The Goodbye

He stood at the edge of the beach taking in the expanse of wide dark sand, peppered with rocks and stones. The high tide mark near his feet had deposited a raft of plastic bottles, some blue rope and a chewed foam body board. The constant drizzle meant the beach was empty other than two people at one end, too far to make out faces, heads were bent to the sand searching the beach.

He fumbled with his rucksack, rechecking the contents, his hands numbed by the wind and looked back to the old Fiat, its windscreen cloudy with salty drizzle. Mandy still sat, a study in sullenness, in the passenger seat, arms folded and mouth tight with frustration. He’d had to work hard to convince her to come this far and now his brain failed him when he thought about how to get her to the water’s edge.  Let alone actually in the water. He looked at the waves crashing lustily onto the beach, unlike their usual gentle teasing. It wasn’t going to be easy. Easy? Impossible more like.

He walked back to the car opened the door and slumped in behind the wheel, the wind suddenly excluded, his face tingling with the warmth.

‘So, you coming then, or what?’ He watched the grey sky meet the slightly lighter grey sea, and deliberately didn’t look at her. He could tell she’d turned her head to him though.

‘Are you mad? Look at it. Its pissing down, the winds blowing – and look at the sea!’ her voice rose with each objection, getting shriller and from the corner of his eye, he saw one arm waving indignantly at the view out of the windscreen.

He breathed in and out before responding. ‘We can’t back out now. We’ve driven all the way here.’

‘Don’t I know it.’ He hardly heard her low mutter and decided not to rise to it. She continued under her breath, ‘God knows how you got mum to agree to this.’

‘We have to go through with it.’ He imagined rather than saw her eye roll.

‘Well, you can. It’s your show. I’m staying here.’ She crossed her arms again.

He knew this side of her; she could be the most loving supportive older sister (by two minutes, as she told everyone) anyone could have, but she could also be stubborn and immovable. Like the granite rocks surrounding the farm, strange mounds rising out of the flat fields. As children, they’d climbed and played on them; only in the day though.

He couldn’t fight her when she was like this. He decided to try a different tack.

‘Please, Mand.’ Silence.

‘Mandy?’ His voice was soft. Still there was silence, which was a promising sign.

‘Mandy, Pandy?’ he teased. A daring ploy, but it might work.

‘Stop it.’ her voice warned. This was the danger point; it could go either way. He gambled.

‘Many, Pandy, pudding pie?’

‘STOP!’ she shouted, but they had grown up together, no more than that, they had shared a womb, and he knew every nuance and inflection, and he had heard the suppressed smile.

‘Pudding pie, you’re so sly…Oww!’ She had punched him, and he rubbed his arm. He wasn’t pretending either. She was a proper gym bunny, and it hurt.

He looked at her, and saw her scowl forced over a burgeoning smile. ‘I saw that.’ he tickled her cheek with his forefinger, and she slapped him away, half smile, half scowl.

‘Will. You. Piss. Off?’ she folded up again, arms crossed and head down.

‘Oh please, Mandy. Pandy. Pudding Pie,’ he started to sing, softly at first, then louder, then started to clap along, before changing into the tune ‘Sandy’ from Grease. He knew she hated it and he was taking a huge risk invoking it. He only ever used it for maximum annoyance or for times like now when he needed to get her to change her mind.

‘Ooh Maaaaandy, can’t you see, I’m in mi-sereeeee…’ There was a sudden shout from Mandy and a list of expletives, before she started pummelling him, and he cowered away laughing and yelling, ‘Owww, ow, ow, ow.’ She only stopped when she was out of breath; and his face now serious, he said, quietly,

‘Please? You said you’d help.’

She gave a frustrated growl. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Fine. Come on then,’ and she opened the door into the wind. Relief washed through him and he followed, hoisting the rucksack onto his back.

By the water they both watched the sea contemplating the grey foam topped waves crashing onto the shore and he knew if he gave her too much time, she would back out.

‘Come on then,’ and he started pulling off his clothes, down to his swimwear. Mandy looked miserable.

‘I’m only going in up to my thighs. That’s it. I’m keeping my jumper on.’

‘Fine.’ He shrugged, even though he thought she stood a good chance of said jumper getting wet. But he wasn’t going to put any doubt in her head now.

