Offcomer

by Jo Baker

  Claire remembered blue-green iridescent eyes blinking at her, the tickle of tiny feet printed on her nose. She saw the untaken picture. A leafy archway above, the glass dome of the Butterfly House. Shiny ferns brushing against bare arms. A round nub of a chin, forehead creased, frowning with concentration. The rest of her face unseen, covered with the dark, papery, unfolded butterfly mask.

  And when the butterfly blinked and was gone, Dad had scooped her up, his big hands meeting round her ribcage, holding her up towards the misty glass dome. And, exhilarated, laughing, her red shoes dangling in the air, she had stretched out her arms towards the butterfly. It flew stiffly away, bobbing along as if powered by a wound-up rubber band.

  Alan had been good with Dad, and it seemed as if he had liked Alan. Did he realise Alan wasn’t coming back? She wondered whether it bothered him, whether she could ever know. When he spoke, his intonation was perfect. He mumbled familiar skeins of sound, in phrases, statements, questions. The rhythms told you what kind of thing he was trying to say: there were no longer any words. Bubbles formed at the slack corner of his mouth, spittle gathered behind his lips. He held tissues to his face with thick, shaky fingers. Claire had, for years now, kept a clean tissue folded in her pocket.

  When Alan had come to stay that one time, the rowan berries had been bright red, peppering the hillsides. The first sign of the end of summer, they always made Claire feel sad. She’d picked Alan up from the station in her mother’s buoyant battered Fiat 128, and she tried not to be irritated when she saw him flinch at the sight of it.

  “Don’t worry. No one round here to see you.”

  While Claire peeled carrots, she kept half an eye on Alan through the open kitchen door. He lowered himself into the chair beside her father. He made some low, meticulous observation. She could not see her father, but heard his reply, a fluttering, wordless, quiet phrase, and Alan nodded, his uneasy grin flickering across his face. She felt warm with guilt and forgiveness. Her mother, hearing, glanced round from the sink at Claire, lips puckering. They smiled at each other.

  In the waiting room, her nose prickled.

  Her mother turned the page, closing the album. She placed her hands down flat on top of it.

  “Let’s look at the special one.” Her voice was low, conspiratorial. The special one held the old family. Mum’s family. The ones who were gone long before Claire was born, when her mother was herself a child. The ones who had come before the adoption, before Ray and Fran, themselves now yellowing in a different album. Claire knew her father mustn’t find out what they were doing. She never quite knew why.

  Her mother leant down, dragged out the old familiar photograph album from the bottom of the pile. It trailed cotton-silky threads. She lifted the scuffed fake-snakeskin cover and the pages inside lurched, tugged up by the tight binding. The paper was brown, powdery as mothwings. Tiny white triangles cupped the photographs’ corners, held them in place. Some pictures had slipped their moorings. They left blank black rectangles where the paper had not faded. The strays slid and shifted, loose between the leaves. Familiar images. Claire’s mother began again to name them, repeating things Claire knew so well that they no longer needed to be said.

  A bushy-white-bearded man, watch-chain across his waistcoated middle. A grave, grey-suited little boy at his side. Their collars soft, shapeless. Behind them, a stack of splintering wood, a high fence. The old man was her great-grandfather, her mum’s dad’s dad. Over from Poland at the century’s turn, leaving his name behind him. In England, he had taken his name from his trade, and called himself and his family Taylor. The boy, eyes shadowed, was her mother’s father. Granddad.

  On the next page, the muddy pair of kids in shorts so big they had to be held up with thick buckled belts, were Granddad and Great Uncle Sid. Great Uncle Sid was the older, bigger boy, who had his arm round Granddad’s shoulder, and who would grow up to drive a Vauxhall Velox and work for the Electricity Board, and die, quite suddenly, aged forty-two, of a heart attack, whilst hanging up new net curtains in the parlour.

  The young woman in a pale patterned dress, her lips folded in against her teeth, her arms folded behind her, looking cut off at the elbow, was her mother’s Aunty May, and Clare took after her. Her two sons, Ben and Sam, were older than Claire’s mother, and brought up Jewish, not like her, and were only little when the Fascists marched through their part of town. Aunty May locked the front door, pulled down the blinds and hid her boys in the kitchen dresser, and Mosley’s mob passed them by unharmed.

