Ghost Fish

The neighbour kicks off his sandals and swipes his bare feet on the mat, three times each, one foot and then the other. Eddie is impressed; he is losing the battle with sand. Despite his best efforts it gets in everywhere – the spines of his books, the bottom of the cutlery drawer. He wakes most nights from gritty dreams and has to stand in the dark shaking out the sheets. The neighbour follows him into the living room where they both hesitate in front of the small sofa. Eddie gestures for him to sit down and then picks a cushion from the sofa and sits on the tile floor with his back against the wall. The neighbour clasps and unclasps his hands, clears his throat and then begins to talk in Creole.
Eddie watches for clues in his hand gestures but can’t get the gist of what he wants. Though English is the official language of Mauritius very few locals can speak it. At first this irritated him; the ridiculous officiation of a language no one speaks, but now he accepts it as one of the island’s quirks and in his letters to his daughter Hannah, sites his tolerance as an example of how he has moulded himself to island life.

They resort to pen and paper and by means of a series of rough sketches and sound effects, the neighbour makes it clear that a cyclone is on its way and that Eddie should get ready for it.

“When?” asks Eddie, pointing at his watch.

The neighbour points at the broken palm tree he has drawn, howls windly one more time, pats his thighs and gets up to leave.

Eddie wrestles open the glass sliding doors and walks along the verandah, down the stairs, over the scrubby patch of lawn and onto the beach. It’s the middle of the day and the heat rises in sheets. He skips across the burning sand and wades into the small rock pool that he thinks of as his.

There are no signs of the impending storm; the lagoon beyond the low wall of the pool is the colour of recycled glass, as listless and calm as ever. Even the waves breaking across the reef on the horizon look no more than waist height. The sky is spattered with the usual puffs of cloud.

This is exactly the kind of trouble that Joanne would have forseen.

“I’m telling you,” she would have said, shaking a guide book, “it’s the wrong time of year to go. We shouldn’t go.”

And so they hadn’t. Hadn’t gone anywhere in twenty, maybe thirty years. It will depress him to calculate the exact number and so he tries not to think about her. That is the main thing he is doing out here, trying not to think about Joanne.

He holds up his hand to shield his eyes from the light dancing across the water. Burnished. That word just will not leave him alone - pops into his mind when ever he stops to stare; like someone waving from the far end of the beach. It’s the intensity of the light, its tangibility. He feel a flutter at his ankles and looks down two see two goat fish, as white and silent as ghosts, gliding past his feet. There’s a strange beat in which he can’t determine the relative movement - like being on a train when another passes - it's hard to tell who is moving. Is it him or the ghost fish?

After the funeral, they had all want to come back to the house. He was standing at the front door with his back towards the street and he could feel their expectant presence huddled like flock of crows on the lawn, hunched and bobbing in feigned apology, shuffling persistently forward.

“Dad,” Hannah said, taking his elbow, jiggling it, “you need to let them in.” He looked at her long fingers on the black material of his coat - they were just like Joanne’s.

“No,” he said, “I won’t,” and went in, shutting the door behind him.

The living room has been rearranged - the armchairs were drawn up against the sides of the room and glasses he didn’t recognise were stacked upside down on a tea towel on the drinks cabinet. Who had done it all? The dining room table was covered with a clean white cloth and laid out with plates of finger food – miniature sausages, olives, lurid cherry tomatoes on toothpicks and a plate of sandwich triangles curling apart at the corners. He looked at the matching crockery, the distorted image of his face in the round of a polished spoon, held one of the napkins up to the curtains and yes, it was an exact match to the colour of the petals. How typical of Joanne to plan all of this. He could hear Hannah letting herself into the hall, telling people where to hang up their coats.

