The Extinction of Snow Read online

  Frederick Lightfoot has had five previous novels published including My name is E (Sandstone Press) and a collection of short stories Fetish and other stories. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Stand, Northwords, Oasis and most recently Tears in the Fence. He is a previous winner of the Skrev Press short story competition.

  A novelist of national importance.

  Egremont Today, reviewing My Name is E

  A writer who proves to be just as gifted as an observer of human behaviour as he is a story teller. Congratulations are more than due to Mr Lightfoot.

  Joao Henriques, Chapman

  Lightfoot succeeds in producing prose that is innovative, striking and compelling. Authors like Lightfoot restore my hope in the future of prose.

  Emily Mahen, The Journal

  Beautifully constructed and thought provoking.

  Steve Spence, Tremblestone

  Passion, politics and intrigue reminiscent of Marques.

  Dawn Bruin, Evening News

  Frederick Lightfoot is an exceptional prose writer.

  Ian Robinson, Oasis

  Frederick Lightfoot writes with the confidence of a modern European, a true international.

  John Murray, author of

  The Legend of Liz and Joe, Jazz, etc

  By the same author

  Migrants

  Immigrants

  Cry/Swans (single volume)

  Fetish and Other Stories

  Estuaries

  My Name is E

  THE EXTINCTION OF SNOW

  FREDERICK LIGHTFOOT

  First published in Great Britain

  and the USA in 2014 by

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  PO Box 5725

  One High Street

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9WJ

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  © Frederick Lightfoot 2014

  Editor: Moira Forsyth

  The moral right of Frederick Lightfoot to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  The publisher acknowledges support from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-908737-53-3

  ISBNe: 978-1-908737-54-0

  Cover design by Mark Blackadder, Edinburgh

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore

  For Denise with love

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter One

  I am sacred, comfot me.

  A simple typing error transforms scared into sacred. A simple typing error means that I shall never know whether he was saying comfort me, lavish on me the boundless pit of your motherly love, or come for me, come and save me in your practical mother way from the mess in which I’ve found myself.

  Was it fear or was it simply laziness that led to such a message? Was he so nervous at that point that his mind and eye were no longer in tune? That is something I should consider. I have made endless pronouncements on the nature and relationship of eye and mind. They haunt me now. Or was it simply the laxity of his generation, a generation that abbreviates and condenses, dispenses with vowels, getting rid of anything superfluous.

  I’ve printed the message, of course. I couldn’t trust it to the computer, couldn’t believe that such a life changing collection of words would be safe inside a machine. Are they actually inside it or do they exist in some other reality, waiting to be drawn down? I betray my predilections rather than my age, the artist, techno-sceptic. I grew up when computers the size of entire rooms, large rooms at that, were displayed on science programmes and the prediction was made that within a lifetime we would all be using them, at work, in the home, wherever mankind did business. I probably scoffed, dismissing such a vision as science fiction and fantasy. How I wish that were true, in my heart condemning the messenger, bringing a stale classicism to the tragedy. I would like to escape such banal educated associations but it’s impossible. With hard-copy in my possession I read the message continuously, ritualistically, caught in its barbaric web.

  I am sacred, comfot me.

  I don’t feel I can shed any more light on the words, force them to yield their terrible meaning. I just have to read them, speak them aloud at intervals, memorializing the voice that typed them as if he were whispering them to me, consoling me, living in them for me, my paradoxical, elegiac son. Yes, he would leave such a statement. If it wasn’t for the fact of what was to follow I might have assumed it a joke, a piece of enigmatic fun. But that wasn’t to be the case.

  My son, Joseph, my amazing act of creation, Joseph, my beautiful man, was found dead by the roadside on the outskirts of a small French village. The police said his body had been run over a number of times, certainly three times – three separate collisions – but that it was an accident. There was evidence of alcohol and drugs in his body. The police are quite happy with an account of him falling over in some self-induced stupor and unobserved in the dark being hit by any number of motorists.

  The reality they depict isn’t true. It can’t be true. My son never touched drugs. Besides, if you hit someone it doesn’t escape you. I’ve known that for all of his life and longer, known it for more than his scant twenty-six years and I am no forensic scientist, though they would dismiss my knowledge on the grounds that I am a mother, which is apparently an entirely irrational condition.

  Chapter Two

  My sister Vivien has appeared as if she were a friend casually calling in for morning coffee. On the door-step she laughed when she saw my expression and told me not to worry, she hadn’t come to stay. She has persuaded Graham, her husband, to bring her to the sales, and they have booked into a hotel not far from Tottenham Court Road. She sits with coffee cup poised in her hands like a cup of divination preparing to lecture me, reprimand me, to tell it to me just how it is. The encounter fills me with dread. I freely admit that the estrangement was on my part. I was the one that left, insisted I had to leave, circumstances personal, and came to London and reinvented, reconstructed myself, Louise an artist – well art teacher, let’s not hide from any truth – later Louise Tennant, married to John, eleven years my senior, the man who looked after me, always looked after me, until now.

