The Great Explorer

I’ve never been alone. I’ve always belonged to somebody. I was a daughter, then a wife, then a mother and now? I’m drifting, without the anchor of belonging. No one needs me. Letters come to the house, addressed to Alice Bateman, and I look at them and wonder: Who is she? I knew who ‘our kid’ was, I knew who ‘darling’ was, whether it was whispered in seductive tones or cut the air like a poisoned blade. I knew who Mummy was, and Mum as they got older. But Alice? There’s no connection with that word, it’s faded from lack of use. I need a dictionary, to look her up. I need to know what the synonyms are.
My son rang last night; I replay the conversation in my head as I sit at a breakfast table set for one.
‘I’m not going to get back for Christmas, Mum. Sorry.’ The regret trembled awkwardly in his words, set off kilter by his fear of hurting me; he had no idea how deep that particular blow struck. I faked a cough, to buy myself a little time so my voice was steady when I assured him that it was fine. I understood. He had his own family now, they had to have their own Christmases.
‘But you’ll be on your own?’ he asked, with such a weight of hope that I would deny it.
‘It’ll be lovely!’ I lied. ‘I can watch what I want on telly, no big meal to make, no fuss or bother. Don’t you worry, we’ll celebrate together when we see each other next.’
I don’t know when that will be.
My daughter is overseas. She went travelling, got as far as San Francisco fell in love. There’s no talk of it being permanent, yet, but no talk of coming home, either. Part of my heart, in San Francisco. High on a hill, it calls to me; once a fortnight, regular as clockwork.
She worries too, but she’s a bit more proactive about it. I see that now as I open the mornings post, there’s a glossy brochure from ‘Just You’ who call themselves, The specialist in single holidays.
I snort and push the thing to one side. A singles holiday sounds like the seventh circle of hell to me. You might as well just put a sticker on your forehead that says ‘lonely and desperate’ and have done with it.
There are two other pieces of mail; one is an electricity bill, I’m not even sure why they send them when I pay on direct debit. The other is a card, from the feel of it. A good quality envelope in cream, stiffened by the contents. It’s not my birthday, not Mother’s Day…why is someone sending me a card?
No, not a card. An invitation. Someone’s getting married! How lovely. A niece or nephew, perhaps?
I’m transformed to a Vesuvean body cast as I flip it open and see the names. Then I can’t read them because my eyes are burning with tears that fall down my cheeks and drop onto the kitchen table, scattering toast crumbs.
My husband, ex-husband, marrying the woman he left me for. I thought, after all these years that he wasn’t going to. I felt a bit smug about that, if I’m honest. That he’d married me, and not her. The scab on the wound from the day he left is pulled open again and I bleed raw sobs into the lonely room.
How has it come to this? When I was young, I had so much potential. I was smart, could have gone to university; except you didn’t, in those days. You got married to someone who had. I stayed with my parents and worked in an office, saved every penny so when he came back with his degree and a well-educated swagger we could afford to get married, put a deposit down on our own place. I suppose there were chances for more, I mean people do, don’t they? They start their own business, or do the Open University or whatever but I never really wanted to. I was content with my life. It was safe, I knew where I was. At least until he told me he was leaving and I suddenly found myself lost at sea.
After that I pretended. Threw myself into mothering, and another job in an office. Not a career, like women have these days, just a job. I work for the council. Parking permits.
I look at the invitation again, smearing tears on my cheek with the back of my hand. I want to set fire to the damn thing but I won’t. I’ll go and buy a nice card and send my regrets and best wishes. Not that I mean it, but that’s what you do, isn’t it? Slipping the luxury, foil embossed card back into its envelope I tuck it behind the radio on the counter. Out of sight, out of mind.
I don’t know why I grab the brochure again. Just to have something else to look at, to think about, I suppose. I can shed my scorn on the idea of singles holidays, trick myself into feeling lofty by looking down on others. Travelling solo is liberating and with the right ingredients it’s the perfect way to see the world, says the brochure. Maybe I could do with liberating.
They go to all sorts of places! I had no idea. I just assumed it would be the Costa del Sol for cheap wine and sunset fumbles on the beach. Kenya, Japan, Cuba… My breath catches as I turn to a page illuminated by images of immaculate whiteness: Antarctica
The Final Frontier, it calls it. Here, in possibly the most remote and empty place on earth, you’ll have a chance to meet huge colonies of penguins and spot majestic whales as they leap through the water. I know they say remote and empty, and that sounds lonely, but there’s something inside me that aches to see it; to find a place emptier than I am.
The price takes my breath away. That’d be my savings, gone. I was hoping I could leave the kids a decent inheritance, besides the house. I’ve never thought of touching that money until now; it’s been sacred. What has come over me?
I scan the details. A flight to Chile and a few days in Santiago, then a cruise down the Magellan Strait, through Drake passage to Antarctica. Those names make my head spin! I remember them from school, those intrepid explorers out there, looking for the unknown.
Like me, I suppose.
I just want to go and stand in all that cold, all that purity, away from everyone and everything. Maybe, just maybe, if I go somewhere so clean and fresh and bright, so far away from all the things I know, all the weight of the expectations, all should haves and would haves and could haves…maybe I’ll finally be able to see myself.