Midwinter Break

by Bernard Maclaverty

  It must have been more than an hour later and Gerry was still sitting there smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening to ambulance sirens. Seeing lights flashing from somewhere. Difficult to distinguish incoming from outgoing, difficult to know if it was a bomb or a heart attack. The real danger of course was no sirens. That meant no warning. There would be dead and wounded. Plenty of work for the big scissors. He’d heard a nurse friend of Stella’s use this phrase at a party. She didn’t work in Casualty but knew nurses who did. Talked about cutting people out of all their clothes. He tried to remember what Stella had been wearing when he left home earlier that morning.

  At one point a little girl and her mother came in. The child made a beeline for the other side of the room where the brightly coloured toy was. Again and again the toy buzzed as the girl failed. Her mother was taking no interest in what the child was doing except to say occasionally, ‘That’s enough now.’ She sat sideways on her seat and stared off in the direction of the window.

  He asked the waitress for a toothpick. Bacon always did that to him. When he finished his tea he went up to the room. The place had not yet been serviced. He’d left the bedclothes mountainous at his side. The bath towel lay on the floor. He glanced at his watch. Almost Ailment Hour. It was Stella’s idea to allot no more than sixty minutes a day to their various illnesses. But he had nothing new to report. He noticed hairs, approaching luxuriant, growing from beneath his watch. So much so, that he took it off and inspected where it had bitten into his skin. That might be something he could report. He smiled. Sub-watch hirsutism. With concomitant angst.

  He pulled back the curtains. Light flooded in. It was not raining. The packet of Gauloises and the yellow child’s plastic bucket. They might have been there for years. And will be, for years into the future. Unless the hotel changes hands.

  He didn’t want to show he was inadequate when on his own so he tied his navy scarf around his neck and put on his hat and coat. Stella had left last night’s map on the desk. He pocketed it and went downstairs. She wasn’t in the lobby or the coffee lounge.

  Outside, the block of ice was still there. The street iceberg. He surmised somebody had done exactly the same thing as he had done and pushed it, because it had moved several metres since last night. What was it? How had it got there? Something square had filled with rain, which had frozen and been emptied out or cut free. There was no sign of it melting. He toed it gently again and it slid unsteadily, rumbled a little. He stepped around it. Then stopped and looked more closely. There was a faint blue tinge to it in the daylight. Maybe it was frozen piss dropped from an aeroplane. That blue disinfectant flush. He could kid Stella about it – tell her that’s what it was.

  He followed the signs northwards towards the station. A girl in denims and red anorak cycled towards him, her mobile to her ear, steering with one hand. She rang her bell at him. Gerry stepped back and looked down to see bicycle path markings. He thought she was amazing, sitting high in the saddle, her hair streaming out behind her. Indeed all of the girls cycling were amazing – like Valkyries, Amazons. Who needed a red-light district?

  He had to cross a main road rumbling with traffic and reached out to take Stella by the hand before realising she wasn’t with him. His hand went to his pocket to disguise the empty gesture. The traffic lights changed. The green man was universal. The Irishman. This one had a little green pork-pie hat.

  Having negotiated the road, he wondered when he had first held Stella’s hand. But he couldn’t remember. It was certainly not to cross roads, that service came later. Logic told him when it would have happened. The first time he had laid eyes on her was at a dance in Fruithill, a Catholic tennis club. One shirtsleeved summer night. His memory manufactured or filled in the details. Her pale frock. The gold cross at her neck. And when he saw her, he had to dance with her. And to dance with her he had to hold her hand in his. One of the first things they established was that neither of them played tennis. And they laughed and made jokes about this. She was from Dungiven, a small town in County Derry, taught English in a girls’ comprehensive in Belfast, shared a flat on the Antrim Road with some civil servants. He was so taken with her that he asked her to dance a second time – which was quite forward of him – and she had been sufficiently taken with him to consent. Usually when a set of three dances finished everyone returned to the crowded margins of the hall. But having agreed to dance together again they stood at the edge of the floor waiting for the music to start. And it took a long time. And, as they waited, he must have taken her left hand in his right and gone on talking. Who knew what they talked about? It was a matter of not frightening her away, of not causing embarrassment, of keeping her face to face, of retaining her. And to do it by entertaining. And when his second dance with her started they changed hands. The band was a showband and played a set of three songs before the dance was over. He remembered this particular set as slow – a waltz or slow foxtrot. He had devoutly wished for it to be slow but, really, the sprung floor was so crowded that there was very little dancing going on. People moved when and where they could. It was a licence to be close to someone you didn’t know. ‘Spanish Harlem’ was very popular at the time. And the Everly Brothers’ songs. All showbands did covers. Nobody wrote their own stuff then. Even after all this time Gerry could remember the sensation of his hand on her back through the material of her frock and the mix of perfumes and scents that filled the hall. And her hair – he remembered smelling her hair when they were dancing. After the second dance he offered to buy her a mineral. He smiled, remembering Catholic dances which didn’t serve alcohol. She took an orange juice. And he had the same. And the hall had become so hot and smoke-filled that they stepped outside onto the balcony with their drinks. Into the night air – not quite dark because it was June – which was filled with the smell of lilac from the bushes around the clubhouse. The red clay courts had been closed down for the night but there were still a few lights left on. Insects were whirling around the bright bulbs. In the dusk he could see the pale of her neck as she looked down at the courts. Her skin was amazing – flawless, translucent, smooth. It seemed to have light coming from it in the dark. He asked her to go out with him. And she smiled with her eyes and nodded that she would like that.

