The Comet Seekers: A Novel (31 page)

She shimmers around the kitchen, dancing to music from days before she was born.

Your great-granny used to play this, she says, she taught it to me on the piano.

I’ve not heard you play.

It hasn’t been tuned for years.

So?

Right enough, I will play for you later. From Mozart to ‘Mr Moonlight’.

They sing together: Mister-er-er-er Moonlight.

He’ll always remember that, too.

They set the table for family dinner, and François doesn’t try to stop her. What does it matter now? If she wants the ghosts to join them for dinner, who is he to object?

Shall we put Granny at the head of the table?

Of course, he says. Great-Grandpa Paul-François beside her?

And you beside him. He is your namesake, after all.

What was he like?

Oh, he’s a foolish old man, she chuckles, he’s full of stories. Young though, sometimes, like when he was in the navy. He sunk a submarine, you know? He was in the papers.

And she reaches for more cutlery, more table mats, as she rings off the names he has heard so many times: Antoine and Brigitte, Ælfgifu and Henri, and Mama, his own grand-mére, whom he thinks about often.

I think we are ready, says Severine, shall I be Mama for a change?

He smiles. It is usually him that serves the food, pours the wine.

You be Mama, he says, tucking a napkin into his collar. Knowing it will make him look silly and make her laugh.

Now, she says, a little more wine. And she holds up her glass, and he follows her gesture, tipping it to clink gently with hers over the table set for a feast. But she is subdued, all of a sudden.

You are the last of our family, she says.

Probably not, he smiles – you go back far enough and you can see that everyone in the world is family.

Well then, she says, holding her glass up again. To our family.

The next morning, before he leaves, she asks him to take her to the Bayeux Tapestry.

It’ll be full of tourists, he says.

Not this time of year.

They’re here every time of year.

Humour an old lady, she smiles.

So he helps her out to the car and drives to the visitors’ car park, parks close to the door so she won’t have too far to walk.

I’m OK, she says, I can manage. But he asks for a wheelchair at the front desk anyway – just in case, he says, and she must agree with him really, because she sits down in the chair and immediately begins wheeling herself through the shop and towards the museum door.

There’s something you need to see, she says.

We’ve been here many times, Mama, I know it well.

Look! Did you know there was a green horse?

The horses are all blue and whi—

But she is right, and he can’t help laugh at her triumph as she points it out, the other-worldly green horse in a panel surrounded by foot soldiers and spears and shields and the threat of war.

Of course I’m right, she says. Now, follow me.

And she is off again, enjoying the mobility now, as she glides from wall to wall.

Halley’s comet—

Looks more like a sun, doesn’t it?

And see these soldiers watching? That one, there. Ælfgifu loved him, I think.

How do you know?

She showed me.

Who?

Look!

And he is standing in front of a small panel that he hasn’t noticed before, despite all those visits, with school and with his grand-mére, even with Severine – she used to bring him here, but never told him what he was supposed to see.

But close to the glass now he can make out each stitch: a woman, eyes looking out from the pale background, her hair in a red shawl. Behind her, an older man clasps her face in threat:
Ubi unus clericus et Ælfgyva
. Ælfgifu. It’s her. The ghost his mama always talks about; she had come from the tapestry.

But there is something about the proud look in her eyes – Ælfgifu is not cowering before this man. She is turning away, looking not at the man beside her but out, to the world, to him. There are pillars either side of where she stands, almost like a door frame she is looking out of, and that is when he remembers, for the first time in years, the day they camped out in the park to watch a comet but saw instead a sunrise. And that woman in the window, with her telescope pointed at the sky, and her eyes looking straight at him. Is that who this woman reminds him of?

And he looks away, over to Severine by his side, and he sees the same haughty eyes looking back at him, the same red shawl covering her head – though she is not young like Ælfgifu was when she was captured in thread and gold.

She looks like you, he says, eventually.

Yes.

