Phosphorescence

by Raffaella Barker

My voice shakes, and sobs start to thrust up through my chest. I wrap my arms across myself. Mum moves forward and this time she holds me tight. Her tears say everything.

  Chapter 10

  Jack’s funeral is on his birthday. It is the worst and the best day it could be held on. On the Norfolk train with Mum, I look out as we pass familiar landmarks. It is a cruelly beautiful day, a day meant for being outside. An estuary with the tide out, somewhere in the first hour of our journey, has the crisscross tracks of sandpipers and flat footprints of shoveller ducks in the mud. I look at it but instead I see the marshes, a low tide, and me and Jack crouched in ankle-deep water, catching flatfish in our hands. I was six the first time I caught one, and Dad has the photograph of both of us, wet and laughing, holding out our fish, Jack standing behind me in his shirtsleeves, his eyes the colour of the summer sky behind him.

  ‘How can he not be here now?’ I speak my thoughts, and am surprised to hear my voice in the quiet, early morning train carriage. Mum squeezes my hand, and I need more memories to push back the tide of loss which creeps up on me as we come nearer to Staitheley.

  ‘Do you remember when Jack gave you Cactus?’ Mum is smiling, she knows this story well too. I was eight, carrying my book bag, back off the bus from school. Jack and Grandma had come to tea. Mum used to wear an apron a lot then and she was always baking things. I think it was jam tarts that time, but it could have been my favourite chocolate buns. She came to the door, wiping her floury hands on her blue-striped apron.

  ‘Jack and Grandma are in the garden,’ she said. ‘They’ve got someone with them.’

  I can see them still in my mind, framed by the door, in two chairs under the apple tree and Jack standing up when he saw me, leading me to the hammock, and there was Cactus asleep with a bow round his neck.

  ‘A grown-up girl like you needs a puppy,’ Jack said, and he handed me a collar and lead. ‘Look after him and he will look after you.’

  It was such a treat, and it wasn’t even my birthday. Jack loved surprises.

  In Dad’s car on the way from the station, I find I am still locked in my memories. I don’t want to talk. Mum and Dad are in the front. Cactus and I sit behind them and it’s just like it used to be, except that everything is different. I hug Cactus, his warm round body is comforting and solid. I wish I could take him back to London with me.

  ‘Where’s Grandma?’

  I can see a sliver of Dad’s face in the rear-view mirror, his pale eyes like Jack’s.

  ‘At home. We’re going there now to pick her up so we can all go to the church together.’

  It must be the light, or just the way I’m feeling, but Grandma’s front garden with rocketing lupins and roses cascading, and the blue door in the middle of honeysuckle, is the saddest thing I have ever seen.

  ‘I can’t get out of the car, Mum,’ I whisper, hugging Cactus. ‘I’m afraid.’

  Dad goes in, and the sight of Grandma, with her best pink lipstick on, and holding Tike in the doorway makes me feel better. I follow Mum to the house, and stand with my eyes on the floor until Grandma hugs me.

  ‘Oh, Lola, I am so pleased to see you,’ she says into my hair, and I hug her back as tightly as I possibly can. She releases me, and I struggle to make myself speak.

  ‘I wish I had come before, Grandma, last weekend I mean.’

  There. I’ve said it. She knows now.

  Grandma squeezes my hand, and smiles.

  ‘I know. Of course you do. And Jack knew too.’

  I have never been to church without both Jack and Grandma. Often when I was small they would take me to the Sunday service and back to lunch with them afterwards, and all of us, with Mum and Dad too, attended every Easter and Christmas. We sit in the same pew as usual, but Jack is small in his coffin in front of us. Grandma is small too, and Dad and my Uncle John on either side of her are huge like rocks around her. There are too many people, all looking at me with kind, sad eyes. I know so many faces. It is bewildering to try and look at them, acknowledge them, and still keep myself from crying. I glance at Mum, she has her head down, and I copy her.

  Afterwards, in the churchyard, I see Josh and his parents, and Josh nods as I pass with Grandma towards the gate. Grandma doesn’t even look at Josh’s mum and dad, although their faces are next to us, full of sympathy and sadness. Jack is going to be buried on Salt Head Island next to Uncle James. We have to go in boats out there. I am worried about Grandma. She is weary and cold today, and I don’t think she much wants to get in a boat, but she does it, her hair ruffling in the breeze. She sits down, holding my hand tight. We are in Jack’s red boat and Billy Lawson is at the helm so it is hard to believe we are not going for a picnic or fishing excursion.

