Sea Change (30 page)

The journey and the storm have purged him. Quite literally, he feels on the other side, swept clean, a new blank state. And for the first time in years he feels able to view his life with unparalleled clarity. He thinks of the month that followed Freya’s accident. No one called them, because it was unspeakable, consolation was impossible, it was a mortal wound for the parents, and everyone knew it. They had been marked out by this tragedy. People had kept a distance from them, almost superstitiously. He remembered the fear of going into Freya’s room, every object in there a simple and incisive ambush on him, every poster and toy, a clear sign of a life that was led and a life that was lost. A pair of her socks, drying on the radiator, no need to be put away; a tiny woven handbag hanging off the end of the bed; a crudely drawn outline of an animal in her scrapbook, how she’d rubbed the neck out and redrawn it, the tiny bits of the eraser still there on the paper. Each one of these things was now frozen, belonging to a chapter of his life which was past, and each one of these things would have to be dealt with, somehow. It had seemed insurmountable, either by himself, or with Judy. You just don’t have the facility to cope, there just isn’t an answer, there is no right or wrong way, there is just the unassailable truth that life has stopped but time has not.

After a month they had reached the same conclusion. That they would put their own end to it. They hadn’t come to this decision hysterically, or out of a series of discussions - it just seemed to be the inevitable and right thing to do. The only talk he remembered having with Judy was about how to do it and where to do it, guided by the practical issues of having to let someone know, after the event. They had discussed this in a kind of emotional shorthand, as if the decision whether to do it or not no longer needed to be mentioned. It was liberating, in a way, to be thinking of such an escape, that they could after all do something about all this untenable pain, that there was an option of a numbing darkness that they could manufacture. It had almost made them giddy.

Guy had wanted to do it at their house, with a recorded delivery letter sent to their GP, but Judy had felt uneasy about the plan. She hadn’t liked the thought of sending that letter, committing themselves before they absolutely needed to, a decision like this couldn’t be taken in two parts. She didn’t want the immediate transferral to be dealt with by the authorities, either.
How do you mean?
he had asked her;
Our bodies
, she had replied, chillingly.

‘Fergus and Cindy’s,’ Judy had said, with finality.

So their plan had been to invite themselves over for a night with their friends. In the early hours they would take sleeping pills, and leave an apology by means of a letter on the table next to the bed, alongside all their instructions. Fergus and Cindy would take a long time to accept it, but they wouldn’t, ultimately, hold this against them. They’d understand.

On a Saturday evening they had driven to Fergus’s house on the island in the estuary. They had had to wait for the tide to clear from the Hard - the stone and seaweed causeway that connected it to the mainland. They’d sat in the car, waiting for the water to drain off. The seabed emerged across the estuary, and the road began to lift through the water, bordered by blackened seaweed. The sense of finality was immense, that they were leaving the land behind them on the first step of their plan. It was an awful moment, but oddly calming, too, because it was so resolved between them. Judy had been driving, and her hands looked small and pale on the steering wheel.

‘I feel all right about this,’ she had said.

‘Me too,’ Guy had replied. And they hadn’t said much else. Usually they would have talked about their Sunday plans, but Sunday was a nothingness - it was a blank footstep into a void, arriving by the minute.

There had been strange pleasures that night. Fergus had made a bonfire, and after dinner he and Guy had sat by it, watching the logs burn down to a softly crumbling glow of embers. Guy was drinking a vintage wine, which he’d brought for the occasion, and was enjoying the hint of luxury it was giving him. A glow, from the fire, from the wine, a feeling of rightness, and a sense that life in that moment was a very vivid thing. All evening he’d had this feeling. Fergus had cooked tiger prawns in chilli and garlic, and their taste had been exquisite. Guy had savoured every last morsel, knowing they were some of the last things he’d ever eat, save for the bitter-tasting pills which Judy had somewhere in her handbag.

Fergus had unearthed some Smithsonian Folkways recordings, and in particular played an Appalachian vocal piece - a plaintive ballad of three men singing to each other, with the sounds of cicadas in the background and the occasional crack of a fire. They’d all listened to it before dinner, but for Guy and, he supposes, Judy, it must have had the feeling of a lachrymosa. God have sympathy on us.

