The Comet Seekers: A Novel (8 page)

Go to college, have a career. Get married?

I just wanted you to be free.

Severine lets go of her anger. She hadn’t realised it was still there until she felt it vanish.

Perhaps some things are better than freedom.

That’s what your granny would have said.

Only sometimes.

That’s true. She was a contradiction.

Just like us.

Even though her mama is crying now, there must be an unspoken memory of her own mother that makes her smile; makes her laugh despite her tears.

Severine wants to talk to her mama about the ghosts, but every time she tries something stops her. They would, surely, have appeared to her if she had wanted to see them.

But it’s more than that. She has seen too often how people looked at her granny, the concern, the pity, the embarrassment of watching a woman lose her mind. She doesn’t want that; she doesn’t want to be looked at like that. She will try to keep the ghosts to herself.

What have you been doing upstairs? her mama asks, as if she could hear her thoughts.

Just resting, Severine says.

Her mama’s eyes, red for two days, search her own. She reaches forward and tucks Severine’s hair behind her ear.

You’ll let me know if you need anything?

Severine nods.

All I need is to be here.

She looks up, to the window.

Or maybe outside for a minute?

They take the picnic chairs out to their back garden, even though the evening is drawing in and it is cold. Severine used to think that she could see all the stars there were to see in Bayeux, the sky was so full of them, until her granny told her that there were layers upon layers they couldn’t see. Would every black space have a star in it, if we could only see well enough?

They wrap a blanket each around their shoulders.

What’s in the old shed? Severine asks, as her eyes fall on it.

That was my grandpa’s shed, her mama says; he built it himself.

So it’s empty now?

Granny kept her gardening tools in there, and some other things she imagined she had to hide from me.

It seems funny, that a mother would need to hide things from a daughter, but perhaps all mothers are doing it and it’s only the rarest daughter that realises and understands enough to leave well alone.

Do you think I could have a look tomorrow?

If you like, her mama says. I think she was keeping it all there for you anyway.

It feels good, to be outside talking with her mother, feels like something they should have been doing for years but haven’t. She takes her hand and they sit in silence for a minute. Severine is glad that the ghosts have stayed upstairs.

Where’s my father?

It’s a question she hasn’t asked since she felt afraid to keep asking as a child, but it feels right to ask it now, at last.

He wanted to travel, she says. You were a baby, but it was OK, somehow. He said he hadn’t found his home, not here. She looks at Severine with a fresh worry in her eyes. Do you miss him?

Severine smiles, shakes her head. It is her granny that she misses.

You can’t miss someone you never knew, she says.

Her mama thinks that, actually, you can; she has watched her own mother go mad with longing to speak to members of her family that she never knew.

Where did he go?

Across Europe first, she says, then . . . Africa, South America.

You didn’t think about going with him?

Her mama smiles then, and shakes her head.

Because you needed to be with Granny, after Antoine . . .?

Because I had a home, and I had you, and I’d married a man who was too restless to ever stay in one place.

What was he like?

He was gentle, but distracted. And he was always whistling.

Her mama’s expression changes, as if another forgotten memory has been rekindled, and it makes her face softer.

I always thought I wanted to travel, she says, it was part of why I loved him in the first place.

So what changed?

Life, she says, but Severine knows from the look in her eye that she means a new life; she is talking about what happens when you have a child. And what happens when you lose one.

It’s colder now, she says. Time to head in?

Severine nods, allows herself to stop questioning.

There are fewer ghosts in Severine’s room that night. The night before she was overwhelmed with how much family was around her; tonight she feels overwhelmed by the loss of them.

Some of you have left already? she asks anxiously. You’ll come back, won’t you?

With the next comet, says a ghost who hasn’t spoken before.

Which one are you? asks Severine, but she regrets the question as a shiver of fear passes through her body. She knows who this must be.

If you stay here, in Bayeux, says Brigitte, holding out her hand.