  ‘Everyone is welcome back at the village hall for tea,’ shouts Dad to the people still spilling out on to the quay from the churchyard. We head out to sea with Reverend Horace and the undertakers. They are all really fisherman friends of our family, wearing hired suits and sad faces. Our family is diminished. There aren’t enough with just Grandma and her two big sons, Mum and me and Great-Aunt Phyllis, Jack’s sister, whom we only ever saw at Christmas when she slept through everything except the Queen’s speech on telly. Phyllis has to bring her dog, a fat short-legged Labrador called Jean. Jean barks hoarsely all the time we are in the boats, but Phyllis does not utter a single word. No one does actually.

  The motor chugs to life, bringing the smell of two-stroke petrol. The familiarity of the sound and scent ease my sadness as we make our way across the creek to Salt Head. The burial ground faces north, and was consecrated hundreds of years ago when there were several small houses on Salt Head. Now no one except our family is buried there – it is just too sad and lonely. The burial is surreal; I almost feel as if I am watching it from above. The things that should be very difficult, like getting the coffin off the boat, are easy, maybe because Billy and the other fishermen help Dad and John do it. Reverend Horace holds his prayer book and leads us to the burial site. The walk, which is the bit that should be easy, is so sad it is almost impossible to do. With every step I know Grandma is thinking of Uncle James as well as Jack, and I cannot stop crying. My tears are hot channels in my skin, and even the sea breeze doesn’t dry them.

  Mum puts her arm around me.

  ‘Darling, Lola. I shouldn’t have let you come,’ she murmurs, wiping my face with her handkerchief. Her scent on it cuts through the soft, summer-marsh smell of salt water, outboard engine oil and succulent samphire. I push her away.

  ‘No, Mum. I’m all right. I’m glad I’m here. I belong.’

  I am so surprised by what I have just said that I stop crying. Mum and I look at one another in silence.

  ‘May the Lord bless and keep the soul of our brother Jack.’

  Reverend Horace used to fish with Jack for sea bass and sea trout every summer. Late at night they would head out along the Sand Bar on the Point, one in the water, waist-deep in huge waders, the other walking on the beach, a long net dragging the shallow seabed between them. In the holidays, on Saturday nights, I was allowed to go too, and I walked behind the net with a box for the catch. Sometimes Dad came instead of Reverend Horace, and he walked deeper in the sea in his wetsuit with Jack rowing a bit further out in the darkness. The beach at night is one of my favourite places. Jack taught me to love it when I was first allowed out at night aged about seven. And I still love the glittering, mysterious night sea, and in it, just out of sight, dolphins and fish and unimaginable creatures. They are there, but we cannot see them and it is as if they inhabit a parallel world to ours as we walk on the moonlit sand.

  I am wholly unprepared for the black grief which I feel when Jack’s coffin is lowered into the ground and I can’t see it, or remember him any more because I am crying.

  My grandmother steps towards the grave and throws a tiny posy of lilac and sea lavender on the coffin. I stand by her side, calmer now, holding hands with her, until she raises her eyes to look out to sea and I know she has said
goodbye.

  Across the channel, a red smear catches my eye.

  ‘They’ve lit the boat,’ says Dad. And I can make out the dark carcass of the burning boat cloaked in flames over on the mainland. I saw them moving the boat, one of Jack’s old oystercatchers, when we collected Grandma from her house, and now it is alight, and the ancient tradition feels raw and painful and matches my mood perfectly.

  We chug back across the water, Grandma sitting bolt upright, her eyes never leaving the burning boat, and this time Dad guides us through the inlets to a mooring where we can see it without being noticed too much by the crowd around it. The afternoon light melts, changes shape, and re-forms in the heat of the flames, and the black-clad mourners look like burnt scraps tossed on to the marshes by the wind as they wander back to the village hall for tea.

