with my finger as it found its way down across the window. I’d be gazing out at the countryside rushing by, at cows and horses scattering away over the fields, at clouds of starlings whirling in the wind, at a formation of geese flying high into the evening sun.
And I’d be on the lookout for wild animals, for foxes or rabbits, or even a deer. A glimpse of just one of these was a marvel to me, the highlight of any train journey, because they hardly ever ran away. They’d just gaze back at me from out there in their wild world, interested perhaps, but quite unconcerned. It was as if they were trying to tell me: we don’t mind you being here, just so long as you’re passing through, just so long as you leave us alone. I had always longed to be part of their world. For me that momentary glimpse was never enough, always too quickly over.
On this train journey though I had seen no foxes, no deer, not even a rabbit, and that was because I hadn’t been looking for them. My mind was elsewhere. I didn’t want it to be, but it was. Everything out there was nothing but a blur of grey skies and green fields, interrupted with monotonous regularity by endless passing telegraph poles. None of it was of any interest to me. I wanted this train journey to go on forever, not because I was enjoying it one bit, but simply because I did not want to go where I was going. I did not want to arrive.
I glanced up at Mum sitting beside me, but she did not look back at me. I could see she was lost deep in her thoughts, and I knew well enough what they had to be, that they were much the same as mine, and that it was better not to interrupt them. I regretted again that I’d yelled at her at breakfast that morning. I shouldn’t have done it, but it had been the shock of it, the suddenness. She’d just said it, right out of the blue, without any warning at all. “We’re going back home, Will, as soon as I’ve packed the cases. Grandma says she’ll drive us to the station.”
I tried arguing, but she wouldn’t listen. So that was when I yelled at her, and did a runner to the hay-barn, climbing up the stack to the very top. I sat sulking there, till Grandpa came and found me, and fetched me down. Mum was very upset, he told me, and we shouldn’t be upsetting her, not after everything that had happened. He was right of course. I hadn’t meant to do it, but I’d been so looking forward to staying for Christmas down on the farm with Grandpa and Grandma. It was the house where Dad had grown up, the place we’d always been for every single Christmas of my life, whether Dad was home on leave or not.
But if I’m honest, that wasn’t the only reason I’d shouted at her. The truth was that I was dreading everything about going home, and what’s more I knew Mum felt the same, which was why it was a complete mystery to me that she was suddenly so anxious to leave. And there was something else I couldn’t understand. Before she’d come out with it at breakfast that morning she’d never even discussed it. She’d just told me. It wasn’t like her. Mum always talked things over with me, always.
After all, hadn’t she been the one, who only a few weeks before had insisted that it was a good idea to go to stay with Grandpa and Grandma, to get away from home, and the memories, and the ghosts? Hadn’t Mum explained to me that she thought we should be with Grandpa and Grandma at this time anyway, because after all, weren’t we all going through the same thing, and wouldn’t it be good for us to do it together? So why this sudden change of heart?
I gazed blankly out of the train window, trying to work it all out. I thought then it might have been because she had just had enough of Grandma. And it was true that Grandma was never the easiest person in the world to get on with. She did like to organise, to try and tell everyone what to do, what not to do, and what to think even. With Grandma everything had to be just so, and that could be a bit irksome at times, and annoying. But as Mum was forever telling me, that was just how Grandma was and we had to put up with it, like Grandpa did.
No, we couldn’t be leaving because of Grandma. It didn’t make any sense. But if it wasn’t Grandma, what was it then? It certainly wasn’t Grandpa, and it certainly wasn’t the farm. For Mum and for me, for all of us, it had always been just about the best place in the whole world, and my idea of heaven. I loved being there, whatever the weather. I was up before breakfast with Grandpa, milking the cows, and feeding the calves, and then opening up the hens and geese on the way back to the house for breakfast. Afterwards, it was out on the tractor, with Grandpa again – and driving it sometimes too, when we were far enough away from the farmhouse for Grandma not to be able to spot us. We’d be checking the sheep together, counting the lambs, or mending fences when we had to. We’d be doing whatever it was that needed doing, and doing it together.
And Grandpa was like a walking encyclopedia of nature. He knew all the bird songs, all the plants. He even had a weekly nature column in the local newspaper, so he knew what he was talking about, and I loved to hear him talking about it too. Grandma said one afternoon when Grandpa and I came in for our tea: “Happy as Larry out on the farm, aren’t you, Will? Give you half a chance, and I reckon you’d be sleeping in your wellies. You’re just like your Grandpa.”
She was right about that. For a start Grandpa never said a lot, and nor did I. We knew each other so well that maybe we just didn’t need to. Grandpa never mentioned anything about what had happened, except once, when we were down in the milking parlour together, washing down after milking. “Got something to say to you, Will,” he began. “What I think is this, and I’ve thought a lot about it. In fact these last weeks, I’ve thought about precious little else. When you’ve cut yourself, what you do is you make sure the wound is clean, and you put a plaster on it, don’t you? Then you give it time to heal – if you understand what I’m saying. You don’t keep taking the plaster off and looking at it, because if you do, you’ll just be reminded of how much it hurts. And you don’t keep asking yourself why it had to happen to you in the first place either, because that won’t make it better. Sometimes – and I know it’s not what some people think these days – but sometimes when you’re hurting, I think the less said the better. So you and me, Will, we’ll say no more about it, unless you want to, that is.”
But I didn’t want to, and so between us, nothing was ever said about it again. And in fact, Grandma hardly spoke of it either, not in front of me anyway. It became like an unspoken pact between all of us, to say nothing, and I was glad of it. I knew well enough that they were doing it for me, to spare me the pain. They were trying their very best to take my mind off it.
But the trouble was that it was always there, in the back of our minds, despite all that Grandma and Grandpa were doing to keep everyone busy and happy. And we were happy, as happy as it was possible to be, under the circumstances anyway. But as each evening came to an end, and the time came for me to go upstairs to bed, I always began to dread the night ahead of me. One look at Mum’s face told me we were sharing the same dread.
Whether I kept my bedside light on or off made no difference. Lying there in my bed everything would come flooding back, the ache inside me, the pity of it, and worst of all, the awful finality of it. I longed every night for sleep to come, so that I wouldn’t have to remember it all again, so that my mind wouldn’t go over it and churn it all up. But the more I longed for sleep it seemed, the more it was denied me. I’d lie there listening to the murmur of their talk downstairs in the kitchen.
If I tried, I could hear most of what they were saying. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but sometimes I couldn’t stop myself. I’d hear Mum sobbing again, and Grandma sometimes as well. Soon enough I would find myself crying too, and once I’d started I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop, not until I fell asleep, because everything Mum was saying down there in the kitchen seemed to echo so closely everything I was feeling.
It was her words I was hearing again in my head now, as I rode along the beach on the elephant. Ahead of us a large lizard or iguana skittered away over the sand and disappeared into the shadows of the palm trees. A sea eagle soared out over the sea. There was so much to see, but my memory would not leave me in peace. I was doing all I could to force myself to live for now, to bask in the joy of the moment, in the beauty of this strange paradise, and for a while I could and I did, but not for long. So I determined that if I was going to have to relive anything in my mind, I would will it to be only the good times: driving