  Since Joseph’s funeral, since that harsh, interminable day, she has telephoned regularly, her voice large and boisterous on the line, checking up on me, she says, cajoling me, instructing me to get my life back together and move on, certain that an elder sister has such vulgar rights. She performs on the telephone as if we have been friends forever, which is a type of forgiveness, I suppose, though forgiveness is the last thing I want. When she first left college she worked as a student nurse for a while, before settling into management in a department store, and assumes the brief experience of some thirty years ago gives her unique insight into what I’m going through, unique
insight into any human drama. In darker moments I think I am a source of entertainment rather than sister love.

  “You look dreadful,” she says, caressing her mug. She is broad and well made without seeming overweight, dressed in a smart pink suit. I insist that I’m fine. “Are you sleeping?” she asks. I should just admit that I’m simply hung over from almost two bottles of wine. I tell myself that it’s almost two bottles, not entirely, as if the distinction holds out some hope for me. “How is John?” she asks. “Have you heard from him?”

  “Of course I’ve heard from him,” I say sharply.

  She gives a brief, sceptical frown and sips her coffee, her two hands covering the lower part of her face as if she is praying. She has quite a lovely face, round with baby smooth skin and piercing black eyes. She is subtle and managerial in her use of make-up. Soon she will start advising me. She is so used to telling people what to do it spills over into her non-work life. She has not come to be with me but manage me. Maybe I should resent that, but in reality I’m desperately grateful.

  “You look a bit of a mess this morning, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  Yes, I probably do mind. I don’t need to have it spelt out that the telltale evidence of dissipation is so obvious. I could see it myself in the mirror this morning. I will be fifty next birthday and this morning that was how I looked, a woman about to reach a half century. I don’t usually look my age. I still have an air of girlishness, too much so at times. People take it at face value, the smallness, the quiet, and talk down to it, to me. I still have the vestiges of a narrow, quite gamine, well-structured face, but this morning I was blear-eyed, my hair, which I have coloured a lovely sandy-gold, unruly and my lips were caked with last night’s wine, a purple crust. My tongue had the same purple shading. It took an age to scrub them clean, lips and tongue. The back of my tongue remains coated because I couldn’t reach it without gagging and retching. My eyes were marked with deep black circles, and spider-lines were apparent across my usually pale-grey skin, the way fine lines form across old porcelain.

  “No, I don’t mind,” I say and smile. “What are sisters for if not brutal truth? I’ve just had a bit of headache, that’s all, well thumping, in fact.”

  “Have you taken something?”

  “Of course, paracetamol first thing, before anything else.”

  “Well, you need to look after yourself.”

  “Doesn’t everyone.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I’m not actually sure that I do, but it will be a reference to some previous crisis, something I missed because I was in the middle of it, but Vivien will have viewed with interest and stored up for future reference. I reassure her that I’m fine. It is strange talk really, packed with lazy lies and easy concern. Maybe I’m just worn-out with being worn-out and I can’t detail it all again, or maybe I suspect that Vivien is less interested than she would want me to believe, and why should she. Mine is a tragic tale, beyond easy reassurance. Why would anyone want to take it on? I should be gentler to Vivien. At least she calls. But I sometimes feel it’s to prove to herself that she has no fear. I can imagine her telling Graham how she fearlessly asks for the low-down on dying.

  “Are you going back to work?” she asks, with a hint of mild surprise and disappointment in her voice, which I find difficult to comprehend. Does she want me to return, or would it suggest the drama, in which she has positioned herself as a key player, the rescuer, is maybe coming to an end, and that would be disappointing for her.

  I shake my head. “No, I’m not going back, not yet. I couldn’t face it.”

  “You should think about it. It’s been a while. It might help.”

  I want to snap at her, demanding to know in what way it might help, in what way exposing myself to design students would compensate for the loss of a child, my child. It’s not as if the department has secured my gratitude: one or two visits to begin with and then nothing. Nothing from colleagues I have worked with for years, some openly saying that they couldn’t cope. Couldn’t cope with what? I’m the grieving mother, the one banished into a place of no life at all. Well, to hell with them. I can’t play that game anymore.

  “I’ve discussed it with my counsellor and he thinks it premature.”

  “You’re still seeing him then?” she asks, a certain note of satisfaction entering her voice.

  “For a while longer I think.”

  “Why not?”

  Indeed, why not. It takes a certain amount of time and seems to suggest purpose, even if no purpose actually exists. I nod. “The University has been very good,” I say, “certainly financially, but I couldn’t take on the students at present. Maybe they’re too young and I’m too old.”

  “Nonsense, you look wonderful.”

  “You said I looked dreadful.”

  “Usually wonderful, wonderful more often than not. Oh come on, you know you do. You should get out, meet people, see friends.”

  “Move on.”

  “Yes, move on.”

