Seahorses Are Real

by Zillah Bethell

  She tried to work out how much money she had left as she made her way back up the precinct. It was £3.80 by her reckoning – the decorations had been expensive – and out of that she still had to get a loaf of bread for lunch as well as the stocking presents. They could be got tomorrow however. Now it was simply a question of getting the loaf of bread for lunch. It was cold for a moment in the shade outside the precinct and then she stepped into the sun again. She bought a loaf of bread and a currant bun for David, then made her way back through the market stalls, weaving in and out of the throng.

  ‘Glitter hats,’ a voice suddenly shouted in her ear. ‘Perfick for Christmas. All the way from Venezuela!’

  She stopped and turned to see a white-haired burly old man holding a softly glowing felt hat covered in gold and silver glitter and dangling with candied lemon and orange peel from the brim, like an Australian bush hat.

  On impulse she asked: ‘How much?’

  ‘For you, sweetheart, £2.50.’

  I’ll only have a quid left, she said to herself, but to hell with it!

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she grinned at the white-haired man. ‘It might just fit my boyfriend’s head!’

  He packed it up very carefully in a brown paper bag, adding a sprig of mistletoe ‘just for you sweetheart’; and she packed it up just as carefully in her haversack then carried on down, across the pelican crossing and up onto the bridge. The ducks still sat on the golden water, waiting for Matilda and their waltzing daily bread and Marly, peering over, caught a glimpse of her own reflection and was startled by it. It wasn’t an horrendous thing at all. Not an horrendous thing at all. She saw a tall, slim woman dressed in a shapeless coat, her long hair shimmering in the pale white sunshine. She wasn’t perfect by any means, not perfect like the women in the magazines but she was real, she existed, she had a right to be happy, to be loved. Marly felt quite sure at that moment that she was real, that she existed and that she had a right to be happy, to be loved.

  How the world changed when your head changed! It was a world of many mirrors, they really should have said, reflecting and distorting your own self right back to you. She’d waited too long in her little cocoon, waiting to get through the chrysalis stage, waiting to break out into a butterfly. Waiting for the world to burst open like a flower. A butterfly that lives a day has lived an eternity, someone had said and it was sort of true. Better to live one day as a butterfly than thirty years as a cocoon. She would live her life as a butterfly now, a beautiful golden, orange-tip butterfly.

  (They dip their wings in the marmalade jar, her father had said for an April Fools when one sailed through the kitchen window.)

  Best to forget the bad and remember the good. Be valiant, her stars had said that week, and turn your back on the past. The magic was in the choosing, choosing to forget and forgive. Love and happiness weren’t just things that happened to you – they didn’t just charge out of the horizon in shining armour or sit in a crock at the end of the rainbow – they were choices you made. And it wasn’t just one choice. You had to choose again and again, every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year.... Bad things came and went like clouds over the sun – that’s what Terry said, what he meant. Bad things came but they got washed away. Only the sun remained, day after day.

  The magic was back – she could feel it there in her hands – like stars and seas, sunsets and horses, glitter hats and autumn leaves, secrets, toboggans, buttered toast and cocoa. So much to see, to feel, to explore and the feeling that life had a purpose, that there was some amazingly wonderful reason for her own life and everyone else’s. Marly felt quite sure at that moment that there was some amazingly wonderful reason for her own life and everyone else’s. The magic was there in the palm of her hand and all she had to do was keep a hold of it. She almost ran up the hill, clutching the haversack in front of her, her thin arms wrapped tightly about it as though she were carrying a child. She would sneak past the house and up to the churchyard, have a sit down on Umfreville’s tomb and write out the clues to the treasure hunt. Yes, that’s what she’d do, tiptoe quietly past the house in case he was up and looking out for her, write down the clues on Umfreville’s tomb. Oh knickers was the first one – a tangerine tucked away in her socks and pants drawer. Maybe something like Dr Barnardo’s for the second – a tub of crisps stuck in the toe of one of his boots! She could just imagine his reaction: ‘Gee, thanks a bunch. Just what I always wanted: cheesy crisps for two!’

