by Bella Pollen
When Jamie didn’t answer, a teacher took Felix to one side.
‘Jamie’s father has gone to heaven,’ he heard her whisper.
Jamie had long accepted that certain aspects of life were kept from him. He had learnt to recognize the signs. Adults who stopped talking when he came into the room. Family dinners during which looks were exchanged instead of words. His mother waving him away when she was on the phone. But quite why important information should be kept from him when it was made readily available to another boy at school – a boy he scarcely even knew – was beyond his comprehension and, most unusually, Jamie was overcome by a surge of anger so ferocious it propelled him after the teacher as she walked away. He yanked her sleeve. Miss Stevenson spun round.
‘Did my mother tell you that?’ Jamie demanded.
‘Tell me what?’ Her eyes softened as she recognized who it was.
‘That my father was in heaven?’
‘No, Jamie,’ Miss Stevenson said gently, ‘I haven’t spoken to your mother.’
‘Then why did you say that? Who told you?’
The teacher looked down at the trembling boy in front of her. Tears of anger glistened in his slanted, strangely avian eyes.
‘Don’t you know that heaven is for dead people?’ he demanded.
‘I’m sorry, Jamie,’ she said. ‘I just thought . . . well, I know you’ve lost your father and I . . .’
‘I am not supposed to talk about my father and I don’t like other people talking about him either.’
‘Of course not,’ Miss Stevenson said. ‘That’s quite understandable.’ In the teachers’ common room, earlier in the term, she remembered Jamie Fleming being flagged as an odd child. ‘We won’t talk about him again,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
Nevertheless, once the idea of heaven had been mooted, Jamie’s analytical mind was forced to examine the implications. He started where he always started. At the beginning.
The day of his father’s accident.
The day of the circus.
When his father had been hurt.
Before he had gone away for a long time.
On a mission.
And then got lost.
But now his father was in heaven?
The jump between these last two statements made no sense because heaven was where you went when you were dead. Jamie understood about being dead. His grandfather had died the year before. There had been a service for him and after that he had been burnt.
Jamie had sat in the church between his mother and father and stared at the balls of dust trapped between the cassocks. In spite of a warm spring wind outside, the church had felt oppressively cold, but then churches were already oppressive and perhaps death made them colder still. His mother had cried throughout the service. He watched, concerned, as the tears washed through the tributary of grooves around her eyes. Once upon a time he had himself been an Olympian wailer, but this habit had brought the wrath of Alba down on him. Jamie had loved his grandfather but he found it difficult to associate the idea of sadness with the man who had held him upside down and tickled him, the man who had tried, with more patience than most, to teach him how to catch and throw a ball with his five-thumbed hands. Also, and rather shamefully, Jamie found himself preoccupied by hunger the entire service. At breakfast that morning there had been the usual cereals, toast and jams on the table but he had been unsure whether or not to eat them. It hadn’t been as if anybody had said he wasn’t allowed. It was just that his mother’s sadness was so immense and communicable that when she pushed away her plate, Jamie felt he ought to do the same.
So, in as far as his grandfather was gone, Jamie understood that death was final.
But there had been no church service for his father. There had been no purple curtains or ashes to scatter over the island. More significantly there had been no talk of dying. Beyond his mother explaining to him about the accident, there had been no talk at all. Then, surely, he reasoned, if there had been a river of tears for his grandfather, his mother would have cried two oceans for his father. So no, what had happened to his Dada did not in any way resemble death. It was something more mysterious and complicated and pupils and teachers alike should jolly well mind their own business.
Still, he was the first to admit that he misunderstood things. Perhaps he had misunderstood the concept of heaven. Maybe you didn’t have to be dead to go there.
So he asked around.
Heaven was floaty and dreamy.
Heaven was paradise.
Heaven was full of puppies and things to cuddle.
‘There is no heaven,’ Alba said.
‘Yes, there is,’ Jamie said. ‘It’s God’s kingdom.’
