The Sunlight Pilgrims

by Jenni Fagan

  —It sounds like malcontented mermaids are about to sink every whaling ship around, Constance says.

  —That’s a bit poetic for you, he says.

  —I must be trying to impress you!

  The wind calls out, high-pitched as a baby. They stand with feet wide to brace against the elements, and moving crags of ice settle and creak.

  —Mum, why is the ice making those noises?

  —It’s all freezing up, Stella. All those platelets will be frozen into one sheet in a few weeks. I came down a few hours ago and it was just frazil ice, so the temperature is really dropping crazy fast, to get it to solid big bits of ice like this in only a few hours. The Gaelic for it is cuan eighre, she says.

  —Mum is basically becoming Siri, she says.

  —No, I’m not!

  They crunch back over to the ambulance, too cold to stay out any longer.

  —Can we come back and see the iceberg again in a few days?

  —We’ll see what the temperature’s like.

  Dylan pulls on a door handle held on with string. His mind is snow. They are two bridges. Separated by a river. She likes him and she wants him, but she can’t let go. Of what? Alistair or Caleb, or both? They pull out of the beach car park and the ambulance rolls slowly down along the coastline.

  —Why are we going at five miles an hour? Stella asks.

  —Because the ice is packed under the snow. Salt is good for grip but it’s still really dangerous!

  As if to back her up, the ambulance groans and slides a little along the ice and she changes gear and it screeches its way up the hill. It misfires a few times at the top and then they are onto the motorway, where stacks of snow are piled in hillocks and clods of grass jab out at odd angles and a gritter is in front of them, which slows everyone down even more. It’s not that anyone is driving anywhere near the speed limit anyway. Even 20 mph feels like high speed when the roads are like this.

  —It gets dark too early, he says.

  —What’s the temperature now, Mum?

  Constance checks the temperature gauge on the bonnet and flicks it a couple of times with her nail, but the dial still hangs down.

  —Cold as fuck, she declares.

  Stella sighs.

  They drive through the village and the church bell calls out in a heavy gong. Snowy council houses and narrow streets are lit by bright Christmas lights. Ornament snowmen have been attached high up on lampposts and someone has set up a nativity scene in the square. The village shop has a display outside it of real pine Christmas trees. Round bits of cut log sit in a pile to be used as bases for the trees. The chip shop window glows hot and greasy, with a queue of people trailing out the door. It is Friday night and everyone is getting ready to drink and eat and watch telly and not worry about the rising snow as it settles even thicker outside on gates, fences, rooftops.

  —I heard Lewis Brown’s mum found their dog frozen by their bin yesterday, Constance says.

  —That’s horrible!

  —I know.

  Stella taps her fingers against the dashboard. She saw Lewis on the way home from the doctor’s and he waved hello. It is the first time he has acknowledged her since they kissed this summer, the two of them lying on a hay bale holding hands and watching clouds, and then him not answering her texts and her getting battered at Ellie’s Hole and Lewis pretending they never even knew each other at all, then just like that—a wave, a hello. She didn’t wave back. Not at all.

  There is a deadening of volume as the ambulance rolls over slush and everything goes dark, just like that.

  —It’s like someone switches the lights off, Dylan says.

  He peers out at the streets, lamp posts lighting up the snowy pavements.

  —That’s winter arrived properly. I reckon we are now officially getting completely dark at two-thirty p.m., Constance says.

  —I thought we were already in winter, he says.

  —Not quite before, but that’s it now.

  —It’ll be like a three-month night, Stella says.

  —I think maybe we should leave the country after all. Vietnam is nice, he says.

  —Some of these winter days you still get really amazing blue skies, but it is going to be bloody dark this year!

  Constance switches on the windscreen wipers as snow begins to fall.

  Perhaps tonight is the right time to ask her on a date.

  It’s not like either of them is going anywhere.

  —I found the canister to make a stove, Dylan. It’s basic, but if we make sure the flue is right, then it’ll keep the place warm and you won’t get any risk of carbon monoxide. We could fit it tomorrow?

