The Coat

by Joel Glover

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My father killed himself, drowned in the lake at the bottom of the quarry, the week after my mother died. His pockets were full of rocks, and one lonely shell. He left me a note, in his bag on the shore, and a request for his ashes to be scattered on the sea.

Every memory I hold dear takes place in the town where I grew up. Forgotten, almost, by the world. An hour’s walk across the heath the bypass carries tourists up to famous hills and valleys. We had no coal, no tin, no steel, so never had a mine. A church, quite old, but otherwise unremarkable, a village store that closed when I was little, a pub, and farms.

Mum worked. Dad stayed home with me. In the summer, we played in the park or walked in the woods.

We never went to the beach.

Mum got ill when I turned fourteen.

The doctors ruled out heavy metal poisoning first.

They never said why.

In the face of the unknown, they changed her diet, a little at a time.

No shellfish.

No fish at all.

No nuts.

Then, no grains, no dairy.

By the time they gave up all she was eating was lamb and pears, from the farm shop down the road.

Her organs failed slowly, her skin cracked, her hair fell out.

Blood transfusions were next, which slowed her decline from a sprint to a steady jog.

She clung to my father, beneath a tartan blanket on the sofa, and sobbed quietly when she thought I was asleep.

I failed all my GCSEs except PE. I got a C in PE, my grade buoyed up above the passing grade by my times at national swimming competitions. Like a fish, my mother laughed, you should have seen her Don. He kissed me on the crown of my head, but he had never come and watched me swim, and never would.

It was the last time I heard Mum laugh.

When the end came, it came quickly.

Auntie Lin came to nurse her through those last few months. Dad would go outside and stare out at the fields, whipped by autumn winds, soaked by the rain.

Calling to him to come in did no good.

When the sun had long set he would come in and sit in front of the electric bar fire, drinking whisky and hot water.

One night, I heard him talking to her, his voice hoarse, tell me where it is, he begged, you must tell me.

She did not reply.

Two days later, she stopped talking at all, unable to form the words with cracked lips. Her lungs slowly filled with fluid, coughing coming in weaker and weaker waves which echoed around our small house.

I held her hand as she choked and gurgled, hoping that the doctor’s promise that she could not feel it was true. I watched as the light went out in her eyes.

Dad wasn’t in the room when it happened.

I remember stumbling out of the room and finding him in the armchair, tears pouring down his face and into his beard, matting his lashes. I clung to him, wracked by sobs, she’s gone Dad, she’s gone, I told him. Auntie Lin made us cups of tea, dark as rum, Dad’s sticky with sugar. He drank in silence.

At Mum’s funeral, we watched the coffin lowered into the ground. Some of us threw flowers down onto the lid. Not Dad though.

Then, a day later, he was gone too.

Peter didn’t come to his cremation. He’d had too many days off work, he said.

I met him at school, when he was still Petey, when girls and boys meant kiss chase, and different uniforms and not a lot else. He lived across the hill, in a little cottage, his father had a flock of sheep and kept a timberyard. He was the only boy who ever showed an interest in me, I suppose, Mum called us childhood sweethearts.

He dreamed of leaving, of singing in a band. He never did. After too many pints in The Red Lion he sings, his voice cracked and harsh.

He said I fit right in here. That I would never leave, that I never should.

He hadn’t been to the house much when Mum was ill.

I think he was scared of Dad, who never liked Peter much, but never said it. He said he didn’t like to be around sick people, said it weirded him out. I was glad to have somewhere to go, a refuge.

I asked if he’d come with me, to scatter the ashes, but he said his dad needed him at the timberyard. It’s daft, he’s gone, it isn’t like he cares. It is important to me, I said, it was his last wish, it would be selfish not to. You know what’s selfish, he said, before he stopped talking and I started crying. He could always make me cry.

I stayed with Auntie Lin. The beach Dad had chosen was near her house, in Northumbria. It is where they met, my parents. I didn’t know. When I had asked how they met Dad would clam up, and Mum would laugh.

She told me stories over tea. Beans and toast. Stories about my Mum, growing up. Of boys she had kissed, and teachers they had hated. And Dad, I asked.

Your mother, she laughed. She waltzed right in off the beach, claiming she’d met the man of her dreams. Dragged him in with her.

The day after, she upped sticks and moved south, and they never came back.

She carried him away, or he carried her away, I never knew, she said.

They never came back.

I slept on the sofa, under a heavy blanket just like the one Mum had when she was sick.

Maybe it was the same one.

In the morning, I walked along a narrow path to the beach. Time and tides had shaped the land, a shallow groove of a footpath cut into the Northumbria rock, the cliff face jagged as shattered teeth.

Auntie Lin had pressed a coat on me before I went out, an old thing, she said it was my mums, or my dad’s, she wasn’t clear. It had been in a bag in Nan’s loft for years, apparently. The leather was soft, supple, dappled grey, the coat lined with fur.

I stood on the beach watching the water rush in and out, soap sud foam gathering on the sand. In the distance, I saw a face in the waves, appearing and disappearing between the furrows. Then, another face, too far away to have been the first.

I heard their barks, quiet in the distance.

Come join us, they seemed to say.

I took the Tupperware with my dad’s ashes in it out of the bright orange carrier bag and waded into the shallows.

I shook the box, shook it until all that remained of my father were my memories and the coat.

A wave slapped across my thighs, unexpectedly high, soaking me through.

I felt alive for the first time, alive.

I dived into the sea and changed.

I was home.