Midwinter Break

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ he said. ‘Your wife was involved.’

  Then he was waking up in the chair. In a hotel room. With the light from the television changing as the picture changed. Stella’s breathing from the bed. How long had he been asleep? Had he drooled? His watch said it was after two. Had he put it forward after landing or was it still British time?

  ‘Better get going.’

  He finished the whiskey in his glass.

  ‘Did you say something?’ Stella spoke from the bed. ‘What are you muttering about?’

  ‘Snuthing. Sallright.’

  He sat still until her breathing returned to being audible and rhythmic. He switched off the television and went to the bathroom. When he closed the door he depressed the handle and eased it back slowly so’s not to waken her. He aimed down the side of the bowl and after he had finished closed the lid to quieten the flush. He was on statins for his cholesterol. To be taken at night. But pushing one of these brutes out of its blister pack was noisy. So at home he kept them outside the bedroom. Now here in the hotel bathroom with the door closed it was okay. Stella would hear nothing – she would not be disturbed. He ran a glass of water, broke out the tablet and swallowed it. In the act of medication he ended up looking at himself in the mirror. The drink was labelling his face – it was a kind of telltale, like the one fastened to the wall at home – to show the subsidence, the undermining. To let people know what was going on. The nose – more than anything else – red or grey or slightly tinged with blue – it’ll eventually become pocked like a strawberry. The whiskey sunburn, the tan, the leathery look. This all takes years, decades. The oul habits sculpting away at the finished you. When it first made its appearance he had frequently used the joke ‘That rosacea would give you a red face.’ His image stared back at him. He was developing a dewlap – a definite dewlap. He waggled under his chin scornfully with his fingers. But if all this stuff was on the outside what the hell was he like inside? Was he shrivelling his liver? Pickling God knows what organs. The finished you. He raised the towel and wiped the corner of his mouth. There was a danger too that his drinking would end the both of them being together. He knew she hated it so much. The answer was for him to keep it to himself – the amount he was drinking. But half the time he didn’t know.

  The hotel tumbler only held a moderate amount of water but he filled it to the brim. He squeezed the light switch so that it did not snap. Around the bed to his own side. Deposit the glass of water. His spectacles lay on their lenses on the bedside table, their legs up. ‘They’ll become scratched if you do that,’ his optician had said. He pushed the spectacles to one side so that his hand could get directly to the glass of water in the new dark. Stella snored quietly in her nest of pillows.

  His bladder woke him. For some moments he didn’t know where he was. No light anywhere, except the red glow from the television standby. An hotel room. Amsterdam. No outside light whatsoever. The curtain overlap was perfect. It was Stella in the bed with him. She was silent but he thought she was awake. He didn’t want to arouse her to find out whether she was asleep or not. When he got up, immediately the chandeliers came. Stars against the night sky. Marcasite jabs and darts. An imminent stroke – probably before he reached the bathroom. Blood pressure and alcohol. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Marooned in the outer space of no speech. Nurses changing him down below three times a day. His hand went out and using the wall he guided himself to the lavatory. He tried to be as quiet as he could but there was no need, because Stella had switched on the bedside light. She had been awake. When he came back into the room she said, ‘Weet wee-o.’ The two words.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The black pyjamas.’

  He gave a theatrical bow.

  ‘Me next,’ she said, getting out of bed.

  ‘Didn’t flush – didn’t want to waken you.’

  ‘I’ll flush for both of us.’ On such occasions there was an unspoken pact not to speak, not to waken each other too much. A ‘ships that pass in the night’ moment. Occasionally one or other of them voiced the cliché.

  But sleep would not come back. For either of them.

  ‘First night away syndrome,’ she said.

  Gerry heard her twist and turn in the huge bed. She switched on her bedside light, got up again and began to rummage. Noises came from the foot of the bed – like crinkling, like crunching. It went on for a long time. Eventually he reared up and saw that she was sitting in the armchair raising a half-eaten biscuit to her mouth with both hands.

  ‘What’s with the midnight Mass?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I felt hungry all of a sudden.’

  ‘You’re stopping me getting over,’ he said. He lay down again and thrust his head into the pillow. ‘Where did weet wee-o come from?’

  ‘Must have been the comics,’ she said. ‘A bit like your storyboarding. How does somebody wolf-whistle in a comic? There has to be a speech bubble. But it’s not speech – so – weet wee-o.’

  She came back to bed. ‘I could never get the knack of whistling. And the nuns didn’t exactly encourage us. On the grounds that Our Lady never did it.’ It was not long after she turned out the light that she began shaking with laughter. He felt the vibrations.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he said.

  ‘Getting over,’ she said. ‘What a quaint phrase – I haven’t heard getting over in years. My father used it all the time. My mother’d say, did you sleep well? – and he’d say, naw, I’d a hard time getting over.’ By now Gerry was laughing too.

  ‘I’m still half shot,’ he said. ‘Stop talking or we’ll never get over.’ And that started them again. But the laughter this time was not as long or as intense. They were silent. He put his arm around her, held her close for a while until she moved away from him in the vastness of the bed.

