by Jane Shemilt
“Is that right, Harold?” Michael asked him lightly. “Or is there anything at all you can tell us?”
Harold stared at him blankly. He started scribbling hard with the blue crayons. We stood, looking down at him, reluctant to leave.
“Well, if you remember anything, please let us know,” Michael said.
Outside, the white vans had gone. Michael smiled grimly. Back in my kitchen he made some notes while I phoned Frank, relieved to hear the answering machine; it meant not having to answer questions about how I was. Instead I left a brief message: they might need help; midwinter was always busy in the medical office. I was still by the phone when there was a loud knock. Michael, gathering his things to leave, went to answer.
Harold was standing outside, a wad of paper under his arm.
“Naomi,” he said loudly. “Naomi.”
Mrs. Moore appeared breathlessly at his shoulder.
“Harold wouldn’t wait. It turns out he’s got something to tell you, after all that.”
Harold put his pictures on the table. There were about twenty in smeared blue wax. They all had a squarish shape with an oblong protruding from one side. He pointed to the shape.
“Truck,” he said.
Michael sifted through the pile and drew out one where the blue shape was in front of an outlined square.
“That’s the theater,” said Mrs. Moore. “After you left he started on about your daughter.”
A blue truck outside the theater? I thought back desperately. Had I seen a blue truck or even a blue car? Ever? Maybe there had been one, streaked with mud, a small dog with his nose to the sliver of open window at the back? Or had it been a big, dark blue Mercedes? Either could be true, or made up completely, conjured out of suggestion.
Harold had a screwed-up piece of paper in his hand. He was pushing it into the blue picture of the car. There was sweat along his upper lip. I saw where the razor had missed little clumps of hair by his right ear. He was getting angry.
“Thank you, Harold,” Michael said quietly. “It’s kind of you to help us find Naomi.”
Harold stared at him. Michael eased the screwed-up paper from his grip and flattened it on the table. It was the photocopied picture of Naomi.
“Thank you,” Michael said again. “That was very helpful. You have been more helpful than anyone else.”
After they had gone, I glanced at Michael. “This could be important.”
“Maybe,” he replied. He inspected the picture again. “That rectangular shape joined to the square one makes it more like a pick-up van.” As he turned to me, concern flitted over his face. I knew what he was seeing: my exhausted face, messy hair, red eyes. The new thinness.
“You look—”
“Don’t tell me I look terrible. It doesn’t matter a fuck.” A shocked expression crossed his face, and I laughed, actually laughed. “If you knew how much I don’t care about my appearance.”
“The boys will,” Michael said steadily. “Ted will. Your appearance is part of how you stay strong.”
I knew that made sense, but it was almost impossible to think about my own appearance when my mind was full of Naomi, how she had looked when I last saw her, how she might be looking now.
I touched Michael’s arm. “Do you think it will help, this blue van?”
“It might.” He smiled down at me. “There are a lot of blue vans about, but it’s one more tiny bit of information. One more thread. This is how it’s done, you see. We untangle the threads, one at a time.”
WHEN THEO CAME home he looked miserable. He thought he’d done badly in the art scholarship. Changing his mind too often, he had ended up rushing. We had supper together; Ed came in sometime afterward. He had been coming in later and later recently, often working in the library until it closed. He didn’t want food; he had eaten at school.
After supper I caught sight of Theo lying on his bed, talking on his cell; he grinned at me more cheerfully. Ed had left his door open; he had fallen asleep on his bed with all his clothes on. I slipped his shoes off and covered him with a blanket. As I turned to go, the light from the landing caught a pile of bills on his bedside table. I looked closely. There were ten- and twenty-pound notes stacked in a neat pile, perhaps three hundred pounds in all. What was he doing with this money? Where did it come from? Ted transferred the boys’ allowance from his account online, so it was unlikely that it was from him. Had Ed been working in secret somewhere? Perhaps all the evenings I thought he was studying at school he was working for money at a pub. Why hadn’t he told us? Was he saving it to give to us, trying to make amends for not being there for Naomi in the theater? The thought caught at my heart. I wanted to wake him up and ask him, but even in sleep he looked exhausted. It would have to wait till morning. I tiptoed out and closed the door.