  And that was all there was. Loose, slithering photographs; her mother’s stories. These pale imagined people, who were hers, and to whom she almost belonged. Offcomers, all of them, she thought. Never a generation born in the same place as the last.

  A queue had formed. Its tail was just slipping through the doorway. Claire grabbed her bag, leapt to her feet. Her footsteps were unexpectedly loud; the floor sounded hollow as she walked across the empty waiting room. Up two flights of stairs, then across a gangway. She handed over her boarding card, stepped onto the blue metal deck of the Seacat.

  It was a grey morning. The lough was smooth, flat, but for the ship’s wake. The air was wet with drizzle and spray. Claire leant on the railings, breathing in the cool damp air, the smell of oil. It was good to be on board, to be moving.

  She had walked round the interior of the catamaran, past aeroplane-style seating, past the giftshop, the newsagent’s, the video-screens, through the piped music and the smoky, already alcoholic atmosphere of the bar. She couldn’t settle. She had come back out on deck, into the damp grey morning. Passengers pushed in and out of the heavy glass doors, leaning on the railings just long enough for a breath of fresh air or a cigarette. She had stayed.

  From out on the lough, the city, wedged between the flat dark hills and the lip of the sea, seemed to take up very little space. Streets ended abruptly halfway up the hillside, then there was nothing but a steep dirty climb, patched with scrub and bright gorse, right up to the radiomasts and listening stations on the crest. A helicopter hung in the sky, silent, distant. Claire couldn’t guess which part of town it was hovering over, but knew well the soft, insistent, unobtrusive throb of rotorblades. Unnoticed, it would fill heads and homes and streets for miles.

  Alan had known that kind of thing. Looked in the sky and seen a helicopter and told you, confidently, which part of town they were watching. Back in Oxford, his arms around her as they lay in his bed, the rain spangling the window, he’d told her about Belfast, made a map of the crook of her arm and the pillow. That was his street, that was his house, he said, and that was where they left the bomb. The front windows had got blown in and the sofa was stuck all over with broken glass, and when his mum tried to claim compensation, they just told her to go and pick out all the bits of glass, and not to make such a fuss over nothing. Alan, running a finger down her arm, told her how the city had been built on its own refuse; built out onto the lough on mud, on muck. Drowsy, she’d imagined the streets slithery and sticky underfoot, seen the city traced all over with the white outlines of the dead.

  From the first, she had been delighted with the names, fascinated by the destinations on the front of passing buses: Four Winds, Silverstream, Cherry Valley. She would, one day, jump on board and be whisked out to one of these mythic places, just beyond the city limits, where there was cold bright air and clear water and thick clotted blossom. When a taxi ride took her under unexpected bunting, swept her past flags and painted kerbs, half-seen murals and graffiti, she had to fight the urge to duck down, ashamed and anxious, her eyes closed, into the seat well. Seeing that stuff always made her feel like she was eavesdropping.

  “On your holidays?”

  An elderly woman, her wispy hair glistening with spray, was leaning on the rail. She wore a grey dogtooth-checked coat. Her skin was pale, heavily lined. No make-up, except for some strong dark eyeliner and mascara. It made her eyes look oddly young; made her wrinkles look incongruous.

  “I’m
going home,” said Claire, grudgingly.

  “Me too,” the old woman said with warmth. “Be glad to get back.” She leant more of her weight on her arms, stuck out her behind and crossed her feet. She was wearing startlingly white trainers.

  Claire smiled involuntarily.

  “Got a train journey on the far side. Just as far as Oxford. There’s a straight line from Lancaster. Takes me almost to my doorstep.”

  “That’s handy.” Claire turned back, looked out across the water, at the shore of the lough. They passed distant houses, yachts, seafront caravans. And, eyes following the Seacat’s furrowed wake back towards the quays, she saw gantry cranes and harboured ships, and behind, the distant green dome of the City Hall.

  “I was over in Belfast visiting my son. He’s an engineer.”

  “Oh.”

