Star Shot

by Mary-Ann Constantine

  Luke is asking about the outside of the building. The exits are blocked, they say, and the police are searching the area, though it does seem unlikely that such a small boy would have wandered out by himself. And would he have got through the silence? It’s pretty thick still, especially at the front there; you’d think it might deter him. They look at the picture on their phones, and hope that it isn’t going to become the iconic vanished child picture in tomorrow’s news.

  I’ll go, ah, and see if I can help outside, he says. Just for ten minutes. He glances across at Dan. Tell him …Tell him I’ll be right back. Can, ah, someone let me out here? They give him a neck tag, and open the door.

  He’s wearing a T-shirt, and is still hot and sweating from cycling, so the cold of the silence is a shock. He catches his breath and pushes through it to stand just the other side. Two policemen on the lower steps are turning people away from the main entrance. Then he sits down and pulls up the most recent map of the silence on his iPad, homing in on the thick loop around the building. He experiments with different ways of zooming in, magnifying the line of emptiness to try and capture its edges, which are slightly fuzzy, slightly ragged, perhaps because the stuff is in flux, he thinks. He steps back into it, and the screen goes blank. Then he steps out again and, holding the iPad like a map, starts to walk along the edge, a bit like following a river, he thinks, but with the river as high as a wall and invisible – higher than head height, nobody can quite work out how high. What am I looking for anyway, he thinks; why would Teddy be here?

  It isn’t easy to follow the silence exactly round the building, as various architectural features get in the way, especially at the front; but it gets easier walking up Museum Avenue along the low stone wall, easier to move in and out, to trace the line precisely. It seems, as at the front, to keep about a foot away from the building itself, but there are places where it brushes up against the stone, and others where the coldness collects and pools, swirling back on itself. The staff entrance, down the slope at the back, is like a small dark lake. He spends five minutes there, though plenty of other people are looking in the corners and behind the parked cars, and shivers as he climbs the steps up the side, following the silence as it snakes back up, cutting off the building from the visitors’ car park, and coiling round towards the bulge of the lecture theatre on Park Place. He follows another low wall, and turns at last onto the front steps, where he waves his badge at the police, and is about to push through the doors when he sees, just ahead of him, shuffling slowly across the Gorsedd gardens, a familiar bundled figure clutching two grubby plastic bags bursting with papers. He hesitates for a second, wonders about going to talk to him; but he is coming from the wrong direction, he thinks. He can’t possibly have seen Teddy.

  66.

  The long walk down the corridor left her worn out; she has spent the last two days more or less in bed. Small flurries of doctors and nurses, more than has been usual lately, have been taking blood and measuring things. And there was a trip to some other part of the hospital to be scanned again. All of which, they seemed to agree, counts as progress. No Lina, which she regrets though half expected. She knows her hours have been cut. But the Polish girl with the wide smile is back, and on the second day, watching her empty the tangled red hair from the bin, Myra asks her what her name is, and how long she has been in Cardiff.

  Two years, says Dorota. Yes. Nearly two years.

  Have you been cleaning all this time?

  She shakes her head and smiles. No, I work in a hairdressers, up near the castle. Closed down now. I am training there. Back home, near Gdansk, I will open a salon. She says it the French way, and gives a little wave of her long fingers, and it all sounds utterly plausible.

  Myra nods approval. That sounds good, she says. I’m sorry your old place closed down. You looking for another salon to work in?

  Looking, she says with a shrug. But a lot is closing down out there. Maybe I’ll go home sooner.

  Myra touches her own hair. This is no good, she says. You see how it’s coming out. Do you think…?

  Dorota comes over and gently feels a strand of Myra’s hair.

  Beautiful hair, she says. But yes. If we cut it short short it will come back one day stronger.

  Myra nods, says nothing.

  I come back this evening after work, says Dorota. With my scissors.

  The trolley trundles off down the corridor towards the lift, and Myra curls back under the sheets, suddenly sad for her poor hair. She feels her mother insistently brushing out the tangles before school, yelling at her to just be still.