Chapter 22
DORSET, 2010
THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER
The air in the shed smells stale after Christmas. Mouse droppings are scattered on the sheet of paper I left on the table, and the wax crayons have been etched with tiny teeth marks. My feet crunch on grit blown through the gap under the door. I shut the door again and go back into the house.
In the mornings when the light is still gray, I wander around the house in this nothing time between Christmas and New Year’s. I can tell exactly where I am with my eyes closed. The air feels differently charged around the blue chair, the silky wood of the desk, the pile of books. Touching the familiar furniture is like touching my own skin. I look at the photos from Theo’s montage one at a time. Today it’s the baby in the carriage, her eyes serious, looking at the patterns the cherry tree blossoms make against the sky. The picture captures a starfish hand reaching to touch the shadow of the leaves on the inside of her carriage.
I miss the boys and Michael; he had tactfully arranged to cover at work when we thought Ted might be here at Christmas, though he knows we have separated. He calls every night, never in the day; our relationship is still secret from his colleagues. I don’t know what would happen if they found out. I miss him, my body misses his. I find myself craving him unexpectedly. In my darker mistrustful moments I wonder if he knows this, if he wants to gain some kind of hold by his absence. Could he be playing a game? He has stepped across a boundary to make love—should that make me trust his motives more or less?
Ed has gone back to the rehab unit. He’s planning to stay for a few more months, but he gave me no details. He didn’t talk to me about his feelings again either, though Sophie gave me a hug as they left. His words echo on, and I turn them over and over; did I trade Naomi’s life for mine? Now that I have all the space and time I ever wanted, I’d swap everything for a second of her.
Theo phones. “It’s so good to be back home.” Ridiculous to feel a pang. “Think I could live here forever.” As he talks I hear the clink of bottles and Sam’s voice singing Carmen in the background. Once Theo’s relationship with Sam would have taken us time to encompass, causing a shift in the smooth track of our lives and the assumptions we made. Instead it has found its place easily.
After Theo’s call, I try the shed again, shaking the little battered tin tubes of oil paints out of their box into a small heap on the trestle table: French ultramarine, Indian red, Naples yellow, a whole geography of colors. Theo said forever; that’s as far as you can see before you’ve been hurt, though of course he has been hurt. No, it’s farther than that; it’s as far as you can imagine, stretching to all the places and people that you think will always be there. But nothing lasts. Not places, not people, not love, nor the vanishing lives of children. Loss does, and I start to make thick straight lines with Sophie’s charcoal. At the beginning I didn’t see how I could ever manage the hours, then the days, the weeks, the months of forever, the dull metal of her absence never wearing any thinner. As I work, dark crumbs break from the sticks; and I blow them away. The boys don’t talk much a
bout Naomi. The space behind them is full of her, but their lives have gone beyond hers. Mine hasn’t; I’ve endured, that’s all.
I cross the vertical lines with horizontal bars to make a grid, thinking about the colors to put between the lines, luminescent, bordered by darkness but not stained by it; these spaces will represent the boys’ lives. I walk in tight circles inside the shed, trying to think of a color for them, one that sounds a clear note but carries other darker ones within it. It’s difficult to think of a pigment that holds light and shadow at the same time, perhaps a glowing cinnabar orange. I need more colors. I imagine some kind of rich desert dust that has been distilled by wind and heat. Then I remember the Byzantine paintings hidden in the caves of Göreme in Cappadocia. The frescoes on the walls looked backlit by sun even in the deepest caves. They had a rich, hopeful glow that was also somber. I experiment with strokes of oil paint on my easel. Cadmium yellow, cadmium pale? Something extra is missing. White? Red? Orange? I lay my brush aside to wait until I can catch it somewhere else. The sunset, or the yolk of an egg perhaps.
