He puts the tray down and crouches beside her, and when she lifts her face to his she is tear-stained and laughing.
What happened?
She waves the hairbrush at him.
Got the bastard, she says.
She won’t let him ring for the nurse, but she does let him help her back into bed and give her a mug of horrible sweet tea and a brief homily on the virtues of patience in patients.
There’s no time to be patient, I have no time for this. She is helpless, petulant.
Tough, he says. If you’re not patient now there’ll be no time for anything later.
She shrugs, and then sips her tea. Decides not to tell him that one of the consultants is advising a course of chemotherapy.
Tell me the other things now, she says, the ones behind the dam. And he starts to explain about the channels of silence eating into the city, and tells her a bit about Luke and Dan, and the other people on the benches, and the mapping project, and the various possible solutions, including the imminent parade around the museum. He treads as carefully as he can, nervous of upsetting her, but she nods, and seems to accept it all without difficulty, and even laughs at the idea of the parade.
That poor building, she says. Doesn’t sound at all like its kind of thing. Undignified. Do you think it’ll work?
Theo considers. No, he says. No, I don’t. I’m not sure that even they think it will really. The problem is obviously next door, and the solution obviously needs to be more radical. But I think it’s a useful experiment, to see if noise is the answer, if it helps at all. And it’ll be vastly entertaining to watch.
Are you going?
I thought I probably would. It’ll be on telly, though – you can watch it from here. Saturday. Day after tomorrow.
I’m unlikely to be out by then.
On your current showing, most unlikely.
She closes her eyes. I’m going to sleep again, she says. Then, anxiously. Will you still be here when I wake up?
He looks at his phone. Probably not, he says. I have heaps to do. But I’ll stay till you’re properly asleep, and I promise you the dream won’t…
It was a different one, she says, visibly drifting now. It was sad, sad… She looks at him from a distance and he can see trouble fogging up her eyes.
Not now, he says. Don’t try and tell me now. I’ll come back tomorrow and maybe you can tell me then; here, let me read a bit, close your eyes, here’s some more Fort.
34.
They finally work their way through the last item on the list and rub their eyes and look at each other. Finished. Yes. Thank you.
They stand up, and he puts a friendly hand on Luke’s shoulder and thanks him again, warmly, for all his hard work. The look he receives is so proud, so helplessly grateful, it pulls him up short. He smiles him out of the office and turns back to his desk, glad, half-amused, a little shocked, to have made the young man so happy: that such things should be somehow in his gift still surprises him. It has been a pleasure, too; he is so used to having negotiate resistance.
He stands perfectly still at his desk for a moment, letting it all ebb away. The week-long frenzy of meetings, of organization, is still flinging out a few last-minute emails; they drop quietly onto his computer screens, his phone, his iPad. He deliberately disconnects. He turns off his computer, watches the beautiful maps go out one after the other all around the room, puts his work phone into a drawer, and then, next to it, his private phone. He leaves the drawer open for a minute or two, while he slowly unknots his tie, just in case her name should light up either of them. You could wish me luck, he thinks. It was your idea. He pushes the drawer to, slips out of his neat dark jacket, hangs it carefully on the back of his chair. Then he unbuttons his white shirt and takes that off too. He sits at his desk, putting one foot, then the other, onto his desk to remove his shoes and his bright socks. Then he stands, his bare feet on the smooth cold floor, to unbuckle his belt and slip out of his trousers, folding them neatly over the chair. He spends five minutes prowling around the room in his boxers and t-shirt, opens the drawer one last time, and shuts it hard. You could wish me luck. He fetches his running things from the cupboard and puts them on; finds his swipe-card and his housekey, pushes them deep into the pocket of his shorts, and heads out towards the park.
There is little point in running before the park itself. He crosses the war memorial gardens as briskly as he can; another place where the cold silence pools, and the thick white cherry blossom seems unreal, suspended. He nods at the high naked angel with the beautiful wings and the beautiful behind. Ti ddim yn oer lan fan ‘na ngwas i? The A470 opens up for him like the Red Sea, and he is suddenly at the gates.