‘I don’t believe in God.’
‘I know there’s a heaven, because everybody says there is.’
‘If you know, then why are you asking me?’
‘Because I don’t understand where it is exactly.’
‘Look it up in the phone book then,’ she said flippantly.
His eyes widened. ‘Do you really think it will be in there?’
‘Why not?’ She turned her back on him. ‘It’s probably just down the road and you can go and ring on the doorbell.’
‘Thank you, Alba.’ Jamie was struck by the brilliance of this idea. ‘I love you, Alba,’ he called over his shoulder as he ran from the room.
After he’d gone, Alba pulled at her hair so viciously that a small clump came away in her hand. Occasionally, she glimpsed in herself the possibility of protector as opposed to tormentor of her brother – someone able to absorb his love and adoration and release it back to him, if not in a touchy-feely way, then from a safe distance, and only when strictly necessary – but unconditional irritation with Jamie had been hard-wired into her personality and she had never understood how to defuse it. Besides, why should she? The world was not as he believed. If she didn’t get let off the butcher’s hook of life’s misery, why should he?
Jamie got his neighbour, Saul, to look Heaven up in the Yellow Pages.
‘It won’t be there,’ Saul said.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I don’t think it works like that,’ Saul said doubtfully. ‘Anyway, heaven is for dead people.’
‘I don’t think heaven is just for dead people,’ Jamie said. ‘I think you’re allowed to visit on special occasions. A boy at school told me that when his grandmother had a stroke last summer she got all the way to the door of heaven. He said she saw bright lights and singing angels and then she woke up and found herself back in the hospital.’
‘Okay, but I still don’t think you can just go to heaven whenever you want.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I think you need a plane or a spaceship to get there.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jamie said doubtfully. ‘Alba would have said so.’
‘I promise you do. My sister saw a movie about it. She said that heaven was on the other side of the Black Hole but you had to be an astronaut to get there . . . or a robot,’ he amended.
‘How old is your sister?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Well,’ Jamie said, ‘Alba is fourteen so she probably knows a bit more what she’s talking about.’
Saul, youngest of four, rigorously and occasionally painfully versed in the hierarchy of age, backed down. Dutifully he grappled with the copy of the Yellow Pages until he reached H, then, squinting through his glasses, he traced his finger up and down the lines, until suddenly, there it was! Artfully placed between Heating Engineers and Hebrew Translation. ‘I don’t believe it!’ Saul was dumbfounded. ‘It is in London.’
‘I told you,’ Jamie said proudly. ‘Alba is very clever, you know.’
Getting to Heaven had required the breaching of several rules. Rebellion was not in Jamie’s nature, but his mission was important enough to justify both truancy and stealing. His mother’s wallet had been an easy target, sitting on the kitchen table and weighty with coins. Jamie felt no guilt. He
knew his mother would pay anything to get his father back.
145 Tithe Street had revealed itself as an unprepossess- ing house in a narrow north London street. The boys waited until the taxi had disappeared around the corner before walking up the steps. A purple bulb in the ground-floor window bathed the lace curtains in a promisingly divine light. Jamie rapped on the lacquered door then pounded resolutely with his fist and in time was rewarded by the creak of a bolt being drawn. The door half opened and a woman peered out, a cigarette smouldering between her fingers.
What had he been expecting? A uniform? A doorman with peaked hat and gold epaulettes? Heaven was special, that much he knew, but there was nothing special about the woman standing in front of them. Her eyes were puffy and a back section of her hair was macramied into a cobweb of knots. A pink blouse hung limply over the waistband of a pair of achingly tight white trousers.
‘What do you want?’
Until this moment Jamie’s excitement had not once been tempered by doubt. He checked the paper in his hand. ‘Is this heaven?’
The woman snickered and glanced down the street. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘I am,’ Jamie said, then, fearful that she was looking for someone more authoritative, drew himself up. ‘After all, I’m the one who’s standing here.’
