macCLOUD FALLS, page 4
‘You,’ Martina laughed, ‘would have everything Scottish. But surely that can’t be correct. What about Eliot and his cats? That must have made millions.’
‘I’m only repeating what I’ve read,’ he said, holding his palms up to both.
There had been a dusty old settled pride about this native-born lady as she sat behind the old shop counter, but as she shifted into a beam of light that streamed from the window, a glamour of well-to-do assurance came over her. She stretched out across the small desk and the sunlight caught her profile.
‘I think you’ll find I’m right about Mr Service,’ she said firmly. For a second he was tempted to spout a challenge, and probably appear quite pedantic, but he smiled instead.
‘Ah well, maybe you are. I’m only a bookseller, after all,’ he said. And he put a twenty-dollar bill in the collection box by the door as they exited. No gift shop here.
Afterwards, outside, they stood silently for a while, looking out over the grandeur of the harbour to the mountains beyond.
‘That woman annoyed me,’ she said.
‘Really?’ he asked, and smiled in a slightly twisted way that didn’t turn out right. ‘I’d never have guessed.’
‘Are you teasing me?’ she said sharply. Did he twist his smile because she seemed annoyed, or because he was nervous?
‘Maybe. So what if you’re a Czech cheechako?’
She laughed. ‘And you’re very cheeky.’
‘And this is the cheek of a Czech Cheechako,’ he added and, for no reason, kissed her on the side of her face, as a joke maybe.
She put down her glasses, checked the time on her cell. Hero raised his head from the cushion of his paws, hopefully. She patted his neck fur, and said, ‘This is weird, buddy. I’m in a story.’ And she put her spectacles back on.
‘So,’ he said, ‘Tell me what I’m looking at here. What are these places called?’ And so, slowly, she began to name the various sights, from Vancouver Island in the distance, to the Sunshine Coast, Bowen Island, West Vancouver and the mountains of Cypress, Grouse and Seymour all opposite, and then Point Grey on the same shore. He tried to memorize all the names, but his mind was still reeling gently from the jetlag.
‘Okay. Enough,’ he breathed. ‘That’s all my brain can take in for now.’
‘You must be tired,’ she said, examining his face. ‘You probably want a timeout.’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘I’m enjoying this. I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough.’
‘Well, the tide’s out. We could walk back along the shore? It’s not too far to where you’re staying?
‘What about your car?
‘I can pick it up later. I could do with the walk. And you should see this piece of shoreline. It’s the last wild part, the rest has all been landscaped. There’s a nice place below MacDonald where one of the Squamish villages used to be. Tsumtsahmuls, they called it. The name’s lost now.’ So they clambered down onto the beach, and went treading their way through the wet stones and slippery surfaces.
‘You must tell me more about why you’re here,’ she told him, as they walked in the ebb along the shore. Shells crunched underfoot.
‘I told you. I want to write a book.’
‘I sense there’s more to it than just the book.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s my top bucket-list item,’ he said. ‘Things to do before you die.’ Along the seawall an impressive line of graffiti caught a blaze of sunlight. It lit up shapes and slogans unfamiliar to him, though one smallish piece Uncle George – get well soon! made them both laugh. They walked on a little further, around a headland, picking careful steps across rock and sand.
‘But why? I think I deserve a little more information. I’ve brought you to one of my secret places. You owe me more about your secrets.’
A large flock of ducks and ducklings made darting bobbing passage along the shallows. A few went far out, some were left behind.
‘Well, you are right. There is more. It’s to do with my father. Something I always wondered about. You see, he was much older than my mother, a widower, and he died when I was a boy so I don’t – I didn’t even have the chance, you know, to find out much about him, other than what my mother told me, and she had her own issues with him. She always seemed to end up talking about those.’
He stopped and peered out across the water. ‘Downtown’s stunning from here,’ he said, ‘the way the city seems to try to compete with the mountains in scale...’
‘But completely fails,’ she finished.
‘So far.’
