Space Hopper

by Helen Fisher

  ‘Okay,’ said Eddie, and again, I just knew that he would.

  The chilli was almost gone, and only one egg had been claimed. ‘I can hardly see my cards anymore,’ I said, holding them closer to the candle.

  ‘Me neither, shall I turn on a light?’

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ I said, and he blew out the flame, took my hand and led me up the stairs. In the dark we had no need for anything beyond our tiny world, insignificant and yet so important, our connection, so vital to us. Right now I only needed him, and the knowledge that my children were safe in their beds nearby. I didn’t need to see, I only needed to hold him in the dark, and be held, and know that he loves me.

  But I knew that soon this world alone would not be enough; I was already hankering after another.

  11

  I’m glad you’re here, still listening. It was a relief to talk to Louis, but you’re so important to me. All this stuff I’m telling you happened a few months ago, so you and I are still in catch-up mode. I told you that telling Louis my story was like a drug I knew would wear off. Well, telling you everything is distracting me from the withdrawal symptoms, the pain of not being honest with my husband. I still need to bring you up to speed, but I will tell you that at this very moment in time from which I am telling you my story I still haven’t said anything to Eddie about what’s going on. And so I need you – very much – to hear me, and believe in what I’m saying.

  * * *

  The day after the cards was Saturday and we took the girls roller-skating. When I was growing up, roller-skating was by far my favourite thing. My first pair of skates had metal wheels and straps that tied over my shoes. I used them on the pavements and you could hear me coming from a mile away. Then a skating rink opened in the town where I lived, and that’s where everyone went at the weekend; by then you could hire skating boots. Kids with money had their own; I wasn’t one of them, and I didn’t know anyone like that. Anyway, skating with Eddie and the girls is so much fun, we’re usually there for a couple of hours and we always go for burgers afterwards.

  I was feeling happier, and I could tell Eddie was too, even though I knew he must still wonder what had happened when he found me in the loft a few weeks ago. We were definitely back in a good place, talking about stuff, working things through, I was trying to understand him and he was listening to me. I was thinking a lot about my mother, and my younger self; I felt the pull of them, and a desire – which got harder and harder to resist – to return to them. I wanted to see my mother again so much. After a little taste of her company, she was almost all I wanted but the thought of what I had to go through to get back to her tightened my throat and made me sweat. It was like having to go on the most frightening rollercoaster in the world, one that might kill me, in order to get to the sweetest destination imaginable. I had to go back, I wanted to help them – my mother and me – but I didn’t know how; while I thought about how to do that, real life kept me busy.

  As often happens when we four go skating, I do a few circuits on my own, while Eddie and the girls take a less graceful approach to it all: stumbling into each other, picking each other up, bashing into the far ends and setting off again; they laugh and enjoy it. I love it too, but I get lost in my own thoughts as I circle the rink, this Saturday more than ever. As I glided round, I grew intensely conscious of my breath coming out of my nostrils and felt ultra-aware of my immediate place in the universe: alive and present. I felt governed by a deeper sense of calm and focus than I had ever felt lying in bed at night pondering the madness and wonder of my time travel.

  I guess most people experience something similar when they perform any repetitive physical activity that they are proficient at: their body is fully engaged, and if the skill is mastered then the mind is completely available for exploration of itself. I glided round the rink and the other people there were blurred and irrelevant to me; simply obstacles, easily avoided, like rocks on a path. Even my own family. I was vaguely aware of the sandy-coloured, polished, wood flooring and the hum of the wheels as they spoke the language of easy movement: of wheels and weight unimpeded, running on a smooth surface. On the walls around the large skating rink were electronic posters at eye level and they made a vague technicolour impression on me as they advertised travel in beautiful locations. I was barely aware of the bright images showing mountains and rivers, as I circled round and round in lazy, easy rotations.