  Rather than turn on the light and risk wakening him Stella reached above the bed and lifted a corner of the curtain. It was still dawn dark but there was a yellow sodium light outside somewhere. She turned back the sheet and swung her legs out of bed. The light was enough for her to find her way to the bathroom. She was glad she’d had a bath the night before.

  She knew her clothes in the wardrobe, not by colour, but by shape and touch. The sulphur light neutralised their colour. She chose a navy outfit with a pale silk scarf. It wasn’t important because she’d be wearing her overcoat the whole time.

  Gerry would sleep for ages. Before she went out she lifted the red napkin containing the last of the biscuits and put it in her bag. In the lift she avoided herself in the mirror. Savoury breakfast smells drifted from the buffet. Yet she felt it would be inappropriate to go in, overcoat and all, to eat by herself. She might be back before Gerry was up and dressed. She shouldered on through the revolving doors into the street.

  It was cold and wet. She threaded one arm through the handle of her bag and put both her hands in her pockets to keep them warm. But immediately her nail snagged on the lining. She made fists because she hated that sensation. A pocket lined with silk was like a magnifying glass for the slightest imperfection. The light from the east, rising up between buildings, was white. She had put a bookmark in her Amsterdam guide and stood into doorways out of the rain to consult it. The network of canals on paper was confusing – one looked much like another – distances were deceptive. It took ages to get to where she wanted to go. She walked past the entrance several times without realising. ‘It can be difficult sometimes to find the gate.’ There was a brick archway which led into a dark passage. She hesitantly walked its dry length, hearing her own footsteps echoing. The passageway led out into a space which took her breath away. The notion of being born came to her. Moving from the dark into the light, into the world. She was in a new place, had the feeling of being a new person. An amazing born-again feeling. No one remembered the experience of being born. Maybe just as well. She had been born once and given birth once. The first she didn’t remember, the second she wanted to forget. The giving bir
th had been surrounded by such circumstances as to flood her body with panic when she thought of it. But she had become expert at nipping the memory off before it could get started by concentrating on the physical world around her. Grass, winter trees, a ring of neat ancient houses with their backs to the world, all looking inwards – like covered wagons pulled into a circle – creating their own shelter. An inner court or Roman atrium. In the centre of the green space stood a Christ-like statue facing a red-brick church. It was the same place she had seen on her computer screen at home. And the silence was the same. The passageway she had come through had edited out the noise of Amsterdam – the trains, the trams, the cars, all gone. As if to emphasise the quiet, some sparrows cheeped within the enclosure of houses.

  Now that the rain had stopped she walked around the space, savouring it. For a moment or two the sun broke through the clouds and shone whitely on the wet branches of the trees. She turned her face up to it and her eyes closed automatically. So she stopped walking and stood, became aware of the red world behind her eyelids. The same thing happened at night when she couldn’t sleep, only then the world was black. And she focused on the thud of her heartbeat as it pressed on the pillow. The body working away without permission. Independent. The heart never taking a break. The bowels never taking a nap. When it stopped, that was the day it was all over. She’d come close to that once. A day she’d never forget. Death had winged her. But some day, somehow she would move into soul. It happened to everybody who had ever lived since the beginning of time. Soul was her, minus her body. Parturition – her, minus her son. Gradually her eyelids darkened, then opened. The sun had moved behind cloud. She should put together another parcel for Canada soon. It would keep her fresh in their minds after the one at Christmas. In Oxfam she’d bought a game for her grandson, Toby. Construct-o-Straws. A bargain, still in its cellophane. Maybe make an architect of him some day – like his grandfather. Her payment, a tiny contribution to charity. For the others – her son, Michael, and his wife – she could buy something here in Amsterdam. Indeed she might do it this very morning if she had time. Without Gerry tripping after her.

  The door of the church refused to budge. Only an empty echo of the clunking of the door handle. The guidebook told her this was the English Reformed Church dating from the fifteenth century. She walked around it, trying to see in. Someone she’d studied as part of her degree was Julian of Norwich. A woman anchorite with a man’s name – the first female to write a book in English. Her of ‘All shall be well’ fame. And again, ‘All shall be well.’ Julian had had a cell constructed against the outside wall of her church, like a wasps’ nest. It contained only a hard bed and a crucifix. There was access to the church through a small, unglazed window or ‘squint’ which enabled her to keep up with Mass and the ceremonies, and through it she’d receive the Word of God and the sacraments. Gerry had pointed out a leper squint to Stella in the outside wall of a church in Antrim. Stella imagined the excluded lepers huddled in the rain, crouched, taking turns to follow the Mass. Julian of Norwich was a contemporary of Chaucer. Stella loved the down-to-earthness of the medieval period, its vulgarity, the language itself with its flat, sat-on vowels and its ability to move in a blink to the religious, the mystical, the compassionate.

  She moved to have a closer look at the houses. One was marked 1660 on its gable, the numbers looking authentically old. There was a courtyard with square indentations in the wall. In each was a little Old Testament scene – all of them recently restored and painted with bright colours – Abraham brandishing a sword above his son, the burning fiery furnace consuming the three young men whose names she could never quite pronounce, the flight into Egypt. DE VLUGH VA EGIPTEN. She liked this last one best with Mary protecting her child in her lapis lazuli cloak being led by Joseph.

