by Alice Jolly
And Lara – has she found out what time the flight will come? Mollie feels that she should get up and find something to eat, or at least go up to bed, but she’s so warm and comfortable that she doesn’t want to move. It would be good to stay like this forever, in this moment of night, when the house and the street are quiet. When Rufus is sleeping peacefully and the fire radiates a comfortable heat.
54
BEFORE
Oliver – London, September 1998
Grace does have her blower with her and her medication. Oliver has checked. And they’re off for the weekend, driving from his parish in Whitechapel down to the sea, to Brighton, Grace’s favourite seaside town. It’s been hard for him to get away and so it’s gone ten at night as they leave the suburbs of London behind. Grace suggests they should swap places, offers to drive, since he’s exhausted. He isn’t sure that she is any less tired. She’s just had an exhibition. He’s been healing, as always, and filling out grant forms late into the night, trying to get money to rebuild the north wall of the church – although Grace and he agree that the whole place is an Edwardian monstrosity which should be bulldozed.
Grace insists again that she should drive. He doesn’t want this but knows she won’t give up. And so finally, when they reach the M23, they pull into a lay-by and swap places. And she drives as she always does – a little too fast, but skilfully. And he tells her to slow down and she laughs, starts to annoy him by driving with exaggerated care. It’s a night of continual rain, thick and dark as tar. He is lulled by the frantic, mesmeric scraping of the windscreen wipers. And she talks about what they’ll do the next day – a walk on the beach, a cup of tea. She hopes the hotel will have a dirty-weekend look about it, has insisted on a room with a view of the sea. She wants fish and chips for supper, she wants to paddle. More than anything she likes a seaside wind which tugs and whips, stings salt on the lips. He wishes she would stop talking and let him sleep.
He will never know how it happened. Afterwards the police will make a call for witnesses, they’ll carry out a mechanical assessment of the car, they’ll erect a sign on that stretch of motorway asking anyone with information to come forward, they’ll examine the surface of the road. It’s autumn and it may be that wet leaves made the road slippery but this can hardly be the case. There are no trees nearby and anyway the leaves have not yet started to fall.
And, of course, they ask endless questions about the allergies, the idiopathic anaphylaxis, even though the paramedics have confirmed that what happened had nothing to do with that. Finally, no reason can be found. Oliver asks himself again and again if there was a noise, a bump, the sound of something giving. But all he can remember is her sudden laughter, a sense of the car turning, lights swirling, his body flung sideways, his head smashed against the side window. Then a buckling and crashing and a scream and then a thump and the blare of car horns and a smash from somewhere far away and then a gaping stillness. And he raises his bruised head and says – Grace, Grace. Then he feels the door give beside him and a man is there with a torch.
My wife, he says. Get my wife. He can’t see her in the darkness. He doesn’t know if his head is pointing towards the sky or the earth. He hears instructions being given. Someone is shouting about the danger of fire, the need to get everyone clear. Pain shoots through his leg. He finds himself pulled out of the car, drags himself upright and staggers around the wreck. Two men have pulled her out and she’s lying on the tarmac. The light of a torch shines down on her. Oliver kneels. Her face is calm and unmarked, as innocent as a child sleeping. And he waits for her to jump up and laugh but she doesn’t. And then he sees how much she’s bleeding. A voice tells him that an ambulance has been called. Traffic still buzzes on the other side of the motorway. A woman is crying. The rain beats down, soaking Grace’s hair and her clothes and mixing with the running blood.
He knows what he has to do. It’s quite simple. It’s said that he’s cured people with terminal cancer and so, with the grace of God, he should be able to do this quite easily. He spreads out his hands and lays them on her. He concentrates on his own heart, his own breathing, and waits for his life to be transferred to her. All you have to do is to want – entirely and absolutely and with a great force – that someone should become well and it will happen. All he has to do is to reduce the bleeding for a while and the ambulance will be here. He looks down into her face and tells her that she won’t get away with this. And he waits.
