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26. SUMMER 2013

We were definitely the odd ones out at the airport. Perhaps that’s just how it felt, and others didn’t notice, but I suspect the more perceptive traveller would have spotted the middle-aged couple, red eyed, looking in desperate need of a holiday, but who also appeared to be dreading getting on the plane. They might have assumed fear of flying. But it was fear of landing which afflicted Nancy and me — the fear of it all becoming real. So far all we had been able to do was imagine. Now we must look at the body of our son who had gone ahead and experienced something which he should have waited for us to do first.

Before we left for the airport, I had taken down from the dresser the three postcards Jonathan had sent us. Paris, Nice, Seville. Glossy and bright. Dashed-off words, which carried little weight when first read, but then were scrutinised over and over. The one from Seville was the final one we received: the cathedral bathed in sunshine and tourists being pulled in a horse-drawn carriage in the foreground. How could these tourists know their image would be frozen forever in our heads? That when that postcard landed on our doorstep, we would see them, then turn them over and read the words which were to become the last words we ever had from our son:

Dear Mum and Dad, have spent two days here, but heading to the coast tomorrow. Want to get the ferry to Tangiers. Love, J xox

Neither of us spoke Spanish but the consulate in Jerez helped us through the bureaucracy. Of course there was a lot of it. Certificate after certificate which needed to be signed, stamped, handed over to various authorities before we would be allowed to take our boy home.

It had been many years since we had seen Jonathan naked, but he was nearly naked when we looked at him lying there, with only a cloth to cover his genitals. He was perfect. Preserved in death, his eyes closed, and unmistakeably our son. The consulate had informed us he would be embalmed — Spanish law insists on it before a body can be transported. I understood the technicalities of the embalming process, we both did, but neither of us wanted to think too much about it.

Jonathan had drowned, but his face wasn’t swollen the way I had expected it to be. There was a mark running along the inside of his left arm. I traced it with my fingers, stroking the cold flesh along a purple line which crossed with another. An injury he sustained, we were told, during the accident.

I cried, as quietly as I could, but I did cry. Nancy shook. Tremors ran through her whole body, not just her shoulders. She was not shaking with sobs. This was prolonged, lengthy. Something had ruptured inside her, sending wave after wave of shock through her. It was as if she had been plugged in and couldn’t be switched off. I put both my arms around her to try and steady her but I couldn’t. And the worst thing about it was her silence. Absolute silence. I tried to pull her away and get her out of the room, but she wouldn’t move. She leaned forward and took Jonathan’s hand. It was stiff. It wouldn’t curl around hers anymore. We saw his palm was purple and scuffed, the skin ripped and burned, where he had held on to something. He must have held on for dear life. Nancy sank to her knees and kissed his poor hand and I put both mine on her shoulders. The man from the consulate shuffled. There was no doubt this was our son but we still needed to sign a piece of paper to confirm it. He thought it was time for us to leave, I could tell, but I must have looked helpless so he came over.

“Mrs. Brigstocke, Mrs. Brigstocke, we can go now.”

I was relieved that she ignored him, it left me some space in which to act. I pulled her hand from Jonathan’s and put it in mine.

“Nancy, come on, darling.” And finally she let me lead her from the room. The consulate had organised a car to take us to the seaside town where Jonathan had died. I didn’t really think about whether we would have to pay for any of it. We did, as it turned out. Jonathan’s travel insurance didn’t cover it.

