by Robin Byron
‘You’re limping,’ said Claire.
‘How observant. I’ve limped for twenty years – since the plane crash.’
‘I never realised.’
‘You saw me limping in France.’
‘I must have forgotten.’
Turning in to the Church Street Market Place, they stopped at a pavement café. Marianne gazed across to the mock-Georgian City Hall building, such a solid and comforting presence from her past. She watched Claire look down the pretty street as if seeing it for the first time; her body language suggesting that, while she was prepared to sit there for a coffee, this was not where she belonged; it was not London and certainly not Paris.
‘Callum will be disappointed if I don’t have a Ben & Jerry’s,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s the only thing he remembers about coming here before.’
‘Well, it is about the only thing Burlington is famous for.’
For a while the sisters sat in silence. There was much that could have been said: their father was clearly dying, though their mother seemed to be in denial, but neither felt able to articulate their thoughts. Eventually Claire said, ‘You know I can’t stay very long.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Assuming the operation goes OK I’m going to fly back at the weekend.’
Marianne shrugged. ‘If you have to.’
‘What about you?’
‘I think I’ll stay. I think Maman needs someone.’
‘How long?’
‘I’ve subcontracted my last week of teaching for the term and then it’s vacation. I’m thinking I will fly Callum over and spend the summer here. I can carry on with my writing and Maman would enjoy getting to know him better.’
‘Really, I am the one who should be staying – after all, he’s my father.’
‘Oh, so you think he’s not my father too? For Christ’s sake…’
‘You know what I mean…’
‘I do know what you mean, but it doesn’t make the slightest difference…’
‘Hey, chill. I didn’t mean to upset you. I think it would be good if you stayed. I would like to but it’s just not possible…’
Exactly why it was not possible, Marianne was unsure, given all the resources at her sister’s disposal, but she said nothing more on the subject. She knew it wouldn’t work for them both to stay and she had already decided she would be the one to see her father through to the end.
They had been warned that the operation would be lengthy so they didn’t arrive at the hospital till midday but it was a shock to find that the surgery was still on-going. Two hours later the surgeon came out to announce that the operation had been a success – though his ashen face didn’t reflect the optimism of his words. He explained that the severity of the operation meant that the patient would be kept sedated and breathing through a ventilator until the following morning. Since it was only possible for one person to stay Marianne and Claire prepared to leave their mother and return the next day.
It was something about the expression on her mother’s face which alerted Marianne.
‘Are you sure you’re OK to stay, Maman?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
Marianne looked at her sister. ‘One of us could stay if you prefer?’
‘Sure,’ said Claire, looking far from enthusiastic.
Marianne turned back to her mother who looked away, muttering, ‘I think it really should be me.’
A polite argument ensued, broken finally by Marianne’s insistence that she would stay and the others could return early the next day to be there by the time he woke.
In retrospect Marianne rather wished she had not been the one to stay. She would never forget the moment her father began to regain consciousness. It was earlier than she had been led to expect – before six o’clock – and the duty nurse had just left the room, when her father started to cough. His face – pale but calm under sedation – began to turn crimson and as he opened his eyes his face took on a look of such terror that for a moment Marianne was unable to act. It was the heart monitor – now beeping at an alarming rate – that finally sent her screaming for the nurses. It seemed to take forever, while her father coughed and writhed in obvious agony, but eventually they removed the ventilator. For Marianne, it was incredibly distressing even to witness the scene; she could only imagine what it must have been like for her father.
15
It was over an hour’s drive from her parents’ village to the hospital in Burlington and Marianne and her mother took it in turns to visit. Sometimes Callum, taken out of school early and now in Vermont with Marianne, would come too. The visits were not getting any easier. The more Marianne tried to comfort her father the more it felt as if he was trying to push her away. His physical pain seemed to be getting worse and this in turn was setting up an emotional barrier she couldn’t penetrate.
‘You don’t have to come every day,’ he would say.
‘I don’t. I take it in turns with Maman.’
‘Either of you.’
‘We want to see you.’
‘I can’t imagine why…’
‘Papa…’
‘… such a disgusting wreck. It might be better if you came less…’
‘I love you, Papa.’ She reached out for his hand. ‘I know I haven’t been around enough since I left home but I want to be with you now. Just let me sit here – you don’t have to talk.’ She watched as her father turned away from her and screwed up his eyes, his pale thin lips clenched together. It’s his pain, she thought, he wants to be alone to cope with his agony, but when she queried his obvious pain with the hospital she was told – not for the first time – that he was not yet ‘due’ his next medication.
