A Small Part of Me

by Noelle Harrison

  He waited.

  And when she came out of Bill’s house, he watched her running onto the beach, with the little boy following. He had stared at her and then down at his lap, at the notebook in front of him and the swirl of black lines on the paper. The child roused him then, and when he heard him call he had run towards him without thought.

  ‘Where will I drop you off?’ he asks.

  ‘Here, just here is fine,’ she says quickly.

  ‘But we’re not in the centre yet.’

  ‘Oh, well, on the main street then, that will do.’

  ‘Aren’t you staying at the Red House Inn? I can leave you there.’

  She stares at him. She looks shocked.

  ‘I was in the bar last night,’ he explains. ‘I saw you.’

  She frowns, and staring out of the window, says, ‘It’s fine, just leave us on the main street.’

  Her skin is so pale he can see blue veins on her neck and dark shadows under her eyes. There’s a small scar by the side of her left eye. He sees every little detail of her face in a second. Her colour is blue. Her jeans and runners reflect the cloudless sky and her plain white T-shirt adds to her delicacy. She could be pregnant, or sick, very sick.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he asks again. ‘Do you want me to take you to a doctor?’

  ‘No!’ she snaps, then gently adds, ‘Thank you, but I’m all right. It happens to me sometimes. I’m always fine afterwards.’

  ‘Okay.’ He pulls into the main street. ‘Well, here we are.’

  He stops the truck. She pulls her bag over her shoulder and reaches over for the case.

  ‘Here, let me get that.’ He climbs out of the truck, walks round and pulls her case out for her. Cian is on the street looking in the window of an ice cream parlour.

  ‘Well, thank you again,’ she says awkwardly.

  ‘No problem. You okay then?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says emphatically.

  ‘See you around.’ He gets back in the truck and drives off. He sees her in his rear view mirror. She stands very still, like a shadow ghost, fading in the bright summer light, almost transparent against the surge of tanned tourists walking up behind her. He turns the corner and parks. He sits thinking for a minute. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. He hadn’t expected this.

  Luke picks up the notebook again and rummages in the glove compartment. He finds what he’s looking for – a set of coloured pencils he got Sam the last time they were out. He licks the end of the pencil and then, trying not to think too much, he begins drawing. He pauses, touches the space between his eyes gently with his middle finger, and then, picking up the blue pencil, he continues. He doesn’t want to say anything.

  GRETA

  Greta unzips the tent. Henry is brewing liquorice tea. When she woke from a dreamless night, she sensed the brightness underneath the canvas pressing in on her eyelids, and now when she pokes her head out, she’s not disappointed. The sky is spotless blue, not a cloud in sight, with the last quarter moon fading away.

  ‘What a beautiful day!’ she breathes, crawling out onto the sand.

  ‘Not bad, not bad,’ Henry says, ‘though I was listening to the forecast. They’re predicting westerlies, building up to fifteen to twenty knots this morning.’

  ‘That should be okay,’ she says, taking the mug he offers her.

  ‘Well, twenty knots can be difficult.’

  ‘But look at the sea,’ she says, adding soy milk and honey to her drink. ‘There’s barely a ripple on it.’

  ‘It’s calm at the moment,’ Henry says with authority. ‘As you know, things can change dramatically within just a few seconds.’

  ‘Oh, Henry,’ Greta sighs, ‘don’t be so gloomy.’

  ‘I’m just being a realist,’ he replies stoically. ‘I’m sure that we can deal with whatever the weather brings. That’s what makes this vacation so great. We just have to surrender to nature.’

  ‘Which I must do now,’ Greta says, giggling, and jogs across the sand towards some trees fringing the beach. Her mood has changed since yesterday. She feels giddy. Being away from her house and routine makes her feel disconnected from her pain. There’s relief.

  ‘I’m not going to run away any more,’ she says out loud to a gangly fir, flicking twigs at its base.

  An hour later they’re on the water.