There, with his usual ironic grimace, he swipes his card and he is in, running fast and light across the playing fields through bright trees and rugby players, children, sweet hyacinths and dogs, to the river. The great park swindle, he thinks, still not quite yet apparent. Give it another couple of years. It depends how quickly people, the People, decide to sell up. He has been pushing at the university council for months now to do what he has done in the Institute, and start buying them whenever and wherever they come up – in twos and threes, if necessary, though occasionally you’ll get a small handful, all at once. People die, or suddenly need the money; they can always borrow a card from a friend, from a relation; or they never go near the place at all, why would they? Cash it in now. It’s just a matter of time, of patience.
The river calms him; he forgets his anger and the daft complexities of tomorrow’s parade in the noise of the breath in his lungs and the feel of the late afternoon sun on his back and arms. He drifts over to Paris, stands on a dusky corner in an interesting hat and watches her coming up the street laughing silently with her friends; her glance raised to meet his shocks them both; her agility on the stage, twenty years ago. Birds sing in the trees all around him. He runs for many miles, following the river, looping, diverting, making it last: he comes out at length into a network of terraces and back lanes, and weaves his way home.
He showers, cooks, and lies down on the sofa to watch the news; perhaps he sleeps for an hour. At around midnight he leaves the house again to cycle across the quiet city. Back in the silent building he spends a couple of hours dealing with the final emails; there are no real crises, no major names bailing out, no helicopters pulled from the sky for technical reasons. He sends calm and concise answers to those who will need them in the morning. Then he sets his many maps to brighten the room in their different colours, fading in and out, chasing, overlaid, gradually replaced: he sees, over and over, how the channels of silence are like the branching capillaries of lungs. At around two he packs it all up again, closes it down, locks up and leaves. And as he heads down the stairs the phone in his breast pocket pulses. He smiles and pulls it out, still lit up from the inside. Pob lwc, she says.
35.
The buggy and the sleeping child are parked tidily in a corner of the town library. Dan sits at a crowdsource workstation, dragging white ellipses over star-clusters with a practised hand and eye. He is somewhere in the Horseshoe Nebula, identifying anomalies for the Mapping the Heavens project, refreshing his memory with the names of certain stars, the nature and shapes of the swirling phenomena of deep space, so that he will be able to teach them to Teddy when he is older. They don’t teach this stuff at school, do they; he wonders why ever not. Since he stopped paying for an internet connection at home, and since his laptop packed up, these workstations, scattered all over the city, are a lifeline, a proper lifeline, not a manner of speaking; just as the child himself is a lifeline. And so is music, and beer. He used to spend his evenings doing this, but now it’s down to two or three sessions in the early afternoon, after Mother and Toddler group, when Teddy is properly worn out and his nap is deep and lasts a good hour. Long enough to get lost in space. Parent and Toddler, he means; Parent-stroke-Guardian and Toddler. There are quite a few grandparents too, of course, the parents are all out working, poor sods.
As he should be, as he will be, soon.
Today it is harder to concentrate. He breaks every ten minutes to check for messages, and finds only disappointment. His sister in London is busy for the forseeable future. His parents-in-law have failed, as ever, to take the hint. Unfair. They are both ill, and old, and could not manage him for a whole day in any case, not now that he is running around. And they don’t change nappies. And, to be perfectly honest, Teddy barely knows them. There are the playgroup mothers, of course. The concerned, flirtatious mothers. One of them would take him for a morning or afternoon, he thinks. But, given the travelling, he needs a whole day. A whole day would be too much. And in the quick rush of frustration and anger that follows he realises, with a helpless falling-away like sand slipping under your feet as you climb a dune, that he is not yet ready to leave the child with anyone else, not for a morning, not for an afternoon, not yet.
