The Long Delirious Burning Blue, page 42
‘Five Yankee Mike, cleared to land.’
There’s a slight crosswind; I crab the plane into it and land on the numbers.
It isn’t till we’re back at the flight school and the ignition has been switched off and the propeller is still that he turns to me.
‘Well, little lady: looks like you’re a pilot. That was a real classy ride.’
Clutching my pink slip tightly in my hand, I watch him walk across the asphalt and on into the building where Jesse will be waiting.
I can’t believe that it’s real. This pink piece of paper – this temporary licence – is a badge of honour. A sign that says: look at me. I am a person of courage. I can fly.
I turn to Five Yankee Mike and I bow my head for a moment and drop a light kiss on her shiny hot nose. And then I hear his footsteps behind me.
‘Hey.’
I turn to face him with a huge grin on my face.
‘Congratulations,’ Jesse says.
I meet his eyes. Blue, blue eyes teeming with warmth and I think to myself – he isn’t my instructor any more. And a sudden sharp loss pierces my chest and takes my breath away.
And the sudden sadness that overtakes me isn’t what I expected at all.
Something is over. Something is coming to an end.
‘Post-checkride blues already?’
Does he really know me that well? I shrug, and try to maintain the smile. ‘How crazy is that?’
‘It isn’t crazy at all. It’s actually quite common. Though most people wait for a few hours before they succumb.’
‘Well, that’s me. Always one step ahead of the crowd.’
‘It doesn’t end here, you know.’ He looks at me, eyes intense. Uncomfortable, I glance away. He sees too much, I think. He knows me too well. ‘There’s so much more you can do. Instrument training, for one. You might not need it too often out here in the desert, but anywhere else in the country it’s a necessity.’
I nod my head without conviction. ‘Yeah. I guess so.’ I’m so mad at myself. This should be the happiest day of my life, and now look at me.
‘Right now, though, I’m not your instructor any more.’
‘No.’
‘So.’ He looks away, shuffles his feet on the asphalt.
Panic sweeps over me. ‘Listen –’
He reaches out, puts his hands on my shoulders. His fingers burn into my skin through the thin cotton of my tee-shirt. ‘Cat.’ I turn my face up to him and as I meet his eyes again something happens and I’m moving towards him and then it’s just his face, blocking out the sky.
His lips meet mine and I’m drowning.
Drowning …
… or falling.
I pull myself out of his arms and I run for my life.
I drive away from the airport with tears in my eyes and those same old fingers clutching at my throat. What am I doing? What in God’s name am I doing, running away from Jesse? Isn’t this what I’ve been wanting, if I’m honest with myself? Isn’t this what I wanted almost right from the start? Because it’s not just the flying, with Jesse – not just the hours spent side by side, crammed together in that tiny little cockpit. It’s not just that he’s been beside me, teaching me and encouraging me as I’ve plumbed the depths of my courage to get myself out of the hole I’ve been so blindly digging all these years. No: it’s more than that. It’s the lightness that seems to surround him – the sense of space, the lack of pressure … oh, I don’t know. He’s just so easy to be with.
And, let’s face it – he’s gorgeous. Far too gorgeous for me. I can still feel the warmth of his mouth as it brushed against mine for that briefest of moments – the shiver that ran through me as he placed his hands on my shoulders. What on earth would a guy like that want with me?
Way above me, out over the desert, a plane is practising aerobatics. My stomach lurches as I watch it, spinning and falling through the sky. Another plane joins it, keeping pace with it. Whirls and swirls of white smoke spinning out from them, spinning and spinning and falling and falling until it seems they’ll never stop … and then, in perfect synchronisation, they pull themselves out of the spin and they point their noses into the air and upwards they soar, back up into the sky where they belong.
