Cold Fire

by Craig Saunders

  I try not to think about her living with a cripple until one or the other of us dies. I try, but I don’t manage it. It’s a hard thought. It butts up against me. Insistent.

  I do think about the kind of dedication that would take. The same kind of dedication that drives a woman to share her bed with a dead man for half a decade.

  I don’t want to think, though. I really don’t. I’m tired, I’m heart-sore.

  As it turns out, I’m good at not thinking about things. I think about the ball. The ball becomes everything. The ball, I can deal with.

  Seetha’s second rule: one step at a time.

  I put the ball on the sheet. I take my dead hand and turn it, palm up, on the bed. It feels like a ritual. Like I’m holding a wake for my hand. I don’t like the look of that hand. It looks alien. It doesn’t belong to me anymore.

  I’ve got to win it back.

  I take the ball in my left and place it in my right palm. I try to remember what it feels like. Shape, texture, weight. My sight is spoiling it. I feel like I’m cheating. So I close my eyes. Try again.

  I can feel nothing. But I know it’s there. It’s light, but it has weight. I should be able to feel it.

  I’m getting angry. I don’t want to be angry. Not now. I’ve been angry too long. I want to be calm. I want to feel the weight of that grey ball. I’m not worried about yellow. I’ll settle for grey, if I can just feel something.

  Fuzz. Bristly. Light, but there.

  I feel it. I do.

  I open my eyes with a smile and look down and the fucking ball is on the bed. It rolled out of my hand.

  That’s when I cried. Not like when I was in pain in the ambulance, feeling like I’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. Not like when I was frightened I was going to die. Not like that.

  I’m crying because after five years, six months, eleven days, a dead hand made me realise that I could feel again. My heart had stopped then. Five years, six months, eleven days ago. It stopped for good at 7.45pm, while I was holding my wife’s hand, beside a bed just like this.

  It didn’t start up again in the ambulance. It started again that night. That night, crying, looking through tears at the stupid ball.

  As I stared at the ball on the sheet, I punched my arm and my leg and felt nothing and everything all at once. I remembered all the things I didn’t want to think about. That was O.K. This wasn’t thought. This was memory. I cried so much that night I burst a blood vessel in my eye. They took me down for a scan in the morning.

  People talk about floods of tears. I should have drowned that night, but as the sobs receded, as I wiped my nose on my pyjama sleeve, I didn’t drown. I floated. Holding onto a little grey ball, like it could keep me from going under. When the tears stopped, really stopped, my chest was wet. My left sleeve was wet.

  The ball just sat there. Me watching it. I was all cried out. The ball didn’t cry. It was just a ball.

  But it witnessed something. That night, crying my heart out in a hospital bed, it saw me for what I had become.

  When I lost my girl, she wasn’t the only one who died. I died, too, and the story that was me, and Helen, and our daughter. But that was then.

  This is a new story. Me, Helen, and my little grey ball, and how we float.

  I picked up the ball, left handed. I didn’t want to drop it, not ever, because I fucking loved that ball.

  *

  28.

  I woke up. Turned my head. I smelled her first. Saw her sitting there second. Smiling. I looked down. The ball was there.

  It was stupid, but I thought if I could hold onto the ball, I could hold onto Helen.

  She wasn’t watching me. She was reading a book. Just sitting there, smile on her face, reading. I watched her for a minute. Each small part of her was perfect. Her dark hair, her black eyes. Her shining skin. Even the lilac scar that runs down her jaw-line just added to the sum of her.

  I was tongue-tied. I didn’t have the first idea what to say to her. I wasn’t the man she’d given her virginity to. I wasn’t the man who’d sworn before God to honour her. In many ways, I was a stranger. A stranger who’d been raping her. Raping our marriage. People think force is necessary for rape. A lie is just as damning.

  But I loved her. That hadn’t changed. Not ever.

  She wasn’t smiling because of the book. Sometimes a book can make her smile, laugh, cry. But this was the smile I’d married. The one I hadn’t seen for so long. This was the one I made.

  ‘What are you reading?’ I say.

