The Day That Went Missing Read online

  I can’t find him, not fully, in this photograph. I can’t feel him. I’ve never consciously preserved memories of how he was as a person, because my brain has been used up suppressing the more aggressive memory of the two of us in the water. That left no space either for Nicky as the person he was before, or for what became of him afterward. Oh, my poor old mum, I think, and on I charge.

  “Did they ever find the body?”

  Not much of an inquest without a body, though with drowning the body can be a source of complications. The sodden corpse can be seized by currents and lost at sea. Fish peck at softened flesh until the bones separate and sink into the Atlantic darkness. The exhausted bone matter flakes into sand, and random particles formerly known as Nicholas Beard diffuse across the oceans and wash up on shores. He exists, but is dispersed and untraceable.

  In 1978 at an ancient churchyard in an English village, led by an Anglican vicar with his Book of Common Prayer, my parents may have buried an empty box. Lord, have mercy upon us. Better than nothing. The memorial gift to the school was an empty box—I don’t know what is coincidence and what is not.

  In England in 1978 it was important to keep up appearances. Go through the motions, with a solid though small coffin to lower as a focus for grief, if the actual bones were unavailable. I imagine. I imagine the deep brown grave, the empty brass-handled box. Perhaps the coffin was lacquered white, to denote the innocence of a child. I don’t know because I wasn’t there.

  “Mum, did they recover the body?”

  “Yes,” she says. “We had Nicky’s body.”

  If Mum said the word “Nicky” at irregular intervals, and she did, I never once heard my dad speak my brother’s name. Not once. Whatever memories or mementos Dad kept were his alone, and his was the example we followed. Now, several years since he died, the rule of silence has lifted. I can rummage around, and I have the keys to the closets.

  His study at one end of the bungalow remains largely untouched, and in an alcove behind a scroll-down door, formerly locked, there are three metal filing cabinets. Most of the drawers contain business correspondence or bank statements, but the bottom drawer of the corner cabinet has no obvious organizing principle. Letters from a Swindon rugby-club dispute with Ushers brewery (1980) are filed among Round Table itineraries from 1972. I pull out a green plastic bag.

  Mum watches from the doorway. She has been sorting through Dad’s papers and was the first to find the bag. “In the attic we have a red suitcase full of Nicky’s stuff,” Mum says. “And these papers your dad kept.”

  I separate out the contents: school reports, and a vinyl-covered ring-binder clamping a thick collection of commiseration letters. In among these is a Certified Copy of an Entry of Death. In the United Kingdom no document is more conclusive than a certificate signed by the Registrar, and the date of death is officially recorded as 18th August 1978. Nicky was alive, then he died, a fact now confirmed by two separate sources. There was a body:

  Date and Place of Death: 18/8/78 Dead on Arrival Stratton Hospital, Bude

  Name and Surname: NICHOLAS PAUL BEARD

  Date and Place of Birth: 23rd March 1969 SWINDON

  Occupation and Home Address: Son of COLIN ANTHONY BEARD, BUILDER

  Cause of death: DROWNING in the Sea. Accident.

  I know the date and I’ve found the body.

  I did not see him drown. The last time I saw Nicky he was alive, his head back, his neck tight, his lips clamped shut to keep out the water. Nevertheless, his body was recovered; he was removed from the sea, transferred to a vehicle and declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Bude. A signed document, registered in the sub-district of Stratton in the County of Cornwall, authenticates these facts. The form is filled in by hand, black ink, fountain pen, sometimes with block letters and sometimes not, with a note that an inquest was held on 4/10/78 and Certificate received from G. H. St. L. Northey, Coroner for N-E Cornwall.

  The death certificate also gives me the date of my brother’s birthday. 23rd March. I hold the page in my hand, not the certificate itself but a copy, signed by the Registrar (illegibly) “certified to be a true copy of an entry in a register in my custody,” dated 20th November 1978. There is no arguing with this document, no reinterpretation. What I do feel is that our reaction to these facts can’t have been entirely healthy, if I’m finding out the date of my brother’s birthday from his death certificate.

