Numbers

by Rachel Ward

  And then I suddenly thought, Fuck the numbers, fuck it all. How many people meet the person they’re meant to be with? If we stayed indoors, out of harm’s way, maybe we could cheat the numbers after all. What if Karen was right, and it was all in my head — what if the numbers didn’t mean anything at all? If I ignored them, eventually they might go away. Spider and I could have our “happily ever after” ending.

  “I love you, too, Spider. I can face anything with you. Let’s go inside, I’m freezing.”

  He smiled at me, let go of my hand, and formed a fist. Our knuckles touched. “Safe,” he said.

  “Yeah, safe.”

  I bent my knees, put my hands on the tops of the stones, and slowly lowered myself back down. When I looked up, Spider was dancing along the top, easy as anything, enjoying the buzz of it, just like he’d danced on the railway sleepers the first day we’d talked, down by the canal.

  “Get off there, you silly sod, you’ll break your fucking neck.”

  He spun ’round to face me, big daft grin on his face, ready to jump down. Our eyes met, and we held each other’s gaze; my warmth and love for him reflected right back to me. It was going to be alright.

  And then his foot slipped on the wet stone, and his balance was gone.

  He teetered on the edge for a split second, eyes still on me, thrashing his arms wildly…and then he was gone, falling backward, a look of surprise on his face.

  It was so quick, so unreal. I didn’t scream, although someone did far down below. I just watched as he tipped over and over in the air, arms thrashing, hands desperately trying to get a grip on something.

  He didn’t hit the ground. His fall was broken by the roof. His fall and his back. Spread-eagled, lifeless, he lay staring upward. I looked into his eyes for the last time. They were still wide open, surprised, but he wasn’t looking back at me. There was no one there anymore.

  His number had gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It had pissed down rain all the way over there, but by the time we’d parked the car it had stopped. We walked down the pier, the wind whipping off the sea around us. Clouds were racing across the sky like a speeded-up film clip.

  Karen kept asking me, “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Difficult to imagine a time when I’d been less fine, but you know what I meant. I just wanted her to leave me alone.

  Halfway down, Val linked her arm through mine. She didn’t need to ask me any stupid questions; she knew what I was going through. She’d waited until I was out of the hospital to do this. They’d had the cremation without me — obviously they couldn’t put that off forever — but she’d kept the pot with his ashes in it until everyone felt I was strong enough to cope.

  She’d come to see me in the ward. The first time, I couldn’t speak, not to her or anyone. My head was still trying to take it all in. I couldn’t look her in the eye, either. She’d asked me to look after him; she’d trusted me with him. And I’d let her down. I’d taken him away, knowing he wouldn’t be back. She wasn’t angry with me, though — Christ knows why not. She was angry with him.

  “What was the silly sod doing? He had to show off, didn’t he? If I could get my hands on him, I’d wring his neck….” Her hands were trembling in her lap, fiddling with the unlit cigarette she was holding. “Isn’t there a smoking room we could go to, Jem? This is killing me….”

  She’d come back again, despite me not talking the first time, and despite the company I was keeping these days: the silent, the screamers, the deluded, and the sad. I managed to get a word out the second time. I’d spent days forming it in my mind, trying to remember how it started, what your mouth did to form the sound. She was talking, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I was concentrating so hard on what I needed to get out. She stopped when she saw me lean forward, saw my jaw moving as I forced my mouth to work.

  “Sss…sss…”

  “What is it, Jem?” She leaned forward, too, breathing her stale, smoky breath into my face.

  “Sss…sso…rry.”

  “Darlin’, it’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. Well, it’s his own silly fault, I suppose. How were you to know? He was always doing daft things, wasn’t he?”

  I wanted to tell her that I had known. It had all happened just how I thought it would, so fast that you couldn’t stop it, and so slow, each minute leading inevitably to the next. So many chances to do something different, to change the path we were set on. I’d played it over in my mind a thousand times. I should have kept him safe. I should’ve…should’ve…should’ve…

  “I saw him, you know, in the police station,” she said. “I sat in when they questioned him. They didn’t want me to — I’d been questioned, too, see, but I insisted. I was responsible for him. I was all he had. Apart from you.” She picked at the side of her yellow thumbnail with her index finger. The skin was very red, near to bleeding. “He said you two were heading to Weston. Gave me a start, that did. Didn’t know he remembered. I took him there, you see, when he was little. A sort of holiday. I’m glad he remembered….”

  She trailed off into silence, and we sat there, while in a chair in the corner another patient rocked backward and forward, backward and forward.

  “I’ve been thinking, Jem. When you’re a bit better, we could take him there, to Weston. Say good-bye properly. Only when you’re better. No hurry, love.”