‘Bring him out then.’ She wouldn’t look at the rucksack, which was fair enough.

He opened it, taking out a large carrier bag from which he took a white box. ‘Here he is.’

‘Miserable git.’ Mandy said, shaking her head.  

He just nodded, ‘Yup. But that’s why we’re doing this.’

‘You really think this will help?’

‘It’s got to. Fire and water…’

‘Yes, ok, ok,’ she waved him away and he shut up. She thought he’d lost it, but he was grateful she had come along.

The box had surprised him when he’d collected it from the funeral home, heavier than he had thought, but then their father had been a big man, something he had used to great effect during their childhood, as had his father before him.

‘Do you have to say anything?’ Mandy asked. ‘Like an incantation or something?’ she wiggled her fingers and widened her eyes. ‘Wooooh.’

‘Don’t be like that, Mand. I know you don’t believe, but I want this to work.’

She gave a sigh, ‘He was a very angry man Pete, and that affected us all. I think…’

He looked at her, beseechingly and she held up her hands in surrender.  

‘Sorry Pete. You do whatever you need to.’

He entered the water, the cold biting first his ankles, then calves, as he walked. Their dad – father he corrected himself, he was never really a man you could call dad – had always been a brutish hard man, doing a hard job, long hours isolated out on the rocky moorland farm, sometimes climbing the mounds to survey his fields, looking for missing sheep, before returning home to the small family. And whisky of course. He looked down at the box, marvelling again how their huge father, with his temper and fists could be reduced to…to… this. As a small boy father had towered above him, face twisted into fury, his hands like clubs.

Father’s father, their grandad had sat morose and taciturn in his corner of the kitchen, glued to his chair, a man he never saw smile. Later, at school, he had listened in amazement as other children had squealed with excitement at going to see their grandparents with stories of cakes, and sweets and treats. His couldn’t imagine his grandad laughing and playing with them and giving them anything other than a swipe if they got too close.

His grandad’s tales were always the same, ‘Those were the times of real men,’ he would grumble, shaking his head at Pete, ‘not the wasters of today. All soft and useless. Scared of real work! If I wasn’t out of bed in time to milk the cows, I’d get a thrashing!’ he would say this triumphantly. ‘Deserved it too! No Conway was ever a slacker. It was the making of me! Now everyone’s soft and pathetic. Men wearing makeup, not knowing what they are,’ he would spit in disgust, ‘And don’t get me started on women. Rights? Rights!’ He would tremble with suppressed anger like a simmering volcano, and he and Mandy would back away nervously to the other side of the kitchen table before their mum would usher them upstairs.

He couldn’t warm to his grandad, and although he could respect his father’s work ethic, he couldn’t love him. Not wholly. He always kept something back and promised himself he would never be like them, the long line of Conways that had farmed here. He had watched his mum tremble as their father drank deeper into the bottle, knowing how the night would end and he would hide under the duvet reading anything he could to block out the noises. Fairy stories were his favourites, tales of good rewarded and evil vanquished.  He would never be evil. That would never be him, he swore. He would never inflict his temper on someone making them feel the sick fear he felt whenever his father drank. Even sober, he became aware of a change in the air when father came home. They were all quieter, more alert.

Yet somehow, despite his vigilance, he absorbed something of his father’s anger as though it had seeped into his very bones as he lay sleeping. He felt it through the quick punch, as he broke Kevin’s nose and was suspended from school. His grandad had actually nodded approvingly at him. ‘Don’t listen to them Petey’, he said, for once using the affectionate name only his mum used, ‘you did right. Stand up to them. Maybe you’re not such a pansy after all.’ Grandad may have been pleased for once, but Pete felt only a burning shame. He was not like grandad and father, he was not and he never would be.

 ‘Why did you marry him?’ Pete had asked his mum once, a day after father had again stormed and ranted all night. Neither he nor Mandy could see anything in father to attract anyone, let alone their wonderful mum. ‘Your dad was so lovely and kind when we first married,’ his mum would sigh as Pete and Mandy listened, mouths open at the vision of their furious father being ‘lovely and kind.’ ‘When we came here, we had such plans…’ her voice trailed away.  

‘What happened?’ both he and Mandy had held their breath, hoping she would answer. She didn’t often talk about the past, it seemed too painful for her.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ her voice was far away, pondering an indecipherable problem, ‘but I think the farm changed him, slowly, over time. He was always out so long, sitting on the mounds…’ She shook her head, as if noticing them listening and had shooed them out.

