The Half Life of Stars (26 page)

A year and some months on

‘Come on Julian, let’s find your coat. Kay, is he going to need his coat?’

‘It’s winter there. Pack it, he’ll need it.’

‘You won’t come back speaking like an Aussie will you, Jools? Grandma will still be able to understand you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t change?’

‘I won’t change.’

‘You’ll still be you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How will I know?’

He screws up his face.

‘Don’t be silly, Grandma. Me’s
me
.’

‘You’re confusing him.’

‘I wasn’t trying to.’

‘Well, I didn’t say that…but you are.’

We are a family subtly shifted; uniquely altered and changed. If you’re careful, if you’re gracious, if you don’t dig about too hard, you’d probably find us much the same. But underneath the surface, deep below the skin, our atoms have fractured and realigned. The patterns we’ve spent a lifetime sewing into place have slowly begun to unravel. We don’t refract the light in quite the same way that we did, our centre of gravity has shifted. Where did they go to, those people we were last year? Try as I might, I can’t keep hold of us.

‘You’ll be with your Daddy at Christmas. Are you looking forward to seeing your Daddy?’

‘Yes, because Daddy lives at Disney World.’

‘You spoke to him at the weekend, didn’t you. Weren’t you a clever boy on the phone?’

My mother has her fingers on her grandson’s cheeks: squeezing them, pinching them too tight. He squirms, he doesn’t like it. He can’t understand she’s already missing him.

‘Will you miss your Grandma?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you call her?’

‘Mummy, will we call Grandma?’

‘You should visit us,’ Kay says. ‘Why don’t you visit? Robert, you must try and make her come out.’

Robert promises to work on her, but all of us suspect she’ll never make it. The Australian outback, this is where they’re headed; a sheep station in the depths of New South Wales owned by Kay’s uncle and aunt. The divorce came through a couple of weeks ago and Kay decided she needed to take some time out. She deserves a break and a chance to refuel, six months away from the grind.

‘I won’t need these shoes. Sylvie, you’re the same size as me. Do you want to take these shoes?’

‘They’re beautiful, they must have cost a fortune.’

‘Take them…really. I don’t want them. There’s more in the trunk, take the whole box if you like.’

Kay on a farm, I can’t imagine it. But look at her now, look at the way she’s loosened up.

‘Jools,
puppy
, come on now. Put your trousers back on.’

‘Don’t want to.’

‘I know you don’t want to, but we can’t always do what we want.’

‘Leave him, Kay, he’s all right. It’s hot in here, he’s probably hot.’

She ruffles his hair. She leaves him be.

There’s so much to clear out when you sell a house like this
and move on. Most of it is going straight into storage but much of it will just be thrown away: papers and ornaments, pictures and baby clothes, textbooks and records and tapes; fragments of a marriage snapped in half.

‘Do you want to take his telescope?’

‘If that’s OK?’

‘I’m sure he’d like you to have it.’

‘I’ll take care of it, for when he comes back.’

I don’t know why I said that, she hates it when I say that, but I’m certain he’ll settle back in London some day. He’s running in another of his marathons this week. He’s competed in half a dozen since he left; always in the top fifty finishers, always in under three hours. He runs them for charity, Amnesty or Oxfam, and once or twice for the British Heart Foundation.

Daniel’s travelled a lot since the breakdown. Is that what you’d call it, a breakdown? Anyway, he’s been all over the world: Asia, India, South America, Alaska, Japan. He thinks he might settle down in Florida for a while now to study for a degree in astronomy but I’m not convinced that he’ll do it. I’m not sure he’s really all that happy. I know he misses Julian like crazy, and it will take him a while yet to admit it, but there are other parts of his old life he misses too. Last month one of his running mates dragged him off to Nevada for the Burning Man festival in the desert, some kind of annual new age retreat. He called me the second he got back.

‘What was it like?’

‘Ridiculous, full of hippies. You have to barter for food, there’s nothing to buy. Everyone coats themselves in wild-coloured body paint, takes drugs and dances all night.’

‘Right, and that was…?’

‘I don’t know, Claire it was OK…an experience, you know. I mean, it’s supposed to be a place where everyone can be themselves. But, fuck it…it wasn’t really me.’

So he’s getting to know what he is now. He’s getting to know where he stands. The last time we spoke he confessed he missed practising law, that he was good at it, better than he thought.
The marathons are wearing away the cartilage in his knees and he’s not sure he can face going back to university at his age. There’s a piece of him that liked the big house he had in London: the status, the cars, the security. Perhaps he chose more of it than he realised. And maybe Dad was right after all; you can’t make a living from running.

‘Some of these things should go to a charity shop. Daniel’s suits. Kay, you
can’t
throw away Daniel’s suits.’