And he kneels down beside her chair and puts his head on her shoulder.

I’m tired now, she says. Time to be going?

OK, Mama. He takes her hand. OK, Severine.

She squeezes his arm in return. Thank you. Really.

And her eyes search his as she tries to tell him now how grateful she is – that he came to see the tapestry, that he is going to see Antarctica, that he has been in her life.

Then she lets him wheel her back out to the car.

Outside, it has begun to snow. This time it is for real, he knows, as he stands in the hall, his suitcase by the door. He is finding it difficult to leave, trying not to break down, not to make things any harder for her, so he stands still for a minute and just watches the snow fall. Then he kisses Severine goodbye, gently brushes tears from her eyes and his own, and steps out into the cold.

1965

Comet Ikeya–Seki

As the needle of the turntable lifts and returns to its starting point, Ariane stands at the window looking out towards her grandfather’s old shed. She never knew her grandmother, but she remembers her grandfather from when she was a child. She remembers being shown the medal that he won during the First World War, and how he would brush away his embarrassment, preferring instead to dance around the room with her and Antoine.

She turns back to the room, more sure of herself. It isn’t easy, this decision she has made, but her husband is a man who can’t stay in one place. She knew this when she married him, when they dreamed as teenagers about the places they would go. But she also knows that she can’t leave, that she needs to stay with
her daughter, and her mother, because too many members of this family have gone and her mother’s mind is breaking under the pressure.

She holds Severine in her arms, rocks her gently as she stirs from her sleep. The love she feels for her child is stronger, she knows, than any she has felt before. It makes her want to forgive her own mother, too, for being strict, for pushing her – for seeming disappointed in her, but she knows now that can’t have been the case. She can’t imagine ever being disappointed in her child.

I told him to go, Mama, she says, preparing herself for a scolding.

Ariane’s mother will have things to say. Well, of course she will have things to say – she’ll happily talk to anyone she sees and sometimes people who aren’t there at all. But Ariane doesn’t know what to expect now.

Have you looked at the sky? her mother says, with a look of awe on her face as she bends down to kiss her granddaughter on the forehead. It is called a sungrazer, that comet to the east. Beautiful, isn’t it?

2017

Comet Giacobini

FRANÇOIS RUNS THROUGH THE SNOW
as if every muscle in his body is screaming to be set free. He doesn’t stop and he does not slow; he is at the furthest end of the world and his heart is clenched in a grip of guilt and loss and fleeting wonder. How could he do it, he asks himself, how could he leave? He should be at home, with Severine. His mama is dying. The others are watching him as if he’s on the edge – a last-minute addition to their carefully selected team who did the shorter, intensive training and is not pacing himself, who seems to need to win. But it is not winning that he needs, it is a speed that will silence the voice in his head, that will let him live with what he has left behind. The air freezes in his lungs as he gasps, as he pushes himself harder through a vast land of silver and red.

He is sorry that they are running laps of the base, he would rather leave the red behind him and head for the endless white of the mountains in the distance, the desperate bite of the coast where the icebergs splinter in the current. But instead he goes round and round, faster and faster.

The nights have begun in Antarctica, but they are not deep; they remain in hazy colours of wine, falling for a few minutes a day like a shadow before the sun bursts out again, forcing him to see. And he remembers Severine, eyes wide, looking into the night, at constellations and galaxies and comets searing through the solar system; dancing in the kitchen while he cooked, and laughing at jokes he could not hear and dreaming of the world.

He feels untethered. Every year of his life has been spent orbiting Bayeux up until now. His skin is burning under his clothes; the cold is stabbing in his stomach, in his chest. His eyes sting. He runs. Others join him. They are a group now, racing around this strange caterpillar base, a woman is trying to keep up with him, but every time she pulls close he speeds up. His breath gasps in his ears.