  Sleep this time takes her directly to her bench, where she sits swinging her legs and feeling hot and thirsty, watching her mother and a man walk round and round the big stones, talking. There are bright flowers in the beds and people coming and going. After a while she gets up and stands in front of the little bronze girl, who is crouched on her plinth with her arms wrapped round her legs, and her chin resting on her knees, thinking hard. She stands there for a long time, a minute, maybe two. Then she touches the girl’s hand very lightly, and gets back on her bench, sitting sideways this time, so she can pull her own knees up and put her chin down, and wait for her mother to finish talking.

  But she doesn’t finish talking, she goes on and on, round and round the stones, deep in discussion, not looking up or over at the bench, where the little girl finally lets go of her grazed knees and lies down to sleep.

  67.

  The letter slips into the box in time. He wishes it luck and speed. Then he goes back to queue up in the village shop, holding milk and biscuits and a packet of frozen peas, feeling disproportionately large, and listening to the chatter around him, dipping and drifting between English and Welsh. He moves forward a few paces, and the phone in his jacket pocket collects a sudden burst of messages as it finds a little pool of connectivity. He balances groceries in one huge hand, and scans through as best he can with the other. Dan’s text from earlier that afternoon is among them. It would be a blessing, he thinks, to see them both. Back at the van he quickly answers those who need it, and then writes to Dan to tell him they can come out any time; and no, he hasn’t seen Lina.

  He is calm enough now to drive home leisurely, with a detour down the valley to collect two more gas canisters and some fuel for the strimmer. The path around the pond needs clearing again, especially if Teddy is imminent. He follows a pair of jays back up the tiny lane to the house. More blue flashes. As he loops around the big mulberry tree to park on the dandelion and gravel drive he sees in surprise, then in fear, that the front door is standing wide open, like a dark astonished mouth. She has escaped, he thinks. Wandered out to find me. But surely not far, and not down the road… The garden. Probably the garden. She can’t have made it to the pond. If she has fallen. Her leg. I should have bloody locked her in.

  He slams the van door shut and looks around for guidance. In the time it takes him to begin to think, two figures appear in the doorway. They smile at him. Lina looks smaller than he remembers, and oddly ragged, and tear-stained; his mother, taller by a head, rests a protective arm around her shoulders. He leaps up the steps towards them and hugs them both together. What happened? he said. Where did you come from? Are you OK? Lina, what happened?

  I’ll make some tea, says his mother unexpectedly. Then turns and points:

  Her feet.

  Theo sees the blood on Lina’s heels and the ruined little shoes by the door. He guides her gently inside towards the sofa, and sits her down.

  No rush now, he says. Let’s have a look at this.

  He goes out to the kitchen to fetch a bowl of warm water and finds his mother stood looking at the tea-pot and the kettle. He spoons some loose tea into the pot and fills it, and points at the cupboard. Can you get us three cups, Mam? He holds up three fingers. That would be great. Then he finds a clean towel, lint and bandages from upstairs, and begins to tend Lina’s wounded feet. The sight of such a large, awkward man kneeling in front of her makes
her sob.

  It’s OK, he says, come on now, you’ll be fine. We’ll have some tea and you can tell me what’s going on. You must have walked miles.

  I didn’t know she was your mother, says Lina through her tears.

  Well she’s not as ugly as me, says Theo cheerfully, not looking up. But yes, we’re related.

  Now she laughs and cries all at once. No, she says, I mean when she was in hospital. I didn’t know she was your mother. Mrs Evans.

  He leaves off bandaging her foot and looks up at her in puzzlement.

  What do you mean?

  In the hospital. Where I clean. Mrs Evans was on my round.

  She smiles.

  We had good conversations. I was sorry when she went, but I’m glad her leg is better.

  Various things dawn on him simultaneously, and he gets to his feet in agitation.

