by Jemma Wayne
“Not even Charles?”
“Well, I guess - well he’ll think that anyway, won’t he?”
Vera remains where she is seated on the sofa and Charlie sighs by the door, reluctantly closing it.
“Look, I’m sorry V, but that’s the only way I’m having it. If you want something else, you’ll have to take it to the authorities. And you better do it quick ‘cos my lawyer’s confident I’ll have him by the end of January.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Why? Why?” Vera hears her voice rising but cannot stop it. “Why do you have to tie me to you? Is it punishment? Do you want to punish me? Here, punish me!” She begins tearing at her hair, a wild tugging that yields a handful of blonde strands before she stops, aghast at her own fragility.
For a moment Charlie stares at her in silence, then he sinks down into a crouching position on the floor. There is a small Christmas tree in the corner next to him, and a box of newly-bought decorations. She can see that one of them bears their son’s name. “I don’t want to punish you,” Charlie says finally. “It was both of our responsibility. I know that.”
“Then why - ”
“Because you should be with me, alright?” he shouts suddenly. “Wasn’t that the plan? Ultimately? Some virgin messiah arrives and bowls you over and you just drop out?”
“Out?”
“Of my life. Wasn’t the plan that we’d end up together, eventually?”
Vera furrows her eyebrows. “It’s not a plan you ever shared with me.”
“Yes, okay, I know that. But I’m sharing it now.”
Vera pauses. “But I love Luke.”
The simple words resonate for a moment around them and they are locked in unfamiliar silence. It occurs to Vera that in all the years they have known each other, there has never really been silence between them. Never quiet, always noise. She breathes awkwardly into the taut air, then Charlie stands up. “Then, goodbye Vera.” His voice is soft but firm, and he does not look at her. “I can’t do it your way.”
“I just want to see him. I just want to know him,” Vera pleads.
But Charlie shakes his head. “He’ll be here in an hour,” he says. “You need to go.”
“He’s coming here?” Vera whispers this as though a holy secret.
“He’s been coming here,” Charlie responds, just as solemnly. “I’m serious about him V.”
Slowly, Charlie reopens the door and motions towards it. He waits, keeping his glance fixedly towards the door, but when seconds pass and Vera still doesn’t move he claps his hand hard against the wall, then takes a deep, steadying breath and finally looks her in the eye. “The chaperone will be with him. She’s asked about you. Don’t make me angry Vera.”
From behind a post box, Vera watches Charles arrive. He skips out of the car cheerfully and holds his chaperone’s hand as they walk together up the path towards Charlie’s door. A backpack much too big for his small body is slung over his arm and he is holding a piece of paper that even from her hide-out, Vera can tell is a Christmas card covered in glitter and glue. Standing on the doorstep he asks to be allowed to be the one to press the bell. He has the confidence of his father. When Charlie opens the door, he shrinks back ever so slightly, but then beams under the manly ruffle of his hair, lets go of his chaperone’s hand, and reaches up, to be lifted up. Vera thinks she can see him mouth the word ‘Dad’.
“But as much as he’s the dad, you’re his mum,” says Vera’s mother.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” asks her father. “We would have helped.”
“You’re a mother,” her mother declares again, her hand never leaving her chest.
Her father stands up. “That whole time you were pregnant. And that whole time you thought he was dead. And these past months when - we would have helped.”
“You can’t just walk away,” says her mother.
“We’ll call a lawyer,” decides her father.
“But wait, Vera can’t go to prison,” says her mother.
“That’s what the lawyer’s for.”
“And what about Luke?”
“And what about our grandson?”
“And what about our daughter?”
Now her parents notice that Vera, who is sat between them on the sofa, is weeping. And smiling as she weeps. And fingering the Scrabble board on the table. And not storming towards the door and out of the house and out of their lives. Nor asking either of them to stop.
