Edge of the Rain

by Beverley Harper

  Paul and the doctor prised Chrissy out of his arms. Paul helped him dress. Then he stood aghast while Alex rummaged through Chrissy’s clothes, stripped off her nightgown and dressed her, slowly, lovingly, talking to her as though she could hear. ‘What about this pair?’ he asked her, holding up some pink panties. ‘Yes. I like them too.’

  ‘Alex!’ Paul tried to lead him away.

  ‘No!’ It rang from him, an anguished cry of sorrow. ‘She needs my help can’t you see that? Here, Chrissy love, what do you think of this? It’s your favourite blouse. Come here, darling, I’ll help you.’

  Alex Theron had lost his mind.

  SIXTEEN

  Paul had taken charge that terrible day. It was Paul who telephoned Chrissy’s parents in Scotland and broke the news to them. When they pleaded that she be sent home for burial, it was Paul who arranged it. All through that long bitter day it was Paul, Paul, Paul. He forced coffee into Alex, cup after cup of it, but the sandwich he made for his brother remained untouched. Alex knew if he took so much as one bite he would be sick.

  He followed Paul around as though he could not bear to be alone. But when Paul tried to order the coffin he grabbed the telephone from his brother’s hand and flung it against a wall, smashing it to pieces.

  ‘It has to be done, Alex.’

  ‘I know, I know. Just not here, okay? She’ll hear you.’ He was sobbing so hard he could barely speak.

  ‘I’ll go and arrange it.’ Paul gripped his arm hard. The pain of it was comforting. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

  Alex shook his head. He had to stay with Chrissy in case she was frightened.

  When Paul returned he found Alex sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed where Chrissy lay. His brother seemed to have retreated into a deep and unreachable place.

  ‘I think it would be best if she goes to the church tonight. The flight leaves tomorrow morning.’

  Alex appeared not to have heard him. But, two hours later, when they came to take her away, two dispassionate men who spoke softly and moved too quickly, the haste with which they were prepared to take her out of his life shocked Alex out of his silence. ‘No!’ he yelled.

  ‘It’s better this way.’ Paul tried to lead him out of the room.

  ‘No. She’s not going anywhere. Not tonight.’

  The men looked at Paul for guidance. Paul looked into Alex’s eyes and saw the desperate, lonely pain and waved the men away. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ he told them. So the men laid her gently in the coffin and went away, their own hearts aching for the silent despairing man whose eyes were wild with disbelief and pain.

  It stood in the lounge for one night, this gleaming horrid box, for though he could not bear to send her to wait in a lonely church, neither could he stand the sight of it. She was in there. Lying on her back which he knew she hated, her hands folded on her breast, her eyes forever closed. Everyone who came to pay their last respects said, ‘But she looks lovely, as if she’s sleeping.’ He wanted to scream at them all, ‘She looks dead, nothing but dead, you fool,’ but he held his peace and said nothing, nodding dumbly. That night, though, when they had all gone away—all those caring, sympathetic eyes which filled him with rage, those sad grieving eyes which overwhelmed him with guilt, Paul’s loving, worried eyes which drenched him with pain—he sat on the floor and rested his head against her coffin.

  ‘Chrissy, I love you.’ But she had no words for him.

  Restless, he prowled the house all night. Her book, open at page 145. Now she’d never know how it ended. Her reading glasses, resting on the open pages. Her shoes, kicked off and lying against each other under the bed. The clothes she was wearing that last day, thrown on the floor as, sick and frightened, she had crawled into bed. The indentation of her head on the pillow. A sandwich on the bedside table, stale and deserted, one tiny bite taken out, he could see the marks of her teeth. In the bathroom, some dirty clothes. He picked up her shirt and held it against his face and he could smell her. Red hair on her brush. ‘Oh Jesus, darling, why didn’t I know?’

