by Lucy Atkins
‘Kal … ’
‘I expect she was like this with me as a baby too – uninterested. It explains a lot.’
‘I actually don’t believe that, Kal. I mean, look how you are with Finn – she must have done something right with you because all that love and patience you have with him – and your goodness and kindness – you – all that doesn’t just come out of nowhere.’
‘Do we have to do this?’
‘Why not? We haven’t talked about you and your mother for years,’ he said. ‘And there’s Finn now and that’s changed things. She bought that high chair, for God’s sake. She’s really not uninterested.’
His hands on the wheel were broad, strong and clean – hands to hold, hands to be held by, hands to keep things safe. I swallowed hard. I was not going to open all this up again. I turned and looked back at Finn in his car seat, gnawing on a teething ring. Seeing me, he let it drop and his face cracked into a great big grin. For a few seconds, my beautiful baby and I just smiled at each other, and the world was simple.
‘All I’m saying is I think she’s sad that you two aren’t closer.’ He really wouldn’t let it go. ‘I actually think she wants things to be better between you, but she doesn’t know how. She might not want to hold Finn and coo at him, but she’s totally aware of him. I saw her today, watching you while you were feeding him and talking to your father, and I think she was almost in tears. She really isn’t uninterested, Kal. Whatever this is for her, it’s definitely not lack of interest. Can’t you just try talking to her?’
‘Doug. Stop. Just leave it. My mother and I are totally fine.’
‘But this is surely a chance to put things behind you and … ’
I looked out the window, silently daring him to say ‘make a fresh start’. But he knew me better than that. ‘The two of you are complicated,’ he said. ‘I get that.’
I stared at the expanses of ploughed clay, the bare oaks flicking by, then the chalk quarry looming above us like a giant’s tooth. We turned onto the London road.
‘But don’t leave it too late,’ he said. ‘Or you might regret it one day.’
*
I should clean up breakfast – the cafetière, the mangle of Marmite and milk. I can’t sit here thinking about my mother and Doug. I can’t. While we had that Boxing Day lunch, her tumour was there already, growing in her breast, a deadly secret that she was hiding from us all.
It is also possible that Doug was keeping his horrible secret too, even then. Maybe he was already lying to me as he ate honey-glazed ham at my parents’ table. A vivid image rises in my brain of a curtain of strawberry-blonde hair and Doug’s broad hands pressing on pale flanks. All I want is to erase myself from this nightmare, completely.
A surge of nausea brings saliva into my mouth. I have to decide what to do next. But I can’t think. These images are too much to hold in my head. I just want to get away.
I wonder what my father is doing outside with Finn. I imagine him leaning down and trying to explain the Victorian architectural features of the house to his small grandson. I pick up my mother’s notebook. Holding it in my hands brings a sudden and unexpected comfort. Her handwriting, though younger, rounder, more girlish, is definitively hers. And it’s still here – still physically present. This small part of her is here and that must mean that she hasn’t really gone.
*
Alice leaves, but I don’t. After I have given Finn his bath, and read him three storybooks, and tucked him up in his sleeping bag, in the travel cot, then sung ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ until, finally, he really is asleep, I creep back downstairs.
My father is in his study; I can see the crease of light under his door. I walk through to the kitchen and flick the kettle on. Her old notebook is lying on the kitchen table, where I left it, next to the jewellery box. I take it, make myself a cup of peppermint tea, then go through to the living room. I curl up on the old Habitat sofa.
It is chilly in this room, and the floor lamp gives off a yellowish light, casting long shadows up the bookcases. I pull a scratchy tartan blanket around my shoulders. The house is eerily quiet, except for the far-off moan of the wind and the occasional creak and tick of the radiator. I feel as if she might pop her head in at any moment, and ask why I’m sitting here, all alone. Is something wrong? Has something happened?
I open the notebook. Maybe there is something in here that will give me a clue about who she really was. Maybe this book will help me understand why the two of us were so twisted and knotty.
