All at Sea, page 10
Tony spun around, incensed. ‘Don’t you know just a teaspoon of water can kill? That’s all it takes. If he inhaled just a teaspoon of water, it would be enough to kill him.’ I remember I felt embarrassed by his outburst, and frankly doubtful it could even be remotely true. And now here we are, gathered around my laptop in Minerva, discovering he was absolutely right. You don’t have to be underwater to drown. Tony’s lungs had filled with water while he had been floundering in the waves, gasping for air and calling for help.
But until an autopsy has been conducted, no one can know for sure if this really is how he died. At first we are told that it may be six weeks before the autopsy takes place, but Jason intervenes again, and suddenly the authorities inform us that it will happen on Monday, just days after Tony’s death. When Monday morning comes, Joe asks me what day it is. I tell him, and his next question confuses me. Will it hurt, he asks, when they get on top of Tony? Will they hurt him? I can’t think what he means, until I realise that he has overheard us discussing something called an autopsy, which will happen on Monday. Joe has no idea what an autopsy is; what he has heard sounds to him that on Monday people are going to get on top of Tony; they will be ‘on top of he’. And so Joe wonders if it will hurt.
He keeps asking if we can go back to see Tony again, ‘to check if he has come back alive’. This sounds like a perfectly sensible suggestion to me, because I do not believe he is never coming back. My self-image of a rational, logical empiricist is proving to be wildly inaccurate, for it is becoming evident that I am scarcely any more rational than a witch doctor. What I know to be true, and what I actually believe, turn out to be poles apart.
I believe Tony is about to walk through Minerva’s door at any minute.
When I wake up four days after he died, I look at the clock and realise it is exactly the time when we should have been arriving home in Kent. It says so in my diary; we should be in our house by now, and in my mind that means it must be true. I had written it down, hadn’t I? If it is written in the diary then in my mind what is happening instead literally cannot be real.
I am beginning to see that most of my notions of reality are really just figments of my imagination, nothing more than plans I have made and mistaken for truths. For all my Western education, the Jamaicans in Treasure Beach have an infinitely clearer understanding of reality than mine. They already knew that life was unpredictable and precarious, and are not dumbfounded by sudden death. One evening they hold a memorial for Tony at the cricket pavilion. I do not want to go; I don’t think I will be able to bear it, but am glad when I do. A young man I have known since he was an infant plays African drums, and Jason’s aunt, an elderly and devout Christian, sings an old West Indian slave song, ‘I’ll Fly Away’. Jason makes a speech about Tony; Ben thanks the village for its support. We all eat jerk chicken and drink Red Stripe as the sun sets.
When Annabelle told me that Tony was dead, I couldn’t think beyond Treasure Beach. In my mind, the tragedy belonged to the village. The only other person I had thought about beyond that was Tony’s daughter. The rest of the world might as well not have existed. How wrong I was about that becomes apparent very quickly, as I discover the surreal experience of becoming a newspaper story.
The first press call to Jake’s had come within hours of Tony’s death, and newspapers keep calling. I had been confused: why were they interested? But of course, this is ‘a story’, so I had knelt at a laptop on Laura’s veranda and drafted an account, which the press report as ‘a statement released by the family’. It doesn’t feel like a statement to me; it still feels like an impossible untruth. The Guardian wants to run an obituary, and Jenni makes a start on one, until she panics about what the Daily Mail will do when it discovers that this man being portrayed by the media as a hero was in fact once a criminal. Who knows what dirt they might gleefully dig up? Jenni’s instinct is unequivocal; we must tell the Guardian to abandon the obituary idea at once.
My feelings are more ambivalent. They are also naïve. Surely, I say, the Mail would never do that to me and my family? Jenni snorts. She is right, of course – but I struggle to conceal my disappointment. I want to pretend that the media interest in Tony’s death is irksome and unwelcome – but the truth is, it isn’t. I find it hard to admit, even to myself, how gratifying it is to see his death so widely reported. I want to pretend that this is only because I know how pleased Tony would have been – and it is true that he would have been. But to pass off my own pleasure as purely vicarious would be a lie. I don’t know why the media coverage matters to me. All I know is that it does.
