Beluga by A. B. Lord. (little readers txt) 📕

Thames go by and tried to find calm in it. London probably wasn’t the best place for a claustrophobic woman to live, but there was so many other things that she loved about it that she couldn’t bare to leave. She enjoyed the parks where she could just sit quietly, feeding the pigeons and squirrels. She also loved London at night, and although all her future dreams of family and chickens in the garden nearly always involved her and Camilla living in the countryside somewhere, they still weren’t ready to leave London just yet. They still felt like city dwellers and lapped up London’s life of outdoor food markets, open top red buses and boat rides down the Thames. There was so much they both wanted to see outside of London though. Kate wanted to see the Northern Lights; spurred on by memories of distant bedtime stories her Dad had told her of the time he saw the Northern Lights from his boat, five miles in to the arctic circle, with narwhals and belugas bobbing up and down in the sea around him. Always when she thought of this story she pictured her Dad like a little boy gazing up at the Northern Lights and everything around him like a magical shaken snow globe. She wanted that experience too. But it was not for now. Now was for London, their pretty flat in Southwark and for panic attacks. The Northern Lights would have to wait.


“Ok, drink this cup of tea and just try to calm down. Do you need me to get your meds out of your bag?”


Camilla was back with the tea. Kate slipped it in to her hands and began to sip, always watching the water.


“Was it the crowds again?”


“Yeah. I felt claustrophobic. The meds are in the little zip pocket inside my handbag.”


“I know. Just drink your tea and then we can go home and you can read a book or we’ll sit and do something together, whatever you want. Maybe there will be a good film on the TV tonight or something.”


Camilla rummaged then produced a little silver foil of tablets. Betablockers. They cut out adrenaline in a matter of minutes and had been prescribed to Kate by her doctor. She was to take one whenever she panicked. It stopped the panic dead. Kate took the silver foil from her and popped one of the pills in to her hand, and then in to her mouth, washed down with a sip of tea.


“Ok, but can we stay here for a little while?”


“Yes, ok.”


Kate fed her arm through Camilla’s arm and snuggled in tight against her on the banks of the river Thames. She really wished her Dad had been around to meet her. She knew that her Dad never had a problem with her being gay and she was glad she had found the time to tell him before he had passed on, but she wished that he had been able to meet Camilla. At least then Camilla might understand part of Kate’s connection with water. Just watching the Thames had a calming effect on her. Her Dad’s ashes had been scattered at sea and in a romantic way she sometimes liked to think they were now part of the giant puddle of water available on earth and that someday, maybe some of his ashes may find their way in to the Thames. There was a morbidity to the thought, but also a comfort in knowing her Dad was now the ocean and that the ocean, and it’s rivers and raindrops was everywhere.


Kate could go whole weeks without thinking of her Dad. It had been near on five years now since his death and although she was by no means over his death, she had rebuilt her life. She had moved on, got herself a good strong life in London, found a partner and was now attempting to write academic texts on natural science, but which unfortunately nobody seemed interested in. To Kate, the natural history of the size of whales and how it had been impacted by whaling was fascinating, but it seemed others didn’t agree. She could go months thinking about this, and her flat that she shared with Camilla, and how to go about living her life, but then the silence would always be shattered by a panic attack. They were becoming more and more frequent and with every instance, she found herself thinking of her Dad.


Sometimes she thought she heard him or saw him out the corner of her eye when she panicked, but then doesn’t everyone think they see dead loved ones occasionally? The world is full of stories of people who have lost loved ones, and then one winter they saw a little robin, and there’s something about its face that compels them to be convinced that it is none other than their dead uncle Tony, come back as a robin to say hello. You go search for it on the internet. It’s usually on the same website as the person who saw the Virgin Mary in their toast.


They slowly began to head back in to the city, in the direction of their Southwark Flat. They had reached a point in their relationship where they now had everything planned out. The idea was they would stay in this little London flat – with its floor to ceiling glass windows and balcony overlooking the bright lights of the city – for a good few years, they’d get married whilst living here, maybe get a dog whilst living here, and then when the time came for one of them to become pregnant and have a baby, they would become country mice and scuttle off to a little cottage somewhere more rural, where they’d have chickens and a vegetable patch. Floor to ceiling glass windows were not child friendly at all.