But it is just lists and scientific jargon. I flip through pages of incomprehensible notes, tables of numbers and columns consisting mainly of vowels. Then I realize that there are little scribbled comments dotted here and there. They are often written vertically in the margins, or scrawled along the bottom of the page – little hints of a life outside the research. I flip from one to the next.
4 p.m. tomorrow – S
Find out about OMP
S bday
Where is B’s family? Puget Sound/Salish Sea?
I notice that the initial ‘S’ crops up frequently, but I can only find one reference to what could be my father:
G to NY Friday?
The last fifth of the book is blank – old, empty lined pages, waiting for something that never came. I wonder if it stops because she got pregnant. Maybe this notebook represents her last days as a scientist. Is that why she kept it?
Then something connects in my head. This S could be Susannah, the postcard sender. There were thirty-seven annual postcards, which means Susannah started to send them the very first year my mother got to England.
If there are old friends out there, like this Susannah person, then maybe there is family somewhere too. My mother was an only child, her parents are long dead, but maybe there are cousins, or at least old family friends. There must be people out there who knew her as a young woman, as a child. Perhaps one day I could take a trip out to the Pacific Northwest and find the people who knew her. Maybe it’s not too late to understand my mother – and if I can understand her, then perhaps I will be able to let her go. Then something occurs to me. I could go – now. I could take Finn and get on a plane and go.
The metal band that has been clamped around my heart for days immediately feels less tight. Just the thought of getting away is a huge release.
And I could do this. I really could. Why not?
If I leave then I won’t have to sit in our home and listen to the man I love explain how he fell for his ex-girlfriend all over again – or worse, how he has longed for her since college. I won’t have to hear him tell me how motherhood has changed me, or how having Finn has exposed the cracks that were always there in our relationship, I just didn’t see them. And I won’t have to hear him tell me that he understands, now, that he never should have left her in the first place and that marrying me was a mistake. He doesn’t love me in the right way. He loves her. He’s so sorry.
I put my mother’s notebook on the coffee table. My hands are shaking. An escape plan has dropped from the sky, and I must pick it up and use it before it shimmies away again.
I get up and go through to the kitchen and my laptop. I pour myself a large glass of red wine and take it back to the sofa, pulling the blanket back up as it falls to the floor.
My mother kept her maiden name, Halmstrom, slotted before my father’s: Elena Halmstrom MacKenzie. I have no idea how people go about searching for family members – there are probably millions of websites dedicated to this. But, not knowing where to start, I just google Halmstrom, Seattle.
Some long-ago Ellis Island slip must have turned a vowel because there are ninety-five Holmstroms in Seattle, but not a single Halmstrom. I feel the disappointment settle solidly in my belly. Maybe there really are no surviving members of my mother’s family.
I skim down the Google links for Halmstrom, and then something catches my eye: Harry Halmstrom, The Ida May Assisted Living Facility, Vancouver, British Columbia.
Seattle and Vancouve
r aren’t that far from each other. I click on the link. The Ida May Assisted Living Facility lists the names of its residents, and there is a Harry Halmstrom, along with the phone number of Jenny Zimmerman, his care worker.
My mother’s father is dead and I’m pretty sure that his name was Theodore. She never talked about him and yet I grew up knowing that she hated him and he died. I have no memory of any conversation at all, in fact, about my grandparents. Presumably she shut me down if I ever asked. This, I realize, is just not normal. It’s not just my genetic inheritance, it’s Finn’s now. Doug can trace his family back to the 1700s. My father’s MacKenzie clan goes back through generations of ministers and bagpipe players. But the other half of our lineage apparently vanished the day my mother died.
I think about getting up and going through the house to the study to ask my father about all this, but then I’d have to explain to him what I am doing, and I couldn’t even begin to do that because obviously it’s not normal to be doing this. So I pick up my phone and call Alice’s mobile.
She doesn’t answer. I leave her a slightly strangulated message saying that I was just checking she got back to London safely.
It is nine o’clock in Sussex, but only 1 p.m. in Vancouver.
