Redemption Song

by Wilkinson, Laura

  But JJ had noticed it too.

  Why was she so keen to stay in Coed Mawr this morning? JJ was to start work on the roof now that scaffolding shrouded the chapel. Perhaps that was why she didn’t want to leave. It would have been nice to greet him on his first proper day, offer him a cup of coffee. Though perhaps it was better she wasn’t there. His presence unsettled her. There, she’d admitted it. She waited at the traffic lights, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel.

  He seemed like a nice enough man. He is nice, she corrected herself. So what is it? He’s handsome, he’s polite, well-spoken, thoughtful, obviously well-educated, more than you might think for the average tradesman, she guessed. He’d understood the Latin inscription on the plaque in the church hall. Now that had surprised her. An image of him standing in the chapel, head tipped to the roof, flashed into her mind: his broad back, square shoulders, low-slung jeans only thinly disguising a shapely bottom.

  A horn honked and Rain jumped. The lights were green and the driver behind was agitated. Flustered, she crunched the gears, waved an apology to the driver, who was now flashing his headlights at her, and kangaroo-jumped forward before stalling.

  For heaven’s sake, what on earth was wrong with her? She tried again. Accelerator slammed to the floor, she turned the key. Another screech but the engine didn’t catch.

  You bloody fool, Rain. You’ve flooded the old girl’s engine.

  Another hoot on a horn. Then another. A different one. A queue was forming behind her.

  Breathe, breathe. One, two, three, four …

  The man behind honked again and again. She glanced in her mirror. Mistake. He was red-faced and scowling, hammering the palm of his hand against his steering wheel. He was rabid.

  Sweat gathered on Rain’s brow, under her arms. There was no point trying the engine, it needed time.

  The sounds ganged up on her.

  Six, seven, eight, nine …

  She rested her head on the wheel. Eleven, twelve, thirteen …

  She heard the slamming of a car door and jerked upright. Oh no. He was coming over. Her chest tightened, her heart went into overdrive. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. She was going to explode, definitely explode. What a mess of the car she would make. Like a raspberry jelly explosion, with bone-coloured bits of wafer. Hysteria built, her vision began to blur. The man was banging on the window.

  Don’t look, don’t look.

  It’s a panic attack, a panic attack. You are not dying. You are not dying.

  Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen …

  She turned her head and looked at the man. He was shouting, she thought, though she couldn’t hear the words. His mouth opened and closed but no sound came. He reminded her of a fairground puppet from her childhood. They frightened her even then, monstrous, ugly things with their permanent smiles, livid red lips, and startled eyes.

  Another bang, on the passenger window this time. She turned. A woman. Back to the man. He was still talking. But he didn’t look angry this time.

  ‘Are. You. OK? Can you open the door?’ he mouthed.

  Yes, yes, those were the words. He wasn’t shouting at her; he wanted to help.

  But Rain couldn’t move. Instead she gripped the wheel harder.

  ‘Mrs de Lacy. Reverend? Are you OK?’ The woman mouthed. ‘I’m going to call the manse. Is your daughter at home?’

  How does she know my name? Who is she? I don’t know her. I know every member of my congregation. Every single one.

  The car began to spin, the nausea built, and the darkness gathered. The woman shrank and shrank, sucked away into the black hole. And then: nothing.

  When Rain opened her eyes, she saw only the sky, grey and blinding in its fuzziness. Then, a face peering down at her. ‘Hello. Mrs de Lacy? You’re back. You fainted. Thank goodness for this old car, huh? No central locking.’

  It was a paramedic.

  ‘Panic attack. I get them from time to time. I’m OK now.’ She went to push herself up, but the medic held her down, gently.

  ‘Give yourself a moment or two.’

  ‘It’s freezing down here. My bum’s numb.’ She managed a smile and he laughed.

  Rain drank a mug of strong tea at a café and called the hospital.

  ‘No need to worry, Reverend,’ the nurse said, ‘Miss Shawcroft won’t mind one jot. You drop in whenever you can. No need to worry about visiting hours.’

