I’m doing a reading next week and since I’ve slipped this into the latest issue of Art and Things I think I might read this. Illustration by Shiv.
Ten months ago, as spring broke, the four of us went away to the seaside. Siofra’s eyes had been glassed over by grief for weeks, an uncharacteristic silence descended upon her like a blanket of snow. She spent the compassionate leave granted to her by her job sat on the worn living room sofa, thumbing through paperback novels (sticking exclusively to ones she’d already read) and filling the ashtray with half-smoked, laboriously hand-rolled cigarettes.
Bryan and I would return home from work to find her in her usual spot, day after day. Her father had finally succumbed to his cancer, her mother had refused the short flight from Geneva, where she lived happily with her new family, to attend the funeral. Siofra’s mother did not like to acknowledge the shards of her past-life, her now-dead ex-husband and grown-up, lesbian daughter were a mess she had tidied behind four hundred and sixty-five miles of land and sea. Days after Siofra learned via a phone call from the hospital that she had missed those crucial moments of passing, as one life that had created hers evaporated, a letter arrived in a familiar crisp, elegant hand. Full of graceful, formal condolences, at it’s crux was a firm and curt message- ‘I’m sure you’ll understand my unwillingness to attend the service, after all that’s happened.’ she wrote. She enclosed a cheque for two-thousand pounds “to help with any funeral expenses that might arise”. Siofra understood, all too well. After her father was safely tucked into the earth she vowed (tearlessly) never to think lovingly of her mother again, and in the space of a month, at the age of twenty-four, she had lost both parents for good.
None of us had seen her cry yet. I began to feel as distant from her life as I did my own. Siofra was frozen in ice. All of the elements over which I had no control were wrapping around me. Soon I would be trapped. I could feel things beginning to turn dark.
Someone else, to my own good fortune, also felt shadows lengthening as Siofra shrank away. To Laura, Siofra had always been the older, bolder, wiser sister that she had badly missed growing up. Until the light inside her began to flicker, this was a role that Siofra had accepted gladly. It was Laura that suggested that she, Siofra, Bryan and I leave the city for a few days to “Take a break. Together.” I was relieved.
And so we took Laura’s decrepit, rusting Citroën to the road, it carried us reluctantly to the blustery coast, we stopped in a depressed and lonely town, wet and salty with rows of severe, mournful looking buildings that looked like they were waiting for the sea to come and claim them once and for all. A strong, cold wind blew and Christmas lights still hung limply from the lampposts, shimmering half-heartedly in the wintery spray. We rented rooms in cramped bed and breakfast with dark carpets and musty pillows.
It was impossible to say that Siofra wasn’t beautiful. She was in perfect balance. Her handsome father’s dark hair and light eyes, her mother’s elegant bones and olive skin. Beauty like hers seemed to be the perfect excuse for anything, That’s more or less why imagination creates such contrasts in the world and why the mind allows it. Beauty was invented so that we’d have a light to crawl towards. Within my own thoughts I couldn’t look away from it. Without Siofra there was darkness. It’s true to say that I loved her. Against all reason, I found it impossible not to. As pointless as it seemed, my love for Siofra could at times allow her to eclipse the universe.
Indeed, for a variety of reasons, each of us needed Siofra back, lest we be plunged into eternal blackness.
We swam in the icy sea at a point where it crashed playfully onto a shingle beach. We whooped and cheered as wave after freezing wave crashed over us. We bobbed up and down in the surf telling jokes and laughing loudly. Laura sat on my shoulders, Siofra on Bryans and the two contested to push each other into the water. Her soaked t-shirt clung to Siofra’s belly and her chest, the wet fabric revealed her belly button, her nipples. She laughed and screamed as she fought to keep her balance. I couldn’t look away.
The bed and breakfast had a general-purpose living room. We were the only guests and that night we played cards and worked through a bottle of whisky. Eventually Laura fell asleep in Siofra’s arms. I noted with shame a pang of jealously shoot through me. I blamed the alcohol. After Siofra dosed off, I lost repeatedly to Bryan at Palace and had to pay him ten pounds.
The next day we climbed a steep hill in the heart of the town and stopped for breakfast in a café with a large, grubby window and a view of the whole area, of the cobbled streets and clusters of huddled houses and shops, the outlying scrublands and out to sea. We drank tea from stained mugs and ate omelettes and toast. Laura shared stories about various misadventures Siofra and Laura had shared, including one in which Siofra’s father made a brief appearance. The mention of his name hung in the air, dampening the conversation. Eventually Bryan proposed a toast with a chipped purple mug.
“To Siofra’s Father.” He said.
We all took a hearty gulp of lukewarm tea, while Siofra merely wet her lips. A half-smile froze on her face and she gazed out of the window for a long time.
(more…)