Once, many years ago, I watched a television documentary about bald eagles. The footage of the eagles mating is something that I’ve never forgotten. They began their elaborate courtship with a series of aerobatic rituals. They circled each other, gently. They cart-wheeled around each other, then they soared up into the sky, locked talons with each other, and began a death-defying spiral down to earth. Down and down they spun, falling like stones, tangled together as if they were taking part in some crazy mutual suicide pact. Moments before striking the ground they disengaged from each other … and up they soared. And then did it all again. If their timing wasn’t perfect, there’d be nothing but death that awaited them there.
What do eagles feel, as they fall? Fear? Exhilaration? Is that what they need, to give them the courage to mate? Because eagles mate for life, and how much of a risk is that? You need to be very sure, to take a risk like that.
Maybe it’s their way of making sure.
The patched-up cracks in the road shine like silver snakes as I slowly make my way home. The truth is the same as it’s always been: I’m afraid. Afraid of my own feelings. Afraid that if I trust him, he’ll hurt me. Afraid that if I take a deep breath and close my eyes and join with him in that tumbling fall … he’ll let go.
As soon as I get home, I pick up the phone and I dial his cellphone.
‘Jesse?’
His voice is cool. ‘Cat.’
‘I want to learn to spin.’
‘You what?’
I take a deep breath. ‘I need to learn to fall.’
There’s a pause and then slowly, deeply, he begins to laugh. ‘You sure know how to spring a surprise on a guy.’
‘Will you teach me?’
Another pause. ‘Yeah. Okay, Cat. I’ll teach you to fall.’
18
Laura
The waiting has been desperate. She just hasn’t been able to settle at all. An odd feeling in her stomach – sort of fizzy. Tension in her shoulders, and a deep throbbing ache behind her eyes. Laura can’t sleep for thinking about it: Roddy’s face grinning drunkenly in her dreams; Cat’s terrified eyes and the high-pitched scream of her ‘Mummy!’ echoing into the night.
When Willy arrives with the post each day she rushes to the door and half-snatches it from him, heart pounding. Torn between the desperate need to know and the equally desperate need not to know. After all, that’s the way she’s always dealt with difficult things in the past. If you don’t want to know, then just push it away. Hide it, lock it up. Easy-peasy. Smile brightly and pretend it never happened – and then, magically, you’ll wake up the next morning and find that it never did happen, after all. It’s gone. All gone.
But that strategy isn’t working now. She’s opened too many doors into her past. Layer upon layer of doors, each of them reflecting the others back at her like some nightmarish fairground hall of mirrors. She can’t seem to find a way to close them again. And so: this purgatory. And the only sources of solace, her morning and evening visits to the lochside. Her strange communion with the solitary seal – her mother confessor; her soulmate.
Laura is back late from a weekly shopping trip to the village extended by another brief visit to Aunt Isobel. For distraction, and the consolation of a cup of her weak milky tea and a slightly soft, damp shortbread finger. As she crawls slowly down the pothole-ridden drive she sees that the postie has already been and gone: the white corner of an envelope peeks out through the lid of the shiny black mailbox by the side of the front door. She fumbles with the rusty old key that she leaves in the box – for who’s going to raid a mailbox around here? – and utters a staccato and uncharacteristic ‘Shit!’ as the mail falls out and flutters to the floor. And then she sees it: a postcard. Recognisably Cat: one of those arid, barren desert scenes again. Some kind of animal skull, for heaven’s sake. Exasperation toys with fear as she fumbles for the card with fingers that grow stiffer with each day that goes by. She holds it for a moment in her hands. Closes her eyes; prays.
Turns it over.
Reads.
Sinks down onto the doorstep with her head in her hands and weeps.
Laura clears her throat and scans the faces around her. The days are still long this deep into summer, and the evening light in the village hall is tinged with the soft blue glow. In previous years the storytelling circle has taken a break during the height of the tourist season, but this year, Meg says, no-one wanted to stop. ‘And ach, after all,’ she said to Laura, ‘it’s only once a month. Their bed and breakfasts aren’t going to go bankrupt for the sake of one Saturday night out of every month.’
