If Gerry stopped drinking then all things were possible. He was basically a kind and talented man who had a problem. She wondered if compromises could be made. Better for him to be in her life than not. If he was sober. If she was part of his life, the likelihood of him being sober would be greater. Although she was reluctant to become a scold. The change would come if she made him truly believe they were going to separate. In Glasgow one of the charity shops she went into had the slogan painted on the window, ‘No one should have no one.’ Was he wounded as well by what had happened to her in Belfast? She had healed but maybe he had not. Was his drinking her fault? Should she give him another chance because she was in the habit of giving him chances? The queue for the bathroom was beginning to shorten.
On the way back she felt much better. Her insides had calmed considerably. She stood on the travelator and enjoyed the pleasure of being borne along. Movement without effort, her hand resting but steadying her on the black handrail. Peppermint in the mouth, a fresh-washed glow to her skin. The queue for the toilet was nothing new. And the same again for a washbasin. All the paper hand towels had gone and most of them seemed underfoot, absorbing God knows what kind of wet from the floor – she’d dried her face against her sleeve.
Gerry was still sitting in the same seat. He looked stunned. She tried to tidy around him as best she could. Imposing her sense of order, making an encampment for them both, folding newspaper pages, pushing Gerry’s bag further beneath the seat with her toe where it would not trip. She picked up and crushed a cardboard coffee cup but could find nowhere to dump it. So she just set it down where she’d found it. She shrugged and turned to Gerry, who was now on his hunkers vaguely trying to help.
‘This is impossible,’ she said. She sat down and indicated the empty seat beside her. Gerry half crawled, half sat into the chair. ‘Now that an all-female religious collective is no longer an option . . .’ She took in a long breath and exhaled an equally long sigh. ‘If you are as good as your word – on giving up the drinking – the place may not have to be sold.’ Gerry nodded his head and put his hand on her arm. There was silence between them for a while.
‘All shall be well,’ said Gerry.
‘And again.’
‘And all shall be well.’ Stella made a pedalling gesture with both hands, as if there was more.
‘And all manner of thing shall be well,’ said Gerry. He paused. ‘I hate myself when I’m drinking.’
‘But sure you drink all the time.’
‘So I hate myself all the time.’
‘I’ll help you fall in love with yourself again,’ she said. His hand covered her hand which was holding on to the armrest. ‘We haven’t all that long so we should cherish each other.’
‘Meaning?’
‘A bunch of flowers would be nice now and again.’
He bent over and pulled his shoulder bag from beneath his seat. He unzipped it.
‘For the gardener,’ he said, pulling out the red onion bag.
‘What are they?’
‘Bulbs.’
‘I’m not that stupid. I mean what kind of bulbs?’
‘Mixed bulbs. That’s what the guy said.’ He handed them to her. She smiled and peered into the bag through the netting. ‘You can plant them out front. Although we’ve missed the boat for this year.’
‘Are they tulips?’
‘I hope not. I’d never be able to live it down. Tulips from Amsterdam.’
‘Thanks for . . . whatever they are.’
‘There may well be some tulips among them. I’ve no idea what colour. Narcissi too. God knows what else. I thought for a minute they were going to confiscate them in security.’
‘I’ll plant them in the autumn,’ she said. ‘Next year we’ll see.’
He produced the Werther’s from his pocket and offered them to her.
‘Bought in Glasgow.’
Stella thanked him, opened them and put one in her mouth.
‘I think you should have one too.’
The snow was heaped mattress-thick on everything. Other places it had drifted even deeper. White undulations. Gentle slopes.
They sat together looking out, the dawn light steadily growing, beginning to appear as a pale bevel at the horizon. Nothing was said for a while. The air around them was filled with the smell of butterscotch. The airport was gradually becoming visible, taking on edges, outlining itself in the light of the fallen snow.
‘Better or worse?’
‘Much worse,’ said Stella. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s what the optician always says.’
‘What?’
‘Better or worse? When she’s fitting you for lenses.’
‘Better – now that I know the question. But worse last night.’
‘Do you think we’ll get away today?’ said Gerry.
‘We can only hope.’ Stella put in her eye drops and blinked away the excess, then wiped her cheeks with a tissue. She smiled. ‘Do not ignore the donkey braying from afar.’
Gerry nodded and said, ‘And they returned under different skies than witnessed their commencement.’
They both looked out into the darkness. There was a bright light over the buildings at the end of the dock. It looked like a plane making an approach, coming in to land. Things must be beginning to move again. He nudged Stella with his elbow and nodded in the direction of the incoming plane. But the more they watched the less it looked like it was moving. It had a greenish tinge to it. After a while they agreed that it was not a plane but the morning star. Ablaze like a spotlight. Venus. Stella said that the Romans worshipped Venus as the goddess of love. Gerry claimed that he had read somewhere that sometimes it could be bright enough to cast shadows. If that was true surely the shadows would be there now on the unbroken snow. But no matter how they looked they could see no trace.
He tried to build a picture of this landscape before the snow. And when he succeeded in doing so, he subtracted the buildings. Dismantled them and imagined how it would have looked centuries ago, long before flight had been thought of, when transport would have been a family in a flat-bottomed boat or a hollowed tree fleeing danger, beating against the current. Thousands of years before that – marshlands with sedge blowing and water reflecting the brightening sky. The sound of birds. Curlews flying from horizon to horizon in great circles. Flocks of waders rising simultaneously and explosively to meet the day. In such places people had been sacrificed, strangled, thrown into the fen and forgotten. Survivors’ funerals. There they lay, victims of a religion without a name, until in our own time someone unearthed and drained them and marvelled at their preservation, their very stubble. Nothing, except their remains, would register their lives. Sitting beside Stella in this grey light seemed to Gerry such a privilege, such a wonderful thing to be doing, despite the nightmare of their surroundings. He believed that everything and everybody in the world was worthy of notice but this person beside him was something beyond that. To him her presence was as important as the world. And the stars around it. If she was an instance of the goodness in this world then passing through by her side was miracle enough.
By the same author
NOVELS
Lamb
Cal
Grace Notes
The Anatomy School
SHORT STORIES
Secrets
A Time to Dance
The Great Profundo
Walking the Dog
Matters of Life & Death
Collected Stories
FILM
Bye-Child
FOR CHILDREN
A Man in Search of a Pet
Andrew McAndrew
Copyright © 2017 by Bernard MacLaverty
First American Edition 2017
First published in the UK by Jonathan Cape
All rights reserved
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JACKET DESIGN: CHIN-YEE LAI
JACKET PHOTOGRAPHS: (PEOPLE) KEITH LLOYD DAVENPORT / ALAMY STOCK
PHOTO; (BRIDGE) GEORGE PACHANTOURIS / GETTY IMAGES
PHOTO COLORIZATION BY MADS MADSEN
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: MacLaverty, Bernard, author.
Title: Midwinter break / Bernard MacLaverty.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017015733 | ISBN 9780393609622 (hardcover)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PR6063.A2474 M53 2017 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015733
ISBN 978-0-393-60963-9 (e-book)
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Midwinter Break Page 22