But the young Pete knew what had happened. He had read about changelings, and about deals with faerie, dangerous and mischievous. It was obvious to him that something had happened to father on those long nights on the mounds, that local legends said were burial chambers or gateways to another world.

He felt sure the faerie had changed father, and grandad before him and as far back as the Conways went. It was as if the male line was cursed.

—

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ Mandy had asked. They were in his room, the day after he had lost his temper. No be honest, he thought. He didn’t just lose it; he had gone balls to the wall ballistic. His poor mum had cowered away from him, and now he squirmed with shame as he remembered her look; the same look she had when father lost his temper. He couldn’t clearly remember why he had lost it, except it had started with losing his keys, a comment from mum about him going out so often, that had escalated to money, how much he spent, how much he gave for upkeep and so on, and then he had spilt tea on his new shirt, because the kitchen was a bloody mess and…things were hazy after that though he remembered smashing plates. He had groaned as each new piece came back to him.

Early morning he had gone to his mum and apologised and of course she had forgiven him, but her smile had been sad, as though she was simultaneously disappointed in and worried for him. She had cupped his face and kissed his forehead. He felt he had broken her heart.

Mandy had driven home from town, and she sat on his bed, while he lay, eyes covered and tried to make sense of it.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said finally, ‘It is a curse, I’m telling you. Every man in our family is cursed with the devil’s temper. I do not want to be like our father. Or grandad.’ He sat thinking of grandad’s chair downstairs, which their father had taken to sitting in once grandad had died, and he had a sudden vision of himself, years hence, growling and snapping at small grandchildren; he shuddered.

‘I’ve got to break the curse,’ he said.

‘Anger management might be more sensible?’ Mandy had said, looking worried. ‘Come on. It’s not a curse, its learned behaviour.’  He had smiled at her, ‘Professor of psychology, Mandy Conway,’ he teased, although he was secretly proud of her. Ok she wasn’t a professor at all, yet, but she was starting a psychology degree the following year, a late starter, a ‘mature’ student at twenty-four, but she was paying her own way. ‘Yeah, I know, I know, it probably is that too, it’s just….’ He had paused. ‘Don’t you ever feel it here? Those mounds? They are strange, like they emanate a sickness that infects the farm. You’ve got to admit you’ve seen things.’

‘Oh, come on, yes when we were children, out after dark. I was wetting myself at every shape. I thought the sheep were gremlins!’

‘No, no,’ he had tried to convince her, ‘we did see things…creatures …malevolent.’

But Mandy wouldn’t have it, and he had stopped trying to convince her.

—

A few short years later, their father had gone, and in typical style, both drunk and angry, in a foul temper tantrum, face red and spit flying as he ranted on about all the people that had done him wrong, pacing up and down the kitchen, his heart had given out.

At the funeral he grabbed Mandy’s arm pulling her aside.

‘I’ve been researching local legends.’  She had looked confused, then worried for him as he continued, ‘and there are ways to break a curse, fire to cleanse and water…’

‘Pete. Seriously, you’re worrying me now.’ She laid a hand on his arm, her eyes concerned.

‘I know, I know. Honestly, I’m not mad, I just…it’s something I need to try.’

‘But…come on this is…’ Her tone was incredulous.

‘I got in a fight.’ He blurted out the confession. 

‘What? When? Why didn’t you tell me?’ Her hands went to her face in shock.

He sighed, ‘I’m telling you now, I didn’t want you to worry. It was down the pub, with Lambert, you know. We were both drunk…’

‘Oh my god,’ Mandy groaned, ‘what happened?’

‘There was a bit of a punch up, then we got thrown out and …’

‘And…’

‘And I only just managed to stop Fraser calling the police.’

‘That’s it. you need help and…’ she caught his arm, but he shook her off.

‘I am, that’s what I’m telling you. The curse.’

‘Sod the bloody curse,’ her voice had risen and now friends and family were looking at them, a flock of black ravens with beady eyes. She lowered her voice. ‘You need to get professional help. I have contacts, there is a good place in…’

‘No.’  he said flatly, his set in a mulish look. ‘It is the curse. Will you help me, or not?’

