The Glass Ocean(108)

            He is frightened of my mother: of her beauty, of her mockery, of her unhappiness. He won’t look at her. My father won’t either. They’re both afraid. They’re hiding, one behind his paper and pencil, the other behind his whiskers.

            Me, too, I am also afraid. But I do look.

            She sees me looking. Doesn’t like it.

            Carlotta, she says, why aren’t you in bed?

            • • •

            Away from the fire I feel how cold the house has become. Clatter of hail on the red-tiled roof.

            My mother’s voice follows me up. The Scaur? That awful, ugly place? Oh, Leo, must you really? Poor Doctor Owen . . .

            While Harry Owen says: But you don’t understand, my dear. I want to go! After we’ve reviewed the specifications for the new models, of course . . .

            Oh, of course!

            • • •

            Jingle of harness, later, informs me that he has departed.

            My mother, on the stairs: He’s checking up on you. Spying.

            • • •

            To this, my father says nothing. What can he say?

            • • •

            I wonder does she know what he’s doing out in that shed instead of making the glass ocean that he’s promised Harry Owen. Does she know about the things he’s taken, Thomas Argument’s gifts to her which have gone, or those other objects, my father’s carefully wrapped, tenderly cosseted secrets? Does she feel, without being able to identify it, the sense of herself diminishing? Of something being taken away, somewhere beneath her notice? Is that why she’s decided to leave us? So as to make the choice herself, which parts of her will stay, and which will go?

            • • •

            I am surprised I haven’t noticed this before, my mother’s doubledness, the way the light falls through her. Through the shadow that both is and is not her. She is like an image in a kaleidoscope, bright and scintillating fragments coming together, falling apart, beauties and monstrosities forming and reforming, combining, breaking, fleeting away.

            • • •

            I don’t think she knows. I think she’s a secret to herself. As are we all.

            • • •

            In the morning, early, Harry Owen returns, bringing with him harness jingle and whip of wind bearing stinging bites of cold rain, dry rattling dead leaves that pry like fingers along the jointures in the stone floor, heavy scent of sea stink and brine. Various pieces of gear enter with him as well: heavy oilskin boots, thick coats, gloves, collector’s bags, pick and hammer for each, coils of rope, all paid for by the benefactor, she who by her own account has been, by my father’s work, taken. As one might be taken by an illness. Swept up in a gale. Except this thing is a good thing. There is talk of boats, expeditions, all paid; this frightens me, the ocean is no comfort, a scaled and horned and scornful thing in my imagination now, slithering at the foot of the cliffs, murmuring low and constantly of distances long, black, impossible to imagine.

            Harry Owen says, We shall go out together in the spring. There is a great deal of money.

            Spring: this, too, is difficult to imagine, with the Whitby winter pressed so hard upon us.

            My mother stands helpless before the influx, golden braid slack on her shoulder, mug of tea pressed between cold hands.

            I’m not coming with you. I won’t come, Leo.

            This being evident regardless. She is undressed but for a moth’s wing of nightgown, shivering by the fire. And anyway, they have not asked her.