They pushed open the door to their flat and were greeted by a pile of mail. Kate pilled them in to her hands and went and sat on the sofa, sorting them in to piles of “Kate’s mail” and “Camilla’s mail.” Occasionally the piles blurred in to “our mail” which included clothes catalogues, occasional cards from well wishing relatives and friends, and pizza delivery flyers. Kate noticed she had an official white enveloped letter and she opened it curiously.


“Dear Miss Whitman,


After reading your article as submitted for our journal, we regret to inform you that on this occasion we will not...”


The letter went on.


It was the same letter she had received countless times before; such and such journal was very sorry to inform her that her article about the natural history of whaling, would not be getting published. They always wished her well though and hoped she would continue to read their publication.


The letter went in the bin.


“Rejection!” she shouted through to Camilla who was pottering in the kitchen. “I thought people liked whales?”


“Oh I’m sure some people do, darling.”


“I like whales.”


“I know you do.”


Kate slipped her feet out of her little black moccasin shoes and pulled her feet up on to the bright red sofa. She loved this sofa. This sofa had been home to many excited book readings, evenings watching David Attenborough documentaries, and her favourite piece of furniture n the flat. It wasn’t child friendly either and she didn’t know what she’d do with it when the time came to get a child friendly sofa which pulled out in to sleepover bed, and which had easy washable surfaces. But this, this sofa was lovely for the right now. The flat wasn’t massive but it was a comfortable size. The main selling point had been the large windows, if you can call them that. They were more like a solid wall of glass. The sofa sat perpendicular to the wall of glass, facing a rectangular coffee table which housed magazines, recent newspapers and the odd holiday brochures for trips they planned to make, but as yet had not. Svalbard... Mexico... Paris...


She reached across to the coffee table and thumbed through a copy of National Geographic. One day, she wanted to open it up and read something by her. Anything, by her! It didn’t even have to be about the sodding whales. As she flicked, an article on scrimshaw caught her eye and she stopped to look at it.


The article discussed the artwork as depicted on the whale bone scrimshaws and was accompanied by a photograph of a man holding a scrimshaw up to the light, with the sea in the background. His face was weathered and bronzed. Clearly a man of the sea, thought Kate. The background looked like it could be part of an old whaling town, maybe Nantucket, or somewhere near Norway?


Looking down at the picture, she began to feel dizzy.


“Bloody betablockers”, she mumbled.


“Did you say something?”, called Camilla from the kitchen?


“Er, just that my head is starting to spin a bit. Think I’m still a bit shaken from earlier. Maybe shouldn’t have had that betablocker on an empty stomach too, I feel queasy.”


“Just take some deep breaths. Do you want some water?”


Water. Oh no. That was the problem. It was the water that was making her feel unwell. She looked down at it intently. Was she hallucinating? It was if someone had a shot a video and slowed it right down, to mere milliseconds of movement, and then they had somehow got this barely moving film clip in to the National Geographic magazine. She could see the water of the sea, rippling slightly; the suns reflection bouncing of it in a ray of colour. Oh god, it was the face as well. The smile, was it smirking slightly? Were the corner of this man’s smile moving?


She felt sick. But it wasn’t just the picture of the sea, it was the feeling of the sea. She put her hands down on the bright red sofa to steady herself. She could have sworn she felt as though she was swaying. Side to side, side to side, as if on a boat. She felt her tummy go as it would if she were in a car going over a hill too quickly.


Suddenly she became aware of Camilla standing in the doorway.


“You don’t look well. Maybe you should lie down?”


“Yeah... oh God... my head...”


She felt her gag reflex go. Straight away Camilla was helping her up and the seconds that followed turned to a blur. She was on the sofa. The sea was moving. The man was smiling. She was being lead to the bathroom. She was being sick. She was lying on the bathroom floor shattered with Camilla stroking her face. She was being helped up and in to the bedroom. The nice comfy bedroom with the white sheets and ceiling to floor glass