Speed of Light, The

by Cowley, Joy

  Jeff knew about the visit. Winston said he and Jim Fitzgibbon talked about golf, the best place to go for a car wash and the New Zealand horses in the Melbourne Cup.

  “Anything new on the house front?” Mr Fitzgibbon asked.

  Jeff chewed, swallowed and had some orange cordial. He liked Mrs Fitzgibbon’s South American food, but didn’t know why chilli sounded cold. He put the glass down. “Mum’s given up looking for a house to rent. There was nothing with wheelchair access. Now we’re going to buy.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” said Mrs Fitzgibbon. “Moving house is hard work. Why do it twice?”

  “Mum’s looked at a house in Lyall Bay. It’s old but on flat land and we can get a ramp built for Dad. Mum showed Dad photos and he told her, go ahead.” He looked at the table and wondered if he should say the next bit. “The house – it’s got four bedrooms.”

  No one said anything, but they smiled. That meant they understood one day Beckett would be living with them.

  He went on eating. The hot peppers with the silly name tasted okay.

  * * *

  The house was perfect. The land agent said it was eighty years old, but Jeff knew that it had to be eighty-one. Yes, eight and one! The sun-baked bungalow with flaking white paint on the windowsills was surely a nine. Only two blocks back from the beach, it sat on a little section, mostly sand held down by a variety of wild grasses and succulents. It had low wooden fences that allowed a view of the neighbours’ windows and clothes lines.

  There was a white-painted garage with a green door, big enough for one car and a few garden tools. They could live with that, Helen said. The problem was the number of steps to the front door, because the house was built on high foundations to stop sand coming inside. A ramp would definitely be needed, but if the owner accepted their offer, Eddie and François would come in and build it. Two days max, said Eddie when he called in at the motel to discuss it. Ramp finished before the old man would be out of hospital.

  “Cool!” Jeff said to Eddie. “I’ll help you at the weekend.”

  For Jeff, the two best things were the beach at Lyall Bay, with surfers riding its waves, and the inside of the eighty-year-old house. An extra bathroom with a disability shower had been added at the back, but the rest was really old, with wooden panelling on the living room walls and varnished doors. There were cork tiles on the kitchen floor, blue carpet in the bedrooms, and white plastic light shades hanging on cords in the centre of each room. The house smelled of sunshine and old wood and saltiness, as though the sea had once sneaked in during the night.

  He breathed in deep. Yeah! He would get a surfboard!

  The back bedroom by the kitchen was his. He stood in it, letting the walls wrap themselves around him. He could have his bed here and his desk there, and there would still be space left over. It was a story, of course. Not true, but he could make it up, a basket in the corner with a patch-eyed puppy. It was all right to imagine running a dog along the beach, throwing sticks in the water, okay as long as you knew it could never happen. For that matter, even the house might not happen, if someone else bought it first.

  He opened and closed the wardrobe door. If there was a patch-eyed puppy in a basket, he would call it Maisie. That name was a two.

  * * *

  In the rehab unit, Winston had traded pyjamas for track pants and a T-shirt, and he spent much of each day in a large armchair with an overhead hoist. He could now get out of the chair by himself, walk three steps with his walking frame, turn, then go back to the chair. “I do that every hour,” he told Helen. “What do you think about that?”

  “Sweetie, you’re wonderful!” Helen kissed his forehead. “I don’t think I’d have the patience.”

  “Bloody hell,” he growled. “I’ve got to do something while I’m waiting for your visit. How did the shifting go?”

  “Nearly finished,” she said. “I don’t know what we’d have done without Eddie and François. They trucked in everything from the storage unit and put it in place.”

  “Everything?”

  Helen laughed. “Less than half! How did we collect so much stuff? I suppose the rest can stay in storage until we decide what to do with it.”

  Winston dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief. “Don’t worry about it now. When I come home we’ll sell it. No point in paying rental for surplus furniture.” He turned his head to Jeff. “And how’s Jeffrey our mathematician? Counting all the streets between the new house and the hospital?”

