by Rhys Thomas
‘Is he dead?’ Joseph said, his voice rising at the end of the sentence.
‘Joseph . . .’ He didn’t know how to proceed. ‘Yes. Henry died last night.’
Joseph was Henry’s older brother by eight years and his father had always known how, as a child, he had prided himself on protecting his little brother.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s here. He’s in Cornwall.’
‘What happened? Why is he in Cornwall?’
‘He . . .’ he paused. ‘It’s this thing they’ve been talking about.’
‘I’m coming down. I’ll leave now.’
Henry’s father knew there was no way to dissuade Joseph.
‘Take care on the roads, son.’
At seven o’clock the next morning, Miriam pulled on the overcoat and boots that she kept in the house for the coastal walks she and her family had always taken, and pulled the front door closed behind her. It was cold and she lifted the collar of her overcoat.
The road in front of the house gave on to a wide patch of short grass. A solitary sheep chewed lazily. Miriam made her way to the tip of the headland that extended out into the ocean like a knife blade and looked out to sea. Her bones rattled in the wind that stormed in as a great mass, a solid block moving in on the coast. The sun was barely up. The distended, painful tide rose up at the cliffs, its waves drawn into sharp mountains by the angry breath of blasting wind.
She stepped towards the edge of the cliff. They should have put a fence here. The land fell away so fast. Making her way along the path to the right, away from the house, she stifled her tears.
She halted and looked down at a gull. Its grey feathers assumed a dirty shine as it glided inland between her and the water. There was not a soul in sight. It was the absence of human audio that struck her more than any other sense. The howling silence was disconcerting. It explained how tiny she was, and how massive nature is. If she were the last soul alive she would let its size cover her, smother her and pull her apart.
For a moment she wondered if the headland on which she was standing might crack away and fall into the sea. Maybe it would cleave off along an invisible fault in the rock and sink, slowly, toppling by degrees, away.
There was a bench further along, past the entrance to the cliff path that led to the beach. Henry had proposed to her on that bench. She wanted to see it again. The dawn light began to grow and as Miriam found her way along the line of the cliff, heading back inland, she caught a glimpse of the bay down below. The sand was orange in the morning light. A gap opened in the low, foggy clouds and a cylinder of sunlight hovered delicately over the beach. A wrecked ship lay in the sand, a ribcage hull the only survivor of the years of salt and water and wind. Soon it wouldn’t be there at all. Time came and went and nobody knew about it. Perhaps it is all hidden away in the folds of the dimensions, she thought, and one day scientists will unlock the fabric and all of time will dazzle outwards in a yawning lurch of history. Then Henry would come back to her.
She passed the entrance to the cliff path and clambered over the rising hummock and down the other side to where the bench was. A man was sitting on it, watching the sunrise. Cautiously, Miriam approached. He wore a hat and a scarf but he did not have a coat. He must be freezing. She went closer, but the man didn’t move.
He looked around the same age as her: late thirties.
‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Are you OK?’
He didn’t answer. She stood for a moment, just looking at him. The only things moving were his clothes, the scarf blowing around his head in the wind, his T-shirt fluttering against his arms. She waited for a quarter of a minute, maybe longer, and then started back towards the house. She walked quickly and then started to run. Tears burst out of her and blurred the landscape. She ran as fast as she could, painful oxygen burning her insides.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered, over and over.
Possibilities tumbled through her mind. The enormous spectre of death rose up from behind the cliff as a giant black shadow. As she ran across the desolate grass, her chestnut hair swirling around her, an abyss to one side, the dawn light suddenly penetrated the clouds and the sky became viscous with an eerie red-orange vapour and it really did feel, then, like the end of the world.
She came to the house and found herself slamming the front door shut behind her and turning the key in the lock. Taking several deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, she tried to stop crying. Levels of horror swelled around her in pulsating shockwaves. She went into the kitchen.
A stranger was standing at the kettle, his back to her. Miriam gasped with shock and stepped backwards.
‘Henry?’ Her voice trembled. The man at the kettle turned slowly. A sad smile softened his face. The wheels of her mind began to turn correctly again. ‘Joseph?’
‘I came down last night,’ he said.
Although Henry was eight years younger than Joseph they had the same mouth, the same large teeth, the same nose and eyes. They stared at one another for a moment, each unsure as to the correct protocol for offering or receiving condolence.
The kettle hissed and steam rose from its spout.
‘Tea?’ Joseph offered.
Miriam shook her head. She couldn’t understand why he should feel the need to come to Cornwall. Henry was dead and there was nothing he could do about it. Why would he come now?
She sensed a new presence, behind her.
‘Joseph,’ said Henry’s father.
He walked past Miriam directly to his son and embraced him. Joseph’s body relaxed as his father held him, and his head rested down into the old man’s shoulder. She pictured Joseph fifteen years younger when she had first met him and remembered that that was how he was then: emotional, giving. It was as if she was looking into an echo of him from the past. The two men came out of the embrace and Henry’s father turned to Miriam.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, immediately picking up on her feelings.