In the afternoon the three of them take a walk crossing the same fields they used to when she was still a child. From somewhere deep inside the hall closet, her mother unearths Vera’s wellies and as they hike across the fields of her childhood she fixes her gaze on them. The last time she wore this particular pair she was 19 and sharing a tent with a group of university friends at Glastonbury. Swirling ink symbols whose meaning she can no longer recall stamp across them like insistent flakes of mud. Sticky reminders of the past. In them, Vera cannot understand why she feels so light-footed. “The Lord is near to all who call upon him, To all who call upon him in truth”, she hears in explanation inside her head, or through the wind perhaps. Vera smiles cynically, then laughs into the wind, amused that finally, finally she has read enough of the bible for her subconscious to quote a verse back to her. Your subconscious, or Jesus? whispers the wind again, and Vera laughs again, this time loudly, oblivious to her parents’ confused glances. She laughs, but it is not an answer, the truth has not yet freed her. She is so far from being free. If anything, having laid it all out to her parents – the facts, the problems, the inconceivable things that have passed – the longing for her son and for Luke is more intense than ever, more paralysing with the force of desire. And although there is a fresh openness between herself and her parents, and despite gargantuan efforts on their part to understand, they do not like what she has asked of them: to wait. To wait until she knows what it is she wants to do.
She does not know if this will ever be the case. If she will ever see her son, if she will be arrested if she tries to, or even if, in a few weeks time as was the plan, she will be married to Luke. “Don’t be a martyr,” her mother cautions, as though guessing her thoughts. But Vera’s overwhelming sensation is that she owes something. She owes Charles a parent. She owes Charlie a child. She owes Luke a true, baggage-free, clean-slated life. Yet these are separate, mutually exclusive obligations. They cannot be given together. And if given, they leave her with what? Christmas is a time for generosity, but she is just one person, with just one heart to break. It would be so helpful if those guiding hands would return to their shoulder perch.
Without them, Vera strides ahead. Truth, truth, whispers the country wind insistently. Or perhaps it is saying Luke, Luke. Or move, move. Don’t pause, keep moving.
Luke calls at 3.45 on Christmas morning. “I think it’s going to happen today,” he whispers. “Can you come?”
Chapter
Thirty-One
When Emily woke, she was thirsty and her clothes were drenched in a cold sweat. Vaguely she remembered someone banging at her door but by the time she had dragged herself into full consciousness, and to the door, the corridor outside it was empty. Perhaps it was Omar. Standing in a pair of threadbare socks she considered venturing across the few feet that separated their flats and knocking, but even if he was there, what would she say? The iciness was still with her, un-melted by sleep. If he needed emotion, she did not have it. If he did not, then what was the point?
Emily closed the door and sat on the cushion in front of the television. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a red light blinking: her answering machine. It flashed on and off, on and off, on and off. Outside, the sun must have been fading because the small light that crept through the window into her room was growing paler and less insistent. Day to night. On and off. On and off.
At some point, Emily rose from the cushion and without a glass drank water from the tap at the sink, then without a coat or sh
oes, she left her flat. She wasn’t cold, or rather she was unable to separate the effect of the weather from the iciness inside her, and so she didn’t notice the hairs on her arms prickling or her toes turning numb. Occasionally the people she passed in the street regarded her from beneath their hats and scarves with curiosity.
Hours later she found herself outside Auntie’s house. A light was on in the kitchen and Emily imagined Auntie peeling sweet potatoes, boiling rice, drying fish, preparing the foods of the place she’d decided to leave as though this mitigated her abandonment. For a time, Emily had felt angry with Auntie for not having had the courage to stay and face the dangers she herself had suffered. But later, she had turned this animosity against her own dead parents who had not been foresighted enough to take her and her brothers out of Rwanda too. The problem with the dead is that they are not around to answer indictments, and so Emily’s rage had had nowhere to flow and she was always so close to snapping. Or had been. If Auntie appeared at the door now, Emily wouldn’t snap at her, or blame her, or plead with her.
