Morgan

BAS STEMAN

MORGAN

MY LOVE

A NOVEL

TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH BY
LORRAINE T. MILLER

Nieuw Amsterdam

First edition 2018

Eighth edition 2021

© 2018 Bas Steman

© 2021 English translation Lorraine T. Miller

All rights reserved

Cover design Nico Richter

Cover photo © beeldbankwo2.nl – NIOD

Author’s photo © Pascale Drent

NUR 301

ISBN 978 90 468 2814 4

www.nieuwamsterdam.nl

www.bassteman.nl

This digital version is made based on the eighth edition, 2021, ISBN 978 90 468 2813 7

Though lovers be lost love shall not

Dylan Thomas

For Glenys (†), Siân, and all the others…

Prologue

Up there everything is different. First you come loose from the ground, you’re swallowed by the heavens, move in all directions on the wind. Then gravity sucks you back to earth. An island rushes towards you. The altimeter counts down tens of metres per second. Despite wearing goggles, tears burn your eyes; your stomach swells. Adrenaline flings you into an orgasmic tunnel of speed and abandon.

I want that too, I thought.

Specks drifted in an endless firmament. Later they turned out to be colourful canopies from which people dangled, shrieking with excitement. A few metres from the ground the enigmatic Anne pulled up her legs; her chute bulged like a huge cushion. She landed. Boisterously embraced her tandem master. Pressed her lips against his cheek. The others also returned to earth howling. The instructors unfastened their chest straps, helped the over-joyous step out of their rigs and field pack their parachutes. Radiating heroism they passed me on their way back to the hangar.

‘Next group get ready!’ One of the instructors shouted. His face brown as a sailor’s, his blond hair dry as rope.

‘You, you and you, and those two there,’ he pointed, ‘jumpsuits on, follow my instructions.’

‘Yes!’ I heard beside me. Laughing colleagues hurried ahead to the hangar, a large open space with about as much atmosphere as a school gymnasium: shelves full of clothing along the wall, grubby floor mats with waiting parachutes lined up like rucksacks. I straightened my back, followed directions. It was going to happen. In a few minutes, I’d go up, up, and away. A tandem jump was the ultimate, they said. The station’s TV ratings had risen so sharply in recent months that the editors-in-chief had decided to treat all forty-four of us to a free fall.

Anne was just to my right on the bench. She’d removed her jumpsuit, pulled up her hair with an elastic band, and was laughing with the others. In shreds of conversation I overheard her say that she felt like a bird, something about weightlessness and never wanting anything else.

A Cessna roared as it climbed above our heads.

I kicked off my trainers, took a jumpsuit from the rack, and found a spot on a bench in between the clothing left behind by those now jammed into a plane a few kilometres above the ground.

‘Get a move on, folks!’ The instructor called. ‘About thirty minutes, then it’s your turn.

I was relieved to see all their faces tighten. Some laughed to calm their nerves. I tried to ignore the dumb ‘your chute not opening’ jokes. A parachute jump was statistically less risky than plummeting down a mountain on a racing bike with narrow tyres. I sighed.

As soon as I wormed myself into the jumpsuit, dizziness overwhelmed me. The light grew misty, as if it might snow at any moment. Thousands of ashen-grey dots, transparent spots, spun wildly in front of my eyes, merging into an expanse of white. My throat tightened. I felt a deep chill inside my chest. My T-shirt was glued to my back by sweat.

What the fuck was this? Was I going to throw up?

I didn’t know what to think. I was shaking. My hands sought the bench behind me. Better sit down.

On the mats I saw my group practising for their jumps, curving like human bananas, with hollowed backs, their lower legs and shoulders simultaneously retracted from the floor. The instructor pointed at me, curling his index finger and moving his lips, but I was shrouded in a mist that cut me off from my surroundings. It muffled every sound. I had the feeling I was completely alone. On my own. Surrounded by a threatening silence. I heard nothing, only the roaring in my head: Don’t do it!