But nothing happens. His hands are only hands. They contain nothing beyond flesh, blood, muscle, bone. And around him only tarmac, the rain, the tight-fitting darkness, the shadowed faces, the man with his half unfolded warning triangle dangling from his hands. He waits again, applies all of his mind to her. Make her live. Make her live. But there is nothing there. He is quite alone, just a man on a motorway in the dark with his hands resting on the body of a woman. Nothing more. And it’s never happened to him before that he can do nothing. Now, when he’s needed, when he has to stop the bleeding, he can find no way of doing it. And he’s struck by a freezing fear. He feels her going from him, knows that she will die.
People around him are telling him that the ambulance is on its way. It will be with them any minute. But he stands up and moves away from her because she’s already gone. He felt it – spirit, as light as a shadow, slipping past him, crossing some unseen barrier, dissolving soundlessly into the night. And the woman on the ground is no longer her. The white face is empty, the rain-soaked hair an irrelevance. He moves away from the circle of watchers and stands staring at his own hands. Then he climbs up the bank beyond the hard shoulder and sits down in the wet grass, wiping rainwater from his hair and face.
And then the ambulance men come with giant lanterns and a stretcher and they bend over her and people call for him, and climb up the bank, come to tell him that it’ll be all right now that the ambulance is here, but he knows that it won’t. And down below he watches the vast pantomime of their efforts as though it’s all happening some miles away. Equipment is brought and instructions are given and the ambulance men are continually bending over her. A policeman comes up to him and asks questions but he can’t understand what’s being said. He knows that he should stand up and go back down the bank but he can’t do it.
And then another policeman comes and two paramedics and they help him to get up and he realises that all the power has gone from his leg and that he’s bleeding. They take him down the bank and sit him in a chair and they tell him that the paramedics have been able to do nothing, although he already knows that. And they take him to hospital and dress his leg, although later he can remember nothing of this.
All he can remember is being driven home to Whitechapel through the dawn by a policeman and all the time he keeps the bag which contains the blower and the medication with him, in case she should need them, in case she should stop breathing. And when finally he lies down in bed, he puts the bag carefully on the bedside table. Because he takes great care in this matter. And he hates her for her bloody carelessness, and her laughter. And she’ll be laughing now somewhere else, that same abandoned mirth, without any thought for him. Having a good day. And he’ll be left holding the blower, in case she should happen to need it. A day at the seaside, Brighton. Fish and chips, a cup of tea, a seaside wind which tugs and whips, stings salt on the lips.
55
NOW
Lara – Brighton, May 2003
There will be no flights to Amman now until morning so there’s no rush. Just drive slowly. Wait for me, Jay. Wait for me please. 256. 255. 254. Rain is thrashing down across the windscreen, the lights of the motorway shatter and then come back together again as the wipers move. Lara can’t breathe any more, fear is choking her. The dawn must come – that’s all she can be certain of now. Time to stop for a coffee but no signs for services appear. Why hasn’t Patricia rung? It can’t take that long for her to find out. Again she thinks of that distant city, the dark streets, the terror and confusion at the hospital, bloodied
people lined up in corridors, wailing children, a young Spanish woman searching through the wards and beds, trying to ask, not understanding. There will be no anaesthetics there, hardly any disinfectant, no beds, no clean needles.
A car cuts in and Lara brakes, swerves towards the hard shoulder, presses her hand down onto the horn. Bastard. Briefly she thinks of Oliver and all of his mad warnings about cars, the danger of the road. She should be touched that he cares about her but her anger has not yet entirely turned to ash. Her shoulders are locked tight as she leans forward, staring into the curtain of rain. Her eyes touch for a moment on the sleeve of her jacket. That green suede jacket with the upside-down horseshoe-shaped stain. The Liam jacket. It was wrong of her to lie to him, to tell him that she’d had a miscarriage. He’d tried a couple of times to get in touch in that first year but she’d never returned his calls. Could she now ring him up and say, OK, Liam in Los Angeles. Put down that cordless hoover, which costs only forty dollars and will transform your life. Because I need to tell you that actually you have a son. No, she can never do that.
