How To Be Brave (17 page)

Dear Lord, look down on us here with mercy. See how much we need you, how very much we long to find our way home, how very desperate we are for your kindness in helping us get there
.

Ken took the evening’s first lookout with an unhappy Leak at his side. He kept awake for the first twenty minutes by writing in the log, which was now a piece of torn sail covered in neat dates and facts. When there was anything to report, Ken recorded it. No matter how burnt his fingers, he made sure everything that mattered made it to the improvised log. This he did for the duration of his time on the lifeboat.

Colin tried to find a comfortable sleeping position in the boat’s well. With less meat on his bones now, and more bruises and cracks and cuts, sleeping proved agony. But while thirst caused insomnia, hunger meant exhaustion – and so he eventually slept, with an arm reaching out above his head as though clinging to hope.

Dreams came gently that night. No vicious Death-filled nightmares. Colin found himself in a house, one different to any he’d seen before. It was a kitchen where the surfaces gleamed metallic, shinier than a ship’s polished railings. The oven top was silver as a new shilling; nothing like the stone one his mother cooked stew on and cleaned daily. In the alien beauty was chaos; crockery had been abandoned on the table, shoes were piled high in a corner and muddy footprints marked the floor tiles. It was as though whoever lived there had left in haste.

On the counter sat a pumpkin.

When Colin was young he’d carved out a turnip at Halloween because it was all they could afford; one between the five of them. This pumpkin was fat and rich orange. A candle still burned inside, illuminating disjointed eyes and teeth so the face leered at him with fiery life. Someone must have forgotten to blow it out.

‘He’ll get the candle.’

The words came from nowhere, sweet and hopeful. Colin looked for the speaker. No one there. He was alone in this foreign yet familiar and welcoming kitchen. Perhaps he should blow the candle out. Perhaps whoever had departed in haste would be grateful he had.

In one quick puff he extinguished the flame. On the lifeboat he blew into Bott’s ear, causing him to stir and cry out for his mum.

Neither woke fully.

In the ocean, on both sides of the boat, sharks followed.

It was a week until Christmas and no one wanted us to be alone. My mum rang from the Isle of Wight three times, reminding us we’d be welcome to go there for a few days. She’d first suggested it weeks ago and I said I’d think it over. But I knew now where I wanted to be – home.

On recent mornings I’d felt happier than in weeks. When I crossed the landing, the diabetes box didn’t feel quite as heavy in my hand. I’d open Rose’s hint-of-pink door and she’d be sitting on her bed edge waiting and we’d go down to the book nook as though it was all we’d ever done.

But my mum wasn’t having any of it.

‘It’ll be just you and Rose, all alone,’ she said, aghast at the idea. ‘There’ll be loads of us down here. George will cook turkey and our friends Carol and Jim are coming over and you can …’

‘Mum, we’re fine,’ I insisted. ‘Rose wants to be here. I do have friends as well you know.’ I was defensive; I’d always chosen friends carefully, preferring a few special ones to hordes of acquaintances. ‘I’ll invite people over if I need to.’

‘I don’t like to think of you both there alone when Jake’s away. It doesn’t seem right. Christmas is about being with your family.’

She didn’t know we’d be sharing it with family. How could I explain that we had our own special guest? That Rose’s great grandfather Colin was with us four times a day. Mum had said the word
alone
numerous times, yet I didn’t feel like we were. There was no point telling her.

‘Look,’ I insisted. ‘You’re kind, but Jake will be home just after New Year and I’d like to be here if he rings on Christmas Day. I’ll feel somehow farther away from him down there.’

‘That’s silly,’ laughed my mum. ‘He couldn’t be further away than in Afghanistan, so what does it matter if you’re down here or up there?’

‘I feel closer to him at home.’ I did. He was everywhere here – in pictures, in the TV unit he’d built, in the pile of boating magazines at the bottom of the wardrobe, reminding me of his watery sailing dreams. ‘Can’t you see that?’

She acquiesced and said I had to do what I must but that she’d worry over Christmas. We parted with promises of a spring visit. My dad rang that evening suggesting in his customary don’t-mind-either-way manner that we could go there for Christmas lunch if we felt inclined. Vonny then texted, saying her home was open if we needed, and my boss Sarah left a message saying they were having a get-together the night before Christmas Eve and everyone hoped I’d go.

They all understood that Rose and I had our own simple plans; a small chicken, our favourite vegetables, minty potatoes, Doctor Who crackers and a sugar-free sponge because neither of us liked Christmas pudding.

Even April knocked on the door late morning with a fruity Christmas cake (‘sugar-free,’ she smiled) and offered her services. Frosted air left her mouth like magic dust. She was elated that she’d been invited to her daughter Jenny’s home at Christmas but said if we needed anything before then we should just knock.

‘I’m not interfering,’ she said quietly, as though others might be trying to learn our doorstep secrets. ‘But it’s a tough season to be on your own, lovey. I know – I’ve been there. My Gerald was often away on the rigs. It’s all about family and couples and … well, you can feel the odd one out, can’t you?’

