The Sea House: A Novel (13 page)

I first sat down in my study to write to Matthew, asking if I might visit again and thus spend some time in the anatomy and zoology departments of the university museum, very much cheered by the thought of once again enjoying the wise conversation of my old foraging companion in the midst of the civilised hum of Edinburgh. I was finding it a lonely situation, stranded as I was on the edge of the Atlantic, and though I was sometimes tempted to confide more than I should in Miss Marstone, I resolved that in future I must guard against such indiscretions. A good minister makes no friends and favourites, and he is always above reproach.

CHAPTER 13

Ruth

That morning I had to go into Tarbert for a check-up with the nurse. I handed her my pot of wee, then sat and waited on the plastic chair, tapping my foot and wondering why the nurses’ room always had such an unpleasantly sweet smell, some chemical or disinfectant. I glanced at the posters on the wall: a diagram of the inner ear, a pregnant woman sliced in half. A list of practice staff was pinned up on a green felt board. At the bottom, a new name had been written in by hand: ‘Dr Susan Montgomery – Counsellor and Clinical Psychologist’.

I wondered what sort of problems you had to have to end up going to see someone like that.

For a moment, I saw myself there, knocking on her door – and for the briefest moment I really wanted to – but even thinking about it seemed theatrical and self-important. Why would you do that? What did I think I had to say to her?

The nurse came back. She was also new to the practice. Just moved down from Stornoway, she told me, as she gently padded her hands over my stomach to feel how things were going. ‘Ketone levels are fine, and no sign of puffiness here,’ she said, picking up my ankle and rotating my foot as I lay on the couch.

I sat up and she strapped a velcroed sleeve round my arm and pumped up the blood pressure monitor on the trolley. I watched the flickering red figures on the screen as she waited for them to settle on a number. She took the sleeve off my arm with a ripping sound. ‘Not high exactly, but we should watch that. Are you getting plenty of chances to relax?’

There were flecks of paint in my hair and under my nails from decorating walls, old paint under my nails from stripping fireplaces.

‘Yes, plenty,’ I said.

She was dark haired and sweet faced. Late middle-age. From where I sat, I saw that the ornate clasp on her belt had been polished and polished over time and with so much care that it had worn to a beautiful silver pebble.

‘And nothing worrying you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not that I can think of.’

‘You’ve put your name down on the ante-natal class list?’

‘Yes.’

She patted my hand. ‘Good girl, Ruth. You’ll learn a lot that will help you.’ She looked over my chart and put it back in the Manila folder. ‘And I expect you’re on the phone to your mother all the time now, wondering how she coped with you?’

I shook my head. The nurse looked surprised.

‘Mum died. Years ago. She probably killed herself,’ I heard myself blurting out.

The nurse’s smile crumpled.

‘You know you can ring me, any time you want to, Ruth.’

I felt a hard lump in my throat. Didn’t dare speak again.

*   *   *

I hung my coat up. We had pegs by the front door, a luxury Jamie had recently added; usually the coats ended up clogging up the kitchen chairs or falling onto the floor. I looked around at the quiet hall space, the pale yellow walls, the smell of fresh paint in the air and wondered how I could have been so silly those times – just because it had been dark.

After supper, the boys threw Leaf and me out of the kitchen, saying it was their turn to wash up. We took mugs of tea through to the sea room, although going in there still felt a bit like happening on someone else’s room. We hadn’t got used to having such a civilised space: large paper lampshades like moons; white calico curtains – not yet hemmed; the pale wooden floor varnished; a red kelim rug by the sofa. Leaf leaned back in the old armchair that Angus John had rescued from its journey to the dump. She blew on her tea and looked at me over the rim of her mug.

‘The check-up went okay?’

‘Yes. They said it’s all going really well.’

There was the lonely piping of a curlew in the distance, the breaths of the sea, the tide far out.

‘You must be tired.’ She looked at the bump like it was a conundrum.

‘And crabby,’ I said.

‘Only natural you’ll feel up and down, all the changes with the baby.’

I swallowed. We listened to the birds outside whistling regretfully in a minor key.

