The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore (26 page)

Looking past Katelin at the mass of foliage in the spinney, I notice what might be the outline of a face, and when I look harder I see a number of faces. I can't be sure, but one looks like the memory of my father, and one has an expression that reminds me of Gazza, and maybe Jo's there too, and even Brian, and everything's okay and everything's falling into place now.

“But why aren't you…?” I begin to ask Katelin, until two leaves sprout from each side of my mouth, from my nostrils and my ears and the corners of my eyes. It's no worse than growing whiskers for a beard, with each pair of leaves followed by a slender tendril, and each tender stem budding into more leaves.

Katelin steps closer to me then; face-to-face. She pushes her arms carefully through my foliage to embrace me, noses through the leaves until her nose is touching mine, her tongue stroking my lips, the softness of her breasts and the tickle of her berry-nipples against my chest, and her toes resting on mine.

“Delicious,” I say, but the words are a rustle in the breeze.

“Now,” she murmurs.

And I wrap two leafy arms about her.

She lifts one leg and wraps it around me, and every part of me enters her, grows through her, until the warmth that's running through me is rising through her body too, and it becomes pointless to consider that we were ever separate or could ever be separate again. And why did I never know this before?

“Forever and ever,” we think.

Turn, turn, turn.

New spring.

I know that we could grow here forever, and slip into the consciousness of wood and foliage, to drift through the seasons in a curious harmony that would be beyond all knowingness.

Or, I believe, if I try hard enough I might retrace my understanding of how I arrived here and then dream myself back onto a plane landing at five-thirty at Heathrow, or onto a train arriving at Northampton Station, or into a car, or waking in a bed from another dream, with a building site in front of me, or into a memory so vivid it might seem like a dream itself.

Or I could listen to the whispering of leaves and the lapping of an ocean, and make myself breathe to its rhythm until I'm ready to dive forward to meet it, and swim down for a while, to find this new current, before stretching out and up – up and up – until kicking free and breaking the surface again… to open my eyes and take a deep breath. And return to the world I came from.

But I must choose. I've no choice but to choose.

*

My lips have been rough bark, glued together with dried resin and blood. My eyes were a splintered ache, sealed with the grit of sand and salt, soil and dry leaves, and for so long all I've wanted to do is sleep and keep both the fathomless darkness and the blinding brightness out. But the wind is a warm breath across my face and neck, and the whispering of the surf is also the singing of leaves, telling me it's a new day. There's a part of me that's numb, so I ease my fingers apart, stretch my toes, and feel a blanket of kelp drawn across me, strapping me down like driftwood on the beach.

I look at the sea and see it rise and fall, rise and fall, and its rhythm is the rhythm of breathing. A wave rolls in towards me and I watch it lift as the ocean takes a breath, and then, as it breaks and crashes, it exhales that breath in a long sigh. Breath after breath after breath.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

This is why we're hypnotised by the sea. Cruel though it can be, it nurtures life; is more mother than smotherer.

Breathe in, it says.

Breathe out.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I listen to the suck and sigh of the surf, each rolling rise and soft crash sighing onto the beach. I take a deep breath to draw in the sweetest, nourishing scent of ozone, and I push the blanket of kelp away.

“Hello,” the flight attendant says. “Welcome back.” She's all smile, uniform and reassurance.

“Have we landed?” I begin to ask, but have no voice.

“Easy,” she says.

It's then I notice the tubes growing out my nose, my arm, my hand, and the leads sprouting from my chest. I liked it there.

“Can you tell me your name?” she says.

If I can't I'll become driftwood. I see it in her eyes.

I try to nod, but blink instead.

“What is it?” she asks. “What's your name?”

It takes a moment to remember and would be easier if I could show her my passport, but she's in no hurry to get me out of here, wherever here has become.

The moment I remember who I am is also the moment I realise where I am.

“Tom,” I whisper to the nurse. “Thomas Passmore.”

When she moves to one side, I see a window and out the window the meagre light of winter dawn and, some distance away, the form of a large tree – a spruce perhaps. The early light hasn't drawn out its greenness yet, but the shape of each of its layered branches is highlighted by a coating of hoar frost, and for a moment I'm sad to have returned to this place and to have left Katelin behind, but glad the tree has stayed with me.