‘They’ll never tame it,’ she said, with absolute certainty. ‘The buildings will all be thrown down and overgrown.’
‘Prophecy of doom?’
‘Certainty, in cosmic terms.’
‘You know a bit about the cosmos?’
‘It’s innate. Stardust, you know, like the song says we are.’
‘Ah yes, the great Canadian songstress.’
‘You know Joni?’
‘I grew up with her.’
‘Me too. I learned so much from her songs. About art, emotions. And America. Funny we should share that.’
‘Her background was Scottish, I think.’
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘Enough already.’
Nine freighters were anchored in the depth of the harbour, various combinations of rust-proof red and salty black, a little sallow yellow or white for the superstructure. Flags lay at mast in the stillness. They could be from anywhere, this metal leviathan school, carrying containers across the Pacific, to and fro from China, Japan, Russia, full of everything that can be bought and sold.
‘So what’s the mystery? Are you going to tell me?’ she asked.
‘The family secret? It’s not so great, and I don’t know the answer. I may find out when I go north.’
‘North?’
‘Yes, next week. To Cloud Falls. I’m following his trail, really, coming here, going there.’
‘To where your Lyle fella lived?’
‘Oh, he’s part of it. My father was there too. After the First World War, he emigrated. At least I think so. He was married, settled, but his wife died, and he went back to Scotland. Or so I think. So far it’s not proven, as we say in Scotland.’
‘And you are here to prove it,’ she said, with that same tone of certainty he was growing used to. He didn’t bother to confirm. She had decided, and he understood.
‘It’s a complicated family,’ he added.
‘Aren’t they all?’ She stopped, sat on one of the huge tree-trunks that had washed ashore in some high tide or other. He sat beside her, close enough to feel her warmth, or to imagine that he did.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is what used to be called Tsumtsahmuls by the Squamish. That’s all Stanley Park across there, to the right. And over there, where the forest ends, you can just see Siwash Rock.’
‘You mean that little rocky pinnacle?’
‘Yes. It’s a famous landmark. There’s a story about it, you know, in native myth.’
‘Which is?’
She took a breath before replying. ‘I don’t remember it all, but from what I recall, Siwash was a virtuous young man. His new wife was pregnant and so he swam every morning to kinda purify himself before becoming a father. Soon after the baby was born, one morning he found himself in the path of a great canoe that was making its way south along the coast and on a course to go through the channel where Siwash was swimming. And he refused to move out of the way. His ritual demanded that he didn’t stop. He didn’t know it, but the canoe belonged to the four grey men of the north, and they were like wizards.’ She stopped, as if trying to find the right words.
‘What happened?’
‘Well, he explained to them that he couldn’t turn aside without breaking his vow. The phrase sticks in my mind - clean fatherhood, it was called. So anyway, they turned him into that rock, saying that it would be a reminder to people of the importance of uprightness forever.’
‘That’s quite sad. What happened to the young wife and child?’
‘Ah well, the men of the north took pity, and turned them to stone too. There are two other smaller rocks hidden in the forest near Siwash, supposed to be his wife and child.’
He whistled in surprise. ‘A rather harsh form of pity. But I suppose they’re together forever,’ and at the same moment, both of them exclaimed, ‘John and Dimitra!’ Laughing at the coincidence, they looked directly at one another, their eyes locked together for a millisecond. Again he saw that golden light radiate from brown. She did so remind him of someone.
A surprised silence grew as they listened to the gentle rhythm of the waves. The calls of the seabirds played a shrill melody above. In the harbour, the freighters had multiplied to eleven, as new hulls which had been hidden from sight came into view behind the foregrounded few.
‘The story with my father relates to Jimmy Lyle,’ he said after a while. ‘I think Lyle may have been my grandfather.’
She turned to stare at him. ‘Really? How come?’
‘Well, when Lyle left Scotland to come out here, he left behind a pregnant woman.’
‘His kid?’
‘I think so. But I can’t prove it. Yet.’