  At the hospital? Where my mother…? Cleaner? Lina, I didn’t know. Of course of course … she let you in. Oh, Lina…

  He crouches back down again and grabs both of her hands in his; his incoherence deepens.

  I … do you know a girl with red hair, very pale? She’s on the cancer ward … is that part of your … I mean, have you seen her, is she…?

  Lina pulls her hands free so she can put them firmly on his big shoulders. I know Myra, she says. Of course I know Myra.

  The shock of her name.

  I…

  She’s getting better, I’m sure she is. She’s making herself walk. To get out. It won’t be long.

  By now he is next to her on the sofa with his head in his hands. Two weeks, he says. Two weeks, I ring every bloody day but no one answers. And I can’t go into town because I can’t leave… He gestures helplessly. Why doesn’t she phone me here?

  Tea, says his mother brightly across the room. Theo helps Lina to her feet, and she limps over to the table.

  Thank you, Mrs Evans.

  The older women smiles at her, and then at her son. Do you take milk? she asks him.

  He closes his eyes. No, Mam. Not now, not ever.

  No phone, says Lina, answering Theo’s question. She can’t phone, it’s run out, dead. And the nurses, they hardly ever come now. It’s hard even to get her a cup of tea.

  I need to see her.

  I know. I can stay here. We’ll be fine.

  He is looking at the clock and calculating time and distance.

  It’s late. It will be late.

  He looks at Lina, still dishevelled and tear-stained. Her clothes are covered in dust. At his mother, smiling intently at something or somebody just beyond them both. He takes a deep breath.

  Tomorrow, he says. Come on, you need to eat and rest; and I’ll show you the house and get you settled in. I’ll go first thing tomorrow. Mam will be happy with you here.

  Relief lifts him like a wave. And while Lina is washing and changing into some of his mother’s old clothes he puts fish in the oven and peels potatoes. Remembers Dan. Fetches his jacket and slips out the back door, climbing the hill behind the house as fast as he can to the spot where the phone usually works.

  Lina is here, he writes. She’s fine. Come and join us.

  The sky west behind the rowan-tree hill the other side of the valley is streaked with red. Fort’s rivers of blood, he thinks, that vein albuminous seas. The arteries of Genesistrine: sunsets are consciousness of them… super-embryonic reservoirs from which life-forms emanate…

  At this moment, anything is possible. I’ll show you soon, he tells Myra in his head. Soon.

  As he sets off down the hill another late message comes through. From Dan. Inscrutably brief, and frightening: Teddy is lost, it says.

  68.

  The building emptied out its public an hour early, and most of the staff, those not part of the volunteer search group, have gone by now as well. The police and the volunteers have been methodically working their way through room after room. Dan is still at a table in the main hall. He has stopped talking or reacting altogether, but when Luke suggests they walk once round the Gorsedd gardens he lets himself be pulled gently through the main door and down the steps. In the park they find the black guy on Myra’s bench, being interrogated by two frustrated policemen. Luke intervenes.

  Ah, excuse me? We know this man, he’s part of a university project; can we, ah, help you?

  He’s not co-operating, says the first policeman. He won’t tell us how long he’s been here, so we can’t rule him out.

  And, says the second policeman, he won’t stop singing.

  Luke checks his watch. Ah, about two hours and twenty minutes, he says. I saw him arrive earlier. About an hour after the kid went missing. I don’t think he will know anything.

  Who is he? says the second policeman. He won’t tell us his name.

  This is Mr Jones, says Luke. Nehemiah Jones.

  Dan adds, quietly, but you can call him Skip. He nods at the figure on the bench, who grins and winks at him, and gestures that he should come and sit down. Hallelujah, he says. Dan shakes his head. The policemen look slightly uncomfortable, make professional-sounding noises, and withdraw. Dan sits down in his misery beside Skip, who shifts one of his dirty bags along to make room. Luke shows him a picture of Teddy. We’ve lost him, Mr Jones, he says. He’s gone.