A coffee, something to eat. Staines. She pulls off the motorway. Surely somewhere must be open around here? It’s hard to think about food but she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. She’s going to need all her strength. She comes to a twenty-four-hour petrol station attached to a motel and a supermarket. A tiny Asian man guides a mop across the floor. At a till, a young woman sits with a nodding head waiting for customers who don’t come. The lights are violent and piped music tinkles. In the café, groups of night-dazed travellers sit blinking at plastic tables. A businessman reads through some papers. Three young men slouch, gathered round a radio which plays scratchy music.
Lara records every detail so that she can tell the story to Jay later. Printed words appear abnormally large – Coca-Cola, Nespresso Coffee, No Smoking, Two for the Price of One. I was endlessly waiting for the call, I was so sick with fear I couldn’t breathe. She looks up at the board and tries to decide what she should eat. The girl serving behind the counter is lost in rolls of flesh, a pert white cardboard hat sits on top of her greasy face. Lara asks for coffee and a cheese sandwich. She doesn’t usually eat cheese but here it looks like the most edible option. The girl serves the coffee and takes out a white baguette sandwich from the cold cabinet. Lara takes money from her purse, finding it difficult to get a grip on the coins. The girl places the sandwich and coffee on a plastic tray and Lara picks it up.
And then the phone rings. Lara tries to grab it but it’s stuck in her bag, behind a book, a notepad, a case containing credit cards. Her hand fumbles through her bag. She needs to put the tray down and use both hands but she can’t do that. A scream is rising in her throat. Eventually her hand closes around the phone and her finger clicks. She hears the voice at the other end. On the tray, the cup of coffee starts to slide. Lara watches it. She needs to adjust the angle of the tray but the coffee cup is still sliding. It waltzes down the tray, followed by the sandwich. Lara tips her hand one way and then the other. But still the whole lot goes. The steaming coffee splashes down her T-shirt and her jeans, and the sandwich breaks in half and slides to the floor, spilling slivers of cheese.
And there I was in the service station when the call came.
The voice on the phone crackles and hisses. The girl looks at Lara, raises her eyebrows, sighs. Still holding her phone, Lara bends down and starts to pick up the empty cup of coffee. But as she gets down towards the floor something breaks inside her. She gasps and drops forward onto her knees, draws in a snatch of breath, wails. The businessman looks up and starts to move towards her and then stops. The three boys with the radio stare then look away. The serving girl has moved out from behind the counter. Even the Asian man with his mop has stopped to see what’s going on. Lara switches the phone off and starts to pick up the cheese sandwich. The girl is straining downwards, breathless, trying to help.
The music still rattles from the boys’ radio as they leave and in the distance a till drawer closes with a ring. Lara feels the heat from the coffee scalding her leg. She must drive on to the airport now and sort out a flight. Of course, there may not be one until later in the day. Not many people fly to Amman.
And then she realises there’s no reason to go there any more. She feels herself suspended, unattached to anything or anyone. She wants to scream or to wail but no sound will come. The fat girl moves, and her huge arms come down, and Lara finds herself enveloped in flesh, lifted onto a chair. And the Asian man comes with his mop and starts to clear up the mess. The businessman wipes uncertainly with paper towels at the place where the coffee went down the front of the counter. The serving girl goes to get another coffee and a sandwich and stands them on the table in front of Lara. And the Asian man is down on his knees now and the businessman looks awkward and twists the napkins around. And then the girl leans over and tries to take hold of Lara in an awkward hug. And the four of them stay there, just like that, a tableau of incomprehension. Lara and the fat girl and the Asian and the businessman. While the piped music tinkles and the lights glare down onto the witnesses of this moment.
And this is where I was, my darling, the night when they told me you were dead. I was sitting on the floor of a service station and this man was trying to wipe up coffee with a piece of tissue. And this tiny Asian man was kneeling down, with his forehead pressed against the floor. And the music still went on playing and the cup of coffee was still there for me to drink but they’d told me you were dead. Oh do not leave me. Do not leave me now, my love.