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘So were they married?’
‘No. She was an older woman. A widow in her thirties. I don’t know the truth of it, but it seems from what I can find out that the child was his. And that child, I believe was my father.’
‘So he ran out on them?’
He shrugged, gave her a look of uncertainty. ‘Could be. He was just a lad, barely eighteen. I expect it was a scandal.’
‘And that’s why you’re so interested in him?’
‘Not only that,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, he lived this heroic sort of life. From what I’ve been able to find out.’
After a long time, she added, ‘I can take you to Siwash, maybe. Maybe on Thursday?’
‘That would be great.’
‘I’ll text you.’
‘So, anyway, your story about clean fatherhood. From my family’s perspective, your Siwash has a point.’
‘He has a rock.’
‘A rocky point.’
‘Or a pointy rock.’ They both began to giggle, he started coughing and he signed that she should slap his back, which she did, repeatedly. When he’d recovered, he said, ‘I still find laughing hard on the throat.’
‘After the radiation?’
‘Yep.’ That reminder shifted the mood like a breeze from elsewhere, a colder place, paradoxically filled with the memory of lasers burning. Being strapped down and hit with beams. She seemed to stiffen, breathing in the sea air deeply.
‘I wanted to tell you, on the plane, when you told me about your illness...’ She paused.
‘What?’
‘It happened to me to.’
‘What?’
‘Cancer.’
‘You?’ They looked at each, eyes wide, as her secret wound its way around them, drawing them closer still.
‘I was having radiation more or less at the same time as you were.’
‘Good God,’ he said.
‘So we’re radiation twins, in a way.’
‘I suppose so. Are you okay? What’s the story?’
‘Yes, all clear at the moment. Regular checks. Some post-surgery pain, but I’m okay so far.’ She touched her left breast with her open palm, and he understood.
‘So you’re still healing, like me?’
‘Yes, still a distance to go. In lots of ways.’
‘Well well.’ For a while they sat in silence, then without thinking, he said, ‘I wonder if it will ever be like it was before?’ It was a question neither of them thought worth answering.
The ebb was low. Mist was embracing Mount Seymour. Above those downtown tower blocks, the high forest ridges of the valleys inland slipped mysteriously into a grand enveloping shroud. From here, the city was shining towers, striations where balconies marked out floors, altogether like a single bent-back crouching creature with skyscraper spikes and streets for stripes, like some giant armadillo. It did not move, this beast, but smaller creatures moved within it. Tiny struggling creatures, forever going nowhere.
‘Did you ever think about not going through the treatment, just letting go?’ he asked, after a while.
‘What do you mean? Wouldn’t that be a bit like committing suicide?’
‘Sort of, I suppose. Just letting it all go. Having the cancer do its thing.’
She frowned at him. ‘No. Did you?’
‘I did. At the start, when I knew I was ill but before I found out what lay ahead.’
‘What happened?’
‘I suppose I couldn’t imagine how I could do it. Where. But the why seemed obvious.’
She shook her head slowly, leant down and picked up a pebble, then threw it towards the distant waterline where it skipped once and submerged. ‘I just try to deal with it, matter-of-factly. As a thing that’s happening to me. Something I have to get through. Somehow.’
‘And are you? Getting through?’
‘I’m still on sick leave. And it was a huge shock, okay, that’s for sure.’
Now the mist was slipping behind Stanley Park and the wooded outline was vivid against the white wall. Siwash rock was perfectly framed, clearly separated from the main cliff at this angle. In the foreground, the small boats in the visible marina were all anchored. The natural harbour lay beyond, hidden from the ocean behind the strait. He imagined the coming of the Europeans, how Captain Vancouver’s crew must have welcomed the sense of shelter, the safety from the open sea it brought, as they sailed into this great fjord. And here, at Tsumtsahmuls, someone would have watched, perhaps whilst gathering shellfish, astounded by the other worldly vessels approaching.