And yet at the same time I worry about its legacy for Jake. When he is old enough to read the reports about his father’s heroic sacrifice, will he feel comforted and proud, or resentful? I don’t want him burdened by some sense that he has to live up to the saintliness of a ghost dreamt up by hacks.
One consequence of the press coverage I had not anticipated is the deluge of emails and text messages that begin pouring in. Many are from close friends, or people I know well. Some are from celebrities I have only ever met when I interviewed them. I would like to say that the messages from the famous people mean little to me – but again, that would be a lie. I am astounded, and mildly horrified, by my gratification.
I wish my embarrassment regarding these emails ended there, but it doesn’t. One arrives from an immensely wealthy Jamaican businessman called Butch Stewart, who owns the Sandals hotel chain, and for many years also owned the Air Jamaica airline. We have met several times through work, and have always got along, but I couldn’t claim to be his friend. So I am surprised and moved to receive an email from him, forwarded on by various intermediaries, conveying his condolences and asking if he can help in any way. My big mistake is to read this email aloud during dinner.
‘Jesus, Dec, he’s a billionaire!’ exclaims Matt at once. ‘Dec, he is a bill-i-on-aire! Can he help? Of course he can! He can send you a sum of money big enough to change your life, and too small for him to even notice on his bank statement. Dec! I’m serious! For fuck’s sake, email him back and ask him for some money.’
Once again, what I would like to say at this point would not actually be true. I don’t tell Matt he is being vulgar or greedy. I laugh. I haven’t laughed since Tony died, and it feels startling and miraculous, like breaking out of prison. As soon as I stop, the only thought in my head is how nice it would be to escape again.
I would still have had the good sense to stop the joke going any further, had a friend from the village not then happened to drop by and handed me a spliff.
I have never been a big fan of cannabis. I don’t need a drug to make me vague and a bit careless; I can manage that quite easily by myself. But every now and then I still give it a go, because very occasionally I get a pleasant surprise, and it makes me giggly and silly instead of sleepy. This, regrettably, is one of those occasions.
What happens next is a measure of our collective derangement, and later a source of such embarrassment to some that it would be unfair to specify precisely who says what. But somebody produces a laptop, and in this unexpected delirium of laughter we begin to dictate what we imagine to be a subtly lucrative reply. The ridiculous email is still being drafted when I make my next mistake. Butch isn’t the only billionaire, I announce with a giggle, who has been in touch to offer help. I am slightly taken aback by the impact of this revelation. The table freezes.
‘What do you mean?’ someone asks, suddenly alarmingly serious.
‘Um, well, I had one from David Furnish too. You know, Elton John’s husband.’ The table erupts.
I expect Danielle to find all this shameless avarice distasteful. She is an actual Christian, for a start, and the most fastidiously virtuous person I know, who grew up on a council estate in Hackney, has worked hard all her life, but at twenty-nine still can’t afford to move out to a place of her own. To Danielle perhaps we all look like billionaires. But when I glance at her, she too is laughing and nodding vigorously.
And so, to my eternal mortification, we send off an email to the two billionaires, thanking them for their generous offer of help and suggesting it might best be realised in a monetary form. By now I am so stoned that I consider these emails to be both elegantly tasteful and guaranteed to generate substantial piles of cash. There is no doubt in my mind – until I awake the next morning. Oh my God. What can we have been thinking? What must they have thought when they opened these emails? To this day I do not know the answer, because – unsurprisingly – I never heard from either one again.
All I want to do is go home. But we are not leaving until we can bring Tony’s body with us, and Jamaican bureaucracy proceeds at a snail’s pace. My brothers cajole and harass and chivvy, and Jason applies more pressure, and eventually – eight days later – we are allowed to take Tony home.
