A week later, two days before Christmas, it was Zoe’s thirtieth birthday. They had some friends round for a dinner party. They drank a lot and laughed too loud. Then around the time the coffees arrived someone said that thirty was a significant birthday, and everyone around the table agreed. Someone else said it was the first time you heard the bell.
But they all knew what bell. It was like you’d already completed a few laps, observed another, but this was the first time you’d properly heard the bell. There had been one at seven but you hadn’t heard it because you were so young; and then one at fourteen but you hadn’t heard it because you were so busy looking over your shoulder; then another at twenty-one but you hadn’t heard it because you were too busy talking; and then one at twenty- eight which for some reason took two years before you heard it. But they all agreed you did hear that one, eventually.
Your lousy career, said one guest. Babies, said one of the women. Lovers, friends, travel, said another. Parents ageing. Bong. All the things you hadn’t done. Might not do. Bong.
And in the silence that came after the bell someone said, ‘Happy Birthday, Zoe, cos you’re one of the best.’
‘Yes, happy birthday.’
‘Happy birthday.’
After the guests had gone home, Zoe and Jake cleared away the debris of the dinner party and went upstairs. Jake crashed out on the bed and fell asleep immediately. Zoe felt dizzy from the wine. She lay down on the bed and her head was swimming so she stretched out a leg and pressed her foot flat on the carpet to try to stop the room from going round and round. Eventually she fell asleep.
She was awoken some hours later by someone shining a bright light in her face. She sat up and blinked into the white light, shielding her eyes with one hand.
‘Who’s that?’
There was no reply.
She looked over her shoulder at Jake, who, illuminated by the light, slumbered on.
‘Who’s there?’ she tried again.
No one answered.
She swung her legs out of bed and it was then that she realised the light wasn’t coming from a torch inside the room. It was streaming through the window. Jake had failed to close the curtains properly before crashing into bed and this light was flooding in from outside. She went to the window.
It was the moon. Thrilling, waxy and low in the sky, it seemed supernaturally large; like an inflated berry of mistletoe, or a pearly bauble hanging on a Christmas tree. She gasped. Its light looked milky, liquid, sticky even. She could easily see the crater shadows on the moon. It was almost like an unblinking eye, gazing in at her from the clear night sky, remote yet interested. Never had she seen it so low in the heavens. It seemed to risk crashing on the earth.
There was some music in the distance, light orchestral music, drifting over the rooftops. She assumed someone else was having a dinner party. The music swelled and then dropped away, as if swirling on a breeze.
She glanced over her shoulder at her sleeping husband and thought about waking him; but she resisted the idea, afraid of killing the moment. So she stood at the window, gripping the hem of the curtain, staring back at the moon, holding her breath.
She was uncertain how long she’d watched the moon, but after a while, without any sign of movement or sense of time passing it seemed to have retreated, and faded; withdrawing to a condition of ordinary beauty.
She went back to her bed and lay down, still watching through the window, and eventually she drifted back to sleep.
In the morning over breakfast, while they were both getting ready for work she started to tell Jake what she’d seen.
‘You should have woken me.’
‘Yes. Now I’ll never know if I dreamed it.’
He was about to answer when the telephone rang. It was Eric, Archie’s friend, calling from Tunisia. ‘Zoe, my love, I want you to be sitting down.’
When he said that she already knew everything.
‘I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry.’
‘When?’
‘Bill and I missed him at breakfast, so we went up to his room.’
‘I see.’
‘I want you to know how happy he was last night. How happy. We’d been to a tea dance in the afternoon. He didn’t stop giggling. We danced with all these lovely ladies. Then in the evening we had a lovely dinner and we drank some wine and after that we went for a stroll along the seafront. The moon was incredible last night. Beautiful.’
‘I know.’
‘Archie was dancing. He was whisking an imaginary partner along the promenade. He wasn’t drunk, you know your dad. But he kept saying look at the moon, look at the moon, lads! Are you there, my darling? Are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look at the moon, he said. I’ve never seen your dad so happy, my darling. Bill said the same. He was a lovely man, was Archie. A lovely man. I’m so sorry.’
‘Couldn’t help himself,’ Zoe said. ‘Had to come visit me despite himself.’
‘What’s that, darling?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I had to call you. He was a wonder to us. Are you there, sweetheart?’
Jake, who was watching her face when the tears started rolling, took the phone from her and held her hand as he continued the conversation with Eric, very softly.
Eric and Bill had insisted on taking care of everything. Archie’s insurance was up to date and they dealt with the officials and the paperwork and had Archie flown back in a zinc-lined coffin, as per the regulations. Archie’s remains were cremated at the local cemetery. He had a Humanist service.
Zoe left the Christmas tree in his bungalow until Twelfth Night, according to the tradition. Then she carefully packed away all the hanging mementos. She made charity bags of his decent clothes and asked Eric and Bill to take what they wanted of his equipment. She kept a few things for herself and gave them Archie’s bowls to pass on to someone at the club.
Eric asked her about something she’d said on the morning he had phoned her from Tunisia. ‘You said he had come back to you, despite himself. What did you mean?’
So she told them the story of the moon. Eric and Bill both looked at her with shining eyes, and said nothing.
Zoe took the box of Christmas tree tokens and souvenirs so that she and Jake could continue the tradition of decorating theirs with luminous memories. She went out and bought a silver-moon disc to commemorate Archie’s passing and all those years afterwards, whenever her eyes fell upon it as it hung from the tree, it never once made her sad.
11
The wind had died down and the entire resort had a scraped look, as if raked clean by a giant claw. Loose snow had been swept and piled high against doors and apartment blocks; parked cars had been shaved of ice and snow on their windward sides; and the entire village seemed to have been blown back at a minute angle, only now emerging to blink in surprise at the morning sun.
