The Comet Seekers: A Novel (4 page)

How are you going to mark it on your maps?

I don’t know.

She sounds despairing.

You could draw it next to the farm. Between Dad’s shed there and the fence around the cows’ field?

Liam can see how that would work – when he imagines the world it is always somehow relative to the farm.

It’s not about the farm, says Róisín, a little stroppily.

He can’t answer that.

But it was a nice idea, she says, softening.

He looks from the comet to his cousin and back again.

The comet gets dimmer as the morning passes. Liam’s dad trudges around the farm, feeding, checking, clearing, talking to himself, or sometimes to the memory of his wife beside him.

Don’t you want to leave here? Róisín whispers.

No.

How could Liam leave his dad, when it’s just the two of them?

Not now, obviously, I get that . . . You’re still a kid. But when you’re a grown-up?

You’re still a kid too.

But there’s nothing left to explore on the farm.

I don’t want to go away.

But you can come on an adventure. With me.

Maybe one day.

Liam doesn’t like lying to Róisín, but he doesn’t know how to make her understand.

Well, I’m going to explore the universe, she says.

Liam knows that they should go in soon, for breakfast. His dad will be waiting for them. It seems like his dad spends all his time waiting for people to come home, though most of them have gone for good.

That’s what astronomers do, says Róisín; they go and explore the universe.

Liam looks up at his cousin – she is spinning round and round now with her arms spread wide – and he forgets about his dad.

I know, he says, with a cheeky smile – he doesn’t usually talk back to her – you’ve already told me about the universe.

She stops spinning and looks surprised for a second, then pulls his bobble hat down over his eyes.

Glad you were paying attention, she says, before grabbing the sleeping bag from the ground and running inside.

That afternoon, Liam’s dad drives them to the village fete – Róisín stares out of the truck window at the sheep watching them pass, then into the woods where the trees hide weasels and badgers. As they wind through the outskirts of the village she waves at her house, even though she knows her mum is still away.

You OK, pet? asks her uncle.

Did you know that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy?

Look, he smiles, we’ve arrived.

Róisín is up and out of the car, waiting impatiently for Liam to undo his seat belt.

There are stalls lined up along the high street; sweets and candyfloss, wooden figurines painted in bright colours, soft rugs of sheepskin that Róisín can’t help but touch, knitted dolls and, on the green, an assortment of engines and tractor parts that have arrived on a huge truck.

Róisín grabs Liam’s hand – come on – and leads her cousin, running, up to the toffee-apple stall.

Can we have one? she asks, fishing in her bag for this week’s pocket money. The coins spread out on her palm when she shakes her hand, a jangle of silver and copper, pennies and a ten-pence piece. We’ll share.

She passes it to Liam and smiles at Mr Toffeeapple (actually it’s Mr Morris that runs the toffee-apple stall) and they go to the green and sit on one of the benches by the trees.

He’s my Latin teacher, Róisín says, nodding at Mr Morris.

Róisín is in a different school to Liam, though when they’re older they’ll go to the same school in the town, because that’s where everyone goes.

Do you want to know Latin? she asks.

He doesn’t answer; he is preoccupied with the toffee apple, so Róisín starts reciting for him anyway, or maybe for herself.

Amo, amas, amat, she says.

Ama-mus, ama-tis, am-ant.

Lego, legas, legat. Lega-mus, lega-tis, leg-ant.

The textbooks they use in her Latin class tell stories, and actually Róisín likes the stories more than she likes amo amas amat. There is a Roman man called Caecilius who lives in Pompeii, and he has a wife called Metella, a son Quintus and a dog Cerberus.

She knows that Vesuvius will erupt by the end of the year, but the whole family will refuse to leave their home. She’s flicked forward in the book and read the final chapters; she likes to know how things will turn out, but she doesn’t like the fact that they stayed in Pompeii. They should have run away when the ash started to fall. For now, Caecilius is going to do business in the agora and his son is playing with the dog in the garden. They are quite rich Romans; they used to have a slave but soon Caecilius is going to make him a freedman. It’s a very moral textbook.