  Nevertheless this information, limited as it is, makes him more alive to me. I want more of him, whatever I can glean from this and other items of paperwork left behind. In the folder with the death certificate I find a typed letter from the Operations Manager of North Cornwall District Council, a reply to earlier correspondence from Mr. Beard, dated 7th October 1978, “concerning bathing conditions at Tregardock Beach.”

  Your observations will be presented to the Council’s Beach Safety Working Party later this month.

  I don’t find a copy of the original letter, but I doubt Dad was commending the Council on their attention to health and safety. He wrote his letter of complaint, if that’s what it was, six weeks after Nicky drowned, suggesting that by that time he’d already started looking for someone to blame. He wanted a story, with reasons and a villain, so perhaps he’d found a way to blame the Council. Their godforsaken beach was a death trap. Through negligence, the North Cornwall District Councilors had caused the death of his innocent child.

  I want to see the beach for myself, so I borrow Mum’s car again. “To visit the scene of the crime,” I think. I’m behind the wheel of Mum’s MX-5 heading south on the M5 asking myself why those are the words that occur to me: “the scene of the crime.” It’s just a phrase, because I have no evidence of criminal activity. DROWNING in the Sea, says the official verdict on the Entry of Death, the relevant section handwritten in black-ink copperplate: Accident.

  I’m driving Mum’s car to the scene of the accident. At times before now, on stressful occasions, I’ve fantasized about hiring a car and driving north. Any car will do, just point it north as far as north will go. The instinct may have been sound, only the direction was wrong. The deep southwest has the answers. I’ve used up the M5 and am running out of A30. On the A39 to Wadebridge, angular wind turbines on every rise remind me that 1978 is the past and these days we live in the future. I’m beyond the future—up close, the giant metal turbines are rusting.

  The satnav tells me where to go, and when I crest a hill on the B3267 the horizon ahead is a slab of slate-gray Atlantic. In my head I hear my dad, and he says what he always says:

  “Can you see the sea?”

  “Yes, Dad, I can see the sea.”

  My destination is Port Isaac, a former fishing village on Cornwall’s north coast. The holiday cottage where we stayed in 1978 was isolated, a gray house in a green valley with no other houses in sight, but I doubt we’d have stopped in the village more than twice in the course of a fortnight, once to look around, then again for souvenirs. When we needed provisions, Dad would show he was willing by leaving in the car and coming back with items from a list written by Mum, who’d tell him his strawberries and yogurts were overpriced. He had no idea about the realities of life, she’d say, to make a point and because she was right.

  In Swindon, Dad would never go near the shopping, but on holiday he’d load the yogurts into the fridge and look hurt, as if no one understood his pain. The mood would pass. As a family we were together once a year, and it was important to stay calm, just as a month later he’d feel calm enough to write a letter of “observations” to the District Council about conditions on the beach that killed his son.

  The Council’s letter of response contained a valuable fact, which along with the death certificate made for a second important find in the green plastic bag. Mr. Pyman of the Camelford office names the real live beach where the drowning took place. Tregardock. Admittedly, my life had to be creaking and my dad had to die before I felt able to open the filing cabinet, but my day in Swindon with Mum had pro
duced a decent opening result, enough to start piecing together the story we’d collectively conspired to forget.

  Tregardock Beach, named in that letter, is north of Port Isaac, about halfway to Tintagel, which is nine or ten miles away. I check the name “Tregardock” as transcribed into my notebook, to remind myself where I’m going, then leave the notebook in the car as I wander through Port Isaac itself. The steep harbor streets don’t bring back memories, and scratched across a metal One Way sign are the words No English, which is slightly hurtful, because the Cornish are welcome in Swindon any time.

  The woman behind the counter in Nicky B’s pasty shop tells me the village has changed, not always for the better. She blames TV tourism, because Port Isaac is the picturesque setting for a TV drama called Doc Martin—visitors get confused about what is real and what is not. “We get a different class of tourist now,” she says. “They forget what they came for.”

  The fudge shop sells a map of the village as it appears in the TV series, where every façade is recognizable but different. The fudge shop is the pharmacy, and Doc Martin’s surgery is the pottery. I’m not disappointed, though I’ve never seen the TV show and hadn’t expected the village to be stuck in time, in the preservative of 1978.