As I turn to go, my fingers knock a little bunch of kindling off the bench. I must have paused to look at a painting on the way to make up the fire, and left it by mistake. I pick it up, pull out a long twig, and twirl it in my fingers. The wood is gray brown, there are tiny bumps where next year’s leaf buds would have formed, the bark is minutely pitted and delicately peeling in places, the stubbed end is split and frayed as if chewed, the ends open and spread like the thinnest fingers. I sketch the twig roughly, then again more carefully, larger, then larger still. Forms and shapes, waiting to change into something else; the idea for a large painting begins to form, a cycle of life. A triptych. An unfamiliar excitement starts to build, so light and distant I’m afraid I will spoil it by thinking about it. I focus on the minute buds, smooth, unformed.
After an hour my hands start shaking with cold and I have to stop drawing. Back inside the cottage, the excitement has gone. In the empty rooms the dark condenses around me, the familiar weight of sadness so heavy that I can’t move. When the bell goes, I can barely walk to the door. Dan is on the doorstep, serious-eyed, hunched in his coat.
“Don’t stand there”—I step outside, putting my hand on his sleeve—“come in. I was hoping someone would call, and here you are.”
He walks in past me, looking downward, suddenly shy.
“It’s good to see you,” I tell him, taking his coat. “It’s been too quiet since Christmas.”
“You okay?” He looks hard at me, the green flecky eyes searching my face.
“Yes, ’course I am.” My smile falters under his gaze. “Well, maybe not okay exactly . . .”
I expect he knows about Naomi from Mary, though I’ve never told her. As he stands there, he seems to be waiting for more, and some of my resolve breaks: “Maybe it’s the time of year, but it’s the second Christmas without my daughter, so it’s like she’s getting further away all the time. I’m wondering what it will be like on the third and then the fourth . . .”
He flushes. “I could stay if you like . . . Would you like me to stay?”
“Have you had supper?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Stay, then. Turkey curry? You can carve the meat off if you want to be helpful.”
He comes in, sits at the table. I give him a glass of wine. He takes off his sweater and rolls up his sleeves as I get the huge carcass from the fridge. Even though it’s winter, his arms are brown from working in Mary’s garden.
“Nice tan.” As I reach into the cupboard for spices and curry paste, I catch his slow blush; Ed used to be easily embarrassed like this. I should know better. “How’s the deciding going?”
He carves carefully, the meat falling in curls on the board. “I’m thinking of going away for a bit.” I glance at him, surprised. “Yeah.” He looks down. “I saved some money. Theo told me about this art course in New York, cheaper than here, even. I’ve applied for the sculpture modules.”
“That’s great, Dan. Where will you stay?”
“Sam said I could stay on a mattress with them.”
“That’s fantastic. Do it.” I fill up his glass again and clink mine against it. “How did you make up your mind in the end?”
The rice bubbles, I tip the turkey he has carved into the simmering sauce. The kitchen feels warm and like home again, as though Theo or Ed was here. Over food he talks about his family, how his mother is fine with his plans, and his father, uncertain at first, has now agreed to help him with the fees. He wants to know what I’m doing. His face lights up when I describe the grid painting.
“Sounds amazing, Jenny. Almost like sculpture.” He hasn’t used my name before; it sounds strange, though I don’t know why. He could hardly call me Mrs. Malcolm. He leans forward. “I’d like to take some photos of your paintings, might give me inspiration.”
I haven’t shown them to anyone. “Maybe,” I murmur noncommittally. His face falls, so I add quickly, “No one’s seen them, some of them aren’t even very good.”
I’m tired suddenly. It’s late. I let Bertie out into the garden and Dan stands up and stretches widely.
“I’ll do the cleaning up.”
“Thanks, but I always do it in the morning.” I fetch his coat, relenting as I hand it to him: “Come back before you go away, Dan. I’ll find something for you to photograph.”
He turns at the door, looks down at me, says, “I want to take some pictures of you too. Your face.”
My face? I feel confused with surprise. Then I laugh. “Not me, Dan. Mary’s got a wonderful face. Take some of the young pretty girls in the village.”
“I’ve taken loads of Mary already and I don’t want girls’ faces.” He looks at me almost angrily. “You’re pretty anyway. Beautiful, actually.”
“Rubbish, Dan.” I try to laugh again.
Stretching behind him to open the door, I jolt when he reaches out and touches my face with his fingers; then he turns and is gone.
