Star Shot

by Mary-Ann Constantine

56.

  She is in a big blue sky, looking down on a dark blue sea, and she is spinning so fast it is as if she is not moving at all. She smiles beautifully, confident of keeping it all together; her constituent parts, a hundred, possibly a thousand spinning spheres have coalesced to create her lovely form. If even the smallest one of the spheres, she thinks, were to spin off course, were to be tugged into deep space by a body with a heavier gravitational pull, with an orbit more forceful than the willpower holding her together, then she would disintegrate and the spheres would scatter and travel alone for perhaps centuries before another force in a different part of space pulled a new set of spheres together to make a new form. But she is in equilibrium, she is perfectly balanced, and there will be no question of collapse.

  Awake, when she is not practising walking, she knits furiously. The scarf is now absurdly long, but this is the last ball of silky silver wool, so it will have to stop soon. She has lost all inclination to read, and Theo’s books stay stacked on the bedside table. His absence defeats her. Ten, eleven days in, it has become uninterpretable, and all she can do is retract like a creature in a shell, for protection. She is very good at not thinking about things, she has had a lot of practice, and it is not hard to divert her thoughts back to the building, which she revisits incessantly, its steps and columns bright in the summer sun. When she can walk again, she thinks, she will sit on those steps in that sun and eat fruit salad. It won’t be long now.

  And Lina is safe in her flat, and the flat, she thinks, must be glad to have her there. The little tree was dead, of course, but the fridge, she said, wasn’t bad at all, and she has opened the windows and let the air in and cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom. You shouldn’t be cleaning, said Myra, not after cleaning the way you do all day. This is different, said Lina, this is so very different you have no idea. And they had both cried, and laughed at each other for doing so. This week, though, Lina is doing another ward, so she doesn’t see her as much. There is a nice Polish girl with a wide smile who comes most mornings instead.

  The huge gull watches her through the window as the nurses come and go, bring tea, bring medicine, bring the dull food, take her blood pressure. The walking must be tiring her out because she sleeps and sleeps. On three separate occasions this week the duty nurse has come into her room with a phone in her hand, and found her so deeply asleep it would, she tells the voice on the other end, be wrong to wake her. And yes, she says, she’ll say who phoned, don’t worry; we’ll make sure she gets the message.

  57.

  He puts the tea down carefully and stands with his hand on her thin shoulder, looking at what she’s done. Huge sheets of paper cover the table. The lines she draws across them dance and curve, a dozen or so sketches on every page; some are discrete and clear – faces, birds – but others cluster into scenes, small landscapes with foreign-looking buildings, groups of figures in conversation. Others are more abstract, or perhaps just unintelligible. Beautiful, Mam, he says, these are really lovely. She smiles and reaches up to touch his hand as he squeezes her shoulder gently. He wonders where they come from, whether she carries the shapes in her head all the time, or whether they only happen at the point of contact. He didn’t get that gene.

  He pulls out one of the finished sheets from the back of the table and holds it up to the window. Round the edges are mostly faces and long-legged birds – she was quite well-known for her birds, at one time – but in the centre, evoked in a very few lines, is the shape of a woman, naked and lying on her side. She is staring straight ahead; an indistinct figure hangs over her, it is not clear who or why. He recognises her, and goes hunting through other pages and finds her again, twice, lying much in the same position but seen from slightly different angles. He would like to see her face closer, he thinks; he wonders if she will draw her again.

  Who’s this, Mam? he asks, without much expectation of a reply. She looks briefly at the picture, and then goes back to her page.

  Galatea, she says. Poor girl.

  He goes into the hall and phones the hospital one more time. This time it rings and rings and nobody answers at all.

  Have you had enough drawing, Mam? he asks after a while. Shall we try and walk a bit in the garden? Be good for your leg, and we could do with some fresh air.

