The boy who loved rain, p.21
The Boy Who Loved Rain, page 21
She took the few moments on the way from the car to show Colom the vivier itself, remembering Miriam’s explanation of the Portivy installation. This was an older, wilder arrangement, unused for many years. It was a stone-walled pool, built into a natural inlet in the rocks. A primitive system of drainage using metal sluice gates had long since surrendered to redundancy and rust, as had the ladder leading down into the pool. But the system’s main functioning remained intact, provided not by metal or mechanics but by the moon’s magnetic field. With every tide a refilling and refreshing of the vivier’s water. Any fish left here at low tide these days would be accidental tourists, occasional visitors too slow to quit with the receding waters. Long gone were the more crowded populations placed here to be kept alive until paying customers demanded their execution.
Today’s “Le Vivier” was a popular seafood restaurant, benefiting from proximity to the fresh and living fish, even though their stocks were now delivered from Port Maria and further afield. Generally crowded in the summer, and often so on winter weekends, it was quieter today: one table finishing off a late lunch; another taking an afternoon break from their clifftop walk; just one local at the bar. Fiona found them a table in the corner, far enough away from other occupants to free their conversation. They were closer, though, to the bar’s non-human population: a tank of lobsters, floating, crawling, flicking their antenna lazily through bubbling waters. Beyond them the view to the open sea, where their brothers and cousins still roamed, unaware that they might soon be residents of this same tank.
So here they were. She panicked. Was this the right environment? The right moment? She had not planned to speak to him in such a public place. She knew what Mark would say to her, were he here. There will never be a right place. There is no perfect moment. You just have to do it. She knew he would be right. She felt wretched.
After talking to Mark over breakfast, she had looked for something to tell Colom that was big enough to get the conversation moving, but not so big that she would let show the fear and dread she was feeling. Something to move them to the place where telling him seemed natural. She had quickly come to what that something would be.
Testing the volume of their likely conversation, she said, “There are some things we need to talk about, Colom.”
No one looked around. No one was listening. Perhaps this was, after all, a safe place. Colom obviously thought so, too.
“We’re not going to do the sex talk, are we? You know I’ve done it at school. I know everything I need to know. It’s all good.”
She smiled, despite everything. “No, it’s not that. More about our family and what we’ve been going through.”
“You’re going to get a divorce?”
“No, not that either. We’re not getting a divorce.” She said it emphatically, but wondered if she should have crossed her fingers when she said it.
A pause. He waited. She breathed; readied herself; dived.
“I know about the letter.”
“What letter?” Genuine. Could he even have forgotten?
“The letter you wrote with Daniel, for that website.” Recognition coming to his face. Shock. Fear.
“I wasn’t spying on you, love.” How to explain? She didn’t want to mention the police, for fear of spooking him. “After Daniel died, his parents found the letter he had signed. They told us because they knew you two were close, and wondered if you might have signed one too. That’s why we looked. That’s when we found it.”
“OK.” Hesitant. Guilty. Afraid of what would follow.
“I’m not mad with you. Colom, believe me. It’s not that at all. I know how hard things have been for you lately; how you’ve been struggling. The thing is… I think I know why.”
She left a space. Heard him begin to form words. Had to listen hard to catch them, half-whispered, half-mumbled, directed not at her but at the table.
“I don’t.”
“No, I know you don’t. That’s just it. There are some things that I know, that you don’t, and I think they might help you to understand what you’ve been feeling.”
He looked up, his eyes clouded. “What things?”
And there it was. The open goal she had tricked herself into creating. She breathed her silent thanks to Mark.
“Colom, there are some things your father and I have never told you, about your history. We should have told you, and I’m so sorry we didn’t. I love you, we both love you, and we should have told you the truth.”
She could see, on his face, fear descending like a cloud. His eyes were on hers, but spoke of terror, not embrace.
“About your birth. About how you came to us.”
The fear now contorting him, darkening his eyes. Self-doubt; horror. She could almost believe that he knew already, understood what was coming.
“You were born in Canada, that much is true. But not to me. Your real mother’s name was Chevonne. Chevonne Richards. She was from Newfoundland. She died not long after you were born.”
She wondered if she should stop; let him react. But she could see he wasn’t going to; was working hard to take this in, his mind spinning even as she spoke.
“Your father and I adopted you when you were two years old. We chose you because we loved you. I’ve always told you that seeing you for the first time was the happiest moment of my life. And it was. It really was.”
He had closed his eyes now, was swallowing his tears; his body shaking slightly.
“I’m so sorry we didn’t tell you sooner, Colom. Truly I am. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and I would give anything to go back and change it. But I can’t. That’s why I want you to know the truth now. We love you. You are our son, nothing changes that. But you need to know that you had another mother – a birth mother.”
She slid the photograph across to him; let him see what it was. He took it gruffly; refused to look at it; replaced it on the table between them. She waited for some response. Got the merest hint of a shrug, his face twitching now. Should she stop? How could she? Full disclosure – that was what she had committed to. She hated the cruelty of this, but knew it was more cruel still to push the secrets back into their hiding place.