Tonight it’s Laura’s turn to tell a story. She’s managed to avoid it so far, though she hasn’t missed a single meeting since that day back in November when she so reluctantly accompanied Meg for the first time. She’s nervous. She’s accustomed to telling stories to children, but not to adults. And it’s a long, long time since she told stories at all, even to children. She looks at Meg for courage: Meg winks and grins. Laura takes a deep breath and, without preamble, begins.
‘It was long ago, and a beautiful night. The full moon reflected in calm, glassy water – you could almost believe it had fallen to earth, floating there, finally now in your grasp. The sand twinkled silver like a galaxy of dusty stars, and the midnight air was warm and still. How could you not want to taste its treasures? So they swam in to shore, the selkie sisters …’
It’s a long story, as Laura tells it – indeed, as she began to write it, the first afternoon that she saw the seal. Longer than the average story that’s told here, anyhow. But there isn’t a murmur in the room as her voice, faltering at first, slowly grows stronger and clear. Not a single flicker or fidget. All eyes are on her; each face is entranced. It’s an old, old story that she’s telling, but with a twist in the story that is uniquely Laura’s. She has no concept of time; she’s aware only of the gentle dancing glimmer of the single candle on the low wooden table in the centre of the circle.
‘… And so, with each day that went by, the selkie woman withered still more. Mara looked after her; each morning she bathed her parched flaky body with water that she fetched from the sea. And whenever she could, she hunted for her mother’s skin. “I’ll find it for you, Mother,” she whispered each day: “I promise I’ll find your skin.”
‘The burden of responsibility weighed heavy on her young shoulders, but there was nothing that the selkie could do to halt the sickness that was draining away her life.’
Laura pauses for breath and closes her eyes. Cat’s face, wary and withdrawn, flickers back and forth in her mind like the guttering flame of the candle, and the sharp suddenness of pain in her chest makes her wince. She blinks; recovers herself. ‘But after a while it seemed that Mara had given up. Powerless to intervene, she grew silent and withdrawn as she watched her mother slowly fade away. And at night, when the selkie had finally fallen into a fitful, restless sleep, Mara turned increasingly to the solace of the sea. She would wander for hours on the beach; a slight, solitary figure, coming and going with the tides.
‘One night it began to rain heavily as she made her way back to the house at midnight, and she took shelter for a moment in the old stone boathouse on the shore. No-one had been inside since her father had died. She slipped through the rotting wooden door and sat down on the upturned wreck of an old boat with her head in her hands, until a gentle glow around her feet – from a beam of light shining into the shed from the newly uncovered full moon – told her that the sudden rainstorm had passed. As she stood to leave, her shadow shifted, and the moonbeam fell now on something dark and shiny that protruded from under one corner of the boat … and that was how, finally, Mara came upon her mother’s skin.
‘She ran home swiftly through the rain; she came to the selkie with tears in her eyes and her voice low and breaking with anticipated loss.
‘“Mother,” she whispered, bending over her bed, “I’ve found it. I’ve found your skin.”
‘The selkie’s heart leapt to hear it, but by then she was so weak that she could barely move. Getting down to that beach was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Her skin cracked and broke in the chilly night air, and pain lanced through her body with each step that she took. But her daughter supported her: all the way to the shore Mara held her up, murmuring words of encouragement and love. Who now was the mother? Who now the child?
‘The selkie sagged down on the sand while Mara ran to the boathouse and came back, holding the skin in her arms: the soft warm skin that smelled of her mother and the sea. Still sleek, still glossy after all those years. Weakly, the selkie held it to her face and inhaled the old familiar seal-smell, and for the first time in years found the energy to weep. Salt tears rolled warmly down her arid cheeks and lent her strength. She took hold of Mara’s hands; they were cold now, and trembling. “Listen,” she said: “listen to me, Mara. This isn’t the end. When the moon is full and the night is still, slip down to the beach and I will come to you. That way, you’ll always know you can see me again. You’ll always know that I’m with you.”