The curtain in the kitchen moved. Then the hall lamp lit up the space behind the door revealing a small group of silhouettes. Perhaps Auntie had seen her. Perhaps she regretted turfing her out. Perhaps she didn’t. The light went off. On again. Off again.
Emily moved on. After hours she hadn’t bothered to count, she lost track of where she was going or how long she’d been going for, but the sun rose while she was still in the graveyard. At this time of day the quiet of the place was liberating, and the thud of it made Emily pause. She sat on top of a stone monument undisturbed and thought about nothing. Gradually, early morning rabbits crept towards patches of grass, birds sang brazenly in nearby trees without summer foliage to hide them, and a London rat flitted deviously between graves. Beneath the soil, there were probably chrysalises waiting to hatch into caterpillars.
Emily noticed that she was hungry, but she lacked the necessary precision of thought to do anything about it. Hunger was only another empty hole to add to the dark mass inside her. In a distant part of her soul there murmured a suggestion that she had missed or forgotten something important, but this conviction was barely formed and slipped in and out of the pervading emptiness.
One by one and then in loose bunches, people began to appear on the path: People bent against the cold and scuttling to work, mothers with prams and red-faced babies in them, children padded in gloves and marshmallow coats that might tear if they climbed trees. For a while longer, Emily watched them, unmoved, but at some point she lowered her sock-clad feet back onto the frosty ground and slipped into the march of pedestrians. Walking on, she noticed with a marked detachment that she was passing all the places she had once known intimately: her school, the grocer owned by Uncle’s friend Franco, the newsagent where Auntie let her buy sweets, a string of bus stops. It was as if her legs were taking her on a tour of her life in England, recapping it, or bidding it farewell, but even this she did with indifference, uninterested in whether she paused or persisted.
It grew dark again and she was somewhere unfamiliar. She sat on the steps of a building she didn’t recognise and rested her head against the stone wall, though she wasn’t specifically tired. Perhaps night turned to day. Darkness. Light. Noise. Silence. On again. Off again. When she closed her eyes a red light blinked, and at the back of her mind that nagging suggestion itched uncomfortably.
Emily stood up. It was daylight and nearby a bus was pulling up to the pavement. She got on it, fishing her Oyster card out of her jeans pocket. She stared out of the window and wondered what it was that should be on her mind. Was it Omar? What was her soul suggesting? It was a great effort to force herself to think, almost as though she had to climb out from underneath a pile of dead weight to do so.
The bus stopped at a red light and Emily stared at it until it finally turned green. The colour that the Hutu Power men had waved in the street, the colour of the bandana worn by the man who’d once slapped Cassien, the colour Jean had worn, the colour of grass. She thought of these disparate things without emotion and returned her gaze to the city that trundled by.
Some indefinable time later, she found herself back in her flat, sitting again on the cushion in front of the inactive TV. A tin of corn had made its way into a bowl, topped with chickpeas and a few cherry tomatoes that she should really have thrown out days earlier. She ate the concoction slowly, taking at least a small grain of satisfaction from the feeling of fullness that began to engulf her. She supposed that it was important to eat. In fact, perhaps that was what her mind should be concentrating on: determining which aspects of her existence were truly necessary. So far, eating was the only thing that seemed obvious. If she didn’t eat, she would die. If she didn’t drink, this too would kill her and quicker. And she should probably not sleep on the street again, at least not during the winter. She poured herself a glass of water and pulled on a jumper. What else? Was anything else important to her survival?
It didn’t matter where Emily slept, only that she did, and so she remained on the cushion and drifted again into unconsciousness.
When she woke next, the phone was ringing. The red light was still blinking and Emily moved slowly towards it, letting her body and not her mind decide whether or not to pick it up, since it was of little consequence. Her body hesitated. The answering machine kicked in. Suddenly, the urgent voice of Lynn’s youngest son invaded the room.
