How Not to Disappear

by Clare Furniss

  It was quite an eye-opener, clearing out Gloria’s flat. I found all sorts that she’d hoarded over the years. Reviews of her performances as Hedda Gabler and Ophelia and a whole load of other roles. There was a picture of Gianni (he really was very easy on the eye), a truly awful painting of someone I assume is supposed to be a young Gloria looking out of a window by RG (who must be Russell) and nothing whatsoever to show she was ever married to Gordon, except for the divorce papers.

  There was also an article cut from a broadsheet, an interview with a scientist, Professor Danielle Carter, with a full-page photo of her, striking, about Mum’s age, maybe a bit older, laughing. I recognized her vaguely from the TV; the article said she’d been ‘credited with making science cool’. The bit of the interview that was underlined was the bit where she talked about her inspiration. Her father, Samuel, she said, who had arrived at Tilbury Docks in 1948 on the Empire Windrush, had become a teacher and a local councillor, and who had taught her to work hard and believe in yourself. He’d died four years before and she missed him every day. It took me a moment to make the connection. Sam. Gloria’s Sam.

  What would have happened, if Gloria hadn’t gone back home that day, if Vinnie hadn’t been waiting? Would she and Sam have got married and had their children, Danny and Vivienne? Or would their relationship have ended anyway? Gloria never was the settling-down type after all . . . What does it matter now, anyway? Sam lived a happy life and I’m glad of it, as Gloria must have been.

  She is talking to Ollie now. They have a special bond, those two. Alice grows impatient of Gloria’s constant repetition of things, of her forgetting what has just been said and who anyone is. She tries not to but she always ends up rolling her eyes and then Gloria gets snappish with her, though they always make it up. I wonder if that’s how it always would have been with the two of them. They’re too like each other. But Ollie seems to understand what she is feeling and what she is trying to say. She’s always calm when he’s around. She is gentler now. Sometimes I hate the gentleness. It is a sign that Gloria is disappearing. But she hasn’t disappeared. She is still with us. And if I ask her to tell me about the time she cut one of Brenda Onions’ pigtails off, she’s just like her old self again.

  Kat’s brilliant with Gloria. She dropped out of art college and decided to become a doctor instead. That summer with Zoe-f-K changed her. ‘You’ve got to see things how they really are, not how you want them to be,’ she said, ‘And I want to be good at art but I’m not. I’m crap at it.’

  ‘Not crap,’ I said. ‘Just . . . mediocre.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘There is such a thing as being too honest, you know, Hats.’ She’s two years into her medical training and wants to become a neurologist. (‘So am I your homework?’ Gloria used to say, but she doesn’t understand what a neurologist is any more.)

  So, I know what you’re thinking. What about Reuben? Don’t pretend you’re not. Everyone always wants to know what happened to Reuben, even if it’s just because they hope it’s something very painful. (Everyone except Kat, who, in her own words, couldn’t give a monkey’s, frankly. Knob. One of the many, many reasons I love Kat.)

  Did he see the error of his ways and come running back to me and Dylan?

  Come off it. Of course he bloody didn’t. And if he had, I’d have sent him packing. Don’t look at me like that. I totally would have.

  Rumours still circulate among the old Mayfield Comp crowd. He’s found God and is a missionary. He’s in prison in Mexico. He’s a male escort in Vienna. He’s in witness protection. He’s been recruited by MI6. He lost a leg in a shark attack off the coast of South Africa. He contracted bubonic plague. (I like to think this last was a tribute to Ms Horace.) He’s married to the daughter of a wealthy American businessman. Actually this last one turned out to be true, though not for long.

