The Comet Seekers: A Novel (6 page)

Not yet, I’m not ready yet, her granny says, calming down. I haven’t shown you what I brought you here to see. It’s important.

You have to be more careful, Severine says. Try to concentrate on the people who are really here.

Do I embarrass you, just like I embarrass your mother?

I think we’ve both embarrassed my mother, Severine says.

Her granny chuckles.

Well, that’s true, God knows.

What are you going to call him? her granny wants to know.

Severine sighs; she doesn’t want to have this conversation yet.

It’s not me that wants to know, you know.

She raises her eyebrows.

Your great-grandpa Paul-François has been asking.

Severine smiles.

I bet he has.

She tilts her head to one side, nods a few times, then holds her granny’s stare. You know, Great-Grandpa Paul-François is very keen for you to have a sit-down.

Mais non. What he actually said was that I should hurry up and show you what I brought you here to see. And he’s quite right, too.

Is it the Halley’s comet border? Because I saw that when I was a girl.

No, no, not that old thing. There’s something much more important for you to see. Now, let me think.

When, at last, the ghosts quieten down enough for her granny to find the panel she needs, she doesn’t even look – she points from halfway across the room and says: There. Go. Look. See for yourself.

Severine does as she is asked, leaving her granny behind. She goes to look, and she looks carefully, and she looks for a long time.

Two red pillars are spiralled with gold. At their tops, two dragon heads breathe tongues of fire. Between the pillars a woman stands; she is wearing a long robe of gold with a red scarf covering her head and neck. A cleric stands to her side, beyond the pillars, and he is reaching out; touching her face, no, perhaps striking her. Below them is a naked man, a dagger, a winged monster fleeing to the right. Above them, the words:
Ubi unus clericus et Ælfgyva
. She doesn’t know what it means.

Severine can see the texture of the cloth, stains that take it in patches from beige to brown, each thread of colour, the wonky lines of the pillar’s spirals, the shading on the cleric’s cloak. His fingers look long; his thumb is pointed where it reaches her face. The top of his head is bald.

What does it mean? Granny?

She turns around.

And then there is a rush of people trying to help – tourists, schoolchildren, the security guard who sits by the door and hands out the laminated information cards. So many people that Severine doesn’t even move, she just watches while all these eager hands help her granny, check her pulse, feel for her breath, and finally go running to the phone for an ambulance.

HE WAITS FOR HER BY
the closed brown gate, like he always does at lunchtime. They squeeze through the broken slats in the fence, her first, then him. The rain is floating instead of falling; Liam likes the way it lingers in the air; Róisín would prefer it to fall, like pumice instead of ash.

Shall we go to our island?

She nods.

Róisín knows it’s going to be difficult to tell him the truth. She’s been putting it off for a while now. Maybe another day won’t hurt.

The stream is low. They could have waded across in bare feet, but instead they balance on the fallen tree trunk like tightrope walkers, unobserved.

They made the hut when they were still children; neither of them wants to mention how it’s too small now. They crawl inside and sit on the old sleeping bags they zipped together to make a padded floor mat. They end up with their feet sticking out of the entrance – they never got round to making a door, so it’s always been three-walled, with some rocks in the front. When all the wooden walls are gone, rotted away to more earth and soil and mud, the rocks will still be there, outlining a door-shaped gap on the ground –
Look, you can see the remnants of the front wall, and here: this must have been where the door was. Can you imagine what it would have looked like? Can you imagine the people who lived here, all those hundreds of years ago?

Róisín feels sorry for the archaeologists of the future who will get their hut so very wrong. Sorry, and also glad. It’s only fair.

He unbuttons her shirt slowly while she talks about Rome – she’s studying ancient history as well as science; the teacher calls her a contradiction – he kisses the nape of her neck, touches her right dimple when she smiles. Her woollen tights are navy blue today, like her skirt, which unbuttons at her waist and then has to be unwrapped from side to side. She rolls over along the ground and he gently pulls the fabric until she reaches the end of the sleeping bag; still lying on part of the pleated skirt she rolls back over towards him. This is what they do – roll away and roll back again, meet in the middle of their secret childhood hut with their clothes half off and their hands damp from the stream’s spray. His hand rests on her hip; hers on his shoulder.

You have stubble today, she says, her cheek brushing his chin.

He pulls her closer; the sleeping bag scrunches up underneath them until they are lying on an island within an island.

Theirs is not an urgent love; it is undoubted, whispered rather than shouted.

Stay there, she says. Stay inside me.

She kisses him, fleetingly, inhales the warm air next to his neck.

Liam rummages in his rucksack, his bare back white, patterned with criss-crossed lines from lying on the ground.

Look; no, wait. You’ll never guess. He throws her a smile over his shoulder. OK, look.

He has brought binoculars with him; he’s holding them out towards her, like a gift.

Do you know what day it is today?

She does know, but she doesn’t want to spoil his moment – she feels guilty enough already.

Today is the day that Halley’s comet will be at its brightest in the sky.

She smiles. However much he grows up, he will always be younger than her.

So I thought, you know, we could look for it.

