The boy who loved rain, p.27
The Boy Who Loved Rain, page 27
“Of course,” Fiona said quickly.
He unfolded it. Saw that it was harmless. Miriam couldn’t see what was written. The paper was thick, no letters showing through. Doug Porter, armed with the instinct of a father, decided he would trust the instinct of a mother.
“I will,” he said kindly. “I’ll give it to her.” He had no idea what it might mean. What it was for.
“Thank you,” Fiona said. “We wish you all the very best. Do we have your permission to pray for Amy? I don’t mean here, now. I mean when we are praying, over these coming days.”
He looked momentarily vulnerable. Alone with the burden of a daughter who was sick and seemingly couldn’t be cured and a wife whose spirit had been crushed by cruel circumstance.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said sincerely. “Please do.”
He stood in the open doorway as they got into the car and pulled out of the driveway. Just before the blue gates swung closed, he turned to go inside. Miriam was sure that he was talking to someone in the hall as he did so.
She wanted so much to ask Fiona what she had given him for Genevieve, and why, but something told her not to. It was a private moment between one distressed mother and, via an intermediary, another. If she wanted to explain she would.
But she said nothing.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Raindrops can fall at speeds of about 35 km an hour.
“Rain”, Wikipedia
They drove in silence for several minutes, each caught in the swirling dance of her own thoughts. Fiona was at the wheel, the river to her right as they headed towards the city. They passed a windmill, next to it a statue of Rembrandt, and they were away from the Amstel, heading into the lunch hour traffic and towards the centre.
“So what’s next?” Miriam said at last, unable to sustain the silence any longer. “What do we do now?”
Fiona sighed deeply. “I don’t know,” she said, wondering if she was sounding just a little like her son. “Do we try again?”
“I’m not sure it will help. His mind seemed made up, I would say. I can’t blame him – they’ve got a lot to deal with right now, without adding the interfering oddness of two strangers.”
“Do you think he thought we were a little crazy?”
“I don’t know what he thought. We never really got the chance to find out. He just hasn’t got the capacity to pursue some whole new avenue with his daughter – introducing strangers to her; asking her to talk to them; explaining to her what it is that they’re doing there. We could have been Mother Teresa and he’d still have said no. He was just doing his job: protecting his family.”
“You think he feels guilty?”
“Wouldn’t any of us in his situation? Did I do enough? Did I say enough? Was I away from home too much? Should I ever have taken her away from her roots in Canada? I suspect poor Doug Porter has felt little but guilt these past few months.”
They were caught in heavy traffic now, heading towards a junction where the road into town cut across the inner ring road: a bottleneck of delivery vans, bicycles, and cars; a few tourists trying to get their bearings in a metropolis planned by a puzzle-maker. Fiona abruptly switched lanes and turned left, finding a gap in the oncoming traffic to cut across and down a side road. She pulled into a bus stop lay-by; engaged the handbrake; killed the engine.
“Sorry,” she said meekly. “I just needed to stop for a moment.”
“Do you want me to drive?”
“It’s not that. It’s… Miriam, what are we doing here?”
“In Amsterdam?”
“In all of it. What are we doing? She’s not our daughter. We know almost nothing about her. Do we really have the right to come blundering in, breaking into someone else’s tragedy? We’ve driven a thousand kilometres and I don’t know why. What were we even expecting?”
“I know, Fiona,” Miriam said. “It seems strange. But it’s… a shred. When you’re in the dark, even the smallest light is better than nothing. I do think that coming here was the right thing to do. It’s a slender hope, but it’s the only hope we’ve got.”
“Had.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s the only hope we had. You said it’s the only hope we’ve got, but it isn’t. As of about twenty minutes ago it’s a hope we thought we had. Now we have… nothing. I’m sorry, Miriam. I’m grateful for your help, I really am. But I think I’ve had it. I don’t think I can do this any more.”