Within a week the house was a mess. Each day, in deliberate defiance of the voice that still chimed in his head, he unfolded the newspapers across the floor and left the cupboard doors standing open. He was distressed to discover the freezer neatly packed with labelled Tupperware containers: macaroni cheese, shepherd’s pie, oxtail stew and set about consuming their contents. In the battle to reclaim the house plastic containers lay like fallen soldiers on every kitchen surface; their lids missing, the remaining contents slowly changing colour. He put glasses down directly on the wooden table and made white circles, like cartoon eyes. The store in the fridge was almost finished when, pottering in the garage, he discovered the chest freezer, packed to the brim with more defrostable meals. He felt like he would never be finished eating it all; that when he got to the bottom, the last layer would rise up and refill the whole freezer from the bottom up.

He called Hannah to tell her he was going to Mauritius.

“Why?” she wanted to know.

“I’ve always wanted to travel.”

“But why there?”

“There’s a house of a friend of your mother’s, it’s right on the beach. She’s been offering it to us for years but your mother never wanted to go.”

The line was quiet.

“Hannah?”

“I know.”

If he stays out here much longer he will be burn. He can feel the skin of his shoulders prickling beneath the cotton shirt. In the first week he fell asleep beneath the tree at the front of the house, feet tucked into the sand, legs spreadeagled, and burnt the inside of his thighs where he had not bothered with the cream. The skin was as purple and raw as beef. It rubbed together when he walked, blistered and finally peeled. He had to sit for days with damp towels pressed between his knees.

On the high water mark there is a single shoe, a brown brogue, the leather reddened by its journey on the tide, the seams dusted with white salt. He keeps finding these lone shoes, marooned along the coast. He keeps them in a bucket in the garage where they curl themselves into strange shapes as they dry.

Back in the kitchen he puts the kettle on, first tipping out the old water, checking the kettle and then refilling it from the tap. The geckos get into everything – they turn up boiled and glassy-eyed in the catchment tray at the bottom of the dishwasher, dash across his fingers as he opens cupboard doors. Once, prompted by the bitterness of a cup of coffee, he had lifted the kettle lid to find one floating, translucent-belly up, the water cloudy with excrement. Ants appear in long black threads winding across the counters or twisting up the sides of jars. Crumbs of food, splashes of milk, anything left out is soon traced with a thick black outline, like a Lichtenstein. He wipes them up with a dishcloth and drowns them in the sink only to have them reappear in glasses of cordial, turning slow sinking circles.

All these things Joanne would have hated. She would have spent her time tidying and dusting and sorting and ordering. She would have worried incessantly about home: were the neighbours feeding the cat, what if the pipes had frozen and flooded the house, was Hannah eating proper meals? It would have been nothing like a holiday at all.

The kettle boils he finds himself humming: “I’m a little tea pot short and stout.” Because no one can see him he tips himself up and pours his tea over the smooth tiled floor of the kitchen, laughs at the absurdity of it.

Overcome by the heat, he falls asleep stretched out on the sofa in the living room, his legs draped over the arm. He wakes groggy, in the late afternoon, checks the tide timetable and then sets off, walking north along the beach - a walk he does twice a day. The sand is broken into squares by the low walls of gardens which reach right down to the water’s edge. In most places he can clamber over them but in some places the stairs have been completely washed away and he has to wade out into the sea to walk round the point. One pier has a hole  running beneath it that he can crawl through on his hands and knees at low tide. He has developed a little routine that he follows along the way, a choreography of sorts – one quick swing on a frayed rope hanging from a tree, a lightly tapped beat on the bottom of an upturned boat. Between the big hotel and a series of thatched villas a sheer wall runs flush along the coast and there is only a narrow ledge to walk along. He hops along it from stone to stone. He picks up shells: the green skeletons of sea urchins that you can crush in a clenched fist and chipped cowries, always looking for a perfect one. He waves at the holidaying families sitting with drinks in hand, watching their children splashing in the shallow pools. They wave back.

At the northern end of the beach, where the coast turns in and curves around a huge sweep of bay dotted with red and green pirogues, he walks out to the end of the stone jetty and sits watching black crabs skitting along the wet stone walls.