‘I’m not odd,’ I said. ‘I’ve got Rose.’

‘She’s only nine. You can’t look to her for companionship or support. It’s not her responsibility to be your friend is it, lovey?’

‘Of course not,’ I snapped.

‘I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. I’m just trying to watch out for you both. Look, anyway, I hope you enjoy the cake. I got a bit carried away with the brandy so maybe just a small bit for Rose?’

‘Thank you.’

The words surprised me; they came out so easily. It was a thank-you for helping me find Rose weeks earlier, and for the sugar-free apple pie she’d made then, and for not asking why Rose had been in trouble at school. I said it spontaneously, the way we try and get our children to and never can. The way it happens when we’re suddenly overcome with gratitude.

‘It was nothing, lovey,’ April said, both belittling and elevating my simple sentence. She disappeared around our hedge.

People were kind with their cakes and offers, but they didn’t know that Rose and I weren’t alone. Fourteen men joined us each day. I laughed when I imagined telling my mum we’d be sharing the season with a gang of young seamen. Sometimes I’d wash the pots and hear their voices in the gush of water; or during a shower the rush of bubbles merged with the ocean’s melody and Colin whistling.

There was a week until the big day and still all the last-minute Christmas jobs to do, cards I’d forgotten to send that might not make it their destination now and items to take to the charity shop.

On the last Saturday before Christmas Rose and I headed into town for some final gifts. I’d already bought her stocking-fillers and wrapped them weeks ago and hidden them in the airing cupboard. Her main gift, a sewing machine so she could make bags and other knickknacks out of scraps, was under my bed. But I needed to buy April a little something for being kind and had forgotten to get a box of chocolates for Rose’s teacher.

‘Can we go to McDonald’s for dinner?’ asked Rose as I finally found a parking spot in the main shopping centre.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘It’ll be packed. I just want to buy what we need and go home. The queues will be down the street.’

‘You’re no fun,’ she pouted.

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I don’t reckon Colin’s diary will sound right in MacDonald’s. Do you?’

‘You brought it?’

‘Of course. In case.’

She smiled. ‘People might look at us a bit crazy.’

Eating out could be difficult; nervous about doing her blood test and injection where others were, Rose always insisted we squeeze into a toilet cubicle. Hardly ideal, but few places had anywhere else to do it. On the rare occasions we’d done it at our table because the toilets weren’t suitable, it never failed to surprise me how much people stared. No attempt was made to hide mild revulsion or blatant curiosity. Once a woman leaned over and asked if we should be doing such a thing in public, to which it had taken all my strength not to say sarcastically that normally my daughter did heroin in a derelict house.

‘We could read a page in our heads for once.’ Rose got out of the car. ‘Together so we’re getting the same bit at the same time, like loud reading.’

We were at day nineteen on the boat already. Where had the time gone? While it flew for us, I imagined it was quite the opposite for the men at sea. So little had happened since day fifteen that each chapter now was like an old-fashioned record playing again and again, crackling with dust and scratches. Meals merged into one, sleep and waking had no pattern, with the men hardly knowing if they were conscious or out. The sun rose and fell. And between this only monotony, agony, thirst and no ship.

Rose pursed her lips. ‘But it might not be the same if we read the diary in our heads. Like does a spell work if you don’t say it out loud?’

I locked the car door and fastened her coat; within five minutes she had unfastened it again. We weaved through crowds of shoppers who banged us with bulging bags. I tried to hold Rose’s hand but she roughly pulled free.

‘Have you got your medical bracelet on?’ I asked, eternally afraid of losing her and having something happen in my absence.

‘Yes, Natalie.’

‘Don’t start with that again,’ I sighed. ‘Have you got your phone?’

‘Yes, Na–
Mum
.’

I decided I could get all I needed in one store; Rose nagged to go a shop she liked because she had five pounds to spend and insisted that was the only place she’d be able to afford anything. I said we’d maybe go later and her fierce glare indicated she didn’t believe me. Looking back afterwards, I can say it all started there. Not with the undoing of coat buttons or the rejection of my hand but with her scowl after the amiable conversation in the car.

While I tried to look at flowered make-up bags for April, Rose huffed and puffed and said she was so bored she could die. I suggested she sit on a chair near the changing rooms so I’d get done faster and we could maybe go to McDonald’s after all. With a grunt she flopped into it and I wandered the aisles looking for April’s thank-you gift. Lost in choices – and some half-price earrings I liked – I forgot for a moment that Rose was even with me.

Then a commotion drew my attention to the changing room area. Above the reindeer jumpers and yuletide scarves, a row of heads bowed, watching an event unfold. One or two faces turned to scan the store. I realised who they wanted – me. Dropping the purple earrings, I ran to the crowd, dreading what I knew awaited me.

On the floor, Rose glared at the shoppers. She’d overturned a rail full of fake fur and they surrounded her, covering the ground as though she’d prepared a bed to collapse in. When an old woman with blue hair bent to ask kindly where her mum was, Rose threw a fur at her.