She stood there and it was all she could do to stop herself crying again.
‘I found something,’ she said. ‘Up on the cliff.’
As they left the garden, Joseph closing the green, wooden gate behind him, Henry and Miriam’s eleven-year-old son, Edward, watched them from the window of the spare bedroom. Dressed only in his cotton pyjamas he could feel the intense cold trying to push past the wooden frame and single sheet of glass.
‘They’re going somewhere,’ he said, and looked back into the room towards his little sister.
Mary threw the covers off the double bed and jumped down to the carpet. She joined her brother at the window and gazed out through tired, sleep-laden eyes. Together they watched the adults cross the road in front of the house, move out in single file over the grass and head towards the cliff edge. Beyond them lay the vast openness of the choppy grey sea.
Edward felt his sister fidget on the carpet, the wooden floorboards of the old house groaning underneath her bare feet in spite of her slightness. He knew she was about to start crying again.
‘Come on,’ he said awkwardly, trying to sound cheerful, ‘let’s go downstairs and watch TV.’
She wasn’t listening. She spun around and threw herself face down on the bed. Her small frame underneath her white nightdress made him feel sorry for her because she was so small and he knew that small people need more help than big people.
‘Come on, Mary,’ he said, sitting down beside her. He placed an open palm on the centre of her back. He thought of his father: what would he do? ‘Don’t be sad,’ he said.
Joseph held the man’s wrist in his right hand. It was a futile gesture because he was clearly dead.
Henry’s father and Miriam watched Joseph turn towards them and shake his head. The morning light was brighter now but the cold remained entrenched in the air.
‘We’d better call an ambulance,’ he called over the wind.
Henry’s father stood between Miriam and the sea. He acted as a shield. He looked confused, as if too much informatio
n was hitting him too fast.
‘James,’ she said, ‘what’s going on?’
The television burned to life. They listened as they were told to take precautions, to watch for signs, not to panic, to call the emergency services only if absolutely necessary, that this was the first wave, that doctors did not know what it was. The deaths had started in the middle of the night.
Miriam heard shuffling behind her. The children came into the room and stared at the television. Henry’s father reached for the remote and quickly turned it off. Miriam stood. There was a sense of growing nausea in her. She went into the hallway and called her mother but the phone didn’t connect. She checked that she had keyed correctly and as she did this a voice came down the line. Quickly, Miriam brought the phone back up to her ear and said, ‘Mum?’ but stopped when she realized that it was not her mother. A cold, recorded voice told her the network was currently busy and that she should try again later.
She went into the kitchen and tried the house phone. This time the line connected. She waited for her mother to answer but it just kept ringing.
‘Jesus.’ She replaced the phone and tried again but still nothing.
Then she was aware that her mobile was ringing. The sound of it ballooned in her head and she pulled it from her pocket.
‘Mum?’
‘Miri?’
Miriam looked at the screen. It wasn’t her mother. ‘Sophia?’
Her friend was afraid. She was breathing hard and spoke quickly. ‘Miri, thank God. I’ve been trying to call you but the network – Miri, it’s Daniel. He’s got it. I know he has.’
Her friend was sobbing.
The dull weight that had been sitting in Miriam’s gut since Henry had fallen ill intensified and the weight crept into her bones. It was as if the world had inverted itself.
‘Where are you?’
‘At home. Oh God, he’s just sitting in the chair. He won’t even talk to me. He’s going to die, I know it.’
She was becoming hysterical, her own words scaring her.
‘Sophia, stop. Just wait. I’m going to drive to you, OK? But I’ll be a while. I’m in Cornwall. I’ll be as quick as I can. Just stay where you are, OK?’
There was no answer.
‘Sophia, are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just stay in the house, OK?’
‘OK. Wait.’ There was a pause on the line. ‘He’s getting up. I’d better go.’
The line went dead.
She went upstairs to the children’s room. Their clothes were strewn all over the floor so she bundled them up into a ball on the bed and found their bags. Her head swirled. An image of the still, dead man on the cliff top flashed into her mind. The ends of his scarf had flapped violently in the wind.
There was a knock at the door and the crack of sound startled her.
‘What are you doing?’
Joseph came into the room.
She sniffed and didn’t look at him as she stuffed the clothes into a bag. ‘We’re going back to London.’
‘Have you seen the news?’ he said.
Miriam nodded and tried to act cool. She didn’t want him to see her upset.
‘Maybe you should stay here.’
‘I need to check on my mother. I can’t get through to her.’
Joseph closed the door and stepped further into the room. Miriam stopped what she was doing and her head fell forwards. There was a wooden chair in front of the dressing table. Joseph sat down. His face had aged. There were thin lines at the corners of his eyes, scored deeper than she remembered. He put his head in his hands. The action frightened Miriam. There was a tender injury in him.
‘This is insane,’ he said.
Neither of them said anything. There was more grey in his hair than before. He seemed somehow less intense, deflated. He didn’t seem like the man she remembered. His old self-assurance had waned.
‘Miri.’ He paused with uncertainty. ‘What was Henry like? Before he died.’