  My body was busy roller-skating, my eyes were occupied with beautiful visions, and in my head I was free to meander through a maze – a visual maze – of thoughts that came unbidden: I softly glided between high green walls of foliage, and in my mind I saw Eddie, surrounded by tables full of cakes, biting into a slice of Victoria sponge and smiling. ‘You can do this,’ he said looking at the teeth marks he’d left in the cake and then back at me. ‘In fact, you can do better.’ Being a vicar’s wife, as I would eventually be, was going to involve some twee practicalities: I would attend events that I would normally avoid, and bake a lot more; I wouldn’t be able to ignore the call to provide home-made buns and biscuits. There was going to be no more genuine private life for us. We would become public property. We would be on call, on show. But if Eddie were a politician, or a celebrity, life would present me with the same demands. Religion worried me, partly because of its intangibility, but cakes were tangible, fundraising was tangible, kindness could be tangible. I could do this part of it, I could take this on and do it well.

  I continued skating, still gliding, vaguely conscious of a pleasant ache in my thighs and conscious too of being in control of my surroundings; I found relief in feeling that I was rooted here on earth, and not flying through the atmosphere to another time and place. Soon, I was back in the maze of my mind and I turned a few corners in there, watching my hands ahead of me brushing the leaves as I passed between the carefully crafted topiary. I saw my mother and I actually stumbled on my skates a little and saw the floor come into sharp focus for a moment. In a beat I was steady once more and my inner eye watched my mother in the maze. Her smile was one third apology and two-thirds amusement. ‘I’m sorry, but this is all I’ve got to give you,’ she said, handing me a glass jar and her leather recipe book. ‘This should sweeten the savage,’ she said dreamily, and I looked down and saw the book was open on the page for sticky toffee pudding. ‘Come and see me, I’m your mother,’ she said, but when I looked, she was gone, and I heard her echoing voice say, ‘Now you see me, now you don’t!’

  I thought I heard the rushing of a river, but it was the thrum of my wheels on wood. Without any effort, my mind sifted thoughts and worries. Is this what meditation is? Because I’ve never done it, I’ve never even done yoga, but if I had to guess, this was meditation. I continued to float through my cerebral maze and while my body remained on the roller-skating rink, I was in a zone, unaware of anything around me. I felt a few wisps of my tied-back hair blowing in the breeze generated by my speed of motion.

  The green of the maze was alluring; I wanted to breathe it in, but I started to get the same nervous feeling I associate with being lost. The visions of Eddie and my mother had come unbidden; they were there for me with messages, and not too cryptic. I struggled with both my mother and with Eddie, and my responsibility to them, and what they needed or wanted from me; what I needed and wanted from them. But I could work through it. The loneliness of the maze was now harder to bear than my more obvious responsibilities; a loneliness that felt like hunger.

  The maze had more to show me, I felt sure, but before the centre could reveal itself to me, I hit a wall, or something like a wall. I had been totally mesmerised by my weird dreamlike visions, and I guess eventually something was going to get in my way and disrupt them. In this case it was a wide-bottomed man who had entered the rink and got into difficulty. He wanted something to hang on to, to steady himself, but was too far from the edge, and opted for the floor. He was rolling along slowly as though he was trying to touch his toes. I hit him at speed and rolled awkwardly over his ar
ched back, landing hard on my coccyx. The jarring in my back was nasty, and the shock of being yanked out of blissful meditation and back into the real world of pain, people and verbal interactions was unwelcome, to say the least.

  Eddie had been with the girls having a drink, but when he saw me go down, he came and pulled me to my feet. I was fine, and I navigated myself against the flow of skaters to join Esther and Evie, while Eddie helped the guy I had leapfrogged.

  * * *

  ‘That was horrible,’ I said, rubbing my bum and sipping on the icy lemonade that was waiting for me on the table.

  ‘He really broke your reverie,’ said Eddie.

  ‘He broke my cool,’ I said, looking at the girls. ‘Which is far more serious.’ They giggled.

  ‘Seriously, you have been skating round in a daydream for half an hour.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Half an hour!’

  ‘At least,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘Thirsty,’ I said, draining my drink. I gave the girls some change and asked them to get me another – they loved getting the drinks on their skates: dangerous waitressing.