Miriam said nothing; had nothing to say. Fiona was right and at the same time wrong. They sat in silence, the noise of the traffic like the breaking of distant waves. And then another noise: closer; muffled but insistent.
“Is that your phone?” asked Miriam.
Fiona snapped out of her reverie, grabbed for her handbag where she’d left her phone on silent while they’d been speaking with Doug Porter. It was vibrating as she took it from the bag, but stopped the instant she had it in her hand. She looked to see who it was but saw only a number she didn’t recognize: a +31 dialling code.
“I don’t know who this is,” she said, frustration bubbling up in her. She handed the phone to Miriam.
Miriam read the number slowly.
“I do,” she said.
When they reached 130 Amsteldijk again, coming this time from the direction of the city, the high blue gates were open for them. Once again Doug was at the door by the time they got out of the car, but not, this time, alone. Beside him was a tall, finely featured woman whose jet black hair fell like a curtain to her waist. She towered above him, confounding again Miriam’s habitual pre-judgement. She had expected a mouse, a diminutive “little lady” hiding in the shadow of her husband. Genevieve Porter had been crying, that much was obvious. But that took nothing away from her stature. This was not a trembling servant girl. This was a princess of the Amazon. No question now how the heart of a young English intern had been so comprehensively conquered.
Doug, a little paler than when they had last seen him, took care of the introductions.
“Thank you for coming back,” he said, when they had arranged themselves around the chairs they had not long vacated. No coffee was offered this time around: both hosts were too preoccupied to even think of it. On the table where the tray had been, there was now a piece of paper, the folds of which identified it as the note Fiona had left for Genevieve. But it wasn’t a note. It was a drawing. Miriam saw a girl; a boat; buildings that looked to be Amsterdam canal houses.
“I apologize for not having met with you before,” Genevieve said, the strain of recent tears still tugging at her voice. “I’m afraid I just didn’t feel that I could face it. The past few weeks have been too much for me. I’ve felt so exhausted. The thought of new people coming; of talking about Amy all over again with them; going over all that has happened. I couldn’t face it. I am truly sorry.”
“There’s really no need to apologize,” Miriam replied. “You’ve been through – you’re going through – something that would strain the health of any parent. Believe me, we do understand…”
I’m not sure I do, Fiona thought. And I’m certainly not sure why we’re back now.
“Your husband said you wanted to talk to us after all?” she said. “To ask us some questions?”
“About the picture,” Genevieve said, as if that made sense of everything.
“Maybe you could explain,” her husband interjected, “why it struck you so.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, collecting herself. She coughed, clearing her throat. “Fiona, did your son draw this?” She flattened out the picture on the table so they could all see it: the girl; the signature; the title.
“Yes. Yesterday afternoon. He went to the Van Gogh Museum and was really struck by the charcoal sketches. He spent three hours or so at home afterwards just drawing. He loves to draw.”
“Do you know who the girl is?”
“I have no idea. He didn’t say. Somebody he saw in the museum maybe. I’m never sure where Colom’s ideas for subjects come from.”
“You said before, in your email to us, that your son dreams of a girl – that he feels he needs to rescue her.”
Fiona nodded assent, not sure if she was supposed to explain more.
“Do you think this is a picture of the girl he dreams of?” Genevieve asked hesitantly. Because she didn’t want to hear the answer? Or because she did?
“Are you saying… that this girl looks like your daughter?” Fiona ventured in disbelief. “Is this a picture of Amy?”
“No, no, I’m not saying that at all. Sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well. The girl in this picture clearly isn’t Amy. Amy is much taller, her face not so round. No, that’s not it at all.”
They waited for more.
