shook his head. “Stay.”

  “I’ll be needed at the library, and Suki’s baby is due soon. I left Zelda alone and I want to know that she’s okay. I’ve not completed my application form yet, for the librarian job...”

  With each thing Martha listed, she felt herself diminishing, like a sandcastle washed away by the sea. She pictured the tasks in her head, listed in a column with glaring red dots next to them.

  Siegfried waited until she ran out of steam. “Stay,” he repeated.

  He opened a drawer, then removed a flat cardboard box. It was brown and worn. He walked over and handed it to her.

  Martha frowned. “What is it?”

  “Daniel,” he said.

  * * *

  For the rest of the day, Martha lay in bed in her small room in the lighthouse. Or she sat in the armchair, her face warm as she soaked up the sun rays through the window.

  She leafed through the few pages in the box. It contained a couple of poems, an essay on the sea and a birthday card for Siegfried. They were things that someone else might have thrown away. Unless a terrible event had increased their significance.<
br />
  They were all written by Daniel. His words were simple yet strong. They were emotional and expressive.

  Perhaps I took after him all along, Martha told herself. And she clung to this thought.

  A feeling of calm began to fall upon her and here, alone at the top of the lighthouse with Daniel’s words, she was able to view everything more clearly. She took the time to think about her family and what they meant to her. They hadn’t been perfect, but what family was?

  She could appreciate what her mother went through, the choices she made, that she thought were for the best. Betty had wanted a strong, secure household for her family, after losing a true love, but it came at a price. She had to juggle a difficult relationship between her husband and mother.

  Martha imagined Zelda being forced to leave her home and family behind, to start afresh someplace new, because she hadn’t been able to adapt her behavior to suit her son-in-law. She must have been so hurt and bewildered, even if she had Gina’s unending support.

  Martha tried to see things from her dad’s perspective, too. A man who had fallen in love with a woman who was already pregnant with another man’s child. Someone she had loved and lost. Thomas made a promise to raise the baby, without his own family knowing he wasn’t the father. He only knew one way to do things, and that was his own.

  And Lilian had known that she and Martha had different fathers and kept this secret for decades. Perhaps it had eaten away inside her and shaped her life, too.

  And finally, Martha turned her attention onto herself.

  She was the same person as before. But after the last week or so, what she’d done and what she had learned, about others and herself, meant that her skeleton felt it was reinforced with steel. The past was in the past, and she had to accept it and lay it to rest, so she could look to the future.

  She was no longer angry at Zelda, just terribly sad about the happenings that touched decades of her, Lilian’s, Zelda’s and Betty’s lives. She could spend hours and days allowing them to mill in her mind, or she could strive to put them behind her.

  I have to find the strength to move on.

  Because there’s no alternative.

  She decided that she wasn’t going to focus on always trying to please others. She felt determined to take the time to get to know, and love, herself. And she hoped that the warm glow of appreciation she always looked for might actually come from within.

  I want to be glorious again.

  * * *

  Siegfried brought Martha’s supper for her, a glass of milk and hot buttered toast. Two other things also lay on the tray—an envelope and a small sheet of paper. On the paper were a few lines, written neatly in blue pen.

  Suki is okay. She’s given Ben his culmination (ultimatum?)

  Zelda says she’s truly sorry

  Lilian sends her love

  Job application deadline—tomorrow

  Owen wants to take you for coffee

  “How do you know all this?” she called after him, but he moved quickly away.

  Martha opened the envelope and found her job application form inside. It had a yellow sticky note attached, with Suki’s handwriting on it. “Go for it,” it said.

  And so she did.

  In addition to the questions, Martha thought about the big box full of fancy dress costumes in her shed, and how an Alice in Wonderland outfit wouldn’t be too difficult to put together. She wrote up her idea for a literature festival, where everyone dressed up as their favorite fictional character. She put forward an idea for intergenerational reading groups, where children came together with older people, to share a love of books. She suggested promoting and expanding the reading group further. She stated that the library needed more support from head office.

  With Daniel’s words surrounding her, Martha poured out her heart, about what the library and its people meant to her. The library was there when she needed it, and she wanted to devote her time giving something back.

  She told her own story.

  * * *

  She woke early the next morning, at 5:31 a.m. Siegfried was already seated in front of his typewriter.

  Martha washed the dishes while he clack-clacked away. They had found a strange easy rhythm of being in the same space together.

  She placed her completed application form in front of him, knowing that she wasn’t quite ready to leave yet.

  He nodded once, then opened and read it.

  Martha looked out of the window. The tide was going out and her stomach was tight at the thought of leaving the calm white space that had been her haven.

  Siegfried handed the form back to her. “Top marks,” he said.