We could run away, she says. We’ll go on an adventure.

Liam takes a bite of the toffee apple, smudges caramel on his chin.

Down to the river, how about that? We can make a secret hut where no one will find us and we can explore all the country and you can bring Bobby.

I don’t need to bring Bobby, he says, momentarily sounding older than he is; he can’t always be the baby.

But we can build the secret hut?

She takes a bite of the toffee apple, still clutched in his hand.

Liam’s dad is looking at the tractor pieces on the green, but every now and then he turns round to check on the kids. They’re like
brother and sister, those two, he thinks; it is good for Liam not to be on his own all the time. The last year has been hard, on them both.

The toffee-apple stick is thrown in the bin and Róisín’s on her feet again.

Right, let’s go.

It’s starting to get dark.

But she’s pulling him along beside the green and heading for the river that runs by the village, through the woods.

Then Liam’s dad is beside them, and he’s saying, where are you two off to?

Just playing, Uncle Aedan.

Time to go home, he says, taking Róisín’s hand and trusting Liam to follow along. Your mum asked me to look after you while she’s away, he says to her, and that’s what I’m doing.

He’s not normally strict, Liam’s dad, he’s too preoccupied, and Róisín is surprised that he even noticed they were running away.

So, he says, fish fingers for tea?

Can we watch the comet again later?

Liam’s dad looks up; he can’t see anything so unusual about the sky. She’s a funny girl, Róisín. Head in the clouds. And always staring at the stars, just like his brother, searching for something – not that that’s any excuse for running off the way he did. Taking Róisín in for the week was the least he could do.

Of course you can, pet, he says kindly, wondering how a father could ever leave his child.

At dusk, the stars begin to appear around the comet one by one.

Tonight’s the night, Róisín says; she seems more excited than ever. They’re back out by the tent and she’s arranging the sleeping bag for them to sit on.

But I’ve already seen it.

That’s not the point. It’s not enough to just see it. You have to see it fly. You have to see it change.

All right then. Liam looks up but her hands are suddenly clasped over his eyes. Not now. Not like this. Wait.

She starts digging around for her maps and a sigh escapes his lips.

She’s insisting he pays attention to the dots and lines on her sketch pad; some constellations are named, and they are the ones she points out to him.

See this shape?

Yes.

OK, good, now remember that. And see here? That’s where the comet was last night. OK?

Yes, yes, yes.

Grand. I think you’re ready. And it’s nearly time.

Her ponytail has come loose in the breeze and a strip of hair is caught in her mouth. He reaches to her face and brushes it away.

Of course I’m ready, he says, and she looks at him as if she’s pleased.

Liam wonders how his cousin got to be so bossy. He likes it though, in secret. It’s not often someone tells him what to do; it’s not often that someone even notices him. He once heard his dad talking about the farm to one of his great-aunts that came to visit from Dublin. It was just after the funeral, on the day everyone came for cake. He said that the world didn’t need the farm, but that his heart wouldn’t let him leave.

When Liam remembers that, he wonders if it was really the farm his dad was talking about.

Now, I’m going to prove to you that the comet is flying faster than anything else in the sky.

But it’s
still
not moving.

She puts her notebook down on the grass and squeezes his hand tight.

I’ll help you.

How are you going to help?

Don’t look up, look here. Remember?

She puts her map on his lap and he stares at it, trying to memorise the shapes, biting onto his bottom lip in the expression that he’s had when concentrating since he was learning to read and write; learning to build a farm with wooden blocks.

This is exactly what the sky looked like last night, at exactly this time. Now close your eyes.

But I’ll miss it moving if I do that.

You won’t miss it moving, you’ll notice that it has moved, and that’s different.

OK, Liam says with a bit of trust, and a bit of uncertainty, and a bit of something else that he’s not able to describe.

Go on, she insists. Close your eyes. For me. Please?

This time Liam closes his eyes.