  “He hasn’t half got boring!” The old woman laughed; the sound was sudden, guttural, engaging. “It’s all house prices and school fees and the new car with him nowadays. His wife! I’ve never heard anything like it. She sat one evening and talked, I swear, for an hour about whether she was going to get the front room painted lilac or yellow. Yellow’s so much warmer, but she thinks lilac is more elegant, apparently. Like it matters! Like it’s actually important! But you can’t be too rude, can you?”

  “No, you can’t,” Claire said, a smile twitching at her lips, aware that she was being lured in. “So what did you say?”

  The old woman laughed again, folded her papery hands on the rail. “I told her I always went with white.” She looked round at Claire, narrowed her eyes. “Are you going far?”

  Claire shook her head. “Not far.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “Belfast.”

  The old woman grinned, showing pink plastic gums and neat white false teeth.

  “You’re not a very forthcoming young lady.”

  “Do you think?” Claire asked, unsettled, considering this.

  “I’d’ve said so.”

  “Whereabouts in Oxford do you live?”

  “On Port Meadow, not far from Binsey. Do you know it? I have a narrowboat moored there.”

  “You live on a boat?”

  “Oh yes. Why not? I love it. Compact, bijou,” she grinned again. “I don’t even own a hoover. Don’t need one with wooden floors. It’s ideal, really.”

  “Doesn’t it get cold? Oxford’s freezing in the winter.”

  “No, no, it’s lovely. I’ve got my wee stove and the girls—my dogs—they get onto the bed with me at night. Bit stuffy perhaps, but not cold. I don’t like leaving them, tell you the truth. They’re staying with a friend, but she’s got three of her own and she isn’t as mobile as she was, bless her. But Poppy and Sue would never put up with going in boxes for the crossing. Chris wouldn’t have them in the house anyway.” She pushed herself upright from the railings.

  “I’m going in for a cup of something,” she said. “Will you join me?”

  Claire hesitated.

  “You look like you could do with it.”

  Which was, Claire realised, true. She bent to pick up her backpack, straightened. The old woman jerked her head towards the door.

  “C’mon,” she said. Claire followed her inside.

  In the bar a handful of men were drinking their early-morning pints. Claire sat, enjoying the buttery flakiness of a croissant, the hot black coffee. At the counter, the old woman had ordered for Claire, and then asked for half a cup of tea “… and top it up with coffee would you?” and the steward, wide-eyed, had complied. She now sat facing Claire, sipping her drink with apparent enjoyment, her lips pursed and creased. Claire rested her head back against the soft upholstery, listened.

  The old woman’s name was Margaret.

  She had been born in Kerry, at some unspecified point in what sounded like the remote past. There had been a big house, which she could only just remember: “Cold, high rooms, not enough furniture, no bathroom.” It had been sold while she was still young. She’d gone to boarding school and then college in England, qualified as a teacher. Frank was the Latin master at her first placement. He’d had polio as a boy; it had left him with a limp and a weak chest. He couldn’t serve in the war. He’d had such a sense of fun, could always make her laugh. The year they were courting, he had her constantly in stitches. They had married, he got a job in a school in Kashmir, and they moved over. Their daughters were born there. That was before Independence. Then it had all got complicated and messy, and they had to leave. They moved to Kenya. He taught in a school there. They had a late, unexpected son, Chris. Then it all got complicated and messy in Kenya too. It wasn’t just the trouble. It was the way the trouble was dealt with. Terrible. So they came back to England and finally settled in Kent. Their children were growing up, so Margaret returned to work, both she and Frank teaching in a small, girls’ grammar school. The children left home. Then, slowly, Frank died.