  He watches the man’s face slowly cloud over; he rustles through one of the plastic bags and after a while pulls out a picture of the professor from about five years ago, newly appointed as Director of the School of Cultural Cartography, looking shiny and determined.

  Jesus, he says, is a mighty good saviour.

  That’s not Jesus, says Luke.

  And anyway, says Dan, bitter and already shivering, he isn’t; he’s patently useless. Don’t give us the Jesus stuff now, for christ’s sake.

  Skip’s eyes are filling up with tears, and after putting his picture away he starts to sing again, hoarse and low, a jumble of desolate bits and pieces about hard times and the killing floor and the people who are drifting from door to door. He rocks back and forth.

  When the policewoman comes out to check up on Dan she finds him sitting with his eyes closed, pale and completely still, with the man on the bench beside him rocking and keening. In the pines, he sings, in the pines. Luke is on another bench a few yards away, comparing maps on his iPad. He looks up at her and smiles.

  Hi, he says. He’s OK here; best if you leave him be. And I’ve just thought of something. I need to go back inside. Would you, ah, just keep an eye? Don’t sit too long, though, or you’ll get cold.

  She sits down neatly on the bench and folds her hands over her walkie-talkie as if it were a prayer book.

  Where the sun never shines.

  And shiver the whole night through.

  She shivers.

  Ten minutes later her walkie-talkie crackles. She can hear nothing through the interference, so she moves away from the bench, turning towards the building. At that moment Luke appears on the top step, with Teddy limp in his arms, asleep or unconscious. He is yelling for Dan, though no sound reaches them at all through the silence. She cries out and drops the walkie-talkie and runs over to the bench, pulling Dan roughly out of his cold trance.

  Come on, she says. Quick now. They’ve found him.

  69.

  He lies under a sheet, too cold and then too hot, letting the poison of the weekend work its way through him as illness. He cannot read. Music is unbearable, and the voices on the radio cannot be endured for more than two minutes. He shrinks like a coward from the news. When he phoned the office he had warned them that it might take three days. This is already the third; at least he thinks it is the third. He sleeps as much as possible, and eats almost nothing, and wonders how long it will all go on. He can feel her restlessness, trapped inside his phone, his iPad, his laptop, volleys of questions and comments swirling around like starlings, light and teasing at first, then increasingly disturbed. But he has built a glass wall around her, to keep her safe, to keep her out. I did what was required.

  The crea
ture lurches into the black pine forest again and again. Blood on its flank. Over fine bone china, the old lady laughs.

  70.

  In two weeks the place has become utterly strange again. He takes at least three wrong turns, and finds himself at the end of a corridor, a lift the only way out, and no stairs in sight. He doesn’t usually take lifts. He stares hard at himself in the mirror, trying to see what his big face might hold beyond the familiar ugliness. A glimpse of his brother around the eyes, but that is about all. He feels presumptuous and insignificant.

  The door opens for the top floor and he steps out into a white corridor he knows. He had left at first light, his mother and Lina still sleeping, and it is barely seven now. Everything feels unnaturally quiet. He turns to make for the room at the end of the corridor, and stops short.

  She is walking precariously towards him, as if on a tightrope stretched across an abyss, one step at a time, wholly focused on the next few inches ahead. Her red hair is cropped tight around her face; her cheekbones are sharp, there are dark pools around her eyes. The drop on either side of her is terrifying, but all he can do is hold his breath and watch.

  She sees him, or seems to, but she barely reacts, concentrating harder than ever, foot after careful foot, on the taut line. He can only wait, willing her on, readying himself to run forward if she should start to fall. She doesn’t fall, though he can see that she is tiring. The effort of balance. The effort of moving forward. He is as patient as a mountain. He must not, he will not move.

  Closer now, and the strain on her thin face is breaking him. Almost close enough, but not quite, she wobbles, breathes fast as a cat, but finds her balance, and keeps on.

  At last she lifts her head and looks right at him, gives a small shout of triumph and holds out both her hands. He grasps them and pulls her in to him, away from the edge of the cliff.