I couldn’t think anymore. I hid my face. From a great height I saw myself lying there: a speck in a green sea. Above me a flawless sky.

Slowly, I caught my breath and the world around me came back into focus.

‘Planning on joining us?’ the jump instructor said tapping my shoulder. I had a sour taste in my mouth; I swallowed and looked up. ‘Well?’ he asked more forcefully.

I carefully shook my head and mumbled, barely audible, that I was going to die. From his bemused gaze I saw he’d understood me.

‘Not likely.’ He planted his feet in front of me, put his hands under my armpits in an effort to pull me to a standing position. ‘C’mon.’

One by one, I realised my colleagues were staring at me. My head was spinning. Was my blood pressure too low? A loud cry pushed the enormous weight from my chest, ‘No!’

Laughter rippled through the hangar.

‘Seems our cyclist here can’t muster the nerve,’ someone tauntingly said.

‘It’s the greatest. Man up! You don’t get to do this every day!’

I shook my head and felt much too dizzy to stand. Flying like a bird, being shot through the air like a rocket, letting my body fall like a ton of bricks was now something I couldn’t fathom. A profound anguish consumed me.

‘Then don’t do it!’ someone called out.

Slapping each other on the shoulders, they crowded together at the exit, grinning – men and women, each with their tandem master. At the door the instructor turned towards me, ‘We’ll be back in half an hour, maybe you’ll feel differently then.’ A burst of cheering sounded from outside: the exuberant cries of my colleagues who’d just landed, welcomed back by those about to soar high in the sky.

The hangar was deserted. I sat quietly on the bench just staring out in front of me. Stunned, drained, as if I’d cycled up a mountain. A body in standby mode. Hopefully my refusal to jump would quickly be forgotten. I unzipped my jumpsuit with trembling fingers. Before I hung it back on the hook, my hand slowly slid over the fabric’s smooth surface. Unconsciously I was saying goodbye, letting go, or perhaps not. I was looking for a explanation, but I didn’t want to look too deeply.

‘Are you okay?’

A silhouette in iridescent light was speaking to me. Anne. Eye contact – lightning struck my body, tried to exit through my feet. She touched me with a fleeting gesture, ran her fingertips over my back.

I stuttered something like, ‘I’m working on it.’

She must have noticed the tremor in my voice.

‘You’re white as a ghost, sweating all over,’ she said. ‘Should I get someone?’

‘Please, no. Anyway, I’m already feeling better.’

I closed my eyes and shook my head to gather my thoughts. Anne stayed a while longer, a distant look on her face. She was simply there. A few minutes later my breathing calmed down and the colour returned to my cheeks.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

She stood up and slowly walked towards the gaping doors of the hangar. Had she expected me to say something else? She gradually transformed into a shadowy apparition, her contours fading first, then with a few steps, she dissolved into the daylight.

Embarrassed by what had happened, avoiding eye contact, I found a spot outside on the grass. My thoughts swirled. Gazing at the sky I slipped far, far, away.

The Departure

Coat and scarf on, just a few steps, you hear the door close behind you… if only it were that simple. As much as I looked forward to leaving, something kept me from making a move, choosing a direction, embarking down an unfamiliar path – to see what I might encounter, what was waiting for me.

‘You really need to do this on your own.’ Anne said, lit from behind in the doorway, blowing a kiss through the air, waiting until I started the engine. With her dressing gown wafting in the wind she looked like she had wings. She said something, words carried off by currents of air. I understood what she’d often said before: that I’d come so far, that I was getting closer, and above all, that I had to go this last stretch alone. That every soul has its own journey…

As long as I’m in time. I held up my hand and waved to Anne, then accelerated and drove through the night to the Port of Calais.

After I left she most likely went back upstairs to our warm bed and fell asleep again. Or she read more of the book I’d seen lying next to her pillow, or listened to music, or perhaps she dozed off on the sofa downstairs. Whenever she surrendered to sleep, she was transformed from a woman into a child with tucked-up legs and a boundless imagination.