Marianne also saw it as her role to keep up her mother’s spirits. Often she would try to steer the conversation away from her father’s illness and reminisce about some happier times in the past, but this was not proving easy as her mother gradually retreated into herself and became increasingly unwilling to engage in anything beyond the most mundane conversation. Marianne had imagined long intimate evenings with her mother during which she might be able to piece together some of the missing episodes in her early life. She might even – she imagined – persuade her mother to open up about her wartime experiences and Marianne’s biological father. He must have been a German or else surely Maman would have been more open about it; but who cares now – who would blame her, here in America, fifty years after the end of the war? I will have another go at her tonight, she resolved.
Back in her parents’ house Marianne watched as her mother prepared a dish of duck with a sweet cherry sauce for their dinner. Callum had been tired so she had fed him early and let him go to his room. She poured a glass of wine for them both and said, ‘Maman, will you tell me something about my biological father? I mean, you’ve never even…’
Her mother’s reaction had been sharper even than she had expected. ‘Your father is the man lying in hospital in Burlington.’
‘Of course, but…’
‘You don’t need to think about any other father.’
‘I don’t understand why you can’t even tell me…’
‘You were conceived during the war; that much you already know. You never knew the man and he never knew you. You don’t need to concern yourself about it. Please don’t ask me again.’
Marianne put down her glass and left the room in frustration. She went to Callum’s bedroom, sat down on the bed and gave him a big hug. Honestly, she thought, my mother treats me like a child. So ridiculous.
‘Mum, I’m trying to watch this,’ said Callum, wriggling from his mother’s embrace. Marianne got up. She didn’t approve of television in the bedroom – still, this was only a temporary treat for him. Right, she thought, if Maman won’t talk to me about my father, there is another subject on which I need an answer and I won’t let her off the hook on t
his.
Back in the kitchen Marianne helped her mother peel and slice vegetables, then she said, ‘Maman, you know all my life I’ve had this vision, this apparition – I wouldn’t really call it a dream – it’s a child’s face, and it seems to be accusing me and then it fades away. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s not just the face which I see, but the nausea – terror, even – which invariably come with it.’
‘I remember you had bad dreams, but I thought you had got over them.’
‘Well, I haven’t. Do you know why I see this face?’
‘I always assumed it was the boy next door – you used to play with him. I think you were missing him.’
‘Missing him?’
‘After they moved.’
‘Are you keeping something back about this, Maman?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why did they move away?’
‘I don’t know – perhaps after the boy drowned…’
‘He drowned? Christ, you never told me that.’
‘Didn’t I? Well, it happened when you were quite little and then they moved to another village.’
‘What was the boy’s name?’
‘Ryan, I think it was.’
‘So why don’t I remember him if he was my friend?’
‘You used to play with him when you were two – you were not quite three when he died – people don’t remember what they did at that age.’
‘So what happened?’
‘What happened? I don’t remember exactly.’
‘When did he drown?’
‘I couldn’t say, but it was soon after Christmas – about two years after we came to live in Vermont. You would have been three that January.’
‘Was I involved?’
‘Involved – no, why should you have been?’
‘I just don’t know why this face I see – if it’s his face – should evoke such a feeling.’ Marianne walked to the window. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. She watched as the evening sun decorated the distant summits with tints of pink and yellow leaving heavy shadow in the foreground, a lake of darkness across the valley. Could she see that face now if she concentrated? She wasn’t sure.
‘Was it because of the accident that they moved?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘I remember the house and the pond – but not very well. When did we move?’
‘Really, Marianne, why are you asking me all these questions? I can’t remember exactly. It was when your father started to work in Burlington. Before Claire was born. I suppose you were about eight or nine.’
‘So what happened exactly? How did the boy – Ryan – drown?’
‘I have no idea, I don’t think anyone knows – now come and sit down.’
Marianne sat at the table and helped herself from the dishes which her mother had set out. Usually they would find things to talk about while they ate but this time they chewed in silence. Her mother seemed to be lost in thought and Marianne was sure she knew more than she was letting on.
‘Maman, I’m sorry but I still think there is more to this than you are telling me.’
Her mother looked up, confused, as if she had been in another place. ‘More to what, Chérie?’
‘To the drowning of Ryan – and how it relates to me.’
Her mother said nothing, but a frown came over her face and she looked away from Marianne as if she saw something on the kitchen wall behind her, something perhaps in the montage of family snaps taken at different times over the years: Marianne making a snowman in the back garden, carrying baby Claire in her arms, skiing between her father’s legs.
‘Look at me, Maman. I am hardly a child. I am fifty. If there is something to tell, then for God’s sake let me hear it.’
‘You may be fifty but you are a post-war child,’ said her mother, suddenly more animated and looking intently at Marianne. ‘You didn’t live through what we lived through. Amnesia is a blessing. I couldn’t live if I had to remember all the bad things that happened. Forgetting has been my way of survival – it’s nature’s way to heal us and I am convinced it’s the best way.’