  It hadn’t been easy getting rid of the paramedics. What fusspots they were. It was only after she’d pointed at the sky and said, ‘I’ve someone far more powerful than you looking after me,’ they’d decided it was all right to leave her. She’d been joking about the big man upstairs.

  She ordered another drink, added two heaped spoonfuls of sugar, and stirred. Miss Shawcroft. Rain had forgotten that Mair had never married. ‘Never met the right man,’ she’d said. ‘Courted by plenty,’ she’d added with a wink, ‘but none were quite right.’ Rain had asked if she’d ever been tempted to settle for Mr Nearly-Right, to which Mair had replied, ‘I’d rather be on my own than with someone who wasn’t absolutely in love with me and with whom I wasn’t absolutely in love with back. What would be the point?’

  Rain found her relatively newly single state hardest to bear when she was out and about. All those empty spaces, nasty little gaps and potholes she fell down on the less than vigilant days – reaching for a hand to hold when strolling down the high street or along the beach, turning to ask for an opinion in a queue, sitting in a café sipping a latte, aware of the pitying, questioning eyes: Is she waiting for someone? Stepping into a pub or a restaurant of an evening was inconceivable – And at church. How had Mair spent a lifetime with all that space around her?

  Men marry for someone to come home to; women marry for someone to step out with. She’d read it somewhere and realised, now, it was true.

  Rain missed Stephen when she was home, of course she did, but not in the same way. Not the space in the bed – she’d been used to that being empty. No, she missed someone to collapse with onto the sofa. Someone to fold underpants for. Loneliness was a vast space within her. She felt like the castle in The Sleeping Beauty, full of creatures who had once lived and laughed, but who now slept, frozen and empty, like death. She waited for someone, something, to hack down the thorns and break the spell, bring her back to life. Only her faith prevented her falling from coma to true death.

  Rain sipped at her tea, unable to taste or feel anything but the unpleasant coating of sugar on her teeth. She picked up her phone again.

  Not due at Wynne’s that day, Saffron was still schlepping about in her pyjamas, moping, when her phone rang. Tempted not to answer, she walked away at first but the ringtone was insistent – she’d chosen it deliberately – and she was compelled to pick up. She figured talking to Rain – anyone – might take her mind off the events of the night before. Nevertheless, she couldn’t disguise the irritation in her tone.

  ‘Everything all right, Saffy?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  Had Rain seen Joe? He wouldn’t have said anything, would he? ‘Mrs de Lacy, your daughter made a pass at me last night. Could you tell her to keep her paws to herself please?’ Saffron shuddered at the thought.

  ‘No reason, no reason. Probably me, projecting again!’ Rain chirped.

  Saffron sensed her mother’s forced cheeriness. ‘What’s up, Mum?’

  ‘I’ve had a bit of an episode …’

  ‘A bit?’

  Saffron was dressed within minutes. She had intended to take a leisurely bath, to wash away her dirtiness, the lingering scent of alcohol and cigarette smoke in her hair, the shame clinging to her flesh, but despite Rain’s reassurances that her panic attack had been minor, Saffron wanted to be with her as soon as possible.

  Head down as she bolted up the path, Saffron didn’t notice the Land Rover until it was too late. She lifted her head at the sound of a car door slamming and almost collided with Joe. Mumbling sorry, swiftly followed by hello, a
nd fiddling with her hair to shield her eyes, she continued down the street. Dismayed to hear footsteps behind her, she stopped and half turned. What was he doing? Was he going to follow her into town?

  ‘Everything OK?’ he said.

  Without looking at him, she answered that it was, and hoped that would be the end of their conversation, such as it was. She couldn’t bear excuses or, worse, attempts to rake over things best forgotten. Conscious of her filthy hair, last night’s clothes, and lack of make-up, she dipped her chin further into her coat, peeping at him surreptitiously through strands of hair she’d pulled over her face. She wished she looked her best rather than her worst, to remind him what he’d turned down. He wouldn’t get another chance.

  ‘See you later then,’ he said, a faint colour discernible on his cheeks.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. Not if I can avoid it, she thought, scuttling off.