I shut the door and lean against it. I hadn’t seen that coming, or had I? I start to clear supper, tipping away the leftover food, rinsing plates, scrubbing saucepans, annoyed with myself. How did I let that happen? Dan is even younger than my boys, yet tonight I had let myself be warmed by his attention—no, I enjoyed it. I’ve been careless; I won’t see him for a while. I’ve traveled further than I had thought from my old life, the person that I had been, the good, happy, busy woman. I climb upstairs slowly. Michael’s text comes through to say good night. I usually text back, but tonight I sit on the edge of my bed, my cell loosely in my fingers, while I stare into the darkness outside. If I go right back, to where Ted and I started, I’ve traveled much, much further.
Remembering back is like watching a film with actors playing our parts; I can see myself in the hot library. I remember the flowery minidress I was wearing and that my hair was piled anyhow out of the way; I was oblivious and absorbed in a dermatology book in the library. I’d come to the university from high school after a gap year in between, and took medicine very seriously, convinced that becoming a doctor was all I wanted. Edward Malcolm was in my year but moved in a different group. He had a car when no one else did; he played cricket for the university. Everything about him irritated me, especially his smooth good looks. I doubt if our paths would have crossed at all if we hadn’t both been so ambitious, and if the library hadn’t been so hot and crowded that afternoon. Summer 1985. I had been sketching out an essay that I planned to enter for a prize worth several thousand pounds. I was glad I had a head start on Ted Malcolm; he was after every prize as well, but he didn’t need the money like I did. The library had been stifling. I scooped up an armful of books to take home, and then bumped into him on the way out. He casually took the top book off the pile I was carrying. I’d fought him for it, laughing but annoyed at the same time. He only gave it back when I promised to go out w
ith him. It began then.
Pulling off my clothes, I get under the duvet. It wasn’t a film, though; romantic films have happy endings. In real life only the beginnings are happy and nothing ends well. But then, nothing really ends.
Chapter 23
DORSET, 2010
THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER
On December 30, tired of missing Michael, I make a plan so as not to leave any gaps into which I might fall: a walk to Golden Cap. From this high point the Jurassic coast spreads wide on either side. In the summer there is the hot coconut smell of gorse, but at this time of year the air will be fresh and salty. I can look for colors, though I expect I will have to wait until the weather is warmer. I could always collect what I need to sketch for the larger work about change that’s in my mind. I need leaves, twigs, tiny buds.
Bertie and I start out at seven. The village is still quiet, with a few lights on here and there, glowing from bedrooms where couples are waking up, curled around each other. Cups of tea are being passed carefully and set down on bedside tables. The scent of night is still thick in the misty shadows between the cottages. I walk quietly so as not to wake people still asleep. In the silence, distantly and then nearer, there are footsteps beyond the corner in the lane. They sound tired and uneven. Perhaps a farm worker coming back to his breakfast after milking, or one of the fishermen returning home to his bed after landing the first catch of the day.
A tall man comes around the corner, a thin, bent shape in the dark. It takes me several moments to recognize Ted. His walk is different, slow and slightly hesitant, not the old purposeful stride. He looks exhausted, as if coming to the end of a long journey.
I’d forgotten his text and feel sick with the unexpectedness of him here, now. If I stand by the side of the road he might walk past me. He would find the cottage dark and locked and perhaps go away again. I lean against a garden wall in the dim morning light; the stone is damp and gritty under my fingers. He won’t see me unless he looks in the shadows, but he might hear my heartbeats, which seem to fill the space between us. He is level with me, he is passing. I hold my breath, but then Bertie runs toward him, tail wagging. Ted bends to him and I know he is thinking how like Bertie this dog is, then, realizing it is Bertie, he looks up quickly and sees me. He says my name and there is gladness in his voice. As he steps toward me, I move back, just slightly. I don’t look fully at him yet; instead I look behind his head, where ivy is prizing apart the stones of an old wall. He tells me he has left his car in the pub parking lot; he didn’t want to wake everyone with the engine rumbling under the windows of the narrow little streets. We walk back to the cottage; Bertie trots between us, looking up at him constantly.