The Extinction of Snow Read online

  I look at Vivien, and can’t help but cry. “He hasn’t run away from me,” I say. “He’s run away from himself. He and Joseph had a tough time of it together when John’s father was living with us. It was only brief, but it didn’t work out. John regrets that, can’t cope with it, feels guilty, I suppose.” I gaze steadily at Vivien. “I am on my own,” I whimper, despite every intention of not doing so.

  “You’ll always have me,” she says, her tone surprisingly brusque, almost stern. If her intention was to stanch any likely outpouring then she has certainly succeeded. “Look,” she says, more amiably, “you’re right and sometimes a sister has to give some brutal truths, unpalatable truths.”

  I wait, uncertain and for some reason fearful about what she has to say. I eye her carefully, as a hunted animal might its potential assailant. She forces me to enquire of her what the brutal truth is.

  She smiles grimly: “I know that Joseph dying is terrible, I mean, my God, I cannot imagine, really cannot imagine, but I also know you, know what you’re doing, taking it all on, wallowing in it, making it about you. It isn’t about you, and you need to think about that, think it through and give it up, live again. I know that’s what Joseph would want.”

  “Don’t be disgusting,” I retort, startled by my own anger.

  “I know what you’re thinking, about what happened. It was an accident. It was a long time ago and you have to put it out of your mind.”

  “No,” I declare with shocking vehemence. I want to scream it aloud. It was not an accident. There was fault. There was my fault. Instead, I say in a hurt, crushed voice: “Of course it isn’t about me, about that. I have his email, his last message, and I know there is something wrong about it, something terribly, terribly wrong.”

  “There has to be a final email. There’s no getting away from that. There’s no point dwelling on it, reading things into it that aren’t there. Doing that just doesn’t help anyone.”

  I utter it aloud, a quotation, a statement, a fact: “I am sacred, comfot me.” Spoken aloud it sounds like, comfort me, but he could have meant come for me. Surely I have failed him. I am sacred, surely it meant, I am scared. The thought is awful. My son was scared, but scared of what. My son was scared and he is now dead. There is something not right. I say it again, wanting to hear the words again, his words, his last utterance to me.

  Vivien gazes at me, uncertain, baffled. I can see it in her face, the acknowledgement of strangeness, of things being not right. Eventually she seeks confirmation. “That was the last thing you heard from him? But what does it mean?”

  I shake my head.

  We sit in silence for a while. Vivien is the first to speak, her voice hesitant, even reluctant: “He rang me a couple of times, before he went away, before he went to France.”

  “Rang you, about what? He never said that he’d rung you. Why would he ring you?” I ask, uttering the questions quickly, objecting to any suggested intimacy with anyone other than me. I am a jealous mother, not prepared to allow even an aunt admission.

  “Joseph often rang, you know that, bridging the gap, the sister gap, the one you make. Joseph liked everyone to get on. He was a party animal, not like you and John. Oh God, don’t glare at me like that, you know what I mean. Anyway, he was in Leeds so not so far from us really. Well, a lot closer than when he was in London. He told me he had to do something for John, for his father, but not the things he had been doing. I asked him what he meant but he only said that I’d see, that we’d all see and when we did he’d be pleased, pleased with himself again. He said that with real feeling, pleased with himself again, but when I asked him what he meant he just said he’d been doing stuff he wasn’t proud of. He was pretty sure that Sara would never get it, but he had to do it whatever. He said he would be really grateful if I’d keep in contact with Sara, Sara and Georgia. I didn’t think anything of it, just that I wasn’t so very far away. I said yes, of course, of course I would. We weren’t exactly local, opposite sides of the country, but I said I’d do anything that would help.”

  “Help,” I repeated, uncertain of the word, of its meaning. “Keep contact as if he knew he wasn’t coming back. He knew something was going to happen. Vivien, there is something not right, I know it. I need to find out but I just don’t know how.”

  “Look, don’t be melodramatic. It was probably nothing.”

  “Do something for his father. What? He knew something.”

  “He could have meant anything, a present, a gift, God, I don’t know.”

  “I am sacred, comfot me. I need to find out. I need to pull myself together. I need to look better than I do.”

  “I shouldn’t have said that. You look great.”

  “No I don’t. I look like hell and I feel like hell, and it has to stop. I have to find out what it means. I have to start somewhere.”

  “Look, God, don’t go off at the deep-end. I know what you’ve been through and I know how you feel about things, more than you’ll ever believe or give me credit for, but you have to keep things in perspective. It’s more than likely nothing, the phone call, the email. You know what that generation is like. It was a terrible, terrible accident. A tragic accident. You have to accept that.”

  “And move on.”

  “Yes, move on.”

  I shake my head. But yes, maybe I have moved on. My child’s death is not right. I have to deal with that. In some way I have to deal with that.

  “There is a piece of music goes over and over in my head,” I say, hearing it as I speak. “It’s called Spiegel im Spiegel, mirror in mirror.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t know, but something. It’s telling me something and I need to see it.”

  We are silent for some time. Vivien brings it to an end by adopting a managerial, girlfriend attitude. “Anyway, I’ve brought you a present, a Christmas present for the New Year. New Year, new start.”