  “It was terrible. He was ill for so long, and in such pain. Watching him suffer like that was awful. He just wasted away. He was never a big man, you know, but when we came to bury him, I could have almost carried the coffin by myself.” She paused, lifted her cup to her puckered mouth, drank. “I stayed on at the school for a few years, but it wasn’t that much fun anymore. I missed him. I missed him at work, and I missed him when I went home. So I thought, time for a change. Not to get away from Frank, now, you understand. Not a bit of it. But me hanging round unhappy, just pining away, it would have really upset him. It would have made him angry, you know. So I sold the house, and bought the narrowboat.” She snorted. “Went off to have adventures. Chris went mad. Thought I was going to blow his inheritance, I suppose. Well, I didn’t. Not all of it anyway.” She lifted a paper napkin to her lips. “I used to get all over the place in the boat, but the locks are too much for me on my own, these days. Permanent mooring for me, now. But still, sometimes I think I might up sticks and move on. I’d buy a caravan, if the traffic wasn’t so bad nowadays.” She turned the cup round on the table, setting it straight. “I still miss him, of course. I soon realised that I didn’t want to stop missing him.”

  Claire, warmed by the coffee, by the buttery pastry in her stomach, blinked once, twice, smiled gratefully. She wanted to ask something, but wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  “It’s lovely and warm,” she said.

  “It is, it is,” Margaret said. Then, after a moment, added quietly, “Yes.”

  Under her cheek, the rough canvas of her backpack. Her shoulder crumpled up towards her ear, her arm squeezed flat underneath her. In front, the scuffed aluminium edge of the bar-room table. She had been dreaming. Darkness and warmth and someone close, someone holding her close.

  She heaved herself upright, slid her legs off the bench, pushed the hair back from her face. The old woman had gone, their cups and plates had been cleared. She glanced round the bar. No sign of her.

  Claire grabbed her bag, stood up. She staggered, steadied herself against the table. The floor was rolling; the walls lurched and shifted. They must be out of the lough, out onto the open sea; choppy slate-blue waves hammering at the twin hulls, making the Seacat lunge and pitch. Spray rattled against the windows.

  Singing. Chanting. It must have woken her. A crowd of kids in shiny brand-label tracksuits gaping open-mouthed and thumping the table with the flats of their hands. Plastic beerglasses dancing and slopping on the tabletop. Claire stood, unsteady, swallowing saliva, conscious of her sleep-messed face, her crumpled slept-in clothes. She stepped forward a few paces, stopped, swaying. A warm soupy mix of coffee and pastry heaved up her throat. She swallowed it down, shivered. She wanted to find Margaret, to keep her talking, to listen to her talk, until she could find her way back to whatever it was that she wanted to ask. She staggered out of the bar, down into the seated area.

  The floor pitched and heaved beneath her. She gripped hold of the chairbacks, glancing left and right down each row of seats as she passed. Mostly couples curled against each other, chi
ldren asleep in parents’ laps. She came to the last row, glanced down. A young woman with a small child leaning against her. The woman’s face was pale, she looked up desperately.

  “Will you go and get help?” she said quickly. “My baby’s been very sick.”

  Then Claire saw the woman’s cupped hands were full of pale milky vomit. It slopped and swelled with the motion of the craft. The child was draped over her. There were no sick bags, newspaper, nothing to hand. Then Claire caught the sweet bitter smell of the child’s sick and felt the oily acid rise in her own throat again. Pale and sweaty, she nodded and turned back the way she had come. There was a stewardess standing near the stairs. Perfectly balanced, one hand resting lightly on a handrail as the Seacat pitched and rocked. Bright hazel eyes, kohl-lined.

  “There’s a woman down there at the front. Her baby’s been sick. Can you give her a hand?”

  Then Claire ran, reeling, to the ladies’ toilet. She shoved urgently against the closed cubicle doors, retching. Her mouth filled with bitter, bitty liquid. From behind the doors she could hear the coughing, spluttering, spitting, as other women vomited. Her stomach heaved. She shoved the final cubicle door. It opened. She fell in, rattled the bolt into place behind her. She flung the toilet lid back, opened her mouth. Brown foamy liquid fell out of her, slopped around in the toilet bowl. She saw flakes of pastry, strings of mucus. Her stomach spasmed. She heaved again and again, muscles aching, bringing up greasy yellow bile. The spasms subsided. She spat hard, dislodging wet particles of food from the back of her throat. The taste of bile, stomach acid, bitter coffee and sweet pastry in her mouth. Exhausted, she slumped against the partition wall, blew her nose, wiped her eyes, waited. Her stomach, emptied, began to settle.