  And his heart broke again and again. But when they came for the coffin the next day he stood in the doorway and watched it go. ‘She’s not in there,’ he slurred to Paul, waving the bottle of scotch at him. ‘She’s fooled them all. She’s flying.’ And he laughed at his clever Chrissy who was flying without him and then he cried.

  He heard the aeroplane that took her away. It flew directly over the house. He did not bother to look up. ‘Why didn’t I know?’ he cried to the doctor the next day who had come to see how he was doing.

  ‘She was very determined not to let you know. She had great strength. I’m surprised she managed to keep it from you, though. The last couple of months weren’t easy for her.’

  ‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘I could have helped her.’

  ‘Mr Theron,’ the doctor said, his voice full of sympathy, ‘your young lady knew that if you discovered the truth she could no longer pretend it wasn’t happening to her. This way, she gave herself many moments during the past few years where she could pretend she was well. I saw her a few months ago. She was talking about the job you’re doing for the Bushmen. She was full of enthusiasm and do you know what she told me? She said, “In a few years it will be good to see the scheme working.” She believed she would see it. These are the moments I’m talking about. If you had known she was ill she could not have deceived herself. Your grief would have been a constant reminder of the fact that she was dying. Don’t blame her.’

  ‘I don’t blame her,’ Alex said quietly. ‘I blame myself.’

  ‘You couldn’t have stopped it.’

  ‘No. But I could have helped.’

  It all seemed unreal: the empty house loudly echoing his solitary footsteps as he paced and prowled in lonely despair but which he preferred to the intrusion of well-meaning voices; her clothes and toiletries which mocked and tortured so he hated them but he could not bring himself to throw them away.

  Alex did the only thing he could think of. He went into the desert and found !Ka.

  Be took one look at his face and she knew. ‘The fire in your girl has gone out.’

  ‘Yes,’ he cried in anguish. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It was already growing cold when you brought her here. She did not know it then but the little arrows of sickness had already been brought by the spirits.’

  !Ka tapped his arm. ‘We could not do the curing dance. She had a sickness we cannot make better.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said miserably. ‘And now she is gone.’

  ‘Look up !ebili. Can you see the backbone of the sky?’

  But it was no use. !Ka’s wisdom could not help him this time and, three days later, feeling abandoned and alone in his pain, Alex returned to Gaborone and tried to throw himself into his work. But it was no use. The shell worked; he walked, talked, ate, drank and laughed but the impetus to carry on, the enthusiasm he had brought to his project, had gone. There were days when he was too hungover to get out of bed. Timon Setgoma had him removed from the scheme. Too much aid money had been spent on it to allow it to stumble along in the hands of a man who had lost his mind.

  Three weeks after that terrible night when Chrissy left forever, a memorial service was held in Gaborone. Paul told him her parents wanted it. They wanted to meet her friends, get a feel for the last few years of her life. Marv and Pru came down for it, Pru heavy with child. She took charge of the arrangements for which Alex supposed he was grateful. He began to drink heavily. He didn’t understand why a service was being held at all. But he kept that thought to himself and watched himself circulate among friends and listened to them saying how sorry they were and heard himself make the right responses. He watched while he comforted her parents who appeared to be as bewildered as he.

  ‘Why didn’t you let us know she was sick?’ her father kept asking. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’ He missed the worried look which passed between Paul and Marv.
He thought how well he was doing. He thought he’d given the kindest answer. Why hurt her parents? Why tell them she lived with her illness right under his nose and he didn’t see it?

  They all turned out for the memorial service. A crowd who loved to laugh and have fun. A crowd too young and strong to ever die. A crowd struck dumb that one of them had traitorously fallen under the weight of illness. They were no help to Alex. They were too busy with their own shock. They patted him awkwardly and mumbled about him coming over for dinner and moved away as quickly as they could. Alex preferred their company. Paul, Marv and Pru, Chrissy’s parents, even Mum and Pa who had made the journey from Shakawe, they made him feel. And he didn’t want to feel.

