The Comet Seekers: A Novel (17 page)

Antoine looks up.

I dare you, he says with a grin.

What?

You can do it – he turns a page – you can go and see the world. That’s what I’d do, if I could. Don’t worry about us. He looks back down at his book, smiles at something on the page. After all, he says, we’re already dead.

In school, François is learning about the Hundred Years War, which was not a war that went on for a hundred years, but three of them – war after war after war. It is not like the history lessons they had at his old school. It seems more serious; he feels like they wouldn’t be teaching this stuff to children. It didn’t really end with the last war, just like it didn’t really start with the first – it started a long time before that, in 1066, but he thinks it probably didn’t start then either. Everyone is the product of something else.

The first war of the Hundred Years War went on for twenty-three years. And the next lasted only twenty. The last was the longest one of all and that started in 1415 and had Jeanne d’Arc in it, when she was the same age as François, with her visions and her strange faith, and her conviction that the voices she heard were real.

François thinks it’s probably a good thing his mama doesn’t know too much about Jeanne d’Arc. It might encourage her. There is something going on at the moment, and he’s wondered if he should talk to his grand-mère about it, but has decided not to tell tales. It’s not just that his mama is talking to herself in the house; she’s started acting weird as well, weirder than usual. The other day she asked him where he’d like to go, if he could go anywhere in the world. It’s like she’s plotting. He’s not sure yet, but he thinks there’s a chance she’s going to take him on a real adventure. Now that
would
be a good thing.

That night Severine is woken by Brigitte screaming. She tries not to listen, but it doesn’t work. Something too horrific for words
happened centuries before she was born, and she has to feel it, every night.

What is this about? she tries.

She thinks she can smell burning skin.

Stop this, please.

The room goes quiet; the fire flickers out.

What is it that you want from me?

I know you’re planning to leave, Brigitte says.

And how do you know that?

You are planning to leave, and you’re going to take François away with you.

Leave my son out of this.

Your
son—

The flames threaten to engulf the curtains.

Stop it, Brigitte!

Severine tries to be calm, despite the intensifying smell, the smoke that makes her eyes burn.

Stop it and talk to me.

But Brigitte can’t stop these flames any more than she could stop the fire that killed her. Her voice comes out as a growl, skin curls off her arms and she is gone.

As the sun rises, Severine remembers what Antoine said, and goes looking for him. She doesn’t want to be told what she can’t do any more, she wants to talk about all the places she wants to see, to take François – the promise of all that world they have yet to explore. And one of the ghosts, at least, will understand why she wants to leave.

IT FEELS DIFFERENT
,
TO LIAM
, to make breakfast when he knows he is going to share it with Róisín. The coffee smells stronger, fresher, looks a deeper colour of black in the mugs once it is poured. He
makes up a tray, feeling like a character in a film: coffee and juice, toast with marmalade and strawberry jam. Carries it up the stairs so they can have breakfast in bed.

Of course, it feels different. They are different. But it also feels different from anything else. When Róisín wakes up she has this strange feeling of knowing that she has nowhere to go – nowhere that she has to be; no work that she has to do. And it can’t go on. She is going to have to find something to do. This is too like a holiday.

But then he slips back into bed beside her, and his bare legs lie against hers, and she remembers the first time, when he had kissed her, quickly, like if he didn’t kiss her fast he was going to back out, pretend it was only a joke, and she had been so shocked. Not that she hadn’t thought about it, she had, many times, but still, she’d never thought he would actually do it; never thought they would kiss like this, in his bedroom – the same bedroom they are in now – while his dad was out at that farmers’ union meeting and there was condensation clinging to the windows that separated them from the insistent rain. He had pulled away, been ready to apologise she thought, but she hadn’t let him. She had pulled him back, while his eyes looked at her in disbelief. They had kissed and not known what to do next so they had kept kissing, had spent the afternoon kissing. They were young, at first. But now, he is a man, and some combination of his rough stubble and his sure hands, his eyes that are so like those of a boy, his voice that is deeper than she remembered, the lines already forming on his forehead, his skin, the skin of a man who works outdoors, who understands what it is to manage acres . . . All of it makes her put the breakfast tray on the floor and reach for him again, still half amazed that she can, that she has made this happen.

Liam smiles now, a half-sigh, half-laugh, as her hands push him back onto the pillow, as her hair falls over his face. He, too,
remembers how she had been older than him (it doesn’t feel that way now), less afraid, or so it seemed, when she had taken her shirt off and told him to do the same. I want to see, she had said, I want to see you, and that had changed everything that he was. How he had stood still for her, allowed her hands to touch his chest, the flicker of a smile on her lips as her hands moved up over his shoulders, down over his stomach, making him hunch over from a tickle he couldn’t laugh about, that did something else to him entirely. His breaths had come in stop-starts, he remembers, as she took so long, so long to unbutton his jeans. Now his breathing is less desperate but still fast; his thoughts more conscious but still not controlled; his exhale comes with a deeper voice as she guides him inside her again and his memories dissolve into some continuous present version of the past.

Róisín thinks, in the shower, that she must go out today. She will go to the village, see if she can find some temporary work.

Liam doesn’t knock on the door, does not come and join her.

As he leaves the house he sidesteps around the large box that was delivered a week ago. It is Róisín’s telescope that, for some reason he doesn’t understand, she has left unopened in the hall.

She walks from the post office to the pub at the end of the high street, feeling like she is too big for her surroundings. When she was a child this street had seemed long, with the green opposite, and the old wooden benches named for people that no one can remember but with surnames they all recognise: families that have lived in the village for longer than anyone knows, having arrived no one knows when.