  —Sounds good.

  They drive along in silence for a good three or four minutes.

  —I’m going to string the Christmas lights around the caravan tonight. It’s too dark outside already. Stella, can you stop picking at your face in the mirror, Constance says.

  Stella sits a fraction closer to Dylan.

  —Beatniks and star children don’t do well with scientists, she says.

  They pull into the caravan park behind the car of a young woman with a red woolen hat pulled down over her ears and she stops at Ash Lane and gets out with a bag, and she has her nose pierced and she gives Stella a wee wave as she goes up to Barnacle’s door. The girl has a mongrel sheepdog with her and it wags its tail, waiting for her to come back.

  —Chip-shop delivery girl, Stella says.

  Stella unclips her seat belt and waits for Dylan to get out, then she ricochets along the path and straight in the door and into the bedroom and kicks off her boots and climbs up onto her bunk. He steps in behind Constance and she puts a log on the fire as he pulls out a bottle of wine she stashed in the cupboard below the sink. She kicks her boots off and puts her bare feet underneath her on the sofa and tucks her short hair behind her ear and flicks the television on. He pours the wine.

  —I like you, but it won’t change anything else, she says.

  —What, like if Caleb comes back, or if you want to see Alistair? he asks.

  —It is how it is. I’m not looking to settle down.

  —I know, he says.

  They walk down the path together in silence. Stella can smell chips and pie from Barnacle’s caravan and hear the sound of televisions playing different channels in caravans right next to each other and someone having an argument, and right on the other side of the park someone fires up a power tool. They walk down his path easily, now all the thistles are cut back and it is just snow and ice on his path, with grit lying on top of it that Constance threw down earlier. The doorway to Dylan’s caravan looks even shabbier now it is not hidden by lots of thistles. Dylan opens the door and holds it to let them both walk through.

  —What’s in the parcel? Stella asks.

  —The missing part for my gin still.

  —Excellent! Stella says.

  —I’m thinking about setting up the projector next year.

  —Where? Constance asks.

  —I might ask the site manager if she wants to do a screening at the back of the store. Could do it outside when the weather gets better. It’s a big old wall—it would work.

  —I cannot imagine a cinema in Clachan Fells! Stella says.

  —There didn’t even used to be a coffee shop here, Constance says.

  —Mum, you’re such a dinosaur.

  —That’s nothing; if you’d told me about the industrial units, car showrooms, giant warehouses selling stuff in bulk—when I was a kid—we would have thought you were talking about some kind of voodoo! When I was a kid in Clachan Fells it was exotic to eat French bread; seriously, we thought it was from France. I remember when people started eating pasta! They’d say, Have you tried this pasta? It’s from Italy! Or tortillas: we thought that was eating Mexican just a few decades ago, Stella. Things change fast.

  —Your caravan is freezing. Stella shivers.

  —That’s why we’re here, Constance says.

  —It’s an em
pty Calor gas canister, Mum, what exactly is it going to do?

  —Give me that marker: okay, this is where I am going to weld out a door. It will need to be fixed back on and the flue will fit here.

  Constance sketches onto the red canister with a black marker pen.

  —I’ll need to paint it black and put in tensioning latches. You need a viewing window here at the bottom and insulating firebrick to line the inside. Then we need some vermiculite insulation, and luckily for you I have some left over from doing Ida’s last winter. And you’ll need a decent heat exchanger, then you can fix it up to provide hot water, if you get a back boiler and a thermal store. I couldn’t find enough pieces for that yet, but we can add them on—at least this is free and it will work for now, though. We can fix your water heating up next year and put in a more detailed system.

  —I love that you’re the kind of woman who keeps spare vermiculite insulation, he drolls.

  —That turns you on, does it?

  —A little.

  —I have a grinder disk and welding electrodes as well, Constance mocks.

  —Remind me again why nobody married you?

  —Remind me again why I would want to marry anybody?