Doug took the hint, aware that his wife was struggling to make herself understood. The look of utter shock that he had seen on her face when she had first unfolded the picture was still with him. A combination of disbelief and terror, but then the emergence, under both, of something else. Hope? He had not understood, had not at first looked closely enough at the sketch to see what she had seen. But when she pointed it out he too had paled with shock. Could he really believe? That the boy knew? That it wasn’t some bizarre coincidence, or worse still, a set-up? In the end it didn’t matter whether he believed it, because he saw that she did. She was up and out of the bed in an instant. “Call them,” she had said, unflinching. “Get them back. I need to speak with them.”
“Perhaps I can explain,” he said. His voice soft now. Every effort made to distance himself from his earlier, more abrupt responses.
“I told you earlier of Genevieve’s roots in the Mi’kmaq tribe,” he began. “What I didn’t tell you was that Amy, too, has native ancestry. Stronger even than my wife’s, we think. We know that her birth mother was of Mi’kmaq descent, and we suspect her father was too. It was one of the reasons we decided so quickly to adopt her. We already knew that we could not naturally have children. We’d told the adoption people that we would gladly give a home to a child of native descent. Amy’s case was special. We weren’t told much, but we did know that her need of a new home was considered urgent – she was a priority case, and we were thought to be her best hope. Once we saw her, it took us less than a second to say yes. She was beautiful. I knew when my wife was halfway through the doorway that she had fallen in love. Amy’s hair has changed somewhat over the years: she loves to try different styles, and has worked hard at curling it. When she first came to us she did have the most perfect jet-black bob. She beamed out from it with the brightest eyes I had ever seen in a child.”
Genevieve was staring at the picture again.
“The thing is,” Doug continued, “Amy was the name she was given in the foster home but it wasn’t her birth name. We were told by the adoption people that it would be best to keep it, since it was the name she had grown used to. We had actually always wanted an Amelia – it was one of the first decisions we ever made together – so we were more than happy, and Amy she became, and still is.”
“But it wasn’t her birth name?” Fiona said, sensing a tingle of where this might be going. A hint of something. A train, still in the distance, but on its way.
“Her mother was part of a whole hippy subculture. Her childhood dream, so we were told, had been to reclaim her native heritage. When her daughter was born she felt a moment of hope, and named her baby in honour of her dream.”
Fiona looked first to Doug and then to his wife. Alert. Expectant.
“She called her Rain,” Genevieve said, her eyes fixed on Colom’s drawing.
Fiona’s hand went to her mouth. Miriam’s eyebrows arched. No one spoke. They all knew what they were all thinking, but they were all afraid to say it. They had crossed now into new, unknown territory. Where they went from here was far from certain. But it would not be where they would have thought, ten minutes ago, they were each going.
“Tell me about your son,” Genevieve said. Unmoving. Her eyes still on the drawing.
It took Fiona fifteen minutes to recap the basic facts of Colom’s life so far, including what they’d learned of McAllister and his conviction. Once or twice she stopped and looked to Miriam to confirm the story, or fill in gaps. In the end she felt that Genevieve and Doug could build the most accurate picture possible, in the circumstances, of her adopted son.
“And you think these dreams are… real?” Genevieve asked. “That there really is a girl and that Amy might be her?”
Fiona took from her bag the photograph of Amy that Mark had found. She passed it across.
“This is a picture of your daughter, we believe,” she said. Genevieve nodded, tears pricking her eyes.
“The soft toy beside her – we call him Oscar – has been Colom’s companion for as long as I’ve known him,” Fiona said.
“We think that Colom and Amy were together in the McAllisters’ home,” Miriam said. “And we think this means that they did develop a particular bond. Is it impossible to believe that he would dream of her as his missing sister?”
“No, it’s not impossible,” Doug said, “but it is unusual.”
“It was an unusual home,” Fiona said, “and not in a good way.”
Genevieve spoke again. “And you think that seeing Amy might help your son in some way?”
“We think it might help both of them,” Miriam suggested.
“But why?” asked Genevieve. It was a genuine question. She wasn’t trying to be obstructive, but she was trying to understand, and nothing in her experience to date was helping.