Nobody sleeps as small as she does. It began with her.

1

Anne

Cigarette smoke snaked into the lights above the bar. The light fell across faces I knew from the TV station. Some were already three sheets to the wind, trying to maintain their balance, find solid ground. Others grabbed handfuls of peanuts much too eagerly, howled with laughter, or hung on the bar with a finger in the air, hoping to order. Behind them bodies danced, contorted, underexposed like in a grainy film.

Carrying four glasses of beer, Tom fought his way through the writhing forms on the dance floor. His face changing colour from the revolving lights. He was my guest tonight. Because it was a gala, he was dressed in black tie, his battle suit. Anyone who knew him was aware of what this meant: the swankier the clothing, the wilder the party.

‘So,’ he said sinking into the fake leather sofa beside me, ‘where’s the blonde?’

Ever since he’d caught a glimpse of a new colleague of mine leaving our building, he seemed obsessed with her. ‘Haven’t seen her,’ I replied as I took a sip, spellbound by the throbbing shadows on the floor.

Our editor-in-chief had opened the September gathering with a speech about the new television season, how distinctive our programming was, that our coverage was the most innovative of the era, that every evening a million viewers tuned in and – yes, that called for a toast. Whatever… Churning out the TV news these days was something of a trick, a proven formula: a solid opening; a catchy sometimes tendentious voice-over; a few quotes, finished off with a dozen powerful images with music under; all that in three, or four minutes. Journalism was certainly interesting, but unfulfilling in a creative sense. My ambition had shifted from daily newscasts to writing books and filming longer, in-depth pieces – special reports and documentaries made with conviction.

‘She’s still a juicy piece of ass,’ Tom said, nodding in the direction of one of our female anchors.

‘For sure.’

‘There!’ he blurted out. He sprung to his feet, adjusted his dinner jacket, and dived headfirst into the crowd. For him a broadcasting party – for that matter any party – was much like an evening of European Cup Football: it was all about scoring. He surfaced again at the bar, where he deployed his stud charm offensive at the ‘new girl on the block’. Lightheaded from a bit too much beer I walked out of the room, towards the glare of blue neon anti-junkie lights in the lavatories. The stench of piss filled the air by the Men’s WC. My tired reflection stared back at me in the mirror. Not the best look for seducing women. I washed my hands, splashed water on my face, and returned to the bacchanal.

These days my body felt heavy, as if weighed down by an invisible sack of sand. I nervously fiddled with the top button of my shirt to open it. I plucked a glass of red wine from a tray and looked for a place on a sofa, in viewing distance of the insanity.

Tom apparently needed to devote all his energy to his mission. Every now and then his handsome face popped up in the crowd or his laugh roared above the din. I observed my learned friend hanging on the neck of the blonde. Five minutes later he was doing the Twist with her in the middle of the dance floor. As if he knew I was watching him, he turned his sweaty face in my direction and stuck both his arms in the air. He gestured that I should join him. I demonstratively raised my glass and stayed seated. At that moment, I felt a hand on my shoulder. My eyes swivelled right, only to rest upon a woman with wavy hair coloured blue by the lights. Anne. Anne.

‘How’s only the lonely doing?’

‘Just taking in the party,’ I said.

She jumped right in. ‘It was wonderful, that clockmaker in that atelier under the Rijksmuseum…’ referring to a documentary of mine that had just been aired.

The loud music cut off her sentence. My eyes were pulled towards the dance floor, where Tom – with a huge unlit cigar clenched between his teeth and one hand on the coveted blonde’s hip – was headed in the direction of the bar again.

‘That man with his silver-grey forelock and lazy eye. How he simply belonged there, amongst those beautiful antique clocks, timepieces that have been ticking on the same spot for centuries. What an effort to restore all those musical mechanisms and get the sound right, magnificent,’ Anne continued. ‘Also moving.’

My body relaxed, and I felt myself sinking into the fake leather. I leaned towards her. ‘That the clockmaker himself is out of step with time makes him a beautiful but tragic figure.’

