The Comet Seekers: A Novel (24 page)

Erm, I haven’t had the time . . .

Conall thinks this one’s the best, Neil shouts from the kitchen. Don’t you, Conall?

McNaught, she says – she’s just looked it up online – Comet McNaught. And she promises herself to look for it tonight, to have an evening closer to home, to search the skies for a comet that can be seen with her own eyes. To allow herself to remember before she moves on again.

BRIGITTE IS BY FAR THE
most beautiful of the ghosts. There’s an elegance to the way she holds her head high but she’s not
pretty; she has a long face that is almost angular in the way it reflects the light, and a stubbornness in the way she will never apologise. And when she is calm – as she is now – Severine can see a sadness in her that is missing in the others. They have accepted what happened to them; they have moved on. Brigitte is not able to.

I want to help, Severine says, I just don’t know how.

Brigitte sits, poised, on the end of the bed, her eyes looking out of the window.

I’m trying, Severine carries on, I’m not leaving, and I’ll still be here when you return. But none of us know what happened to your son. We don’t even know his name.

She thinks, for a quiet moment, that Brigitte is going to let the tears in her eyes fall. Instead she looks at Severine.

It’s easier to burn, she says. I’m not angry at you.

I understand.

I’m just angry.

And Brigitte catches light, flames devour her hair as she fades and the ghosts leave again with the last glimpse of the comet.

François wants to comfort his mama, but it is hard to do when he has no idea what has made her so upset. He arrived for lunch, thinking he could surprise her with a new version of his crêpe Suzette, but he doesn’t want to cook that now; Severine is curled up on the sofa in the front room saying that her family is gone.

I spoke to grand-mère yesterday, he says, thinking she is worried about her mother. She’s doing well, all things considered.

It seems to make things worse.

She’ll leave too, Severine says, and she won’t come back.

Mama, no one has left. Grand-mère and I, we’re right here. I’m just up the road in Paris.

Severine looks up at him, as if recognising something new in his face. François, she says, Hélène is nice. A sweet girl.

I like her, he says, feeling suddenly defensive. He’s given her a set of keys to his apartment; she said she was going to come round later.

I like her too, Severine says, seeming to sit higher now, as she brushes the hair away from her face.

Come on, let’s make lunch, says François. We can have anything you want.

Well then. Something from when I was a girl . . .

She lets her mind fall back to when she was a child, standing beside her granny in the kitchen.

I’d like roasted tomatoes with rosemary, please. With fresh brioche.

He laughs at her choice. And red wine to go with it?

Of course.

At home that night, François can’t sleep. He doesn’t want to wake Hélène, so he steps quietly out of the bedroom and goes to sit in the lounge. The skies are cloudy tonight; although the curtains have been left open he doesn’t look out, instead he stares into the air in the middle of the room and breathes. He’s not sure how long he is sitting there, but it is long enough that the night gets less dark; there is a purple tint to the blackness outside when Hélène comes to sit with him, curling her legs underneath her, resting her head on his shoulder.

I recorded something for you earlier, she says. While I was waiting for you to get back.

On TV?

Yes, there was a programme about South America. Your mama said you’d wanted to go, so I thought—

I was young.

I think you’d still like to go, really, she says. Wouldn’t you?

He can tell that she’s thought about it, though he can’t picture Hélène wanting to go to any kind of wilderness.

Maybe I would, he smiles. One day.

She springs up, grabs the remote.

Here, she says. Let’s watch a programme about an untouched wilderness from the warmth of your living room.

And he reaches to tickle her, gently, but she is too fast and they end up in a tangle of limbs on the floor by the sofa.

The programme, though, is not about an untouched wilderness; it is about the opposite. It is about generations, millennia, of change. They are both leaning forwards, towards the images of the rainforest, forgetting to watch the sun rise outside.

Geometric human-formed earthworks found beneath existing areas of rainforest; he can’t believe it, though it is wonderful, he thinks, how the landscape can evolve like that. Different scientists argue over the details, some convinced that people cleared the forest in order to farm, others believing the climate itself meant the rainforest had to retreat. But all of them are excited, it seems to François; they are like explorers, he thinks, and he remembers how he had imagined visiting new lands, how he had dreamt of adventure in the wilderness.

I always thought the rainforest was untouched, he says to Hélène after the programme has finished. But it’s not.

Is anywhere, really?

Antarctica, I guess, he says, smiling at how he’d once stared at a map of the ice. Though who knows what they’ll find under all that ice, some day.

That thought fills him with a longing to discover something for himself; for the first time since starting his job he feels like a restaurant kitchen in Paris might be too small for him.

Would you like to go? he asks.

To Antarctica? Too cold.

To anywhere, he smiles. The rainforest?

She shudders. Too many insects.

He looks away.

Have I spoilt it for you? she asks, and he looks back at her in surprise.

Because you don’t want to go?

No, because it was inhabited, she says. You wanted it to be a wilderness . . .

Not at all, he says, and you’re very sweet. Actually I think it’s wonderful. It was inhabited, farmed, lost and—

Reborn? says Hélène. Resurrected?

She giggles at her choice of words.

It recovered, says François, more serious than Hélène. It keeps growing and changing – he looks at her, her laugh fading now – somehow it survives.

He wants to tell Severine about it, leave a message on her answerphone to match the message she left him about the comet, but he doesn’t. It is not conscious, but somehow the gratitude he felt then is retreating now, and being replaced with something else.

