HENRY

As hard as he tried, Henry Belvidere couldn’t recall where he was or how he got there. The first thing he remembered at the beach was looking for his oxygen tank. He couldn’t leave home without it, but it wasn’t here. The last thing he remembered before waking up was bringing Madeline coffee in bed. She smelled like the eucalyptus soap in the bathroom. Henry hoped he wasn’t dead.

He sat and scooped up a handful of sand, letting it run through his fingers. Some grains stuck under his nails, and he swore. He watched his hands stretch and barely recognised them. His fingertips were nicked with a hundred, tiny white scars from decades of splinters evidence of the forty-three years he’d spent working at Dixon’s Lumber before he retired. Down the side of his left thumb, between freckles and age spots, was a longer, redder scar. Henry stroked the lines on his palms with hardened fingers. It looked like his flesh was cracking, made up of different pieces instead of one unending wrap of skin.

It felt like only recently his hands belonged to a young boy. They weren’t soft and smooth like other children’s, but instead suffered just as many cuts and scrapes as when he took up lumbering. The scratches he got when he was young were different to these in one important detail: as a man, Henry handled the real world. As a boy, his sole line of work was in shaping the imaginary. With one touch a tree could be transformed into a mighty monster, whose almond shaped leaves became thousands of eyes that blinked in the wind. He ran from it to the garden wall, which was his medieval castle. Moss grew between the slabs and stained his palms green– the same colour as the blood of the monster Henry slew. At ten years old, he was Midas; every golden opportunity lay at his fingertips with all of the glory and none of the consequences.

Henry grabbed another handful of sand and let it flow out of his grasp again, aware that he didn’t have the same hold on the world as he did in childhood. In any other scenario, the beach might have been a magnificent place. The sea’s white horses galloped into the shore that swooped up into the dunes behind him. The golden hills met an oasis of greenery where birds dipped into the thickets of trees. Clouds smoked in a sky that was the colour of Madeline’s eyes.

He thought it was strange that he remembered playing along the garden wall fifty-seven years ago, but had no recollection of how he came to be on this beach alone. He brushed his hands clean on his trousers and lifted his shoes off his feet. Peeling back each sock and rolling them into a ball, he wedged them in the left shoe. Leaving his loafers, Henry pulled himself onto his feet and shambled to the sea, wheezing without his oxygen tank. He couldn’t go far without it. Turning up the bottoms of his trousers, he stepped forward and let the water ripple over his feet. Each breath he took whistled in his lungs. He stroked the red scar on his thumb.

It was a childhood mishap that gave him the scar, but he remembered every detail as though he’d just lived through it. His mother was in the kitchen baking her “famous” Christmas cake. Once, when Henry enquired as to precisely how famous her cake was, he discovered that no one outside the family had even heard of it. Nevertheless, it was delicious and full of raisins, which Henry liked to poke out with his little finger and eat by themselves. The marzipan icing was the best part. It was so white that his mother could have taken snow off the lawn instead and it wouldn’t have looked much different. Henry liked to hold it on his tongue and feel the sugar spread around every single tooth, the saccharine delight swirling in the cheeks of his smile.

When the cake was in the oven baking, Henry went to his bedroom. There wasn’t much to do in the winter as he couldn’t play outside. The weather that year was especially bad; the rain was relentless and there were storms with hail stones so large that they would have dented a car if they had been able to afford one. Henry was in his room for a couple of hours playing with his toy soldiers when he smelled burning. The fire alarm went off and he ran into the kitchen. His eyes watered from the smoke and he was relieved that there were no flames.

“Mum!”

Henry tried to fan the air clear in front of him with his hands, but he began to cough. Without a second thought he snatched the tea towel, dashed to the oven, and yanked the door open. The cake was heavier than he realised and, in his haste, the tray banged the roof of the oven on the way out. It slipped from his grasp, the metal burning his hand on the way down the floor, where it clattered in a pile of burned mush. He cried whilst he turned the oven off and opened the window, clutching his wounded hand close to his chest.

“Mum?”

He found her in the living room on the sofa. She was asleep with an empty bottle of sherry on the table by her head. Her whole body reeked of it. Henry stared at her for a few minutes. She looked almost happy as she slept. Taking the blanket off the nearby chair, he put it over her as best he could with one arm and then went back to the kitchen to take care of the mess, his hand still burning.