  Jeff shrugged. His father’s smile was lopsided but it was good to see. “It’s a long way from your office, Dad.”

  “I’ll be working from home for a while.” Winston gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Maybe back on my feet by summer.”

  “You’ll be playing golf again by summer,” said Helen, but they all knew that wouldn’t be true.

  They were quiet for a while, and then Winston reached out with his strong hand and took hers. “It’s been one hell of a ride, honey.”

  “I know,” she said. “But you’ve made an amazing recovery.”

  “I mean all of us.” He shook her hand from side to side. “That southerly storm and the homeless woman. It started then, didn’t it? What the hell happened?”

  Helen pulled back her hand and placed it on top of his. “No, Wins, it started before that. Mr Staunton so-called Jones! I hope they make him eat his filthy money!”

  Jeff wanted to say that it started earlier, with lots of things, the way they were about Beckett, and even before that. Maisie called it something. Forgetting the memory of Light, she said. But telling them would be way out of order. “There are good people in the world,” he said. “Kind people who’ve helped us.”

  “Too damned right, Jeffrey.” Winston laughed. “Look at the support we’ve had! Anyway, storms have their uses. They say a calm sea never makes a good captain.”

  Jeff remembered Beck’s letter to their father, and the comment about knowing hell to appreciate heaven. He supposed it meant the same thing. Somewhere in a box of papers he had the notes he’d made of his last conversation with Maisie. He would try to find them. Some of that stuff about people choosing paths was making sense.

  * * *

  They were going to Auckland! Jeff was so excited that he sometimes found himself holding his breath, either with eager anticipation or else with apprehension. He would be seeing his brother. But would Beck be different? He looked different in the newspaper photo, although he sounded the same in his letters.

  Jeff started counting things again, unimportant things, like the leaves on the geranium plant by the car park, the number of baked beans on his toast. He timed Mrs Wilson’s lessons to the nearest second and turned them into a graph. It helped, although he didn’t know why. It just seemed that numbers made his breathing easier.

  The flight was booked for the week Winston came out of the rehab ward. The doctor said it was too early for travel, but he didn’t know Helen was a senior employee of a big travel firm that would make the journey easy.

  An attendant wheeled Winston to the plane, where a front aisle seat was reserved for him. Helen sat next to Winston and Andrea had the window seat. Jeff was in the seat across the aisle. He waited until the attendant had gone, then he leaned across. “The Boing 737 has one hundred and thirty-three seats,” he told his father. “The old Fokker Friendship had only twenty-eight seats.”

  “Not now Jeffrey,” said Helen.

  Jeff saw that his dad had closed his eyes and was looking tired, much older than fifty-three. Strokes did that to people. But they got better. They did. They got extremely well again, and when his father turned fifty-four, his nine number, he would be in perfect health.

  It was a good thought to hold.

  Andy seemed older, too. Because she was tall, she’d always looked more than her age. She still acted young, though. Now it was as though the inside had caught up with the outside. Jeff missed his sister’s laughter and mad singing. But she’d be eighteen in another month. She
would be a nine number, and that was a good thought, too.

  Jeff sat back in his seat. He couldn’t wait to talk to Beck. He’d probably have to wait to tell his brother about Maisie. Beck would understand the notes about dream-keepers and Light and dreams. He’d know all that stuff.

  In Auckland, there was light rain from fat clouds squashed down on buildings. Andrea held an umbrella over the wheelchair while Helen pushed Winston out to the taxi rank. Jeff carried his mother’s bag.

  Helen had organised a disability van with a hoist. Winston was picked up in his chair and then clicked into place inside, next to Andrea and Jeff. Helen sat in the front.

  The van driver had glasses that sat low on a lumpy nose. He said he would wait for them at the prison car park and take them back to the airport for the flight home. He turned to Helen. “You won’t be able to take that handbag in, love. Strict, they are. You’ll all be searched. Wheelchair, too. Got your visitors’ papers?”

