by Sarah Hall
I’ve been swimming, she explained.
At the lido?
She nodded.
Wow! It’s still open? I should go there. Is it cold?
It’s OK. Bracing.
Had he forgotten? The cold water never used to bother him. She ran a hand through her hair again, tried to think what to say. Her mind felt white, soft. The shock of the real. Even though he’d said he was leaving, she’d expected to run into him and had, for a time, avoided the area. After a few months the expectation had lessened, and the hope. Then the baby had come, and life had altered drastically. She’d assumed he’d moved away for good. His face was becoming increasingly familiar the more she looked. The shape of his mouth, too full, too voluptuous for a man, the fine white scar in the upper lip.
So, where are you these days? she asked.
Brighton.
Brighton!
I know!
He smiled. One of his front teeth was a fraction squarer, made of porcelain – the accident on his bike while at medical school, she could recall the story. She’d liked tapping it, then the tooth next to it, to hear the difference. Heat bloomed up her neck. These days she could not remember anything – where her purse was, which breast she had last fed the baby on, the name of the artist from her university dissertation. But she could remember his mouth, and lying so close to his face that its structure began to blur. She felt as if she might reach out now and touch the hard wet surface of his broken tooth. She put her hands in her coat pockets. Around them the grass was swaying and hissing. A bird darted out of the field, flew a few feet and then disappeared between stalks.
He was studying her too. Probably she looked tired, leached, and aged, the classic new mother’s demeanour, not like the woman who had come up to him in a low-cut swimsuit and asked to borrow change for the locker.
I’ll pay you back tomorrow.
I might not be here tomorrow.
Yes, you will.
So confident, then.
She hadn’t applied makeup, there was no point most days really, and her mouth was dry and bitter from the coffee. At least the long coat hid her figure. There was no point avoiding the obvious question.
Did you go to Burma? she asked.
Myanmar, he corrected, quietly. I did. Well, officially to Thailand, but we went across the border most days into the training camps.
I thought you would.
Now it’s not such a problem getting in. Tourism.
She nodded. She was not up to speed on such things anymore.
Was it difficult?
She wasn’t sure what she meant by this question, only that she imagined privation, forfeit, that he had made the wrong decision.
Sometimes. We had a decent team. A lot of them were more missionaries than doctors really, but on the whole the quality was good. I don’t know whether we helped. The students qualified, then got arrested for practising.
He shrugged. He glanced towards the north end of the park.
So it’s still open?
Yes. Last week before winter closing. You should go before it shuts.
For old time’s sake. She did not say it. Nor, why have you come back?
He glanced at his watch.
I have a conference. I’m presenting the first paper, actually. I have to get to Barts.
Oh. Congratulations.
He had obviously come up the ranks. Hence the suit, the tidy version of his former self. He shrugged again. Humility, but the duty was clearly very important. There was a pause. She could barely look at him; the past was restoring itself too viscerally. Since the baby she had felt nothing, no desire, not even sorrow that this part of her life seemed to have vanished, perhaps for good. Daniel had been understanding, of course, patient. She couldn’t explain it; breastfeeding, different priorities, the wrong smell, and when she looked at the baby she felt redefined. Now, there was a familiar low ache. She wanted to step forward, reach out. Compatible immune systems, he had once said, to explain their impulses, the heedless attraction, that’s all it really is. That’s all, she’d asked?
For something to do she took her bag off her shoulder and rummaged around inside. It was a pointless act, spurred by panic. But then, in the inside pocket, she found the season ticket. She held it out.
Here. It still has a couple of swims left. They won’t check the name when they stamp it, they never do.
He took the pass.
You should go, since you’re here.
That’s really thoughtful of you, Emma. God, I do miss it!
But you’ve got the sea? In Brighton?
Yes.
He was grinning now, and she could see in him that uninhibited man who’d never cared about the cold, who’d plunged into the pool without hesitation and swum almost a length under the surface. She could see his damp body on the bed in his flat, the chaos of sheets around them, his expression, agonized, abandoned, as if in a seizure dream. She could see herself, holding the railings of the bed, fighting for control of the space they were using. Walking quickly home, ashamed, electrified, holding her swimsuit under the kitchen tap so that it would look used. Luxury hour.