He feels Róisín moving, but keeping hold of his hand. He can tell she’s sitting up. Next, he feels the air get warmer, his shivers stop, the breeze dies down. And then she plants a kiss on his lips. It is the swift, soft kiss of children, of cousins and best friends; of someone who has known you since the day you were born. She lies back down and the breeze picks up, the smells of the farm brush over his skin. His lips feel tingly. He keeps his eyes closed as he listens to the sound of her lying back down on the grass, and listens for the sound of the comet flying overhead. What kind of sound would that make? The sound of running out past the horses’ shelter, past the stream that winds along the bottom of the field and up the hill, up to the highest point of the village, to look back
at things that are small and big and that make up everything he has known in his life.

OK. You can open your eyes now.

Liam opens his eyes.

At first he can’t find it. He looks back to the bright star it had been next to, then sideways to Róisín. He looks for the constellations, but the comet’s not where it should be. Róisín has her hair in a sideways ponytail so she can lay her head flat on the ground, and she’s grinning at him like she knows a secret she’s not quite decided to share.

It’s there now, she points.

And it’s true. The comet has moved on. It really must be the fastest thing in the whole of the sky. It has passed by stars and through the transparent scattering of clouds and even though it looks like everything is completely still overhead now, even though he hasn’t actually seen the comet moving, he knows that it has moved. Róisín’s hand is still holding his.

He doesn’t want to take his eyes off the sky. He doesn’t want to move. He watches the comet for a long time – longer than ever before. They lie side by side and stare at the sky and Liam wonders if staying perfectly still is the way to live in one week, in one moment, for the rest of his life.

But when he looks back down to the farm everything has moved. He can feel the rush of the wind as the Earth races around the sun. He feels like he needs to cling on, or he will go flying off into space. Things shifted while he wasn’t looking at the ground and now the world is different; everything is beautiful, and wild, and precarious, because now he knows how the sky can change.

1759

Halley’s Comet

In Bayeux, two sisters in lace dresses read to one another as their husbands play cards and drink cognac. The family home was once deserted, so the story goes, burned down to its stone foundations, but it was rescued by twin sisters, like them, and now it is filled with books and flowers and laughter. They read in the paper about the naming of a comet after an astronomer who did not live to see it arrive, but they are not saddened by this. They know that their house is filled with more than children – sometimes, when a comet flies through the sky, they see generations past and know that their family is tied to the skies and to their home and they are glad.

That evening as the sun starts to dip they look for it in the sky, Halley’s comet – it is flying low, over the sea to the north. So the
sisters take the carriage out past Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, with their three daughters and Henri, the youngest, the only son. He loves the beach, Henri; he runs along the coast exploring the caves and collecting sea-urchin shells. Don’t stray too far, his mother calls, and he turns back and waves before racing on – his mother likes to stay near Bayeux, he knows, but Henri wants to go to sea.

The sisters watch the sky as the night falls and the stars begin to shine from the dark, but they don’t notice that the wind is building up and the waves are crashing closer to the shore. They point out constellations to their daughters and teach them to read the skies, to follow the patterns of light in the dark and watch how the comet moves between them. But then they look down.

Where is Henri? A question at first, changing to a shout, his name called by his mama and aunt and sisters, but Henri doesn’t hear – he is trapped by the waves along the coast, the ground sinking beneath his feet as tides pull him further out to sea. He tries to gasp in air, to shout, but his mouth fills with water and his eyes sting with salt; he can’t see through the dark, through the crash of the waves, but then a hand is holding his, an arm pulled around his waist, and he is lying, coughing on the rough sand of the beach.

Mama? he says, as soon as he is able, with his eyes still scrunched up from the salt and his sisters running to him.

He forces his eyes open, sees the whites of the waves crashing on the rocks beyond the sand. His sisters are crying and his aunt is running deeper into the sea – why is she in the sea now? Her lace dress is ghostly as it catches the light of the stars, disappears beneath the waves, and reappears again. As she walks, falls, crawls back to the beach, her hair is soaked and sticking to her face like seaweed. She wants to collapse, but doesn’t.