  And then one day, about six months ago, I got an email from him. There was a photo attached, of the sun setting over a landscape that looked like Africa. It said:

  Hey Hats,

  See if you can work this one out: Initially saw short vehicle in sad state.

  xR

  No ‘How are you?’ or ‘What have you been up to for the last four years?’ Probably didn’t even occur to him that I might have been doing anything at all. Certainly not dashing from university lectures to the nursery to shifts at the Happy Diner. (Melanie turned out to be a rock in my hour of need. ‘I knew you were up the spout,’ she’d said, ‘soon as you started crying in the loos and going green when you were anywhere near the deep-fat fryer. And your face went all puffed up like a balloon but kind of more flabby, you know.’ Thanks, Mel. She gave me unwanted but well-meaning advice about stretch marks and she now lets me do whatever shifts I can fit in. She calls me into her office for coffee on a regular basis.) There hasn’t been quite as much tap dancing along the Great Wall of China as I’d wish for, but I live in hope. Once I’ve finished my degree, who knows?

  Despite all of that, I reread the message a hundred times after it pinged into my inbox. I finally worked out it was supposed to be an attempt at a cryptic crossword clue. It meant (I think) ‘sorry’. I didn’t reply. I have let him go. If you keep on running, if you don’t let people love you, eventually they will let you go.

  Reuben Wilde. Most Likely To: Disappear.

  Dylan.

  He has Reuben’s chaotic hair and his casual disregard for authority, although perhaps that’s to be expected from a three-year-old. He has eyes like mine and Dad’s and Gloria’s. He is gentle like his Uncle Ollie and spirited like his Aunty Alice. He is adored by us all, especially his Grandad Carl.

  Has it been as hard as I thought it would be, having a kid? No. It’s been harder than I ever imagined, even with everyone’s help. It’s been lonely and exhausting and boring and heartbreaking. I don’t fit in with the other students who are my age, and I don’t fit in with the mature students with grown-up kids. Kat’s been there for me, of course, and I know she always will be. But she’s away studying now, and she’s got her own life.

  People make assumptions about me, about my character, my ambitions, my intelligence, my motives, my selfishness. Most people don’t do it maliciously, though some do. Things may have changed since Gloria was forced to give up her baby, but a young unmarried girl with a baby is still not treated the same as a married woman with a baby. Not by everyone anyway. That’s the truth of it.

  I’ve cried for the lives I did not choose. And then I’ve cried with guilt, because I love Dylan more than anything, more fiercely than I have ever felt anything before, and in spite of everything I would not be without him, or change a single thing about him.

  He stands now with his back to me, up to his ankles in the ice-cold waves that lick the shore, throwing stone after stone into the sea that crashes and foams in front of him, dark, wild, powerful. I can see him breathing it in, the salt spray and the noise and the power, the danger, the vastness. I know he is feeling the thrill and the thunder of it shake his tiny ribcage, that his heart is full and pounding inside it.

  He throws in another stone, and another, transfixed. As each one disappears he crouches to pick up another. I call to him but he doesn’t hear. His face is alight and fixed and alive with the power of the sea. And still he throws the stones as if he cannot stop.

  I am overwhelmed, suddenly, with love for him, for Dylan, and with fear for how small and helpless and fragile he is, and with pride at his fearlessness and with joy at his joy.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asks Becky, Carl’s still-very-annoying sister. ‘Always has been a funny little thing, hasn’t he?’

  And I’m so bursting with all the love and fear and pride and joy that I just smile sweetly at her and don’t point out that her own child is a spoilt pain in the arse.

  ‘Oh, look, Alice seems to have your Bertie in a headlock again,’ I say, trying not to sound pleased. ‘He really should know by now not to try and pick a fight with her. He always comes off worse.’

 
She curses under her breath and sprints off down the sand in the direction of the screaming.

  And then I turn my face to the wind and walk down to my boy. I put my hand on his shoulder and we stand there together. He doesn’t notice me. In one cold hand he clutches the stones and with the other he hurls them, one by one, silently into the waves.

  I watch him. It’s as if he is taunting the sea, defying it. He is saying to it, with his stones, I am here. You are bigger than me. I cannot stop you. But I am here.

  The sea crashes on, cold and oblivious and inevitable, as powerful as time.

  It is all we can do. I close my eyes and lean into the wind.

  I let myself feel the warmth where my hand touches Dylan’s shoulder, the heat that passes between us, that connects us and that I will feel even when he is far away from me.