‘You know, I’m sorry, Leaf, if I’ve been a bit off sometimes.’

She paused, got up and came and sat on the sofa alongside me. ‘Ruth, all the time I’ve been here, you’ve never really told me what happened.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘With your mother.’

‘She drowned. I told you that.’

She put her hand on my breastbone, near the base of my throat. ‘Not really. You haven’t really told me. You keep it all bottled up. In here.’

I moved back a little, hoping she’d take her hand away. It felt horribly intrusive.

‘Well, that’s the English way,’ I said, making a joke of it.

Her face was hanging in front of mine, a pale moon with green eyes.

‘You can always talk to me, Ruth. You should talk. Let it breathe.’

I thought, that’s what friends do, they share their secrets. They give a little bit of themselves away. But I felt like I was standing too near the edge of a long drop, dizzy with vertigo. My heart was thumping. I was sure she could feel it through the chest bone. My palms were sticky.

I stood up and her hand fell away.

‘Thanks anyway, for offering.’ I found myself glancing at the door.

‘But how do you do it? Living here, on an island, the sea all around us. Don’t you ever…’

I gave a short laugh, irritated now. ‘Why would that bother me, Leaf? I mean, really. I’m a bloody good swimmer. Believe me, I made sure of that. And I actually really love the sea. Don’t think for a minute I’m going to let what happened to Mum – what she did – spoil that. And this child here, it’s never going to be afraid of the sea either.’

She sat nodding her head, her lips compressed like someone who still has plenty to say.

‘Might take my tea up to bed. I’m pretty exhausted.’

‘Sure. You should get your rest.’

*   *   *

Michael was shaking my shoulder.

I startled awake, not sure where I was; panic and loss filled the room. I gasped.

‘Ruth, you were shouting. It’s okay, Ruth.’

The pillow was wet and cold; as if in my dreams she came to me again, the water from her clothes seeping into the room.

I had been crying. I turned the face of the pillow over and Michael scooped me into his arm as we settled back down to sleep; but his arm under my ribs kept me awake.

In my dream, she had been so present, so real, that I couldn’t believe she wasn’t still there, asleep in the next room, breathing quietly; and I wanted her to be there, so much, so much, that the pain was as new as the day she left me.

*   *   *

It’s three days after my tenth birthday. She has a chiffon scarf tied like an Alice band to keep her long black hair out of her blue eyes. She wears a yellow dress with long sleeves and a floaty skirt. I don’t know anyone with a mum as pretty as mine. We stop in Bethnal Green to buy cherries from the greengrocer and I carry the soft bag like it’s a prize to the top of the bus, the dark red already soaking into the paper at one edge. The cherries are warm and feel soft as a cheek inside the paper. They taste dark red and sweet.

We sit together in the front seat and sail through the London streets, swaying round the traffic. The hot sun bathes us all over, although, after a bit, my arm against the window feels like it’s burning.

Once inside the museum, it is calm and cool; the heat can’t get at us in here. We walk past glass cases where old things are spread out like clues to a mystery or objects rescued from a crime scene.

We make up stories about the jewelled treasures locked inside glass cases in Ancient India, a golden comb given to a beautiful princess by the prince in the miniature painting. We think the metal bowl is the one the princess used to serve poison to avenge her prince. Mum walks on to the next case, but I can’t stop staring into the peacock colours of the Indian bowl: she is happy right now, and I don’t want to break it.

In Ancient Egypt, she walks along the columns of hieroglyphics and whispers funny stories about the lists of tiny figures. They look like vases with Afro wigs and long black eyes. I giggle too loudly.

We walk down polished stone stairs, through enormous halls, and reach the Eskimo and North American section. At the far end, there’s a case with a leather-fringed coat spread out like birds’ wings. Next to it, lit from behind, there’s a huge Eskimo parka made of something so fine it looks like a transparent angel. I want to tell this story. I run towards it but as I get there my rubber sneakers catch on the waxy floor and I stumble forward, thumping my palms against the glass. The whole case vibrates.