Severine recoils. The skin on Brigitte’s arm is weeping, red raw and peeling back in places to expose shrivelled muscle and blackened bone.

Brigitte stands where she is, stands taller, her arm still held out towards Severine, who finds her back is pressed hard against the wall. Brigitte’s burns are spreading and her hair – a minute ago wild dark curls down to her waist – has caught alight and Brigitte’s head, her face, is turning from a vicious red to the black of ash as her eyes still stare, open and pleading.

Severine clasps her arms around her belly, turns away – she can’t help it, can’t stand to watch this horror, and she has to protect her child.

Please, no, she says. Leave us alone . . .

But as she rushes for the doorway she sees the tall woman in the golden dress, a red shawl wrapped around her head and neck, a gentle smile on her face.

Hello, Severine. It’s all right now.

Her accent is strange, foreign but not foreign; an inflection to her words that Severine has never heard before.

I am sorry, she says. I didn’t realise what I was creating.

Severine looks around the room, but Brigitte has gone and everything is calm again.

I don’t understand.

That’s why I’m here, tonight.

Severine wishes she could kiss her cheek to welcome her, but instead she gestures towards the old chest by the window and with that Ælfgifu sits down and starts, softly, again, to tell her story.

Severine dreams that night of hundreds, no, thousands of ghosts clamouring to be heard, breaking from their disorderly queue and talking all at once. You’re like children, she says, waving her hands around her head as she’d seen her granny do so many times, trying to swat the voices away like insects; you’re just like children.

She wakes to silence in the night. Stands at her window for a moment, but it is not enough. She creeps down the stairs, avoiding the step that creaks, holds her breath as she passes her mother’s room and pulls a coat over her nightdress. She turns the key in the back door as quietly as she is able to; she doesn’t want anyone to follow her out here.

In the garden, she searches the sky for the comet. She couldn’t see it out of her window, or from the back porch. Her binoculars show her layer upon layer of stars; more layers appear the longer she looks, every dark space fills with stars but Halley’s comet is nowhere to be seen. At 4.30 a.m. the sky begins to lighten and the furthest layers of stars sink into the rising blue. Standing on the grass out by Great-Grandpa Paul-François’s old shed she gives up the search; lets the binoculars fall to the ground with a quiet thud. The comet is gone, and besides, her waters have broken.

1066

Halley’s Comet

They walk into the village like it’s carnival day, that’s how it feels; like it’s fun and wholesome and will never lead to arrows of fire and lungs pierced with splinters of wood. Ælfgifu stands with the others and cheers for the local boys who are going to fight, and she waves her flowers because that is what they do, at carnival time.

That evening she goes to collect water from the stream; their well is sending up mud and they say that the flying star means bad luck, that her family shouldn’t trust anything when the stars come shooting through the clouds. What nonsense, she told Grandpa once, but still, she avoids the well and there – by the stream, she sees the boys from the procession, not off fighting yet, but playing in the water. They are like children, she thinks.

The night is warm but fresh and their clothes are piled by the stream’s bank; one of them turns, raises a hand halfway then stops. Shaking her dark hair out over her shoulders she walks up to the stream, pretending not to watch him. He’s emerged from under the water now, the one with black hair and a wave half formed, glancing at her when he thinks she’s not looking. She kneels by the bank, and without meaning to she’s slipping her feet into the stream and he’s walking towards her. In the moonlight his skin shimmers. She slips off her dress. She invites him, and he accepts.

She can hear the sounds of the battle, her sisters and brothers hear it too; like a shared nightmare lingering after they’ve woken. No way to protect themselves so they sit outside on the grass and wait for whatever will follow. The screams – shapeless howls of pain that can’t be comprehended. They threw flowers, she thinks, just yesterday, daffodils of hope that were more like the petals thrown into a grave. Even the young ones understand what is happening; no words yet to speak it but she can see the fear in their eyes.