  ‘You were in a world of your own,’ Eddie said. He looked gorgeous in a black crew-neck sweatshirt and jeans that sat low on his hips. The belt he was wearing, I bought him for our leather wedding anniversary. I can’t remember which number that is.

  ‘I was,’ I said. ‘I was daydreaming. Meditating, I think.’

  ‘Out there?’ Eddie said, with more than a hint of disbelief. I looked back out to the rink, and agreed that from here it looked as far from a place of meditation as it’s possible to get.

  ‘I must have shut the world out. I was alone with my thoughts.’

  ‘Penny for them.’

  ‘I thought about you, about being a vicar’s wife, the role I’m going to take on when you’re ordained one day and how I’ll cope. I thought about my mother, and how I wish I could see her.’

  He held my hand. ‘And you did all that thinking out there?’ He jerked his head again in the direction of the noise, the music, and the mayhem of what looked like too many limbs per person.

  ‘You must have experienced being so lost in thought that you didn’t notice anything around you?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been lost in thought, but usually in peaceful places.’

  I looked over at the girls, who were at the counter ordering a drink. Evie was like a baby deer on ice as she fumbled with money and tried to hand it to the man serving them. I winced.

  ‘They’ll be all right,’ Eddie said. ‘Don’t look! We’re too far away to catch them if they fall.’

  I shook the ice from the bottom of my cup into my mouth and crunched it.

  ‘It’s a skill to be able to block out all this interference and concentrate on your inner world, Faye. Finding peace in the havoc of daily life is something to aspire to.’

  ‘It’s dangerous, is what it is,’ I said. ‘I nearly killed a man.’

  The girls returned, and I drank half my drink and let them share the rest between them; they’re rarely allowed fizzy drinks. Then I clapped my hands. ‘More skating?’ I asked. ‘Or is it time for burgers?’

  We all voted burgers and I remained in the real, outward-facing world for the rest of the day. It was heavenly.

  12

  France happened, which meant I didn’t have to lie to Eddie or sneak around in the middle of the night in order to get back to the seventies. He decided to squeeze in a trip before the end of the summer holidays and take the girls. At first he assumed I’d go with him, which was slightly awkward, but I told him I could really use the time to myself; I would love some me-time, I said. He stared at me as though trying to read my mind, but then he just said he understood. I mean we all need me-time; you, I’m sure have felt the need for it. Having young children makes you hungry for the opportunity not to be constantly and intently alert, it makes your mouth water at the thought of not looking at the clock or even knowing the time. So it wasn’t an unreasonable request. And I could picture Eddie and his mum talking into the night, in their own private way, after the girls were asleep, without me there spoiling their opportunity to be completely frank with each other. I think people underestimate how much their presence interferes with the way things would be if they weren’t there, and I knew that Eddie’s visit with his mum, this time, would be better for him if I didn’t go.

  And of course I wanted to be alone to visit my mother. Being selfish is so much easier when you convince yourself it’s better for others.

  Every time I went in to work after my revelations to Louis, he would contact me, wanting to talk to me about it. I wanted to talk about it too, but for me it felt more serious. Louis was delighting in it all a little too much, as though it were a game, a trivial and challenging conundrum as opposed to a life-threatening voyage into the unknown. But I can’t criticise him really, as I do love him. It’s just, he took the logistics seriously, but not the emotional side. I knew how to get back to my mother, my body could take it, I thought. But my heart?

  When Eddie went to France, I was so relieved. Getting a good opportunity to visit my mother had been my priority, and now that was sorted, the dangers of it all began to strike me; other really frightening things played on my mind. Frightening in a different kind of way than never going back to her I mean. Because that was a worry: never getting back to her. But then, anyone who has lost their mother has to deal with that.