“But that’s not all,” she said, as gently as she knew how. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
He looked at her now, pleading with his eyes for her to stop. She knew she couldn’t.
“Before you came to us, you lived for a while in a foster home. With a family called the McAllisters. There were several children there. But they were very cruel people. You should never have been placed there. They did some terrible things – they hurt you. Badly. That’s why we never told you, because it was too painful to talk about.”
And he knew. That it was true. It arrived in the very centre of his puzzled, whirring mind, and as soon as it landed, he knew it belonged. Knew he couldn’t scream that she was lying. Knew that he would never again reach the calm, dry shoreline of the life he had lived until now.
She put her hand on his. “Colom,” she said.
Tears were rising in him now, ready to overwhelm. Suddenly he stood up from the table, the violence of the act rattling his cup and drawing stares from their fellow customers.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he half-shouted, half-cried. He turned quickly and headed for the door.
“Colom, come back!” Fiona said, her voice hovering somewhere between an angry mother and a jilted friend. She got up quickly to follow him; grabbed the photograph of Chevonne; threw down twenty euros in its place so as not to be pursued for non-payment. He was out of the door and gone by the time she reached it. She ran instinctively towards the clifftop; grey rocks in menacing formation, white spray breaking over them. She couldn’t see him.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that he had not headed that way, but in the opposite direction, towards the car. She ran after him, fumbling for her keys as she did so; clicking the remote. As soon as he heard the locks disengage, he climbed in, pulled his seat-belt on, turned to lock his door. She had to click again to open hers. She got in beside him; saw his angry silence; tried to speak. “Colom…”
But he turned from her and she knew in her heart that, for all she wanted to say right now, it was better to stay silent. She started the car; turned towards Portivy; drove home; watched him open his door before she’d even switched off the engine; saw him run into the house; knew by the time she got there that he would be on his way up the stairs.
Not a word had passed between them on the journey home. He pretended not to notice when she slipped the picture into his coat pocket.
She came into the house to see the back of his heel disappearing up the stairs; Miriam standing in the kitchen; now moving towards her. She fell into her arms; let the tears that had been pressing against her all afternoon flow now, and express themselves. Sobbed like a wounded child on the welcome shoulder of her friend.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Whenever it rains you will think of her.
Neil Gaiman, Strange Days, Short Story
Fiona explained to Miriam, as best she could, all that had transpired with Colom. She felt wretched still, believed she had mishandled everything, but Miriam was more optimistic; felt that progress had been made. Fiona wondered on what evidence she based this. Was it a reasoned hope, or was she simply trying to be positive?
They cooked, but Colom didn’t show for supper. Fiona knocked on his door; asked without opening it if he was coming; heard a muffled “No”; heard even in that one syllable that he was crying still. Her heart ached for him, but something told her not to force his hand.
Much later, she went upstairs to check on him again. She was determined not to communicate to him her fear – but equally determined to make sure he was OK. She couldn’t go to bed herself without knowing how he was doing. She knocked, and as she came into the room saw something hurriedly slipped under his pillow.
She went to his bedside; smiled gently.
“Do you want to talk about her?”
A half-shrug; a puzzled look.
“I don’t mind, really I don’t. I don’t know much, but what I do know I can share with you.”
He said nothing for a moment, questions gathering in his mind like a traffic jam on the M25. He wasn’t looking at her; was staring, rather, at a point on the wall beyond the end of his bed. There was nothing there to look at.
“Did you ever meet her?”
“No, never. Your father did, before you were born. She was involved in one of his projects.” She hated that this, even now, was only part of the truth, but knew that this was not the moment to pursue it.
“Why?”
“Because of her addiction. She was heavily addicted to drugs. That’s really what was destroying her life. It was very hard for her.”
“Did she even try to quit?” Anger hovering under his words.
“She tried really hard, Colom. But it was too strong for her. You have to understand, she was ill. Addiction is a disease, not a choice. You can’t blame her for not quitting. But you can know that she did try. For you, I think. I think she really wanted to be able to look after you. She wanted to be a good mother. But in the end, the disease was too strong for her.”
He was quiet again. Examining, still, the same vacant wall.
“Did she ever hold me?”
The question landed like a dart in Fiona’s heart. She fought tears, held herself in check for his sake.
“Yes. She did. She had you for just over twenty-four hours, in the hospital.” Her eyes closed now, imagining what it must have been like; this scene that she herself had so often wished, so deeply longed to have been a part of. “They gave you to her and she held you, right there in her bed. She looked at you, into your eyes, and loved you. She loved you as much in that moment as any mother has ever loved a child. Enough, maybe, to last a lifetime.”
His tears were coming now. She knew the conversation would not go on much longer.
“And she named you.”
He said nothing. But for a moment his crying slowed. This information was arriving in his mind like a wave onto the shoreline. Climbing the sands. Making sense.