Tears force their way into his eyes. He gets up and walks over to get a drink of water. And as if he really can see from the back of his head, he catches the sense of a big shape lumbering over towards Teddy’s pushchair. He turns very quickly and is about to cut back across the room when recognition holds him back: it is the black guy from the bench near the church, smiling and crooning and holding one of his cut-out pictures. He lays it very gently on the boy’s stomach, and winks and bows at Dan, then ambles out, collecting his fat plastic bags from under a table near the door. Dan goes over to the child, still deeply asleep, and picks up the ragged cut-out, which is of a bird, a blackbird in a tree. It has a bright-eyed, university prospectus look about it. Teddy will be delighted.
Blessed by the encounter, Dan goes back to his stars with renewed commitment. And as he sizes and sorts them, he thinks of the constant mild shock, the oddness, of seeing any of the bench people out of their highly restricted context. It happens surprisingly infrequently. And then he thinks of the last time he saw the black guy, on his bench, singing and talking to himself and all the passing shoppers. It was sunny. People were responding cheerily. He had stood up unexpectedly, begun ceremoniously removing coats, three of them, each one filthy, and each one an entirely different sort of coat: a thick parka anorak; an oversized suit jacket, a big winter coat, in no logical order. He just adds layers, thinks Dan, as the benches get colder. The silence won’t be driving him away just yet. But some of the others, he feels, won’t be coming back. He thinks the red-haired boy is probably dead. And the busker is restless, constantly shifting his patch, his songs sounding less and less convincing.
Where we are is among the stars
Then, somewhere deep in the Trifid Nebula, Dan thinks of Lina, and sees in a burst of clarity that she could be the answer to his problem.
36.
Long dull-red hairs choke up the bristles of the brush. She picks at them with a shudder of hopelessness, and puts another clump of hair in the bin beside her bed. A tangle of red against the layer of crumpled tissues. And under the white of the tissues, more tangled red, then more crumpled white. And so on. Stop brushing your hair, she thinks. And stop crying.
She has a thirst on her that cannot be cured by water. She cannot stop thinking about fresh lemons. Squeezed over ice-cubes. The smell of grated zest. Boiled in their skins with a bit of sugar for old-fashioned lemonade. She thinks of lemon trees, the scent of their dark glossy leaves crushed. And she thinks, so much does she crave the taste, that she could probably suck half a lemon now, without her mouth twisting in shock.
Today she submits to the morning’s rituals without a word. Painkillers, blood-pressure, temperature. The nurse worries vaguely that this obedience might be a bad sign, but does not fuss her with questions. Everyone is excited about the parade, and at ten those who are well enough to move pile into the dayroom to watch the half-hour of build-up before the event begins. Those still in their beds are set up with extra pillows and the screen on the wall is adjusted to suit. In Myra’s room the nurse turns the sound off and places the remote control beside her; there are still fifteen minutes to go. Then she goes off to fetch her a cup of tea, and Myra hasn’t the heart to tell her, when it arrives, that she wants lemon in it, not milk.
All is quiet for five minutes, and then the cleaner arrives, apologetic. They are all quite out of their routine, this morning, she says; they have had to do some sections as a priority, before the parade, and they are short-staffed because several people wanted the morning off to see it. It’s fine, Myra says, I’m not really sure I’m watching it. Please go ahead. The woman nods and smiles. Empties the bin of its red and white rubbish. Removes the wilting flowers, and wipes over the side table. Then she gestures at the cold grey tea.
Would you like me to take this away?
Myra stares hard at the tea for several seconds, fighting tears.
I wanted lemons, she says helplessly. And begins to cry, without control, without hope. The woman puts down her cloth and reaches for the box of tissues.
Here, she says. It’s OK. Take this, come on, it’s OK.
Myra nods and weeps, and weeps.
Do you want me to find a nurse?
She shakes her head, and blows her nose.
Do you want me to leave?
She shakes her head again, and tries to apologise, but the sobs are huge.
The woman goes back to her cleaning trolley and puts the cloth and the spray carefully in their place. She puts a hand on the trolley and hesitates, then leaves it by the window and goes back over to the bed. She bends over the crying girl and touches her shoulder. Shall I get you lemons? she asks. Myra nods vigorously, still sobbing.