  I’ve had a present, a Christmas present, and don’t understand. I’m obviously something of a cause. I should object to that, but really don’t. I look on blankly, saying nothing. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she says. She hands me an envelope and insists I open it. Inside there is a voucher for a pamper session: massage, hair, nails, Indian head massage, makeover. I thank her. She smiles, evidently pleased with herself. She suggests that we could go together, tomorrow, insists on it, being sisters together, sisters again. Sisters for the first time, I think, but say nothing. I don’t feel able to refuse. I commit myself against my better judgement. Vivien leaves with a display of briskness. Today she has to shop, do the sales, but tomorrow we’ll meet, a pamper session and then who knows, a meal, a few drinks. She obviously thinks she is making headway with me. Who am I to disabuse her? She is somehow still my sister. She thinks she knows all there is to know. On the other hand, there is so much that I still need to know, it frightens me. Death hangs so heavily on me.

  Chapter Three

  A day of ice, black, wet pavements, cold enough for a hat and gloves, but no whiteness, no cheerfulness of frost. When I put out the rubbish there were discarded wreaths beside overflowing bins all along Lady Margaret Road – sometimes three or four bins where houses have been turned into flats – the holly still green, the berries shrivelled. Most bins along the street don’t have the capacity for an extended break, but some manage, as I have managed. I dread being home all day, the empty rooms, empty time, space in all of its many manifestations. Sometimes I walk up to Parliament Hill, which takes about twenty to twenty-five minutes and go into a café, Paz Bistro, with its welcoming green and yellow awnings and its formidable Italian proprietor who is stern with strangers but to me a charm. Sometimes I pop in and see John’s father who is resident in a home there, costs a fortune but John insists on it, when I can stomach the smell of shit, piss and lavender. I know I should go more often. He said to me one day, I like being with us, which I know was beautiful, but I just can’t face it.

  Today I went to the shops, took a bus to Oxford Street and joine
d the sales crowds, despite the risk of running into Vivien. I went from department store to department store, enjoying the delicious, cloying must of perfume. It gave me the idea to go in search of blooms, flowers out of season. All I could find were orchids, white-yellow orchids, not cut but in plant-pots. They looked clumsy and deformed, yet somehow beautiful. Despite the inflated price I had to have one, its beauty respite. As I left the shop someone tried to steal a coat, a young girl, but was wrestled to the ground by a security guard, a large, heavy man, who needlessly felt her all over, enjoying himself. I was ashamed to find myself staring at the drama. For a moment, only a moment, I was with the crowd.

  I tell my counsellor that I am never lonely, never bored. I have inner resources. I am an artist. I am rich in imagery, correspondence and construction. I am comfortable with myself. It is all lies of course. I crave my men, the two poles of my life. This comfortable home, structured with an artist’s eye, is a domestic prison. At least I have the sense to make sure the heating is on, warming the house for my return. In the first months I never thought of it – it is after all an indulgent waste – and used to return to cold rooms. Cold rooms lead to inertia and sterile pleasure.

  There wasn’t even any solace in eating. In the warmth it’s different. There is some comfort. Not that I prepare elaborate meals anymore – not as a general rule, though sometimes I force my hand, make a batch of this or that and freeze it. Old habits aren’t so easily broken. My sophisticated manner sticks with me. Tonight it will be cheese and biscuits and wine, more wine than I intend, not because it washes away grief, but rather highlights it, much in the way children highlight the people and things in their pictures with thick black lines. That’s what wine does, daubs great thick black lines around things so that they stand out. My mind is a lovely spinning top then, achieving insights and understanding that the bleary morning wipes away completely. Besides, it fills in a bit of space and helps me sleep. If I carry on I’ll become a real drunk, lying to myself, living in a parallel world. I should relish the thought. Of course I have more Stilton, Brie and goat’s cheese than I can possibly manage, but it was Christmas and habits are habits.

  I put out my cheese-board and crackers and lay my plate and glass in the dining room determined to eat in style, with the orchid placed alongside for ornamentation. I consider chancing some music, risk listening again to the music that goes round and round in my head, but before I commit myself the telephone rings. For some reason I don’t immediately answer. Eventually I lift it from its cradle and quietly mutter hello.

  “It’s me,” John says, as if responding to my reluctance, the fear of more bad news. There is a period of silence, not necessarily uncomfortable, before John goes on. “How is it there today?”

  “Icy cold, but no frost.”

  “It’s cold here too.”

  “It’s nearly Epiphany.”

  “I know.”

  “It was bin day today.”

  “I know.”

  “They missed out a whole week. Some of the bins are over-flowing. It’s all the Christmas and New Year things. There are Christmas wreaths, still green, all right really, except that the berries are a bit shrivelled. You could take the berries off and still have something nice, attractive. I suppose it’s over though.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “All over again. Nobody cares about kings bearing gifts. The green Father Christmas used to live until Twelfth-night, but not the red American one. He deposits his presents and then it’s all done. Remember we used to eke it out until the bitter end, always sad at the close. Never a lover of God but always a lover of God’s things.”