  Then I crouch and pick up the biggest stone and I send it into the deep dark of the sea. In time it will be ground down until it is sand. But for now it makes a splash, it makes a sound and I see its mark; I see the light flash, I see the rainbow it leaves for a split second before it disappears, as if it never was there at all.

  I am here. You are bigger than me. I cannot stop you. But I am here.

  I live. I love. I remember. I forget.

  But still I live. And still I love.

  Still I am.

  They fly through the air, the – what are they called again? You know. With the petals, from the garden. There was a jam jar of them on the kitchen table. The girl who catches them doesn’t look very pleased. I know her, I think, but I don’t know who she is. She looks like trouble. She’s thrown them away now. Flowers, that’s it. She has thrown the flowers away.

  I can see the ones on the kitchen table. They are pretty but there is something sad about them. I can’t remember what. They make me scared but I can’t remember why. There is blood dripping. The thorns, perhaps. ‘Be careful, Gloria, they are sharp,’ Mum is saying. ‘Don’t hurt yourself.’ Always worrying about everything, Mum. I wonder where she’s got to. It’s not like her to be late.

  There is a fair girl paddling in the sea. She is young and the thing when you aren’t sad. What is it when you smile? Happy, the boy, Ollie, says. Yes. She is happy. She is my mother, I think. She isn’t scared yet. She isn’t sad yet. She is beautiful. Il faut souffrir pour être belle, Gloria.

  My eyes close, and when they open again I can’t help crying out at the noise, the darkness in front of me, coming towards me . . . What is the word for it? It is big and cold and unforgiving and terrifying.

  ‘What is it, Gloria?’ the boy says.

  I point. ‘The dark,’ I say. ‘The big dark.’

  ‘It’s just the sea, Gloria.’ It makes me shiver and the boy knows I am scared and he holds my hand. Ah, yes. The sea. It is beautiful and big and loud and deep and dark. It would welcome you into it and make you part of it, if you let it. I feel the warmth of the boy’s hand. It is comforting, yet when I look at my hand it doesn’t look like mine. It has liver spots and ugly veins. It is old. His hand is young.

  ‘I’m not afraid.’ I say it as clearly and firmly as I can, because if I say it enough perhaps I can make it true.

  I close my eyes again. I feel very tired, though I can’t think why, when all I’ve done today is – well, you know. This and that.

  ‘What have we been doing today?’ I say to the boy.

  ‘The wedding,’ he says. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I say, because I’m too tired to tell him that he’s wrong. I close my eyes.

  Further out is another girl. She is Vivienne, I think. She is my daughter, I think. Is that right? It seems right and not right. She is too far out, a long, long way out. She is just a tiny dot, but I don’t feel worried. No harm can come to her, I think, and that thought makes me not sad. What is it when you smile? Oh well. The word doesn’t matter. It is the smiling that matters.

  When I open my eyes the boy has gone and I am sad for a moment but then I see him coming towards me with a glass. He gives it to me and I drink. The drink tickles when I drink it.

  ‘It’s the bubbles,’ Ollie says, smiling.

  ‘Did you see her?’ I say to the boy. ‘Vivienne, the little dark girl. Do you see her swimming? I’m sure I saw her.’

  He smiles. ‘Yes, I saw her.’

  I can’t remember why this makes me cry. It is the not-sad crying. It is because I love this boy, although I can’t remember who he is. I can’t even remember who I am really. Perhaps that makes loving easier. I have a feeling I was never much good at it before; it felt difficult. It is simple now. This boy is here and he is holding my hand and that is good.

  ‘I had a son, I think,’ I say to Ollie. ‘You’re not him, are you?’

  ‘I’m Ollie,’ he says. ‘I’m your grandson, Gloria.’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ I say, because I am far too young to have grandchildren. But then I think time has become strange; it doesn’t behave as it used to. It stretches like elastic and then snaps back, unravelling, so that you don’t know where you are with it. It brings ghosts and dreams and sometimes you don’t know which are real.

  ‘No, really,’ he says. ‘In true life, Gloria.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He nods. ‘And Alice and Hattie are your granddaughters.’