  But she couldn’t rid her mind of the image of his face, those extraordinary eyes contrite and pleading.

  ‘Why don’t you come in?’ Rain asked. ‘Mair won’t mind, it’ll be more fun than sitting here in the car park –’

  ‘And you won’t have to feel guilty if you’re there for ages!’ Saffron said it kindly, though she meant every word.

  Rain smiled, reached over and touched Saffron’s hand, which still rested on the gear stick though she’d switched off the engine. ‘You’ve got me there! It’ll get cold here too.’

  ‘I can turn the engine on.’

  ‘What a waste of petrol! Think of the environment.’

  ‘I’ve a coat on.’ Saffron looked at her mother, her eyes shining, still watery and a little glazed. It was the way she looked after an episode; it was the same expression people wore after bad news, when operations hadn’t been as successful as hoped, when the drugs weren’t working, when despite how hard the medical staff had worked there was little else to be done. Saffron wanted to hug her mum and tell her everything would be all right, eventually. But how could she do that when she didn’t believe it herself? How could things ever be right again? The best they could hope for was OK.

  ‘I hate hospitals too, Saff. Please.’

  Rain gripped Saffron’s hand harder, pressing her bones into the plastic handle.

  ‘You’ve done it before, since … You do want to go back, don’t you?’

  Saffron sighed, there was no point arguing. She didn’t have the energy; her mum was right. She wanted out of Coed Mawr and medicine was her route. She would go back, she would. She pushed aside thoughts of the damage she might inflict; her incompetence. It was the only route she could justify leaving Rain all alone for. She still worried about her mum so much. She could hardly move to London to work in a shop, even one a step up from Wynne’s, Selfridges or Harrods for example, though any shop would be a step up from that pathetic excuse for a department store. And what else could she do with her MBBS and nothing else? Work for a multinational pharmaceutical company, pushing drugs? She’d rather slash her wrists and be done with it.

  Rain gave one last push. ‘And if you’re with me, it means I can get away faster. Mair’s lovely, but she can talk for England. You have to do it eventually.’

  ‘Don’t you mean Wales?’ Saffron smiled and retrieved her hand from underneath her mother’s grip; it was beginning to hurt. ‘OK, but you might have to catch me if I faint.’

  Anxiety swept over Rain’s face. ‘Is that likely? You’ve seemed so together, so strong, since …’

  Saffron shook her head. ‘Course not. I was joking.’ Not that she could be sure. She hadn’t been near a hospital since the hot day last July when she’d walked off the ward, sweating, limbs quivering, heart palpitating. The startled faces of her fellow Foundation Year One students as she threw off her badge and declared, ‘I can’t do this,’ plagued her.

  The image mingled with memories of the previous summer, when her world had been crushed as easily as the car against the wall. Concertinaed, trapping her in a role she’d planned to escape.

  But Rain was correct, in part. To the outside world Saffron had done a brilliant job of holding it together, of being stoic and brave and just getting on with it all. Until, almost a year afterwards, she’d dropped out of her medical training, becoming angry and withdrawn. And then the meltdown, total collapse. Holding it together like that had acted like a pressure cooker on her emotions. The resulting explosion was messy. Unlike strangers, Rain had seen all this. She’d blocked her mind to it, though. Her mother was so very, very good at deception.

  ‘Mum, I’m not going to pass out. I’m much more worried about you. Let’s go.’ She flung open the door and leapt out, her gut liquid with nerves. Dawdling would give her time to bottle out. It was important to get inside a hospital again. The first step towards going back. And it wasn’t as if she was going in there as a doctor, pretending to be someone who could make everyone better. She was a visitor, nothing more.

  She bent down and knocked on the window. Rain was fussing, still sitting in the passenger seat. ‘Come on!’ Saffron shouted.

