No, it is not so simple as grief. It is guilt that chases him. Misplaced guilt over Rebecca’s death. He blames himself, believes that if he hadn’t left her, things might have gone differently. I worry for him. I understand well the peculiar guilt of tragedy’s survivors.
Through the window, I could see Ruth across the street; she’d got caught talking with the minister and his wife and hadn’t yet reached the pharmacy. With great effort, I eased myself to the edge of my seat, hooked my handbag over my arm and clutched my cane. Legs trembling, I stood. I had an errand to run.
The haberdasher, Mr Butler, has a tiny shopfront on the main street; little more than a hint of striped awning sandwiched between the bakery and a shop selling candles and incense. But beyond the red timber door, with its shiny brass knocker and silver bell, a trove of diverse items belies the modest entrance. Men’s hats and ties, school bags and leather luggage, saucepans and hockey sticks, all jostle for space in the deep, narrow store.
Mr Butler is a short man of about forty-five, with a vanishing hairline and, I noticed, a vanishing waistline. I remember his father, and his father before him, though I don’t ever say so. The young, I have learned, are embarrassed by tales of long ago. This morning he smiled over his glasses and told me how well I was looking. When I was younger, still in my eighties, vanity would have had me believe him. Now I recognise such comments as kindly expressions of surprise I’m still alive. I thanked him anyway-the comment was well-meant-and asked whether he had a tape-recorder.
‘To listen to music?’ said Mr Butler.
‘I wish to speak into it,’ I said. ‘Record my words.’
He hesitated, likely wondering what I could possibly be meaning to tell the tape-recorder, then pulled a small black object from his display. ‘This one ought to do you. It’s called a walkman, all the kids are using them these days.’
‘Yes,’ I said hopefully. ‘That looks the thing.’
He must have sensed my inexperience, for he launched into explanation. ‘It’s easy. You press this one, then talk into here.’ He leaned forward and indicated a patch of gauze metal on the side of the machine. I could almost taste the camphor on his suit. ‘That there’s the microphone.’
Ruth was still not back from the pharmacy when I reached Maggie’s. Rather than risk more of the waitress’s questions, I pulled my coat around me and wilted onto the bus seat outside. The exertion had left me breathless.
A cold breeze brought with it a cluster of forgotten items: a confectionary wrapper, some dried leaves, a brown and green duck’s feather. They danced along the reaches of the street, resting then twirling in step with each gust. At one point, the feather reeled on ahead, embraced by a partner more vigorous than the last, which lifted it and sent it pirouetting up over the shop rooves and out of sight.
I thought of Marcus, dancing across the globe in the grip of some unruly tune from which he can’t escape. It doesn’t take much these days, to bring Marcus to mind. In recent nights he has been a constant trespasser on my thoughts. Pressed like an exhausted summer flower, between images of Hannah and Emmeline and Riverton: my grandson. Out of time and out of place. One moment a small boy with dewy skin and wide eyes, the next a grown man, hollowed by love and its loss.
I want to see his face again. Touch it. His lovely, familiar face, etched as all faces are by the efficient hands of history. Coloured with ancestors and a past he knows little about.
He will return one day, of that I’ve little doubt, for home is a magnet that lures back even its most abstracted children. But whether tomorrow or years from now, I cannot guess. And I haven’t time to wait. I find myself in time’s cold waiting room, shivering as ancient ghosts and echoing voices recede.
That is why I’ve decided to make him a tape. Maybe more than one. I am going to tell him a secret, an old secret, long kept. Something no one knows but me.
Initially I thought to write, but having found a ream of yellowed notepaper and a black biro, my fingers failed me. Willing but useless collaborators, capable only of transmuting my thoughts into illegible spidery scrawl.
It was Sylvia who made me think of a tape-recorder. She came across my note paper during one of her occasional cleaning sprees, timed to avoid the demands of an unfavoured patient.
‘Been drawing, have you?’ She’d said, holding the note paper aloft, turning it sideways and inclining her head. ‘Very modern. Quite nice. What’s it supposed to be?’
‘A letter,’ I said.
It was then she told me about Bertie Sinclair’s method of recording and receiving letters to play on his cassette machine. ‘And I don’t mind saying he’s been much easier since. Less demanding. If he starts complaining about his lumbago I only have to plug him in, set him off listening to one of his tapes, and he’s happy as a lark.’
I sat on the bus seat, turning the parcel over in my hands, thrilling at the possibilities. I would start as soon as I got home.
Ruth waved at me from across the street, smiled a grim smile and started across the pedestrian strip, tucking a pharmacy package into her handbag. ‘Mum,’ she scolded as she drew near. ‘What are you doing out here in the cold?’ She looked quickly from side to side. ‘People will think I made you wait out here.’ She scooped me up and led me back along the street to her car, my soft-soled shoes silent beside her tapping court heels.
On the drive back to Heathview I watched out the window as street upon street of grey-stone cottages slipped past. In one of them, midway along, nestled quietly between two identical others, is the house in which I was born. I glanced at Ruth, but if she noticed she did not say. No reason she should, of course. We pass that way each Sunday.
As we wove along the narrow road and village became countryside, I held my breath-just a little-the way I always do.
Just beyond Bridge Road we turned a corner, and there it was. The entrance to Riverton. The lace-winged gates, as tall as lampposts, doorway to the whispering tunnel of ancient trees. The gates have been painted white, no longer the gleaming silver of yesteryear. There is a sign affixed now, alongside the cast-iron curls that spell ‘Riverton’. It reads: Open to the public. March-October. 10 am-4 pm. Admission: adults £4, children £2. No pass outs.
The tape-recording took a little practice. Sylvia, thankfully, was on hand to help. She held the machine before my mouth and I spoke, at her behest, the first thing that came to mind. ‘Hello… hello. This is Grace Bradley speaking… Testing. One. Two. Three.’
Sylvia withdrew the walkman and grinned, ‘Very professional.’ She pressed a button and there came a whirring. ‘I’m just rewinding so we can hear it back.’
There was a click as the tape returned to its start. She pressed ‘play’ and we both waited.
It was the voice of age: faint, worn, almost invisible. A pale ribbon, frayed so that only brittle silver threads survive. Only the merest flecks of me, my real voice, the one I hear in my head and in my dreams.
‘Great,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Sing out if you need me.’
She made to leave and I was beset, suddenly, by a sense of nervous expectation.
‘Sylvia-’
She turned. ‘What is it, darl?’
‘What will I say?’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ She laughed. ‘Pretend he’s sitting here with you. Just tell him what’s on your mind.’