56
NOW
Jemmy – Brighton, May 2003
The lights hover above her like vast suns, bleaching everything, stinging her eyes. Jemmy stretches a hand towards the plastic armchair beside the bed, moving carefully, feeling a tug deep inside. Her fingertips close around her dark blue T-shirt and she pulls it over her eyes. Words float in and out of her mind and she tries to catch hold of them but they go swishing past like shoals of fish, quick and silver, flashing in the light.
It must be the pills.
Bill is somewhere not far away. She can hear his voice but not the words, only their rise and fall, their insistent rhythms. He’s complaining to one of the doctors. Jemmy must be moved to another hospital. Not enough is being done. Soon Bill will start worrying about whether she has clothes, her sponge bag. Like the reports he writes at work – damp in the bay window, rotting floorboards in the attic, a crack of structural significance in the back wall at the northern corner of the property. Underpinning required.
Jemmy is no longer angry. What he’s doing is useless to her but this is what he can offer. Maybe love is worries about nightdresses and sponge bags. She should have known this before. Romance has gone but a tired and tarnished love still remains. And yet she is twenty-three years old.
Twenty-three and old. Maybe she’s always been old?
That man was here earlier – the man from the church with the red-eyed dog – she can’t remember properly. She may have spoken to him but she may not. He’d stood by the bed, tall and solid but transparent also, so that she’d expected to see straight through him. It had seemed that he shone bright yellow but it must have been the lights. And she’d breathed him in like peace and silence. She can’t remember now. He’d said Laurie’s name and also – Sebastian.
And she’d heard big words floating past like God and love. She herself has always been sure that salvation is only kindness – dropped like a stone into a pool, its minor disturbance spreading endlessly in concentric circles, seen and unseen. But now she is certain that the red-eyed dog man brought with him something more, something beyond. So hard to remember. He was the one who saved Sebastian, she is sure of that. It had turned out that the first doctor had been wrong and now she’s been told that Sebastian can stay inside her for a while longer. The situation isn’t any worse and it might even improve yet. She has more days, more time. Precious, precious.
She drifts towards sleep, the T-shirt still pressed into her e
yes and Bill’s voice continuing its fish-like progress somewhere far, far away. Jay is with her as well, out there in the far distance, on his way home. He’s been with her all the way, always will be. She lies on her side and her hands are held tight around Sebastian. Occasionally she feels his tiny movements like a summer wind brushing against leaves. Bill comes to sit beside her and fish words flash. She moves the T-shirt from her face, reaches out, takes hold of his hand, kisses the end of his fingers, keeps his hand pressed against her cheek.
57
NOW
Oliver – Brighton, May 2003
Oliver sits on a bench just outside the entrance to the hospital, his head down, his shoulders sagging. When he raises his head briefly to look at his watch, he finds that it’s now three o’clock in the morning but his exhaustion has little to do with time. He needs to walk home, go to bed. Gradually he summons the strength to stand, sets off down the road. The surfaces ahead – roads, roofs, the bonnets of cars, the lids of dustbins – are touched with a dull silver sheen from that shower earlier in the evening. He concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. Through Kemp Town and into Edward Street, past the closed shops, the sleeping houses, disturbed only by the bark of a dog, the roar of an engine.
He thinks of the girl in the hospital bed. Jemmy. They say that’s her name. Those marks on her arms – scars. Showed up like silver threads in the frost-white light of the room. As he walks, his energy returns and gradually he raises his head, looks around him. The night is nondescript, nothing but a blurred backdrop. But the air feels settled now, peaceful in a way that it hasn’t done for many long days. Something dislocated has fallen back into place. Muscles and sinews gasp a sigh of relief. The pain eases. He thinks of the hospital. He might ask – why now? Why not then? But he doesn’t want to attach any significance to what happened. He has always refused to believe that God should be merely fickle.