An old friend drives us north across the mountains to Montego Bay. I have had to introduce the boys to a whole new vocabulary of death – undertaker, hearse, coffin, funeral – and explained that Tony’s body will be on the same plane as us. I think I have taken care to make sure they understand it all, until Jake asks how we will carry Tony onto the plane; he thinks the body will be propped in a seat next to us. Joe asks if we can please go straight home when the plane lands, and not ‘to the party for everyone who love Tony’. I have explained that when we get back to England there will be a funeral – ‘a sort of party for everyone who loved Tony’ – so he assumes it will take place that very day. Losing heart in my ability to make any useful sense to them, when we pass a Bent’s hearse driving south and I realise it must have carried Tony to the airport that morning, I do not point it out.
In the departures hall at Montego Bay airport I unravel into a monstrous brat. A tropical downpour soaks us on our way across the car park, and I stand on the concourse and bawl like a toddler, in a tantrum about being wet. I am appalled by myself, but cannot help it. I am out of control, and suddenly this feels like the only appropriate way to be; I am not a normal person any more, and have no wish to pretend to all these tourists and airline staff milling around us that I am anything like them.
There is a strange and confronting moment in the smoking lounge. I take a seat at the bar alone, order a drink, and the barmaid studies my face. ‘Are you okay?’ The room is almost silent; everyone is too busy smoking to chat. ‘No,’ I say evenly, ‘I’m not okay’ – and tell her why. She stares. Everyone stares. She comes around the bar and hugs me. A man says to the barmaid, ‘Buy her whatever she wants.’ I thought people only ever said that in films. Do I like it? I cannot tell.
The airline has made arrangements for us to be escorted onto the plane after everyone else is seated. It is my first intimation of the celebrity of tragedy, and half of me is burning with embarrassment as we take our seats, but the other half almost enjoys making a spectacle of ourselves, and is grateful for the public statement of our difference. Before I fall asleep a steward tells us he read about Tony’s death in the papers and can’t believe he is now flying us home. I can’t tell if I am touched or angry. I hate becoming a freak show – a scrap of anecdote fodder for random strangers – but I also want the special status of our catastrophe to be acknowledged. We have been cocooned in a community where everyone knew what had happened to us, and re-entry to a world which may not know or care is so confusing that I do not know my own mind. When I awake before we come in to land, I stare at the rows of other families returning from their holiday with the father still alive and I think I hate them; I think I feel jealous and bitter. But do I really? Or do I just assume I ought to? I can’t be sure. Perhaps I am just making the most of an excuse for ugly misanthropy.
Tom’s girlfriend, Shakira, meets us in arrivals at Gatwick and travels back to our house, Tubslake, with us in the taxi. On the way Joe asks me to tell him the story of how Tony died-ed again, so I do. Conscious that the driver and Shakira are listening, mesmerised by the poignancy and close to tears, I sense another intimation of the power of our tragedy – the dangerous appeal of our new specialness – and my uncertainty about the difference between emotional candour and showing off.
My father and his partner, Sarah, are waiting to greet us when we get home. It is a perfect late May day; the garden is a confetti of blossom, and Jake and Joe fall upon their toys in the playroom, soothed with the comfort of familiarity. For eight days I have fixated on getting us home, and now here we are.
But as I walk from room to room I begin to weep. There is no trace of the relief I had anticipated; I don’t want to be here at all. I wish we were back in Jamaica. In fact, I would rather be anywhere in the world than here at home.
6
The overwhelming sensation of being home is one of homelessness. That breath of relief as you flop onto your own sofa, whose familiarity I’d always taken for granted, has vanished; I cannot find it anywhere. Even in my own bed there is no sanctuary.