  It shouldn’t be too hot now, he thinks, late afternoon, the sun has relented. She acquiesces smiling, as she does to almost everything now, it is as if all volition, of body and mind – to eat, to drink, to stand or sleep – must come from him, and everything he suggests she performs willingly, gratefully, as if pleased to have delegated all decision- making to someone else. She forgets to stop, he thinks, she would go on making lines on the paper until she fainted or wet herself. How could he possibly leave her for more than an hour at a time? No one else, no stranger come in to mind her, would be able to know the way he knows what she might need next. Ten, eleven days in, with a routine in place and some of the fear gone, he feels more confident that they could manage this together, day by day; but only if he pulls in his horizons to fit hers, if the house and the pond, the marsh and the woodland are the extent and limits of their shared world. He wouldn’t have minded, three or four months back; when most of the few people he has any time for came to him, and the prospect of endlessly shuttling in and out of the city filled him with irritation. The group is experienced enough now for him not to have to do all the pond drops; they’re managing OK, he thinks, and from home he can at least deal with the orders, plan the locations, and do what he likes best: the preparation of the tanks, the planting and thinning, the management of the land. Retreat.

  But it feels worse than that.

  The woman holding onto his arm is as light and thin-boned as a bird. Walking requires the full concentration of both. He guides her to the roses, passionate red. Smell these, Mam, he says, can you smell them?

  58.

  They pound down the river-path for the third time that day, stopping briefly to admire the heron standing on a stony patch near the weir. Dak-dak, says Teddy. Big one, says Dan. Teddy is riding shot-gun on a footplate at the back of the buggy, which holds two black bin-bags full of clothes and saucepans, stuffed toys, plates and mugs and bundles of cutlery wrapped in tea-towels and clothes. The last run.

  Mercifully, it rained in the night. The air is breathable again and the entire city feels less irritable. Luke had insisted on getting them a taxi for the main load of boxes, the books, the ancient cd player, the still-unopened box of Jane’s things, the dismantled highchair, but Dan was stubborn about doing the rest himself. Three journeys down the path along the river and through the park, past the white buildings of Cathays and through to Luke’s new, larger, emptier office where all this stuff can be stashed. Temporarily. Till they find a place. Luke has sent a request round on the University staff list, in case anyone has rooms they’re not using. For now, they can have the sofa in his tiny flat. It’s a plan. Dan knows that two or three nights with a hyped-up restless toddler in the living room will be enough; Teddy does not go to sleep willingly.

  Near the castle they stop for the third time to say hello to the JCB and Rhod, who finds their unconventional method of moving house amusing. What are you doing all this for? asks Dan.

  Keeping the water under control, he says. They want it away from the walls; they think it’s damaging the foundations.

  Dan looks at the ugly, emptied moat. And is it?

  Course not. It’s a daft idea. And there’s plenty else happening round here; haven’t you seen they’re mending the railings, right round the park?

  Dan thinks of his gap into the dark starry fields closing up. They say goodbye to Rhod and leave the park; pushing hard and fast through the wall of cold on the way out. As they pass the museum Teddy hops off the back and runs along the lower steps. His chatter does not stop; the thick channel of silence must still be up nearer the top.

  Most of their stuff can be pushed under the desks and tables hard up against the walls round the edge, but the off
ice, nevertheless, looks quite a bit smaller and less empty. Black bin bags are never a good look, he thinks. More cardboard boxes would have been less conspicuous. Luke comes in balancing two cups of coffee and a beaker of milk and some digestives and tries not to look too alarmed. It won’t be long, says Dan. I promise.

  While they are talking and Dan is offering to cook supper there’s a quick knock and the door opens. The professor looks surprised. I’ll come back later, he says, withdrawing. Apologies.

  No, no, says Luke, going slightly red, I’m not, ah, busy. Shall I come and find you in your office? Five minutes? The professor nods and looks with courteous curiosity at Dan and Teddy, who seem familiar.

  Ah, this is Dan, says Luke, and ah, Teddy. They’re in the middle of moving house, and this is just temporary, I thought it would be OK, in the office here, you know…

  He nods again. I think we must have met, he says, and smiles.

  Dan says nothing, but smiles back and shrugs. He lifts Teddy up onto the desk beside him and holds him tight round the middle.

  Dan’s been helping out with the, ah, benches project? says Luke, making it sound like a question. He collected a lot of stats for me a while back, and he’s been keeping an eye, you know?

  It’s BenchMarks I want to talk to you about, says the professor. There is something in his tone.