The worst is when it gets quieter; wails of pain replaced by silence of death. From over the hill they appear, with their unfamiliar uniforms and flags; these are not their soldiers come to protect them. They are the other side, here to destroy. At the edge of the village a house is set on fire and the smell tells her it is not only wattle and daub that is burning; the animals, she thinks, and the thought turns to hope that it is only animals. The men shout in a language she doesn’t know. Children scream. She gathers her brothers and sisters, tells them to stand behind her. Overhead the comet blazes.

She doesn’t know why they do it. The arrows pass her outstretched arms and find their target in her brother’s chest, in the face of her eldest sister who still has a flower in her hair. They
set fire to their home. Her youngest sister runs to the next house, into the blade of a man who has blood streaming from his arm. He falls with her. Ælfgifu turns, looks them in the eye, holds her last sister behind her. They have killed everyone else. She’s pushed to the ground. When her sister falls beside her, blood leaks from the gash in her neck. She doesn’t know why they do it. They leave her alive.

At the sound of his voice Ælfgifu opens her eyes.

Please, he says, there is not much time.

She is holding her sister in her arms, blood dried now on her face and neck, her tunic dyed brown with it. She turns away from his eyes that had smiled at her through splashing water. She wants to die here.

He carries her to the stream, away from the village to where the smell is less thick. He follows the shooting star because there has to be some help and it is all that is left. He saw it, the bright flying star, on the battlefield, watched it from the ground where he lay, pierced, bleeding. And now here he is. He doesn’t understand it. And there it is, the flying star, still in the sky.

They stumble through the night, following the flight of the shooting star; when he falls she takes over, supports him in her arms so they can keep going even though she doesn’t know where they are going to. As the sun rises they see a building of stone high on the hill, an impossible shadow. They don’t know if it’s real or a death-dream but they start to climb. She trips, crawls up the steep hillside, feet bleeding against the stones. There are doors of thick wood; she beats on them with a fist and falls to her knees.

My child.

She looks up. A woman is standing above her; the doors are open.

She tries to stand, collapses into the woman’s arms.

What is your name? she asks.

She doesn’t know if her voice will work; she thinks she is dead.

Ælfgifu, she says, letting the shapes form on her lips and hoping the sound will follow. And—

She turns to the soldier boy but he is gone. Something in her changes. It is a loss too far and she will spend the next thirteen years trying to bring him back; trying to protect their child. She has lost too much family and she knows she cannot stand to lose any more and now – and now she allows herself to be carried by a stranger into the safety of ancient stone and shade.

1994

Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9

FRANÇOIS SQUIRMS ON HIS SEAT
as he looks out of the aeroplane window, trying to turn far enough that he could press himself through the glass and into the clouds.

Look, Mama, he gasps, Mama, do you see?

They are over the sea; there is land rising up from the water.

Most of the Earth is water, his mama says, and below the water is magma. The land on top, it’s just floating, like the croutons in your soup.

François laughs at the image – Mama is so silly – but he doesn’t take his eyes from the view. As they descend through the clouds there is a moment when the world through his window is striped; golden sky, silver cloud, blue sea far below.

Look! he cries again. Mama, look!

And he turns, flattens his head back against his seat so she can see through the window, and she leans over him and presses her nose to the glass, and he laughs and kicks his legs against the seat in front, oblivious to the complaints of the man sitting there.

It’s not easy, taking a child on an aeroplane. Severine is learning the hard way, just like she has with everything else. Holidays have been by car so far, sometimes by train – though when he was younger she was too exhausted to take him anywhere. But they have seen Paris and Nice and stood at the foothills of the Alps; they travelled whenever she could take the time away from the épicerie, though every time they went away she wished her granny had been there to help. It’s not enough, not for her and not for what she wants for him, but she has tried to show him some of the world, at least the country beyond Bayeux. She has tried not to mention the ghosts that she saw in the days before he was born, because she wants him to have a normal childhood. Besides, she’s not even sure they were real now, though she still dreams of their voices.