We drove in silence from Jerez to Tarifa, sweating in the back of the car. The first thing Nancy wanted to do when we arrived was go to the beach. I asked the driver to wait. It was too hot. Midday. There was no shelter, nowhere to escape the hot, white sun. It was the largest beach we had ever been to, miles and miles of white sand. It was a desert, except there were crowds of people there. Hoards, burning, glistening in oil. We were the only ones fully clothed, and our shoes sank into the sand and I wondered whether to take mine off and walk barefoot, but Nancy marched on so I followed. She headed in a straight line to the sea, her hand holding her hat onto her head. The wind whipped around us and I squinted to stop the sand getting into my eyes. It was a hostile place. It took fifteen minutes for us to reach the edge of the water and then we stood there and stared out. It was like staring into space; I could see no end to it. The wind played on the water, teasing it into white froth, but there were children playing in there and windsurfers helped along by the wind. To them it was a friendly place. The top of my head was burning and I imagined how the skin would blister, then peel in a few days. I couldn’t stand it and put a hand on Nancy’s arm but she shook me off. She was not ready to leave. I felt ashamed that I had shown weakness. I looked behind me and wondered which patch of beach Jonathan had lain on. I wondered whether he had tried windsurfing. When I turned back Nancy was taking off her shoes. She hitched up her skirt with one hand and held out her other for my hand. I took off my socks and shoes, rolled up the bottom of my trousers, and stepped into the water with her. We stood there for a few moments and then I saw her close her eyes. I closed mine. “Good-bye, Jonathan,” I said in my head and imagined her doing the same. Then we left and got back into the car and drove to Jonathan’s hotel.

Our driver knew exactly where to go, a cheap hostel for backpackers in a back street about twenty minutes from the beach. I expected kindness from the staff at the hostel, but we didn’t receive much. They said they had barely seen Jonathan during his stay. They didn’t know him. He was a stranger who happened to die while he was their guest. I found them evasive, almost embarrassed, as if we might turn round and blame them for our son’s death. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, we kept being told. It was an accident. The sea is treacherous, the wind can suddenly come up, as it did that day. Was there a red flag flying? No one seemed to remember.

Jonathan’s rucksack was sitting on a chair in the room he had occupied. It was an inhospitable room: a single bed with a sheet and a blanket; a chipped chest of drawers which still held his clothes. The police had returned the bag he had had on the beach. They had found his room key and located his hotel. And there they had found his passport and that had led them to us.

Nancy took charge of everything. She took his clothes out of drawers and folded them, then laid them out on the bed. She wouldn’t let me help. It was her domain. While she sorted through Jonathan’s things, I sat in a chair at the window and looked out at what Jonathan would have looked out at. He didn’t have a sea view — his room was at the back of this cheap hotel. So while I was staring down at two, possibly Scandinavian backpackers sitting on white plastic chairs, at a white plastic table, on a yellow and pink crazy-paved courtyard, Nancy must have found Jonathan’s camera. Did she put it into his rucksack? I don’t know. Or did she hide it in her own bag? I will never know, but I wonder when it was that she decided to have the film developed. Was it then, or later, when we were back at home? I never saw his camera — I always assumed that it had got lost somewhere, or been stolen by someone in the hotel when they knew Jonathan wouldn’t be back for it. It was an expensive camera — the most expensive present we had ever bought him. A Nikon, top of the range, with a superzoom lens. Our gift to him on his eighteenth birthday. If he had lost it, he wouldn’t have wanted to tell us.

When I turned back from the window, Nancy was holding Jonathan’s penknife, Swiss Army, another birthday present from us. Was he thirteen? Fourteen? Anyway, it was an age when we felt he could be trusted with it. She found his aftershave and squirted it into the air, then sniffed, a last breath of our son’s scent. Why was she going through it all now? Just pack it up, please. I wanted to get out of there. Then she held up a pack of cigarettes. Neither of us knew Jonathan smoked. His girlfriend Sarah wouldn’t have approved. She wasn’t the type. Perhaps he picked up the habit once she had left. I wonder where Sarah is now? Middle aged, married probably. She was perfectly nice but I wouldn’t have wanted Jonathan to end up with her. Actually, that’s not true. If she hadn’t gone home. If she had stayed in Europe with Jonathan, then he would probably still be alive. And I would have done anything to have him still alive, even if it meant sacrificing him to marriage with an earnest, slightly humourless woman.