Beyond the High Blue Air (28 page)

Will and I start off by dividing everything into two piles, to keep and not to keep. The latter pile requires decisions – throw away, give to charity or sell? We intend to be business-like about this but very soon we are floored. Every item is a graphic personal remnant of what he was, each thing has a history, evokes a particular memory that spools out into a fresh story. I stand holding the hammered brass bowl I gave him one birthday, when he surprised me by asking for something decorative and surprised me even more by how delighted he was with it. I want to smarten up the flat, he had said. I don't know where to get those kind of home things. Why don't you be my interior decorator? But once he knew where to look his natural flair took over, just as he had personalised his rooms at university. I had not expected him to be domesticated; how he would have loved a home of his own.

We can give his clothes to the hospice shop, I say to Will. That seems simple, but it isn't, each piece as I fold it away releasing a fresh image of how he looked wearing it, how casually he wore his clothes, how little he cared for them. I'd know he'd come home even if I hadn't heard him come in because of the trail of dropped coat, jacket, keys on the floor in the hall, even the jacket of the Paul Smith suit he bought when he began his last job. I remember the ridiculous fun we had choosing it despite his hatred of shopping for clothes, the lunch we treated ourselves to, his exuberance talking about his new job and his future and his protectiveness of a waiter who irritated me by getting the order wrong. Be kind to him, Mum, he's trying hard, he's probably new here. How handsome he looked, finally wearing a smart suit. His dislike of shopping was a family joke, the grumpiness that accompanied it, his decisiveness – that's fine, I'll have that, let's go now – and his incredulity that the girls and I could happily spend half an hour deciding on whether or not we should buy something.

While I sort the clothes Will goes through the electronic equipment, putting the music-making kit, the keyboard, synthesiser and other complex-looking instruments aside for safe-keeping. It was a shared hobby and they could spend hours riffing together. I imagine them now, the way they sparked off each other's humour, their adorable energetic boyishness I would think, listening to them, no different from their shared excitement dressed up and playing Starsky and Hutch aged five and six. And though I never understood the instruments I loved the haunting futuristic sounds of the digital music they made. Will hasn't done anything with them since the accident and looking at them now I think that their silence – silence altogether – is the purest reflection of our loss. All the particular resonating sounds of Miles silenced, the only noise he could make for the past five years that roar of frustration and misery that we dreaded.

We are almost finished. Around us lie the remains of Miles's life, sorted and labelled in black plastic bags and boxes. Will and I are still intact but we are wrung out and facing us now is the final pile stashed in the corner of the room, the thing we have both been avoiding. Miles's snowboard leans against the wall, its sleek shape and colourful design of snowboarding graffiti still in perfect condition, not a scratch on it. Like a riderless horse after a fall, it stands quietly innocent of the disaster it carried. I don't want it in my house. Would you sell it, Will? I ask. No, he says, I couldn't let someone else use it. I understand; innocent or not, it has bad feng shui now. Next to the board is the battered leather and canvas hold-all, still with its easyJet label for LGW, Gatwick, that Ben and Charlie brought back with them from Munich, the bag that Miles packed that Sunday morning. Beside it is a pile of snowboarding clothes, boots, gloves, hat, scarf, the wide waterproof trousers and zipped jacket and, Oh Jesus, Will, I say, that's the helmet. This is what Miles was wearing when he fell. Will puts his arm around me as I pick up the helmet. How slight a thing it looks. How lethal. I turn it over, run my hand round the padded interior, weigh its lightness in my hand. His brain rotated. Not even a scratch or dent on it. Get rid of it now, get rid of these things, throw them all away, immediately. Bending down to scoop them up I see underneath them all his vest, one of the cream-coloured thermal ones I bought so long ago for the boys when they were teenagers and we still had the chalet in the Alps, and as I stand up it falls apart in my hands. It has been ripped up the front, slashed from waist to neck in one long jagged cut. Of course, the paramedics. Dropping the rest of his clothes I close my eyes and bury my face in this torn old remnant and suddenly I'm drenched in the smell of him, the distinctive acrid smell of his perspiration, vivid man smell, still alive. The essence of him, still here, that final moment of pure exhilaration perfectly preserved. He is about to leap into the boundless blue air. And now I am standing next to him and I say, Go for it, Miles. Go for it.

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks:

To Clare Alexander, Margaret Stead, and all at Atlantic Books, Blake Morrison, Francis Spufford, Tamsin Shelton, Erica Platter, Eileen Horne, Genevieve Fox and Tricia Gilpin, for their encouragement, and for their invaluable help in the completion of this book; to all my friends, for their kindness and support, and to Teresa and Jonathan Sumption, Benjie and Sarah Lister, Liv Lowrie, Jane Custance Baker, Pete Gingold, Nicky Thomas and David Mitchell, for their sustaining practical help as well; to all Miles's friends who continued to visit and support him; special thanks to Tom Lister, Zach Leonard, Caroline Kamana, Jason Blain, Freddie Sumption and Simon Rucker; to Richard Greenwood, Christine Quisel, Daniel Atkinson, Suzanne Davey, Khanye Lembethe and David Echendu, my deep gratitude for the outstanding care they gave Miles at all times; to the many medical staff and carers who looked after Miles with gentleness, respect and understanding; to Belinda and Amelia Spinney, for their generous encouragement and support; and finally to Will, Claudia and Marina, to whom I owe everything.

In grateful and loving memory of Jennifer Mitchell, Angharad McAlpine, Josef Barbach, Martin Coleman, and Shasha Li.

Beyond the High Blue Air

LU SPINNEY was born in Cape Town and spent her childhood on a farm in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, later moving with her family to the Indian Ocean coast north of Durban. After university, she left South Africa to live in Nice and Paris, before settling in London.

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2016 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Lu Spinney, 2016

The moral right of Lu Spinney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

“Buffalo Bill's”. Copyright 1923, 1951, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976 by George James Firmage, from
complete poems
: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

‘Ninth Duino Elegy', in
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
(1987), by Rilke, Rainer Maria edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, published by Picador. Reproduced by permission of Macmillan Publishers Ltd and by Abner Stein Ltd.

Heaven's Coast
(1997) by Doty, Mark, published by Jonathan Cape. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

Sir Thomas Bingham MR, in
Frenchay Healthcare NHS Trust v S
[1994] 1 WLR 601, [1994] 2 All ER 403, [1994] 1 FLR 485

The Myth of Sisyphus
(1955), by Camus, Albert, translated by Justin O'Brien, published by Penguin. Translation copyright © Justin O'Brien, 1955. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 9781782398875

E-Book ISBN: 9781782398882

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Author's Note

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people like Miles who are unable to speak for themselves and give or withhold consent for inclusion in a book such as this. To protect the identity of those few I have included, their names have been changed and some details of their story altered.

Some other names have also been changed, for reasons of discretion.

Finally, there are people who were closely involved in Miles and Ron's situation but whom I have not included in detail, both to protect their privacy and because they were not, in the end, part of my story.