‘I haven’t got time. I think we’ll just have to dump them.’

‘I’ll do it, I’ll take them next week.’

My mother’s face tightens.

‘No…Claire, you’ll forget. Sylvie, will you take these things for Kay?’

Sylvie knows better than to answer a question like that these days. Gabriel squeezes her hand.

‘Mum, I won’t forget, I’ll take care of it.’

She takes a moment.

‘You’ll remember to wrap them up in cellophane?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’ll get moths in them otherwise. They’re wool, you ought to remember to use moth balls.’

‘I said I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of it.’

‘Well, I suppose…if you’re sure?’

Mum lifts a glass of juice to her lips–orange, or mango, I can’t tell which. She doesn’t drink alcohol at all any more, she’s a recent disciple of AA. She spent so many years being absent from herself but when Daniel left, it forced her to be present. So we shifted. So we turned. So she drew the rest of us towards her. We’re still drifting, still separate, still speaking in code–but we’re progressing. Occasionally, we even speak the same language.

‘I was angry with you,’ she said to me last year.

‘I know you were.’

‘For not realising. For not being there. Your father was…it was always…hard for me.’

‘You could have told me…you could have said something.’

But she couldn’t, of course. She really couldn’t.

‘I was protecting you. I didn’t mean to punish…to
confuse
you.’

‘I would have helped.’

‘Sweetheart, I know that you would.’

‘I think we should all drink a toast.’

‘Christ…must I have orange juice again? Robert, I’m so sick of orange juice.’

‘Elderflower cordial?’

‘Disgusting…have you tried it? Sylvie, don’t make me have it, it’s revolting.’

Sylvie hands the champagne bottle to Gabe and he twists off the cork with a flourish. Still strong, still stupidly handsome, and newly engaged to my sister.

‘To the wedding, next year. Let’s hope we can all be…’My sister falters, she trails off.

‘To the wedding.’

‘And to Sylvie. Her results.’

Sylvie passed the first stage of her medical exams this month and I’ve never seen her look quite so happy. She’s fulfilled her own destiny. She finally has a purpose. She’s becoming the person everyone always said she was; she’s the girl who makes people feel better. We met Gabe’s family last week at her graduation, his father baked a beautiful cake. You should have seen his mother, his two sisters. They’re stunning, outrageous, they almost make Sylvie seem plain. Gabe’s a boy grown immune to the value of beauty, that’s part of why she loves him so much. I wonder if she’s still doing phone sex? In secret, on Thursdays, when Gabriel works late nights at the bakery. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about her. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

‘So, Claire. How’s it going with the meteorologist?’

‘He…yeah, it’s OK.’

‘Meteorologist? I didn’t know there was a meteorologist.’

‘He’s someone I met in Florida. We’ve been writing to each other. He’s over here on sabbatical.’

‘She likes him.’

‘Sylvie.’

‘OK, OK…I’m just saying.’

‘So, tell me about him. What’s he like?’

We laugh a lot. He makes me laugh. He’s layered, soulful and generous, and beguilingly difficult to read. He’s wild like Michael, kind like Huey. He is the man that I might almost love.

‘Come on, don’t be so secretive. Tell me, what is he
like
?’

‘It’s early days, Mum. It’s early days.’

‘Shit…it’s late. I ought to get going.’

‘You’re going to the restaurant,
now
?’

‘I have to, Robert, it’s a busy night.’

‘That place…it’s always so busy.’

‘She’s turned that place around. New staff, new look. That place has turned around since she bought the lease.’

It seemed like a good thing to do. A good way to use Michael’s money.

‘He paid her back extra, with interest. About time he did. The little sod.’

‘Did you see his new album in the shops?’

‘Yeah, I did. I saw it.’

‘It had a snake on the front cover. Why a snake?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t the foggiest idea.’

Gabriel hands out the glasses, refilled and fizzing. Overflowing.

‘Another toast,’ he says, proudly.

‘Another toast.’

‘To family,’ he says.

‘To family.’

We embrace and clink our glasses together. It took an outsider to say it.

Yori waves from the corner of the restaurant.

‘OK, partner?’

‘Yeah, partner. I’m good.’

She’s deep in conversation with someone, the first hungry customer of the day. I have some papers to look through so I head for the office, next to the old TV set. A video is playing but, with the door left ajar, I can still hear most of what they’re saying.

‘Why do you ask me this question? I say to you already, is bad idea. A difficult journey. So hard for a person to come back.

‘Yes, I understand, you unhappy. Yes, so you say, nasty wife. But I’m certain in my bones that it wouldn’t suit you.

‘Is it real…yes, of course it is real. Is not just a TV show, let me tell you. This Yonigeya, it really exist.