  The beach, however, is more of a worry. If the beach has changed, I’m frightened my possible encounter with the past will be lost. I’m equally frightened I’ll find it exactly the same, opening up a direct route to memories deliberately erased.

  I leave Port Isaac village without enriching a single fishing-themed tea-shop. The road north through Delabole runs parallel to the coastline, and as long as I try every left turn, I should be able to find my beach by trial and error. Sooner or later, without consulting a map, I’ll find the beach about which the District Council, in 1978, received comments in writing from a recently bereaved father.

  The first couple of lefts fail to reach the coast, ending at holiday cottages or farms. I five-point the Mazda between high thorn hedges, go back the way I came. I didn’t bring a map because I felt the memory ought still to be within me, as a measure of the importance of the event, and of the dead. I’m looking for Tregardock, as named by the Council, but I’m not going to find it by car, not with the navigational skills of an eleven-year-old. I’d be more likely to recognize the route from the backseat of a Vauxhall Viva, no seat belt, towels on my lap and a beach ball under my feet. I end up at Trebarwith Strand, with its two surf shops and a pub. Should have brought a map. I decide to ask for directions.

  Only I’ve forgotten the name of the beach, even though I recently looked it up in my notebook, which I left in the boot of the car, now parked in the car park. In the Trebarwith Port William Inn I find myself speechless. The beach I want starts with Tre-something, but so does most of Cornwall. I’m standing at the bar in the Port William Inn at Trebarwith Strand and the word—whatever it is—won’t come out of my mouth. The name of the beach has vanished from my mind. Darkness is falling.

  I don’t find the beach that afternoon, and before daylight fades I need to pitch my tent. I drive back to Port Gaverne, and down the lane from the campsite I buy a pint at the Port Gaverne Hotel and order fish and chips, burger and chips—don’t really care, as long as the plate is covered in chips, for the comfort. As my friend Dru once pointed out, all authentic English food is comfort food.

  At a table in the corner I sip a pint of Doom Bar and make a start on the letters of condolence, which I’ve brought with me in their green plastic bag. There are so many, so much commiseration handwritten on various types of paper, from headed office stationery (Hills Builders) to lined double-punched A4 pads. I open notelets with floral designs (all profits to Harlow Carr Gardens, Harrogate) and ready-made cards from Hallmark (At This Time of Sorrow):

  Although no words that we can say

  Will really ease your sorrow

  We know your faith will see you through

  To a happier tomorrow.

  I eat and I read. Occasionally I glance up at the mirror behind the bar and wonder what I look like. The most plausible resemblance is to a down-mouthed widower, escaping recent tragedy on a Cornish mini-break while rereading the sympathy of others one last time. This is the last time, then he’ll put away the letters and move on.

  I can’t make the sadness stick. I find these letters from three decades ago too interesting. Some of the cards contain a discreet printed line from the Bible (Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me, Psalms 23:4), and because no trace of 1978 is beneath my attention, I note the stock code and penciled price on the back: B119, 20p. I hold up the heavier writing papers to the backlit bar, for the watermarks: Queen’s Velvet, Three Candlesticks, Leach’s Abingdon Parchment. The correspondence evokes a different era, just as many of the writers remain unmistakably themselves, whoever they may be.

  I only heard about it this morning, Dorothy Clarke told me at the Coffee Morning.

  Back then the death was gossip to some, and these letters are like gossip to me now: I’m tickled by the glimpse of characters from the past.

  What an ending to your holiday, incidentally thank you for the card.

  Not everyone had their best stationery to hand, but the urge to express written sympathy extends from work colleagues to people who live in the same Swindon street as us (they add the address, to be sure we can identify them as neighbors). Everyone is feeling terrible, from the PE teacher at school to the staff at Cross Street garage, which has the contract for the company vans. Bystanders on the beach (how did they get the Swindon address?) offer their sincere condolences and their deep concern, as do relations who in brackets add a reminder of who they are (Aunt and Uncle). Nicky’s own friends communicate their sorrow as best they can: Dear Mrs. Beard, I was very unhappy indeed and cried quite heartily.