  “We’ve done all that,” said Winston.

  “My husband’s medication is in this bag,” said Helen.

  The driver laughed. “You know how many times they’ve heard that one? Don’t worry. The bag’s safe in the van. If Mr Lorimer needs anything you’ll have to bring him out. No exceptions. Everyone gets treated the same.”

  Jeff’s heart beat so fast, he could feel it in his ears. He had seen movies of prison visits where people sat at tables in a room like a large cafeteria without food or drink. He wondered if they would all be allowed around a little table, or if they would have to go in one by one. But this was different. The guard, a large woman with thin eyebrows, took them into the family room. It looked a bit like the waiting room in the stroke unit: metal chairs; two small tables, one with magazines; and bright fluorescent lights in a low white ceiling. They were told to sit and wait.

  Helen remained standing, twisting the rings on her left hand. Jeff knew she was anxious about leaving her bag in the van. It was hard to trust a smiling man, after Mr Warren Staunton-Jones. “I didn’t get the driver’s name,” she said.

  Winston said, “If it goes missing, I’ll get you a new one.”

  She laughed then, and sat down. “Where’s Beckett? Everything smells of pine disinfectant. Comb your hair, Jeffrey. It’s a mess.”

  “Let him be.” Winston waved his strong hand. “His hair’s fine. He’s a good-looking kid. When I was his age, I was as ugly as sin. Now look at me.” He grinned at her. “Handsome as hell!”

  She grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

  Jeff didn’t laugh at the joke. His stomach still felt as though bugs were crawling in it. He started counting the seconds because there was nothing else to count. But the moment he had been waiting for was close.

  At forty-seven there was a noise outside and at forty-eight the door opened. A man came in, a tall, thin version of Winston. He had hair like hay stubble and deep lines at the edges of his mouth. But the eyes were as Jeff remembered them, a pale blue that caught the light and held it.

  Before any of them could stand up to greet him, the guard came in and closed the door. Beckett sat down in the chair between his father and Andrea. He looked at them and his eyes twitched. “You’re here. All of you. Thanks for coming.”

  There was a silence. It wasn’t easy to talk with the guard standing against the door. Helen twisted her hands. “You don’t look like – You’re so thin!”

  “Yeah.” Beckett glanced down at himself. “I had amoebic dysentery last year. I’m putting on weight now, working in the kitchen. He ran his hands down the front of his shirt and then smiled, his head still down. “You’ve all changed, too.”

  “Not for the better, in my case.” Winston indicated his weak arm.

  Beckett looked up then. He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “These situations are temporary, Dad. Everything passes.” He turned. “Time! So much time! Andy, you’re a beautiful woman. Jeff! My little Mr Number Freak, you’re sprouting like a runner bean! Thanks for the letters. Both of you.” He changed direction and put his face close to Helen. “Mum, you’ve changed the least. I like that grey in your hair. Looks classic.”

  Jeff glanced at the guard standing against the door. He was Samoan, maybe, black curly hair, and he looked straight ahead, no expression at all. Did he have a family that talked like strangers? Jeff licked his dry lips. This was the meeting he’d longed for. He should be happy.

  Helen folded her hands in her lap. “We’ve moved into our new house and we –”

  Winston interrupted. “Your mother did all the work. Her and Andrea and Jeffrey.” He put his handkerchief to the corner of his mouth. “I was sitting on my backside in rehab.”

  “Yeah.” Beckett smiled with one side of his mouth. “I know a bit about rehab.”

  “This kind of rehab is different,” said Winston. “We do these confounded exercises, in the pool, out of the pool, walking between two bars –”

  Helen nudged him. “Beckett knows it’s different.”

  Winston wiped his mouth again and shrugged with one shoulder. “Okay, okay.”

  They all laughed. Jeff too. He didn’t know what else to do. Under the laugh, he counted his heart beats, averaging eight to every breath. Helen continued, “The house has four bedrooms. Beckett, one of them is yours.”