‘How were the reactions? Too poetic, right?’

A familiar story. As far back as I could remember, one way or another, I was always misunderstood. In kindergarten, my drawings were too gory. Later my curiosity was seen as stubbornness. Nowadays, when I wanted my stories to have a deeper context, I wasn’t tough enough for objective, dry journalism. I’d learned to take this as a compliment.

She suggested we sit somewhere quieter. Her eyes wandered over to a narrow corridor with a pale leather sofa flanked by two metal flower boxes with large plants. ‘There?’

I grabbed a second glass of wine from a tray on the table in front of us. ‘Red?’

She nodded and said, ‘That poem, about an autumn day when we’ll all fade away like leaves, who’s it by?’

I hesitated. I hadn’t told anyone that the poem which introduced the broadcast was from my own hand. Would have only caused a stir: documentary filmmaker gives his own poetry a platform on TV. Fortunately, nobody asked about it. And once again, the editor-in-chief had managed to send me a super-motivating e-mail, ‘In retrospect, not the type of programmes we’re actually interested in.’

‘You’re looking at the poet,’ I said, waiting for a glint of surprise in her eyes, but I immediately added that I hadn’t written any poems for years.

‘What a shame,’ she murmured. Anne paused for a while and sipped her wine. She gave me a quizzical look, then grinned, as if she’d finally figured me out. Soft opalescent irises, deep black pupils, her lips parted. ‘So now I have a better understanding of who you are, who’s hiding behind that ball of energy.’

Something shifted in me, went tilt, jolted as the light from her eyes pierced my skin, flowed like lava through my body, made me glow.

I didn’t know what to say. I put the glass to my lips, sucked air into my cheeks, let the wine roll around on my tongue as if I knew what I was doing, and tried to avoid her gaze. In a strange way, I felt like I could trust her.

She took a sip and her mouth relaxed. ‘You know, you’re a hard one to read. One moment you’re telling corny jokes at the coffee machine, and ten seconds later you’re talking about whether we’re free to think what we think over Cup-a-Soup.’

‘I have something to confess. Sitting here watching all this madness, I find it utterly moving. Because everyone on the dance floor is busy dying… 24/7.’

‘Well, aren’t you the cheerful one?’ Anne said, as she drank and listened.

‘Zoom out,’ I continued. ‘The further away you are, the more ludicrous this earthly escapade seems. There on the dance floor is the party, a lusty bunch full of happiness and hormones. We’re observing from a short distance away, less than ten metres, and we see the tragedy of it all, the party and the dancers. In any case, I do. It all has no meaning. Imagine: we zoom out even more. You’re hanging in mid-air, a bird above Amsterdam, the POV changes, this party disappears in the chaos of the city. Everyone is busy, in search of their own party. Observed from the moon or from another galaxy, we’re simply pathetic. Why make a special effort? All those hours in front of a mirror just to get your face on television, dog-eat-dog, to fight each other, to wage war? It all makes no sense. At least… if there isn’t something greater, something we’re not aware of, cosmically speaking, we’re totally pointless. It’s as if we simply don’t matter. Sometimes I think it needs to be like this: pointless. That it’s our destiny.’

The muffled sound of my voice revealed the embarrassment I felt for the pretentious drivel I was now spouting.

‘So, so, melancholy man, your very own version of Metaphysics for Dummies?’ she said.

‘Science made easy.’

‘And that’s why you were moping all alone?’

I shrugged my shoulders and glanced at her apologetically. ‘Never mind. Somehow, at this time of year, I’m always too down for dance parties.’

‘Autumn blues?’

‘Maybe that’s it: the September doldrums.’

‘Well, brood no more, just zoom in! If it’s all pointless anyway, immense and unfathomable, then you’re better off celebrating. Might as well dance!’

Her eyes sparkled. She could have laughed at me, but she didn’t. She slowly sipped her wine and gracefully crossed one leg over the other.

