The Other Side of the World

by Stephanie Bishop

  The nurse appears at his side. “Shhh,” she says, pressing a hand against his shoulder and urging him to sit. He lowers himself slowly into the chair and takes his mother’s hands in his. How terrible it is now that death is here, gurgling back and forth in her throat.

  “It is all right,” he says. “You can go now. I am here. I am here.” There ought to be something else to say, something more, but he doesn’t know what. That he is sorry for buying the flowers. For taking so long. For staying away. For the years and years he has stayed away. Instead he repeats what he’s said before: It’s all right. You can go now. I am here. I am here. He strokes her hand, her arm. He knows it is too late. He knows he’s waited until it is too late. Her breathing grows slower and more labored. Henry leans closer still and strokes her hair. It is fine, thin hair and he can feel the bones of her head—the narrow band of her forehead, the rise of her skull. There is the dark hole of her mouth, the smell of her sour, meat-dank breath. It comes intermittently, her breath—long and rasping, then nothing. Then long again. Every time she falls quiet Henry starts forwards, thinking it is over. Then she breathes, the sign of life giving him fright. Henry sweats through his clothes. His trousers cling to his thighs, his shirt sticks to his back. He notices a breeze stirring the branches at the window, causing water to drip down onto the glass, tap tap tap, like the second hand of a clock. Thick cloud moves past, obscuring the trees, and when he looks back down he knows that she is gone. He holds her hands for a few moments longer, then lets go.

  Charlotte looks up at the clock on the kitchen wall and realizes that it has stopped. It is the silence she notices. Henry usually winds the clocks before he goes to bed. At first Charlotte remembered to do this but at some point must have forgotten. It doesn’t matter—somehow, in Henry’s absence, time has changed, softened. The hours undulate rather than divide as they used to, an hour for this, half an hour for that, each day an equation. Now there is no one to check such progress, such efficiency. No one expects a packed lunch ready on the table by seven, dinner at six. Her watch is in the bedroom, but she will fetch it later, once she’s finished the dishes.

  She does not always dislike domestic duties. She enjoys bringing in dry washing that smells of clean air and feels warm with sunlight. And she likes washing up at dusk, as she does now, the garden blackening and fading away, the bright interior of the room beginning to shine on the inside of the kitchen window. The girls are quiet in front of the television—they’ve both fallen ill and for the last few nights Charlotte has padded back and forth between the bedrooms, tending, tucking in, bringing milk or water or chamomile tea. Henry has been gone two weeks now. In the background the children sneeze and sniffle.

  Charlotte is just lifting the saucepan out of the water when she hears a knock at the door. She looks around, then hears it again. Three taps once. Three taps twice. “Just a minute!” she calls, wiping her hands on the tea towel and untying her apron.

  Nicholas stands at the door. “Oh,” Charlotte says, taken aback. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “No. I thought I’d just drop by on my way home—I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Yes—I mean, no,” she says, faltering. “Henry’s away, and the children are unwell. I haven’t heard from you since, I thought maybe—”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize you were on your own. Can I do anything? Get you anything?”

  “No, no. We’re fine, thank you,” replies Charlotte, pulling a crumpled handkerchief from her pocket and blowing her nose.

  “Can I come in—at least let me make you a cup of tea? You could put your feet up a minute.”

  “Oh,” Charlotte says, still barring the door with her arm. “Well, no, I suppose not, I mean there’s no reason not to come in.”

  “You mean yes?”

  “Yes, come in. That would be lovely. But let me make the tea.”

  * * *

  Henry pulls the sheet up over his mother’s face and then returns to the hotel. He orders tea and drinks it sitting by the window. Seven sparrows perch in a row along the red awnings of a nearby building. Each time a new sparrow flies in to join the line, another sparrow flies off from the end, so that no matter how many new birds alight, there are only ever seven sitting on the roof. The fog lifted in the afternoon but now returns, rolling and creeping and floating down the hillside. Low-flying crows appear and disappear in its white depths. It is Monday. On Wednesday his mother will be buried in the British cemetery, as she requested, and Henry will not attend.