  Jeff stopped breathing.

  Beck’s smile disappeared and his eyes widened, a transparent blue. “Really?” It was almost a whisper.

  “Bloody hell, yes,” shouted Winston, punching Beckett on the shoulder. “It’s been a bloody awful year.”

  Andrea looked quickly at the guard. “Dad, don’t swear!”

  “I’ll bloody well swear if I want to. It’s been a rough road, but we’re family, aren’t we? If family can’t hang together, what else can we do?” He pointed across the room at Jeff. “That boy has been bloody marvellous. You’d better believe it. That one’s been the glue in the family.”

  Jeff took a deep breath and felt his chest expand. He had been thinking about all he would say when he saw Beck again, but so far he had not been able to find a single word.

  “Don’t know where we’d be without him,” Winston said to Beckett. “We’ve done the unthinkable. We’ve arranged to get him a puppy.”

  What? Jeff sat upright, but only for a second. Like hell, they were getting a puppy.

  Winston could put promises in reverse faster than a car. Unthinkable! Fleas, hydatids, rabies, filthy bloody mongrels!

  “Oh, sweetie!” cried Helen. “That was supposed to be for his birthday!”

  Winston was pointing at Jeff. “One of Jim Fitzgibbon’s pups. The one you like.”

  Forgetting the guard, Jeff sprang off his chair, bounded three steps across the room and stopped. It couldn’t be true. It was a trick. He stood in front of his parents. “But you hate dogs!”

  They laughed. That was their response, bursts of laughter, happy, loud, rising and falling. He hadn’t said anything funny, but it went on and on. All of them laughing, like waves of light, Helen, Winston, Beckett, Andrea and finally, himself. Yes, definitely himself! They were all over their heads, drowning in laughter, because it was true. They meant it! Everything was true! And then with the laughing, the rest happened, first Beckett up out of his chair and swinging Jeff around, hugging him against his prison shirt. Spinning around and around! Andrea with them, kissing him, kissing Beck, weeping into the laughter, and Helen getting in the middle, hugging them all, with her lipstick smudged, her hair over her eyes. Then all four were leaning over Winston’s chair, smothering him with hands and kisses, and laughing with some tears and some swearing. They were awash with Light!

  It was very fast, as though all the terrible things that had happened were suddenly a huge joke that swept them together in a heap of family and although there were no numbers to count, Jeff knew the moment was perfect.

  THE END

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I developed the idea for this novel over three years, from reading that went back a lot
further. When I was writing the book, I gathered information from a variety of sources. Some of the reading came from the mystical traditions of several religions, while others came from books and the internet.

  I would like to particularly acknowledge the following sources:

  Dr Quantum Presents: A User’s Guide to the Universe by Fred Alan Wolf (audiobook, 2005, Colorado: Sounds True)

  Thinking in Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math by Daniel Tammet (2012, London: Hodder and Stoughton)

  Wonders of Numbers: Adventures in Mathematics, Mind, and Meaning by Clifford Pickover (2001, New York: Oxford University Press)

  The Pan Dictionary of Mathematics (1990, London: Pan)

  New Zealand Sailing Guide; New Zealand Boatmasters’ Course; Aoraki Polytechnic Certificate in Woodturning course notes

  Encyclopaedia Britannica

  Wikipedia.org (accessed February 13, 2014), with special acknowledgement for the following chapter openings:

  Chapter 3: “Black hole,”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Black_hole&oldid=595309620

  Chapter 4: “Prime number,”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prime_number&oldid=593374659

  Chapter 6: “Sound,”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sound&oldid=595995385

  Chapter 8: “Fibonacci number,”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fibonacci_number&oldid=595209997

  Chapter 9: “Tide,”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tide&oldid=596074112

  Chapter 10: “Terminal velocity,”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terminal_velocity&oldid=596178967

  Chapter 11: “Photon,”

  http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Photon&oldid=4618327

  and my husband Terry who is at home in the world of math and physics.