Seahorse (29 page)

He looked up, his eyes wide and shiny as marbles.

Myra slipped her arm through mine.

“Once, a man was walking through a forest…”

“What was his name?”

“His name was… Stefan. So, Stefan was walking through a forest, when suddenly a storm broke… the winds rose, clouds gathered, and lightning flashed… he ran to take shelter under a tree…”

“But grandpa says we mustn't stand under a tree if there's lightning…”

Myra laughed into a gloved hand.

“And your grandpa is right. He was running past a tree, to get to a cave, but before that… what did he see in the branches? A bird's nest…”

“What kind of bird?”

And so it continued, until we reached a clearing where Myra wanted to stop. “More, please, more,” pestered Elliot. Eventually, we reached a compromise; I promised to read him a story later, before bedtime.

We sat on a bench—dedicated to “Arthur, who so loved this place”—and unpacked our basket. Chunky roast beef sandwiches, mince pies, Victoria sponge, and hot chocolate in a squat flask. Across the churlish water, the countryside swept away from us, patches of field hemmed by neat hedges, distant low-lying hills, and clusters of poplars like fine pencil drawings etched into the sky.

It was a rare sort of happiness. An inkling, a rush, a feeling that somehow this, and only this, was where we were meant to be. Nowhere else in the world would come close.

After our picnic, I showed Elliot how to skim stones on water—one, two, sometimes three quick skips. He had to hunch low, balance on the balls of his feet, and fling—“Fling,” he said joyfully, enraptured by the word, by its carefreeness. “Fling! Fling!”

Before the light faded, we headed back. It was much too cold to stay out any longer; the wind whipped about us, tugging at our coats, stinging our faces.

The next time I visit, said Myra, we'd drive to the moors. “You should ask Mrs Hammond for moor stories… giant black hounds and ghostly lights, and a rock that's supposed to be a man turned to stone by a witch…”

Moors, like forests, were mystical places.

When we were almost home, it started raining, cold, sharp pebbles falling hard on the ground. I hitched up Elliot for a piggyback ride, running through the gate, and across the gravel. He screamed with laughter.

That evening, we lit a fire in a room at back of the house, a smaller, less formal place, and cheerful, with butter-yellow walls and floral curtains. Originally, explained Myra, it had been used as a “lady's letter-writing room”—“Can you imagine? The things these walls must know.”

For supper, we warmed a pot of leek-potato soup, buttered some rolls, and ate sitting on the floor, the firelight flickering on our faces.

“Do you do this every time Philip's away?”

Myra nodded, happily.

And in the spirit of celebratory excess, even though we were all sated, she dug out leftover apple crumble from the fridge, and served it drenched in custard. The other night I'd been too tired to enjoy this; it was delicious, tart and sweet, creamy and crumbly. A few card games, and a round of snakes and ladders later, Elliot was asleep on a cushion, his thumb in his mouth. I carried him upstairs, light in my arms as a bird, dressed him in his pajamas, and tucked the covers around him.

His curly dark hair, the shape of his nose.

In the low glow of the night lamp, all could be revealed.

When I came back downstairs, I found Myra opening a bottle of wine. “Daddy's finest.” An opulent cabernet sauvignon from Château Saint Pierre, St Julien.

“Tell me about your time in London,” said Myra. “Your work, your friends… everything…”

And so I did, slow and halting at first… unused to talking about myself in this manner… the journal I joined on Nithi's persuasion… its almost closure… my bid to get away for a year from Delhi… its serendipitous fruition. “All because of Santanu, of course…”

“And Santanu, what does he do?”

I told her.

“What's he like?”

I laughed. “A bit of an old soul, in love with a poet.”

“Aren't we all?”

I didn't reveal what he'd disclosed before I left London. When we stopped at the bar on our way to the Christmas party. Yara and the infinite heart. Bold, beautiful Yara with dark eyes stained by silver light. I suppose Myra could say he hadn't known her long, that if he were to lose her, it wouldn't be all that difficult. But time and love have little to do with the other. On occasion, love is a burst of light, and the intensity of a week, a month, a year could scarcely be replicated in a lifetime. Brevity should not be scorned, for it bears no indication of the absence of depth. Else, dismiss the sunrise, the arietta, the haiku.

In life, everything, including love, is fleeting.

I hadn't spoken to Santanu again before leaving London.

Perhaps Eva would prove a more helpful companion, but by now she would be across the world, with Tamsin in Japan.

Then I told Myra about Eva.

Her silken peacock dresses. Her immaculate hair. Her great and gaping emptiness.

I told her about Stefan. “He sends her flowers to mark time.”

Love came in the shape of lilies.

Myra sighed. “How can I say she's foolish? I have no right.”

And neither did I.

We burned log after log to keep the fire going. I told her how, when we were children, my sister and I would dry orange peel in the sun, and then toss it into the fireplace. They'd splutter in the flames, a mini fireworks display that thrilled us each time. Oranges were the smell of my childhood.