  —Will fitting this stove mean that Dylan won’t freeze to death in his bed?

  —Stella, don’t say things like that.

  —How many layers are you wearing to sleep? she asks him.

  —About four, plus your hot-water bottles and all the extra blankets and two duvets, he says.

  —I’m not sure that’s enough, she says.

  —What would you add?

  —A hat.

  Stella goes into the kitchenette. Dylan is watching Constance mark where the hole will go for his stove flue. He looks happy when he is near her mother. He has learned how to walk around the caravan so he is not stooping totally. He sits down a lot. This place is too small for him really. He needs to get an old barn up on the mountain and convert it, and maybe they’ll all move in together and she’ll take the blockers that she bought online and everything will work out okay. How does her mother do all of this stuff? She watches as Constance measures the distance to the wall for the flue and up to the roof. Dylan and her mother place pieces of pipe out and get together a saw and a mask for the welding gun, and this will probably take the rest of the day, but her mum will have the whole thing fitted out for him by tonight. Stella looks in Dylan’s cupboards for biscuits.

  —What’s this?

  Stella picks up a sketchbook.

  —No!

  Dylan lunges over and grabs it, puts it in the cupboard.

  —It belonged to my mum—I’m still working through it, he says.

  —What’s there to work through?

  —Nothing! Just leave it alone, all right?

  —Okay, then!

  Adults are weird. They can’t help it. They’re defective. Outside it has fallen dark again and it is only three p.m. but it is like this every day now from two-thirty p.m. They are living in a world of night. There’s something heavy and easy about the darkness, like a weighted blanket. There are some tins of food and beer and a loaf of bread in his cupboard above the sink, but not much else. She opens the cupboard to the left and finds an old-looking ice cream tub and a Tupperware box; there’s no biscuits inside either, just a load of old ash. She goes to the front door to see if the stars are out yet and peels off the Tupperware lid and launches the entire contents of ash right across his garden because at least she can help by tidying while they do all of that.

  —I don’t know why you’re keeping ash from some old fire, Dylan. You need to throw it out—it feeds the soil—or get an ash bin!

  —What?

  —Ash: why are you keeping it in the cupboard? It’s okay, I just threw it over your lawn. God knows, your ratty grass will need it when the snow melts.

  Dylan straightens all the way to his full height.

  His face is wrong.

  —What?

  When he stands up like that everything seems to shrink around him and she has a bad, bad feeling; even her mum is reaching up with her hand over her mouth, a mixture of shock on her face and trying not to laugh.

  —I’m only helping to tidy. What is your major malfunction? Stella asks.

  Stella goes to get the second tub of ashes and he strides over with one step, looks out of the door to where ash is scattered across the snow.

  —You could say Thank you for being helpful, Stella. You’re welcome!

  —Stella!

  —What?

  She peers in between the two of them at the front door and there are smudges of gray all across the snow on his lawn. It dusts the outline of a few remaining thistle stumps and the wind has carried it across the path. Ida walks through it with her two children and gives them a wave, and Stella is the only one who waves back because the adults are acting strange, again.

  —Which one was it? Constance asks.

  —It’s Vivienne, he says.

  —What’s Vivienne?

  —You just scattered my mother across the garden, he says.

  They stand quietly for a full minute.

  —What a way to go, she says.

  —It’s not funny, Stella!

  —I’m sorry—I’m nervous. I didn’t know! I get funny when I’m nervous, and what was she doing in a Tupperware tub? I guess if that’s your mum, then I take it this Carte D’Or tub is your gran?

  He takes the tub out of her hands.

  —Aye.

  —Why didn’t you keep them in an urn?

  —The urns wouldn’t fit in my suitcase, he snaps.

  —One down, one to go? she tries.

  —Get back home right now, Stella, I will deal with you when I get there. It’s not funny!

  —You just scattered Vivienne across the lawn, he says again.

  Stella is scared now.

  Dylan doesn’t look right.

  He looks limp.