  Pa’s sympathy was unbearable. The pain he felt for his son made Alex’s pain worse.

  ‘Do you have to drink so much, Ali? It won’t help you know.’

  Paul dragged their mother away as Alex shouted, ‘How the hell would you know?’ and felt sadistic pleasure at the sudden look of shock on her face.

  He didn’t want to feel or think or do. He needed company but, as soon as he had company, he needed to be alone. Then he heard himself agreeing to return to the farm with Marv and Pru. He didn’t have the strength to say no. Besides, at night alone in the house, the pain was too intense. He was sick of thinking and remembering and crying. He was sick of prowling the rooms, touching her things. Without knowing it was happening, a watcher was born who lived inside his head and observed. This watcher, whose impartial eyes observed an Alex who had gone cold, who moved and spoke like the old Alex but who was dead inside, this watcher never judged, simply watched and listened.

  While Alex helped Marv with the fences and nodded dumbly when Marv told him hard physical work would take his mind off his grief, the watcher listened. He was there watching when Pru went into labour and Alex drove a calm and matter-of-fact mother-to-be, and a father-to-be who had fallen apart at the seams, two hours to the hospital in Francistown. He—or the watcher, he didn’t know which—saw himself do all the right things. And then he listened when, three months later, he explained to Marv why he was leaving. He did that rather well, too. ‘I just have to get away. Leave Botswana for a while. I’ll be back.’ The voice was his, but the watcher knew if he didn’t leave, the happiness and love between Marv and Pru and their newly born baby son, Alexander James, would send him truly mad.

  So he left. He left Botswana. Then he left Africa. Life became a blur. Too many hotels, too many bars, too many girls who left him empty inside and aching, too many bottles of scotch. Sometimes he could not remember which country he was in. They all looked the same. Europe at her quaint best. Doll’s houses lining canals and streets. Ducks in picturesque ponds. Bright green fields and hills dotted with fat black and white cows. Guttural voices and faces which smiled a welcome. Snow-capped mountains. Blazing blue Mediterranean seas. Grapevines. Fishing boats. Blue rivers. Brown rivers. And always, always the welcome oblivion of one amber liquid too many.

  Sometimes he remembered snippets. Brawls mainly. He wanted to be left alone but they would not leave him alone. Young and free and convinced everyone was their friend, they badgered him with their conversations. Flat nasal Australians, broad twangy Americans, broken English’d Dutch or Germans or Spaniards or wherever they came from, they would not leave him alone. Mainly he went with the flow, allowed himself to be picked up by their lives and taken along for the ride. After a while, when they realised he had nothing of himself to give, they dropped him. On some occasions, when self-pity and pain were almost too great to bear, he lashed out at them. Verbally, he shouted abuse so he could watch their happy faces turn to bewilderment. Physically, he shoved them away roughly so he could fight them, lose himself in physical rather than emotional pain.

  Once or twice the real Alex lifted his head and saw what had become of him. But grief hadn’t finished with him and the pain was too much so the real Alex slunk away and the watcher returned.

  He worked sporadically. Odd jobs he could not recall asking to do. He picked grapes somewhere, probably Spain. He painted boats. Greece, he thought. He shovelled pig shit and had no idea where except it was icy cold and the people spoke a funny lilting language and they all had blond hair. Hard physical labour which had him sweating out last night’s whisky, only to top up again tonight. Mindless jobs which didn’t require him to think. And the watcher in his mind noticed how well he was doing.

  One day, nearly three years later, for no reason he could think of, he stopped watching himself. He woke in a strange bed, in a strange flat, in a strange land and the first thing to hit him was he felt pain. Pain in his head. Pain from too much scotch. But he, Alex, was feeling it, not the mind who had watched Alex. It was real and it was inside his own head. He stirred in yellow and ivory striped sheets and wondered whose they were. He cursed when he found one eye was swollen shut. He ran his tongue over teeth which felt like cat fur.