  She shows me. The smile’s still there. I want to keep it there.

  It’s a John Wyndham book. Looks like she got it in a charity shop. The spine’s broken. There’s a coffee stain on it. I don’t know the book.

  ‘Any good?’

  She shrugs. ‘Clunky.’

  That makes me smile. Clunky. She’s the world’s greatest critic when it comes to books. She’s one of the world’s greatest readers, too. I think she’s entitled to her opinion.

  I can’t remember the last time I read a book. Too busy filling my nose with shit and being dead. The thought could make me sad, but not this morning. It doesn’t make a dent, because I’ve got the ball. Helen’s here. For the first time in years, I am, too. That feels good. Unbelievably good.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Cuckoos.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, don’t be daft.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s good. You should read it.’

  She goes quiet. She knows I won’t. But I appreciate it. I don’t want to break the spell, so I search for something to say. It’s not normally this difficult to talk to my wife, but then I haven’t thought about what I say to her for years. Now my words come out funny from time to time, and I’m thinking maybe this is what it should be like. Like having to think before I speak. Measuring the words. Making them count.

  ‘The ball’s good. Better than your book. You should feel it.’

  ‘It’s just a ball.’

  ‘No. It’s not just a ball. There’s a story in this ball. One day, maybe, it’ll tell you.’

  ‘What kind of story is it?’ she asks. She’s smiling.

  ‘Dunno. You’ll have to ask the ball.’

  She laughs. Once I used to be silly. Once I used to be fearless. Arrogant, confident. Then I died. I don’t know what I am now.

  I don’t want to make her cry, but I’m going to now. No matter what I say next, she’s going to cry, but maybe that’s good.

  ‘Can we start over?’ I say.

  There’s so much more to say. But I don’t start in with it then. It’s not the time, because: one step at a time.

  She’s crying, and she’s shaking, and she’s coming over to the bed. I notice she doesn’t mark her book. She never does. She remembers the page number. Once, I remember, that used to impress me. It does again. A small thing. The kind of thing you notice in a marriage, but only when you’re awake. Then she’s hugging me. I can’t feel half of her, but that’s O.K. The parts I can feel are just fine.

  She takes my dead arm and puts it around her back, like she’s done so many times before.

  This is what it’s like to be resurrected. The world’s suddenly brighter. Colours are fresher, even grey. Smells are sharper. She’s hugging me, then she laughs and kisses me and tuts.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  She moves. I see I’ve got an erection.

  We’re both blushing like mad when Seetha comes in. Helen shifts to hide me. I raise my left knee to make a bigger tent over my bed sheet tepee.

  ‘You two look guilty,’ says Seetha. She pauses, looks from me, to Helen, and back again. She doesn’t blush, because Seetha doesn’t blush. I can’t imagine her caught out. In another life she’d have been a great teacher. She could make you feel so naughty.

  ‘Time to go.’

  She takes my chair from beside the wall.

  ‘I thought I had Simon this morning.’

  ‘We switched. I
’m off this afternoon.’

  I’m touched. She won’t say it, but she switched so she can see me. I just know it. But that doesn’t help me out of my predicament.

  ‘Ah…’ I say. But Helen doesn’t help. She’s laughing behind Seetha’s back, hiding it well behind a cough and a hand.

  I’m trying to slide out sideways, but Seetha’s having none of it.

  Suddenly I feel vindictive, and I think, fuck it. Forty-two’s too old to be embarrassed, so I stand and just give it up.

  Seetha sees my erection. Nods.

  ‘Good,’ she says.

  I don’t know if she’s referring to the size, or the quality. Suddenly it’s me that’s embarrassed. She wins. Again.

  She winks at Helen as she wheels me out.

  Helen’s cracking up.

  I can hear her all the way to the lift.

  That was when I knew I loved my wife again, when I got the ball. That ball saved my life, as did she. The black cat? I’m not so sure.

  Back then, I came to life. My marriage was reborn, but me and the stranger both died at 12.03 in the back of an ambulance. I came back to life when my wife gave me that ball.