  Not Lina, thinks Dan, in a sudden rush of fear. Please, not Lina. He bundles Teddy into his arms and stands up.

  We’ll go and get the stuff for the curry, he says. See you later. He nods at the professor, and leaves them to it.

  59.

  The silence has claimed its first fatality. The red-haired boy, too drunk or wasted to feel the cold, had gone to sleep on a bench too close to the castle, with his head pillowed on his rucksack, and had not woken up. Perverse, really, to die of hypothermia in August. It had taken quite a long time for anyone in the flow of people hurrying past to realise; someone with a medical background, apparently, had eventually noticed the colour of his face and done something about it.

  But there is nothing he can do about it. Worse, the things that were being done, the connections made, the useful partnerships with the science departments, the energetic efforts of his own team, all seem to be failing or thwarted or breaking down. When he had finally cornered the reluctant VC she had said it was out of her power now, that they had been obliged to back off, and that backing off was the right thing to do. And when he pushed her, gently, insistently, she had sudden tears in her eyes. The park, she said, the playing fields; they made it quite clear they could revoke the agreement, or push up the price we pay on the student swipe-cards, and then there are the leases in Cathays…You know as well as I do they could bring us to our knees in months. I said you would back off, what else was there to say? And there’s an injunction of some sort on your maps. God knows. You have to leave the castle alone, they said; the silence isn’t their doing, they’ve got their own people working on it, and they don’t want that kind of publicity. She shook her head abruptly as if trying to shake something out of it, and held her hands up in front of her face for protection.

  So he is looking out of the window of a train at five in the morning, heading for breakfast with Meg in Crewe. Beyond that, a long way beyond, the Highlands, and a weekend at the Lodge, courtesy of the old lady, he isn’t even quite sure which one, who had taken a violent fancy to him at some public event or other. More power, apparently, in her crooked little finger, than all the phoney Boards and Trusts put together. Desperate measures, he thinks, god, these are desperate remedies. Poor kid. Though it would doubtless have happened anyway, as Luke said, he never looked terribly likely to be a survivor. He scrolls down his phone to find Meg’s last message. She will come as far as Crewe, she says, and no further, no time, with the kids still off school and the troupe rehearsing furiously for September. He has a glimpse of her in the huge vaulted granary, the ropes and lights like a crazed web from floor to ceiling, as ruthless as Rodin with her performers, twisting their beautiful bodies in the air. And grins to think of her, an unlikely trainspotter, implausibly quick to find him the times and itinerary all the way to Fort William: do it now, she says, or it will be too late. Who would have thought it, in this day and age, that you could still get all that way, that there would still be trains. He stretches the vertebrae in his tired back like a cat and watches the pale grey morning wash the trees and fields with a delicate light, and wonders when it might be possible to get a coffee, however unpalatable, and wonders if he has the necessary strength of mind to get what he needs from the weekend ahead.

  She looks five years younger than the last time they met. Seven. Perhaps the light is better here than in St Pancras, he thinks; but he knows with a pang of envy that it is the month in the mountains, curative, restorative, home. Not his, for such a long time now. He does not like to be reminded of what he is missing.

  Look how tired you are, she says with her hands, accusingly.

  Entirely your fault, making me get up at four.

  Oh but it’ll be wonderful, the train beyond Glasgow, you’ll see. Worth it.

  And then. He shudders. What then?

  Be cool. Do as they do. Tell them what you want in pieces, unravel it gently. And do the same with what you have to offer; give it to them bit by bit.

  She hands over the file, and pulls a face. Here, she says with her eyes; and then taps the rest onto the screen. The tailored version: a performance for the castle, site-specific, one-off, a private viewing, at my lady’s pleasure. See if she bites.

  Oh, I expect she bites, he says grimly. He takes the file and flicks through the first few pages, then looks up at her and smiles. Hey, he says. Hey. Diolch.

  60.

  And now, the corridor. It stretches from the door of her room into impossible distance. But there are waymarkers, targets to aim for; a few strategic posters, doors off to other rooms, and a little way down, the entrance to the lift. Cruelly, no chairs. She must not overdo it, she thinks. She is perfectly aware of the lure of walking in straight lines.

