Chapter 20
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 the lamplit 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.
I was going to tell you something, earlier, he says, still looking at her painting. They are not touching. And what would she do if they were; if he tilted her chin in his hand, like she did with him on the swings, a lifetime ago.
I’m not going to say it, now, he tells her, when he feels her tense at his words.
But, and he clears his throat, drinks more whiskey, likes it better, this time round.
All that I said, in my bedroom? That was …
wrong of me. You never hung on to me. Or if you did, I …
wanted you to. So I didn’t mean it, and I’m sorry, Nora. I lashed out.
Nora makes a small, acknowledging noise. Sinks lower into the sofa bed, which is so comfortable, Bren thinks; like it’s still moulded to their bodies, him here, her there; chocolate stains on the cushions from their many shared packets of Minstrels.
I really did buy you a plane ticket, he says. I wasn’t joking, about that.
Seriously?
Yeah. For the both of us, back to Queenstown.
She thinks she’ll tell him he’s deluded; laugh at him, or worse, look like she feels sorry for him, all over again.
But instead she sips more whiskey, keeps it in her mouth, before swallowing, then says, did you ever do that personality test?
With the cube and the horse and the ladder?
And when Bren shakes his head, she says okay, and shifts on the sofa to face him.
Picture a room, she says, any room.
This room?
Any room. Don’t be difficult.
I’m not!
Inside that room is a cube, Nora says. Can you describe that cube to me, please? Whatever comes to mind.
So Bren does, after a moment. Sort of fish-tank sized, the kind you might get in the middle of a Chinese restaurant. And it’s opaque, made of concrete. Nora nods. Small, approving lift of her lip.
Next, she says, picture a ladder. Where is it, in the room, what does it look like?
He tells her.
And then a horse, she says, and once again he obliges. There’s more, Nora says, the weather outside, and something about a storm, but I don’t remember what those bits mean. We’d have to google it.
What do the first bits mean, then?
The size of the cube is your ego, Nora says, breaking into a proper smile as she taps into her phone anyway, to check. And the cube’s colour shows your true nature. Concrete? Impenetrable, I’d say. Hard to understand, or get through to.
I hate this game, Bren says, and Nora laughs, and it is his favourite sound, still, he realises. Drinks more whiskey.
The ladder represents your ambition, Nora goes on. You said yours was tall, and also far away, on the back wall, which I think means your goals are … lofty. Unattainable, maybe, or at least kind of hard to pin down.
I’m sensing a theme, Bren says.
But the important thing, here, Nora says, is the horse.
Okay?
The horse embodies your ideal partner, Nora says, and she keeps her voice serene, even though she begins to blush, as ever. Scrolls on her phone, not looking at him.
My horse is dark brown, she says. And it’s usually lying down in the room, kind of grazing, even though there’s no grass.
Which means you’re attracted to lazy gluttons?
Which means, she says, reading from her phone: I prize comfort and reliability above all else, and my ideal partner is calm and fully committed.
Silence, then.
Burn, Bren says.
No arguing with that, is there, Nora says, and she is keeping things light, as usual, they have always played and teased and jibed and not gone there with any real sincerity even though she is the most sincere of things to him, the only permanent fixture he has held on to and he never realised it or told her so he says, without dithering, that doesn’t change things, for me.
Nora lowers her phone then. Looking sad but certain, and for once, not scared.
And I hear what you’re saying, Nora, I do, Bren says. But sometimes I think, if we’d dated, you and me? Then we’d never have stopped.
He feels as if he has taken his heart from behind his ribcage and rolled it towards her.
Whether we’re an ideal match or not, he says, we’d have gone all the way. Wouldn’t we.
Another roll, of his marble heart.
And Nora breathes out. A sigh that travels through her.
I don’t know, she says. But then: I’d have liked to.
Her voice, so quiet.
But we didn’t, she says. Even if I’d got your message, and joined you out there, Bren, I never wanted to travel the world forever. I’m a home body. I like to be rooted. You like to be … free.
I wonder if you can be both, Bren says, and Nora says she wonders that, too. They face each other for a long moment, after this. Motionless. Bren, for once, not wanting to move. Then he says, for the record, Nora? He’s a really good guy. Robin, I mean. I … want to be happy, for you both.
I don’t need you to be, she says, as she tips the whiskey side to side in her glass. I thought I did, but I don’t. You’re. We’re – small shrug, palm out – what we are. Whatever that is; it’s hard to define. But I actually think that’s okay. After all I’ve learned, recently.
Bren doesn’t know what she means exactly, but he’s so tired, so drained, so sort-of-not-drunk-but-wanting-to-be, he doesn’t ask.
Forces himself to sit with the pulsing in his hands and feet.
They have scattered his father’s ashes today, and with it, he has decided to accept more than one thing: he knows Nora is going to marry Robin.
And yet, there is still something he needs to make clear.
Nora, he says.
Bren, she says back, half serious.
He peers over the edge. Thinks about the years below them.
This day, between them, like his father between his fingers.
The ash of him but also the matter, and atoms, the straw of his hair, paler than Bren’s, his voice he can hear if he tries to, calling him and Nora inside after dark, come on, you two, it’s time.
What I wanted to tell you is not right to tell you, now, he reiterates.
And he feels like he’s bungee-ing off a bridge as he says it – body falling in slow motion, like he’s not really doing it, because why would you, why throw yourself off a ledge when it goes against all your instincts but you do, people do.
But I want you to know, he says, even if I don’t say it. Because how you think I might feel, about you, Nora? I do.
Beat of his heart, in his chest.
Slower, steadier, than he’d expected.
I was just … scared, I think. Of feeling that way. Because that’s when things hurt the most, so I guess I figured it was better not to. And I’m not asking for it back, I know you’ve made a choice, you’ve got your life. But I do. Feel that way. And I just … thought you should know.
He expects Nora will blush harder, or chastise him for his terrible timing; elbow him in the nose on purpose, this time. But instead, she sighs again.
You’re an idiot, Bren Ferguson.
Your idiot? he says, and she smacks him on the arm, and they laugh, and they’re still them; everything light and heady like the whiskey in their blood or the wind rushing past as he sails through the air on the bungee cord that did not break.
And when they’ve been quiet for a long while, Nora no longer laughing but resting against his shoulder, he says her name, in a low voice. Nora.
Hm?
Won’t you always … wonder about us?
Stillness, between them. No sound.
I think, she says, slowly, we’re far past wondering, Bren. Don’t you?
And it seems she has nothing else to say to him, about that. Falls asleep, eventually, in an upright position, as the night lightens to dawn and Bren sits there and listens to her grinding her teeth, feels her flinch, as if she’s dreaming, her face pressed against his arm.
Without waking her, he takes his phone and amends his flight as the sun comes up.
Feels his world opening again, because it does that, when you have no ties, when you can react, when you make a choice to keep moving, and he gets up and heads to the bottom of the garden with the oak and his dad and the morning chorus is a din, by sunrise.
He emails the Queenstown adventure centre; tells them his arrival date.
Thinks, as he looks up, about how he helped him make this bird feeder, right here.
Casting back to that day, the radio drifting through the kitchen window, the sandwiches they’d stopped to eat in the shade, and it all wells up inside him, love and pain both, strange, to him, how they go hand in hand.
His dad. His heart. Gone, broken; still beating.
And when Nora is awake he goes back inside and makes her a coffee because he hasn’t noted she doesn’t drink the stuff and she takes it from him and smiles, at his mum, too, in her slippers, coming downstairs.
And it is over, whatever it was, whatever it never nearly became; it is done, and now he can go.