  Chapter Ten

  As it transpired, Saffron didn’t have to go on to a ward, and though she’d felt distinctly wobbly she’d made it through the main doors without hesitating. Miss Shawcroft, Mair as she insisted upon being called, was in the day room, sitting in a wheelchair, stuffing a knitted doll. She made them for the children, she said, though Saffron couldn’t imagine any child wanting to cuddle up with the creature laid on Mair’s expansive lap, one loose, under-stuffed leg dangling over Mair’s knee. With large buttons for eyes and a stitched on scowl – surely meant as a smile – it was nightmarish.

  Rain retrieved a box of chocolates from her bag. Saffron stared at the doll.

  ‘Ugly old thing, isn’t she?’ Mair said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Rain said, offering the gift.

  ‘I like her,’ Saffron said.

  Mair picked up the doll and shook it. ‘She looks like she’s had polio, though you’re far too young to know what I’m talking about. Now, pull up those chairs, why don’t you, bach? We’ll stay here. Much nicer than the ward.’

  Saffron wasn’t sure that it was. Mediocre watercolours, of country scenes and coastal ways, hung at odd angles on magnolia walls. The walls were marked and grubby, in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint, and the only decoration other than the awful prints was a bunch of fabric flowers in a chipped vase on the windowsill. The stink of disinfectant underpinned by piss and blood and pain lurked, the unmistakable scent of a hospital and one Saffron barely used to notice.

  ‘I know what polio is,’ Saffron said.

  ‘Course you do, bach. You’re a doctor. Though I’ll bet you’ve not seen a kiddie with it?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor yet.’

  ‘But you will be,’ Rain added.

  Mair shuffled in her seat. ‘Why did you leave?’

  Rain leant over and touched Mair’s arm. ‘You remember what I told you?’

  Mair blinked, shook her head, as if disappointed with herself, and sighed.

  Rain continued, ‘Stephen, my husband, wasn’t the only one …’

  Mair stared at her, blank.

  ‘… in the car.’

  ‘Damn my bloody memory,’ Mair said, holding Saffron in her gaze. She shook her head. ‘Bugger old age.’

  Saffron nodded. ‘It can be a bitch at times, no mistaking. Medicine can’t solve everything.’

  ‘Saffron!’ Rain squealed.

  ‘Now, now, Reverend. If it’s OK for me to swear then it’s OK for Saffron.’

  The old lady was barely recognisable as the pearl-wearing flower arranger Saffron had seen at meetings in the manse and hall with other church members. She leaned over to Saffron and whispered conspiratorially, ‘Life’s a struggle and full of disappointments. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Sure do.’ Saffron smiled.

  ‘It must be hard for you. Not believing and all. Your mam and me, see, we have our Lord, and he’s a great comfo
rt. I’ve not been too lonely, and I’m not afraid of death –’

  ‘You’re not there yet,’ Rain said, tutting as if Mair were a child.

  ‘For the Kingdom of Heaven awaits me and there I will find peace, I’ll find the greatest love of all.’ Mair tipped her face to the cracked ceiling and for a moment Saffron thought she might shout, ‘Hallelujah’. She wondered what it might be like, waiting a lifetime for a kind of happiness, a promise of bliss. Especially when there were no guarantees. After all, no one had come back and said it – Heaven – was definitely there and just as described. No one had proved it, and proof was everything, for her. She envied her mother’s faith at times.

  ‘Mind you, if you find love down here, grab it with both hands,’ Mair continued. ‘Go for it full throttle, no holding back. Not that there’s much talent round these parts.’

  Rain choked on her milky tea.

  Mair placed her hand over Saffron’s, veins roping between swollen knuckles. Her grip was surprisingly firm. ‘Nice-looking girl like you, you’ll find another. I had offers, but I wasn’t pretty like you.’

  Saffron took in the older woman. The girl was still discernible beneath the mask of old age.

  You might not have been pretty as a young woman, but you were handsome. Strong-featured, a direct, bold gaze. Oodles of sex appeal for those unafraid of it. A woman born into the wrong era. What a waste.

  ‘She will find love again, though it’s too soon right now,’ Rain said.

  Mair tutted. ‘Nonsense.’ She looked at Saffron and clenched her fists as she said, ‘If it comes along, grab it.’ She turned to Rain, wagging a finger, the other fist still tight, ‘And you.’