  What fun they’d have! Little stocking presents hidden all over the flat, silver tinsel, glitter hats, golden bells, mince pies and marshmallows roasting on the gas fire’s fake flame. The magic was back – like starlight and gasoline rainbows, funny films and old school annuals, Christmas and bonfire night – the world an enchanted place to be.

  It was quite hot in the churchyard for a winter’s day: the horse-chestnut trees seemed to swoon in the haze and silver snail trails mazed the tarmac. A ginger cat lay twitching on Charles Messenger’s grave, losing one of his lives in a dream or playing out a scene in a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Marly dumped her haversack down on the smooth, flat tomb of Umfreville and squinted up at the sky. The sun glimmered and gleamed like a great golden bauble and the stone was warm beneath her hands. She dug out her biro from the bottom of the haversack and a few bits and pieces to write on: the back of her mother’s old shopping list, a few curled-up receipts, an unused brown paper bag; but instead of writing out the clues to the treasure hunt she found herself writing a letter to David, in fits and starts – saying the things she wanted to say, had never said, felt she ought to say: how they must stop the endless hurt and endless recompense, about her guilt and gratitude, how she had never understood the layout of his heart, too busy navigating her own.... Now and then she paused to think and looked about her at the graves: angel wings tottering heavenward, stone crosses teetering backwards, black and gold marble, glinting and dangerous, a rail-guarded tomb protecting, no doubt, the bones of some illustrious family – the Miskins probably – they had a street named after them (where her landlady lived) and a theatre.... A few open, granite bibles where several poor unfortunates had obviously been bored to death reading a psalm, a grassy mound in the shape of a bolster, the mischievous spirit having stuck a pillow in the earth and gone off on some mad escapade or other, and a wonky, ancient, sunken thing that proclaimed his owner had turned once too often in the grave.... A flower pot sat upside down on J. and A. Firminger’s little plot and Marly got up to straighten it, noticing how young the man had been when he died. What a span of years she’d lived after the death of her sweetheart. What an awful burden of years. Loving husband, beloved wife, dutiful daughter, treasured one now sleeping in Jesus and other strange euphemisms. Gone but not forgotten to the lord’s kindly besom....

  She almost dozed off for a while, stretched out on the tomb of Umfreville, the scraps of letter in her hand. The sun bore down on her upturned face, fizzing and flashing beneath her eyelids in a kaleidoscope of colour, a light-fantastic show, though the tips of her toes still pinched with cold. She heard a magpie yackety-yacking somewhere behind her ear and she said out loud a little ironically: ‘Hello Mr Magpie, how’s your wife?’ then smiled to herself. She must break these stupid superstitions and obsessions. She must break through the walls and tunnels of her mind. ‘Look at it twice,’ David had said, ‘and you’ve got yourself two for joy!’ She sat up a little dizzily at that but the magpie had disappeared and she came face to face with a robin perched on Firmingers’ flower pot. His eyes were like little black, glistening raisins and he cocked his head and looked at her from one, then the other, as if he didn’t know which to believe. He chirruped and poked around the flower pot for a moment, pecked at a cobweb that glittered in the sun like a small lace handkerchief then flew off over the wall into one of the gardens that ramshackled up to the bottom of the cemetery. Marly collected her belongings, carefully placing the fragments of letter in an inside pocket of her haversac
k – a scent of newly baked bread and currant bun wafted up at her and she decided it was time for lunch. High time for lunch! She slipped the haversack over her shoulders and strode out of the churchyard, past the ginger cat still twitching at a Tom & Jerry cartoon or losing one of his lives in a dream.