As Henry caressed his long-healed scar, he stared out across the sea to the horizon. He never understood why his father left. He brought his hand to his chest again, the way he did when it was first burned, and felt his heart struggled to beat. Where was his oxygen tank? He’d never find his way home without it. Madeline’s face filled his vision as he thought of her with lips so close to his that he could feel the tingle of mouthwash on them. Henry thought that if he didn’t figure out how to get back to her, it would be just like abandoning his family, or perhaps even worse as Henry had never intended to go anywhere in the first place.

There was no one about. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been at the beach, but it must have been at least an afternoon and nobody had come along. He resolved that he was either dead or dreaming, trying to suss out which it might be with what little information he had. If he was dead, surely his heart would be the way it was before he developed emphysema. Henry knew one thing for certain; he was alone.

Suddenly, a voice:

Henry? Henry, can you hear me?

“Hello? Yes! Yes, I can hear you!” Henry called back, twisting around as best he could in the water to scan the shore for the source of the voice.

Are you sure he can hear me?

Henry recognised the voice. It was Madeline. His heart clamoured for her to continue. He wanted her to say more. Every part of him begged for her to never stop speaking. He needed her to say absolutely anything, as long as she carried on talking.

“Madeline? Darling! Where are you?” he cried out. “How is your day going? Do you know where I am? What’s for dinner? Honey? Madeline? Madeline?!”

Henry?

“Madeline!”

A second voice cut through:

I think he’s listening.

How do you know?

His face looks calmer when you speak, Grandma.

Henry knew the second voice too. It was his granddaughter, Lacey. He searched for her in all directions, but he couldn’t see where she was either. Her stark black hair should stand out against the brightness of the beach, but there was nothing. It occurred to him that they weren’t where he was at all, but somewhere else.

“Lacey! Madeline! Hello?” he tried again, but the volume was slowly going out of his voice.

For the first time in years, Henry tried to run. His feet took off before he questioned whether his lungs could take it. He wasn’t going fast, but managed to jog down the stretch of the shore, having no idea where he was going. He sweated and tightened every muscle, pushing himself to the fastest speed possible, but Henry could keep it up. He panted and felt his heart straining in his chest. Stopping only when he had no other choice, Henry dropped to his knees. His eyes traced the horizon again, begging for Madeline to step out of the distance towards him.

Grandpa, please. Give us a sign.

Lacey, I don’t think he can hear us.

He can! Look at his face. He really can.

No, honey. Grandpa is asleep. We should go.

“I’m not! I’m awake! I’m here.”

Fine. Bye, Grandpa. I’ll be back soon.

You head out, sweetie. I’ll be right there.

Henry’s chest heaved as tears mingled into the sweat that dripped down his face. Frantic, his neck snapped left and right as he searched for his wife. Was he sleeping like she said? In all the decades they had been married, they never slept apart. He missed watching her next to him. Every now and then, he nose would twitch and her mouth would fall open, but she never snored. As each night passed until decades slipped away from them, her face changed and aged. She had laugh lines around her mouth and eyes, while stress left its mark on her forehead. When they met, she had curly blonde hair, but now it looked like dove feathers. As he longed to pull her close, he could smell the eucalyptus soap; wisps of her sweetness flowed into the air around him. Hairs rose on his neck when he felt her breath in his ear. She was right next to him.

Henry? I don’t know if you can really hear me. Seems like another doctor’s lie. I just– oh, this is stupid. I know I’m just talking to myself. Maybe I am mad…If there’s a chance you can hear me, just hurry up, Henry. I need you to wake up.

When she stopped speaking, her presence evaporated with her voice. Henry sat with his legs out, feeling heavy and stuck. He was unable to catch his breath and unsure he ever would. The truth dawned on him like a present being unwrapped– a terrible, frightening present; at first it was revealed slowly and with caution, but when Henry began to figure it out, the mystery ripped itself into reality. He wasn’t dead or alive. He wasn’t awake or asleep. Henry Belvidere was somewhere in between, falling into oblivion from a hospital bed.

Dr Briony Collins is an award-winning novelist, poet, educator, and publisher. Her poetry and short fiction can be found with Broken Sleep Books and Atomic Bohemian, and her debut novel, Ambergris, is available from Barnard Publishing. Her next poetry book, Wyoming, is forthcoming this year with Black Bough Poetry.