‘Cheeky,’ the woman commented. She took a meditative suck on her cigarette. ‘Right. What do you want?’
‘So is it?’
‘Is it what?’
‘Heaven?’
‘Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.’ She scratched her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Why?’
‘I’m looking for my father.’
‘Oh, are you now?’ She eyed him with vague interest. ‘And what makes you think he might be here?’
Jamie was about to say Miss Stevenson had said so when it occurred to him that permission might be required from a higher authority than a geography teacher.
‘My mother told me.’
The woman’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh, she did, did she? And what did she have to say about that?’
‘Well, my mother doesn’t like to talk about my father much.’
‘Sensible woman.’ She pursed her lips.
‘So can I see him?’
‘Who?’
‘My Dada.’
‘Listen, sonny.’ She started to close the door. ‘Your dad’s not here.’
‘Wait,’ Jamie stepped quickly forwards. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know.’
‘Come on.’ Saul plucked at his sleeve. ‘Let’s go.’
Jamie brushed him away. ‘How can you be so sure?’
The woman flicked her stub into the street and considered the boys in front of her. The silent one had crooked teeth and jug ears. The other was an underfed-looking thing with string bean arms and huge, rather piercing eyes. Nevertheless there was something endearing about them. Here was a pair of life’s soon-to-be failures. Before her stood her future clientele in all its youthful guise and for a moment, she felt the stirrings of something approximating maternal instinct.
‘What does he look like, this dad of yours?’
‘He’s got a thin face and browny hair. He looks a bit like me, but grown-up.’
‘Well, he’s definitely not here right now.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because no one’s here right now, sonny, except me.’
Jamie’s self-assurance was rocked by a wave of confusion.
‘But I don’t understand. Is this God’s kingdom?’
The woman snorted. ‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Well, is it paradise?’
‘Now that, young man,’ she said with grand coquet-tishness, ‘it certainly is.’
‘Good.’ Jamie felt better. God worked in mysterious ways. Stood to reason heaven did too. ‘So will he be here later?’
‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ the woman asked curiously.
‘If he does come later, will you tell him I’m looking for him?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jamie. Jamie Fleming. And I’ve been trying to find him for ages.’
‘Well, Jamie Fleming, are you sure your father wants to be found?’
‘Of course he wants to be found. Everyone who’s lost wants to be found.’
The woman snorted.
‘So do you think he’ll come later?’
‘I expect so,’ she said, managing to exhale and sigh in the same breath. ‘Believe me, sooner or later they all come.’
After she’d withdrawn, Jamie stood looking at the door for a long time. Finally, he turned to leave. If this was heaven, he was glad his father wasn’t there.
But that had been London and now here he was on the island, months and months later, and his father had still not found his way home. How lost could a person be? His mother had said his father had hurt ‘everything’ in the fall. Could he have hit his head and ‘lost’ his memory? Jamie dared not provoke his mother by asking questions. Besides, his mother was so different these days. Oh, the familiar acts of love were still available to him – her arms still went round him, she still pulled him onto her lap or dropped an absent-minded hand onto his head – but it wasn’t the same. Her love for him used to feel so huge and all-consuming it was as though he lived inside her very heart, but now there was an invisible barrier around her. He was too young to understand that she was not cross with him, but only sunk in her own sadness. All he knew for certain was that his world had changed.
So, first Georgie’s and now Roddy’s re-introduction of heaven came as a relief. It gave him something to think about, a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.
Heaven was where fishermen turned into seagulls.
It was where you went when you were dead, or a place you visited when you were sick. Heaven was an address in Tithe Street, London. Jamie realized he’d been too quick in dismissing the notion his father might be there. Clearly there was more than one kind of heaven.
45
Ballanish
‘How could you, Alba?’ Letty stared down at her daughter. ‘How dare you! Here, on the island. Of all places!’
Alba sat on the sitting-room sofa, every muscle tense with defiance. ‘Alba, look at me!’ Letty ordered.