So. What’s your life like now? Are you still at the Tate?
No. I’m married.
Ah.
She glanced at him, then looked away.
To Daniel?
Yes, to Daniel.
Any children?
There was nothing to his tone, other than polite conversation, the logical assumption that one thing would follow another. Perhaps a slight wistfulness, some regressive emotion, it was always so hard to tell. The wind moved across the meadow. The grass rippled, like dry water.
No. No children.
As if it could be as it was before. He nodded, neither surprised nor sympathetic. It was suddenly hard for her to breathe, though there were acres of air above them. The lie was so great there would surely be some penalty. She would go home and the house would be silent, her son’s room empty, the walls painted white again. Or the baby would be screaming in the cot, and he would smear to ash when she lifted him up. He would be lying motionless in the bath while the minder sat on a stool, wings unfurled, monstrous.
Her old lover was speaking, saying something about his engagement to a woman from Thailand; her name was Sook, his family liked her, they had no children yet either. He was holding the season pass. He looked contented, established, a man in a tie about to give an important paper. Everything had moved on, except that he was here, and this was not the way to Barts. She reached out and touched his arm. He was real, of course he was.
You should swim, she said. Will you swim?
He looked at his watch again.
Yeah. Why not. I reckon there’s time, if I’m quick. What shall I wear? Will I get away with boxers?
I have to go, she said.
Oh. OK.
It was too abrupt, she knew, a breach in the otherwise civil conversation that should have wound up more carefully. But already she had turned and was walking away up the path, the wind cold in her hair. His voice, calling behind her.
Bye, Emma. Lovely seeing you again.
She kept walking. She did not turn round. At the edge of the meadow she stepped off the track, put her bag down, and crouched in the grass. He would not follow her, she knew, but she stayed there a long time, hidden. From her bag came the faint sound of ringing. She was late for the sitter. She stayed crouched, stupidly, until her legs felt stiff. In the earth, between stalks, were tiny pieces of brown glass from the old works. Enormous hurrying clouds above, but the rain was still holding off.
Eventually, she stood and looked back. He was gone. If she ran to the lido maybe she could catch him. She could apologize, and explain everything, tell him that she’d been afraid, she’d been angry and hurt that he was leaving; she’d had to choose, like he’d had to choose. The baby was a complication, but she could tell him what the child’s name was at least, if nothing else, he should know that. They could exchange phone numbers. They c
ould meet, somewhere between Brighton and here. Or she could just watch him through the cafe window, from the corner table, a woman from the past. She could watch him swim, his body a long shadow under the surface.
· Later, His Ghost ·
The wind was coming from the east when he woke. The windows on that side of the house boxed and clattered in their frames, even behind the stormboards, and the corrugated-iron sheet over the coop in the garden was hawing and creaking, as though it might rip out of its rivets and fly off. The bellowing had come into his sleep, like a man’s voice. December 23rd. The morning was dark, or it was still night, the clock was dead. He lay unmoving beneath the blankets, his feet cold in his boots, chest sore from breathing unheated air. The fire had gone out; the wood had burned too high again with the pull up the chimney. It was hard keeping it in overnight. Coal was much better; it burned longer, but was hard to find and too heavy to carry.
He pulled the blankets over his face. Get up, he thought. If he didn’t get up it would be the beginning of the end. People who stayed inside got into trouble. No one helped them. Part of him understood – who wanted to die outside, tossed about like a piece of litter, stripped of clothing by the wind and lodged somewhere, dirt blowing dunes over your corpse? Crawling into a calm little shelter was preferable. He understood.
Something hard clattered along the roof, scuttled over the slates, and was borne away. There was a great ooming sound above, almost oceanic, like the top of the sky was heaving and breaking. Whatever had been kept in check by the gulfstream was now able to push back and lash around. People had once created aerial gods, he knew, fiends of the air or the mountaintops. He took it personally, sometimes – yelling uselessly up the chimney, or even into the wind’s face, his voice tiny and whipped away. Not often though, because it didn’t really help, and the chances of getting hit were worse.
