Page 8 of See the Stars

Astronomy? Impossible to understand and madness to investigate.

SOPHOCLES

A lice lay in bed listening to the sound of Hugo’s gentle snores.

It was hard to sleep; worries about the future flooded through her mind.

She’d never suffered from ill health before and it terrified her.

What if she couldn’t go back to work? What if she did, and the stress of it was too much?

What if she had another stroke, more serious this time?

Hugo shifted, and she felt his cold feet touch her legs.

Although unpleasant, the contact helped Alice to settle herself into more prosaic thoughts.

In her flat, they slept at opposite sides of an enormous superking bed with a memory foam mattress, the same material that NASA used to line the astronauts’ seats in rockets.

In this bed, she shifted uncomfortably, feeling a spring digging into her back.

Her mother had replaced the bunkbeds from her childhood with a small double that still took up most of the room.

She heard Basalt scratching at the door and took it as a welcome distraction from the worries swirling around her mind.

There was barely room to swing a cat in here, she thought.

How had that become a unit of measurement?

Light years she could understand, clocking in at six trillion miles. But swinging cat units?

She smiled to herself. No one in their right mind would dream of swinging Basalt. She wished everyone knew their own worth as much as her cat did. He didn’t possess an ounce of self-doubt, and he’d not allow anyone to push him around. Or swing him, for that matter.

Six trillion miles. Alice could still remember the speed of light, but earlier that day she’d pointed at a dripping tap, unable to think of the word for it. Turn off the water machine , she’d almost said, but that would have scared her mother. Instead, she’d got up and tightened it herself.

It was lack of sleep, that was all. And stress. She’d be back to herself in no time.

She had to stop thinking about the alternative.

She heard the sound of the toilet flushing, the gushing water and then the groans of the pipes as they lurched into action. The plumbing, like much of the house, was old and struggling to cope. A final hiccuping sound emerged from somewhere deep within the walls, causing Hugo to stir in his sleep.

It meant her mother was up. Even though Sheila no longer worked the night shift, it had left her body clock permanently disrupted, and Alice listened as she clattered around her room.

Basalt must have heard her too, because the scratching stopped.

He had likely left to investigate his nocturnal companion.

Alice opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling.

It felt high above her head, used as she was to seeing her brother’s bunk above her when she used to sleep in this room.

The light fitting was the same: the moon-shaped cover that she’d begged her mother to buy her for her tenth birthday.

It had lasted well, and Alice tried to remember how much it had cost back then.

Certainly more than her mother could afford.

She’d managed it somehow, likely taking on extra shifts.

Alice thought for a moment about how much her own life had changed.

It had been a long time since she had wanted to buy something she couldn’t afford.

She found an idea creeping into her mind.

She’d made it all the way up here to the countryside from home, and she’d not done any work at all.

Perhaps a small cigarette wouldn’t be so terrible, as a reward?

She had one, just for emergencies, hidden in a hole in the lining of the old warm coat she’d brought with her.

She felt like it was calling to her. She listened for noises from her mother’s room. Silence, finally.

One cigarette wouldn’t hurt, it wasn’t as if she was starting again. Just a few puffs to take the edge off and help her sleep. Perhaps the nicotine was what her brain needed – it could help sharpen her mind, peeling away the layer of fuzziness.

She shifted in the bed, trying to ease herself up gradually without waking Hugo.

It didn’t work. ‘Where are you going?’ he muttered sleepily.

‘I’m just nipping to the loo,’ Alice lied, tying her dressing gown around herself.

‘Noisy flush here,’ commented Hugo. ‘Maybe I could look at the plumbing in the morning.’

‘You must be dreaming,’ she said to him, with a laugh, ‘if you think you know about plumbing.’

‘I’m a science teacher.’

‘Exactly. Not a plumber.’

‘How hard can it be?’

‘We’ll hire someone,’ said Alice, giving him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Now go back to sleep. I’ll be right back.’

Alice slipped her feet into her mother’s gardening shoes, sitting by the back door. Her cigarette and lighter were safely concealed in her hand.