  ‘Ever been to Ballycastle?’ he said.

  He walked the streets of Amsterdam his fists closed against the cold. The architecture was unique. In strange cities he was always looking up. At first in Glasgow he had been amazed at the number of spires. Here it was the different gables – neck and bell gables, ornate and plain gables, enough to form ramparts against the sky. Some were stepped, which he felt was Scottish. All of them with a hoist beam for moving furniture in and out with block and tackle. All of them roofed with orange terracotta tiles. He loved the houses reflected in the canal water.

  In the bracing air he began to feel better. Except for Stella’s absence. Was she all right? He’d seen movies – thrillers – where somebody near and dear to the hero disappears. On a shopping trip – last time glimpsed, she was pushing a supermarket trolley. Kidnapped. He’d read of weird things in Holland. Those cartoons. That well-known guy who’d been slain on the street – a member of parliament or a film producer or something. He consulted the map then headed north along the Spui. There was an icy wind coming from the North Sea, down along the canal, brushing the water to darkness. His whole body was clenched against the weather. If he relaxed he wouldn’t feel so bad, but it was hard to relax in such temperatures. Stella had a theory that if you had courage and stretched your feet down to the bottom of the bed then they would warm quicker than if you lay there ‘like a half-shut penknife’. He lowered his head to avoid the wind and saw his shoes pace the pavement beneath him. Nowadays wind brought tears to his eyes. When he blinked, tears spilled and he had to mop his eyes with a hanky before he could see clearly again. Unlike Stella whose problem was no tears at all. She had to carry hers about with her.

  He arrived in a large square full of shops a
nd cafés. Different establishments had different-coloured tables set out on the stone flags in front of them. There was a Waterstones bookshop on the corner. He liked the familiarity of the big W and the black frontage. The same in every city. Like the way Mass used to be before they dropped the Latin. He crossed the square to it.

  The Art and Architecture sections were on the second floor. He climbed the stairs and browsed for a while until he got his breath back. Then he went to the window and took in the view beneath him. It was an impressive space. His gaze travelled around the square until he saw something familiar out of the corner of his eye. It was Stella.

  It gave him such a jolt. Such a strange feeling. Like when he saw her across the space of Glasgow airport going into the duty-free area. She looked so tiny in the distance – like a stranger, like a woman seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He remembered meeting her once in Glasgow by accident. He had left the drawing office to go on an errand of some sort – biscuits, maybe – and on St Vincent Street he’d met her coming out of John Smith’s bookshop, now no longer there. She was supposed to be at home. In the picture he had of her she was wearing a plum-coloured coat with a scarf to match and it was a moment or two before she noticed him – she was looking over her shoulder at some books in the window display. They were about five paces away from each other when she turned and their eyes met. Her eyebrows went up with delight and she smiled her smile. He was elated and stood there blushing because he felt such elation. It was like the first time they’d met. And yet they’d been married about twenty years. She had come to him with her hands out.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she’d said.

  ‘Admiring you.’ He took her offered hands and held her close so that their cheeks brushed. ‘I might ask the same question of you.’

  He tried to remember what had happened next. Had they gone for a coffee? Or lunch? But the picture was lost. What remained of it was the shyness and admiration which existed between them after such a long time together.

  He noticed now that at the far side of this Amsterdam square she was standing, her head looking down. Then she began to nod. She was talking to a man in a fawn gabardine standing next to her. Gerry set his book on the windowsill and watched. Was it somebody she knew? Maybe somebody she’d met – the last time she was here? She had a memory for such stuff. But what if it was something more? Not a matter of recognising – but somebody she knew well. He dismissed the thought and went down the stairs. When he came out of Waterstones he could still see her. The man walked away from her and disappeared. Stella set off across the square with Gerry following. People were walking in all directions and he had to keep his eye on her in case he lost her again. He had perfected a two-finger whistle at school – the gym teacher had taught them how to do it – loud enough to referee basketball matches. Weet. And knowing it, Stella turned. In a square in Amsterdam. Like a bird on a crowded beach who knows the sound of its own chick.

  ‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ he said.

  ‘Only if it’s a small cup.’

  Gerry sat down in an empty seat by the window and Stella went to the counter. Coffee places were so noisy. This one sounded like they were making the Titanic rather than cups of coffee – the grinder going at maximum volume, screaming on and on – making enough coffee grounds for the whole of Europe while another guy was shooting steam through milk with supersonic hissing. A girl unpacked a dishwasher, clacking plates and saucers into piles. A third barista was banging the metal coffee-holder against the rim of the stainless steel bar to empty it – but doing it with such venom and volume that Gerry jumped at every strike. Talking was impossible. It was so bad he couldn’t even hear if there was muzak or not. And still the grinder went on and on trying to reduce a vessel of brown-black beans to dust. Stella had to yell her order.

  Gerry looked out onto the square. Pigeons pecked and waddled after crumbs in between the green café tables and chairs. Stella eventually came to the table.

  ‘In the coffee shops of heaven they will not grind coffee beans,’ she said. ‘But coffee will be available.’

  She’d ordered a croissant for herself, with butter and strawberry jam. She began to eat almost immediately. The coffee was good, the croissant even better. Through bites she said, ‘I assume you had breakfast.’

  Gerry nodded.

  ‘That size of cup okay for you?’ he shouted.

  Stella sipped her latte and nodded. The coffee grinder ceased.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ he said. His ears now sang in the absence of noise. ‘So where did you get to?’

  ‘I went for a walk.’

  This did not seem a sufficient explanation.

  ‘I woke early and you were sound asleep – snoring your head off,’ she said. ‘So I figured I’d leave you to it. Grinding coffee and snoring are some of my least favourite sounds.’

  ‘I’ve missed the Ailment Hour.’

  ‘We can do a two-hour stint tomorrow. If you feel well enough.’

  ‘I’ve got these strange hairs growing beneath my watch . . .’

  ‘I was only joking.’

  ‘So was I. Did you not have breakfast? In the hotel?’

  She shook her head – no.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘A walk. It was glorious. To see a city starting the day. Then I ended up in a wonderful place. Over there.’ She pointed to the far side of the square. ‘You walk down a passageway into a quadrangle place – trees, houses all around a green, with their backs to the world. You remember in Cromarty the fishermen’s houses had their backs to the sea – they preferred shelter to a view. That’s what these houses were like. And an old church. But it was shut – too early in the day.’

  ‘Does God work office hours?’

  ‘He’s on call, I’m sure.’

  ‘And the man?’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The guy you were talking to. In the square. In the cream raincoat.’

  ‘He was behind me in the queue. He was very patient.’

  ‘What queue?’

  ‘In the place – in there – they have an office.’ Gerry looked at her, his head on one side. Stella smiled and said, ‘No. He was just being friendly. His English was very good.’

  ‘What’s the office?’

  ‘Deals with the organisation. Don’t ask me to pronounce its name. To do with the Beguines. In there.’ Her voice was becoming sharp and she was aware of it.

  ‘And this afternoon?’

  ‘This afternoon I will endure a gallery.’ She smiled. ‘But only if you let me show you this place.’

  ‘Which place?’

  ‘The place I’ve just been.’

  They gathered themselves and left a tip of some small change, unsure whether it was an insulting sum or an unbelievable generosity. As they crossed the square a flock of pigeons feeding on the ground blocked Stella’s path.

  ‘Hello, pidge,’ she said to one that had strayed out from the melee. Then in an explosion of wings all the pigeons rose and took to the air.

  ‘Why do they do that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The simultaneous thing. One goes, they all go.’

  ‘They must be Catholics.’

  The sun came out and no sooner were they in brightness than Stella led Gerry into the darkness of the passageway. In the tunnel space their voices sounded strange and vibrant, as did their footsteps. They emerged into the sun and Stella gestured with her hand. Look, see, behold. Above all, listen.

  Gerry stared, his head back, his mouth slightly open. There was something familiar about it. The impression was of a bowl, a secluded place filled with light surrounded by buildings in the old Dutch style. Elaborately decorated gables – full of swags and scrolling – each house different by design and time.

  ‘A great space,’ he said. ‘I like the about-to-fall-down nature of the houses. The way they lean against each other – like a lot of drunks. And the hoist beams – like unicorns.’

  ‘That’s where I
made my enquiries. In there.’ Stella pointed to the doorway opposite the passageway.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Matters of life and death.’

  ‘And other trivia.’

  ‘The person I wanted to talk to wasn’t there. But she’ll be in on Monday.’

  ‘Will we be here till then?’

  ‘Yes – how many times do I have to tell you?’

  At the centre of the grassy area was a stone statue of Christ with hands pointing inwards towards his stone heart. Now Gerry knew where he had seen it before. It was what Stella had left on the computer screen the night before they came away.