  The town traffic roared in her ears as she sped down the hill, and the too-big daisy ring jogged up and down on her chest. Perhaps a gold ring didn’t make you more invisible after all; perhaps it made you more real. Perhaps a gold ring solidified things... Marly Morrell had a bit of a jingle to it. They would be married like Arwen and Elessar, she would look astonishing in her mother’s dress, stars on the sleeve. Honeymoon in Greece, Paris, Las Vegas. And they would have children. Of course she would be able to have children. A boy and a girl, John and Candelabra. What a name for a little girl Candelabra would be! She would give them braces and ballet lessons, take them rollerblading in the park, to the zoo, the aquarium. Invite their friends round for tomato soup and cheese on toast. Pick them up from discos far too early to be cool. And they would grow old together, she and David. Hand in hand they would set off on that last strange journey: taking picnics in the car, pottering around amidst the rhododendrons and the archives of their lives, finding each other all over again in a new disguise.... She saw it all stretching into the distance like a beautifully embroidered tapestry, a brightly painted collage.... She didn’t need a rose-covered cottage on a cliff, didn’t need to run away like a sailor to the sea, didn’t need to take a plane ticket bareback into the waves. It was all right here in the palm of her hand, as it had always been. The world lay at her feet, ready to explore, halfway down the hill in that cramped and rundown flat. She smiled, her neck poking forward under the weight of the straps like an etiolated plant making a bid for the sun: she was going home.

  The front door opened with that strange shoosh shooshing noise and…

  ‘Hello.’ No reply. No peep over the banister.

  She pelted up the stairs two at a time and placed the haversack carefully in a corner of the bedroom. No one was there. The bed was newly made, the curtains wide. He must be in the sitting room, she thought, engrossed in the TV magazine or hiding somewhere for a practical joke. She laughed at the ridiculousness of him and crept across the carpeted hallway ready to surprise him.

  But no one was there – the blue magnetic butterfly sat cold and alone on the heater, no gas fire’s pretend embers lit.

  ‘David?’ she called querulously. Where was he?

  His coat was hanging from the hatstand, his money belt there on the chair. He couldn’t have gone anywhere.

  The kitchen was cold and bare: the dishes freshly washed and stacked, no smell of dinner cooking in the oven to go with the new-bought bread and scone; everything packed up and swept away – the marmalade jar, crumbs of toast. A little morsel of cheese sat ready and waiting to entice the mice. Humane Dead Cert it had said on the box... Marly’s head went suddenly quiet and cold like a whisper or a feather or a listening snowflake, though outside the sun still glittered like a great golden bauble, a revolving disco light. The time it took to step to the bathroom went lightning quick yet oh so slow.... She tapped the wooden door with the gentlest of taps, fearful lest she disturb him – it opened with that strange shoosh shooshing noise and…

  He lay quite still in red-coloured water, his eyes tight closed.

  ‘David?’ she uttered, pale and perplexed, half hidden by the door. ‘My love?’

  No smile. No laugh. No reply.

  At times of great physical or mental agony, the mind detaches from the body apparently. The body carries on and the mind goes off on holiday or follows a few steps behind like a dozy sidekick or little old familiar. And so it was with Marly: her legs hastened her over to David, her fingertips felt the temperature of the water, his pulse, opened the little window, unplugged the bath, bandaged up the gash that went from elbow to wrist in pure white liniment. Her arms threw towels around his cold wet dripping body, pulled him roughly and breathlessly over into what she thought was the recovery position. Her voice calmly and efficiently summoned an ambulance to 120 East Hill.... Her heart bonged and pranged on xylophone ribs...

  And all the while her body did these things her mind kept up a little chatter of its own, a flare of hope:

  No doubt some practical joke ho ho... putting ketchup in the bath... ketchup on his arms and legs, ketchup on his face and toes. He just couldn’t live without ketchup. What what! What a lot of ketchup the gods must need for their daily bread…. He’ll be back in the early hours, crawling drawling brawling his way back home, if I sit quite still and quiet as a mouse. He’ll turn up again like a little bad old penny ho ho.