  The stranger came back to life with the cat. Came back to life, but in the dead parts of me, where I can’t see him.

  But I feel him, and he’s ever watchful.

  *

  Part Four

  -

  Black Cat. Lost Girl

  29.

  We’re in the car, driving through a light spring rain. I’m in the passenger seat, Frank’s in the back. There’s a fine mist on the windscreen. Frank’s got his window down and he’s staring out to the north, waiting for the rare glimpses of the sea that pop up along the coast road.

  I’m not so sure it counts as an honest to goodness coast road. It strays too far, so you can’t always see the sea.

  Still, Frank knows it’s there. So do I. Helen doesn’t have the same feel for it. She keeps asking if we’re heading in the right direction. The road runs east to west. You can’t go wrong.

  ‘Yes, Honey,’ I say.

  We make it to Morston. It’s up from Blakeney, but we thought we’d try it. It’s not hard to find the ticket office. They send us off to the port, or whatever the hell you’d call it. There’s some muddy estuaries, and a few wooden platforms going out to nowhere. There are no boats.

  Frank looks pale even though there’s no water, no boat. I touch his arm and smile.

  It’s a strange thing for me to do, but with Frank it feels OK. I wouldn’t do something like that with anyone but Helen and Frank. He’s seventy. He’s never been on the river, the broads, let along the sea. He must be nervous, but he’s a seventy year old man. Seventy year old men don’t admit to being nervous.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he says, brusque, but he smiles to soften it. He’s grouchy, in part because he’s scared. But he’s excited, too.

  ‘The boat’s going out in half hour. You want a bench, you’d do as well to get in the queue now,’ says the woman we’re told to meet at the back of a van in the car park.

  There are only two other couples by the dock, quay, whatever. I don’t say anything. Whatever, I think. It’s not like there’s much else to do.

  The lady at the back of the van’s got a mole. I kill some time looking at that.

  We queue up with the other two couples. The wooden quay runs a little way into an estuary with hardly any water in it.

  Then there’s water. There’s a lot of water. It comes rushing in, filling up the mud so it’s not mud any more. It doesn’t take that long to fill. I suppose the sea’s coming in. The sea’s big enough that when it wants to come it, you know about it.

  I can smell the sea. I can’t really see it. The way the land lies, it’s like it’s just over a hill or something. I know it’s there. It’s right there, just over the hill. But we’ve got to get on the boat to go see it.

  I’m impatient. I get the sense Frank could wait all day. Neither of us have a choice. We wait for the tide.

  Then we get on the boat. It’s not a boat like I was expecting. I was expecting something with a cool name, like a sloop, or a cutter, or a dory. I don’t know what any of those look like, but this one looks like it’s made from plastic.

  We could have paid for a brochure at the main office, but we’re all of a mind. It’s a boat. Then there’s the seals, and above all, the sea.

  You don’t need literature for that.

  I tap the boat with my knuckle. It seems more like fibreglass than plastic. I don’t think Frank’s too happy to be going out to sea in a boat that’s not made of wood. We sit toward the front.

  Helen’s giddy.

  The wait’s OK. Frank goes green pretty quickly. Helen looks good. The boat is rocking in the dock. It doesn’t bother me. Me and Helen, we’re chatting. It’s the first time for both of us.

  Frank’s quiet. He’s looking pasty. He looks like he might bring up the bacon sandwich he had with us before we left.

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘No, really,’ says Helen.

  ‘Really,’ says Frank.

  I can tell he’s ill. He’s got a cigarette behind his ear. Ordinarily he’d have smoked it, but it’s just sitting there, a little bent, sodden from the drizzle.

  Each wave coming in rocks the boat. It gets so Frank moans whenever the boat gets lifted, dropped.

  ‘Frank,’ I say. ‘Are you seasick?’

  ‘Nope,’ says Frank.

  Helen and I share a look. Frank’s stubborn, certainly, but this is just stupid.

  Then the skipper is saying, ‘All aboard!’ which I’m sure is just cheese for the tourists, all seven of us – me, Frank, Helen, and two other couples.

  We pull away. The skipper gives us some safety spiel. I don’t listen.