  “I know.”

  “You must only have the red one, I suppose, the American one.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”

  “Vivien says you’ve run away, run away from me, run away from my grief.”

  He doesn’t immediately answer, and then eventually asks: “Is she there, visiting, staying with you?”

  “She was here this morning. She’s here for the sales. She wants me to have a pamper session.”

  “Good.”

  “Is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you know everything John, that was always the case, everything, absolutely.”

  “I just couldn’t make it. The schedule is too tight. I haven’t run away.”

  “She told me something very strange. She said that Joseph rang her, rang before he went to France. He wanted her to stay in contact with Sara, Sara and Georgia. I don’t understand. Tell me John, tell me what to do.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “She didn’t hold back reminding me about that. That’s what you think too, isn’t it. The fact that everything is tainted, the fact I can’t enjoy anything knowing that someone else never can. You think that’s what the problem is.”

  “I never said that.”

  “It’s no good saying I’m sorry. It doesn’t do.”

  “I never said.”

  “It was his birthday, you know, a week ago.”

  “I know Louise, I know it was his birthday.”

  “Remember how we said it would never have been Holly or Mary if it had been a girl, but we liked Joseph. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it. Joseph was a bystander, didn’t know what was happening, but our Joseph never was. John there is something not right in all this, and now the phone call to Vivien. I don’t get it.” My voice lowers, falls, becomes shadow.

  John speaks up impatiently, frustrated: “I thought . . . I thought . . .” He gives up, and the sound of his voice trails away.

  “You sound like your father when you say that. He said just the same thing one day when he was banging on the walls, I thought, I thought, over and over. It drove Joseph mad.”

  “I know. I remember.”

  “I can understand why you were annoyed at Joseph, well, disgusted really.”

  “That’s not true, I just wanted him to appreciate that my father was ill, that it was the dementia that made him do those things. I was never really angry.”

  “He wasn’t intolerant, just scared, scared for you, maybe for himself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know everything, John, you always have, and he didn’t want you to ever lose that. He was scared.”

  “I said he was intolerant. I shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have said a great deal perhaps.”

  I don’t answer. Perhaps John is right and Joseph was intolerant when his grandfather lived with us, but maybe it was understandable. Joseph had always loved his grandfather. When he was young he used to stay with him for a couple of weeks in the summer in a sky-blue wooden house by the sea, and things like that matter. He was such a presence of a man, kind, funny and generous, and now he is only fragments. He was administered a drug for schizophrenia designed to treat his behavioural and psychological signs and symptoms of dementia, which the explaining doctor then shortened to BPSD. He curled up at this assault and has never uncurled. He remains hunched still. Joseph simply couldn’t bear it. I went to see him on Christmas Day, which at least gave some purpose to my otherwise aimless walk, and the carers played Christmas pop music, put a paper crown on his head, danced in front of him and demanded that he sing up, jollying him along. Why did I let that crown remain? Why was I so powerless? I should have torn it away and trampled it underfoot and insisted that he wasn’t a king of fools. Perhaps I am intolerant too.

  “Your father looks well,” I say, which sounds like the lie it is.

  “Thank you for going.”

  “Don’t thank me John, don’t do that.”

  “Louise . . .” John says, but can’t complete the thought.

  “Why would he ring Vivien?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “No John, I know exactly what an accident feels like. There is something not right.”

  “Louise . . .”

  “What John, what?”

  He doesn’t reply. I presume he
is shaking his head, the runaway husband struggling with my grief, struggling with his grief, working out his guilt.

  “You think I should move on?”

  “I think we both should.”

  “Vivien said the same.”

  “Vivien had a lot to say.”

  “Vivien always has a lot to say.”

  “But maybe this time you should listen to her.”

  I smile. “No, I really shouldn’t listen to her, certainly not this time,” I say, trying to sound spirited, amused even, but know I sound shrill.

  John tells me he has to go. He also tells me that he loves me. He may have run away but he loves me. Do I believe he loves me? Yes he loves me, loves me without reservation, the same way that I love him. Ours was a perfect marriage. Grief has torn it apart. We say goodbye awkwardly, hesitant. He promises to ring tomorrow. He doesn’t need to say it. I know he will.

  I hear the same message from everyone, move on. My counsellor demands that I accept the reality of my loss, otherwise I won’t be able to move on. I don’t take issue with him, he is after all an expert, but I have a secret pact with myself. I don’t want to move on; I never want to move on. I want to live with my dead for all of my days.

  I pour myself a large glass of wine, place the telephone back in its cradle and go from the dining room into the hall. There are beautiful Christmas decorations still on display. I wasn’t going to bother this year, indeed thought I probably shouldn’t bother, but not to do it, to leave the house undecorated, without a tree, seemed disloyal to Joseph. I told myself that I had to do it for him. I discussed it with my counsellor. He wondered why I should say I felt obliged to do it. He picks up key words and taunts me with them. Obliged, I said, because we always did, it was one of the multitude of things that made us a family, not just people sharing the same facilities – a family of three, I thought, like the holy family, the son destined to die, to die in mysterious circumstances, his memory something to keep alive.