  Her body darted about the flat, this way and that, searching for clues: a note, a sign, perhaps a goodbye… and her hands fluttered in front of her, uselessly waving the air like flowers or frantically sponging the blood from the walls, the knife, a marbled eyelid, the tip of his nose...

  Oh Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

  Had a very shiny nose

  And if you ever saw him

  You would even say it glows.

  All of the other reindeer

  Used to laugh and call him names

  They wouldn’t let poor Rudolph

  Join in any reindeer games.

  Then one foggy Christmas Eve

  Santa came to say

  ‘Rudolph with your nose so bright

  Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?’

  Then all the reindeer loved him

  And they shouted out with glee

  ‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

  You’ll go down in history.

  You’ll go down in his sto ry.’

  When everything was spruce and neat and clean she stopped and waited. She waited as the great golden bauble spun behind a cloud and the rain began. In films the ambulance always comes in a jiffy but in real life it takes an eternity. She sat beside the bath and gripped his hand, her breath breathing warm life over him; and it seemed to her that her own life had come full circle and she was back at the beginning of some endless, hopeless journey; that some unlawful throw of the dice had sent her sliding to the bottom of the snake again. The rain pattered down on the roof like little footsteps or shouts of protest, soft insistent protests; and she was glad because he loved the rain – with or without an umbrella – it reminded him of the hills and valleys of Wales. She sat and held his hand in the darkening room and waited for the ambulance. She sat quite still and quiet as a mouse, a whisper, a feather, a listening snowflake. She wished the ambulance would hurry up so that it could all be over and she might go to sleep again and wake up in a dream. Marly felt quite sure at that moment that for the rest of her life there would only be dreams.

  Dearest David

  I’m glad we had that argument and glad you made me see how close I came to losing you. I don’t want to lose you. I’ve dealt so long with the evil in my head (and I don’t think evil’s too strong a word) that when you came along I put it onto you and into the world and wondered why it came back. I treated you like shit and then wondered why you started be­having like shit. And then, when you started behaving like shit I felt justified in treating you like shit... and, feeling guilty when you hurt yourself, I hated you more and treated you worse.

  But I always loved you. I think I loved you from the first moment I saw you in your Tony Hancock t-shirt with your wide shy tender smile, your funny jokes and the letter you sent me so full of the things I wanted to be told. You, the math­emat­ician, so good at letter writing. You, the mathematician, so imaginative. How far I thought I was above you when we first met and how soon I came to see that I didn’t even come up to your knees. How real you are and alive, my rock, my velveteen rabbit! And how I love you for that! You have no need of a Terry to guide you, as I do, seeing your way so clearly (all those carrots you had as a child!), surefooted as a cat through the quagmires that bog me down.

  And how you’ve helped me. Never think
for a moment you didn’t help me. If it weren’t for you I shouldn’t still be here. You, with your patience, your understanding, your simple uncomplicated love; your humour that kept me from fits of distraction, your incredible, ingenious responses to my illness (your fairies, feathers and Quality Street spell, your ‘gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous’ refrain); not to mention your generosity for, as you rightly say, I have no financial capability – I sucked you dry, like a spider on a dark cloud, reeling you in, wrapping you up, leaving you bloodless. Weaving my silken lies (for, as you say, my whole life is built on a fabrication) to gain sympathy, love, respect... playing the victim when I was really the monster. And you, seeing through the sham, hypocrisy, dishonesty and pretension – what astonishing luck for me – you still loved me. I can’t quite believe you loved me, for all that.

  Yet how I took you for granted – believing it some natural right that you should love me, help me. Making your love uncon­ditional yet mine so conditional. Making our relationship an unequal equation. You bore the brunt of it, taking it all in for my sake. I poured the crap out, believing myself to be sharing not destroying. Over­whelmed by my own misery, I never saw yours. (Please forgive me for that. I shall spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you.) You faced my reality – how selflessly – never burdening me with your own. I live my life, you might say, on too many points of an Argand diagram while you, my love, are that famously fabulous Fibonacci flower, as Turing might have said. (Well he might have done!)