‘Radiation twins. Well well,’ he said after a silence.
‘You don’t still think of it, do you?’
‘What?’
‘You know, suicide.’
‘Ending it all, as they say? Oh I don’t know, I suppose it will end soon enough, whatever.’
She gave him a hurried concerned look, then smiled and slapped his back again. ‘All more reason to live, to write your book!’
‘Ah yes,’ he said, with a faraway look, ‘The great book. I’m not so sure that’s so easy.’
She frowned. ‘You’re sounding depressed – and it’s depressing me. Stop it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘And don’t say sorry. Just live. Breathe. It’s not so hard. And none of it is so heavy as you think. Look, see those mountains. Feel how light they are in your mind. Make your troubles as light as those. Distant.’ His eyes followed her tanned arm as it waved towards the ridge of peaks in the far distance.
‘Easy to say,’ he muttered. ‘’Easy to say.’
As they sat, side by side on a giant sea-worn trunk, the great harbour shimmering in front of them, she put her hand on top of his, on top of the worm-filled log. Their legs dangled like those of children, as they sat and stared and watched a flotilla of paddle boarders pass slowly, the voices echoing from the edge of hearing. At the marina to the west, a fleet of little dinghies sailed.
‘I can see I’ll have to look out for you, Mr Sick Heart,’ she said, then pulled her hand away and stood up. ‘I’ll walk back to get the car. You just have to go up the steps there, and you’ll see MacDonald. Just walk up a couple of blocks and you’ll see your place.’
As he watched her walk away, her tall figure receding into the distance as she rounded the great tree trunks washed ashore, stepping delicately over the green seaweedy stones, he felt the weight of insignificance return. The weight that was a lightness, like Kundera suggested. Dying was easy. Living was the hard part. Had he travelled all this way, just to realise that? He could surely have realised that back home. A shoreline is a shoreline, an ebb an ebb, Atlantic or Pacific. The slap and slush of the barely moving, the strange charm of the lolling water’s incantation. Yet the shape of this inlet had its own unique shape, and so the movements of tides did too. What gullies filled, what disappeared from view as the waters encroached, how each shapes the other.
For so long he’d been alone, ever since his mother died, with no one for company but doctors and nurses. Now, in just one day, this other person had penetrated his solitude and now he knew that she had suffered as he had done. Alone in Scotland, he had accepted that he was nothing, an infinitesimal detail in the vast cosmic flux. It seemed unbelievable, somehow, that he had travelled 5000 miles to meet a woman who understood, who had faced the same trial, this stranger who’d had a visit from death just like he had, and knew, like he did, that it would be back to stay at some stage.
Did it matter? Any of it? Was the oyster shell important, this one he picked from the shore as the crows attempted their clam-opening trick, of flying high up to drop it on a rock. To the oyster, maybe. In the grand scheme, as one of a species, maybe no and yes. What was one more oyster? Another few hours of mindless life. Yet its shape is perfect, a closure, the mollusc mouth straining, the seal so tight, as he had been sealed, grimly awaiting death. But he was still alive, and now someone was prising him open again. And how long before the shell is simply dust again, a scattered calcium strain in a sand of many colours, drenched in mud?
The growing hum and judder of the small plane flying in over Stanley Park broke his thought, finally sounding huge in the silence of this natural amphitheatre. It reminded him of those months in the garden at his mother’s house near the airport, watching the planes, as he endured the radiotherapy.
And then a series of explosions, like heavy gunfire, maybe six or seven shots in a row, sounded in the distance. As they echoed away, birds dominated the soundscape again. Gulls and crows, some geese in the water. A heron’s kaarrik counterpointed a crow’s kark. Some of the crows were still apprentice in the art of cawing, this year’s hatchlings, awkward in their grown-up feathers. Had they mastered the art of the clam drop, was it innate?
The curved question marks of two goose heads appeared in the distant water, then disappeared underwater, seeking their missing dots. Voices carried, words inaudible, from a little cruiser passing.