  ‘Watch out for the boomers!’ Henry says as they set off. Greta scans around her. There are a few rocks, but none too close. The swell has increased slightly since they ate breakfast, but not enough to alarm her. I just have to trust in fate, she thinks. It’s impossible to determine exactly where all the rocks lie; if a wave is going to crash into her there’s really nothing she can do about it. Her heart beats a little faster and she feels flushed and excited.

  Henry is paddling beside her now. Although it’s early still, there are several fishing boats out already. Henry shakes his head. ‘Can’t even see the fish jumping any more,’ he says sadly.

  That’s what Henry had done for a while when they first moved to Tofino. He had bought a small trawler and with a tiny crew had made a fair enough living out of fishing wild salmon. Greta had always thought it a bloody business. She had gone out with Henry once and the experience had put her off eating fish for months.

  ‘Don’t you get sick of the gore and the stench?’ she had asked him.

  ‘I can’t think like that,’ Henry had said. ‘It’s our living. And I think it’s a good clean one.’

  But then things had begun to change. Fish farms sprang up everywhere, causing prices to dwindle, and the wild salmon stock began to decline due to overfishing as well as competition from the American fisheries. Then there were the sport-fishing boats, growing in their numbers, with fat city jackasses, as Henry called them. (Greta had to remind him that he was originally from a city too.) Henry had said that he and the other commercial boats had respected the territorial rights of the Nuu-chah-nulth but the fancy sports guys had just cleaned the place out. Henry got sick of it. Besides, he hardly made any money any more, and he was becoming more and more involved with his environmental work, particularly the anti-logging campaigns. Somehow fishing didn’t seem politically correct any more. Greta was relieved. That smell had got everywhere.

  They paddle through a series of passageways and tidal pools. As Greta looks across Vargas Island, behind it, in the distance, she can see the Catface range, along with Lone Cone and Mt Colnett. She thinks of the wilderness between them and the absence of people, yet she doesn’t feel alone. She feels part of everything. In Ireland the landscape could make you feel so lonely.

  Mud. That’s what she thinks of now. Churned up tracks in fields and sinking pools in bogs and the boreens, all bumpy and overgrown. Even the woods behind The Mill were a quagmire half the year, when the horses would destroy the track so that you were knee deep in it, struggling to go up the hill. And everywhere you went there was debris. Abandoned cars, plastic bags full of glass and cans next to a heap of ashes where some lads had gathered for a few beers the night before. She imagined what all her Canadian friends would think of that. It’s probably different now, she thinks, Ireland’s probably like Canada, all cleaned up. But what she liked about this place was that humans hadn’t messed it up here yet. Not quite, though as far as Henry was concerned it was an ongoing battle.

  Greta looks at green-gold kelp swaying beneath her and the dark red spines of sea urchins glistening against the rocks. An osprey glides above her, looking for fish. Ahead is the Pacific Ocean and an eternity of blue. She feels her body paddling and her soul swimming. It’s safe to feel these things here.

  Spray off the end of her paddle splashes her face. She’s back in her body again. It’s time, she thinks.

  CHRISTINA

  His truck is dirty, which is unusual when all the cars around her are gleaming. She watches him drive off and away.

  ‘Mammy, can I have an ice cream?’

  Before she can say anything he has shot inside the shop.
She follows him. All it serves are ice cream, cakes and fancy sweets tied up in gold ribbons. The room is painted pink and white and the assistant wears a matching hat and apron.

  ‘Well, what can I get you, little man?’

  ‘Mammy, have you ever seen so much ice cream in your life?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  She’s cold in here. Her hands are clammy and she grips them tightly. Cian takes ages to choose, eventually going for double chocolate fudge.

  Outside in the sunshine, she finds a bench. Cian sits down next to her, a chocolate beard dripping onto his T-shirt and bare knees. She glances at her watch. Midday. That means it’s eight o’clock in the evening in Ireland. She’ll have to call Declan. She has under thirty dollars left, not enough for another night in a hotel, barely enough for a meal. She’ll have to call him, beg his forgiveness, get him to send money. He’ll have to come and rescue them.