  I walk back from the boat with Dad. We don’t speak, but I hold his hand. It is cold and dry, and he walks stiffly in his dark suit and I know I cannot comfort him because when I squeeze his hand, he cannot even press my fingers in response. Mum is behind with Grandma, and when I glance back she is the only person in our group whose face is not grey. She looks separate and I don’t know whether I belong with her or with Dad. I need Jack now to put everything and everyone in the right place.

  We get back to the village hall and Grandma goes in, followed by a straggle of elderly ladies and her two terriers. Uncle John and Mum stand talking quietly, and Dad galvanizes himself from the spot where he has been standing, looking out across the marsh towards the island.

  ‘I’ve got to go and thank people.’

  He hugs me, and hurries away and it is too small a gesture from my father. I run after him. He has wet eyes and I find it hard to look at his face. I make myself smile and I put my arms around him.

  ‘Dad, I love you so much.’ I am sniffing, my face pressed against his shirt, and his warmth is reassuring.

  ‘I love you, Lola.’ He hugs my breath away and we look at each other for a moment.

  *

  Mum finds me playing with Sadie in the car park.

  ‘I’m going now,’ she says. ‘Will you come with me?’

  I nod, although the idea of anywhere existing now except here on the marshes is impossible to imagine. But being here without Jack is worse. Billy Lawson drives us to the station. As we climb up the road from the sea and over into the next valley, my phone trills, as if woken from a magic sleep. I have six messages from Harry, three from Jessie and a couple from Pansy and Freda. I have never had this many messages before. I have never had any from Harry, and now I don’t want them. I read the first one. It is some rubbish about how to get a new ring tone that sounds like a loo flushing. At the end Harry has added, ‘Heh Heh Atta Girl, Flash in the Pan – Yeah.’ Honestly, what is the point? Does he know where I have been or what I am doing? He is an idiot. I delete everything else without reading it. The phone trills again and I look at the screen. It is from Josh at Staitheley village hall.

  ‘You look so sad. What can we do to help? Your loving friends Josh and Sadie Christie.’

  I turn to press my forehead against the car window so Mum doesn’t see my face. I wish I had come here last weekend to see Jack. And even more I wish Mum and Dad were still together and we all lived at home in Staitheley with Cactus. It is the thought of Cactus that finally makes me howl, hugged by Mum in the back of Billy Lawson’s car.

  Chapter 11

  Back at school it is so hard to talk to anyone, and, weirdly, everyone wants to talk to me, except Freda, who doesn’t like me to get too near Pansy. I couldn’t care less. I hang out in the loos a lot, and if more than a day passes without me texting Nell and Josh, I get twitchy. I need the connection with home so badly, but I can’t talk to Dad, it makes me too sad.

  Josh is great, and we are friends now. He tells me hilarious Staitheley gossip, like this morning’s snippet: ‘Miss Mills isn’t speaking to Mrs Wright from the shop because she heard Mrs Wright describe her dachshund as a piglet in velvet.’

  I ask him about his life, but he is vague.

  ‘Oh well, I might not do A levels. I’d like to work,’ he says, his voice closed to me asking more questions. I can’t imagine facing that choice, and when I talk to him, I’m glad I’m only fourteen and I am separated from those decisions by years of time. As for Harry, when I see him I feel no more than friendship and that is a relief too. I think all my emotion is used up on Jack and my family.

  Mum is away again, researching for her work, and I know I have to put up with the cheesy smell of Ali’s cooking and the depressing, crunchy non-taste of bean sprouts for a couple of days at a time while Mum gets herself established. Then, she says, she’ll be here much more.

  Sometimes it isn’t easy, though. Today when I got back, Ali had washed all her underwear and some of those awful jumpers she wears. There are pools of water everywhere and horrible grey garments in little sodden lumps on the radiators. I can normally ignore Ali’s nonsense, but today it gets to me, probably because Jessie has come back with me so we can do our revision together. She is the only person at school I have told about Jack dying and she understands everything. Jessie is a real friend now, like Nell.

  Jessie and I are gazing, fascinated, at the rags on the kitchen radiator when Ali walks in. She is wearing a baggy man’s singlet and a lot of hair peeps from her armpit. Gross. She pushes her hair back with both hands, giving us a full-on display of her underarm hair.

  ‘Phew, I’m baking. You create tone in your muscles if you wash your clothes yourself.’