I drink half of my glass of wine in three gulps then I dial the number of Harry Halmstrom’s carer at the Ida May Assisted Living Facility.
I don’t really expect anyone to pick up, but someone does, after just a couple of rings.
‘Oh. Hello.’ For a moment, I can’t think what on earth to say. Then I take a breath. ‘I’m calling about one of your residents, Harry Halmstrom. I’m calling from England because I wonder – I think – though I’m not sure – that there’s a possibility he’s a relative of mine.’
‘Really?’ she says. There is a pause. But she doesn’t say anything else.
‘Well, I don’t know. We have the same family name – well, my mother’s name actually, and, well, I might be coming to Vancouver so I thought perhaps I could find out if we are related.’ As I talk, I realize how tenuous all this is – how completely deranged. It occurs to me that I could just hang up.
‘Well, you sure have to come and see him then, don’t you?’ she says brightly. ‘If he might be your relative!’
‘Yes. Well, that’s right.’ I’m bolstered by her enthusiasm. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’
‘I just love your accent,’ she says. ‘What did you say your name was again?’
I’m not sure why, but I give my mother’s maiden name. ‘Kali Halmstrom.’
‘Well, Halmstrom’s not exactly a common name,’ she admits.
‘Do you know if he was from the Seattle area originally, by any chance? Or had family there?’
Her voice lightens. ‘Oh, you know what, honey, Mr Halmstrom lived all over the place; he may have lived in Seattle. Yes. I think so. I do know he was born in Sweden – is your family Swedish? Mr Halmstrom came out west on a boat when he was just a teenager.’
My head buzzes. I remember my mother telling me just once, a very long time ago, that I have Swedish blood and that’s why my eyes are blue, though my hair is dark.
‘I think so,’ I say. ‘Yes. I do think there is Swedish blood somewhere.’
‘Well, Mr Halmstrom has no family that I know of and he never gets a single visitor, so if you’d like to come visit him, honey, you’d be more than welcome.’
‘Do you think perhaps I could talk to him? On the phone?’
‘Oh well, no,’ she says. ‘He really isn’t so good on the phone. He’s very elderly. He gets awfully confused. And he doesn’t hear too good. But you drop by if you’re visiting the area. I’d love for him to have a visitor! When are you visiting?’
I swig some more wine. ‘I’m coming this week,’ I say. A wave of nausea surges through my belly.
‘Well, how wonderful!’ she says. ‘So, what day would you like to come by? I’ll put it on the calendar.’
*
I put down the phone. It’s like the blood is pumping faster through my brain, bringing blooms of colour instead of this heavy grey. It’s mad, but I could do it. I could go. It doesn’t matter if he’s a relative. I could just go – to Canada. Vancouver is as good as anywhere. And I have to get away. That’s clear. I have to go somewhere.
Suddenly, I think about the postcards. Many of them came from a gallery in Canada. I try to remember the name of it – the Susannah something gallery.
I google Susannah, Art Gallery, Canada.
The Susannah Gillespie Gallery
I recognize the name instantly. It’s in a place called Spring Tide Island, off the coast of British Columbia – reachable, surely, from Vancouver.
I skim the gallery home page. There is some blurb about the artists and various buttons to other pages. I click on Interviews with Susannah Gillespie. There is a magazine article from a year ago. I tuck the tartan blanket tighter round my shoulders and, with the wine glass in one hand, I read.
OUR ISLAND TREASURE
By Zadie Hagan, Arts Reporter
When I visit Susannah Gillespie’s Spring Tide home, I’m struck first by the eclecticism of the art – there are paintings, ceramics, carvings, objets d’art in vastly different styles – a mix that is testimony to a lifetime of travel, curiosity and creativity. This should come as no surprise, since Gillespie travels widely throughout Europe, South America and North America, looking for new talent and giving lectures. She is truly a cosmopolitan Spring Tider!
A native of Nanaimo, Gillespie, 62, first came across Spring Tide Island in the late 1970s, she tells me, after a stint teaching in California. ‘I was escaping,’ she admits. ‘My heart was broken. I was looking for a retreat.’