The big band paused; a DJ removed 1980s eighties music from his briefcase. In no time a colleague covered in a tiger print managed to strip herself of any hint of the erotic. Encircled by a group of women doing the same disco steps, she belted out ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ together with them.

Anne softly squeezed my thigh. I knocked back the wine, took her hand and said, ‘Okay, here we go.’

That evening was filled with a modest attempt at dancing, discussions about what kind of television we’d make if it was only up to us, the new book I was working on, countries we’d both visited and those still on the list.

Tom appeared from behind the Men’s lavatory door – a fleeting shadow drying his hands on his trousers. Perhaps he wondered where I was, but before I could call his name, he’d disappeared again.

After closing time, Anne and I walked along the water as the cafes began to shut down for the night. We sat on a wall. Her gaze drifted to the dreamlike reflection of illuminated houses on the canal. She calmly chose her words, formulated her sentences carefully, spoke with admiration about people who inspired her, and about films that I absolutely had to see. In turn I told her about books that moved me, about the feeling of freedom cycling gave me, and about my years of friendship with Tom, who was now a doctor. ‘Time can’t be captured,’ I said, as I stretched out my arm. ‘I never wear a watch.’

Finally, I confessed that originally I’d had no desire to go to a party but that it’d been a nice evening thanks to her. She smiled and brushed my cheek with the back of her hand. My mobile lit up.

Man-oh-man, I’m at Hotel Rembrandt

Take it easy, here with the Blonde!!!

Without saying anything, I slipped the device into the inside pocket of my jacket. Right, my manic friend, I’ll take it easy. Tom was like an automated carwash, even a one-night stand warranted full-service.

‘Do you have to go?’ asked Anne.

‘He said to take it easy, he can use the time.’

‘Who?’

‘Tom.’

She lived close to the hotel, so she decided to accompany me on a night walk through downtown. I’d pick up my car later, in a few hours or so, once the alcohol in my system had worn off. Despite the neon signs and the streetlights, the stars were clearly visible in the dark blue sky, millions of lights, a sparkling expanse of infinite possibilities which always made me feel insignificant. The sound of Anne’s small steps in her long gown and high heels bounced off the facades of the buildings. I heard the rustle of her soft breathing, saw her chest rise and fall. The contours of her face were outlined against the drab light of a bus stop. Let’s call it a small wonder. The queen of editorial strolling through the Amsterdam night, with me.

Hotel Rembrandt, a stately old building next to a garage, wasn’t far. After all my stories about Tom, Anne was curious. She wanted to meet him. I sent him a text.

I’m here, where are you?

No answer. A few stone steps led to a heavy wooden door. I rang the bell. The night porter responded. It took some convincing for him to believe that I was coming to pick up a friend who had checked in with a fair-haired woman a few hours earlier, under the name of Jonkers. The man apologised, but claimed he was protecting the privacy of their hotel guests. We drifted through the hallways. The dining room exhibited a robust splendour: carved pillars, heavy oak panelling, pale green walls adorned with large landscape paintings, and chandeliers heavy with rows of crystals. A few more hours and we could join the hotel guests for breakfast. A text message:

Room 12

Just wait outside in the hallway

I replied that I was on my way.

‘I’ll go get him,’ I said, uncertain in what condition I would find my friend and his one-night stand. But before I could point out that it might be wise for me to do this alone, she said, ‘I’ll go with you.’

We followed the arrows indicating the room numbers. I went up the stairs ahead of her and down a long corridor with old-fashioned wallpaper. Next door to Room 12 was a cosy alcove with a glass table flanked by two ottomans upholstered in fur. Anne hiked up her dress, sat down and elegantly crossed her legs. A high heel dangled from her foot. I knocked on the door. There was no response.

‘Let’s just wait,’ I said, about to sit down next to Anne. But before I got the chance, the door swung open.

