Mud Girl (23 page)

“Not what?”

“Not a bad guy, like I said.”

Again, she says nothing.

He looks at her, pleading. “It's not easy being a dad. I'm barely twenty. I gotta work. I gotta take care of my mum. My kid. I gotta cook some food when I get home. Go shoppin'.” He sighs. “I gotta have a
life
. I
deserve
a life.”

Abi's tone is grit. “
This
is your life,” she says, motioning to the house.

He stares at her, and his face clearly says,
You don't understand
. “I need a little freedom. Can't always be tied up like this.”

Abi doesn't want to hear more, and she passes him, goes into the house, finds the phone, dials Horace's cell number. When he answers, she can hear the hum of an engine in the background. “I'm about two kilometres away,” he says. “I'll be there soon.”

She can tell from his tone that he's had no luck with Ernestine, but in spite of that, his voice gathers her in and warms her after Jude's coldness.

She goes outside to wait. “Are you working tomorrow?” she asks Jude.

He leaves his head in his hands as he answers. “No, my weekend starts now. I have a couple of days off.”

“That's good,” she says. “Take care of your mum. Make sure she eats.”

They wait in silence, but when Horace pulls up, Abi hears a sort of snort, an exclamatory sound, coming from Jude. “You didn't tell me Horace was an old guy!”

“He's a friend.” She climbs into the seat after Horace comes round and opens the door for her. He says nothing to Jude, just gives a sharp wave as they drive off.

“She wasn't there, was she?” Abi asks.

“No,” says Horace, checking over his shoulder for traffic. “But thousands of other people were.”

“Maybe we can make a sign – a big one – and post it on the beach. We can go even earlier tomorrow.”

“You want to go tomorrow with me?” Horace perks up.

“Yes. We'll find her.”

“If she's there,” he says.

William Then

B
ut they don't find her on Sunday night, nor on Monday. Tuesday is the Grande Finale, the night when the winning country is announced, and the pyrotechnics are theirs.

“On the final night, every one who has been here on one of the previous nights comes again…and they bring all their friends!”

Abi has to make a grab for Horace's long
T
-shirt so that she doesn't lose him in the crowd, and she can barely hear his words. She hears enough to understand, though. Not that she needs anyone to point out that there are an incredible number of people here. Already it's difficult to move, and it's not even eight o'clock.

Abi pulls the signs that she has made from her bag, and starts to tack them to the sticks she's carrying, but Horace puts a hand on her arm. “Let's not, tonight. We might scare her.”

She packs the signs away again.

Horace goes on. He's stopped moving now, and he's speaking directly into her ear. “I have this feeling…that she's been here every night, and we miss her. She sees our signs and she goes the other way.”

Abi nods. She can imagine Ernestine doing that. What she finds difficult to understand is how Horace can know that, and yet not give up hope.

“How about we separate?” she suggests. “You go that way, and I go this.” She motions to the far end of the beach, away from the tennis courts and the food stand, down where she'd wandered that day with the dictionary.

Horace points to a huge elm tree. “We'll meet there when the fireworks start at ten.”

Abi doesn't tell Horace what her thoughts are, but they're something like this: it's Abi who Ernestine really doesn't want to see. Maybe if she thinks it's just Horace who has come, she'll be all right. Maybe she'll even talk to him. Or she'll think he's on his own, and she'll head in the other direction.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe if Abi goes right to the very end – even beyond the end…

Takes a while to push through. At one point, she sees a woman in a wide-brimmed hat, and she has a certain roundness to her. Is it? Abi moves over, closer, around. No. She stands there, feeling somewhat foolish as the realization of just how much she'd like to find Ernestine strikes her.

At the far end, she sees a few stragglers. Here the beach narrows, is suddenly caught up into a stone wall that grows higher and higher, becomes private property. The beach itself – the shoreline – is narrow. Rocks rise out of the water. The retaining wall is now the height of a house and it curves away. Abi didn't go this far last time. She follows it, enjoying the sudden quiet from the throngs behind her. She'll go back soon, she thinks.

And there she is, right in front her. Ernestine. Sitting on a rock, with a full skirt draped around her in the water, eating a sandwich, her great fabric bag piled on her lap. Cat's-eye sunglasses hide her eyes, but there's no mistaking her.

She's just taken a bite when she catches sight of Abi, and she stops, then chews furiously.

Abi moves toward her, and feels shy suddenly, uncertain. The tide is coming in, and the water swirls around her calves, licks her rolled-up jeans.

Ernestine wraps the rest of her sandwich and puts it back into the big bag. When she looks up and speaks, her voice is shaky. “I'm so sorry, Abi, that I ran out on you.”

“I'm sorry too,” is all Abi can think to say. There is too much she doesn't know. She sits on another rock close by, and they look at each other warily.
Don't run away again.
Ernestine is trying to make a decision. She makes it.

“A long time ago,” she begins, “I knew your father. He was William to me then. Now…I don't know who he is.”

“How well did you know him?” Abi asks.

The pause is long. “I'm not sure I knew him at all, now that I think of it.” Another pause. “We were engaged to be married.”

Abi blinks. “What…happened?”
There was something between them…there was a lot between them.

“On the morning of the wedding, his friend brought me a letter – a note, really. He said he'd…changed his mind. There was someone else. He was already married to her.”

“My mother?”

“Yes. They'd gone away the evening before, and they'd married.” Ernestine's words are soft and smooth as a stone rolled over and over in water and other stones. They are words she's had to think and say again and again. Abi suddenly feels the heat of the setting sun on her shoulders. She needs to be in shade, but there isn't any.