The museum curator comes over to us like an off-duty policeman. He tells Mum she will have to take me out if she can’t control me. We walk away through the tall rooms feeling ashamed. Mum is patting her hair in place and walking fast. After that, she doesn’t seem to want to hear the silly stories I make up. We are sitting on a stone bench in a corridor between Ancient Rome and Persia. I can see she has slipped away now, into her own inside story that goes around her head. Two slow tears are coming out down her cheeks, making me feel really horrible. I sit closer to her, but it makes no difference.

She smells of her Mum deodorant and there’s a faint tang from the brown paper with the cherry stones screwed up in her straw shopping bag on the floor. I look down at her feet. Her cream leather sandals have a maze of papery cracks in the pretend leather. Her toenails are yellowish and curve over, and for some reason they make my stomach tight with worry. They make me think of the bodies in the glass cases in Ancient Egypt. She’s leaning forward now and stays like that for a long time.

Eventually, I get really bored and go and look at the displays of black carvings, always keeping her in my sight. Then I go back and sit down. She’s still crying into her hanky.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she says, when I demand that we go and find a cold drink.

She stands up very fast, yanks my arm and starts for the entrance.

We are back out into the hot air of London in summer and she is cross with me now because she wants to be alone to concentrate on crying.

We have all the way back on the bus still to do, but the day is already over. I insist on the top deck again, hoping it might remind her of being happy, but as soon as we get up there, I realise it’s a mistake. It is so hot on the top deck, I can’t breathe. She stares ahead, tense and preoccupied, and I feel sorry for spoiling everything.

We get back to Carlisle House and go up the concrete stairs to the second floor. Doris has put her washing across the balcony walkway and we have to duck beneath it to get to our door.

Mum makes beans on toast and then sits at the kitchen table smoking while I eat my tea in front of the TV. At seven she tells me to get into my pyjamas and I watch her put on her white mac. She’s got a late shift at the pub. She takes one last look in the mirror over the electric fire. She licks her finger and smoothes an eyebrow. Tuts.

‘I’m just popping out,’ she tells me. ‘Doris is there next door, eh,
mo ghaol?
’ and she pats the wall with the back of her fingers. ‘You get to bed and go to sleep at nine.’

I think she kissed me. I can’t remember, to tell the truth. She looked very young and pretty with the floaty blue scarf in her hair and the mac belted round her waist so that the skirt stuck out above her boots.

I kneeled up on the sofa after the door closed so I could look out of the window. I pulled up the grey net curtain and waited until she appeared down below, between the blocks of flats, heading along the concrete pavements. I saw her white mac slipping round the grey corner of Devonshire House and then she was gone. She would be walking away to the bus stop by the canals.

At nine o’clock, I turned off the TV and got into bed. It was dark outside, so I left the electric light shining like a sentry above my bed. Mum had forgotten to put a lampshade on it, and it shone through my eyelids. I saw the clock say two, but I must have gone to sleep soon after that because I woke up from a horrible dream. There was a ghost with no face in Mum’s room and I couldn’t get past him.

I shouted out for Mum to come. I just wanted her to stand there, bad tempered and exhausted and shout at me to stop having these bloody nightmares. I’d dreamed again of the tall man in his feather cloak, who came from a dark forest, carrying his rack of dead birds with their drooping necks and curled claws.

But Mum didn’t appear in the doorway. I got up and turned on the hall light, looked up and down the hallway to check there was no ghost and then opened Mum’s door. My heart was hammering so hard, making me feel worn out.

I walked over to her bed in the shadows and ran my hands over the candlewick bedspread. The bed was flat and empty. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t back. Where was she? I started to cry. I went back to my room to wait for her and shut the door tight.

When I woke up in the morning, the flat was very quiet. No radio playing the hits. I went through to her room, the purple candlewick bedspread still neat and flat over her bed. There were some of her hairpins and bits of her hair trailing from them on the dressing table, a worn-down red lipstick, pots of blue and green eye cream, a bottle of Pagan scent that smelled stale when I tried it. The ashtray was full. I stirred it with a hairpin and got a cloud of its old, ashy breath. I picked up a little brown bottle with pills inside, a printed label on the front. Why had she gone to the doctor? What was wrong?

The clock ticked, making a lonely echo in the top of the dresser.