Best European Fiction 2013 (45 page)

The skate isn’t enough to hold me over. I’m hungry, but it’s too early for dinner. I’ll sleep a bit first, in the darkness of the room, with the tune of rainfall against the window.

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY JEFFREY ZUCKERMAN

[U
NITED
K
INGDOM: WALES
]

RAY FRENCH

Migration

We’re standing on the banks of the Humber river, my father and I, the two of us enjoying the sun, the pleasant breeze. This is a rare outing for him. His loss of memory, a gradual loosening of his grip on the world, making him increasingly reluctant to leave home, where he’s surrounded by things that are familiar, that can be named. But, today, he is coping well with the unfamiliarity all around him, remarkably well in fact. Who knows when there’ll be another day like this—I’m determined we make the most of it.

To our right is the Humber Bridge. He gazes at it admiringly and says, “That must have taken some work, boy.”

The cue to take my notebook from my pocket, flip to the page where I’d scrawled some notes while reading the display about the bridge at the Information Centre. He likes facts, cherishing their lack of ambiguity—clear and solid signposts in a shape-shifting world.

“It took 480,000 tonnes of concrete and 11,000 tonnes of steel wire to build it,” I tell him. When I glance up at him he’s alert, focused; nothing grabs his attention like detailed information about construction. He worked as a labourer all his life, this is his currency, these are things that still bring him satisfaction.

“That’s enough wire,” I continue, “to stretch one and a half times across the world.”

“Fecking hell!”

I knew he’d love that one. He shakes his head and looks back at the bridge.

“That took some work alright.”

It’s good to see him re-engage with the world. There should be more days like this.

“When the winds reach eighty miles an hour,” I say, encouraged by his reaction, “the bridge bends by up to three meters in the middle. That’s close to ten feet—amazing, isn’t it?”

Bad idea. His face grows taut, worried, a nerve begins to jump under his eye. This drags him back to some dark and threatening place.

“Nature is fierce, boy. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries, man will never beat it.” He shakes his head emphatically, “Never.”

I wonder if he’s remembering the pitch and roll of the British navy destroyer on which he served in the Second World War. It must have been a terrifying experience, toiling away as a stoker in the bowels of the ship, knowing that if it went down, he would go down with it.

He looks at the bridge again and says, “I wouldn’t want to be on that on a windy day.”

“You’d be safe,” I say gently, “you wouldn’t actually feel the bridge moving.”

He looks doubtful. When I was young he was brave to the point of recklessness, burning with manic energy, refusing to ever compromise.

I’ll fecking show the lot of ’em.

In fact, while we’re on the subject of bridges, he once got into a scuffle with a Military Policeman while crossing one in Berlin shortly after the war—it ended when my father threw him into the Spree. Oh yes, he was a tough character back then, well able to stand up for himself. But, as he grew older, something lurking inside that he’d kept at bay for so long by sheer willpower, some dark and twisted thing, grew stronger, began to corrode his spirit.

No more talk about bridges bending in high winds, I change the subject.

“Did you know there used to be brickyards all along here?” There’s little evidence of that now, instead a thick band of reeds, standing pale gold in the sun, then mud, beyond that the brown, churning Humber. I make a sweeping gesture with my arm, encompassing the bank from the bridge right up to where we’re standing.

“At one time there were thirteen firms along here making bricks and tiles. In the mid 1930s they were making over a million bricks a year.”

“Is that so? Hard work too, I’ll bet.”

Dad’s expression lightens; he liked hard work, knows what it means. I could have taken him to one of the museums in Hull, but they would never have held his interest. He looks around, picturing this as a place bustling with activity—people digging clay, shaping it into bricks in wooden moulds and stacking them to dry, others firing the kilns. I tell him about Blythe’s Tile Yard, nearer the bridge, about ten minutes walk from where we’re standing, which has been reopened and makes bricks and tiles using the old methods, without using toxic chemicals. From there you can, if you look hard enough, make out the marks where the train lines once ran just below the Humber bank. Further along are the remains of the posts which held up the jetties once dotted along this stretch of the Humber, the river filled with sloops and keels collecting cargoes of bricks, tiles, and rope. It must have been a stirring sight—the Humber was one of the last places in the country you could see working boats under sail. These days Hull is just another desolate northern town, its streets crammed with drunks every weekend.

“Shall we walk down that way a bit?” I ask him.

“Aye, we will—come on.”

Though slow, he’s steady on his feet today. So different to how he is at home, a pale, bent, shuffling figure, head down, arms wavering, as he makes his way painstakingly across the room. Here he’s alert to his surroundings, looking around, noticing things.

“What are those yokes?”

I explain that the broken chunks of bricks and tiles lying in the grass and reeds are the remains of the long gone industry. I pick up a jagged half-brick and hand it to him, watch him turn and examine it, run his thumb along the edge.

“You could build yourself a house out of all the bricks lying around here.”

“You could.”

He weighs it in his hand, enjoying the solidity, the connection with his working life, back when he was young and strong, before so many things frightened him.

He nods approvingly, “They knew what they were doing in those days. They built things to last.”

“They did.”

We walk on another few hundred yards, but I can see he’s beginning to tire a little now. This has been a long day for a man who rarely ventures beyond the circuit of bedroom, living room, bathroom, and kitchen.

“Shall we go back?”

“Aye, I think we will.”

At that moment the sun, obscured by clouds for the last few minutes, emerges again, and he stays where he is and he lifts his head to the sky and closes his eyes. He always loved the sun. When I was a boy he would be brown as a berry all summer from working outdoors, never burning like so many other Irish people. I follow his example and close my eyes too. There’s no sound except the water lapping, the stiff breeze, the occasional cry of a bird. You could be back in Ireland, in Cullenstown, County Wexford, right back there on the strand, on a fine spring day. I wonder if that’s where Dad is thinking of now, back at the beginning of his journey, his life before him, knowing nothing of this country, of what it is to be a husband, or a father, what it feels like to grow old and frail.