Guy had brightened after the meal, and he’d entered that exclusively male world that Fergus was so good at creating. They’d sat by the fire, looking at the stars swimming eerily in the rising thermals, and listening to the oystercatchers calling to each other in the creeks, just beyond the garden. It was a magical place. Behind them was the garage where they’d all met, so often, to play their music, Fergus on fiddle, Guy on the piano, Phil on guitar and Cindy on drums, with Judy sitting cross-legged on a tabletop, singing her heart out.

‘Good times,’ Guy had said, to Fergus, nodding towards the open door of the garage.

‘Yeah, the best of times,’ Fergus had replied. Fergus was drinking beer, and the can nestled comfortably into his full beard every time he took a swig. ‘I go in there sometimes, to listen. It’s like the music’s still in there, in the walls.’

‘That’s nice,’ Guy said. Fergus was a lovely friend, big and soft and bearded. What a fantastic person.

‘You know, Guy, we’ll have good times again. You do know that, don’t you? I can’t tell you how desperate I’ve felt for you and Jude this month, but all I do know is I’m certain, you know, that we’ll get through.’

Guy listened, accepting Fergus’s gentle assertion, and feeling slightly ashamed for what was hidden, what was really unfolding that night. He’d thought of Judy, up in the bedroom already at the top of the house, under the watchtower platform, in her own private world of thoughts.

‘Cindy says you’ll have another child,’ Fergus said, ‘and I’ve been telling her to shut the hell up.’

Guy smiled. ‘Thanks, Fergus.’

‘She’s annoying at times like this.’

‘You don’t have to tell her off.’

‘Oh, you know, I enjoy it. There’s not much else to do out here.’

Guy had looked deeply into the fire, admiring its timeless beauty. The realization of what would be transpiring a few hours later had suddenly hit, an awful twist of panic in him, filling him with doubt.

‘Thanks for everything, Fergus, you’re a great friend.’

‘I’m your only friend. Phil’s a jerk.’

‘Yep. Phil is a jerk.’

Was this to be the last conversation he’d ever have, before going to his wife’s bedroom?

‘Jude looked tired tonight,’ Fergus said.

‘Yes. She is.’

‘You have each other, Guy. That’s important. And women are marvellous, you know. They really are life’s best thing. It’s no secret, that.’

‘Yes, Ferg. You’re always right. I should grow a beard like you.’

‘It would help.’

‘That was a great recording you played tonight,’ Guy said. ‘There was something very special about it.’

‘I’ve been kicking myself for putting it on. It sounded sad to me, and that’s the last thing you need.’

Guy drank more of the wine, aware that he was finishing the bottle, that at the end he’d have to go up to the bedroom. The level of the drink was his clock, now, and it was draining. He could drink slower, but finishing the bottle was inevitable. The wine had given him a stealthy optimism that was disconcerting.

‘I’m nicely pissed,’ Fergus said. ‘Everything seems all right.’

And with that Guy snapped out of his emerging feelings of contentedness. No, everything was not all right. Everything was far from bloody all right, and Guy had seized the opportunity, before his resolve could weaken any further, retreating from that glimpse of a possible future, to think about that room at the top of the house, about Judy lying on the bed, waiting for him like an angel of death.

‘I’m going to turn in now,’ he’d said to Fergus, forcing himself not to hug his friend, or say anything that might arouse suspicion. At times like this, everyone is watchful, and Guy felt he reeked of his plan. He reeked of death already.

He had gone into the house and given Cindy a kiss on the cheek, while she was wiping down the work surfaces in the kitchen. She looked at him with her gentle browned-apple eyes, respecting him in every move he made. Grief had given him an amazing authority.

‘Has Judy gone up?’ he said, his voice cracking a little.

She nodded. ‘Tell me if you need anything.’

He left her quickly. She had instinct, Cindy, he’d always felt it, and the house was becoming something else now, a place of ritual order.