  Jessie’s eyebrows are high in surprise. I grit my teeth and try to sound pleasant.

  ‘But what’s the point of having invented washing machines? It’s called progress, you know,’ I say without even moving my lips.

  Jessie and I don’t realize that we are holding our breath, waiting for a reply.

  Ali speaks.

  ‘I don’t like to use machines unless essential, and for washing I think they’re evil. They contain a magnetic force that is at worst cancerous and at best energy-sapping.’ She comes over to move her horrible wet clothes and Jessie and I double up in gales of silent laughter, stopping dead when she turns back to us. ‘And washing your own clothes takes you back to the earth.’

  ‘Only if you drop them when they’re wet,’ says Jessie, pointing behind Ali to where the porridge-coloured garments have slid off the radiator and on to the dusty floor.

  We had been heating water for a Pot Noodle, but something about Ali, the hair and the clothes has completely stopped me being hungry.

  ‘Come on, Jess, let’s do some bio practice now. Then we can stop to watch the soaps before we try and tackle history.’

  Jessie groans and we take our shoes off and slump on the floor in my room, the radio on full volume.

  Mum doesn’t actually let me watch TV until I’ve done all my bits of homework, and she hates me listening to the radio while I’m working, but I have to or I can’t concentrate. Anyway, it’s a good thing she isn’t here.

  Jessie twists around to make sure the door is shut and stage-whispers, ‘Who is that fruitcake?’

  ‘Mum’s friend. She stays here when Mum’s away.’

  Jessie makes a face. ‘You should watch out, you might catch something from her.’

  I giggle. ‘Veganism, you mean. I doubt it.’ But I don’t feel good talking about Ali like this. ‘Mum needs someone to be here with me,’ I add lamely, but Jessie has moved on. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out a bit of paper and waves it in front of me.

  ‘Look at this. Lascalles gave it to all of us in his tutor group, and guess who has signed up?’

  ‘What for?’ I arrange myself for maximum comfort, lying on my front on the carpet, a cushion under my chest, another under my biology folder. ‘Let’s do life cycles,’ I suggest.

  ‘Oh no,’ moans Jessie, ‘I’m so useless at everything to do with outside. Can’t we do eyeballs instead?’

  ‘Life cycles aren’t necessarily outside.’ I pick
up the paper she has dropped next to me. ‘What’s this? Ohmigod, I hoped he’d forgotten about that. Surely it isn’t actually going to happen?’

  In Mr Lascalles’s favourite font, as recognizably his as if it were handwriting, he has written:

  Pit your wits against nature and come on the Robinson Crusoe Camping weekend in Norfolk, 15–18 July. We will be living on an island, studying the flora and fauna and learning how to survive. Warden Richard Jordan of the North Norfolk Heritage Trust will instruct us on birds and tides. Are you up for a unique opportunity to go wild in the country? If so, sign below before 15 June. Open to Year 10 and above. Only 8 places available.

  What a nightmare. What a bad joke it will be. How could Dad agree to it without telling me? I call him to see if we can’t cancel it, but he can’t see what the problem is.

  ‘What’s wrong, Lola? We’ve had loads of school groups to camp on Salt Head. Why should this be different?’

  ‘It’s my school,’ I shriek, stamping my feet all over Jessie’s biology revision.

  ‘Well, that’s the best thing about it,’ he says, very slowly as if talking to a Martian. ‘You will be here with them.’

  ‘I’m not coming,’ I flash back instantly.

  ‘Well, your grandmother is looking forward to it, and to meeting some of your new friends, so I hope you change your mind.’ Dad’s voice is so mild and melting, it makes me want to scream.

  Jessie looks up when I put the phone down.

  ‘It’ll be excellent. I’m looking forward to it, and I don’t usually go outside at all if I can avoid it. But this is a novelty. All the exams are over by then. It’ll be a great start to the holidays. We’ll get amazing tans and we can swim naked in that glittery stuff you put in your project. It’ll be fab.’

  She has no idea what she is talking about. I try to discourage her.

  ‘This is Norfolk, not Fiji. It’s most likely to rain, there won’t be any phosphorescence and everyone will be freaked out by not having dry clothes and being covered in mud,’ I mutter. ‘And my dad and probably my whole family will be fussing about, keeping an eye on us.’