It was my fault.
I started it.
11
BlueWhale
Now
When Kit and I moved to London for law school, he asked me to show him where I’d grown up because that’s what normal people do, visit the landmarks of their childhood, point out homes and parks, trace for their partners how they came to be the people before them. My reaction must have had a profound impact on him because he recalled it afterwards as the first time he understood the effect of Mama’s death. ‘A stillness came over you,’ he said, ‘like watching ice form.’ I remember struggling to display the right amount of emotion, to set off a controlled explosion – enough to shut him down but without unveiling the panic he’d detonated.
Occasionally, Kit would bring up West London with a tourist’s enthusiasm, he wanted to take Millie to the Beatrix Potter exhibition at the V&A, the sensory play centre in the basement of the Science Museum, the pirate ship at the Diana Memorial Playground. Once, he suggested that we take Millie to the Natural History Museum for the day and my mind went white; for a fewseconds, I was speechless. Finally, I said, ‘I can’t go anywhere I used to go with Mama. Not the South Ken museums, not West London. It’s just not something I can do.’ That stopped him. Even though it wasn’t true.
Now, outside the Natural History Museum, I wish Millie was here, her dark blonde hair curling at her shoulders, a hair slide dangling by a strand, she’d be running ahead of the queue, excited to get in. My want for her is so keen, I grasp the iron railings.
I step into the museum. It’s busy, I hold my arms around my middle to protect my stomach from the streams of visiting students, parents tugging their children. But even the busyness cannot distract from the museum’s Romanesque façade, the gargoyle drainpipes, the soft hue of the terracotta.
The hall inside is cool and tiled and I think Kit was right, I should have brought Millie here, how could I have let her miss out? Because like everyone else, I am gasping at the skeleton of the blue whale suspended from the cathedral arches by invisible wires. My eyes follow the length of it, the hollow of its open jaw, the smooth plane of its nose, the vertebra that trails off into a tail. I can almost see it. Flesh flown back, heart returned, it dives suddenly for a shimmer of krill.
‘I could watch you for hours.’
I turn.
There he is. The man I’ve escaped from and wanted to see for eighteen years.
‘Lolly,’ he says.
I want his cheeks to have sunken, for his middle to be soft and doughy. But it’s not true. He still has an electricity about him, he’s more magnetic at forty-eight than he was at thirty. His hair isn’t that rich brown anymore but it’s still full and professionally silvered and he’s clean-shaven, revealing that rakish scar to the left of his chin. Age has claimed him only around the eyes, deep folds where once his skin was smooth, but it hasn’t touched the colour, still that brilliant navy.
He takes me in slowly, his eyes holding mine before running over my hair, falling across my body; under his gaze, I’m ashamed of my appearance – the fine lines around my eyes, the heaviness of my breasts, the pouch of my stomach. I call forth feminist slogans, mantras, Instagram posts –I don’t owe you pretty,I owe you nothing,Why should I care what you think of me, all that matters is what I think of you– but they slide off me, someone else’s words, I thought I believed them but I don’t. After all this time, I can’t help it. I still want him to want me.
‘You came,’ he says.
‘You wrote me a letter.’
‘I’ve written you hundreds. You never replied.’
‘No.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You read the most important one.’
His shirt is unbuttoned at the top, exposing the hollows of his throat. His familiar musk is dizzying. Once, I would have found it irresistible, pressed my nose deep into his skin. I dig my nails into my palm. ‘Why did you ask me to come?’
‘You know why.’
‘I really don’t.’ I stare at him, uncertain how to proceed. Eighteen years ago, I knew the taste of his lips. Now, I don’t knowanything about him. I’m not sure I want to. What words can bridge intimacy and strangeness, all the sharp and gleaming things between us?
He is struggling too, his mouth opens, shuts. Perhaps he’s also practised what he’d say, perhaps he is finding, as I am, that everything he’s prepared makes no sense. But then, he seems to settle on something; I’m not sure if it’s appalling or perfect. ‘Shall we walk?’
It’s such an innocent suggestion – two adults walking through a museum, friends perhaps. But it isn’t innocent and we are not friends. It’s an invitation back. Because every Saturday, we’d take a slow walk from the staff entrance all the way to Lepidoptery. And then, suddenly, this moment is precious, the clutch of seconds before everything changes.
I turn away from him, back to the whale, I force myself to read every word of the display. Her name is Hope. Caught at low tide, on a sandbar outside the harbour town of Wexton, she struggled for two days before a lifeboat pilot harpooned her out of pity. Her carcass was auctioned off, her body butchered, the blubber boiled down, her skeleton sold.
Now, scientists have uncovered why she was in Ireland. She was a mother. She was travelling from the subtropical waters of the Atlantic after birthing her calf. They discovered it in her baleen, the molecules of her chemistry. Her child written in her bones.
‘Lolly?’ he says.
My eyes linger on her. I am crossing oceans for my family, Hope, I am braving treacherous waters. See me. Hear me. Give me strength.