  He falls asleep while there is still light outside and wakes, many hours later, to the sound of morning bells and chanting. He opens the curtains, looking for the parade, then realizes that the music is coming from the church. Drums and bells and warbling voices.

  It is time to go. He takes a car down to Kalka, then boards an express train to Delhi. Fog engulfs the lower hills and then night swallows the plains. He is glad not to see the landscape beyond the window. The huts and the sheds and the rubbish and the mud—the catalog that life is reduced to when moving at high speed over vast tracts of land. There is this and this and this. How simple it is to move forwards, and yet, in another way, how difficult, and how rare. Is he moving forwards now? It is hard to say. Later, he will remember things: three Indian women in iridescent saris emerging from roadside mists as if rising out of smoke. Bright pink and gold and violet. Then, lower down, on the narrow dusty roads, another woman, in black this time, ­carrying a tower of kindling on her head like some great crown of thorns, while two small children tug at her long skirt. The injured cow bleeding in the middle of the road. Stalls selling boxes of red and gold apples, each apple wrapped in paper. He thought of taking some home to the children, then remembered he could not. How he longs for them, and for Charlotte. The train judders over the tracks. A man in uniform pushes a tea trolley up and down the aisle. He pines for the sound of neighborhood boys kicking a ball in the park, for the sight of couples walking hand in hand by the river in the evening, for the hushed nights when whole streets are sleeping peacefully. In this moment, as he ­passes through what he can only imagine are some of the poorest and ugliest stretches of the world, Henry longs for the ordinary suburban boredom that he’s always thought somehow beneath him. It is unambitious, dull, so terribly average. But how comfortable it looks from this distance. From the dark window of his berth, that suburban ­universe seems the very pinnacle of ­civilized life. It is time to go home.

  * * *

  When he gets off the train he takes a taxi to the guesthouse near Lodi Gardens where he first stayed. He is given the room facing the rose garden and sleeps long and deep, waking to a fine gold morning, a haze of damp heat blurring the higher branches of the trees. Above this the sky is a pale brown, colored by smog and desert dust. Birds of prey spiral slowly upwards like pieces of ash rising from an unseen disaster. Beneath them dart the yellow-winged dragonflies, while mynah birds watch on from the roof of the guesthouse, every now and then swooping through the low reaches of the neem tree. One for love, two for joy, three for success, four for boy. It is a song his mother used to sing him on the long trip up to his school in the hills. She didn’t like to leave him, but there was no choice, so although the song sounded cheerful, it always made Henry sad. He had forgotten it and now, out of nowhere, the whole of it comes back. Five for silver, six for gold, seven for the secret never to be told.

  He takes his morning tea on the lawn. Without warning the rain comes. It brings leaves and feathers down from the trees. It sends the squirrels into hiding. Parrots call from high branches and the guests rush to find shelter under the eaves. A tall ­Frenchwoman catches his attention—she has a small silver chain around her ­ankle with bells on it and they tinkle when she dashes in from the rain. The wicker chairs sit empty on the grass and turn black with ­water. It is not the season for visiting. Henry wants to be gone, but it turns out there’s some trouble with the flights: something
about ­weather conditions and staffing disputes. It might be another week, they told him earlier this morning, before he can get a flight home.

  Henry returns to his room and writes to Charlotte, telling her of the delay and how he misses her. When he next looks up, the rain has stopped. The sun shines and bakes the grass dry.

  Through the rosebushes Henry can see the gardener pushing a yellow lawn mower back and forth, back and forth. When this is done a second man comes out with a broom and sweeps the cut grass from the lawn. A third man crouches down with a smaller broom and sweeps the concrete terrace outside Henry’s room where stray grass clippings have landed. He sweeps them into four neat piles. When he’s almost finished a wind comes up out of nowhere and scatters the grass back across the terrace. The man stops his sweeping and looks up, watching the clippings being blown away. When the wind dies down he goes in search of them and slowly begins sweeping again. The sun is hot and ­Henry draws the blinds, lies down, and closes his eyes. The fan whirrs above him and the sush sush of the brooms keeps on outside.