  She closes her eyes and tries to shut the light out. She hears people chatting as they walk down the street, snatches of conversations, cars rolling by, her son slurping on his ice cream, quiet with concentration. She feels tiny, insignificant. This feeling has always been inside her, since she was Cian’s age.

  An apology.

  It has always been her fault. She remembers now how it used to annoy Declan, the way she was always saying sorry, and sometimes he’d snap and say, ‘What for? For God’s sake, what are you sorry for now?’ He had teased her when they first met and made a bet that she couldn’t stop from saying sorry for a week. He had won. She had been so conscious of it then, how easily it had tripped off the edge of her tongue, so that she had begun apologising for other people when they knocked into her, when they didn’t hear her, when they were unkind to her.

  Of course.

  She sees herself now, running through The Mill in her pyjamas. It’s early still. The curtains are drawn but the light leaks through onto the landing. She can hear the river running, the birds singing, the cattle bellowing. She goes into her parents’ bedroom. The window is open and the curtain blows in gently. She looks at the bed, its faded velvet cover. It’s one empty side.

  ‘Where’s Mammy?’ she asks.

  Her daddy sits up in the bed. His face is creased, his smile wobbly, unsure.

  ‘Remember, Christina?’ he says gently. ‘She’s gone away for a while.’

  ‘But when will she be back?’

  ‘Soon, I’m sure.’

  She went over to the bed, climbed on it and under the covers. She tucked herself in next to her father and, playing with the frayed tassels on the edge of the spread, she said, ‘I’m sorry, Daddy.’

  She remembers quite clearly now – she thought it was all to do with her.

  ‘Mammy, what are we doing now?’

  She opens her eyes. Cian looks at her. His face, hands, legs, everything is covered in sticky dark chocolate.

  ‘Find a bathroom, I think, and get you cleaned up!’

  ‘And then what?’ he says, standing up.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  She has to change his T-shirt and shorts, his last clean pair. She washes her hands three times, inhaling the scent of the soap. It smells of peppermint.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘First things first. We have to get a phone card.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have to ring some people.’

  There are phones in the post office. Cian sits on the floor, whizzing Walter up and down it. It’s good that he’s a little distance from her, she doesn’t want him to hear.

  The phone rings twice.

  ‘Declan?’

  ‘Christina! Where are you? We’ve got the police involved now, so wherever you are they’ll find you. Just come back, for God’s sake. It’s better for everyone.’

  ‘Declan, can you understand why I did this?’

  ‘What do you mean? Of course I don’t. You’ve broken the law, you’ve abducted my son.’

  ‘But Declan, wouldn’t you have done the same thing?’

  ‘I would never be in your position, Christina. For a start, I don’t drink.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with drinking.’ Her voice is low. ‘You know that. Declan, how can you be so harsh? I’m your wife, the mother of your children. Don’t you care?’

  ‘But this isn’t about you, Christina,’ he says emphatically. ‘It’s about the children.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ her voice breaks.

  There’s a pause. She can hear him inhaling on his cigarette, then he says, ‘I don’t know who you are any more.’ His voice shrinks to a whisper. ‘I can’t trust you.’

  His words feel like a punch. She bends over, presses the receiver into her ear, unable to speak.

  How can she ask Declan for his help now? Her husband is the last person in the world who can help her.

  ‘Christina, please tell me where you are. It’s better this way. Imagine if you get picked up by the police – what would Cian think? Come on, where are you? England?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘But surely you’ve no money.’

  ‘I have money. Can you put Johnny on?’ Her voice is firm; it takes him by surprise. There is a pause, she can hear them whispering, and then she hears Johnny’s voice.

  ‘Mam where are you?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, darling. I just—’

  ‘Please, come back. Bring Cian back.’ Her son’s voice is no longer cross; he sounds scared.