‘“No – it’s too risky. What if someone else finds you there? What if someone else steals your skin?”
‘“This time, I’ll protect my skin. This time, I know its value.”
‘And Mara stepped back then, as her mother clutched the old seal-skin tight to her breast. The selkie closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky. A sliver of moon shone down on her through a crack in the rain clouds and she opened her mouth and the song spilled out and she felt it again – the pain and the rapture – and she turned back into a seal. She hauled herself heavily into the cool sea-water, and wept – wept large salty seal-tears to feel once again the gentle caress of the waves. She turned on her back and she kicked with her flippers and she swam out to sea, away to the sisters who waited for her there, just beyond the limits of the bay.
‘She swam away, and she left Mara behind.’
Laura pauses again; swallows.
‘Mara mourned long and hard. Each night she would go down to the shore, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mother. And one month later, on the night of the fullest moon, her patience was rewarded: a seal sat on the largest rock on the beach. As it saw Mara approaching, it slipped off its skin and instantly was transformed into her mother. Her mother and yet somehow not her mother: a mother with eyes and hair and skin that shone; a mother at peace and seemingly at home with herself.
‘And so it continued to pass: that each month the selkie woman would come to the beach and talk with her daughter and tell her stories. She taught her to sing the song that she had sung that first night, when Mara gave her back her skin: the song that would call to her selkie family. The song that would sing her soul back home.’
Laura falls silent. There is absolute silence in the room. She looks up; meets Meg’s eyes.
Meg nods. Just nods.
The morning air is still and warm down by the lochside. Sheep bleat softly in the fields and Laura’s ears ring with birdsong. She is sitting in her usual spot under the bent rowan tree, with a pen in her hand and a pad of paper resting on her knee. Her handwriting isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still just about legible. And for this letter she doesn’t want the impersonality of a word-processed typescript. She wants this letter to be more … real, somehow. More Laura. Not the fake, cheery Laura who populated letters in the past: the true Laura.
The Laura who has found her skin.
Dear Cat,
Well, I’ve finished my story now. It’s not that there isn’t more that could be told: there’s plenty more. But it’s not necessary now. I’ve come to terms with my story; made my peace with the past. It’s a funny thing, Cat, the past: it’s like a skin. You might try to shrug it off, to shed it, but in shedding it you lose it and you lose part of yourself in the process. And if I’ve learned anything through telling my story it’s that it is possible to find your skin again. Maybe even a cleaned-up, better skin: a skin that you can look at with fresh, new eyes.
Often, when I sit here by the lochside, a seal comes and swims there beside me. Stares out at me, across the water. Do you remember the old stories about selkies? There’s one that’s often told about a selkie woman whose skin was stolen by her husband. Exiled from the sea, she sickened and pined. And everything seemed lost as she foundered under the weight of being what she wasn’t meant to be. But she found her skin again, so the old story says. And I take comfort from that, Cat. Because perhaps it may be – it may well be, if you watch and you wait, with hope in your heart – all that you once thought lost will return to you.
A Devonware jug sits on my mantelpiece now, nestled warm above the wood-burning stove. I keep it filled with flowers. On its side are inscribed the following words:
‘No dream is ever lost
we once have seen
We always may be
what we might have been.’
I feel as if I have found my skin, Cat: and in finding that skin I can let go of the past. Not hiding from it, as I used to do: but just not needing it any more. Letting it go. As if all those doors in my mind that were keeping it under lock and key gave way under the pressure and let the past slip out. And at first it swirled around me like a mist – like something sinister out of that movie, The Fog – a world filled with ghosts and a lingering sense of doom. But somehow, I wrote it all away. And now I sit here, by the lochside, and I look out over the water and the sea blends into the sky and the sky blends into the sea and the endless blue of it goes on forever. It’s as if all the edges have dissolved: there’s nothing to contain me or hold me back.