1927

Comet Skjellerup–Maristany

The sound of the war wakes Paul-François at night again, the blasts of battle and worse, the groans of men whose skin is rotting; slow deaths, as vivid as if he were lying among them. They gave him a medal when he returned – still, he doesn’t know what to make of that – a medal for killing men, or for not being killed. Perhaps it is just a medal for surviving.

His wife wakes beside him – she seems young to him, though they are the same age – eyes of concern, as though she is looking at a stranger in her bed. They did not really know each other when they married; they met as teenagers when he was on shore leave. And war changes people, that he is certain of now.

Paul-François, she says, will you come back to me?

But he doesn’t know how to answer that. He leaves the bedroom and creeps down the stairs that creak so that he can stand outside. The cold helps. The sky. There is a stack of wood at the end of the garden; he’s been collecting it though he doesn’t know why, but tonight he starts to build – he needs to create something after all the destruction he has seen. He has forgotten about his wife upstairs but she has followed him down and now she helps, as they saw and hammer wood through the night.

They finish what they are building as the dawn begins to break, and the comet overhead fades into the orange sweep of the horizon. Paul-François stands back, looks at the structure he has built.

It is a nice shed, says his wife, trying to make him smile.

But Paul-François still feels the weight of what he has seen; he doesn’t know if he can ever be the man that his wife married.

I remember your laughter, she says, placing his hand on her belly. I still believe it will return.

His unborn daughter gives his hand a little kick.

I remember it too, he says, and she smiles.

That is how it begins.

2011

Comet Lovejoy

LIAM KNEW IT WAS COMING
but still he is unprepared for its insistence, for the way it makes his chest tighten – there hasn’t been a comet this bright in years. He doesn’t look up, it hurts too much, but he can feel it watching him. Perhaps that makes it worse; to be visible but unable to see.

He shakes his head. To be haunted by a lump of rock thousands of miles away. There are things closer to earth he should be worrying about.

He no longer allows himself to think about Róisín.

That’s a lie, obviously.

The colours of the world are earthy, here; browns and greens and the murky froth of a churning river. Frost comes overnight then
melts during the day, causing wood to splinter and crack – he sees it in the walls of the barn, in the broken log that used to lead from the riverbank to the island, that is now only a mangle of bark and branches clinging to the shore.

One day he walks out to the field and shoots his only remaining cow. It’s not like before; this is not a culling, it is just goodbye to the last, sick heiferette he couldn’t bring himself to sell. He doesn’t say sorry – he can no longer see the point in talking to animals. He doesn’t think about her name. He throws the carcass on a pyre of wood and hay and boxes from the attic. The stink is of burning meat, it lingers for weeks afterwards on his clothes, on his skin. It taints the food he eats. The farm is silent now.

When he stands at the graveside his eyes wander from the dedication of his dad’s headstone, rest briefly on his mother’s matching one, then stray behind to members of his family that he never knew. They have lived on the farm for generations, and been buried in this patch of land beneath his feet; it is strange, to feel the weight of this history but get no comfort from it.

One by one he reads their names, for the last time – he has decided that he won’t be visiting again – like a roll call, a school register: Gone, he says, instead of here. Gone, gone, gone.

He stops opening his post; bills and bank statements, legal letters and birthday cards all go straight onto the fire. His denial does not discriminate. The lacy cream paper of a wedding invitation crackles and twists away to embers beneath a threatening demand for a loan repayment.

He sits out by the broken section of fence and allows himself to watch the sky. He makes a map of the night, marking on constellations, galaxies, stars that he can’t name, a swirl of cloud and the
position of Comet Lovejoy. Without meaning to, he draws it on the top half of the page, leaving space for the farm below it. He leaves it blank for a while and he thinks about ripping it up or burying it in the mud, but stops short of acting each time he is about to let his anger surface.

Then, at around 2 a.m., he draws a herd of cattle, horses galloping down by the stream, sheep herded into the west field and four people sitting out by the barn. He draws it like a child’s picture, stick men and women with round smiling faces, the barn a four-walled box with square windows, the grass like little spikes rising up prettily from the ground.

Mum.

Dad.

Liam.

Róisín.

He skewers the page onto the broken wooden pole of the fence and heads back indoors.

Róisín has bought new furniture for her apartment, a bookcase and matching coffee table; she unpacks the boxes that have been delivered, half builds the shelves before getting bored with the job and heading outside.

It’s like a fairy tale, New York, one sprinkled with a harsh reality but full of more surprises than she’d imagined when she dreamed of living there. She walks past the university, a group of Japanese women stopping her to ask for directions; she’s pleased, she must look like she belongs here now, and this is a city that takes years to get to know.

Where should we go? they say.

Sure that depends on what you want to see, she smiles.

They laugh loudly, as if rising to the challenge of the twenty-four-hour buzz of New York.

She calls her mum from the North Woods in Central Park, finding a stone where she can sit and watch the stream away from the crowds that gather even in December.

We’ve chosen a dress you’ll like, I hope, for the wedding, her mum says. We’re thinking dark blue for you, like the night sky.

It sounds beautiful, she says. I’ll try it on as soon as I land.

We’ll be there, her mum says – she sounds excited – we’ll come to the airport. Can’t wait to see you!

Me too, Róisín smiles. Put Conall on, I want to tell him about this new flavour of ice cream I’ve found.

It’s the middle of winter—

Yes, but it’s avocado and prawn – it’s non-season specific.

To her surprise, after saying her goodbyes, Róisín lifts her phone again, looks up a number in her address book that she hasn’t used for a while. Her old boss in Bayeux answers – Róisín, you’re coming back to us? – No, she laughs, but maybe I could call into the department for a visit while I’m in Europe?