‘We are not talking about the war…’
‘This modern obsession with rummaging in the cupboard for old memories,’ her mother continued, ignoring Marianne’s intervention, ‘dusting them down, examining them under a microscope, adding a dash of imagination – a touch of fantasy – to what is barely a memory at all, and then worrying how these best forgotten events might be affecting your life today; it’s a terrible mistake. Leads to nothing but unhappiness.’
‘Maman…’
‘In your case, you don’t actually remember so it’s pointless to speculate on what may have happened.’
‘If I had no memory at all then I might agree with you. But I do have something: the face and the terrible feeling which goes with it – it’s been with me all my life and I need to understand. It might help…’
‘The truth is I don’t actually know…’
‘But you know more than you’ve told me?’
‘Yes.’
‘So?’
‘It won’t help you, Marianne.’
‘Please, Maman, just tell me.’
‘Pour me another glass of wine and I’ll try to tell you. The truth is I’ve done my best to block out the memory myself, so I can’t be sure what I really do remember.’
Marianne refilled her mother’s glass and waited.
‘As I said, it was a few days after Christmas. The weather, which had been very cold, had thawed somewhat and there was wet slush on the ground.’
‘In the morning?’
‘Yes, the morning. You know, we regarded the garden as a safe place, so by the time you were nearly three we weren’t necessarily watching you all the time.’
‘Was Ryan there?’
‘Please don’t interrupt all the time, Chérie – no, Ryan was not there. Do you remember the layout of our house and the O’Connors’ – later on, the Johnsons’ – next door?’
‘More or less. There was a pond at the bottom of the garden which somehow went through to their house as well.’
‘Yes – both houses had gardens which backed onto the same pond. Naturally, with a small child in the house we had the pond securely fenced off.’
‘What about their garden?’
‘I’m coming to that. They had also fenced the bottom of their garden but anyway there was a wooden picket fence between the two gardens – as well as trees and shrubs – so you couldn’t just walk through. When we wanted you two to play together we – or the O’Connors – would lift one of you over the fence.’
‘So, what happened that morning?’ said Marianne, knowing that she should let her mother tell the story in her own way, but desperate to get to the heart of it.
‘I was doing something in the house – I can’t remember quite what – when I heard you crying and found you at the back door, wet to the skin and shivering with cold. I was mystified as to how you had got so wet but sometimes there were big puddles when the snow was melting so I thought you might have rolled in one.’
‘My God – so I might have been in the pond as well?’
‘At that moment I didn’t think of the pond – I knew it was safely fenced off, and my main concern was to dry you off and comfort you. Then… well… the phone rang and it was Margaret O’Connor sounding agitated and wondering whether we had Ryan. I said no, but I would come downstairs and check. I met her in the garden and we spoke over the fence. A couple of minutes later, she discovered that the ice was broken on the pond and she became hysterical, screaming Ryan’s name. I climbed over the fence into their garden and ran down to where she was.’
Marianne watched, transfixed, as her mother took another sip from her wine glass. Why have I never heard this before? she thought. H
ow can I be hearing this for the first time now?
‘The wire fence at the bottom of the O’Connors’ garden was quite high,’ her mother continued, ‘too high for her to climb over, but Margaret just launched herself at it, fought it like a mortal enemy, and somehow broke it down enough to get to the pond. She tried to walk on the ice to where the broken area was – about ten yards in – but the ice wouldn’t support her weight and she was floundering up to her waist in the water, trying to break her way through the ice. I could see it was hopeless so I ran back to the house and called the police and fire service.’
‘So what was I doing while this was going on?’
‘I couldn’t say exactly but when I got back to the house you were sitting silently at the top of the stairs holding one of your dolls. Of course, I tried to question you, how did you get so wet, did you go on the ice, did Ryan fall in, did you fall in? But you wouldn’t answer. In fact, you didn’t speak for the rest of the day.’
‘And the police came?’
‘Yes, the police came and… well, I don’t know exactly how long it took, but they found little Ryan’s body at the bottom of the pond – under the ice.’
‘How did he get through the fence?’
‘The police came to the conclusion that he must have rolled under it.’
Marianne shut her eyes. I was there, she thought. I’m sure I was there. Then it suddenly came to her, a small fragment of memory. ‘I climbed the fence. I mean, the wooden fence into their garden.’ She said it as a statement but her mother took it as a question.
‘I don’t know, but it’s possible.’
‘No, no, I remember now.’
‘How can you?’
‘That old wooden pony with wheels, I pushed it up against the fence.’
Her mother nodded.
‘So you know I did. You knew about the pony?’
‘Well, of course I was anxious to know whether you had been there, so I looked at the fence and I did see your horse, but if you did climb over I don’t know how you got back again.’