  I didn’t notice anything getting any better. One day was much like the last to me: flat, empty, crushed under a huge weight. After a few weeks, though, everyone ’round me started saying they were pleased with my progress. I was able to string words together now, when I felt like it, and was managing to eat a few mouthfuls at each mealtime. I’d still wake up in the night, tormented by nightmares, too scared to scream or cry out, and would lie there for hours, unable to close my eyes again. During the day, the nurses encouraged me to draw, to start to let the feelings out. I didn’t mind that, sitting at the table with some paper and colored markers — I could do it for hours.

  Karen was a regular visitor, too. Fair play to her, no matter how often I kicked her, she still came back for more. One day she said, “Jem, the doctor says you’re ready for a change. Come home, love. Come home with me. Let me look after you for a bit.”

  She’d kept my old room free. “I’ll decorate it for you. We can start again. What color do you want?”

  And so I went back to Sherwood Road, to walls painted “Crème Caramel,” warm and honey-colored, the color of Bath stone. I stayed in my room and listened to music and stared at the walls, until one day I heard Karen going out to take the twins to school, and I started drawing. The first one was by my bed, an angel watching over me, keeping me safe; and I worked outward from there until they were everywhere, walls and ceiling: creatures with wings, climbing up and falling down. Some of them had their faces missing, or an arm or a leg. One of them had ridiculously long limbs and springy Afro hair — I put him at the top, spreading his wings and flying across the ceiling. I did a little bald one right down by the skirting board, sort of hunched up, wrapping her wings around herself.

  When Karen brought my dinner in, she dropped the tray. Spaghetti Bolognese splattered on the walls.

  I grabbed a tissue and started wiping it off. “Look what you’ve done, you’re ruining my pictures, you silly bitch.”

  I was back in the hospital after that, and when I came “home” again it had all been painted over—“Bluebell Haze” this time, more calming, apparently. Except that you could still see some of my angels faintly under the paint, and I found that comforting. I didn’t have so many nightmares, knowing that they were there.

  It must have been five or six months later that we found ourselves at the end of the pier at Weston-Super-Mare.

  We stood there awkwardly for a bit, then Val said, “Well, then.” She unscrewed the lid of the pot. “Do you want to do it, Jem?”

  “Um, I dunno. What do you do?”

&nb
sp; “Just tip it out. Hold it at arm’s length over the sea and tip it.”

  Tears were stabbing the back of my eyes. I’d kept them away for a long time, but they were there now, like little knives. “I can’t. I can’t do it. You do it, Val.”

  She pressed her lips together tightly, trying to keep herself together, and stepped forward. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Which way’s the wind blowing? We don’t want him…well, we don’t want it going all over us.”

  Karen licked her finger and held it up. “It’s coming from over there. Hold it over this side, it’ll be OK.”

  “Right.” Val took a deep breath. She had her body right up against the railing and held the pot out as far as she could.

  “Good-bye, Terry, love. Good-bye, my precious boy.”

  Her voice caught on her last words, and she gave a little sob as she tipped the urn over. Gray ash streaked out. Most of it fell onto and into the water, but a rogue gust of wind took some of it and blew it straight back at us. It went in our hair and on our clothes.

  “Bloody hell, I’ve got some in me eye! Can you see it, Karen?” Val stumbled back from the railing, empty pot in one hand, the other rubbing at her left eye.

  “Come here, Val. Let’s have a look.” While Val blinked and gasped, and Karen peered at her face and dabbed her with a hankie, I watched a film of ash bob slowly away from us. That was all that was left of him.

  I looked down at my coat, swelling out over my stomach, and ran my hand down the cloth. Inside me I felt that fluttering feeling again. I didn’t know for sure, but I had a pretty good idea it was a boy. He was always moving about, always restless. Just like his father.

  A little line of gray ash built up on the edge of my fingers as I smoothed down my coat. I scraped it off with the other hand and put it in my palm.

  Spider.

  How could we have done that? Just thrown him away? I needed him with me, near me.

  “Come back! “ I shouted to the sea. “Come back, don’t leave me!”

  Karen and Val looked around and were instantly by my side.

  “It’s alright, love,” said Karen. “You let it out.”

  “But you don’t understand, I wasn’t ready. I’m not ready yet, to say good-bye.”

  Val put her arm around me. “You never will be. There’s never a good time for it.”

  I was really crying now, and so were they. We all put our arms around each other, a sad triangle, coats flapping in the breeze. I rested my arm on Val’s waist, but my fist was closed. I kept the last remaining particles of Spider safe in my hand.

  Safe.

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  I don’t hang around the places where kids go skiving off anymore. I guess you could say I’ve moved on. These days, you’ll find me in playgrounds, on the beach, down at the community center, or waiting outside school. It’s all part of the normal pattern of things, isn’t it? Kids like me turn into parents like me. And our kids will turn into teenagers, and then into parents themselves. And on and on.

