Flying Home

He stands, with his back to the sea, his mobile phone held at arm’s length so that he can capture this image of himself. The sky is grey, his jumper is more grey, the waves are a leaden blue. He looks into the camera lens, concentrating on holding the phone, forgetting to smile, not quite focused on being the subject of the photo. He looks distracted, stern and apprehensive, all at once. His nostrils flare, his jaw is stiff. The thing she likes about this picture best is his adam’s apple, and the fact that his hair is a mess.

Sark. He is on the island of Sark in this picture. The water behind him is the French side of the English Channel. La Manche, they call it. The sleeve.

He went out on his own one morning; the morning he took that picture of himself. There was rain in the air and she hadn’t wanted to leave the cocoon of the eiderdown on the old-fashioned bed in the old-fashioned room. His grandmother’s house. She has been dead for ten years and his aunt lives there now, but it’s still known as his grandmother’s house.

He went out into the drizzly day with its hair-messing wind and grey sky, leaving her in bed to wait for him to come back.

He said he wanted a walk. His grandmother’s house isn’t far from the coast. Not much on this island is far from the coast.

They were going back to Guernsey the next day so that they could fly back to the mainland; back to Manchester.

He had wanted one last walk, on his own, to say goodbye. Adieu. Au revoir. À buèto.

She slept in the eiderdown cocoon, unaware of the day outside the window. She was sleeping at the moment that he pressed the button on his phone and captured his own image on the windswept path at La Coupée, above the steely sea in Convanche Bay. Later, she might have turned, rolled from one side of the bed to the other, to the space he usually occupied, at the moment that he stepped from Maseline Harbour onto the ferry that would take him off the island.

She had slept until noon. His aunt had to raise her from her slumbers.

“Wake up, Kitty, it’s lunchtime.”

She had muttered something in her half-sleep as she climbed back to the surface of consciousness. It was obviously enough of a something to convince David’s aunt that she was alive in that room.

She had stretched and luxuriated in the centre of the bed, feeling the coolness of the sheets under her fingertips; the empty space to either side of her that confirmed her solitude.

No sound of traffic outside the window. Nothing except birds and the call of the sea, the occasional sound of people walking along the road.

She washed and dressed and walked sleepily down the stairs and through to the kitchen. David’s aunt placed a mug of steaming tea in front of her, as she sat down at the kitchen table.

“Is David not back yet?” she had asked.

“No, not yet,” his aunt had replied, keeping her back to Kitty as she served up food from the pans on the cooker top.

She had only been half conscious when he had left the bedroom that morning, and it wasn’t that strange for him to be gone for hours, roaming the island, reconnecting with the places he had played each summer as a child.

“Did he take any food with him?” she asked, as a plate of rabbit stew was placed in front of her. The quantity he had taken would give her an idea of the expected duration of his absence.

“I don’t know,” his aunt said, sitting opposite Kitty at the table and taking up a spoon. She looked at Kitty briefly, smiled, then commenced eating.

Kitty ate a couple of mouthfuls of the rich stew. “He could be gone all day, then,” she said.

“I suppose,” came the reply. Neither woman looked at the other.

Kitty drank some of the tea which was, as usual, thick with milk. David’s aunt didn’t believe in such things as skimmed or semi-skimmed. It was strong tea, too, and sent pains across Kitty’s sinuses. She put the mug down onto the oilcloth that covered the table just as someone knocked at the front door.

David’s aunt went to answer the knock, and Kitty could hear them speaking in a mixture of English and Sercquiais. She continued to eat, but more slowly, making as little noise as possible, so that she could hear. She couldn’t make much sense of what they were saying. Their voices carried clearly from the front door through the house to where she was sitting in the kitchen.

She heard David’s aunt and the mystery caller exchange “À buètos”, and then the aunt came back down the corridor to the kitchen.

She placed a mobile phone onto the table in front of Kitty.

“It’s David’s,” she said. “Jean Hamon found it.”

Kitty stared at the phone. She frowned.

“Where did he find it?” she asked.

“La Coupée.”

Kitty looked up at David’s aunt who was calmly eating the rest of her stew.

“La Coupée?”

“That’s right.”

The aunt got up from the table and cleared away the dishes. She took Kitty’s mug of tea that was only partly drunk and now stone cold.

“And where’s David?” Kitty had gone back to staring at the phone, surprising in its tangibility there on the table in front of her, reluctant to actually touch it.

“Ferry.”

Kitty looked up again. David’s aunt’s back was resolute at the cooker, stirring round the remainder of the stew, covering the pan until it was properly cool and could be put into a dish and placed in the fridge for tomorrow.

David had left his phone at La Coupée and gone down to the ferry.

“Do you mean he’s left the island?”

“That’s right,” said the aunt, busying herself now at the sink, preparing to wash up the dishes that they had just used.

Kitty looked at the phone again, as though she expected it to ring and for David to be at the other end of the airwaves, giving her an explanation. She waited for the screen to light up, for the familiar ring tone to start, but the phone sat on the oilcloth saying and doing nothing.

Eventually Kitty had picked the phone up and looked through the history of phone calls and texts, both sent and received. There was nothing to give her any clues as to what David’s decision to leave meant.

She looked in his picture file, thinking she would look again at the pictures they had taken of each other each day they had been on the island, to see if there was anything in his face that might say that he had been planning to leave.

She had found the picture that she was looking at now; the picture that reminded her of the last time she saw David. Where he was standing with his back to the sea, his mobile phone held at arm’s length to allow him to capture the image. Grey sky, grey jumper, the leaden sea behind him. Looking into the camera lens, concentrating on holding the phone, forgetting to smile, not quite focused on being the subject of the photo. Distracted, stern and apprehensive, all at once. Flared nostrils, stiff jaw. His hair a mess and his adam’s apple there between jaw and grey jumper.

She had looked at that picture a hundred times, it seemed, sitting at his aunt’s kitchen table while the aunt washed dishes and said nothing. She had searched his eyes to see what expression was in them, and found nothing. Nothing to say goodbye, or sorry, or I had to go. There was only the concentration of holding the phone and getting himself in the frame without having the benefit of seeing the screen.

“You’ll be getting the ferry tomorrow, then?” his aunt had said, drying her hands on a tea towel. “Flying home to Manchester.”

Still staring at the picture on the phone, Kitty could only say yes.

© J R Hargreaves October 2006