by Alice Jolly
Don’t look back. But she did look back and she saw. A great wall of fire advancing up the street, a solid mass of flame ripping through the fronts of houses, swallowing walls and chimneys, blazing into the night sky. The Bostocks’ house will be gone. She knows that – but her mind can’t encompass that information. Frank’s cufflinks were there, in a box in her suitcase. Silver and in the shape of a four-leafed clover. She’d bought them for him as a wedding present. Will they melt or turn to dust? Could some fragment of them be left in the ashes? Don’t look back. Rose feels panic rising in her throat. She leans her head against the wall.
Water, a voice shouts. Water coming in. Bodies press against Rose. Panic vibrates through the shelter. Like being on the inside of a drum. Water seeps through the leather of Rose’s shoes.
It’s coming in from here. Bodies heave and Rose’s head spins.
We’re going to drown, a woman screams. Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that will surely be. Rose feels the water break in through the tops of her shoes. The shelter is filled with moans and wails. Rose’s head is bashed against the wall as people lift their splashing feet. A slopping sound and then a splash. Drowning is probably worse than being bombed or burnt. Overall, she would prefer a bomb. That way you probably know nothing. Like poor Mrs Watson. A sudden flash of light? A dull thud?
Blocked it up. All right. Blocked it up.
The shelter sags and breathes again. Rose drops her head against the wall again. Perhaps she sleeps standing up. Hours, days, weeks pass. When the earth shall be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.
Rose dreams of Violet. Violet with her white skin and bulging eyes, her thick blonde hair and white dresses. Violet – tiny and neat. As unchanging as the sun and not a question in her head. Even the Luftwaffe will know better than to bomb Violet. As soon as she gets out of the shelter, that’s where she’ll go – to Violet. That’s what she should have done before. Rose is on her way to the house now, hurrying across the Green, carrying Mollie with her. Soon she’ll be there, folded into the generous shadows of that house. Maybe she misses Violet more than Frank.
She reaches the gate, passes the stone lions, hurries up the front steps. The door is open ready for her. And Violet comes running down the stairs into the sun-speckled hall. A brand new cardigan, soft as a cloud. You will kill yourself with all this, Rose Mayeford. Arthur’s voice rises up through the house, singing. Paradise here, paradise close. And Frank is there, with his tight collar and his hair pressed down, standing next to Violet, the mirror image of each other. Siamese twins, indivisible. Violet, Rose, Rose, Violet. A few flowers more and we’ll have a bouquet. And behind them is the dining room, and beyond, the garden, where wisteria still grows across the once-white wrought-iron arch with its Moorish twisting spike and pineapple-shaped knob.
29
NOW
Oliver – Brighton, March 2003
Spring is here and even now, at seven o’clock in the evening, the sunlight soaks the streets and people sit out on balconies or doorsteps. Oliver opens his window, keeps his eyes away from the roofs of the building opposite, worries that he might see a man balancing there, close to the edge, trying to decide whether to jump, waiting for Oliver to dash up onto the roof, and supply the voice of comfort and reason that’ll bring him back from the brink. But tonight no lives are at risk and so he enjoys the last warmth of the sun as it sinks amidst satellite dishes, chimneys and treetops.
When he hears footsteps on the stairs, he knows it’ll be Lara. She tends to come and see him around this time. He never expected to like her but now, as he opens the door to her, he realises he’s pleased to see her. She looks so different – not in an obvious way – but something has changed. She is lighter, looser, more vital. She begins to tell him about websites and injunctions, clearing out her flat, getting ready to move. He knows that she’s at the peace protest office most days now, is fervent in her commitment to the cause. She’s surviving as best she can. Oliver enjoys her normality, her enthusiasm. She’s at ease with the surfaces of the world as he’s never been.
So I don’t suppose you want to go for a drink – a normal drink?
That mocking question again. It’s become a joke between them.
You don’t really do normal, do you? she says.
Actually, he says. I’ve spent the last few years trying to be normal.
Oh right. You and I obviously have a different idea of normal.
She laughs and he’s surprised to hear himself laughing as well.
So – what about dinner? We could get the car. Drive out of town somewhere.
I don’t go in cars.
What? What do you mean?
Just that.
Oh for God’s sake. You can’t live in the modern world and not go in cars. But anyway – why don’t we just go down to the seafront? I’ll pay.
He can’t explain why he finds her suggestion difficult. Money, yes, and the fear that there might be a death and that he’ll be responsible for it. But there’s something more. For a long time he’s never allowed himself to think that he could be part of that normal world out there. Perhaps he’s always considered himself above it. He doesn’t want to find out that he also might be capable of a bit of trivial pleasure. And beyond anything else, he fears other people’s kindness.
Come on, she says. Please.
Sometimes he does walk down to the seafront so it wouldn’t make any difference to have dinner there. If he’s with Lara, he won’t worry about a wave coming in off the sea and sucking people away, or the big wheel on the pier spinning out of control and cartwheeling down into the waves. He’ll take her up on the offer, he’s bored by the cliché of the faith healer who can’t heal himself. Doubtless he should put on some smarter clothes but he doesn’t have any. So he combs his hair and puts on the one good jacket he has. It’s oddly intimate, doing those things with her in the next room, catching sight of her face in the mirror as he combs his hair.