She looks up to see that the butcher’s has closed but the baker’s is still open. She goes inside and orders a sticky bun, for old times’ sake.

Are you back for a visit? Keira asks. Keira, who has worked here since she was old enough to reach the till, who wears the same apron her mum used to wear when she worked here – and look, she still does. Róisín smiles as Keira’s mum appears from the door to the back room, curious to know who has come in, not quite recognising the voice.

Róisín, it’s you. Staying with your mum?

Róisín smiles, considers her words.

Actually I’m staying on the farm for a bit, with Liam.

Mother and daughter smile and nod. Keira twists the corners of the paper bag, sticky bun inside, and spins it over once, before handing it to Róisín.

In the pub, she asks: Any part-time work? I can waitress.

They have started serving food. She wonders if they get tourists here now – she has noticed a couple of B&Bs that weren’t there before. The isolation of this village makes her long for them to arrive.

Let me think on it, sure, the owner says. Haven’t seen you round here for a while. Staying with your mum?

Mmmm. Róisín smiles – well, let me know – and leaves.

They have a family dinner on Friday – Róisín, her mum, Neil and Conall. She suggests to Liam that he stays home, this time, just until she’s had a chance to see, to test the water.

So, you’re staying on the farm? her mum says.

For a while, says Róisín, fake casual, taking a sip of wine.

That’ll be grand, says Neil, give Liam a hand. It must be hard, running that place alone.

Her mum smiles, Róisín smiles. This is going to be tricky.

It’s nice to have you home, her mum says, taking a sip herself. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful.

Róisín nods, spikes some peas with her fork.

It’s just, what happened with your job?

It’s just a sabbatical, Róisín finds herself saying. I can go back.

And will you?

I’m not sure yet.

You seemed to like it in Bayeux.

Róisín doesn’t reply, though she did like it – thoughts like that aren’t helpful at the moment.

The sun has set but the blinds are still open, letting in the dark of the garden, letting in the cool of the night.

A silence sits around the table with them, the silence of what everyone knows but no one will say.

We’re just two people, Róisín thinks. Two cousins, living together, it’s not so bad as all that. But she knows that to other people, to her mother, it might be that bad. And even so, her mum hasn’t said anything. No one has told her to leave. There have been no arguments. There is just this silence.

She goes to slice a potato, sees that her hand is shaking.

Neil glances at her.

Her mother gets up and closes the blinds.

Róisín sits next to Conall on the sofa as he loads up his favourite computer game.

Two player, he says, selecting ‘Astrogirl’ for Róisín – it’s been her avatar since they started playing together, that summer she came home from Imperial.

Well, this isn’t going to be fair, she jokes, you’ve had a chance to practise and I—

But he’s already beaten her in level one with a swift move she can’t even begin to replicate.

Have you forgotten how to play? he asks.

No, she says, leaning forwards, just needed a kick up the—

Conall laughs loud and hard as he bumps into her on-screen and nudges her joyfully on the sofa.

As they play, Róisín forgets to worry about what people think and remembers how nice it is to be at home, with her family. Her mum gently touches her shoulder.

Liam remembers a time from before he lay out in the field with Róisín to watch the comet, when the house always had music playing. His mum would run from room to room, searching for old boxes they could use to build child-sized cities with sheets for tunnels and torches for street lights. He doesn’t remember her being sad, she never seemed sad, though she must have been – he was so young when she did it he didn’t know the right questions to ask. But the music was replaced by the sound of his dad taking apart the old turntable and trying, again and again, to put it back together while water dripped in from the roof and the fences blew down and the only time he could have fun was when Róisín came round and filled the house with her dreams of the sky. And now she is here. Though she is late coming home.

It is dark outside and he finds himself pacing from room to room, trying to push back the emptiness that threatens to infringe on the farm even now. It won’t do, not now Róisín lives here. So he sits on the floor and starts to unmake his dad’s turntable, laying out the components around him so that each one can be cleaned and checked and refastened, in an attempt to remake what has been broken.

Róisín approaches the farm’s kitchen door slowly, unable to shake the look in her mum’s eyes over dinner now that she has left the warmth of her home. Perhaps, when she was younger, knowing that her home was there made it easier for her to leave, she thinks; her solar system has always had her family at the centre.

She wonders if she needs to have a conversation with Liam, but she doesn’t know what that would be. For the first time she consciously questions herself: would everything really be OK, if they weren’t cousins? It was more than their being cousins that made her leave before, that made her reluctant to return. She wasn’t running away from a secret, she was running towards a world full of mystery and freedom, and she’s not sure if she’s ready to stop exploring it.

She stops a few feet from the door, steps round to the side and leans against the wall of the farmhouse, out of view. She has tried to forget about the stars and the world that calls out for her to travel, to see the things she’s never seen. But it’s not working so far. So instead she decides she will set up her telescope on the farm, after all – avoiding something doesn’t mean you’re longing for it any less, so why pretend? The light from the window shines out into the dark and she can see the first snowflakes of the year glittering in the air, not ready to settle on the ground.

She doesn’t want to go inside yet.

She doesn’t want to have these doubts.

Liam has opened a bottle of wine, tall candles in the centre of the table, with a Beatles record playing on the turntable that had always been broken, that he has fixed. His dad left it unfinished, but he is not going to do that – not to the turntable and not to the farm. It is warm in the kitchen, the windows hazy with heat from the stove. Now all he needs is Róisín, and time to fix everything else.