And then Josie is there with the urn in her hands and thefour of them move towards the base of the oak, and the soil is dark and damp from the rainfall and it reminds Bren of the ocean, spreading on sand; he will tell her that later. Not now, though.
For this moment is not about them.
Josie lifts the lid – or at least, tries to, but it is screwed too tight, so Bren does it for her. Nora sees him keep the lid in his hand.
I feel like we should say something, Josie says. I don’t know what, though. Everything we said at the funeral was so …
Macabre, Freya nods.
And I feel like this isn’t, Josie says. I feel like this is how it was meant to be.
She glances at Bren, who is focused on the roots in the earth.
No words could do him justice anyway, he says.
It is dusk, now, the sunset gone. Stratus cloud, fade of blue. No headstone. No music. Just them, in the place that Jon was, and is, with the grass and the river and the trees as they each take fistfuls of the man who was theirs and scatter him onto the soil and there is so much of him, so much more than they expected, it is sort of funny, after a while; eventually they pour the sand of him into the grass, Jesus, Bren says, he wasn’t even a big guy, how is this possible.
And despite the humour and the sweet smell of spring, Josie weeps. Freya puts an arm around her, and Nora, in a leap of love and truth clasps her mother’s hand and lets her tears fall, too; Freya looks at her, astonished, but clasps it back. Bren, though, does not cry, or reach for a hand. All he does is touch his elbow, lightly, to Nora’s.
Tilts his head back, looks at the sky.
TWENTY
Bren stares at the stars that are out. The ones he can see, at least.
It is a hazy night, for near-May; summer come early, before it recedes again, not quite ready. He is aware this is the first time in years that he has stood completely still. That stillness, while difficult for him, probably is for most people.
It’s why Nora sews, he thinks, and crochets, and draws, and cooks. Why his mother bakes and cleans and waters her plants, why Freya forages for mushrooms and changes the sheets of dying people and why his dad had a tool shed and a never-ending list of odd jobs, fixing fences, playing cricket and bagging Munros and it is not just him, it is everyone, everyone needs to keep busy and moving to fill up their days, or rather, the emptiest parts of themselves.
He can hear the water running through the household pipes as someone – Freya, or his mother, maybe – brushes their teeth. Then the upstairs lights flick off and the garden is plunged into the starlit dark. Slight glow from indoors, haze of light pollution above the treeline. One more look at the stars, stitched into the sky like the sequins in Nora’s dress, before he goes inside.
She has not left yet. Freya returned next door and his mother has retired to bed, so it is just the two of them in thelamplit kitchen. She says she’ll make tea but then – screw it – gets his dad’s whiskey from under the sink. Something decent, a fifteen-year-old smoky something that his mother stirs into her baking, apparently, which is sort of heinous, Nora says, when it should be drunk neat. The way his dad used to drink it.
Bren does not go near the stuff for this very reason, but tonight, he concedes. Watches her pour it into two crystal tumblers before he takes them through to his old games room. And while Nora does follow, she lingers in the doorway. Says she’ll stay for one, but then she should.
Go, she does not say. Does not need to.
Which is her way, Bren thinks, of letting him know she has a life to get back to, outside of all this. That she needs to get back to Robin, which deep down, he knows.
Please stay, he says, all the same.
And the buses have stopped running and the taxi would cost a bomb and she seems to mull that over, and perhaps because of this – or because he has asked her for something, straight out – or simply because of the day they have had, she doesn’t argue. Sits beside him, takes her whiskey. Folds her legs beneath her.
Mad day, she says, taking a mouthful. Bren sips his too, and winces; it’s like drinking lighter fluid. He forces it down. Absorbs the moment. There is a painting on the wall that Nora made him, years ago. Abstract reds and yellows, which make him think of smashed fruit, the tunnels of a heart.
D’you remember that poem, he says to her, as he looks at it. The one you read to me once, on the school bus, about figs?
Sylvia Plath, Nora nods. But it wasn’t a poem.
I thought Plath was a poet?
She was. But she wrote a novel, too;The Bell Jar.The figs are from that.
Well, whatever it was, Bren says, it stayed with me. That idea of life, branching out, all of the fruit hanging there for the taking. But when you picked one fig, all the others would wither and die.
Nora nods again. Says yeah.
Bren feels the warmth of her, beside him. The heat. After all this time, still. After everything, today. Which is why he needs to go there.