The American military killed fourteen people today – unarmed civilians, she says. People in a shopping centre with no military targets anywhere close. And I haven’t heard anything from Jay but I’m not worrying about him – or not really.
He turns to look at her, nodding vaguely, uncertain whether he should support her in her optimism. Of course, Lara doesn’t look anything like Grace. There’s no similarity at all – and yet, just in that moment, there was something. He’s seen it in others as well, people with cancer or heart disease, people stuck in some liminal world between life and death. People who can hear the distant rustlings of mortality. People who have absolute power because they have no power at all.
Together they wander down to the seafront. People are sitting out on terraces, music plays and the streets smell of fried food and beer. Lara talks to him all the way, telling him about what she’s been doing – helping out at the Stop The War office, going to London to meet the lawyer who is trying to save the website. He enjoys the pulse of the streets, the brackish smell of the sea, everything around him flat, one-dimensional, like a picture postcard. Everything only what it is. She takes him to a restaurant on the seafront, with windows that look out over the beach. He allows himself to be seduced by ease and abundance. On the beach people are still hovering at the water’s edge, or sitting on steps, eating cones of chips or kebabs. The sea is grey-green and rolls in gently, with a long suck, a shy splash.
They order drinks and food. Oliver considers with contempt the resilience of the human body, remembers eating a full English breakfast the morning after Grace’s death. But still he’s captured by this experience, starts to remember how to behave – sitting across the table from Lara, he drinks a glass of wine, asks her occasional questions. Her fingers fiddle with the stem of her wine glass. She spreads butter onto small pieces of bread, eats hungrily. Occasionally she raises a hand – a wax-smooth hand – to push her straggling red hair back from her face. The waiter brings wine and food. Oliver experiences the relief of eating
a meal he hasn’t cooked himself and the knowledge that there’ll be no dishes to wash up afterwards. Lara has a talent for talking about herself. He’s glad that he doesn’t need to say anything much. It would hardly matter if he weren’t even here, he thinks, without bitterness.
He asks her about her mother. He envies Mollie, a person of simple faith.
Lara shakes her head, sighs, pours more wine. I don’t know. She’s so kind and good and funny. And she’s amazing for her age. Virtually brought Jay up for me and never asked for anything in return. So then why is it that I’ve only got to be in her company for two minutes before I’m seething with anger?
She stares out over the sea, tells him yet again that she’s being punished.
What have you done that’s so terrible? he asks. When he was a vicar he heard spontaneous confessions all the time. Adultery, minor financial swindles, thoughts of murder or suicide. All of them confessed with hand-wringing as though they were great evils, when really they were nothing more than paragraphs from the ancient ledger of human weaknesses.
Well. I had an affair, for a long time, with my married boss.
She’s hoping that he will chastise her, express shock or condemnation, but he will not allow her that.
Consenting adults, he says.
Yes, I know but once I got someone sacked. She was a secretary and we lost a job because a fax wasn’t sent out. And I claimed she should have sent it when really it was me.
He’s finding it increasingly difficult not to laugh. Lara looks at him and for a moment she’s offended but then the sides of her mouth begin to twitch.
The worst of it was – the secretary's name was Innocent.
They are both of them laughing now. He registers how much he’s enjoying himself, senses danger. The food is finished and the second bottle of wine arrives. The light on the beach is dimming. The lamps from the restaurant window flicker, reflecting back and forth, spreading patches of light onto the beach. She starts to ask him again about the faith healing, as he knew she would. When she’s asked before, he’s headed her off, but here, where everything is so normal and straightforward, it suddenly seems a conversation that he can have quite dispassionately. It’s no different from what the other people around them are discussing – house prices, schools, the chances of getting a flight to Australia at short notice.
So how did you start? she asks. And why?
I liked the power, he said. I liked the sense of being in control. It’s like a drug. If you can heal people, you make yourself enormously important. And I’d been indulging that for a long time. I did it first when I was child. I was in this garden with these other children. He throat tightens as he speaks. And there was this one little girl and we were in the garden of my parents’ house in Falmouth and she—
Lara is distracted by paying the bill.
Sorry – you were saying.
No. Nothing.
They leave the restaurant, walk down onto the beach.
So the idea is that some external force really does the healing? Like – God. She says the word uncomfortably.
Well, some people would think that. I’m not sure. Everyone is a healer, everyone has that power. And one should never underestimate the influence one human can have on another. After all, people are infinitely powerful – far more than they know.
But lots of people do believe?
Oh yes, of course. People are always determined to see agency where none exists. That’s a basic human trait. We all tend to think that something happened for a reason, or to connect things up to make a pattern. But coincidence may be a more honest explanation. People don’t want to believe that. As a healer, you can make people believe anything if they’re desperate. It’s incredible how gullible some people are.