Judy was waiting for him in the room, not on the bed, as he’d expected, but sitting in a chair by the window. There was a darkness to her eyes, and a glint of something almost venal there too, something that felt untrustworthy and shifting. Understandable, he’d thought, before sighing, and lying down on the bed. Should he take his shoes off? Who knows the rules in this situation?

‘Well, this is it,’ she’d said.

‘Yeah,’ he sighed, again, thinking of the weariness with which he’d climbed up the narrow staircase, with all its eccentric twists and turns to get up to the bedroom.

‘I liked that music Fergus played,’ she’d said, surprisingly, stopping herself short of saying we should get him to do us a copy. It would have been an absurd thing to say, given their plan, but the essence of her liking the record, with its assumption of wanting to listen to it again, had remained in the room, stubbornly.

She lay on the bed and kissed him, once, on the mouth. He looked into her eyes and again feared what he saw there, some foreshadowing of a madness that he knew could come, or might not.

They had talked, about the meal, the bonfire, Fergus and Cindy’s friendship. It was a usual routine for them. Guy began to think about Freya, but couldn’t mention it to Judy. He’d felt his daughter’s presence in the room, between them, in a place where they might follow her to. There was so much to think about, so much to set right in his head, but at that moment, it had all felt unnecessary. He was beyond caring. He felt tired and wanted to sleep, and was unsure why Judy was dragging the moment out. It was odd, how unbothered he had felt.

She had cried, silently, and he had looked about him at the room. It really was special, with windows on three sides and a high dark view over the salt marshes outside. They’d stayed here several times before. In fact, Judy had written some of her song lyrics in here, at the desk in the alcove. It was an inspiring place.

‘Guy,’ she had whispered, and he’d known this was the moment the whole night had been leading up to. ‘Guy, I love you.’ She lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I’ve flushed the pills down the toilet.’

Guy waited, listening to the oystercatchers in the creeks outside, at the wind that was beginning to pick up in the chimney.

‘Right,’ he had said.

Soon, both of them had fallen asleep.

And two months after that night, they split up.

He doesn’t know much about what has happened in Judy’s life in the five years since that night. He knows she’s having a relationship with Phil and that they’ve recently moved in together. Their lives, and his diary, have followed a similar route. He also knows she no longer sings. But he’s only been to her new house once, and that was nine days ago. It was the night before he began this journey of his into the North Sea.

It had been so strange, after all those years passing, for him to be standing on the damp brick path in a little pocket of East Anglian calm between a forsythia and japonica, looking at his former wife, haloed by the light of the living-room behind her.

She hadn’t registered much surprise when she’d answered the door. But she’d taken a step forward, just the one, as though she was naturally moving towards something she recognized. Then she’d crossed her arms and leaned against the jamb. The threshold of her house seemed to run through the line of her shoulders.

‘You’re more predictable than you think,’ was what she’d said, the first thing she’d said to him, in fact, for several years.

‘Since when?’ he’d said, willingly falling into their old roles of him playing catch-up with her.

‘I’ve always known you’d turn up here one day,’

‘Really? It’s more than I’ve known.’

That had been their opening exchange. Probing their territorial positions, with claims coming from both of them about how much they knew about each other. But Guy hadn’t driven all that way, after all these years, to find out things he already had the answers for.

‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ Guy had stated, trying to stay calm.

She’d taken a breath before nodding, shyly, just the once.

‘Why couldn’t you tell me? Why did I have to guess?’

‘Because I’m a coward, Guy. You know me better than anyone, don’t you?’

She gazed back with a level, dark expression. She had no apology for him. She couldn’t even give him that.

‘How long?’

‘Five months.’

‘I’m glad, for you. For Phil, too. Tell him I’m glad, will you?’

‘Do you want to tell him yourself?’

‘Not particularly.’

Judy acknowledged that with a smile, having brought it out in Guy, but accepting him, too, it seemed. Perhaps she had been curious to see him like this, unannounced and unprepared. ‘Life moves on, you know,’ she’d said.

‘Yeah. Well, thanks for telling me that.’

Judy had given him a quick questioning look, sensing the brittle charge of argument that always seemed to spark so naturally between them. ‘Let’s not have a scene,’ she’d said.