The Comet Seekers: A Novel (21 page)

Did I forget something? she asks.

Keira looks confused, then smiles. Would you like to get a cup of coffee?

Coffee?

Yeah, you know . . . She tilts her hand to her mouth as if drinking from a cup, and laughs at Róisín’s expression.

And Róisín laughs too.

Sure, sorry, coffee. Yes. Thanks. That sounds grand.

Tell me about your work, Keira says, her eyes lighting up. Róisín had forgotten that about her – she was always asking questions at school, always seemed like she wanted to be there, to know more.

At first, I was studying binary stars.

Keira nods, encouraging her to continue.

Our sun is on its own, but a lot of stars come in pairs, and orbit each other.

Do they ever crash together?

Not exactly, though there can be a transfer of . . . Sometimes material from one of the stars gets sucked into its partner, so one gets bigger and bigger and one smaller and smaller. And
it’s useful – it tells us things about them. What I was looking for were systems where one of the stars – the one that had been growing – got so big it collapsed into itself and became a black hole.

So you can see them, black holes?

Indirectly. The orbiting star – the one that was shrinking – gives off a particular type of radiation.

Keira’s grinning. Sure I’d love to see a black hole, she says. Imagine it! And her hands are wide open as if trying to hold empty space between her palms. I wish . . .

Róisín likes her; she had forgotten that she’d always liked her. It feels good to talk about things without feeling like there’s hidden meaning attached.

Tell me about the bakery. The cakes are grand . . .

We’re doing well, she says. Business is good in the summer – you’ve seen the new B&B?

Funny to think of tourists coming here.

Keira nods. Funny to think of you coming back. I’m not sure I would, if I could be on a mountain top looking through a telescope at a black hole.

And although Róisín never looked through a telescope on a mountain top, or saw a black hole – not in the way Keira describes it – the image of herself living that life is so comforting that for a moment she can’t find the words to reply.

Liam refixes the fence that always blows down, shares out the cattle feed, drives to the market and back again, and can’t shake the worry from his mind that perhaps Róisín doesn’t belong here after all. He could have lain in their hut all night; he doesn’t care about the cold or the rain, or what people might be saying. He had wanted to stay but Róisín – he recognised that impatience in her, and knows, too, that look she gets in her eyes when she’s describing
her work, her old work, the sky she still looks to when she thinks he’s not watching her.

When his dad died there was a moment, sitting by his bedside, when he thought about leaving. But as he reached forward and closed over his dad’s eyes he promised himself he would stay, because that’s what his father would have wanted – yes, he would stay and recreate their home. And he is trying, has been trying, to fix everything, to rebuild what was lost. With Róisín it had seemed possible, though what is possible and what is impossible seem blurred to him, sometimes: perceptions rather than facts. Besides, this was never Róisín’s farm to save.

Can a home be recreated from a distance?

He doesn’t know the answer, but he has started considering the question.

He leans against the shed and asks himself what he is doing here.

You’re running my farm, his dad says.

My farm now, he replies.

Your farm, so it is.

And Liam turns and half expects to see his dad beside him, that weary look in his eyes; stubborn, too. But there is no one beside him. There is no one left who needs him to stay.

Halfway back to the farm Róisín stops in the middle of the field and knows she has to turn round again.

She doesn’t care, she realises, what people might think about her, because the truth of it is that people probably don’t think about her that much at all. She doesn’t care if there’s gossip in the village; she has been worrying about the wrong thing, when there was something far more important to worry about.

She’d forgotten, too, what it was like to have a sense of purpose, but she has one now. She strides back through the village and
beyond the green towards her mum’s house. It is time to face this, while the leaves are still golden and before the snow sets in.

Her mum’s home is so warm; that is the first thing she notices. It is comfortable too. Welcoming, full of family. As soon as she steps in the door she wishes she had done so sooner.

Neil lets her in, holds her in a hug while Adele rushes down the stairs.