  The children worsen; Lucie sweats and cries while May lies on Charlotte’s chest and doesn’t move—she can’t lift her head or talk or drink. Her arms are floppy and her skin is hot to the touch. They have both been sick before but Charlotte has never seen a child like this. Henry wrote the number of his hotel on the calendar and Charlotte phones it—when Lucie starts vomiting and May won’t open her eyes. But when she speaks to the man at reception she is told that Henry has checked out. Where is he? she asks. He didn’t say? There must be a message for me.

  The child screams all night. Over and over the child screams. Which child? She can’t tell anymore. How many times has it screamed and for how many nights? She has lost count; she is too tired and she is too angry, unaccountably angry. There is no justifiable cause—she is simply worn out, and the fatigue turns somehow to rage, a shivering tide of rage that moves quickly now through her blood. If only they would stop crying and let her sleep. She is angry and afraid at the same time. Something must have happened to him. Has something happened to him? If only they’d stop crying. No, she will not go to them. Not again, please no. Please. Mummy, they call. “Mummy’s coming,” she calls back, and like a huge wave rising and crashing and rising, she drags her body from her bed towards the children’s room, the crying growing louder as she moves through the dark, towards them. This goes on night after night after night. One day. Two days, three days, four. She feels her way along the wall. There is no moon. She does not think to turn on a light. It is so black she can’t see her arm as it reaches out in front of her. Where is the door? Further. This is the wall still. Now, here—the different wood of the door, the smooth glossy paint cold to the touch. Her hand slips down towards the low handle and she stands in the children’s room, the crying coming closer now, and closer, and closer, until it is ringing down the tunnel of her ear, the child’s hot wet face pressing against her cheek.

  “Hush, hush. That’s enough now. That’s enough. It was just a dream. Just a dream. Shhh, shhhhh,” she tries again. “There is nothing here. It’s a fever. You’re safe now. You’re safe.” But at the sound of her mother’s voice, May screams louder. She thrashes about in Charlotte’s arms so that Charlotte can no longer hold her and drops her back down on the bed, letting her writhe. She is too tired to walk back to her own room, too tired to stand, so she slumps down against the wall and leaves May to grow hoarse. Her head pounds. The screams run deep through her bones. What does the child want from her? What? “Stop it!” she screams back. “Stop it! Will you just stop it!” She stands up then, quickly, searches out May’s shape on the bed, picks her up under her arms, and shakes her. “Will you just stop it now! Now, I said! Now!” Then she throws her back onto the pillow. She hears the air push out of May’s lungs as her little body lands. Silence fills the room and Charlotte stumbles out, feeling her way back to the bedroom, the dark behind her trembling with tiny, stifled whimpers.

  By morning Charlotte too has come down with a fever. She knows she has to get to the doctor, but when she calls she’s told he is out on his rounds and won’t be able to attend to them until the evening. She can’t find the car keys so there is no option other than to walk the girls to the practice in the next suburb. She packs the pram and sets out, moving slowly, clutching the handles for balance, the ground rolling beneath her. Sweat beads on her forehead. The children cry. The inside of her mouth feels sticky and sour. Nausea comes over her in waves. May’s face turns red and splotchy and her clothes soak through with sweat. They have not gone more than ten yards when Charlotte turns and very slowly walks back to the house. She unlocks the door, pushes the pram inside, and lies down on the cold linoleum of the hallway.

  Nicholas finds her there in the afternoon. He stops by to deliver biscuits and oranges for the children and when no one answers the door he tries the handle. He helps Charlotte into bed and puts the children in beside her, then he takes a flannel from the bathroom and wipes their faces. Later, Charlotte will remember him sponging her lips, the cool water running little by little into her mouth.

  He leaves late in the night but returns the next day, the sun high, the bedroom full of slippery light. Charlotte has never been so glad of company. “Come in, come in,” she whispers, the children just waking. Charlotte’s fever has broken and she’s eaten a little. He helps her dress the girls and together they go out into the garden. It is good to be outside. The sun is warm and the air fresh-smelling. They each carry a child. May rests her heavy, sleepy head on Charlotte’s shoulder and Lucie rides on Nicholas’s back. He talks to comfort Charlotte, telling her how he has begun reading Ruskin again. And how he is trying, once more, to figure out a way to paint the webs of light that waver beneath the surface of the river. This odd hobby of his.