  To help keep her balance, she focuses her mind on walking another line, the long polished stone wall marking the edges of the museum, low and broad and easy for a child to run along, the pale building rising on one side, her mother keeping pace on the other. Even harder, no doubt, for a brittle young woman in high heels. She hasn’t tried it recently. But she remembers leaves dropping around her, back when she was the living twin of the pensive little girl in bronze. Falling leaves would unbalance anybody, she thinks. All those directions, none of them yours.

  Exactly as predicted, and distracted by the falling leaves, she lets the polished stone wall take her much too far. She stops defeated just short of the lift, waiting for her legs to crumple and leave her ignominiously on the floor of the corridor until a rare nurse, or a rarer visitor, comes along and helps her to her feet. But then the lift lights up and thrums into life, travelling upwards, clunking to a halt. The door slides open and the first thing out is the cleaning trolley, and the second thing out is Lina, who is alarmed, and then delighted.

  Well look, she says, look at you!

  Too far, says Myra dimly, glued to the wall.

  Come on, says Lina, gently supporting her thin waist and guiding her to the trolley; help me push this thing back to your room, it’s not so far, and look, I’ve made you a cake.

  Once Myra is sat up against her pillows, and Lina is busy cleaning round her, they catch up. The guy in the shop opposite, says Lina, keeps giving me free fruit; look, two more lemons. I think he likes me. Myra laughs out loud through a mouthful of cake, not him! she says, it can’t be the same guy – he’s a grumpy sod.

  Not with me, says Lina primly, picking up a letter in order to clean the surface of the bedside table. You haven’t opened this, look. When did you get it?

  It’s her work address. Myra looks puzzled, then frowns. I thought that was a dream, she says. Since people stopped coming to see me I tend to dream them instead. She must h
ave been real that time. Work colleague. The difficult one.

  She reaches for the envelope and looks at it dispassionately. Oh, I remember this now, I know what it says; we’re supposed to apply for our own jobs, except there are fewer of them. Like musical chairs.

  And will you?

  She shrugs. I have no idea, she says. I can’t imagine much outside this room.

  Well the corridor’s a start, says Lina, turning to go. You’ll have to take it from there, bit by bit. I have to go now, but I’ll try and find someone to get you a cup of tea. She doesn’t sound particularly hopeful.

  Lovely cake, says Myra, thank you.

  Your oven took some getting used to, says Lina, the first one was a mess. Get some sleep now; you’ll be worn out, all that exercise.

  But Myra has thought of something, and is sliding out of bed trying to find her handbag. Lina goes back over. What is it now, she says, here, let me help. The phone, says Myra, fishing it out and putting it in Lina’s hand; it is cold and heavy, old-fashioned, quite dead. There must be a charger in the flat somewhere, she says, in a drawer in the kitchen. Or still plugged in by the bed. Can you find it? Wake this thing up? We could swap numbers, at least, you and me.

  Lina looks at the phone in her hand, and shakes her head. Mine’s gone, she says. I can’t find it anywhere. I think the girls in the hostel took it. It was no good anyway. No one from my family had that number in the first place, so they would never have found me, even if there is anyone left to find me. She looks across at Myra and smiles. But you should start talking to people. Lots of people. I’ll find that charger.

  If he were ever to come back, thinks Myra, settling back into the pillows and closing her eyes, then I would make quite certain he knows how to find me again.

  61.

  They travel through space together. The universe rushes past them on either side. Teddy wriggles in his father’s lap, and waves his hands as if conducting: stars coming, he calls out, stars coming stars coming stars coming. They stay just long enough for the earth to take shape and form in the void, and then leave the rest of the audience, two patient Japanese girls and an elderly German, to find out what happens next. They know what happens next, and it is not half so interesting, not to them. Nappy change, then coffee in the main hall so Teddy can climb the sweeping white stairs, up and down, up and down. It is nice, thinks Dan, that he still hasn’t discovered the shop. At the top of the main flight of stairs the bronze statue of Labour, a pretty young man leaning wearily on his hoe, looks into middle distance and does not pay them much regard.