  ‘I want to tell you something Johnny, that I love you and that when things settle down we can be together again, okay?’

  ‘But how? You’re gone now.’

  ‘I asked you to come with me, remember? But you didn’t want to.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he wails. ‘Mammy, please come back.’

  ‘Not now. I can’t.’

  He closes up again. She can hear him sniffing. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I have to do this, Johnny. You understand, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  The line goes dead. He’s hung up on her.

  She holds her sides, closes her eyes and tries to push the lump down in her throat. But she is shaking; she can feel the tears gathering. She wipes her eyes and sends out a prayer for her son. She hopes that somehow it can deflect the damage.

  When she comes to, everything is carrying on as normal - people standing in queues, Cian playing with his bear. Instinctively she picks up the phone and dials the operator.

  ‘How can I get a number in Canada?’

  She’s put through to directory enquiries. It’s surprisingly simple. Kittle, Tofino. She has a number now.

  Nervously she picks up the receiver and dials.

  Henry and Greta are unable to take your call right now. We are away until Wednesday, the twenty-fifth of June. If you’d like to leave your name and number after the tone, we’ll get back to you as soon as we’re back.

  It’s a man’s voice, he sounds old. But he said Greta, so she was still there. She’s found her mother…Greta…

  ‘Come on, Cian.’

  He runs over, dirty again from playing on the floor. ‘I’m hungry,’ he says.

  ‘Okay, we’ll go get something to eat.’

  She has two days. Somehow they’ll get there. She doesn’t know how, but they will. I’m not being brave, she thinks, I’m doing the only thing I can do. I’ve no choice.

  LUKE

  He’s eating a large slice of cherry pie with ice cream when they come in the book store cum coffee shop. Cian sees him first. ‘Luke!’ He runs over to him.

  ‘Well, hi there,’ he says, smiling. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘We’re getting something to eat. That looks nice.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Mammy, can I have some of that pie?’

  She follows her son to his table. She stands on one leg, her head cocked. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I hope he’s not bothering you.’

  She looks better. There’s some colour in her cheeks.

  ‘W
ould you like a coffee?’ she asks.

  ‘Sure,’ he says.

  ‘How do you like it?’

  ‘Large regular coffee.’

  ‘How can large be regular?’

  ‘Regular means not decaf, with milk.’

  ‘Oh, okay. I suppose I’m having a large regular one too,’ she smiles, just a little, and goes over to order.

  Cian squeezes in next to him. He still has a babyish face and although there’s only a year between them, Cian seems to be a much younger child than Sam.

  ‘Do you have a dog?’ Cian asks.

  ‘No, but I’d like one.’

  ‘I’d like a coydog,’ Cian says, rubbing his hands together, his eyes flashing with excitement.

  ‘What about a wolf?’

  Cian’s eyes open wide. ‘Do some people have pet wolves?’

  ‘Sure they do.’

  He grips the edge of the table. ‘Aren’t they scared?’

  ‘No, they’re tame wolves.’ Luke can feel himself smiling, opening up to this impish little boy.

  She comes back with the coffees and Cian’s pie. ‘Yummy!’ he says, tucking in.

  ‘So,’ she says, sipping her coffee, raising her eyes yet not quite looking at him, ‘we meet again.’

  ‘Yep,’ he says. ‘And I still don’t know your name.’

  She blushes. A soft rosy glow rises from her chest and spreads up her neck and cheeks.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s Christina.’

  She’s different from this morning, friendly. She didn’t want to talk to him before.

  ‘So how are you feeling?’ he asks.

  She looks down at the table and flicks a corner of her napkin over. ‘I’m grand now. That was embarrassing. Thank you for helping me.’

  ‘What were you doing up there? Do you have friends, family?’ Why was she at Bill’s house?

  ‘I’m trying to find someone,’ she says.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think now, yes, now maybe I might find them.’