The Silent Land

10

Her father had said, You should hold on to every single moment of life, Zoe, because it runs away, runs away so fast. And he would know: lost both parents before he was out of short trousers, then a brother in a car smash, and then a lovely sister who had slipped on some ice on her way to church and didn’t she crack her skull? Then of course Zoe’s own mother. It can be all over like that, Zoe, like that.

He wiped two forefingers together to show what like that was all about.

Zoe had been over at his house doing the tree. She’d done the tree for him every year since her mother had died. They’d had a dispute about it. Not an argument exactly. But Archie had said what was the point when he was going to be away over Christmas? But she’d said it wouldn’t be the same without the tree.

Archie was a retired engineer from Dundee, working-class boy made good. He moved into the bungalow on a development for retired persons after selling his own comfortable house and giving the remainder of the proceeds to Zoe and Jake, so that they could buy their own house. The development had a warden and a bell-push to alert the warden if you had a fall or got into difficulty. Archie had immediately disabled the bell-push. Said it was a bloody insult.

Yes, hold on to every moment, Zoe.

But what was a moment? Spindrift on the back of a sunlit wave? A fox’s tail as it disappears through the hedgerow? A meteorite as it flares in the August night sky? Everything is ending or becoming. Zoe didn’t believe you could freeze a moment, or hold on to one.

Archie had stood watching her decorate the Christmas tree, his fists dug into his hips. He was the sort of bloke who always wore short-sleeved shirts, whatever the weather. It showed off his tanned and hairy arms, but Zoe knew it wasn’t vanity that made him wear short sleeves: it was that sleeves just got in the way and needed to be rolled up all the time.

Archie had booked a winter holiday at a hotel in Tunisia with two of his cronies from the Bowling Club. Jake was to pick them up in the morning to taxi them to the airport. He hadn’t wanted Zoe to decorate the Christmas tree because there would be no one there to see it, he said.

Zoe said, ‘If a tree falls in the woods with no one there to see it, does it still make a sound?’

‘You bloody what?’

What Zoe knew was that Archie didn’t want the tree because each year he was finding the memories harder to take.

The Christmas tree in their household had been different. Different from other people’s trees, that is. Rather than being decorated with coloured baubles it was hung with memorial objects. It had all started when Zoe’s older sister was born thirty-four years ago. Her mother and father had started to hang on the tree objects that represented some significant event in their lives. Each birthday, anniversary, family holiday was represented. If they went away on holiday they bought something to hang on the tree. If the children passed an exam or some other milestone, a symbolic object found its way onto the tree. There were silver Christening gifts, a tiny ballet shoe, a silver box containing all their milk-teeth, a swimming badge, shells and stones brought back from beaches and drilled by Archie, amulets purchased from street vendors in exotic places… and gradually there had been no room for coloured baubles as the tree became a memory map of their days together and apart. Moments of ending and becoming, hanging on the branches.

It was a Tree of Life, in the real sense. And Archie was finding it harder to look at it each year.

He stood watching her assemble the tree and shifted his hands from his hips to dig them deep into his trouser pockets. ‘Aye, we’re just snowflakes on a griddle, lovely girl. Snowflakes on a griddle.’

‘You don’t know what comes after,’ Zoe said, draping a bracelet on a branch of Blue Norwegian spruce. ‘Nobody does.’

‘Nobody wants to know, you mean. Nobody likes to know. It’s just a long dark ride with your eyes shut and your ears plugged. Anyway, it’s not about where you’re going. It’s about what you leave behind. Now the Muslim, he—’

‘You told me that, Dad.’

Archie continued anyway. He always spoke about ‘the Muslim’ as if there was only one. ‘Now the Muslim, he says you should dig a well for the generations that come after you. I like that. I do.’

Archie had dug his wells. He had built bridges and been responsible for constructing two major dams in countries abroad. No one ever needed to tell Archie to roll up his sleeves.

‘No one knows,’ Zoe persisted. ‘It’s the great mystery.’

‘Ah, you say that, but.’

Zoe waited for him to go on, though with Archie nothing ever came after the but.

Then he said, ‘See your mother? She didn’t believe in it either. See how people say they’re haunted by a ghostie? Well, your mother made me a promise that if there was an afterlife she would never come back and haunt me. So if I saw her as a ghostie ever, then I would know it was in my head.’

‘And did you see her?

Archie sighed and sat down in his favourite chair. He settled back, spread his legs wide and seemed to stare at a spot on the wall. After a while, he said, ‘Everywhere.’

Zoe stopped decorating the tree and settled at Archie’s feet, resting her head on his knee. He ran his fingers through her hair, as he would when she was a little girl. ‘Everywhere. It took me three years to stop pulling two cups from the cupboard if I wanted to make some tea. She’d be behind me. If I got out of the bath she’d be standing there holding a towel for me. Or I’d be watching the TV and I’d laugh at this or that or I’d want to say would you believe it and I’d look up at her. She was everywhere.’

‘Dad.’

‘And then it fades and you don’t want it to and remembering gets harder. And sometimes you need help remembering. I love that tree and I don’t, but. Come on, up you get, finish the job.’

Archie was a great one for finishing a job.

After she’d done the tree she helped him pack his suitcase, though he was ready. ‘Jake will be here for you at seven in the morning. Have you told Bill and Eric?’

‘It’s good of him. He doesn’t have to, you know.’

‘He wants to. He likes you.’

‘It’s good of him. You’re both too good to me.’

‘I know. You need a shave. Come on, give me a kiss, I’ve got to get back.’

‘Did they get off all right?’ Zoe asked Jake when he returned from the airport the next day. ‘I thought he was looking tired yesterday.’