She shook her head, in obvious disbelief and worry that he was going mad, but he managed to extract a promise for today, when he could break the curse, by sending their father, burnt through fire, adrift in salt water, no body or bones buried in the earth.  

Not before she had extracted a promise too though.  

—

Now he waded deeper the waves bashing his mid-section and he wobbled, bracing his feet for stability. He looked back ‘Come on, you have to come in, it’s got to be both of us.’

He heard her grumbling and muttering, the words were taken by the wind, but she edged forward, into the water, ‘Aaargh, bloody hell it’s so cold! Argh, argh, argh.’

‘Breathe,’ he said, being careful not to smile. ‘Come closer.’

She joined him, a little behind sheltering from the waves, but just as she reached him a wave crashed into him and he stumbled into her, sending her down. She disappeared for a second before bursting upwards like a whale breaching the surface, spluttering with cold and disbelief.

‘My jumper,’ she wailed, ‘I’m soaked.’ Her jumper was twice its original length, and stretched down to her knees with weight of water. Another wave rolled toward them, ‘Come on, I think they’re getting bigger, help me,’ he hauled her toward him. She swore fluently.

‘Well open it then, quick.’ She yelped as the wave crashed just on front of them spraying cold water into their faces.’

He opened the box, the gritty ashes inside, Mandy clinging to his arm. ‘Go on then!’

‘Here you are old man,’ He took a handful of ash,’ You won’t be buried near the farm.’ He flung the ash into a wave and watched as it disappeared. He took another handful,’ You won’t pass your legacy to me.’ He flung it outwards. ‘It’s over.’

‘Never mind the pigging speech, speed up,’ Mandy shouted, being buffeted around.

He took the box up high and waited for the calm moment, between waves, wanting to see the ashes spread out on the salty water, to watch father sink and be taken. Mandy sensing this was the moment, stepped to stand beside him as he tipped the box and the ashes fell, just as a gust of wind lifted them up, up and over the two of them. Blinded by grit, they coughed and spluttered, and through streaming eyes, Pete saw Mandy trying to get out, lifting her legs high, hampered by the voluminous wet jumper and wracking coughs.

‘No, no, go under we need to get him off.’ He heard a squeal as he grabbed her, pulling her under with him.  The sea washed around and over them, and he waited until his lungs were burning before he let go. They came up together gasping.

‘You shit… you bloody…git,’ she panted out, before the next wave came at them. He made a grab for the box, and missed before they turned and ran out of the water, to their clothes. Pete looked at Mandy, her face and legs, red and blotched with cold, and then back at the sea that had swallowed their father up, leaving with no trace. Nothing to see; no ash, no presence; even the box which he had tried to rescue, had sunk. Through the grey drizzling sky, he saw the pale glimmer of a weak sun, and it was glorious. He was light as a feather and he laughed.

‘What’s so funny? I’m soaked.’ Mandy tried to get damp socks on, her jumper flopping around her knees. He felt giddy, and laughed again.

‘Glad you’re happy. I’ve got no dry clothes, everything’s wet and I’m cold.’ Mandy flapped her arms, water dripping everywhere. He handed her a spare t-shirt, still laughing and she smiled reluctantly. ‘That was father’s last shout, I reckon.’ She spat. ‘Urrgh, I think I can taste him. He’d have hated this. ‘No respect for anything’’, she said in a gruff impression of their father, then spat again looking disgusted. She caught Pete’s eye and then they were hysterical with tears and laughter.

Back in the car, Mandy was shivering with cold. ‘Do you feel differently?’

Pete thought, ‘I think so yes. I feel…calmer. I think, yeah, I think it’s worked.’ He looked at her sceptical expression as she said,

‘Good. But don’t forget – you promised.’

‘I know, I haven’t forgotten.’ The letter for the residential programme had arrived, now sitting on the mantelpiece. ‘Next Friday at 2 o’clock.’

‘I’ll drive you,’ Mandy said, and he wondered if she trusted him to go, but that was fine. He understood, he got it, he couldn’t muster any resentment, let alone anger about it.

‘I’m ready,’ Pete said. ‘I’m ready for all of it. A new start.’

Questions:

• How do you feel the characters work as individuals? And as they relate to each other? Realistic?
• How does the dialogue work for you reading it?
• Does the pacing work? Do the flashback scenes make sense and work?