They met on a bus trip through Europe when Ed was twenty-four and Joanne was twenty-two. She had long thin legs and a pair of enormous sunglasses with white frames. She carried a notebook and a camera in a little canvas satchel that she wore slung over one shoulder. Her denim shorts were rolled up to the very top of her thighs and she her lose canvas shoes flopped off the back of her feet as she walked. Eddie was instantly enchanted. It was a camping trip and so every stop they pitched their tents and set up for the night taking it in turns to cook the meals. On the first night she and her friend pitched their tent next to his and he lay awake all night, listening at first to their whispering and then, or so he imagined, to the quiet rustle of her breathing. On a walk back from some ruins he now can’t remember she broke away from the group and leapt onto a boulder that looked out over the valley. With her arms lifted above her head she called out to anyone who could hear and they all stopped to stare at her. After three weeks her eyebrows (which he later found out she dyed) disappeared completely and her face became softer, rounder even.

In Turkey, sitting beside the remains of a campfire after everyone else had gone to bed, he tentatively took her hand and then kissed her. Even now he can’t think of a time in his life when he has been more afraid.

The sun sets behind him and he doesn’t see it slip away. The night fishermen drift out in their boats shining their torches on the evening water to draw up the squid. They call up to him where he sits watching but he doesn’t reply. He walks back in the dark through the pools of light spilled onto the sand from the houses, occasionally kicking at the water’s edge to spark the phosphorescence. He is back at the house before the moon rises, drinking beer on his stone steps with the sand between his toes. There is still no sign of the storm.

The local television channel broadcasts half hourly updates. The programmes pause suddenly, grey lines rolling across the screen like old VCR tapes, before flicking to the weather logo. The presenter stands in front of an enormous black and white satellite image showing the spiral of the storm. All that can be seen of the island is a thumbprint sized red outline to show where it is hidden beneath the monstrous cloud.

He struggles with sleep. It’s the foam mattress that he hasn’t quite got used to, the fitted bed cover that pulls loose, the damp pillow. Then there is a small tear in the sheet that he fidgets at with his big toe. It’s too hot in the room, the air rests on his chest like a weight. He pulls the sheet around him and then throws it off. A mosquito whines in the dark.

In the morning he is awoken by a noise from next door. There is a man in jeans and a surf t-shirt up the coconut tree in the front garden. He holds on with his knees and using his free hands battles the bearded coconuts, tearing them loose and dropping them onto the grass below. The noise they make when they hit the ground is like the beating of a enormous drum, as if the skin of the earth is pulled tight over a hollow void.

The wind is up; white peaks sweep across the lagoon and on the reef, the breakers leer above the horizon and crash back onto the rocks.

He walks into town to stock up on essentials - brown bread from a bakery he has found that is no more than a window in the side of a wooden house, vegetables from the market, cartons of long life milk, tins of beans, a fan. Everyone he encounters tells him about the storm and how bad it is going to be. The barber is busy boarding up his windows, hammering nails into in the wooden frames and the fishermen have lugged their boats from the water and up under the the trees across the road. There are government warning posters on the lampposts and the shop keepers are taking down their awnings and preparing to close early. He has to fend off a restless dog that snaps at his heels, ears flattened.

By the time he sets off on his afternoon walk the wind is fierce, whipping his parka against his back. It worsens as he walks – sand stings the backs of his calves and rain drops as hard as pellets hit the back of his neck. He finds another shoe – a black flip flop with white trim on the cross band – and then turns for home.

The storm shutters are a struggle. The hinges have rusted and he has to pick at them with a screw driver. Having got them loose and into position, he can’t work out how to secure them and they bang against the window frame making a noise that is only just louder than the wind.