She closed the zip of the bag and sat down on the bed.
‘He was . . .’ Forming the words felt odd. ‘He was just . . . quiet. I don’t know.’ She thought of Henry sitting in the back seat of the car, looking out of the window with no expression on his face. ‘Like they said on the news.’
Joseph’s silence resounded in her chest. She could feel his thoughts, hear the ticking of his mind, sense his confusion. He turned towards her and she caught the smell of coffee on his breath.
‘Miri, don’t worry, OK? We’ll deal with everything. I promise. Everything is going to be fine.’
She thought how stupid that sounded.
‘I’m going back to London as well,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to Pele.’ Pele was his black Labrador. ‘We can go together. Where does your mother live?’
‘North London. Enfield.’
‘Will you come with me?’
Miriam shook her head. She didn’t want this. Joseph wasn’t part of her life. ‘No.’
‘Miri, think about it. We’ll go back together and the kids can stay here.’
‘What? No. I need to check on my friend as well. We have to go back.’
‘I’ll take you to your friend’s.’
‘We’re going back, me and the kids together. London’s our home, Joseph.’
The chair creaked as he shifted in it. ‘I know that, Miri. But something’s happening and I don’t think it’s safe to be in the city at the moment.’
She snorted. He was so dramatic all the time.
‘We’ll hole up here until everything blows over. The kids like it here, I know that.’ How did he know that, she thought. He didn’t care about the kids. He never came to see them. ‘They can stay here while we go back. We won’t be gone long.’
‘No,’ she said, sternly.
Joseph paused. ‘Miri, you have to be rational.’
‘Please, Joseph, don’t tell me to be rational. Not now.’
‘Look,’ he said. ‘What if you and I go back and then, if it’s safe, we’ll call Dad and he can bring the kids?’
She couldn’t understand why he was pretending to be so concerned about the kids or why, for the matter, he seemed so concerned for her.
‘I’m not leaving the kids. Jesus, Joseph, how can you even ask me to do that?’
The bleating ambulance sirens grew from the window and Joseph stood up.
‘Because it’s the right thing to do, and you know it is. Just think about it, OK?’
From the window of the bedroom Edward could see all the way along the coastline, from the point to the west with the tall, white lighthouse sticking up out of the land, all the way along the cliffs, past the fields and barns and patches of trees to the church steeple in the village, a few miles to the east.
Miriam lay on the bed with Mary. Edward placed his fingers on the glass and when he took them away he could see his fingerprints on it. He went and joined them on the bed. He and Mary both rested their heads on Miriam’s chest. She held bunches of their hair in either hand and wondered if she really was thinking about leaving them.
‘I have to go away for a few days,’ she said.
Edward raised his head. She could see fear flicker in his deep brown eyes.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I have to go and see Grandma in London.’
‘Please don’t,’ said the little boy.
Miriam sat up against the headboard. Both children looked at her now. She was going to start crying again.
‘I have to go to check that she’s OK,’ she said with naked honesty. ‘It’ll only be for a day or two.’
‘We’ll come with you.’
Miriam shook her head. She wished she could just pull the covers over them all and stay in the bed for ever. She hated the fact that Joseph was right.
‘No,’ she said.
Desperation ran all through.
Edward had always been a bubbly child, but since she had told him about his father he had withdrawn – his whirl
ing inner mechanisms had slowed. He hadn’t cried, or stamped and screamed. Instead he had become still.
‘You stay here and look after Granddad for me. Uncle Joseph and I will go back, and Granddad will bring you home later in the week.’
‘No.’
Mary’s lower lip wobbled, the sure precursor to a crying fit.
‘It’s only for a few days, that’s all.’
She pulled Mary close to her and kissed the top of her head.
‘I want you to be good for Granddad.’
They left for London after dinner. The weather had closed in and needles of rain rattled against the windows of Joseph’s car. It was a rusting old Peugeot but he had insisted on driving. The wind buffeted them as they drove in silence. Miriam watched the raindrops on the passenger window. They clung to it intensely, vibrating back and forth, wrestling to keep their position before being peeled away and scattered to the wind.
Time, even in short hours, had a calming effect on Miriam. Whatever this thing was, it couldn’t be as bad as the television said. Things like this never lasted. The world was too stable now; the systems and laws and technologies too rigid.
‘Won’t be long before we reach Swindon,’ Joseph said.
In the road ahead, visible only for a second at a time in the now heavy rain, the traffic began to build. The car slowed.
‘What’s going on?’ he said quietly, to himself.
The vehicles in the fast lane veered quickly across to the middle, the brake lights tiny blotches of red in the gloom. Other cars sounded their horns angrily.
As they approached they saw that a car had gone into the back of a second and the fast lane was blocked. They filed past the accident and Miriam looked out of the window. A woman and a young couple were standing on the central reservation, talking animatedly and pointing at the wreck.
‘You shouldn’t stare,’ said Joseph. ‘It’s voyeuristic.’
Miriam sighed and looked ahead. There was a third car stationary in the fast lane, fifty yards further up the road. The driver-side door was open.