  Stumbling, he guessed his way to the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes, a couple of scars, hair which needed cutting, a face which needed shaving and one very black eye stared back. But he could see himself. He realised he hadn’t seen himself for a very long time. This time, for some reason, he did not retreat. This time he faced himself head-on. He ran cold water and splashed his face. His hands trembled. He could smell his own body odour.

  The bathroom was feminine. He took a shower, a long hot shower. He found a razor and shaved, cutting himself several times. He wrapped a towel around his waist and wandered the flat. Nice view. Rolling hills and a castle. He wondered where he was, which country. He remembered he had been in France. When? How long ago? He went into the small kitchen and made himself coffee. The label was in English. He supposed he could always turn on the television and see what language it was in but he found it didn’t matter to him. Snow was falling outside. The flat was warm. Good. He hated the cold.

  He went back to the bedroom and stared at the bed. Had he and the owner of the flat made love? No. Not made love. Fucked. He hadn’t made love to anyone since Chrissy died. Chrissy! He had blocked out her name. Chrissy! He could see her face. He waited for the darkness to cover his heart. Chrissy! But there was only light.

  Had he fucked whoever owned the bed? He could not remember. He had just decided to get dressed and leave when he heard a key in the door, then light footsteps coming into the bedroom.

  ‘Good, you’re up. I bought you some clothes, you don’t appear to live anywhere.’

  He stared. ‘Good Christ, Madison!’

  She smiled grimly. ‘The very same.’

  He shook his head to clear it. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘My flat.’

  ‘Yes but where?’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Stirling.’

  ‘Stirling? You mean Scotland Stirling? How’d I get here?’

  She threw packages on the bed. ‘Bought you some clothes. Yours were disgusting. Get dressed, we’ll talk over breakfast.’

  ‘Did you get me a toothbrush?’

  ‘It’s in there somewhere.’

  He listened to her accent, South African upper class English, not another like it in the world. It made him think of home. He wanted to ask how he came to be in her flat but she turned on her heel and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  He dressed in clean new clothes. She had thought of everything. He found aspirin in her bathroom cupboard and swallowed three, gagging as they stuck in the back of his throat. Then he joined Madison in the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘Hardy surprising. You’re a helluva mess.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She was doing something with oranges and a juice extractor. He could smell the tanginess of citrus. His mouth watered. When was the last time he wanted anything other than scotch?

  ‘Here.’ She handed him a full glass.

  He drank it straight down. ‘Like more
?’ She held out her hand for the glass.

  ‘Please.’ The last of the fur in his mouth had been washed away.

  She turned back to the sink.

  ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘With great difficulty. You’re a dead weight.’

  ‘You carried me?’ No way, she was too small.

  ‘Practically.’

  ‘Did we . . . you know . . . did we do anything?’

  ‘Do me a favour!’

  ‘Where did you sleep then?’

  ‘On the sofa.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s quite comfortable, really.’ She handed him another glass of orange juice. ‘I found you in the street outside a bar. You’d been tossed out.’

  Chrissy’s parents. He remembered. He had gone to see Chrissy’s parents. He couldn’t recall what happened but he knew he left their home with a feeling of deep sadness. The words ‘We blame you,’ rang in his head.

  ‘I guess I was a bit of a mess.’

  She answered with a directness typical of people who came from a country like Botswana and had no time for coyness. ‘You were covered in vomit and blood. You hadn’t bathed in God knows how long. You had no coat, no jacket. You’d have frozen to death in the street.’

  ‘And you picked me up?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said crisply. ‘Much to the amusement of the occupants of the bar.’

  He could imagine it. The small amount he was beginning to remember told him it hadn’t been a very nice place. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Consider us even.’

  He let that pass. ‘What are you doing here? Last I heard you were in Europe at finishing school.’

  She grunted, half amused, half angry. ‘They threw me out.’

  He laughed. ‘What’d you do, use the wrong knife?’

  She laughed back. ‘A couple of us decided to abseil from the third floor.’