Tomorrow, OK?
Another nod.
Beautiful lemons. I promise. Stop crying now. Come on. Look, they’ve started the parade.
The two women stare up at the screen, where dizzying numbers of people swarm and then, very gradually, as the cameras lift and the scene is filmed from above, begin to snake around the museum. Myra watches through tears, and her sobs quieten. The building looks strange, like a relative who has been away a long time. Smaller. She looks at it dispassionately through the moving stream of faces and open mouths and waving hands. Neither woman thinks to turn the sound back on, and both are preoccupied, each looking for a particular face in the crowd.
37.
Three adults and a small child crouch at the edge of the bright pond. Sunlight falls from behind them and into the water, so that, for a foot or so at least, before the light is lost in the rich brown shadows, they can see all the way to the bottom. Theo shows them how to focus for different levels, from the skin of the water dancing with flies and the tiny hectic jewels of the whirligigs, to the yellowish shallows and their wriggling determined tadpoles, and in further and deeper to where slivers of fish hang momentarily and flick away; right down to the silt, which requires patience and a good eye, where ragged twigs and leaves lumber unexpectedly across the debris of their patch, camouflaged, like tanks. Diving beetles cut diagonals, like spaceships, between their heaven and their earth. Predatory white larvae wait, suspended, for whatever comes their way; others hang dormant halfway up the thick stems of plants which burst the surface into the clear air.
Dan has Teddy clutched firmly around the waist, and tries, by pointing and holding his head, to direct his gaze down to the fish in the middle water; but it is difficult to tell if he can actually see beyond the glitter of whirligigs on the surface, and the surface is all distraction in any case, with its yellow kingcups and its sunny reflections. At the far end of the pond, which is huge, more like a small lake, a pair of wild mallards skitter to a messy halt.
After a while Theo scoops out a couple of handfuls of fat black tadpoles and puts them in a washing-up bowl with a bit of duckweed. Lina persuades Teddy away from the water and together they sit and watch, with a shared fascination, their frantic wriggling. Theo, explaining as he goes in a long, low, monologue, shows Dan how to assemble a typical starter tank. Then he makes coffee for them all on a gas ring in the battered summerhouse. There are on
ly two chairs, but it is sunny enough to sit on rocks. Teddy wanders between the adults with a biscuit in one hand and a stick in the other, and they talk over the top of his blond head, until it seems that he is determined to throw himself and his stick in the water. Lina holds out her arms and coaxes him to her.
I’ll walk him round, she says.
Good idea; he might sleep after. You sure?
Quite sure. She smiles at them both, and sets off. They go back to their tank, load it onto the pick-up.
How many of these do you do in a week? asks Dan.
Depends on the time of year. We’re busy enough right now. There are four more of these up at the house, I did them first thing.
And where are they going?
This lot? Um. Two primary schools, three private gardens, one day-care centre. And two unofficial stops.
Why unofficial? Dan is curious.
Not everything we do is done on request, or paid for.
Dan keeps quiet, waits to see if there is more to come, but Theo just grins at him, stands up and collects their mugs, looking absurdly tall inside the wooden house. As if he comes from a different century, thinks Dan.
You up for doing one more? Then we can go over to the trees.
Mud slips through his fingers like silk. It’s the clay in it, Theo says, it’s gorgeous stuff. Full of larvae. Dan’s second tank takes far less time to prepare, and when he is done he gets up to stretch his back and wave at Lina and Teddy, now about three-quarters of their way around the pond.
There, he says. Looks good to me. Official or unofficial.
Theo looks at it critically. Bit short on the crowsfoot, he says; give it another clump.
Do they all take? asks Dan. I mean, you must have some that fail, don’t get looked after properly; if there’s a heatwave or something. He has a vision, from somewhere in his childhood, of a small green rancid pond.
Bound to lose a few, says Theo. But we help look after them once they’re in, especially the schools. They have us over to help with lessons in the spring and summer. I’ve missed a few these last weeks, because of my mother; not everyone in the group is trained for schools.
Star Shot Page 7
