‘Goodbye, Humphrey James. It was truly wonderful to meet you.’
And he smiled at me oddly.
‘Oh,’ he said, as I reached the door, ‘who was it you were looking for?’
‘My love,’ I said, trying to wipe the tears from my cheeks so he wouldn’t notice I was crying.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m sure you’ll find him … or her.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Keep an eye on the skies tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime astral event.’
I had to leave right in that moment or I’d never go, and in doing so I’d break the last promise I’d made to him.
‘I have to go,’ I said, barely above a whisper.
‘Well, goodbye then, Margot,’ he said, ‘and thank you for the kiss.’ And he winked.
Several months later, Humphrey James passed away peacefully in his sleep, sitting beside his telescope in his armchair by the window.
Morning
West Midlands, May 1998
Margot James is still Sixty-Seven Years Old
purple is the colour of morning
the moment
when the sullen sphere rolls around
and there’s a shift
from black to biro blue
light,
dawn,
day.
the space of sunlight
that we predict will last a few minutes longer than the one
before
and we’ll call it wednesday
but it isn’t wednesday, not one in seven, but new,
a gap of light between
the darkness
and who can say for certain
that it will come again?
in this light, they carry the coffin
on this wednesday, we say goodbye
our sadness a gap of darkness between
the light
and a priest in robes of violet and white
informs us,
‘purple is the colour of mourning’
Humphrey’s funeral was very well attended – all the staff from the observatory and several from overseas were there; his side of the family came in great numbers, led by his sister, who stayed with me for the week before to help with the preparations. Even the nurse with the cardigan from the care home came to say goodbye.
At the funeral, I read the Sarah Williams poem he’d written down for me after our first meeting, because my own words didn’t suffice. I wrote him his own personal poem the night after the funeral, when sleep evaded me and all I could do to calm myself was look at the stars.
And then, everything was done. His sister had to go back home and I found myself alone. Doing the washing up.
I’d put the radio on to distract myself from thinking about him – about the haunting knowledge that his body had been there in the box in the church where we were all sitting. That inside that box he was lying, cold, as though he were sleeping. The radio was playing a pop song. So I sang. I sang along with a song I hadn’t even realized I knew the words to. And when the images of his coffin being lowered into the ground swam into my vision, I sang louder. When the sight of his sister crying and throwing her fistful of dirt into the open grave came into my mind, I sang louder still. And then I was no longer at the funeral but in the care home, in The Field. And I had his face in my hands, and he was looking up at me.
I’d kissed him.
And then he’d said …
A plate I’d just balanced on top of a saucepan on the drying rack slipped out of its spot and shattered on the floor.
And I found myself on the floor beside the plate, because I knew then, in my bones, that the last time I saw Humphrey James he hadn’t forgotten me. He’d been pretending.
He’d kissed me back. He’d smiled. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime astral event,’ he’d said. A once-in-a-lifetime astral event.
And more than that: when he told me to find my love, he told me to ‘find him … or her’， when just the day before he’d asked me about Meena, though we hadn’t spoken of her in years.
That terrible, wonderful man had pretended not to know me so that he could say goodbye while he still knew who I was. He’d saved me from those visits, and in his own way he had set me free. And, no doubt, he was able to check if I really would keep my promise.
I laughed for about twenty minutes because the idea of Humphrey pretending not to know me was so infuriating and silly and so very him. And then I cried.
Light … Dawn … Day
MY FATHER IS standing at the end of my bed.
Or he isn’t.
（I haven’t been well.）
He looks smaller than I remember.
I go to talk and become aware of a mask on my face. My words echo back at me. I pull the mask off, and recall a conversation I had with a nurse. It’s to help me sleep, or to keep me awake. To help me live, or to help me die. One of those.