‘Voilà! Because I’m not quite done!’ said Tom, full-frontal naked and waving a few bottles from the mini-bar in the air. The entire scene froze in time, accompanied by an uncomfortable silence lasting not more than a second, but long enough to be burned into our memories forever. Anne put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud.

‘Tom, meet Anne,’ I said, gesturing between the woman next to me and the naked man in front of her. ‘Anne, my best friend Tom.’

Across the Sea

As if it was agreed upon in time. I know, I feel… I must go to an elderly woman who has no knowledge of my existence. I’m familiar with her face because of a single photograph, a grainy black & white image of a young woman in front of a house. A flower nipped in the bud. I’ve conjured her from what I’ve been told, constructed her from old letters, notes found in a box labelled ‘Where All the Flowers Have Gone’, fragments of her diaries. This is how she slowly emerges, takes shape before my eyes, how she got into my head, crawled under my skin. This is how I picture her, write her story, utter her name, ‘Betrys’. It’s all about her, She’s the reason – this frail woman on the other side of the sea whose diary pages I safeguard in my inside pocket.

She’s in failing health, so I’ve been told. Will I get there in time? Even if I can’t imagine that moment, the first time I’ll meet her. If I dare? Will my hand stroke her silver hair? What can I possibly say? I gaze over the grey-green sea, the foaming water beneath me, the eternal singsong of billions of water molecules that for a split second are drops splashing against the boat’s hull, turning into sea again, another sea. The French coastline is a sliver on the horizon, a delineation between water and sky. Above me, seagulls swarm in a cloud of frenzied shrieking.

A ferry takes me to another world with gradual ease. On a wooden bench, port side, I find shelter from the wind. With my face buried in my collar, I leaf through a diary, a collection of clippings, sketches and scribbles in a handwriting that, now and again, reveals distress. The pounding of my temples mixes with the crashing of the waves. What if she’s too weak to see me? Or if she recognises me? In another half-day, the cottages on the hillside will appear, the spire on the church tower, the old trees by the river. Nobody knows me there, nor my name, and yet – in a bizarre way – this village has become a part of me. Somehow, I am homesick for it.

Anne said that my melancholy – which has always been present – isn’t so undefined anymore. Longing brought me here. It was time that I went. For a while now, the editorial desk had been complaining about my absence. Asking what was going on with me, if I was ill, why wasn’t I delivering articles? I avoided answering, came up with excuses, that I was having trouble sleeping and was totally exhausted.

There was no getting around it anymore. I had to go. To this woman somewhere northwest of me in a bed, in a room, in a village in Wales – adrift on her memories.

2

Betrys

Betrys’ gait slowed. A wintry day, more than two years ago. Halfway down Herbert Street her eyes glanced across the facades, past the dimly lit pub windows at the roundabout, to the motionless trees, with their brush-like branches starkly outlined against the dusky sky above the hills. Each day she wandered these streets, their names ingrained in her memory. Always the same stroll around the war monument in front of the Arts Centre, to the old cinema, and on to the shop window where she’d spent years watching the world pass her by. At some houses, faces came to mind, names, even a child’s birthday, one of the Jenkins or Wynn boys. The century had silvered her hair. She’d grown fragile, stooped, plodding. Occasionally her cane pointed to the sky, to greet a passing shadow in which she recognised a familiar face.

At dusk, stepping carefully, she descended the banks of the Tawe, the river that flowed deep blue from the Brecon Beacons to Swansea, and then out to sea. The water near the old bridge was shallow and inviting. From amongst all her memories, she again followed her youthful footsteps to the water’s edge, remembered the blanket of snow that had covered the cobblestone streets, the daredevils who dived from the bridge into the frothy brown water. As a girl she’d gone swimming there on freezing cold days, in a river rusty and warm from the greasy cooling water expelled by the Gilbertson’s steelworks.

It’s him… that voice. Her cheeks flush red. A smile, beckoning hands, his slender torso shiny and bronzed from sludge. She knows him from school – not that they’d often spoken to each other – he was two years ahead of her. His was the cheerful smile she encountered at the gate when he picked up his sister Glenys from school, the big brother who shared stolen apples and knew a radio station that played jazz music.