  I half-smile. She is courageous, willing to say it, unlike friends who say nothing. The truth is I don’t have friendships anymore I form alliances. Friendships are too difficult. I think most of the friends I ever had have run a million miles. If I’m kind I think it’s because they really can’t tolerate my suffering, so have excused themselves. When I’m unkind, which is most of the time, I think they’re bastards. I need alliances though: the bereavement counsellor, the general practitioner, the support group – Phyllis, Susan, Rebecca, Rami. I am the youngest, by far the youngest, so they mother me, which I appreciate but resent. I want sister care, the way they have it. I don’t want to be the exception, the obvious oddity, but I am. They say I am young to be going through this. I find that a strange phrase. Going through suggests an end, a destination. The only end is death. I am not fit for friends, only a courageous elder sibling.

  “I don’t think I’d be much company for anyone, not yet. People shouldn’t have to put up with me.”

  “You should get out, meet someone. If John won’t come home, well hell, why not?”

  I can’t pretend that I’m not rather shocked by what Vivien has suggested.

  “John is working, a lecture tour of American universities. He couldn’t turn that down, the opportunity, the prestige, the money. It’s what he’s worked for. It was too difficult to come home just now, the Christmas break isn’t that long. He’ll be home for Easter.”

  “He can’t cope with you, can’t cope with your grieving, so he’s done what came natural and run away.”

  “He has not run away, don’t be ridiculous. He’s working.”

  “Who doesn’t come home for Christmas, for God’s sake, unless there’s something to keep them away?” She falls silent, the question poised recklessly, and then she speaks up, boisterous again: “I’m deadly serious, why not? If John sees fit to take off and leave you then what can he expect?”

  I should be outraged, defend John, knowing full well that Vivien never has approved, the age difference, the quiet intellectual, the dignity, but of course I’ve been adulterous before, so I can’t exhibit too much shock. There was Frank whom I was seeing when I met John and it was just something that carried on, accidentally, without meaning, certainly without meaning at that stage. With Mushin it was different. He was beautiful, his skin like clay, sun-dried and taut, hot to touch, braiding beneath the palm, his eyes nut-brown, distrustful and alert, yet glad to concede. I’d like to say it was a purely sexual encounter but that wouldn’t do it justice. He had witnessed so much, had a maturity that I couldn’t comprehend – he claimed that even children in the Lebanon were politically informed – and yet at the same time was childlike and naïve. He was only a matter of years older than Joseph. He would have made a fine artist, but it embarrassed him. He had to be an architect. It was a proper job. He was silly in so many ways. The memory makes me smile and I feel as guilty as hell over that. Did I love him? No, of course not. I only love John.

  I
can’t speak, can’t summons the energy needed, but I don’t want to break down. It’s an old, time-worn attitude of mine. I don’t break down with family, elder sister, I remain separate and aloof, but I feel all of my defences crumbling, collapsing under the assault of my brusque efficient senior.

  “I miss him,” I eventually mutter, “but he’ll be home for Easter.” I smile, a bluff, hopeless gesture. “I need him around the house.”

  I can’t manage as my own keeper, sole proprietor of a fine house in a home owner’s paradise. Today was rubbish day, first day after the Christmas holiday break. I scoured every room for any item of waste. When John is at home it’s his job. Naturally, it doesn’t do him justice to think of him in conjunction with rubbish sacks, but I can’t resist it. He takes care of things; that is what he does, the way things were. He took care of me. I wanted to be taken care of, which makes me sound as if I were a problem or a mission, to which I can’t answer. I am running short of answers, but thankfully also running out of questions.

  I can smell him in the house, smell him when it’s rubbish day. I can smell him as animals are able, aware of presence and absence, but in this case it’s not musk and pheromone, the spoor of vigour, vitality and sexual frolic, but gingerbread, newly baked gingerbread. I don’t know why. I can logically think of a whole raft of sophisticated foods much nearer the mark, but gingerbread it is, the aroma unmistakable. The thought makes me want to cry. I cry a great deal. I miss my gingerbread man, miss him so much, his scent of calm, his spice. I miss the fact that the business of rubbish is his.

  Of course the building is large, many of its rooms no longer in use, one in particular a shrine. Maybe it always was something of an informal shrine, the vacated nest left just as it was, protected by the broody mother. I don’t suppose Sara, the other woman, Joseph’s wife, mother of my grandchild, would have been too pleased to think that his room had been memorialized. She is a practical, down-to-earth woman, and considered it their room whenever needed, which wasn’t often enough. I was always crippled by nostalgia even before I realized it had to exist. I wonder how she feels about events, how her hard-headed, modern woman style copes with disaster. We should speak. We were only polite at the funeral, too overcome I suppose to come together. I should make the first move; I am after all the mature one. If we were members of a pack of baboons or chimps would I not be the alpha female. Though maybe I have it all wrong – yet again, I would have to say – and I was ousted years ago. Maybe it is Sara’s move to make, though I know, instinctively, a woman’s intuition, that she won’t.