“The truth is,” Fiona interjected, a little more loudly than she had intended, “we don’t know. We don’t know if the dreams are real; if Colom somehow remembers Amy without knowing that he does. And we don’t know if them seeing each other will help in any way at all. But it’s all we’ve got. And it feels like the right thing to do.”
“Fourteen hours,” Genevieve was smiling. “You drove for fourteen hours straight to come and do this?”
“We did,” Miriam and Fiona replied in unpractised unison.
“I don’t see what harm it can do. One visit. On Saturday morning, if she is well enough. Doug?”
“I’m willing to give it a try,” Doug said. “God knows we’ve run out of other ideas.”
“Genevieve’s parents fly in tomorrow,” he continued. “It’s her mum’s birthday next week. But Amy will be at home all Saturday morning, and I think that could work. If you come for around 10:30, that should be all right. I’ll call you if there’s any need to change the time.”
“Thank you,” Fiona was saying, already getting up to leave; already inhabiting a new and different future, casting off her old, despondent self like an unwanted coat. “Thank you so very much.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
In heavily populated areas that are near the coast… there is a 22% higher chance of rain on Saturdays than on Mondays.
R. S. Cerveny and R. C. Balling, “Weekly cycles of air pollutants, precipitation and tropical cyclones in the coastal NW Atlantic region”, Nature 394 (6693), 6 August 1998
They filled their Friday as any tourist family in Amsterdam might, a tingle of anticipation bubbling under their canal walks and pancake lunch. They visited the home of Anne Frank; the newly refurbished Rijksmuseum, brick-red and palatial under a steep grey roof, the permanent collection a history of Dutch art through the ages. Fiona had expected it to be a positive day; had been so encouraged by the progress Mark had made with Colom. So lifted by Doug and Genevieve’s agreement.
But she saw, all day, that Colom was on edge. He seemed strained; tired. He barely spoke, returning to the shrugs of old. Where Van Gogh had triggered something in him, Rembrandt didn’t even register. She was reminded sharply that however far they’d come, their journey wasn’t over.
Even more so that night. She was woken by a shout more shrill, more urgent than any she had heard from him. She clambered up the steep stairs to him; found him sitting up in bed, his knees pulled to his chest, rocking; crying; whimpering. She tried to soothe him; waited for him to find sleep again. But he didn’t. She talked to him but got nothing in return. She watched as pain and confusion played across his face. His breathing was fitful, as if he was flinching from the pain of third-degree burns. She asked him what was wrong but knew, as soon as asking, that he didn’t know. Just the same mumbled words, “I couldn’t save her.” She sat with him for almost an hour, until he seemed to be asleep, albeit fitfully. She crept out, only to be back within the hour as he again woke, screaming.
This time, exhausted, he let her hold him. She rocked with him, stroking his back. All the time muttering, “It’s going to be all right,” but all the time battling the overwhelming feeling that it wasn’t. In time he found sleep again. But in time, again, the terrors of the night found him, and she was back at his side. The last time she left him, when he at last had fallen back asleep, she saw at the window the pale pink glow of dawn’s first light.
She had no choice but to wake him on Saturday, determined not to miss the meeting they had at last been offered. Her own sleep so badly broken, she felt as haggard and unrested as he looked. They breakfasted quickly and, leaving Mark to himself, set off as a threesome to the Amsteldijk house.
It was 10:35 by the time Fiona tried the bell for the third time, leaning on it for longer than was polite. They had said they would be there, grandparents in tow; that Amy would be back; that she and Colom could meet. Surely they would not have cancelled without saying something? It was a big house – maybe there were parts where the bell could not be heard? She thought she had spotted a pool house – was that where they were?
She tried again. Nothing. No noise or movement; the door resolutely locked. But the gates were open – that was the thing that seemed odd.
Then a voice – not from the house but from the pavement; beyond the open gates.
“They’re not in.” The accent North American. Canadian? A West Coast nasal twang.