They walk down towards the sea, feeling the pebbles shift and grind under their feet. Oliver thinks about the conversation they’ve just had. He feels a contempt for himself. He shouldn’t have played the cynic. She deserves something better than that. He thought before that it didn’t matter what he said to her, that she wasn’t really capable of understanding. But either he was wrong or she has changed.
So you gave it up?
Yes. A few years ago.
But why?
Because – well, I stopped believing. I didn’t stop believing in God – not at all. For me, it isn’t even a question of belief. It’s about experience. I see and feel God everywhere, always have. But I don’t believe now in a Good God.
I don’t believe in God at all – or I certainly didn’t. But now – what you said about meaning. I do believe in that. And if I really think that, then I must believe in some great external forces, organising the whole thing. Or at least – I have to believe some of that now.
She had turned away from him, looking back towards the town, but now she moves back. And what made you stop believing? she says.
He looks out to sea, feels the depths of it, the pull and suck of the waves.
Grace?
Yes.
His feet shift on the pebbles. A small wave bubbles and breaks, close to his feet. He can hardly see Lara’s face in the darkness. Memory ambushes him – another beach, a time long past. That Weston-super-Mare day, the baggy black swimming costume, her damp, crumpled hair, water running down from her shoulders and forming rivulets down her thin white arms. Her teeth chattering on the metal edge of the cup as she sipped tea, shivering. He would like to forgive Grace but he can’t. He pulls his eyes back to the safety of the seafront, tries to join his heartbeat to the beat of the nightclub music. But behind him the sea waits and he knows that however hard he looks he will not see the place where sea and sky meet, only an unending blackness.
Grace suffered from a rare medical condition, he says. People who have it are perfectly healthy but they can suffer a violent allergic reaction at any time which stops them breathing.
He doesn’t want to talk about her. If he does then Lara will say she’s sorry. And she may say it with kindness and sincerity but in doing so she will turn Grace into someone who can be dealt with by a mere word. Grace can’t be betrayed in that way. Since words can’t encompass her loss, he prefers that nothing is said. And he doesn’t want comfort. If anyone can comfort him then Grace can’t have been worth much. He can’t hold onto her but must hold onto the idea of himself as the grieving husband. How can he begin to get over what happened when he doesn’t yet believe it?
Because of this illness, he says, she was always meant to have medication with her and breathing equipment.
Lara moves towards him across the shifting pebbles, lays her hand on his arm. He finds himself holding her, dropping his head so that his cheek is close to hers. His body is wracked by some strange spasm as he feels her against him. He hadn’t touched anyone since Grace died – not properly. Lara turns her head and her lips touch against his. He wants to kiss her, to feel the warmth of her lips, to pull her tighter to him – but doesn’t.
Says instead, I think this is rather too easy, isn’t it?
Her lips are an inch from his and her eyes are fixed on him, questioning.
Yes – perhaps.
You have more important things.
Yes.
But you’re lonely? he says.
I suppose so. She steps back from him, purses her lips, looks away. I didn’t realise. I used to think I had friends, a lover, but now I realise it was nothing. And that’s how it’s always been, I suppose.
Since?
Well, Liam.
Liam is Jay’s father?
Yes.
And he abandoned you when you were newly pregnant?
She nods, turns away from him, embarrassed, but then stretches out her hand as though to draw him back up the beach.
A very old story, she says. One of those endless young women who fall for the myth that you can create an identity for yourself by having a child. But for you – there was a great love affair?
He doesn’t speak but feels the breeze blowing through him as though he
has no flesh, only bones.
Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. Come on, let’s go back. We’ve come too far.
As they walk, her hand remains in his and this knot of their hands feels disjointed, swollen. He feels suddenly exhausted and is uncertain whether this is drink or genuine tiredness. On the seafront skateboarders and cyclists still glide along the bike lane.
I’m sorry, she says. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just— I owe you so much. So I wish I could think of something that would make you happy.
You don’t owe me anything. And I’m quite happy not being happy.
He feels embarrassed by having revealed himself. A feeling of betrayal as well, the sense of an agreement broken. As they wait to cross the promenade, she stands too close to the kerb. Her foot moves forward. That car is close to them, too close. Can she not see that? He takes hold of her arm, pulls her back. She’s his responsibility now, whether he wants that or not. As they reach the other side of the road, he should let go of her arm but it’s better to hold her. That way no harm can come to her. And yet his arm feels stiff around her and he can’t match his step to hers, so starts to let her go.
Don’t, she says. Don’t. I know that we’re not going to. But still if we’re friends then we can? She lays her arm back on his, he catches hold of it and they step out through the waning streets, heading towards the church. He settles against her, walks in time to her steps, enjoys the feeling of her leaning in close to him.
I don’t know what I should say, she says. About Grace. I could say – time will heal, or isn’t it time for you to move on? Or she wouldn’t want you to grieve for too long. I usually do say the wrong thing. Better not to say anything?
Yes, he says. Better not.
Mind you. I don’t think it helps you living in that horrid place.
They come to the end of Monmouth Street.
You know what you said earlier, Lara says. About being gullible?