‘In Tokyo mostly. Maybe all over Japan. People fed up with suicide. Very high suicide rate in Japan. Now some people think is maybe better to disappear. But like I say, like I
said
…I’m not sure it really is so easy.

‘Why not? Pah…you have no imagination. Perhaps this why your wife decide to leave you.

‘OK, OK. So sorry. She left you for ski instructor. I remember. But think for a moment. Open your heart. Imagine what it is that you plan to do. How empty it would make a man feel. To dispose of everything he is. How rotten and bruised like soft autumnal fruit dropped prematurely from the tree. Everything
he has become, discarded like a bowl of dirty rice water. If a person is to leave on such a journey he must die a little inside. He must walk along riverbank and look into water and be content to see no reflection.

‘You don’t think it is so difficult? You don’t think really
is
so sad? Pay attention, stupid man, I’m telling you. Don’t underestimate your life. All your short time on this earth–good or bad, sad or happy–whatever it is, have special value. All you are now depend on every piece that went before you. What a dense and fabulous web a man weaves; how beautiful, how complex is his life. All mistakes are like scars. Tough. Thick. Make web even stronger than before. Every time he take turn in wrong direction just make the web even bigger.

‘No my friend, spider’s web not ugly. You are wrong, you don’t look at it right. Get up to it close, with your nose and your eyes: see how ingenious it is. And every time it breaks, in the wind, in the storm, every time it is torn by some rude insect–the spider makes it over again. Mending it. Always trying to mend it. Maybe is only perfect for a second. Maybe only complete for one short hour. But happiness is like that. It breaks. It splits. You mend it. It breaks all over again. It comes in short bursts. Only moments.

‘Yes. Yes. I see how you feel. You mend your web so many times, you prefer to start again and throw away. But you
must
understand, it is very drastic action. To wrap old life up in a suitcase and to never open suitcase again. To leave all you love, your home and your family, to put all you are in the bin.

‘Yes, I promise you. This type of action only for exceptional people. Only for people in special trouble. I hear about one lovely couple who do this and succeed. You want that I tell you about them?

‘OK, so these two special characters they are deeply in love but in their hearts they are sad. This poor bald man–talented actor so they say–is sucked dry like prune and unfulfilled. His career, through circumstances unforeseen, lie in ruins. The woman can’t make this man happy so she feel ugly sometimes,
and often afraid that he might leave her. This gentle man is the whole world to her. He is her family.

‘One day they involve themselves in incredible escapade. They kidnap very famous person. Person knows who they are and sees their face. They are very much in trouble, is no way they can go back to their old lives.

‘Lucky for them, they have one special friend who comes to rescue. Loyal friend who is there at
precise
moment when they need her, most capable and reliable person. This is her first ever job of this kind, but she pulls it off with big style. She sends them away on a…how do you say it?

‘Yes, how do you guess? She smuggle them away on board a ship. She put them in contact with lovely woman that she knows in England, very beautiful and talented chef. Talented chef helps them with next part of their journey. Give them brand new life, new identity.

‘Where they end up? Me, I don’t know. Some say Australia, some say Atlanta, some clever person says Peru. Very interesting film industry in Peru, so they say. Very fine actors. Up and coming. For this man is nourishment for his soul just to act in small production in small theatre, he doesn’t care for fame or for money. And his wife…

‘Yes, that’s right. Didn’t I tell you? These two, they get marry. I hear they have child now. She has one little girl and I see in the pictures…I mean, I
hear
from some people, that she gets a little fat. Some people say she runs a karaoke bar. Some say she runs a special restaurant a little like this one. The best in whole town. Peruvians love it, she make pancake. The best pancake you ever tasted in your life. This woman very famous for her pancake. Her husband most admired for his astonishing acting. Everyone who come to see him at the theatre leave in tears; especially one extra special Peruvian film star. Maybe they plan to work together one day. This man also admired for his thick head of hair. Plugs very cheap in Peru.

‘Are they happy? Yes. This is what I hear. Both are especially happy. And all arranged for them by one very special girl. Speak
many languages, seven I think, and have the best contacts for escaping. Most intriguing and talented lady. These days, so they tell me, she is one of the finest fly-by-night arrangers in all the world. Very fine instincts, a true escape artist. Can get to heart of problem just like that. For a long time this lady believed her instincts were poor, for a long time she believed she was most unreliable person. In the house where she grew up the walls were funny shape, for a long time she can’t get her bearings. But this girl is sharp, let me tell you. No one read a situation better than her. No one give better solution to a problem. No one give better service than she.

‘Ah, Cherries Lady, there you are. This man, so insistent. I try to shake him off, but he has one question for you.’

He asks me. I listen. I answer.

‘No,’ I say, gently. ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. There are no Yonigeya in London.’