Ashley released the soft ashes into the greenish sea roaring against the cliff.
“You loved the place, when we came here last summer, Manx ancestors… you felt the connection… I know you’re nearby. We should have stayed here. No magazine, no reportage, no nothing. That bloody day at Stonehenge, taking pictures, all the time the archaeologists would point to the stones in rapture and insist that was a discovery, a big deal, they said. A303. Had I paid more attention, you’d be alive, Helen. ’t was a bloody sunny day packed with tourists and weirdos looking for a thrill. The mystery of the unknown… never been so fed up all my life. Never understood what people thousands of years ago had tried to do there… might have been a Neolithic burial ground, a city of the dead. It gave me an eerie feeling, could sense it all the time while handling my camera. Your eyes of glass, I can still feel their fixed look on me… fumbling around the car, not knowing what to do… yelling my guts out. Not even a last word… here we are, Helen, in the place you loved, saying goodbye.”
The wind snatched the ashes from his hands. He went back to the car and touched the key in his pocket and glanced towards the horizon once more. He could not induce himself to start the engine, waiting for an answer. Outside a violet twilight was gushing out of the sky, spreading its shadow over the sea. The gorse and heather were growing bluish all around. It must have been half an hour or so before he drove back to the family place.
They had a pleasant yard at the back of the small gable-house, Ashley enjoyed breathing in the cool breeze before dinner, but that evening a sharp scent allured him into the kitchen, where Mary was roasting loghtan as a special dish. The family sat around the table, Mary murmured a short prayer, then lighted up and said: “You are back at last – I thought you had lost the way home.”
Luke could not wait any longer, he was hungry and curious: “Welcome, Ashley, did you manage to do what you had to?”
“Well… I guess so… I had to speak to somebody.”
“Uhm… quite mysterious affair, it sounds…”
“Dad, I don’t think you need to know everything that happens in the world, do you?” Rosemary said, raising her eyebrows.
Luke ignored her words and said: “So what brought you back this time? I thought you would never come again after… well you know. Maybe you got other pictures to take?”
“To tell you the truth,” said Ashley, “I don’t know, I need time to relax and remember having a good time here last summer. Sometimes, a photographer’s life can be tough,” he said almost cheerfully. “This loghtan is delicious Mary, just perfect… anyway, I’ll see how it goes in the next fortnight.”
“How do you mean?” Virgil asked, while pouring some dark beer in his glass. “I mean, if I can stand it.”
Silence.
Finally, Mary said: “We’ll do everything possible to make you feel at home, Ashley.”
He looked straight into her hazel eyes and said: “Mary, I feel at home here, you know I do, but this is also what I am afraid of.”
“Have some more potatoes”, she said, while at the other end of the table Clare was purring at Virgil’s feet.
“I hate you,” he yelled at the tailless cat and kicked her.
“You’re a beast, how do you dare to kick her? A beastly brother!” Rosemary raised her voice with increasing rage. “You spend all the time doing nothing and when you do, that’s what we get.”
“Oh why, how do you mean I do nothing? I’ve been fishing every night with dad, a back breaking job, I tell you, Miss Highbrow!”
“Yes, of course”, she said sharply, “and I’m the one who reads useless books all the time and…”
“Exactly,” Virgil shouted.
“Enough is enough,” Luke said with gravity, while Mary started apologizing: “Oh Ashley, I’m so sorry my son and daughter don’t know how to behave at the age of twenty two and twenty-three….”
She blushed, as Rosemary stood up and left the room in a rage. Virgil was laughing victoriously.
“That serves her right, her and all that freakish lot she deals with.”
“I think I’ll go to bed,” Ashley said.
In his room, he watched the local news, while lying on his bed and wondering at Virgil’s arrogance…what was that scene about?