I pushed through the throng, said, ‘She’s my daughter, please let me past,’ and knelt down and tried to calm her.

‘Fuck you,’ Rose spat, eyes wild and skin shimmering with damp.

Disapproving murmurs surged through the crowd the way surf does from the wave machine at our local swimming pool. It must be a hypo. I’d only read about the symptoms – the clammy flesh and pale skin and extreme stroppiness – but nothing could prepare me for the reality of it. For how it changed a person. This wasn’t my child.

‘She’s diabetic,’ I told the crowd, ‘She’s having a hypo. Can’t you give us some space?’

I’d have to do a blood test, make sure of it. Had I brought Coke to treat it? I surely couldn’t have forgotten today. Every time I left the house with Rose now I did the checklist in my head: glucose tablets, Coke, snack, blood meter, lancets, emergency GlucaGen pen.

Talking gently to Rose, who barely registered my words and babbled in nonsensical language, I searched for the plastic purse I kept her implements in. Thank God, it was there, with a small bottle of Coke.

It must have been almost eleven – we’d missed her ten o’clock snack. What number had she been at breakfast? Four-point-four. Not a hypo, but low. No wonder she’d crashed – an empty tummy and busy shopping and a distracted mum. I’d just begun to feel more confident. Now I fell apart.

‘Can I help?’ asked the blue-haired woman kindly.

‘No.’ I opened the plastic purse. ‘I have to do her blood.’

I reached for Rose’s hand but she snatched it back and shook her head, skin ashen. Her eyes lolled back into her head, like marbles rolling in a child’s hand. There was no way I’d be able to prick her finger. I’d have to presume this was a hypo and treat it. I unscrewed the Coke bottle and held it to her lips. Rose spat it out and said, ‘fuck off fuck off fuck off,’ over and over.

What if I couldn’t get the sugar inside her? Unconsciousness? I couldn’t face that again. She’d have to have it, one way or another.

‘Let me help.’ The blue-haired woman took the bottle.

So I gripped Rose’s face, turned her towards me and spoke firmly, ‘Drink it. You have to drink it.’ Then the woman tipped the sugary liquid to Rose’s mouth and I held her face as still as I could while she swore at me. But the Coke trickled into her mouth. She swallowed between words. I imagined the sugar reviving, sparking like electricity, regenerating.

Having lost interest, the crowds dispersed. Once we’d got the Coke into Rose and her swearing slowly gave way to less angry get-off-me’s, the blue-haired woman went to find a store manager. I helped Rose back into the chair and knelt before her.

‘Look at me.’ I held her face. ‘Look right in my eyes.’

The clouds across her irises dispersed, allowing those hazel flecks to shine again. I thought of Colin assessing eyes for life. Hers were reawakening; the sugar was taking effect. I found the diary in my bag.

‘It’s just us,’ I said. ‘Just us and Grandad Colin.’

And there in the middle of a busy department store at Christmas time I read a random diary page. It occurred to me, in the midst of the drama and panic, that it was a miracle we’d never opened it in the same place twice. Surely the law of averages determined we should have done. Surely when a page had been opened already it creased in a way that made it likely to fall open again.

But no, always chance. Always a new story.

Be glad it’s not you. That’s what Ken said to me each time it happened. Be glad it’s not you. He said once, ‘I fear I’ll not go on if it’s you, chum.’ So I said, ‘Don’t talk that way.’ I used to shout at him to get angry! Fight, Ken! Anger sustains, sadness doesn’t. Sadness drains. I’m angry! Angry that I’m here, back home, and I can still hear Bott’s screams and Scown’s ranting. I’m angry that they’re louder than the silence of this room. I’m home and still that places haunts me. I think when you’ve fought so hard to survive it can be harder not to have that battle any more. What do you do when life is easier? What do you fill it with?

I paused when Rose smiled weakly at me, even through such sad diary words.

‘I don’t know yet,’ she said.

‘Know what?’ I asked.

‘What we’ll do with when we get to the end of the story. I’m not scared though cos I’ll know the end.’

The blue-haired woman returned with a bag of cookies she’d bought and a burly store manager. He took us into a back room where Rose ate a couple of biscuits in peace. I stroked her hair, meeting no resistance now. She looked exhausted though, like she’d run a marathon.

‘I was there,’ Rose said.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘On the boat.’ She munched noisily. ‘I could hear you talking but it was like you were the dream and the boat was the real.’

‘You couldn’t see me?’ I asked.

‘No, just the boat. I lay next to Colin but I don’t think he saw me. He was sleeping. He looked thin and hairy. So I whispered and he moved a bit. I said, “No, don’t wake up. Stay asleep.” And then I said, “Dream about nice things and you won’t be sad. But it’s okay to be sad cos that’s part of being brave. I just can’t remember the other part right now.” Then I looked around the boat. I wasn’t feeling all weird like when you made me sit near the changing rooms. I was totally strong. Stronger than they are. But there weren’t fourteen – someone was missing.’