  Risk of injury was high on my list of concerns. First of all I got the box out of the loft and put it on my bed. I stared at it, rubbed my chin, then heaved the mattress onto the floor and surrounded it with pillows; landing on that was going to be a lot easier than landing in the loft. No splinters for a start. Then I pulled out armfuls of clothes from the wardrobe on their hangers – I needed something that might be good for time-travelling – and piled them onto the bed base. Louis had suggested bundling up, which was a great idea, but my bottom layer of clothing would need to be acceptable in the 1970s. I had a floral skirt and a blouse, but a skirt didn’t seem like good time-travel attire, too flimsy, so I put on a pair of light-blue flared jeans and my white pumps. I had a sweatshirt, long sleeves with green arms and white torso, and I looked retro enough, but it was too thin to protect me on the journey; I needed something spongy and thick so I started squeezing jumpers between my fingers. When I remembered Eddie’s ski suit, I smiled. It would be huge on me, which was a bonus, plus it had a hood.

  So it was that I found myself standing in my bedroom one sunny August evening, about eight-thirty. I had eaten, and drank lots of water because good hydration always seems sensible. I wore the everyday 1970s-style clothes with a coat on top, because I was guessing it would be January or February in the past. Over that I wore the big red ski suit. I pulled on a Balaclava and then put the ski suit hood up and pulled the toggles to form a puckered peep-hole. Louis had suggested gloves and I pulled some on – ski gloves that secured at the wrist with Velcro and were made of something stiff and synthetic. I turned to the full-length mirror and saluted myself; I looked like a spaceman with a desperate uniform made up from charity shop items, or a very conspicuous, fashion-challenged burglar. A trickle of sweat ran down my back as I stepped slowly towards the box: a make-believe astronaut ready for take-off.

  I tried not to think about what might be about to happen as I stepped into the box. To think I used to be afraid of flying in a nice safe aeroplane. To think I was afraid of spiders, for goodness sake, when there was so much more to be frightened of. My mouth was dry as I stood in the cardboard box, despite my efforts at hydration. The mattress was an uneasy platform and I worried that I would split the bottom of the box.

  I waited there, sweating: one third heat, two thirds fear, and imagined, as I had once before, Eddie finding me passed out while I dreamed that I was back in the past with my mother. How would it be for him to find me here like this when he returned in a week? Like a riddle: a woman is found wearing an oversized
ski suit in the middle of summer, in a cardboard box on a mattress on the bedroom floor. What happened?

  He would struggle to find a logical solution.

  Anyway, that wouldn’t happen, I wasn’t dreaming, this was real. But I didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I was in the box maybe a minute (time is relative and it seemed longer), and I started to panic. The delay was giving me too much time to reconsider. Waves of hot and cold washed over me and I thought of an octopus I saw on a nature program whose colours rippled and changed. I tried to decide whether or not I had time to get out of the box before it ripped me away from my family and my home. I suddenly realised I should have left a note for Eddie in case I never returned. No matter that my words would have seemed like the ramblings of a crazy person. I had to leave him something, otherwise it was too cruel. He was in France all week; I had time and decided I just had to write a letter. But as I went to step out of the box, the world opened up under my feet and I fell through it like a trap door.

  The speed with which I fell is beyond adequate description. You have probably fallen yourself at some point, or missed a step as you’re coming down the stairs, or stepped off the kerb when you walked too close to the edge. That sickening lurch, the flood of adrenalin, the shredding of nerves. But those moments last only a fraction of time. Less than a second. When the falling goes on and on: that’s what I can’t describe. I had thought about it and hoped that if I fell for long enough, maybe I would become accustomed to it, and it would feel more like falling with a parachute. But the plummeting nothingness was relentless. I felt like a cricket ball that had been thrown from an aeroplane.

  But the least I could do was try to breathe. This I had practised. The rush of air made it almost impossible the first time, but the squashy ski hood tied up around my face helped. I panted, taking fast, shallow breaths. My breath was hot and I was reminded of being in a cold bed in the winter, head under the covers, trying to produce heat. I remembered the midwife saying pant as I gave birth, and as I rushed between one space and another I thought, Is this more like giving birth, or more like being born?