How good to see you, she says. Her voice sounds as though Róisín has been living on the other side of the world, not the other side of the village.

You too, Mum.

And all of a sudden she is choked up, almost ready to cry. How absurd, she thinks, as she blinks the tears away.

We’ve been watching the comet, smiles Neil, with the binoculars you got us. Conall’s enjoying it, I think. Aren’t you, Conall?

They are outside in the garden, the whole family together, sitting on her mum’s new patio chairs, surrounded by late-flowering plants and late-evening sunshine.

It’s quite something, to see it there every night, he continues. It’s strange to think it will be gone soon.

Róisín nods. Might be a decade before the next one, she says. It’s been a busy few years, for comets.

Why is that?

She shrugs. Sometimes these things just happen, she says.

Her mum brings out tea and cake, sits beside Róisín and chooses her words carefully.

Do you miss studying the sky? she asks.

And Róisín is stunned by how simply the question can be put, and by how obvious – how undeniable – her answer is.

Two hours later, and Adele is glad she didn’t say anything more – there was no need. She holds her daughter tight, through her sobs; she tells her that it is OK, that it will be OK. She tells her to study the sky, and to travel the world, and to live her life the way she wants to. She tells her not to feel guilty, because it is no one’s fault, and that she tried. She tells her that she loves her.

Róisín spends the night looking through her telescope, searching for the comet that is now obscured behind layers of cloud and mist.

Liam comes in to see her once, twice, but he doesn’t stay and he doesn’t return after that. He knows that he is not what she’s looking for tonight. He falls asleep while the sky is still dark, hopes he will wake with her beside him in the morning.

But as the dawn breaks, Róisín knows she has made her decision, and now it is tears rather than the mist outside that obscures her view of the last of the stars. She packs up her telescope, carefully dismantling each component and wrapping them safely before placing them back in the box.

OK, Liam says. This is not like when they were children.

And she looks at him in surprise. Was he expecting her to leave? Does he want this, too?

OK, he says. You have to do what you have to do. I understand. So I’ll come with you.

Róisín lets his words sink in. His expression is soft but not excited, and she knows that he doesn’t want to travel or to explore, not the way she does. She doesn’t want to have pushed him to make this offer that won’t make either of them happy. It feels wrong. She shakes her head.

I can’t sell the farm, he says, still talking, I can’t lose it altogether. But maybe someone will rent it. Or I can bring in management.

And she is ashamed of how little she has told him of herself, how much she has hidden of her present while they tried to relive the past.

You don’t understand, she tries.

I know you came back here to help, he says. After Dad . . . And it was so kind, he says.

No—

But now it’s my turn, to do what you need.

Liam—

You’re not happy here.

As he says the words out loud, for the first time, their full meaning hits him and he feels his hand begin to shake. If he hadn’t said it, she would have had to.

You just need distance from where you grew up, he says.

No, she says, her eyes already stinging at the cruelty of what she’s going to have to say. It’s more than that. I need distance . . . to be on my own.

He doesn’t understand; that is the opposite of what he needs.

I want to travel and to change, she says, and to know different people and become a different version of myself.

But you are still Róisín.

I’m so sorry, Liam, she says. I don’t think you should come with me.

He stares at her in disbelief.

You won’t enjoy it . . .

And she can’t bring herself to say what she knows; it is something that she will never say out loud: that she wants to spend her life with people who are driven to explore the world, not those who are willing to follow.

He says that he doesn’t understand, that he’s sorry he didn’t offer to leave sooner; he lies and tells her that he wants to see the world
too – they can see the world together. He shakes his head as she describes all the ways that they are different, revisits conversations they had that were one-sided, different views of the world that didn’t match up, until eventually he stops because her mind is made up and he knows her well enough to know that it can’t be changed.

Where will you go? he says.