“Angel? Are you there? Emily?” He paused. “Emily I hope you’re alright, I’ve been leaving you messages for days, I’m sorry to keep calling, only my mother was expecting you, well, for the last five days actually. She’s not doing too well so - anyway we could do with your help if you can. And of course today is Christmas Eve and I’m no good with a turkey you see and Luke, well, anyway, I hope you’re alright, I’m not really sure where you’ve been, the agency said they’ve called you already so - look, if you can come, my mother would like to see you. Oh, it’s John Hunter by the way.”
Emily’s body took her into the shower and stood letting the hot water beat down onto its chapped skin. Then it planted itself in front of the small wooden wardrobe and dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a heavy jumper, before packing an old canvas bag with a few extra items including her toothbrush. For a moment, her body paused and glanced at the still-flashing red light on the answering machine, but then it turned and made for the door, traversing the stench-filled stairwell and walking directly to the flower shop a few roads away where it bought a bunch of yellow tulips, because they didn’t have daffodils. Emily’s body then made its way onto a bus, packed with last-minute Christmas shoppers, and it hung onto the handrail until it reached the stop close to Lynn’s house. It walked without diversion down the three roads that separated it from Lynn’s door and suddenly, Emily found herself on Lynn’s doorstep, aware that her body had just rung the bell. It didn’t matter, she told herself. It was inconsequential, whether Lynn was well or not. Whether Emily went in or didn’t.
John’s face flooded with relief when he saw her.
“Oh thank goodness.” He lurched forward as though he wanted to hug her but then only took her bag. “Luke’s with her now.” Her stomach tightened. “She’s not talking much. I think she might need help getting changed but I didn’t know how to, or she might need to go to the bathroom I think but she’s too - I didn’t know if I should… ” His voice trembled and cracked. His usually debonair demeanour seemed crumpled, like a slept-in shirt. His head dropped. “Luke’s been handling things.”
Emily put her hand gently on his arm. “I’ll see what she needs,” she said simply and turned towards the stairs.
Perhaps the flowers were heavier than she’d realised because Emily found herself climbing the steps slowly. Although Lynn’s state didn’t really matter, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being weighed down. And although she’d prepared herself for it, and it was irrelevant, when she finally reached the woman’s room, Luke’s face shook her. The unmistakable eyes. Not one thing
or another. Or two things at once.
He stood up when she entered. Grey and Green.
Emily dug her nails into the palms of her hands, clinging to ice.
Both of them hovered uncomfortably on either side of the bed.
Somewhere beneath the folds of the duvet lay Lynn. Her thin, white hair was sprawled across the vast pillow and the tip of a pale pink nightgown escaped the blanket that had carefully been tucked in around her, but it took Emily a long time to locate her face. Turned to the side, it could easily have been mistaken for just another fold in the ageing bedclothes, yellowed slightly, the lines that had once indicated a lifetime of smiles hanging downward now, uncertainly, like a sheet that had been accidentally made up inside out. Lynn’s eyes were closed but beneath the thin lids they darted this way and that. Her lips were dry. Her arms were wrapped up in a brown, threadbare dressing gown. Her breath was shallow.
Emily looked around the room and found an empty vase that she took to the bathroom and filled with water, before arranging the yellow tulips and returning with them to Lynn’s bed. Luke had sat down again and placed his hand onto the covers near where his mother lay, though remaining always just beyond the space where their bodies might touch.
“Has she been eating?” Emily asked.
Luke sat up straighter, his shoulders taut, and shook his head. “Not for two days. Occasionally she manages a sip of water.” He pointed to the glass with a straw sticking out of it on her nightstand. It made a ring on the pad that Lynn had used to write the address of GENSUR so carefully. “Where have you been?”
“Has she been to the toilet?”
“She’s needed help.”
“Did you help her?”
“The bed smells a little.”
Emily lifted the top blanket and a putrid smell wafted out.
Luke wrinkled his nose. “You were meant to be here,” he stated, with a sudden violence, slicing the air like a knife. “As it’s Christmas the agency had nobody else to send. And she refused to let anybody else come anyway. And she said she needed you, she needed to - I couldn’t help her.”