The nurse lifts my hand and places hers across it.

“Can you squeeze my fingers?” she says.

Another figure steps into the space behind her – two figures – a woman and a child. The woman is holding the child's hand. She looks tired, sleepy, until she realises I'm looking at her.

“He's awake,” the nurse says, and moves to one side so they can edge next to the bed.

“Tom,” she says. “Tom.”

“Katelin,” I try saying, but only half the word comes out.

Tamsin steps forward and puts her hand out, but doesn't touch me. Elin kneels down next to where I lie. “Kate? Did you say Kate?”

I try to shake my head.

“She was here with me yesterday. She was talking to you for a while. Could you hear us talking to you? You've been gone a while.”

“No,” I say, “not what I meant.” The effort to talk is too much and only half my words are breaking through.

She holds a glass with a straw against my lips. The attempt to move forward brings an axe-sharp pain that buries itself across the front of my eyes, and I wince.

“What?” she says. “What is it? What do you want?”

“How…?”

“Why are you here? Is that what you're asking?”

I nod.

She looks at the nurse, pauses, then speaks the words. “A car bomb at Euston, a few days before Christmas. Do you remember?”

I close my eyes and try. All I recall is a dream about a young mother pushing a pram one hot afternoon in Spain.

“You've been out ten days, Tom. You've been gone ten days. It's New Year's Eve. We saw it on the news, but you shouldn't have been in London. You shouldn't have… Annette's looking after Daniel and Elspeth. We all came straightaway. It's been the shittiest ten days of my life, Tom. I thought we'd lost you – we all thought we'd lost you. It's been hell, Tom. What were you… why…?” Her torrent of words ends in tears, and then she tries smiling. She's angry and happy, smiling and crying at the same time.

A murmur of traffic reaches me, laps against me – comforting – and I focus at a point beyond them. I see a tree in a winter landscape, and remember something more.

“Elin,” I say.

“I'm here now,” she says, dabbing her eyes.

“Tamsin,” I say.

My daughter strokes my arm. “You're awake,” she tells me, then puts her hand up to cover the round ‘O' of her mouth.

For the last – however long – my life has been full of echoes. But the echoes are fading now and that's okay, and I feel as if I've finally caught up with myself.

Elin leans forward and plants a kiss on my forehead. Tamsin grips my hand. I take the deepest breath I can and try to focus on the scent of them, the touch of them, the closeness of them. And to hold onto it. To reach out and hold firmly onto it before this small pond of a room shimmers like a ripple across still water, and before the certainty of them shimmers too.

“You've been asleep a long while,” she says. “Welcome back, my love.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Like many stories,
The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore
has evolved through a number of tellings, and a number of people have assisted directly or indirectly in helping me find its present form. Of these people, I owe particular debts of gratitude to my wife, Siân Burman, and to my publishers Keirsten Clark and Tom Chalmers.

To Siân, who has supported my obsession with writing at every stage of our relationship and who's acted as a sounding board for everything from scribbled ideas to final proofs, and who's nudged me along through some of the darker places in-between: thank you, thank you, thank you.

To Keirsten, for investing so much energy and enthusiasm in this novel, and for providing that wonderful quality of editorial insight which enabled me to see Thomas Passmore's story more clearly; and to Tom, for picking it up and bringing it to fruition: a very big THANK YOU.

Thanks to Lowri and Gwil for your absolute support and for letting me run ideas past you, and – well, for everything. And thanks also to Ivan Boyer and Annie Lanyon who courageously allowed themselves to be press-ganged into reading a very early and unwieldy draft of something which, in places, may or may not have resembled aspects of this story.

I'd also like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the manuscript appraisal service offered by the Victorian Writers' Centre, Australia.

The extract from Bede's
A History of the English Church and People
is translated by Leo Sherley-Price (Penguin Classics, 1979). The full text of Giacomo Leopardi's poem
A Silvia
can be downloaded from a number of websites. I primarily accessed
http://www.ilnarratore.com
.

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