“Paint,” she said. “Mine is paint.” Sitting close to her mother, for hours playing with old tubes and brushes. “She'd call me her little helper.” Myra laughed, tipping the glass to her lips. Then she looked at me, her eyes the color of a summer evening, a deep, endless blue. Her hair glowing liquid bronze. Like the trees in London in autumn. My lost season. For an instant, I wanted to reach out and touch her, the slope of her cheek where light slanted off, the plane of her hand lit by firelight.

“What do you think it is?” she asked. “The memory of happiness that has passed, is it happy or sad?”

The wine swirled full and viscous on my tongue.

Neither, I said. And both.

Memory only gives us back what we had on condition we know it has been lost.

To remake the world, we need first to understand it has ended.

Later, filled with a low tuneful humming, I climbed the stairs to the loft, slip-sliding on the wet wooden surface. The room lay in unbroken darkness; here the rain sounded louder, closer, drumming on the skylights.
Let me in.

As I drifted to sleep, lulled by wine and the wind, I thought I heard the door open, the soft pad of footfall, the hush of breath. I dreamed a warm, rain-splattered body slipped into bed beside me.

It was Nicholas.

It was someone smaller, lighter, with longer hair, and a softer mouth. A silky gown that slipped off easily. Someone with skin smooth as a
seashore pebble, a neck that arched, a pool of deep, endless wetness. In the dark, she was above me, her lips parted like petals, light under my touch, on her, so clumsy. A small mole on the nape of her neck, a beacon I returned to again and again. She was wine and fire. A furious rising. Tonight, the creatures above us were silent. We were watched only by rain and darkness, somewhere behind that, the stars. At the end, I buried my face into her shoulder, and she gasped and held me with fingers that felt like butterflies.

Once, on my wanderings around London, lost somewhere near Green Park, I chanced upon an art gallery open late in the evening. From the outside, it glowed white and glassy, and I walked in because there didn't seem to be any works on display. Apart from mirrors. I was intrigued.

“The past behind… and the future before us.”

A sum of all we are, and all we are becoming.

“Or,” she added, “in the case of the Aymara people in the Andes, the past lies ahead.”

For it can be seen. This is who you are—the entirety of everything that has come before—and it stands there, a steady yet fragile reflection. The future stays behind, unknown, unseen, unfathomable.

Standing there, glimpsing myself in those strange paintings, I thought of how they inhabit the same, and different worlds entirely, one perpetually in the state of becoming the other. Yet there is a moment, in the split second when you lift a finger to the mirror when they touch, and are inexplicably identical.

It felt that way in Wintervale.

“It's another country.”

I shouted, to make myself heard above the wind, lashing across the moors.

“I brought Nicholas here once,” said Myra. “He hated it. For him, only the frenetic madness of the city.”

She stood beside me in her tweed coat and woollen beret, smoking, her gloved fingers speckled with ash. I could still taste her smoke-wine tongue. In the early hours of that morning, I'd awakened, amazed by the length of her by my side. Her bare back turned towards me, pebble-smooth, angular, dipped between her shoulder blades, her skin marked by pale freckles. I wanted to run my fingers along her outline, to trace her and place her like a leaf between my hands. She left soon after, saying she wouldn't like Elliot to awake and not find her home, but even now, after breakfast and an hour's drive to the moors, I was still replete with her. I wanted to stand behind her, beside her, in front, all at once, so wherever the wind would blow, it would carry her fragrance.

How infinitely modest are the steps that change our lives.

How unassumingly bereft of all fanfare and flourish.

At that precise time, if it hadn't been for the storm, I would have been on a train bound for London.

Philip, who returned that morning, earlier than we anticipated, came bearing news that fallen trees had disrupted rail services to the city. They'd closed the line, and since it was Sunday, it possibly wouldn't reopen until the next day.

“Oh, so you can't possibly leave now…” said Myra.

I said I was sure they'd arranged a rail replacement service; it might take me an extra few hours but I'd get back to the city eventually…

“Those coaches are beastly… do stay… and we can drive to the moors… they'll have it all cleared up soon, I'm sure… Isn't your ticket valid for the rest of the week?”

It was.

Philip sat aside, stirring his tea, watching us in silence.

“They're one of the oldest breeds in the world… can you imagine?” said Myra. “To have been around unchanged for twelve thousand years.”

Like seahorses.

“It makes one feel so… fleeting.”

I placed my arm around her waist; at the moment, I didn't want to hear talk of ephemerality. I'd dreamed again of Lenny, and if it hadn't been for her, lying beside me when I awoke, I would have been filled with an old sadness. But it had dissipated when she smiled sleepily, and reached out to stroke my cheek.

Before us, the moors sloped and rose endlessly, while behind, they were as flat as the sea. It hadn't snowed yet this winter, but sprinklings of frost glistened in the afternoon light. The longer I stood there, the more I felt steeped in beautiful desolation.