At dusk he can no longer see the reef through the haze of rain and there are rivulets along the garden walls towards the beach. The tree in the garden is full of fodies their brown feathers puffed in indignation clinging on as the world sways and groans beneath them. There are so many of them that the branches look laden with feathered fruit. He sends Hannah a text message to say he is ok and then goes into the kitchen. He wipes the counters and rinses out the cloth, turns the jars on a shelf to face him. Thought he’s hardly hungry he cuts a tomato into wedges, and lays them out in a circle on a plate, sprinkles them with salt and then vinegar. He picks up the the plate and looks at it. There is something so lonely about the arrangement of the pieces that it starts him crying. He eats them quickly before the feeling has a chance to take hold; they are the colour of blood, and they taste like it too – salty and hot.

The electricity dies unexpectedly with a pop, the last square of light fading slowly from the television. With the shutters all closed it is completely dark. He feels around for matches and but then gives up, stumbling his way to bed where he lies awake again listening to the noise of the wind calling around the house and remembering the shape of the neighbours mouth making the almost identical sound. The wind sneaks through the shutters and turns the blade of the useless new fan.

The trip around Europe was meant to be the first of several for both of them but in Bulgaria there was a telegram from her family to say that her mother was seriously ill and there was no choice for her other than to go back. They talked it over and decided Ed would go too . By the time they landed at Dover, her mother was dead.

It’s tempting to draw a line between everything afterwards and that moment and to say that she changed then. That before that she was a different person: a person without the need to arrange the world around into little organised pieces. Who wanted to go away, who didn’t need to take care of everything, who didn’t need everything ordered and fixed. But how can ever he really know? He tell himself that’s how it is with love, he can’t tell whether it is Joanne herself or the idea he has of Joanne, that holds him to her.

By the morning it’s gone and he folds back the storm shutters. There is sand blown up onto the verandah and the lawn is littered with torn leaves and the wilted heads of flowers. The dried-out shoes have swelled with water and returned to their original shapes.

After breakfast he sets off on his usual walk. The beach is awash with debris – chunks of coral, some whethered planks and a red beer crate with one brown bottle still wedged in it. A palm tree has gone into the pool at the hotel and a downed powerline is sparking outside one of the empty houses. He finds three mismatched shoes and a perfect cowrie the size of his fist. The heaps of seaweed drying slowly in the sun fill the air with the strong smell of sulphur.

Near the yacht club the particularly low tide has marooned a field of star fish above the high water mark. Everywhere he looks they are hardening in the heat. Some are buried so deeply that the only hint of their presence is a faint outline traced on the sand. He digs one out with his toe; they have the texture of jellied sweets. The whole base of the star is a flickering mass of miniscule feelers searching at the still electric air.

Further down the beach a woman, is picking the star fish up one by one and throwing them back into the sea. She has long thing legs and denim shorts, white rimmed sunglasses pushed back on her head. He touches the memory of Joanne - a bruise that hurts when he presses it.

He waves at the woman to stop but she just waves back. He can sense how pleased she is with herself, her sense of righteousness, and the anger rises in him. He walks right up to her and stands in front of her.

“That’s what happens. This happens,” he shouts at the woman, startling her. “They die.” He shakes a starfish from her fingers and they both watch as it hits the sand. The woman backs away from him and then turns and walks away shaking her head.

“That’s how it is” he says more quietly.

All he can know is that he loved her.

He watches the woman walk down the beach. She is so small he can cover her with the palm of his hand. She turns up a path between the houses and is gone. He looks at his hands and realises he no longer has the shoes or the perfect cowrie the size of his fist.

Walking back home, nothing feels familiar. He stops in front of a house with a thatched roof and dog tied up beneath a tree and swears that he has never seen it before. There are stairs that seem higher than the ones he usually goes up and too many boats of all the wrong colour turned upside down on the sand. He sits briefly on the edge of pool and splashes water on his face wondering whether he has gone the right way. But the island is circular and there is no other way back. He sets off again, slightly dazed, walking slowly - then finally the swing and the scrubby front lawn. He staggers up into the house, trailing sand across the living room floor and calls his daughter. When he hears her voice he starts to cry:

“Hannah,” he chokes, “things will never be the same.”