Mourning Ruby

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘The baby will have cousins all over Cornwall,’ said Adam, when I was pregnant and we came to St Ives. ‘God knows how many.’

  We stood in Barnoon Cemetery, by his grandmother’s grave. It was November and I was seven months pregnant. The wind blew and the sky was pale and torn with cloud. We’d come in from Trevail where we were staying in a cottage which had no running water. Adam lit the fires, pumped the water, made me stay in bed until the rooms were warm.

  I bent down, balancing myself, and touched the stone of his grandmother’s grave. I thought of the years she had been there with the smell of salt on the springy turf, and the sea sounding, and the boats sailing around the Island and out to the fishing grounds. Her grave was tended, with white pebbles on it and a little bush that was bare now but might have flowers in the spring.

  ‘One of my cousins looks after the grave,’ said Adam.

  ‘I’d like to be buried here,’ I said.

  ‘Lots of people want that,’ said Adam. ‘There’s competition.’ He helped me up and clasped me close so that my belly bumped against him. ‘Don’t think about it now.’

  Ruby jumped inside me and I felt how alive I was, packed with life.

  ‘I could belong here,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t feel lonely here.’

  The wind whipped hair into my eyes and I turned my face aside, but Adam made a frame for my face with his hands and turned me to look at him.

  ‘Are you lonely?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not.’

  Adam opened his coat and wrapped it so that we were all inside it, the three of us, him and me and the baby who would be our daughter. Ruby.

  ‘Let’s keep you both warm,’ he said.

  We went into town and the wind pushed us in and out of the salt, intricate streets. It was a white gale, with no rain in it. Adam tapped the smart paint on a cottage door as we went by.

  ‘The town’s changing,’ he said. ‘London money coming down.’

  The wind raced and roared and I wanted to run with it. Ruby was excited too. She turned inside me like a fish and thudded against my flesh. I wondered if she knew where she was, and felt that she belonged here.

  We went into an hotel and a slow, tired man served us coffee. I lifted the cup and tasted its sour taste and I was flooded from head to foot with happiness.

  You can write about memory forever. You can do it to avoid writing about what happened. It’s one way out of it. Tell a story, tell another story. Stories falling as thick as snow to bury what happened. But it won’t work any more.

  So, this is what happened.

  It was a warm evening in August. Adam was home, and so for once I didn’t need the babysitter when I went out to work. I had to be at the bar at seven, and usually I’d have bathed Ruby first, but it was such a beautiful evening that Adam thought he’d take Ruby to the park after they’d eaten. It would be light until eight-thirty. Ruby wanted to ride her bike. She’d just started to ride it without stabilizers, which was good for a five-year-old. Adam always made her wear a bike helmet.

  They were still eating when I left. They were sitting together at the table, eating macaroni cheese.

  ‘Have some of your lettuce, Rubes,’ I said. I was standing at the mirror, tying back my hair into its tight knot. I put on lipstick, and blotted my mouth. In the summer we wore sleeveless black dresses and after months of sun my arms were a smooth even brown. I was pleased with the way I looked, even though I knew it didn’t much please Adam when I walked out of the door on my way to the bar. There was no need for me to work there. Why did I hang on to the job? He would have understood if I had been taking an evening class, or working as a nurse. But what value is there in going to a bar and serving drinks and listening to people’s stories of their lives?

  ‘I’m going to work now, Ruby,’ I said, as I always did.

  ‘Have you got to?’ she asked, as she always did.

  ‘I’ll come in and give you a kiss when you’re asleep,’ I said.

  ‘Even if I’m fast asleep?’

  ‘Even if you’re fast asleep. I’ll tiptoe in. I won’t wake you up.’

  We said the same words every time. They had no meaning except to satisfy Ruby. I straightened up, and smoothed down my dress. I kissed Adam too and then I started looking for my keys and couldn’t find them, so I was late and I think I forgot to call goodbye.