“He didn't tell you to your face?” she says finally. “He wrote you a letter?”

Abi doesn't realize how angry she sounds until Ernestine
says, “Don't be so angry with him.
You
don't need to be angry with him.”

Abi's voice comes out in a screech. “I'll be angry with him if I want to be! He's a big bloody wimp, that's what he is.
Writing a letter! Running away!
Big bloody
wimp!
” Her breathing is heavy, and she pulls her arms across her face, like a child, to dry her nose of tears pouring down it. Where'd they come from? There's more she wants to say; the words want to pour out of her.
Big bloody armchair wimp. You deserve to have someone write
YOU
a letter – a note – and run away!

“Abi!” Ernestine's voice is low amazement, and she's looking strangely at Abi.

Abi realizes she's shaking – an angry, icy tremble, a glacier in spring thaw. She feels as if she's going to pull away with a great roar.

“Abi,” says Ernestine again, and she stands and comes close, through the water, wraps her arms around Abi, and they huddle together. The great roar urge eases through Abi – maybe something to do with the gentle lapping of waves coaxing it away. The water reaches Abi's knees, before one of them speaks.

It's Ernestine who does. “He wasn't always like this, you know,” she says softly.

There's an ache in Abi. Something like how you might feel taking a first bite of food after fasting for several days.

“He used to be full of laughter. He drew people to him. He was a light. I don't know where the light came from. He never did enjoy his work and he had no family to speak of, except that odd old uncle who left you his home. We used to have Sunday lunch with him every week, you know. William never missed. He said he was all his uncle had.”

Abi and Ernestine begin to walk slowly down the beach, and Abi is glad for this. It means that she can hear Ernestine's words without looking directly at her. Now Abi thinks she has some idea why Ernestine's eyes are as they are: she's looking for your word, looking to see if she can hold you to it.

“One time, I said to him, old Uncle…what was his name?”

“Uncle Bernard,” says Abi.

“Yes. I said that old Uncle Bernard was all William had…as far as family, that is. And William said, no, that wasn't true any more – now he had me, and I'd be his family.” Suddenly Ernestine is quiet, thinking she's said too much to the daughter of the man she's speaking of.

Abi speaks up. “My mum has no family, except a couple of cousins far away. And she didn't like Uncle Bernard at all.” Then she wonders if she should have said anything. She steals a covert look at Ernestine. Ernestine has a frown, a thinking frown.

“I've always wondered,” Ernestine begins, “if that was why William married her. She had no one; she needed him – at least, I think that's what he thought. I, on the other hand, came from a family of seven. I have three brothers and one sister.” She laughs a hiccupy laugh. “My brothers wanted to track them down and do something
awful
to William. But I told them no, they couldn't.”

Abi can't resist asking: “Do you sometimes wish you'd just let them?”

Ernestine turns to look at her, thoroughly surprised. Then she sees a shine in Abi's eyes and she does begin to laugh, again no more than that hiccupy chuckle, and she says, “Oh yeah, many a time I thought,
Why
didn't I let them go – they would have been like a pack of dogs!”

An evening gust of wind off the water manages to move a bit of Ernestine's sprayed hair.

Abi points to Ernestine's head. “Your hair moved.”

“Oh my. Did it?”

“It's all right. Really.”

Ernestine stops patting her hair and she looks a bit embarrassed. They wrap their arms around each other and move farther down the beach.

“Of course, my theory is probably all wrong,” says Ernestine. “There are many reasons why people choose people, why people marry. Why people don't marry,” she adds.

“And why people have babies,” says Abi. “And what people do when they discover they can't have babies,” says Ernestine.

Abi would like to read more in her eyes, but Ernestine has dropped her sunglasses down over her nose, and she adds nothing to her statement.

“You know,” says Abi, “I always thought my mother hated dependence.”

“She might have at that,” says Ernestine thoughtfully.

“How do you know what you know about my mother?” Ernestine flushes red. “When someone replaces you with someone else, you want to know about them. And friends would tell me. Sometimes because I asked, and sometimes because they felt they should. The same friends who gave me the note from your dad all those years ago, phoned me when your mother left.”

Abi tries to imagine what that would be like – all those years of tracing another's life. She wonders about Ernestine's mention of people discovering they can't have babies. Was she talking about herself? So how did she feel when she found out that Abi was born? What about Ernestine's own life? What about just getting on with it? The sadness of Abi's thoughts swells, and she's glad when they come to the people waiting for the fireworks.

The sun is setting, and the excitement is thick.

“We should look for Horace,” says Abi. “I think he'll just be glad to see you.”

“Abi, he waited outside my apartment for an entire day. He called me and called me, and I didn't answer. I didn't show up for our tea. How am I going to explain all that?”

“How
would
you explain that?”

“I was scared. I
am
scared. I've never told him about all this.”

“Horace is probably scared too; I don't think he's ever had a girlfriend in his life!”

Ernestine laughs suddenly, a little laugh, but still a laugh with no hint of a hiccup. “Oh, Abi, I'm sure he's had quite a few!”

“No – all he has is that train.” “I love that train!” exclaims Ernestine. “See? He has his train; you have your fireworks. You both have something that makes you shine. You're perfect together!”

“It's never that simple,” says Ernestine, and Abi sees a shadow of that old face in her.

Maybe a couple of weeks ago Abi would have disagreed. Today, she says, “You're right; it's not.” She touches Ernestine's arm, prods her ever so slightly, and they resume walking.