  He resumed his tapping away and Martha didn’t ask what he was writing. He was focused and, in his own way, seemed content.

  She wanted to tell him that he’d helped to restore her faith in people and that her time in the lighthouse had helped to quiet her mind and allow for her heart to heal. But she thought that he probably knew.

  * * *

  At just after 7:00 a.m., she unlocked the lighthouse door. Siegfried stood beside her, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his long coat.

  “Thank you,” she told him. She sought out a spot on his cheek, above his beard and below his hat, and planted a quick kiss.

  He gave a jerky nod and held the door open. He placed his hand inside his coat and handed her a blue envelope. It had “To Whoever It May Concern” written on it.

  Knowing he’d be embarrassed if she asked what it was, Martha placed it neatly in the large patch pocket of the purple dress. Her toes were bare in the glittery sandals. She picked up Daniel’s cardboard box and held it close to her chest. She welcomed the sea breeze that whipped her hair and speckled her face with salt water. Inhaling, she held the air in her lungs for a moment before stepping onto the uneven rocks. “If I can ever do anything for you, just let me know,” she said.

  Siegfried stood still, his coat whipping in the wind. “One thing,” he called back to her after a few seconds.

  “What?”

  He tugged his hat down farther so she could no longer see his eyes. “Stop Branda picking bloody Scandi thrillers,” he said.

  36

  Sisters

  The beach was quiet, except for a few people walking their dogs. Something orange bobbed in the gray sea and Martha craned her neck to see what it was. A swimming cap? Don’t they know about the riptide? Then she saw it was a football. A black Labrador splashed into the sea, then swam out to retrieve it.

  Sighing with relief, she looked up and saw her house at the edge of the cliff. The fence was wonky and she pictured five figures in the garden, a mum, dad, grandma and two girls. In her imagination, they waved down at her. She briefly raised her fingers in return, but they were gone as quickly as they appeared to her.

  She walked across the sands and stopped in front of the teardrop-shaped cave. It was empty, dark and calm now. The sea had left behind a wet tide mark inside. It reached above her and Joe’s initials, so the white of the letters had darkened.

  Martha placed Daniel’s box gently on the sand and stepped into the cave. She climbed up onto the rocks, towards the slit, to retrieve her coat and shoes. She was relieved to find they were dry, untouched by the sea. Slipping them on, she climbed back down while carrying the glittery sandals.

  She walked over to the wall and stared up at the initials. She pictured Joe reaching up to write them. His hair was thick and dark, and his shoulders strong. She had locked him in her mind so that he was forever young, and that they were forever in love. She could see now that he was a figure of fantasy, representing her past happiness.

  She now knew this responsibility was all hers.

  She could take up Suki’s offer to seek Joe out, to find out where he was in his life. Or she could let him remain as a lovely memory.

  She pictur
ed Siegfried’s note on the side of her supper tray, and his updates. “Owen wants to take you for coffee.”

  It was definitely her turn to organize and pay this time. She broke into a warm smile at the thought of his lapel badges and his red slippers. He probably didn’t dance in the sea at dusk, whatever the weather, but did she want that any longer?

  She wriggled her toes and imagined her nails painted petal-pink, as she used to do for Joe. She’d never had a steady hand and hated the smell of the polish. After almost drowning, she didn’t ever want her feet to get wet, by the sea, again.

  She smiled up at the initials and briefly stretched up to press a fingertip against them. “Goodbye, Joe,” she murmured.

  She made sure that her door keys were safe in her coat pocket and she picked up Daniel’s box. Leaving the cave, she headed towards the mermaid statue.

  As usual, she stopped to read the plaque, and this time she let her eyes linger on the name Daniel McLean. Expelling her breath, she traced her fingers over the raised letters.

  “You knew about me, and now I know about you, too,” she whispered. “I’m sorry that we’ll never meet. But reading your words has helped me, more than you’ll ever know. I’ll keep an eye on Siegfried for you.”

  And although there was no one else around other than a few dog-walkers, and the voice she heard was more likely to be the whisper of the wind, she thought she heard someone say, “Martha.”

  * * *

  When she got home, she found that her front door was locked. The only person who had a spare key was Lilian, and she wondered if Siegfried had arranged for her to secure the house.

  She opened the door, walked in and stood in the dining room. The cuckoo clock ticked and in five minutes’ time he would pop out his head and call eight times. But Martha didn’t want to hear him ever again, counting her time away.

  Reaching up, she took the clock down from the wall. She took the batteries out and put them in her pocket. The ticking stopped. Perhaps she would buy a new clock, a big chrome thing with a modern white face. She could venture into the scary world of home decoration shops.