  But when I got to work there was a problem. Anna had changed shift, because her babysitter couldn’t come in the next day. Pauline was supposed to have told me this already, but she’d been off sick and she’d forgotten. There was a new girl being trained, and we had too many staff that night and not enough the next. So…

  I was in a good mood. I told Anna I’d do her shift the next night and I made sure it was all written down on the rota so there wouldn’t be any mess-up over pay, and I walked back out into the sunshine with everybody happy.

  Ruby would be so pleased. I wouldn’t tell her I was working tomorrow. Today was what mattered with Ruby. I’d walk up to the park and meet them, and maybe we’d go for a drink at the Silk Garden. It was such a beautiful evening and they lit the lamps around the garden when it went dark. Ruby loved those lamps.

  I was going to go straight up to the park and meet them, but then I thought I’d change first. The house had that quiet sunlit feeling and I knew straightaway that it was empty. I changed quickly because I wanted to get up to the park before they left. I put on my white T-shirt with the embroidered daisies that Ruby liked, and my jeans. As I was going out of the house I remembered that my hair was still pulled back for work. I unpinned it, shook it out and combed my fingers through it. It took about a minute in front of the mirror.

  It was ten to eight as I went out of the door and locked it. I ran down the steps and turned left, walking east. The sun was on my back, the air thick and golden as syrup. The sun was going down and the light was beautiful after the stale whiteness of the day. I noticed a few plane leaves on the pavement, dry and brown. I thought of the thick fallen leaves of autumn and how Ruby liked to jump and stamp in them. I was walking fast, hoping to get to the park, up its long green slopes and into the children’s play area while Ruby was still there, high up on a swing maybe, her heels in the blue air, her red curls tipped back. She was always yelling at me to push her higher and I was always holding back, not wanting her to go too high.

  I was coming down the road, looking down towards the end. I had a clear view. The main road was ahead of me, cutting across, and opposite was the road that led downhill from the park. And there was Ruby. The sun was full on her face and she didn’t see me. She was running down the pavement and Adam was behind, bent over the bike to push it, one hand on its saddle, the other on the handlebars. Ruby’s bike helmet was strapped to the handlebars.

  She wasn’t far ahead of him. Two cars went along the main road, hiding her. Then there she was again, racing downhill. The gap between her and Adam was wider now. She was running faster than he could keep up with, because of the bike –

  she always stops at roads

  she’s never run into a road

  but look how fast she’s going

  Adam

  she’s too far ahead

  the gap between them

  stop Ruby stop Ruby stop

  Rubystop

  ‘Ruby!’ I shouted. ‘Ruby, stop there!’

  Ruby heard me. She looked up as she ran, squinting through the sun which was behind me and full in her face. Ruby saw me. She didn’t stop. She took off, racing for me with the wildness that she knew was safe because my arms were there. She would spring through the air that divided us, thud into my body and I would break her fall.

  I saw things in a jigsaw all at once and very clear.

  Adam dropped the bike. He was off the ground, he was tearing for Ruby in great leaps. A dark-blue car flashed round the bend in the main road.

  ‘Adam!’

  He was behind her. He was fast but the gap was too big. I was running and Ruby was running for m
e, full tilt into the dazzle of the setting sun. I don’t think she even saw the main road.

  The blue car skidded. The brakes screamed and the wheels tore at the road. I saw the blue car go sideways past me with Ruby on its bonnet. The driver’s mouth was wide open. Then the car hit the side of a plane tree, and Ruby was thrown off. I watched her fall on her back, on the back of her head. Her body convulsed.

  She was moving. She was alive. She was trying to get up. I was on my knees in the gravel.

  ‘Don’t touch her, don’t touch her, don’t touch her,’ said Adam. She arched again as if the road was shocking her. Then she went still. She went small. Adam had his mouth over her mouth, trying to find her breath.

  There were people pressing round us. I looked up at them from all fours, like a dog. ‘I rang on my mobile,’ said a man. ‘They’re sending an ambulance.’

  ‘He’s a doctor,’ I said. ‘Her father’s a doctor.’