Alba raised her head. Her mother was white, her cheeks hollow. Alba had never seen her like this. It was as though her anger had sucked all the oxygen out of the room and for a second Alba felt herself sag. Then she looked her mother straight in the eye and very deliberately drew her own eyebrows into a derisive arch.
‘How dare I what?’
Letty kept an unsteady grip on herself. ‘Don’t you understand? Stealing is about the worst crime you could commit here. First, taking things from the mobile van and then, I heard from Peggy this morning that you’ve been in the shop almost every day.’
‘Peggy’s a sneak and a gossip,’ Alba said dismissively.
Letty grabbed at her daughter’s arm. ‘Don’t you dare speak like that about anyone. Peggy is an extremely nice woman. You’re lucky she hasn’t called the police.’
Peggy was an extremely nice woman, but, Letty conceded privately, she was a gossip and had doubtless spread word of Alba’s transgression around the island. Nevertheless, she’d been a great deal more understanding than Alba had any right to expect. ‘Oh aye,’ she’d informed Letty breezily, ‘there’s been the odd thing in her pocket she’s forgotten to pay for, but she’s had a bit on her mind I’m sure, and besides, I put them on the account, so there’s no harm done.’
‘That was very good of you, Peggy.’ Letty had chewed her lip.
‘Ach, it’s no bother, Letitia.’ Peggy laid a hand on her arm. ‘She’s a good girl right enough, still and all, you might want to have a wee word with her.’
‘What’s got into you, Alba?’ Letty could not stop herself saying.
‘Got into me?’ Alba repeated coldly. ‘Got. Into. Me?’ She cocked her head to one side in mock thought. ‘Golly gooseberries. I
wonder? I don’t suppose it might have something to do with having to live in this godforsaken place, or, you know . . .’ her voice rose dangerously, ‘the fact that my father is dea—’
‘Stop it.’ Letty glanced at the door. ‘Keep your voice down.’
‘Why? Why should I keep my voice down?’
‘You know perfectly well why’
‘Oh yes, because we don’t want little Jamie upset now, do we?’ Alba mimicked.
‘No,’ Letty said quietly. ‘That’s right. I don’t.’
‘Why not? Why are you so worried about Jamie being upset? Why does he get to live in a bloody bubble? Can’t you understand that he should be upset. That we should get him in here.’ She glanced at the door. ‘Make him really cry,’ she yelled.
Letty sank into a chair, mute with despair. She had a sudden flash of an eight-year-old Alba. The burning eyes, the passionate avowals of love. Alba, leaping off the bed like a ballet dancer, forcing her father to catch her whether he was ready or not. ‘Ah, Fonteyn in flight,’ he would laugh, and cover her with kisses.
‘I don’t understand you, Alba,’ she said. ‘You have no reason to be this unkind to your brother. Nobody was ever unkind to you in the way you are to him.’ She rubbed at her face tiredly. ‘Where does it come from, this . . . this . . . desire to hurt people?’
Alba worked her finger into the frayed hole of the loose cover.
‘Talk to me, Alba,’ Letty said, ‘please.’
The questions ran through Alba’s head like ticker tape. Tell me why. Tell me how. Tell me what I don’t know. Tell me something, tell me anything, but please, please, tell me what it is you’re keeping from me. She tried to speak but she couldn’t force the words over the block of pride jamming her throat. She closed her eyes and took herself back to her bedroom in Bonn – back to the safety of her bed and under the darkness of its covers. ‘Almost everything that goes wrong in the world is due to people not knowing how to talk to each other,’ she heard father saying. ‘Humans are continually struggling to find ways of expressing themselves and sometimes, with the best will in the world, we forget how to do it, or our problems become so severe that we can’t bear to talk about them any more. This is where diplomacy comes in. In fact, this is the sole reason why I studied so hard to became a diplomat – so that I could negotiate peace between you and your mother.’