  “You never said,” Charlotte exclaims. “Really?”

  “Nets of silver and gold have we, said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. It’s a rhyme I knew as a child. I’ve tried painting those bright lines for years, rather unsuccessfully, I’m afraid. It’s hard to capture the constant movement in a still image. Here,” he says, “let me show you,” and the four of them walk slowly to the water.

  They stand leaning over the edge of the jetty, Nicholas with his arms outstretched on either side of the railing, Charlotte in her wide-brimmed hat, holding May, Lucie sitting on the wooden planks and clinging to the hem of her mother’s dress. Their shadows waver on the tan-colored water. “There are jellyfish down there,” Nicholas says to the children. “Can you see them?” Lucie watches, tracking the throbbing movements until the creatures disappear, their purplish bodies vanishing in deep water. Small waves from passing boats lap gently at the pylons and at the shore.

  Charlotte has the strange feeling she can tell him anything, anything at all, and he will understand. It frightens her, this feeling. It frightens her because it seems they do not even need to speak to understand. They can just stand here, watching the water, and it is as if they know everything, as if everything that has ever mattered is immediately understood.

  He stays for dinner, a small feast of fried eggs and grilled cheese on toast, then he helps ready the children for bed. Once they are asleep he and Charlotte step out the back door, into the tall grass. Charlotte’s eyes are slow to adjust, the moon thin and the yard dark. She smells the cool draft of late wattle flower, and other smells particular to night: damp eucalyptus leaves cold on the ground, left over wood smoke, ash, and the dirt like, earthy smell of the cold night itself, black and fine and a little sour. She pulls two old wicker chairs out from under the house and ­places them square on the grass, then she and Nicholas sit side by side, leaning their heads back against the chairs so they can better see the sky. Stars litter the dark. Charlotte’s long white hands rest along the sides of the chair. They sit in silence, watching the night, and after a while Nicholas reaches out and touches the back of her wrist. Then he takes her hand in his, lifting it, pointing it with his own. �
�There, the Southern Cross. There, Saturn. Do you see the shape of the bow and arrow?” he asks. No, not quite. Nicholas, still holding Charlotte’s hand, traces it out. Then they sit quietly for a while. Charlotte watches for falling stars. She watches closely, her eyes open and watering in the cold. And then they come. Charlotte has never seen so many.

  “Look!” she calls.

  “And another!” Nicholas cries. The two of them are like children.

  “You must make a wish,” she says. “Each time you see one.”

  * * *

  His hands shake as he unties the scarf she wears knotted at her throat. The colored cloth falls to the floor as he pulls her gently towards him, running his fingers up through the fine hair at the nape of her neck. He bends to kiss the length of her collarbone, then opens her dress while she seeks out his mouth with her fingers. They kiss for a long time. Later they make love in her bed, her feet hooked around his buttocks, her hands slipping on his damp back. She tastes sweat and musk on his mouth. His wide shoulders move above her face, wavelike, his head dipping towards hers. At the end she calls out to him while he makes a strange choking noise and drops his forehead on her shoulder. Their bodies tremble. She feels his stomach lifting and falling against hers, heavy and warm. They stay this way while he shrinks inside her, the slow suck of wet flesh coming away from wet flesh, then the cool leak and spread of semen against her inner thighs. She eases herself out from under him and rolls over; they lie beside one another then and she strokes his stomach—it reminds her of the belly of a dog, warm, the skin white-pink, tight but soft, the fine coating of hair. For some time they stay quite still, hands touching. Around them the room smells of old flowers, rotting and sweet, the green stems yellowing in the glass vase. White street light seeps in through the gaps in the curtains. The umbrella tree scrapes back and forth on the iron roof. Birdcalls echo in the huge sky, the cluster of notes bouncing out and out and out until they vanish in distant air. There is the first hush of rain, then the jingling of a bell as a cat runs for shelter.