  I could barely see Ruby. I bowed down so my face was almost touching her foot in its dirty trainer. Ruby’s trainers were never dirty like that. I always put them in the washing machine every week. Her pink jeans too, they had stuff all over them. I lay on the road and stroked her ankle inside the thick trainer. Adam was still crouched over Ruby, but he wasn’t breathing into her any more. He had stopped. He wanted me to look after her now. I lifted my head and saw Ruby’s face, shocked sideways and covered in muck. I knew I would have some wipes in my bag. I always carried them, for when Ruby ate ice cream or there wasn’t any paper in public toilets. I would clean her face, and then I’d put her jeans in the washing machine, and her trainers. I would come back and wash the road with a bucket of water and Ruby would help me swoosh it over the gravel. She would like that.

  *

  Barnoon is heaven. We wanted somewhere for Ruby where she would be safe.

  It was possible to open Adam’s grandmother’s grave and put Ruby there with her. Adam wouldn’t have a heavy coffin for Ruby. We didn’t want her to feel locked in. The coffin was made of a special kind of cardboard and it was so light that Adam carried Ruby in his arms, by himself.

  ‘Give her to me a minute,’ I said. I held the box and I could feel Ruby. She was heavy and I had to brace myself to take her weight.

  You’re getting a big girl now, Rubes. You get down now. I can’t carry you any more.

  14

  We Are As We Are

  After great pain, a formal feeling comes.

  The nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs –

  One evening that November Adam was reading a research paper. The room was quiet. I’d lit a candle, which I did every night now, because candles give life to a room. Each night there was a different candle. Sometimes they were fat and stubby, sometimes they were tall and soaring like church candles. The tall ones wound their way down swiftly. I bought scented candles and decorated candles. There was a shop I used to go to in those months, kept by a young woman who had begun her business by making all the candles herself, in her bathroom. She liked to talk about the atmosphere which a particular candle would bring to a room.

  Tonight’s candle was the blue of polar ice. It burned steadily, without a flicker, and was scentless. I watched a gob of wax make its way down the candle stem.

  Adam let his papers fall to the floor. They slithered down off his knee and the movement of the paper disturbed the candle so that its flame fluttered, then stood upright again.

  ‘I can’t make sense of this,’ said Adam. His eyes were wide open, blank. ‘I read it and as soon as I read it I lose it. My memory’s fucked.’

  ‘Can’t you leave it?’

  ‘I could let it go. It’s only one paper. But –’

  ‘But you remember when you’re at work? You remember things at work?’

  Adam’s fists were clenched. He bumped them on the table, very, very gently, very restrained. ‘It’s different at work,’ he said.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said.

  He had split his life in two. In the compartment of work, the lights were still on. It was warm and there were voices and footsteps, comings and goings, even little family jokes of the kind people have when they work together night and day. Minute by minute Adam was there, concentrating, frowning, smiling, changing with every change in the babies, noting every detail of a drug protocol. He didn’t let go. He wouldn’t let go. More and more, work was drawing him in. He was becoming involved in an international project on HIV and prematurity. There was going to be a lot of travel. There’d be overseas conferences and I could come with him.

  Adam had to stay later and later at the hospital, because he couldn’t work at home. He couldn’t concentrate. Our house was full of grief, packed solid with this thing that kept changing shape and seizing us in new ways. It had moved in like a crowd of strangers: animal, vegetable, mineral. At one moment it was a picture book, the next it became a scuffed place under the swing. It sat at Adam’s desk, it would not let us sit at the kitchen table, it pounced as next-door’s cat squirmed in the autumn sun. It trod everywhere. In the shower water hit me like rods of iron and I gasped at its weight. It filled the garden and shrivelled the nerine lilies and bronze chrysanthemums. It got into birdsong and the sound of sirens. It lay between us in bed like a sword.

  There was no room for anything else. Adam couldn’t use the computer. He could barely use the phone. People would call us at home and say, ‘Adam, are you all right? You sound different.’