“She did? Not you and Dad?”
“No, not us. She named you right then, in that moment.” Understanding, even as she said this, the great elephantine truth she had been blind to these past twelve years. “Every time you hear your name, it’s a memorial to that moment. She loved you, and she named you, and I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to tell you.”
She meant it, now, not just for him, but for herself. How could she have feared this moment; have run from this beauty? She meant it because she wanted to remember too. She wanted to honour this woman who for one brief moment in a life of chaos and confusion was able to love clearly, unconditionally. To receive her son; to welcome him; to name him with a name that had been formed and spoken in the very depths of her heart. She spoke a silent apology to Chevonne, for having resisted her memory; for having tried to erase her; for not having shared with her son before this night the sacred duty of remembering. How could she not have known that the love, the clarity, the holy beauty of those twenty-four hours were a treasure for her son to hold on to?
“I think I’ll go to sleep now.”
“You should. But it’s also OK to think about her for a while. It’s OK to miss her. OK?”
“OK.”
She got up from her knees. She sensed as she moved away from him that they had a new connection. It was fragile; partial; a makeshift bridge. But it was there. The beginning of a new kind of friendship, a partnership not derived from excluding Chevonne but from loving her. Sharing the task of keeping her memory alive. She left the room with a new commission; a new purpose. The first, she now realized, that she had ever so completely co-owned with her son.
The peace lasted well into the night, until her sleep was once again disturbed by his cries. The same dream. The same fierce terror. She soothed him once again, their conversations of the day forgotten, it seemed, in the urgency of the night-time crisis. She wondered if it was of Chevonne that he dreamed. Was it possible that it was his mother beside him in the water? Or was there someone else still; someone for whom they didn’t even have a name?
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Rain starts off as ice or snow crystals at cloud level. A droplet of water will stay in Earth’s atmosphere for around ten days.
“Rain”, Wikipedia
Nobody knew what the morning would bring, but the weather, at least, was on message. A calmer, warmer day broke over Portivy harbour; the sea still but for a tiny, rippling breeze; the sky a hazy, white-glazed blue. The tide was as low as Fiona had seen it so far; the little tribe of boats all leaning on their sides in the mud like sleeping sunbathers. Where the long stone launch ramp usually met the water, it was now dry and exposed, the drainage pipe buried under it showing now where it came out onto the sea bed. She watched a group from the diving school make their way to their dinghy, walking further than on most days they would need to; black-suited; struggling to carry their flippers, their oxygen tanks; pleased, in due course, to heave these burdens into the waiting boat.
She had come down to the harbour to get some fresh air, knowing Colom could be up at any moment, or equally could sleep until lunch-time. For her own part, she had again slept little; drifting in and out of shallow slumber, the waking spaces in between spiked with regrets, fears, self-reproach. She had not yet spoken to Miriam this morning, nor Mark. But she knew that they had no greater clue than she had of what the day would hold. Only one thing would tell them. In due course Colom would wake. She would try to speak with him again. And they would know.
She was surprised to see Mark heading down the hill towards her. Wondered what it was that he was carrying.
“Thought I might find you here,” he said. “You OK?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“I bought something for Colom. Wanted to know if you’re happy with me giving it to him this morning?”
“What is it?” It was wrapped around with a carrier bag. He brought it out to show her. She saw colours: a rainbow display on what might have been a chocolate box.
“They’re pastels,” he said, “oil-based. You use them like a kind of coloured charcoal in some ways, but they can also be like oil paints; you can blend and mix them, rub them together. They’re a great way to discover how colour works.”
“You think he’ll like that?”
“I think he’s ready for it. He loves Thierry’s work, but I don’t think he’s going to take up a palette knife any day soon. This is a step in that direction.”
“You think he should paint?” They had instinctively turned towards the Café du Port and were walking now in that direction, Thierry’s excellent early-morning coffee beckoning them.
“I don’t know. But he’s concentrated on drawing so far, and he’s really very good. It would be good to find out if there’s a painter in there, trying to get out.”
“He reminds me a lot of you at his age.”
“Me too. Odd, isn’t it. There are times when I could swear I can see a family likeness. Physically, I mean… Anyway, you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. It’s very kind of you.”
“It’s not just about the painting. I really felt it might do him good to have something to focus on right now. Take his mind off things a bit.” He held the café door open for her.
“I hope you’re right.”
And he was. Brilliantly so. Colom couldn’t wait to try the pastels, and immediately assumed this would mean working outside. The rain had decided to be elsewhere for a while; the light was good; the colours of the sea were as iridescent as they ever could be. The pastels got him out of his room; out of the house; into fresh air and the ocean’s benevolent presence. After his first experiments, which were mostly attempts to understand how the colours worked, Thierry lent him a big board. He could hold this on his knee, paper held to it with masking tape, and have both hands free to manipulate the colours. He was still tense around Fiona; still reluctant to talk further. But he was at peace, more than he had ever been, with the sea, the sky, his board and the pastels for company.