When it came from the east a lot of the remaining house roofs went, and whole walls could topple – another reason not to stay inside too much, you had to be alert to the collapses. But this house was good; it had survived. He turned on his side and shivered as the cold crept down his neck. The sofa he was lying on always felt damp. The cushion he was using as a pillow smelled of wet mortar. He didn’t usually sleep in this room, but Helene was now in his. He would have liked them to sleep together, to be warmer.
Another object crashed past the house, splintering against the gable, and flying off in separate clattering pieces. He couldn’t remember the last still day, the trees standing upright and placid. Stillness seemed like a childhood myth, like August hay-timing, or Father Christmas. Last night, he’d slept restlessly; his dreams were turbulent – wars, animals stampeding, and Craig, always Craig. After a night like that it was hard to get going.
Get up, he thought. And then, because it was too difficult today, he thought, Buffalo. He pictured a buffalo. It was enormous and black-brown. It had a giant head and the shoulders of a weightlifter, a tapered back end, small, upturned horns. The image came from a picture he’d kept in a box in the bunker, one of the things Craig had taken. The buffalo looked permanently, structurally braced.
He sat up, moved the blankets away, and stood. He found the torch next to the sofa and switched it on. The cold made him feel old and stiff. He moved around and lifted his legs gymnastically to get his blood moving. He did some lunges, like warming up for football. There was a portable gas stove in the corner of the room and he set the torch next to it, ignited the ring, boiled a cup of water and made tea. He drank the tea black. He missed milk most of all. There weren’t even any smuts in the grate. Perhaps he’d leave the fire a day to save fuel – the temperature was about four or five degrees, he guessed, manageable. So long as Helene was warm enough.
He took the torch and moved through the building to the room where she slept. It was warmish. Her fire was still glowing orange. She slept with the little Tilley lamp on. She didn’t like the dark. She was sound asleep, lying on her side, her belly vast under her jumper. He picked up one of the blankets from the floor and put it back over her. She didn’t move. She seemed peaceful, though her eyes were moving rapidly behind her eyelids. The wind was quieter this side of the house, leeside. It whistled and whined and slip-streamed away. Little skitters of soot came down the chimney and sparks rose from the cradle. He looked at Helene sleeping. Her hair was cut short, like his, but hers curled and was black. When they were open her eyes were extremely pretty. A lot of the boys in school had fancied her. He imagined climbing onto the bed and putting his arm over her shoulder. Sometimes when he was checking on her she woke up and looked at him. Mostly she knew he was just checking, bringing her tea, or some food, or more wood for the fire. But sometimes she panicked. And he knew she was worried about the baby coming; that frightened him too. He’d found a medical book on one of his explorations, but still.
She’d done well, he thought, lasting it out, but she was very quiet, mostly. He thought probably she hadn’t developed any methods to help, like picturing the buffalo. She was probably thirty, or thirty-five. She’d been an English teacher, though not his; she hadn’t recognized him when he’d found her. She liked sardines in tomato sauce, which was good because he had lots of tins. She always thanked him for the food. That’s all right, he’d say, and sometimes he’d almost add, Miss McDowell. She never said anything about what had happened to her, or the baby, but he could guess. No one would choose that now. He’d found her in the Catholic cathedral, what was left of it. There were two dead bodies nearby, both men; they looked freshly dead, with a lot of blood. She was looking up at the circular hole where the rose window had been. She wasn’t praying or crying. He thought she’d done well.
He left tea for her in a metal cup with a lid, and some sardines, and went back to his room. He did a stock check. He did this every day, unnecessarily, but it made him feel calmer. Calor gas bottles, food, clothes, batteries (one less for the dead clock), duct tape, painkillers, knives, rope. The cans were piled in such a way that he could count them by tens. This house still had water, a slow trickling stream that was often tinted and tasted earthy. He still hadn’t worked out if the property had its own well, lots of the garden was buried. But it made life easier – he didn’t have to rig up a rainwater funnel. He’d been collecting packets of baby formula too, but when he’d showed Helene she’d looked confused, then sad. There was a box with more delicate things inside, frivolous things, photographs – of his mother, and his little brother in school uniform – his passport, though that was useless now other than to prove who he was, and the pages he’d been collecting for Helene. There wasn’t much to read in the house. He’d been hunting for the play for a month or two and it was a very difficult task, most books had been destroyed, the wind was an expert at that. Once buildings were breached, nothing paper lasted; it warped and pulped, the ink smudged. Sometimes he found just a paragraph, or a line, on an otherwise unreadable page.