  We learned that it only took two or three months after Ruby’s death for people to begin asking us if we were all right.

  I gave up the bar. I tried to go once, but when I saw my short black dress hanging in the wardrobe, my head began to drum.

  If Anna’s babysitter hadn’t let her down. If I had told Adam it was too late for Ruby to go to the park. She gets silly when she’s tired. When they’re tired or when they’re hungry, that’s when accidents happen.

  You might leave the front door open while you fetch the shopping in. Suddenly she’s out of the house. You run down the steps and catch her as she races into the road. You grab her, shake her. She starts to cry and you yell, Don’t you ever, ever, ever do that again. You both go back in the house and shut the door and your heart’s still pumping while she bawls and howls and clings to your waist scrubbing her tears and snot into your jeans. And you sit down together on the hall floor and she burrows into you, and you comfort each other.

  If I had gone straight to the park in my work clothes instead of going home to change. If I’d left my hair as it was. That minute I’d spent shaking out my hair and combing it with my fingers. The minute ticked through my head again. I’d been looking at myself in the mirror.

  I turned away from the mirror. I opened the front door, found the keys in the side-pocket of my bag. I locked the door, came down the steps. I felt the August heat on my arms.

  Better put her pink jeans in the wash tonight, she wants to wear them all the time.

  Another November evening. Adam was back so late these days that I knew I had plenty of time. I would light my candle, and read Joe’s letter again. It was an email, but I’d printed it out and put it in an envelope to keep.

  He didn’t write about our feelings, or about his own. He wrote about Ruby. He wrote about her yellow cardigan, and the day she was born, and the visits we’d made to Moscow, and how when Ruby was four Olya had taught her how to say ‘Do you want to be my friend?’ in Russian because this was what Ruby said to everyone she met. And then Olya had invited her niece to play with Ruby. They’d played together, not seeming to notice that they weren’t speaking the same language. Ruby and Sveta both fell over in the park and both wanted Disney plasters on their almost invisible grazes when they came back to the apartment. And Sveta liked the plasters so much that Ruby secretly put a handful of them in her jacket pocket so Sveta would find them when she got home. Joe remembered everything, in a way I thought no one else would remember.

  I think of you both constantly, he wrote at the end of the letter. I b
elieved him. Joe was constant. It seemed to me when I held the letter that his thoughts flowed towards me, strong and sure, over thousands of miles. It was true even though he had never touched the paper, because I had printed out his email. It bore no marks of his sweat, and there was no envelope which might have his saliva on the seal.

  I think of you both constantly. He was thinking of Ruby like that, remembering the Disney plasters and the yellow cardigan. He remembered the way Ruby would balance in his arms, lightly, with a straight back and frowning slightly at first. And then breaking into a smile, petal after petal of it, her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips –

  Joe didn’t tell me to turn my mind away, to forget, to make things bearable, to heal myself. He did not write about the stages of grief.

  Winter was coming. The trees and bushes were losing their leaves. Soon they’d be dry and brown, stiff and scratchy, and to all outward appearances dead. But inside, if the frost didn’t burn it away entirely, there was the quick of the plant. It was barely green but if you put your lips to it you could feel that it was moist. How I dreaded the thought that inside my shrivelled self there was something that wanted to come back to life.

  I folded Joe’s letter, and put it away. I blew out the candle, and turned off the lights. The house was so familiar that I could find my way around in the dark. I put on my nightdress and my dressing gown. I walked around the rooms, checking that the lights were off in all of them, the TV unplugged, and everything safe.

  I came to Ruby’s room in the dark. I hadn’t changed her sheets, or washed her pyjamas. The smell of Ruby clung to them.

  I always promised her I would come in and kiss her goodnight after I came back from work. Even if I’m asleep? Ruby asked. Even if you’re asleep, I repeated. I like the smell when you come back from work, she said. Sometimes I forgot, but the next morning I always told her I’d done it. I told her about how she was all curled up and I tucked the duvet round her, and you know what, Ruby, you were snoring. Like this. That made her laugh.