  I’m not so different anymore. That whole time with Spider, it changed me, and not in just the obvious ways — growing up, falling in love, having sex, and that. It showed me what I was missing, what I hadn’t had for fifteen years: having real friends, someone to have a laugh with, learning to trust people, open up a bit. It changed my whole outlook on life — I’d been so hung up on the numbers that I’d let them paralyze me, I can see that now. The numbers had stopped me from living. But Spider, and all those other people — Britney, Karen, Anne, Val — they changed that for me, made me realize I was wasting what time I did have.

  I wish I could tell you I’d done something great with my life — become a brain surgeon or a teacher or something — but you wouldn’t believe me, anyway, would you? I suppose, looking back, I’ve done two things so far. For a start, I stayed with Karen and looked after her after she had her stroke. I’d known she only had three years to go, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, really.

  I was trying to sort out getting my own place; in fact, I was over at the flat Social Services were offering me, when I got a phone call from the hospital. Karen had collapsed in the street. It was a massive stroke, left her partially paralyzed down one side. Her speech went, too — she still had all her marbles, just couldn’t get the words out without a struggle. It was just accepted that I’d look after her. She lost the twins — Social Services found them another home — broke her heart, that did. But everyone assumed that I’d stay with her and care for her.

  It was hard, really hard, trying to look after Adam as well as dress Karen, feed her, take her to the toilet. It was like having two kids. I can’t tell you the number of times I nearly walked out. I even packed my bags. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I knew she didn’t have long left. Besides, she’d stood by me, through being pregnant and then bringing Adam home. She’d helped so much, showing me how to cope with him, giving me a break when I was fed up. I figured I owed her.

  Toward the end, we had some very bad days. The thing was, although I couldn’t see the numbers anymore, I could remember them. They disappeared while I was pregnant — when I was in and out of the psychiatric ward, drugged up, sedated. I can’t remember exactly when — just that, one day, I realized I couldn’t see them. They were gone. I felt sad to lose something that had been a part of me for so long. But I felt relieved, too. It took away something that I’d been dreading — the moment I would have to look in my newborn baby’s eyes and see his death date. That day, I realized that I could face the future, whatever it would bring. I could have Spider’s child, and we could have a life together.

  Anyway, I didn’t forget the numbers that I’d already seen. So I knew when Karen was due to check out. She didn’t know, though, obviously, and her illness, her disability, really got to her. The last few weeks, she was really depressed. I mean, desperate. She kept having more strokes. Every time she got a little bit better, another one would come along and wipe out the progress. It was frightening for her, I know it was.

  She begged me to help her end it, exhausting herself, forcing the words out. “Please, Jem. I’ve had enough.” Pleading with her eyes. I told her not to be so daft. What would we do without her? Adam loved his nana. Her eyes brimmed over. She loved him, too, loved him to pieces, but she’d gone past logic — she was in a dark and lonely place.

  I guess the strain of caring for her really got to me. I used to lie awake at night, torturing myself with these awful thoughts. What if that’s what was meant to happen? What if I was meant to help her end it?

  As the day got nearer, I got more and more on edge. She kept going on — wouldn’t talk about anything else. The last time I took her to the toilet, we had a dreadful time getting her settled. Finally installed on the seat, she just slumped there, crying her eyes out with the humiliation of it all. Perhaps I let it all go on too long. Maybe I should have asked Social Services for help. Looking back now, I can see that it had got to be too much for both of us.

  I got her back to bed. She was still upset. We both were. She tried to twist ’round, managed to get hold of one of her pillows. “Just hold it, Jem.” She tried moving it up to her face, but she couldn’t manage.

  “No, Karen. Stop it.”

  “Please, Jem. I’m tired.”

  I took the pillow out of her hands. It would be so easy to do it, press it up against her, lean my weight in. It was what she wanted.

  Then Adam came into the room.

  “Mum, I’m thirsty. I want a drink.”

  That snapped me out of it. I helped Karen to lean forward and propped the pillow firmly behind her back.

  “I think we all do, darlin’,” I said. “Let’s make a cup of tea.”

  I put some juice in a bottle for Adam and some tea in another one for Karen — like I said, it was like having two kids. I sat with her and held the bottle up to her mouth.

  “That’s it,” I said, “everything seems better with a nice cup of tea.” She managed half a smile with the b
it of her face that still moved.

  “Do you want some biscuit?” She nodded, and I dipped a biscuit into my tea so it was nice and soggy, and fed her. And then it happened. She started choking. I put everything down and slapped her on the back. She was gasping, fighting for breath. I couldn’t do nothing to help. I ran into the hall and grabbed the phone. The ambulance was there within ten minutes, but it was too late. She’d gone.

  Adam had seen it all. I should’ve kept him out of the way, but I was so busy trying to help Karen.

  “What’s wrong with Nana?” he asked. I took him into the front room, and sat him on my lap.

  “She’s gone, darlin’. She’s died.”

  “Like Daddy?” I was always telling Adam about his dad. I wanted him to know about him, how special he was.