So dear the love my people bore me, nor set a mark so bloody on the business: but with fairer colours painted their foul ends. In few, they hurried us aboard a bark, bore us some leagues to sea, where they’d prepared a rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg’d …
The town’s library had been demolished in the first big storms. No wonder: it had been built in the sixties, as part of the civic centre. The older the building, the longer it lasted, generally: people had gotten very bad at construction, he thought, or lazy. He was very good at salvaging now. He was good at it because he was good at moving around outside. He wasn’t timid, but he never took anything for granted either. He wore the rucksack strapped tight to his body, like a parachute. He taped up his arms and legs so they wouldn’t billow, he tested the ropes, and he always looked in every direction for airborne debris. He never, never assumed it was safe. He’d seen too many bodies with blunted heads.
After the stock check, he took a tin of salmon out of the stack, opened it and ate it cold. He was hungry and he ate too fast. His mouth hurt. Ulcers starred his tongue. He probably need
ed some fruit, but he’d rather give the fruit to Helene. In winter having two meals was important – breakfast and dinner – even if they were small. Otherwise he’d get sick. This was the fourth winter. Last Christmas he hadn’t really celebrated because he was by himself, but having Helene made things nicer. He scraped the last flakes out of the tin with his nail and ate them, then drank the oil, which made him gag. He saved the tin – while they were still greasy they were good for making flour-and-water dumplings over the fire, though the dumplings tasted fishy. As well as the surprise gift, he’d been planning their Christmas meal. He’d had a tin of smoked pheasant pâté for two years, it was too special to eat by himself. There was a jar of redcurrant. A jar of boiled potatoes. And a tin of actual Christmas pudding. They would have it all warmed up. Two courses! He even had a miniature whisky, with which to set fire to the pudding. It was important to try to celebrate.
He went to the back of the house, peered through a gap in the stormboards and watched the dawn struggling to arrive. Daylight usually meant the wind eased slightly, but not today. The clouds were fast and the light pulsed, murky yellow aurorae. The usual items sped past on the current – rags, bits of tree, transmuted unknowable things. Sometimes he was amazed there were enough objects left to loosen and scatter. Sometimes he wondered whether these things were just the same million shoes and bottles and cartons, circling the globe endlessly. The clouds passed fat and fast overhead, and were sucked into a vortex on the horizon, disappearing into nothing. There was sleetish rain, travelling horizontally, almost too quickly to see.
It was probably a bad idea to go out today. His rule was nothing more than a ninety, what he gauged to be a ninety. This was worse. But he had two days left and he wanted to find more pages.
He went back to his room and got ready. He put on waterproof trousers and a jacket. He cleaned and put on the goggles. He pulled the hood of the jacket up, yanked the toggles and tied them tightly, a double knot. He taped the neck. He taped his cuffs and his ankles, his knees and his elbows. He put on gloves but left them untaped so he could take them off if he found any more books; he would need his fingers to be nimble, to flick through and tear out. It might mean he would lose a glove, or both, but he’d risk it. When he was done he felt airtight, like some kind of diver, a storm-diver, he thought. But it was better not to get heroic. For a while when he’d gone out he’d worn a helmet, but it’d made him feel too bulky, too heavy, not adapted. He weighted the rucksack down with the red stone – he didn’t like to think of it as his lucky stone, because he wasn’t superstitious, but secretly he did think it was lucky. It was egg-shaped, banded with pink and white – some kind of polished gneiss. He’d found it looking through the wreckage of the geology lab at school. It sat in the bottom of the rucksack, as a ballast, leaving enough room for anything he discovered on his excursions, but preventing the bag’s flapping. He had plastic wrapping for anything delicate. He was good at discerning what was useful and what was not; he hadn’t brought back many useless things, though the temptation was to save beautiful items, or money. His mother had always joked his birthdays were easy – as a kid he didn’t need many toys or field comforts or gadgets. His mother had died of sickness. So had his little brother. So had thousands of other people. It wasn’t just the conditions, it was what the conditions led to, Craig had told him. In some ways Craig had been clever.