  There are tears in his eyes and this isn’t how he wanted to let his mum go, and she is crying now too and she didn’t mean it, and her mother is resealing the ice cream tub and placing it carefully on a high shelf.

  —I was wondering why you had taken ashes from the bonfire? I thought you must have taken them from the bonfire. I don’t know what I was thinking. Why did you put your mum in a Tupperware box?

  —It’s not her—it’s the fucking ashes! he shouts.

  —Don’t shout at her! Constance snaps.

  —I didn’t mean it, Dylan says.

  —I was trying to help! Fuck both of you! Stella hollers and runs out, slamming the door behind her.

  Dylan sits on his flowery armchair with a nip glass and a bottle of whiskey. It is not good whiskey. It isn’t smoky or peaty, but it is very, very strong. It is strong enough to burn his throat all the way down, so he doesn’t care that the wood stove is just bits of metal laid out on his living room floor and in front of him on the table there is one empty Tupperware box and right now, while nobody can see him, he is hugging an ice cream tub.

  Dylan rolls a cigarette very, very carefully because he is quite drunk and feeling more okay, the drunker he gets. He raises another glass to Vivienne, downs a neat whiskey and stoats out onto his back porch to have a smoke. They are up there or they’re nowhere, or all the way up there! He sways. Look at those stars! No answers. Just silence. Vivienne saying nothing even now, just a completely unconcerned canopy of stars above him and all those moon craters stand out starkly silver, like moon mountains or white seas, but they are actually seas of lava. He raises his hand and sways. He KNOWS this! They had a moon season at Babylon a few years ago. He watched every film made about the moon and he only picked the best ones, no matter what their customer-satisfaction feedback forms said, and what’s more he watched them all over the space of one week. ONE WEEK! From here only three of those seas are clear—Mare Humorum, Nubium and Imbrium, where Apollo landed.

  His garden is only lit from the moon and the synthetic yellow spilling out of h
is windows. Most of the caravans are dark or dimly lit windows behind curtains, and Constance has not come back. He scoops up some snow. Don’t eat yellow snow, but even more so—don’t eat GRAY snow! There is no point in trying to save those ashes. They are scattered too far and at some point winter will pass and Vivienne will be slush. Dirty snow is the most depressing thing in the world as well, especially when it has stones in it, gravel and maybe a wee stain from a dog. Dylan takes another drink of whiskey.

  —Well, Mum, I can’t say I did you proud on the send-off!

  He slurs.

  The stars are totally uninterested.

  For the rest of his life dirty slush will make him feel guilty.

  He could go back inside or he can just stand here and sway instead. Swaaaayyy. It is such a great word. It seems important to go through all the things he knows about the moon. 1. It is white except for when it’s yellow. 2. It is far away. He snorts at this concise inventory and imagines putting it on a survey for dimlos and desperadoes, but that is not all he knows at all—oh no—he knows loads of moon shit. He is the moon man, but he’s never going to get to marry a woman who polished the moon because his cousin has some toxic hold on her. He reels. The sketchbook is flat out on the deck and that horrible family tree. What it means. What Gunn had to go through. His grandmother! He feels himself crushing the glass in his hand. If he were in a pub quiz on the moon he would fucking nail it, even if he was the only one on his team. Team Moonshine. Constance should be sitting in on it with him. Mr. and Mrs. Moonshine. If they ever get together and rent a hotel, that’s what he’ll sign them in with. His knowledge of the moon is going to impress her—he can’t believe he’s not shared it before now; so her older guy stuffed some rabbits and put some costume jewelry on them—whoopdee-doo! Her younger guy travels all round the world. So fucking what! Dylan MacRae, the greatest projectionist that ever lived, is right here all the way from Babylon. A boy who was made to butcher a calf in a cellar at the age of twelve (and spent three hours puking afterward and who has never been able to eat a burger since then). Yup—he is the man! Dylan staggers forward and glares up at the stars. Constance Fairbairn is the most infuriating woman he has met and what she doesn’t know yet is that he can tell her anything she wants to know about old moon-face up there.