In a glance sideways he sees a flash of black hair and he stumbles, catches himself before he falls, runs behind her for a moment, knowing he has seen her before, in a different world – he can’t breathe – in a different life. He gets back into his rhythm, increases his pace. Some of the team, standing outside the base, are cheering now on the final lap of a marathon and he feels like his legs are going to break but he keeps going, he won’t stop pushing himself until he breaks through something, until he can stand to look at the woman from the tapestry, from the window, from the hilltop in Scotland, from his home; he stumbles again, keeps going, and Severine wanted this, he did not abandon her, he is living for her, that is what she wanted; she is here.

At the end of the final lap he collapses onto his knees, then down to his chest. The nausea that has been with him for weeks is
masked, briefly, by the freeze of snow on his hands, on his neck. He wants to cry, but does not. He rolls over, slowly, letting the snow melt into his hair, letting the glare of the sun and the endless sky burn his face, and he breathes. And he breathes.

He is going to be OK.

He lets himself cry out; it turns into a laugh.

He scoops some snow up in his hands, holds it to his hot face.

When he opens his eyes, the woman is looking down at him.

Maybe he is seeing things too, he thinks, maybe he has started to see ghosts like his mama and her granny before her. Then the group leader walks by and nods at her. She is not a ghost, then, this woman with wild black hair and loss in her eyes.

He must look ridiculous, he thinks, covered in snow, in sweat, lying on the ground in the midday sun on an ice shelf. In her eyes, there is something; perhaps she will smile, tell him her name. But she just keeps looking.

You should try it, he says; meaning letting go, pushing yourself to the edge of what your body can handle and screaming into the wild emptiness of Antarctica.

Maybe next time, Róisín says, meaning she wants to let go, she wants to learn how to push herself to the edge of what her body can handle and scream into the wild.

He says his name is François.

She smiles, then, in a way that makes his nausea return and his heart pound.

Róisín stands beside him while he cooks, and helps by slicing onions and passing him tins of tomatoes. She tells him about her research, about the Earth and the sky and how she came to move from one to the other.

It is amazing, out there, she says, looking up to the sky as if the ceiling of their base did not exist, as if she could see other planets in other galaxies. But if you look out for too long . . .

His smile is warm but he doesn’t press her with questions – he knows there are things he can’t talk about yet. There is something about Róisín, though, that makes him believe he might be able to. Perhaps, he thinks, she is someone who knows how to listen.

They go outside together to watch the sky, at sunset. Usually the others leave them alone, although they’ve never asked them to. They take one of the survival tents out and crawl inside, letting torchlight fill the space. They don’t always talk, although one evening she describes the village she is from. He imagines a farm with no animals or crops, a barn with a painted For Sale sign on the wall; the emptiness of a place that used to be full of life. He tells her about his mama and his grand-mère teaching him to cook; how he used to have a special stepladder in the kitchen, a pale blue plastic one for children, to climb on so he could reach ingredients before he was able to say their names.

He pulls his bobble hat on over his windproof Antarctic one. He is not here to forget, perhaps he is here to remember who he always was. Róisín looks at it almost as if she’s seen it before, smiling as she describes the places she has been to, the people she has met, from city to city as she explored, discovered, lived, until something changed and led her to a small red survival tent in the remotest continent on Earth. He asks her if she believes in ghosts. She says she believes it is possible for people to be haunted. He tells her that his mama is dying, and describes the family she is surrounded by.

Sometimes, two people and a wild expanse of snow and ice and rock can be a whole world.

It was the last thing in the world that Róisín was expecting; to find herself looking for him, wanting to be near him in the kitchen, wanting to look at the sky together. She has not wanted to spend
time with anyone for so long. He is young, of course, but someone to be close to. That can be as beautiful as the stars.

She reaches out her hand, when he talks about his mama, wanting to offer compassion but not knowing what the right thing is to say.

I . . .

She wonders if she should talk about Liam, but doesn’t want to change the subject to herself. So many years, she thinks, feeling her own grief haven’t helped her know what to say to others.