  To her left was a doorway beside a noticeboard with the messages written in Dutch. It too was shut. But there were times displayed. If they were opening times she would not have long to wait. The rain was beginning again. She walked back to shelter in the passageway. Maybe she should have had some breakfast. Her hand went into her bag. The softness of the red paper serviette, the texture of biscuit. She nibbled one now as she stood. It was so quiet she could hear the crunching inside her head. That waiter had been such a charmer. With his white teeth and Asian good looks. His professional kindness. His act of draping this very napkin over her lap. When she finished, not wanting to litter, she bundled the serviette into her pocket. Then realised that crumbs had spilled in the lining.

  She recalled a time when Gerry had had that effect on her. So long ago. When he was flavour of the month. The first time he swept her away in his car. Even having a car, in those days. They drove up the twisting east coast road to the Glens of Antrim. Through a landscape which amazed her. Waterfoot, Cushendall, Cushendun, then on to the seaside town of Ballycastle. She was shy of him at first in the car. They smoked Benson & Hedges. She wasn’t much of a smoker but it was nice to keep him company – most of the smoke she blew down her nose. And the day was good enough to have the windows open.

  And they talked. Politics and religion. Explored the byways of each other and each other’s families. She was one of six, three boys and three girls and they had lived in a small house in a large village. It had no running water and an outside toilet. It had been her job every morning to fill an enamel pail from the pump in the street outside. But they weren’t aware of this as a hardship. They were very near the pump. Not all their neighbours could boast of that. They washed in their bedrooms with a flannel in a basin. And he told her he was an only child who collected stamps. When she laughed he claimed it was a way to travel without going anywhere. But no, she said, she hadn’t finished her story about the house. The District Council began building an estate of council houses to rent in the village and people were asked to apply. The houses were of varying sizes and styles. One had four bedrooms and when they applied for it there was endless talk of anticipation and hope. How great it would be. As well as the bedrooms, a bathroom and two lavatories for their sole use. Her mother and father prayed and enlisted the prayers of their children, that they would get this house. They all did a novena of Masses, getting up at dawn, walking the hill to the chapel. Later it transpired that their mother went round to the building site at the dark of night and threw a miraculous medal into what would later become the spacious garden of the desired house. It was just one more thing her father wanted – a place to grow stuff – carrots, onions, potatoes. Maybe the odd flower or two. But when the time came didn’t the powers that be, Unionist to a man, award the four-bedroom house to one of their own – a Protestant policeman. A widower, a sergeant in the RUC, who lost his wife to cancer. With one teenage son. What need had they of such accommodation?

  That started Gerry on the Unionists. Northern Ireland was a country given away by someone who didn’t own it. The resulting state was like an extreme Protestant version of Franco’s Spain. It would go on for ever because those in power had arranged it in such a gerrymandered way that voting was useless. It was like putting your cross in invisible ink. And it wasn’t just Catholics who were disenfranchised – it was the same for anybody of the left. She soothed and quietened him, told him again and again what a lovely day it was. They stopped for ice cream in Cushendall and parked by the golf course so that Gerry could eat it before it melted all over him.

  When they went walking along the seafront in Ballycastle she was intrigued to see the grass tennis courts. Emerald green, beautifully kept. The nets looking new and taut. He said that they would be getting everything shipshape for the summer and the arrival of the Scots tourists. Most of the courts were occupied and the players kitted out in whites. The puck and whack of the ball, the polite squeals after missed shots – she found it all a bit intimidating. There was a way of doing tennis and she didn’t know what it was.

  They walked down onto the beach and lay on the sand. It was a day of intermittent cloud and sunshine. Shadows moving across the headland of Fa
ir Head. The sand was soft and she spilled it from hand to hand while he smoked. Later they walked further along the beach. The dry sand was difficult to walk on so they moved closer to the sea where it had been solidified by the withdrawing tide. The water left fringes of lace. She was always on the lookout for stones. Only white perfect ones would make her stoop. She would show them to him with a little flourish. Look at this one. When they were wet and glistening they seemed special but she knew that when they dried out maybe some yellow or grey would creep into their colour. The perfect ones would end up in a glass bowl on her table. It was their simplicity that she found so attractive. A full-moon shape. And the fact that they cost nothing, that they were not being sold by anyone.

  In the landscape he looked better. A man for the daylight – better than in the orange glow of a dance hall. Good-looking rather than handsome. He seemed thoughtful, concerned, the kind of guy who would do anything for you. Above all he seemed interesting – the way he talked about art, about architecture. How could anybody make architecture interesting? Before meeting him she had been barely aware of it. People had to have houses to live in, shops to sell from, bus shelters, schools, churches but, generally speaking, it was a shrug for her. She would present him with white stones and he would reciprocate with pyramids and skyscrapers, ceiling bosses and Lady chapels. When he talked to her about these things he talked close, leaning in, his eyes fixed on her eyes. What came across was his energy and enthusiasm, his turn of phrase and wit. To her ear his speech seemed fresh-minted.