We can try, she says, but it might be better to wait till later.

He looks disappointed, but it’s too faint to be seen during the daytime; she knows it’ll be masked by the sun. It is the dimmest appearance of Halley’s comet for centuries. It’s usually so bright – it’s one of the Great Comets, one of the greatest – but this year it will be invisible to the naked eye. If you don’t make a special effort to look for it though telescopes or binoculars, you would never even know it was there. It’s keeping its distance; losing interest in the Earth.

Later then? Will you come to the farm?

OK.

There is a change now; a restlessness in the hut that he doesn’t want. Róisín’s getting dressed.

Where are you going?

I have to get back to school. We can’t lie here all day.

Róisín gets back to the school gate on her own.

She slips through the broken slats of the fence and into the science block before the bell goes.

She stays after class to tell her science teacher about her acceptance to Imperial College, London. He was the one who recommended she apply there; without that push, she might have stayed in Ireland, continued orbiting her home on the same path. She’s grateful.

You’ll love London, he says. It’s a bigger world, so it is.

His arms are wide, palms open, like even he can’t grasp how big it is; bits of London leak out from between his splayed fingers and dance on the lab bench.

And he’s right, that is exactly what she wants – the promise of a bigger world, a cosmos, an expanding universe. She’s too tall to lie in an island hut forever. She knows it.

As she leaves the room, she blinks, brushes impatiently at her eyes.

Liam lies in the hut for the rest of the day.

The smell is of damp wood, the rush of fresh water over moss, cloud cover, familiarity, longing, loss.

DID YOU SEE, SEVERINE?

Her granny is in a hospital bed; her words are slurred.

I’ve been with you all day, Granny.

But the tapestry?

They say you’ve had a stroke.

Well, I’m not surprised, with all these people fussing around me.

The room is empty.

But did you see Ælfgifu? She was very anxious that you see her.

Severine’s mother arrives with sachets of fruit teas and flowers and slippers – her granny’s slippers – and says: You’re awake?

Well, of course I’m awake.

Severine puts her arm around her mama’s shoulders. She knows that it is hard, not getting on well with your mother.

We’re worried about her mind, the doctor says; she seems to be seeing things.

She’s always done that, from time to time, Severine says.

Has she had a stroke in the past?

Her granny’s voice rises in the room behind the closed door – I’m waiting to get her alone, you impatient old man, honestly . . .

Her mother follows the doctor down the corridor. Severine squeezes her hand before she leaves.

It’s OK, her mama says, you go and talk with her. You’re the one she wants to see.

Severine wants to tell her mother she loves her, but doesn’t know how.

It smells in here.

Yes, Granny, it does.

Her granny is propped up with pillows now, and her eyes dart around the room.

Who’s here? Severine asks, but she’s ashamed of the question – she should be saying rest, your mind is broken, there are no ghosts here; if you pretend to be normal you might be able to come home.

She listens to the familiar roll call of ghosts like she did when she was a child; grandparents and great-grandparents and child-uncles and soldier boys, Brigitte who built their house and hangs around at the back, almost out of sight, so her granny says; and then there is Ælfgifu.

You think she’s our ancestor?

Severine’s not daft; she knows where this has been leading.

Her granny’s eyes close over and she slips down her pillows. An alarm begins to sound.

She wakes again in the night. Severine’s mama has gone home to get some sleep; they’re alone in the room.

What will you call him? her granny says, struggling to touch the round bump of Severine’s belly.

I don’t know yet, Severine replies, there’s a chance he might be a girl.

Her granny chuckles. You’ll know soon enough now.

What do you want me to call him?

Severine is conscious of a tone in her voice that she doesn’t usually use with her granny; she is talking gently.

François, her granny says. After your great-grandpa Paul-François, of course.

Her granny looks over to the door, shakes her head sadly, holds up her hand as if asking someone to be quiet.

But don’t make him stay here, she says, pulling Severine closer. Tell him to travel the world. We have so many ghosts in this family already.

Severine looks around the hospital room; thinks about saying that there are no ghosts, that there never were any ghosts. That there is no such thing as ghosts.

But instead she takes her granny’s hand and says, OK, he’ll travel the world; we’ll travel the world together. There are things that I want to see with my own eyes, you know, and I intend to see them all. I’m not going to work in our épicerie forever.

That’s good, her granny says, hurriedly now. Perhaps you should go too. You should go now, though. Before—

I’m not leaving now, Granny! Why would you think . . .?

You don’t have to stay with me.

Severine wants to hold her granny tight, but she’s so frail she’s afraid she’ll hurt her and the expression on her face now – she looks paler, she looks like she’s giving up.

It’s OK, Granny, she says, tears filling her eyes. Stay with me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to leave you. Please, I can’t do any of this without you.

Her granny’s eyes close, and Severine starts to panic.

I’m right here, she says, holding tight onto her granny’s hand, everything’s going to be OK.

Do you want to see me again?

It’s such a faint whisper, Severine doubts she heard the words right.

What?

Her granny’s eyes open, her expression now different to any she’s seen before.

Do you want to see me again?