Actually, my bed is the last place to look for it. While we were in Jamaica the builders have transformed the first floor, and our bedroom is barely recognisable from the one Tony and I last slept in. I pace the floorboards, staring up at the beams, absorbing the cold truth that it will never be our bedroom again; it is mine now, ‘my bedroom’, a phrase so bleakly alien that when I try to say it out loud the words choke me. I haven’t slept in ‘my’ bedroom since my mid-twenties. It feels unnatural, an infantilising regression, like wearing my old school uniform. The boys will never pad along the passage in the morning and climb into their mum and dad’s bed again.
Everything has become a metaphor. During supper on our first evening home, Shakira motions to Tom that he has lettuce stuck in his teeth, my father gestures to a breadcrumb on Sarah’s cheek, and these two inconsequential moments send me reeling from the room. The world is designed for couples; I no longer fit. Even the most mundane household objects have been stripped of banality and invested with a significance that threatens to capsize me at any moment. Because of the building work, the whole house has been rearranged while we were away, and now I can’t find anything, but what should be a series of mild inconveniences – a missing tin opener, central heating I can’t operate – become crises, symbolic of a loss of all control.
Being at home is exhausting, but leaving the house is so exposing that I become mildly agoraphobic. Tony’s face is on the front page of our local newspaper; his death is announced on billboards along the village high street. ‘Local Man Drowns Saving Son’. I find myself cast in a new role I can neither stand nor escape – the public widow – and worry about getting it right.
In the village I sense that people are staring. It is a picturesque and uneventful collection of white weatherboard houses and independent stores, but we moved here so recently that I don’t yet know any of the shopkeepers. I begin to feel paranoid, trying to work out who does and doesn’t know. The teller in the bank seems to be especially gentle, so I think she must know, but then maybe she has always been this lovely? I can’t remember. I’m not even sure if I want everyone to know or not. I feel like a liability in public, for at any moment I am in danger of bursting into tears, so a part of me hopes they do. I rather envy the Victorians, because if I were dressed in mourning clothes this problem would be solved, and allowances would presumably be made for any bizarre behaviour.
When I realise I look like a fright, I want to get my eyebrows waxed and do something about my nails, but if I go to the salon in the village will I look unseemly? I picture the beautician in the pub, gossiping with disapproving friends about my shocking sense of priorities, and end up driving to a town miles away, where I can be fairly sure nobody will know me.
I am touched by the postman’s condolences when he delivers the mail, and grateful for his kind words. But now each time he has a parcel and has to knock again I feel self-conscious and anxious, because I can’t tell how sad I am supposed to look. If I am always in tears, will my grief soon begin to look slovenly and unedifying? Perhaps I am expected to pull myself together – but then I worry that he will think me cold and indifferent.
After a few days Tom’s girlfriend Shakira has to go back to London for work. My dad and his partner Sarah need to get back to Wiltshire. But as bags are packed, and motorway routes discussed, panic overtakes me.
When I ask Sarah to stay, my shame at owning up to this new neediness does not surprise me. The only shock is how little I find I care. Dignity can go out the window as long as Sarah doesn’t leave, because without her I don’t think I am capable of looking after Jake and Joe. So she and Tom stay, my cousin Shona arrives later that week to relieve Sarah, and for the next three months a rota of friends and relatives will occupy the spare room in shifts, so that I am never alone. I’m even helplessly grateful for the company of the builders. Living in a building site is a nightmare, obviously, but I dread the day when they will leave.
The boys go back to nursery, and the rhythm of their old routine seems to stabilise them a little, but their mood swings continue to floor me. Joe keeps asking me to tell him the story about how Tony died-ed again, but every time I begin Jake flies off the handle. Jake doesn’t want to talk about it, or even hear Tony’s name; he stuffs his fingers in his ears, kicks Joe and bolts out of the room. Frightened that I no longer know how to care for my own children, I go to London with Tom to see Tanya Byron, a child psychologist I know.
I haven’t noticed what has happened to my body until we step off the train at Charing Cross into the roar of the capital. Ordinarily I am a typical hurried Londoner, brutally impatient with dawdlers, but now I inch along like a post-operative invalid, getting in everyone’s way. Sirens and car horns make me jump and cling to Tom.