But she doesn’t know the answer yet. Not back to Bayeux, although she would like to – she was only halfway through her post, there was so much more to learn there, to see – but she’s too embarrassed to go back. She’s going to her mum’s for a while, to apply for jobs and see what opportunities come her way. So instead she tells him some of the cities she’s always wanted to go to – Tokyo, maybe, she says. Or New York, I’ve always wanted to go to New York. I want to be surrounded by people, lights – her hands wide as if trying to hold all that life between her palms, before she realises how thoughtless it is to be talking like this, when he has such loss in his eyes. She looks down to the ground.

He wants to tell her that she knows nothing of isolation, has no idea what it’s like to have no family left, but he doesn’t say that out loud. He wants to tell her about all the things he has been trying to fix, all the things she hasn’t even noticed, how he was the one who rebuilt their hut year after year, like a promise – but this time she is making no promise to return.

You’ll be OK, she says later, standing by the door with her bags packed. She means it as a question but Liam doesn’t reply, he doesn’t say a word. She wants to say that she’s sorry, but she doesn’t really think those words would help, not now. So she turns and walks away, and doesn’t look back.

1456

Halley’s Comet

They thought Brigitte was mad, when she built her house brick by brick with her own hands. When she refused to marry, denied all the men in the town, was once seen chasing a soldier out of her door with the point of a blade. She would stand on the roof, they said, like a witch, arms raised to the sky and her wild hair – like she was possessed, they said, just like her mother. But that was not until later. First they shut their doors to her and kept their menfolk away from her and watched, and envied, and waited to see what wild Brigitte would do with the stones as she laid the foundations for a home that would be hers and only hers.

Brigitte told the story to her son on the first night he was born, rocking him back and forth in her arms by the window overlooking the spire of the cathedral. Her home, the home she
had built, stood on the edge of Bayeux. From the front of the house you could see the town, the waterways glistening in the summer light, her mother’s house, but in the other directions – nothing. No more houses or streets or marketplaces, just the wild roll of the countryside out towards the sea. Do you see what I built? she whispers to her son, turning from the front window and carrying him to the back of the house. I can be a part of the town or a part of the world – and as she looks out towards the steeper hills and prickle of bracken, the clouds rolling in on a restless breeze, she knows which direction she feels pulled in today.

When the baby is sleeping she lays him down in the bed, covers him with her blanket, and closes the door so she can make her way to the roof. Before the baby was born she did this every night, watching the sky, watching the people stare and point, then laughing from over their heads to see them scatter in fright. She can’t cower at home, she can’t stop being Brigitte. She climbs the stairs to the flat roof and walks, unafraid, to the edge, looking out over the town that is shaded in the purple silk of sunset. A strange peace, she thinks to herself, after most of her life has been spent during war, when the sight of soldiers in the streets, newly arrived or blood-soaked and carrying the dead, was more common than children playing. But she has her home.

She hasn’t taken the baby to the church yet. She thinks perhaps she never will; why should she follow their rules and agree to her son’s name being written in their book, like a forced confession of how this child came about? No, she doesn’t need to tell them anything; doesn’t need to give a father’s name or pledge a baby’s allegiance to a religion she doesn’t believe in. She will name her son tonight. That is all that matters.

There is a strange star in the sky. It reminds her of something she saw a long time ago, when she was still a child, when she
began to notice how people crossed the street when they saw her mother walking towards them. Even as a young girl she knew the whispers were directed at her family. She didn’t cower then either, she stood taller and stared at them over the street, giving her mother all the time she wanted to talk to the dead. Not like her aunt, with her pretty twins, who told her mother to hide, to keep it a secret. Brigitte would not hide, nor ask her mother to do so. It was something to be proud of, not feared; that’s how she saw it, even pretending, sometimes, when she was young, to hear them too – especially when the other children refused to talk to her.

The flash of red catches her by surprise and she turns, ready to curse whomever it is that’s dared follow her up onto the roof. The woman’s face makes her breath catch, though, and her words are spoken in a tongue she barely understands.