As we’re walking back to the Information Centre, I tell him that I’ll show him where I work afterwards, then we’ll get something to eat before driving back home.

“Where is it you work?” he asks sharply, as if I’ve been hiding it from him.

“The University.”

“A university?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Which one?”

“Hull.”

He stops to stare at me, wide-eyed.

“Jayzus, doesn’t that beat all. A university? You’ve done well for yourself, boy.”

I can’t help smiling. If he had any idea of the enormous expectations, the hopes he’d carried on those narrow shoulders. That he still carries, despite everything.

“What do you do there?”

“I teach.”

“A teacher. That’s grand. What is it you teach?”

“Creative Writing.”

I watch him mulling this over, but growing a little impatient now. I get fed up of repeating myself, wanting him to retain some information about my life, for it to have some meaning for him. A smile begins to form on his lips.

“Writing?”

I nod and he laughs scornfully, “You’d think they’d be able to write properly by the time they got to University. Christ, what’s the world coming to?”

I agree that it’s gone to hell in a handcart. When we start walking again, he’s still chuckling to himself, convinced I’ve pulled a fast one—what a way to make a living.

I must try to get him out more often. At home, the house is always overheated, the television on, way too loud, all day long. Sometimes, as he looks around him, I’m sure he’s wondering how he got here, sitting next to this middle-aged man he believes is probably his son, he certainly looks familiar, struggling to make conversation with him. I am careful to call him Dad often, frequently mentioning my mother, reminding him that this woman, this child that I have brought with me are my own family. What I’m trying to do, what I want, so much, is to place him in a familiar network of associations and meanings. Native Americans speak of having a map in the head, a way of knowing where one is in relationship to the land, its history, society, and all living beings. Most days now, my father has no map, all meaning draining away from his surroundings.

Yes, I really must try to get him out more often.

Back at the Information Centre I get two teas from the machine, bring them across to one of the tables. We sip our drinks looking out at a couple of swans gliding across one of the flooded clay pits. Here at Far Ings, they have created a nature reserve reclaimed from an industry based on digging up the land. In fact this visit is partly a reconnaissance mission, I had the idea of bringing my Creative Writing students here for inspiration, getting them away from the seminar room and out into the world. Unlike the quarries that I visited recently, where you could feel the poignant absence of what is no longer there, here a kind of balance has been restored. When I explain how this place came about my father is delighted. It’s a process that chimes with his belief that the land was here before us, and would survive our tenancy, still be here long after we have gone.

“If I had my way,” he says, “I’d turn every factory, every site that I’d ever worked on into a place like this. They’ve done a good job here, a damned good job.”

We sit for quite some time without the need for conversation, at ease in each other’s company.

Before we head off, we look at the display about the various birds it’s possible to see at Far Ings, and the incredible journeys that they make to reach here. The pink-footed geese coming from Arctic Russia, the swallows and sedges from South Africa, the sand martins from Chad.

“Isn’t it amazing?” says Dad, “the journeys these birds make.”

We read the panel informing us that scientists still don’t fully understand why birds migrate.

“What about you, Dad? Why did you migrate?”

I watch him thinking about this for a while, then he says, “Half the people I went to school with left too, sure there was nothing for us at home.” He starts to laugh, “A great flock of Paddies migrating, that’s what we were—thousands of the buggers descending on Britain.”

This a glimpse of his old self re-emerging—irreverent, scornful. It used to get him into trouble sometimes, when people tried to have a serious discussion about the burning issues of the day.

We look through the window, see a man below with a pair of binoculars and a camera strung around his neck.

“Bird watching, aye, there’s plenty of fellas who love it. I never did it meself. It looks a grand hobby, though, very relaxing.”

But he did do it. Sometimes I’d catch him standing utterly still and silent back in Wales, riveted by the flocks of swallows gathering on telegraph poles in September, before wheeling away in formation and heading back to Africa. Hard not to think he was envying them their return to their homeland, while he was stuck here for another year. Unlike the swallows and sedges, the sand martins and pink-footed geese, he never made it back to where he came from.

You move for work or education, for what you think are short-term goals, but before you know it you are putting off your return home for another year, then another. There is a sense of exhilaration whenever I cross the Severn Bridge to Wales and leave England behind. For a few days I feel that I finally belong somewhere—I rediscover my map in the head. So why the surge of relief when I leave again a few days later? I wonder if Dad used to feel something similar when he was departing Ireland, shrugging off myriad obligations, feeling suddenly weightless?

My father asks, “What is it you do again?”

I explain about teaching at Hull University once more.

“Where’s that?”

“Just there, across the river.”

He looks to his right, over the murky water into Yorkshire.

“Does your mother know?”

I tell him she does.

“Has she told them in Ireland?”

“She has. I’ll take you there later, to the University. I’ll show you my office.”

“You have an office?”

The wonder in his voice reminds me how when I got my degree, many years ago now, he said, “Christ, you’re made, boy, bleddy well made. You’ll never have to work outside in the rain and the cold again.”

When we’re back outside and heading for the car park I realise that I’ve left my notebook on one of the tables. I suggest that he waits in the car while I run back and get it.

“Ah no,” he says, “I think I’ll go and sit on that bench over there next to the water.”

For a moment I’m worried about leaving him outside on his own like that. But he looks so happy at the prospect that I dismiss my fears.

“Okay, Dad, alright. If that’s what you want.”

“I think I’ll do a bit of bird watching while I’m here.”

I’m not sure if this is a joke or not.

“Are you going to take it up as a hobby?”

He hesitates, looking across the water into the reeds.