Opening the door, she stepped out onto the grass and took a deep breath. She lit up and allowed the cold air and tobacco smoke to fill her lungs and seep into her bloodstream. That was better.

Then she coughed, concealing the noise as best she could in her elbow. She closed the door behind her in case Basalt’s keen ears had picked up the sound and he tried to follow her.

She stood for a moment in the garden. Death was often portrayed as cold and dark, but here, shivering in the blackness of the garden, Alice had a moment of feeling intensely alive. She looked up.

It was the same sky as in the city. But it was so different without the haze of pollution she’d grown accustomed to.

It was as though she’d been looking at the world through misted glasses that had suddenly been wiped clean.

She could see the constellation of Andromeda.

And there, to the left, was Jupiter. She liked the way planets disguised themselves as stars, only revealing their true natures to the trained eye.

Jupiter was close to the earth tonight, its elliptical orbit in her favour. With a telescope, she’d be able to see its bands, perhaps even the red spot if it was facing in the right direction.

A telescope. Could she?

Even though she’d only taken a few puffs, she stubbed out the cigarette underfoot, carefully rescuing the butt and putting it back into the hole in the lining of her coat so her indiscretion wouldn’t be discovered.

Then she walked back to the house and picked up the key to the shed, enjoying the familiar shape of the metal squeezed into her palm.

She listened for a moment, but heard no sounds of stirring from upstairs.

She hurried out to the shed, excitement and a hint of nicotine flooding through her. Her hands were shaking as she reached for the padlock and turned the key. For a moment, it felt as though her grandfather might be waiting inside to greet her.

He wasn’t. But as she pushed the creaky door open, she breathed deeply, taking in the scent of musty wood that she associated with him. She flicked on the light.

A few spiders scattered, and a collection of cobwebs suggested their kind had moved in long ago.

But otherwise, it was pretty much as she’d remembered.

Her grandfather’s logbooks lined the shelves, each carefully dated.

Of course, one was missing, and she blinked away the memory.

Instead, she turned her attention to the desk.

Her eyes found where the telescope must be, covered with a sheet of tarpaulin.

Her fingers tingled as she reached out to pull the material back.

There it was. Hand-made, a little rickety, but to her mind more magnificent than all the technology she’d used in her career.

Gingerly she dusted it off. It looked in pretty good shape, considering. A little dust, some discoloration, a cobweb or two. But would it work?

You need the right base to see the stars , her grandpa would have said, so first she went to his tripod, leaning on the desk, and carried it outside.

Years of disuse had made it stiff, and Alice struggled at first to even get it open, but once it was, she made the adjustments easily, muscle memory powering her fingers.

When she was happy it was stable, she went back into the shed.

She looked at the telescope again, then lifted it as carefully as if it were made of glass, which of course parts of it were.

It was lighter than she remembered, or perhaps she was stronger.

Outside, she slotted it carefully into position, under the stars where it belonged.

She closed her eyes and imagined her grandfather bending down to peer through it.

Sadness seeped through her at his absence.

She tried not to think about their last meeting.

Instead, she tried to imagine how happy he’d be that she was using the telescope again.

She pulled herself together, pointed the telescope in the direction of Jupiter, blinked a few times, then looked through.

She couldn’t see a thing.

It was too blurry. The focus had become unaligned, the Sellotape had lost its stickiness over the years.

She took her eyes away from the viewfinder and took the telescope back into the shed to examine it in the light.

Now there was a task to perform, she felt more comfortable, less susceptible to unwelcome memories creeping in.

She detached the lens and inspected it. Filthy.

An old bottle of solvent still sat on the desk, and she placed a few drops on a clean lens cloth from her grandfather’s drawer.

But as she cleaned, she found another issue.

The lens was scratched and would need to be replaced.

She removed it and set it to one side. That would be easy enough. But there was a more serious problem.

Rust.

It had spread across several of the metallic elements. Spending years in the shed, perhaps it was inevitable.

It would be far more trouble to fix than it would be to start from scratch, she realised. And it would never be as good as the modern telescopes available.