‘Tired? They were like three teenagers. They’ve got bowls tournaments and afternoon tea dances lined up. They reckon they’re going to pull some old biddies. Don’t be surprised if he comes back with a girlfriend.’

‘So long as she’s over sixteen I won’t mind.’

A week later, two days before Christmas, it was Zoe’s thirtieth birthday. They had some friends round for a dinner party. They drank a lot and laughed too loud. Then around the time the coffees arrived someone said that thirty was a significant birthday, and everyone around the table agreed. Someone else said it was the first time you heard the bell.

What bell? someone asked.

But they all knew what bell. It was like you’d already completed a few laps, observed another, but this was the first time you’d properly heard the bell. There had been one at seven but you hadn’t heard it because you were so young; and then one at fourteen but you hadn’t heard it because you were so busy looking over your shoulder; then another at twenty-one but you hadn’t heard it because you were too busy talking; and then one at twenty-eight which for some reason took two years before you heard it. But they all agreed you did hear that one, eventually.

Your lousy career, said one guest. Babies, said one of the women. Lovers, friends, travel, said another. Parents ageing. Bong. All the things you hadn’t done. Might not do. Bong.

And in the silence that came after the bell someone said, ‘Happy Birthday, Zoe, cos you’re one of the best.’

‘Yes, happy birthday.’

‘Happy birthday.’

After the guests had gone home, Zoe and Jake cleared away the debris of the dinner party and went upstairs. Jake crashed out on the bed and fell asleep immediately. Zoe felt dizzy from the wine. She lay down on the bed and her head was swimming so she stretched out a leg and pressed her foot flat on the carpet to try to stop the room from going round and round. Eventually she fell asleep.

She was awoken some hours later by someone shining a bright light in her face. She sat up and blinked into the white light, shielding her eyes with one hand.

‘Who’s that?’

There was no reply.

She looked over her shoulder at Jake, who, illuminated by the light, slumbered on.

‘Who’s there?’ she tried again.

No one answered.

She swung her legs out of bed and it was then that she realised the light wasn’t coming from a torch inside the room. It was streaming through the window. Jake had failed to close the curtains properly before crashing into bed and this light was flooding in from outside. She went to the window.

It was the moon. Thrilling, waxy and low in the sky, it seemed supernaturally large; like an inflated berry of mistletoe, or a pearly bauble hanging on a Christmas tree. She gasped. Its light looked milky, liquid, sticky even. She could easily see the crater shadows on the moon. It was almost like an unblinking eye, gazing in at her from the clear night sky, remote yet interested. Never had she seen it so low in the heavens. It seemed to risk crashing on the earth.

There was some music in the distance, light orchestral music, drifting over the rooftops. She assumed someone else was having a dinner party. The music swelled and then dropped away, as if swirling on a breeze.

She glanced over her shoulder at her sleeping husband and thought about waking him; but she resisted the idea, afraid of killing the moment. So she stood at the window, gripping the hem of the curtain, staring back at the moon, holding her breath.

She was uncertain how long she’d watched the moon, but after a while, without any sign of movement or sense of time passing it seemed to have retreated, and faded; withdrawing to a condition of ordinary beauty.

She went back to her bed and lay down, still watching through the window, and eventually she drifted back to sleep.

In the morning over breakfast, while they were both getting ready for work she started to tell Jake what she’d seen.

‘You should have woken me.’

‘Yes. Now I’ll never know if I dreamed it.’

He was about to answer when the telephone rang. It was Eric, Archie’s friend, calling from Tunisia. ‘Zoe, my love, I want you to be sitting down.’

When he said that she already knew everything.

‘I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry.’

‘When?’

‘Bill and I missed him at breakfast, so we went up to his room.’

‘I see.’

‘I want you to know how happy he was last night. How happy. We’d been to a tea dance in the afternoon. He didn’t stop giggling. We danced with all these lovely ladies. Then in the evening we had a lovely dinner and we drank some wine and after that we went for a stroll along the seafront. The moon was incredible last night. Beautiful.’

‘I know.’

‘Archie was dancing. He was whisking an imaginary partner along the promenade. He wasn’t drunk, you know your dad. But he kept saying look at the moon, look at the moon, lads! Are you there, my darling? Are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Look at the moon, he said. I’ve never seen your dad so happy, my darling. Bill said the same. He was a lovely man, was Archie. A lovely man. I’m so sorry.’

‘Couldn’t help himself,’ Zoe said. ‘Had to come visit me despite himself.’

‘What’s that, darling?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I had to call you. He was a wonder to us. Are you there, sweetheart?’

Jake, who was watching her face when the tears started rolling, took the phone from her and held her hand as he continued the conversation with Eric, very softly.

Eric and Bill had insisted on taking care of everything. Archie’s insurance was up to date and they dealt with the officials and the paperwork and had Archie flown back in a zinc-lined coffin, as per the regulations. Archie’s remains were cremated at the local cemetery. He had a Humanist service.

Zoe left the Christmas tree in his bungalow until Twelfth Night, according to the tradition. Then she carefully packed away all the hanging mementos. She made charity bags of his decent clothes and asked Eric and Bill to take what they wanted of his equipment. She kept a few things for herself and gave them Archie’s bowls to pass on to someone at the club.

Eric asked her about something she’d said on the morning he had phoned her from Tunisia. ‘You said he had come back to you, despite himself. What did you mean?’

So she told them the story of the moon. Eric and Bill both looked at her with shining eyes, and said nothing.

Zoe took the box of Christmas tree tokens and souvenirs so that she and Jake could continue the tradition of decorating theirs with luminous memories. She went out and bought a silver-moon disc to commemorate Archie’s passing and all those years afterwards, whenever her eyes fell upon it as it hung from the tree, it never once made her sad.