  I can’t remember what we were doing, or where we were when these letters flooded in. From the Bishop of Malmesbury, from the Swindon Town Club, the Committee and Members of the Clarendon Club, On Behalf of the Swindon Ladies’ Circle, On Behalf of all members of the Inner Wheel Club, from the Swindon Conservative Association, the National Westminster Bank, my grandparents’ neighbors who ran the market garden, teachers and their wives when we’d never have guessed they were married, from Lloyds Bank and various Anglican vicars and the Catholic priest of St. Savior’s.

  The old world, as of 1978, is filled with courtesy and legible handwriting, and the letters together summon a historical community of grief. All of Swindon is grieving.

  A separate brown envelope contains a second impressive set of letters addressed to my grandparents. Gran has written on the outside of the envelope: “our letters, when you want to see them.” Many are in handwriting identical to hers, signed Phyllis and Molly and Gladys, in true sympathy with my grandmother, Mabel.

  My eyes are leaking, so I go to the bar for another pint, which seems to fix the problem. The reiteration of sorrow in these letters bombards me with the idea of grief, but fails to connect me for long to the actual feeling. I start comparing one letter with another, rating them for sincerity. I let my inner literary critic fend away the risk of genuine empathy.

  The general consensus (it has cast a gloom over Swindon), with the notable exception of the Catholic priest, is that my parents and we the boys have suffered a tragic loss, tragic circumstances, tragic news and a ghastly tragedy. The loss, the circumstances, the news, the accident: a tragedy from every angle. At this sad time friends and acquaintances reach out with most sincere condolences on the tragic death of your son.

  The death is tragic, the death. With that rare exception, “death” is the missing word. Loss, circumstances, news. The writers of the letters mean death.

  Although we didn’t know him.

  I stop reaching for a sadness I don’t feel and start looking for Nicky.

  We all remember Nicholas at the Barbecue as a bright handsome boy with a lovely sense of humor.

  Everything Nicky did he did well, be it sport, work, his music, or just kindness an
d good manners.

  Nicky was extremely kind and helpful and a great conversationalist.

  The safest response, I assume, is not to speak ill of the dead. Mum told me Nicky was behind with his schoolwork, and rubbish at sport. He dropped his catches. If he were the paragon these letters suggest, why dwell on his qualities and make the situation worse? Why would these people do that to me, years later in a quiet midweek pub?

  The letters make Nicholas Beard shine, but I feel they’re predictable, cheapening the experience of sudden death by saying what I’d expect them to say. The messages of condolence leave me cold, both the formulas (no words could possibly console you) and the exaggerations. Nicky was, to me, the perfect schoolboy: bright, talented, and so enthusiastic, even when things were going badly.

  Death in these letters is character-forming, like a traditional English education, but no one knows how else to express the sense of loss. Words seem so very inadequate. I’ll need to look elsewhere for the person Nicky truly was.

  In Swindon, Mum had mentioned a red suitcase in the attic, but from my experience of teaching creative writing I’m wary of shortcuts to Characterization. In particular, I distrust classroom exercises that involve a questionnaire:

  • What does your character have in his pockets?

  • What are your character’s favorite clothes?

  • How does your character feel about what he has in his pockets?

  • How does your character feel about the way he looks?

  This is how a fiction writer is taught to fully realize a nonexistent character, as part of the creative process. This step is essential, because if a character fails to come alive, no one will care when he dies.

  My gran’s funeral, up on the hill at Liddington, early 2002. Gran had been dying for months, and at the end she used to clutch my wrist with her waxy, misshapen fingers. “Why does the good Lord spare me?” She was ready to go, she said, and I believed her. So at the funeral sadness wasn’t the only emotion I felt. After Gran’s coffin was in the ground, outside in the graveyard, I saw Mum and my two brothers standing with heads bowed in front of Nicky’s Celtic cross. I felt instant outrage, and no inclination to join them, though I knew my mum would have liked that. They were drawing attention to themselves, and to my dead brother, and this wasn’t their day, or his. It was Gran’s day. I kept to the tarmac path, and one of my cousins, whom I don’t know well, said: “That’s your brother, isn’t it? I remember him, he was a good guy.”