‘Jump in, join us!’

Vapour rises from the water; she can’t stand the smell of oil and metal. Still, with shivering fingers, she unbuttons her winter coat, places it and her shawl beside the dark piles of clothing on the embankment. Off with her boots and skirt; she slowly rolls down her stockings. The freezing air stings her skin. Just three or four cold steps to reach the water, that outstretched hand, those dreamy eyes. If her father ever found out: the dead of winter and his daughter swimming in the Tawe with the steel boys.

‘Betrys?’

She nods.

‘Shall we dance?’ he gallantly asks.

The moment she feels his hand in the hollow of her back, a gentle throbbing rushes through her body, the warm water embraces her.

The village breathed coal and steel. Men toiled underground, pouring burning hot metals, inhaled fumes of tin, nickel, and zinc until the stench could no longer be scrubbed from their skin and the black dust had embedded in the creases of their hands forever. Life didn’t have much more to offer. Steel and tin were their daily bread.

The droning of diesel-powered lorries and the abrasive sound of coal trains shunting throughout the night died out long ago in Pontardawe. The metal factories were shut down. On the spot where chimneys once spewed soot that darkened the sky, a supermarket now stood. Time cleansed the Tawe; the silt laced with copper and tin washed away, and life, the plants, the fish returned. Her thin body trembled as she entered the icy water, holding her skirt above her thighs with one hand, the other stroking the glistening ripples. She hummed almost inaudibly, sang a verse of a Welsh hymn heard here for generations, a moving sound barely breaking free of the wind, ‘Calon lân yn llawn daioni, tecach yw na’r lili dlos.’¹

Nobody could say with certainty how long she’d been standing there. Two lads, who’d just downed a pint at The Gwachel, stepped from the warmth into the freezing cold and saw an unsteady grey ghost in the Tawe by the old stone bridge. They called, waved. The elderly woman didn’t respond; she just kept singing. Without hesitation one of them waded into the water; looked at her with friendly eyes. Backwards, with his hands under her upper arms, he’d guided her to safety. She giggled a bit. When asked why she’d walked into the Tawe in the middle of the winter, she mumbled something the boys didn’t understand, about the steelworks and a rusty brown river that was always warm.

Weeks later, others saw her sitting at the bus stop next to the post office on the road to Swansea. She stared into the distance, past buses that hissed to a halt, spit out passengers, swallowed them up again, and left with the usual clamour. Hours on end, a wax figure, stranded in a time that only exists in the present of her mind.

Now she’s lying in a room of only a few square metres in the care home at the bottom of Alltwen Hill, on the road she’d climbed so often, on which she’d worn out her knees. She was allowed to bring her most cherished possessions: a few photographs, the celestine necklace. Her bed is beside a window behind which the days and the nights flow into each other unbearably slowly, and through which she feels each dawn as a cool breeze on her face. After this, the young nurse’s washcloth sets about its daily ritual: first her eyes, her cheeks and neck, next her torso, armpits, arms, the sagging skin on her bones, her feet and even her groin. ‘Good morning,’ the nurse says, after which she always inquires if she’s slept well. Betrys rarely answers, she can’t bear to speak, to chat about the weather, or what’s been going on in the village. She nods, groans, murmurs through her lips. In recent months she has preferred to listen to the washcloth being rinsed in the basin, to sniff the scent of rosemary soap, and to imagine herself at the seaside. This way she still gets to go places.

Each time, after the morning breeze, the washcloth and the sea, someone helps her eat a slice of white toast with orange marmalade and drink a cup of tea. Breakfast in bed. Once in a while, the door swings open, footsteps sound around her head, someone bends over her, shuffles papers. Sometimes she manages to open her eyes and weakly move her hands. On other days, sleep has her in its grip and it’s harder to resist the touch of the everlasting pulling at her.

1 A pure heart is more beautiful than the fairest of lilies