  ‘Yes.’ I smile. ‘Hattie.’ She is special, though I can’t remember why. Sometimes who she is disappears when I reach for it. But that doesn’t matter. I always know that she is special and what more do you need to know about a person than that?

  ‘And Dylan is your great-grandson.’

  I giggle. Perhaps I drank a little too much of the – you know what I mean. With the tickly bubbles, that makes you giggle.

  ‘Now you’re just being silly,’ I say. ‘Where’s Gwen got to anyway? Is she with Mum? They should be here by now.’

  I don’t know where Father is either, but I don’t bother asking. We always know where he is when he’s not where he’s supposed to be. At the Rose and Crown, that’s where, drinking all his wages away. I just hope Mum doesn’t send me down to get him.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the boy says. ‘They’re fine.’

  He bends down and kisses me on the cheek. He smells of – what makes you clean. Soup? Not soup.

  ‘Soap,’ Ollie says. ‘Look, here comes Hattie.’

  The special girl who was by the sea comes up and hugs me and her cheek against mine makes me feel – I reach for the word but it floats away and I let it. It’s the word for the feeling inside that is like the sun on my skin. Light. Shining. Warm. Those words are all wrong, but they are all right too.

  ‘Hattie,’ I say and I smile at her, and I don’t want her name to slip away, so I say it again. ‘Hattie.’

  ‘Would you like some more champagne?’ the boy says. ‘I think the barbecue is nearly done too. Shall I get you a hot dog?’

  A hot dog? I nod anyway.

  ‘You were drinking champagne the first time I met you,’ she says. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes!’ I say, though I don’t. ‘I’ve always been fond of a drop of champagne.’

  Have I? It sounds right.

  ‘You told me off for drinking tea. You said that you didn’t know why anyone would drink tea when there was perfectly good Bollinger on offer.’

  We laugh, the special girl and me. It is a such a feeling to laugh and for someone else to laugh too, at the same time, about the same thing, so your laugh is one laugh. Such a big feeling. It is inside me but it is so big that it is outside me too. It is all around me. Not-sad.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I say to the girl. ‘Let’s go and see . . .’

  I point to the boy at the edge of the sea.

  ‘Dominic,’ I say. Of course! How could I forget his name?

  ‘Dylan,’ she says and I don’t put her right. ‘He’s getting big, isn’t he? Are you sure you’ll be okay walking on the sand?’

  I look at my feet and see that they are wearing the wrong shoes. Th
ey are those ugly shoes for old people, grey and comfortable.

  ‘Whose shoes are these?’ I say to the girl. ‘These are not my shoes at all. I don’t wear shoes like this!’

  The girl looks at me and laughs but her face is – what is that thing? Watery. Sad and not-sad.

  ‘No,’ says Hattie. ‘You don’t. Shall we take them off?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. So she takes them off and I stand up. The tickly bubbles have made everything a bit wobbly.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ I say to the girl. The stones are cold and hurt under my feet but it is better than the shoes that are not my shoes. They are shoes for someone else, and I am not someone else. Not at all. I am me.

  I close my eyes and turn my face up to the sky to the warmth and light and it fills me up and I want to spin, round and round. I can feel how it would feel, the world whirling, my hair flying. ‘Stop,’ Mum says, but I never will, I will keep on for ever.

  When I open my eyes, Mum has disappeared, although I know she can’t be far away, and there is a girl there instead. She is special, though I can’t remember why.

  ‘I thought you were Mum,’ I say. ‘We were on the Common. I was dancing. She wanted me to stop.’

  ‘I’m Hattie,’ she says. ‘I don’t want you to stop.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘Hattie.’

  I lean on the girl, and she is strong.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you.’

  And slowly we walk down towards the deep, terrifying darkness, my old hand in her young one, together.

  Heartfelt thanks to my mum, who made the writing of this book possible in so many ways, from proofreading and advising on historical detail to childminding and generally being incredibly supportive. Thanks also to my dad, and of course to the rest of my family, David, Marianne, Joe and Ewan, for their support and patience.