  I’m in love with it as soon as we’re out in the water, free of the shore.

  The feel of the boat, responding to the sea, like the sea’s stroking the hull of the boat. The boat’s pushing back, purring along in the swell. The spume gets in my hair. It feels different to the rain.

  I can taste it on my tongue, in the air. It’s different to our bench. Not better, but good. Definitely good.

  Helen’s getting a kick out of it, too. The boat chugs, but you can’t really hear it. The splashing of the sea against the hull is the main noise.

  We head out and all of a sudden we’re not surrounded by land anymore. The land just falls away behind us. We’re in the sea. The proper sea. The hull slaps the waves and we get drenched and laugh every time. Some old and rusty boats sit in the water, rocking like we are. Some are just little wooden sail boats, all anchored in the bay. The rusted boats could be abandoned, for all I know. Like expensive litter, but almost like a Japanese gardener’s idea of litter. Like he’d come along and arranged them just so...just so they look like scenery. The rust isn’t offensive. It’s something true. Like all of us, people, boats, even the land, we’re all just little fish in a big fucking sea that never ends, never gets tired.

  We pass a huge blue building on the arm of the bay that I saw on the map. It looks like a great house. I can imagine it featuring in a film. It’s an epic location for a house. It’s not a house, though, the skipper tells us. It’s for the National Trust.

  I’m disappointed. For a minute, I’d entertained thoughts of living there, out on this barren stretch of coast, swept by the wind, smelling the sea all day. Watching the weather. Maybe wearing a thick sweater and drinking tea from a tin mug.

  But then I think, where would I get my milk?

  There’s a small peninsular, out to sea. I can see it’s covered with seals. Helen’s gibbering, pointing out seals diving through the water, sleek and natural, where our boat is stocky, powering through the sea.

  It’s spoiled, though, because Frank is retching over the side of the boat. His hair is hanging in his face, his cigarette long lost overboard.

  Helen
takes charge. I can’t hold Frank’s hand while he’s puking. He’s not that kind of man. Helen can, though.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, to me, but for Frank, too. ‘He’s just sea sick.’

  Frank pukes some more and groans.

  His rain mac is flecked with grey, which I figure is yellow, because sick shouldn’t be grey.

  Frank waves me away, so I spend the rest of my time gazing at the sea, feeling it on my face, in my hair. I’m wiping my eyes, watching the seals.

  The sky’s turning the colour of the seals.

  I look over at Frank. He’s sitting quietly. He’s got nothing left to give the sea.

  I look back. The seals are cute, but I’m not really interested in the seals. I watch the sky, the sea, the white caps and the green and the grey. I feel empty and full at the same time. Light, but content. Like after a really good meal.

  Helen looks at me when we get back, and grins.

  We were on the boat for the best part of an hour, but to me, it seemed like it was just a few minutes.

  Probably seemed like an hour to Frank. If not longer.

  He stumbles off the boat. Helen stops him from falling off the dock.

  ‘Should have started out small,’ he says, eventually. ‘Maybe a puddle.’

  Helen laughs. I laugh, too.

  Frank just gives us this filthy look, but in the end he gives over.

  The rain is heavy all the way home.

  Helen asks if she’s heading the right way. The road goes west to east. It’s the coast road.

  ‘You’re doing fine, Honey,’ I say.

  *

  30.

  That’s the way of things, for a time. It’s a rhythm. I’m not much for music, so I don’t know what to liken it to. It’s smooth, though. You could dance to it.

  Me and Helen, we build on what we’ve got, though maybe we’re building on sand. At our wedding the vicar said not to do that. As far as I remember, that was what he said. Something about how building on stone was better than building on sand. It’s pretty hazy. The stranger wasn’t in me then. He hadn’t been born. But I think wedding vows are hazy for most people. You’re nervous, but you’re concentrating. You’re stressed, but you’re delirious with happiness at the same time. You’re alone, just you and your wife to be, but God’s there. The vicar’s there. And then about a hundred people sat behind you, most of whom you wouldn’t even recognise on the street.