‘The moment I stepped off the boat I knew I’d found home,’ she continues. Her Isabella Rock home, perched precariously overlooking the sea, was built in the late 1960s by Ian Lao, now one of Vancouver’s best-known architects. Set on the westerly most tip of Spring Tide, the home is fully exposed to the elements. It is also an integral part of the landscape. And nestled behind the house is a custom-built pottery studio, which Gillespie added in the late eighties. Here, she also has a special room dedicated to yoga. But she will not show me round. ‘My studio is out of bounds,’ she tells me. ‘Nobody goes in there but me.’ She also keeps a small cabin, hidden away in the archipelago, though she will not discuss the exact location. ‘Everyone,’ she says, ‘needs a bolt hole.’
The Susannah Gillespie Gallery, established twelve years ago, has become a Mecca for art-lovers who flood over from Vancouver in the summertime. Her exhibitions are characterized by a devotion to the art of British Columbia, but she also selects works from around the globe. She is friends with famous artists such as Dale Chihuly in Seattle. And she has the Midas touch! Those lucky artists who exhibit at the gallery are almost always snapped up by big-time collectors.
Gillespie, whose husband died two years ago, is the picture of serenity, sitting cross-legged on her couch with her two golden retrievers. How does a busy woman achieve this Buddha-like calm? Her answer is surprising. ‘Yoga helps,’ she says, ‘but we all have our demons. Most of us spend our lives trying to distract ourselves from them. We build businesses, houses, marriages to keep them inside, but these are external distractions. Look beneath the surface of anyone you know and you’ll find chaos.’
Well, this writer has to disagree! Gillespie is anything but chaotic, with her beautiful home, her thriving business, her artistic talent and her professional standing. She is fully in control – our very own Spring Tide treasure.
I peer at the grainy picture. A handsome woman sits on a sofa with two golden retrievers at her feet. Her wavy hair is pinned up, her back is straight, gaze direct. There is no ingratiating smile for the photographer. She certainly does not look like a person carrying demons. She looks like a woman who knows how to control the world and everything in it. She looks like someone who is completely in charge.
I go back to the main page and cli
ck on ‘artists’ – a list of potters, painters and jewellery designers pops up. Then I click About Susannah Gillespie. There she is again, in colour this time. Her hair is greying, and dangling turquoise earrings bring out extraordinarily pale-blue eyes in a sun-lined face. She has high cheekbones, deep eye sockets, a serious mouth, and is looking sideways at the camera. Her body is muscular and she holds herself like a tall person who has worked hard not to stoop. You would not, I think, want to mess with Susannah Gillespie.
I go to Google maps. Spring Tide Island is not far from Vancouver. A drive north and a ferry ride.
The plan seems to be taking shape, as if it has a life of its own. I imagine getting on a plane with Finn. We could go and meet this old Harry Halmstrom, stay a couple of nights in Vancouver. Then we could go and find Susannah, the postcard sender. I could ask her about my mother. I would be away from here: this, Doug, death. I realize that I don’t really care whether my plan holds water. I just need to not be here. Canada sounds perfect. I finish the wine.
A buzzy feeling spreads inside me as I compose a brief email to Susannah, introducing myself, telling her I’m going to be in the area, and asking if I could possibly come and visit – this week. Then I dial the gallery number. I suddenly feel nervous and I almost hang up – but I just get her answerphone a deep-voiced Canadian woman instructing me to leave a message. She does sound in control. I give my name, and mobile number. ‘I hoped I might drop by and say hello,’ I say. ‘I think you might be a friend of my mother.’
*
She must be. She sent my mother a postcard every year. They must have been good friends once. She will know things about my mother’s past. Maybe she knows who taught my mother to spear fish or build a tepee, tie nautical knots, or construct a really good snow shelter. Were these skills handed down from my grandparents? Susannah may know about my family too – what happened to make my mother so bitter about her childhood. It is too late to make things right, but it’s not too late to find out more about who my mother was, where she came from – where I came from. Where Finn comes from.