The Language of Dying Page 6

  I watch him talk with them as we laugh over wine and more of Paul’s tall stories and I wonder how they don’t see me flinch when he casually rests his hand around my shoulders. The hand that has pushed and pulled and squeezed and punched me. I try to remember that it has also loved, but just like the ring that doesn’t fit my thinned finger anymore, the idea of love has long since disappeared. There is something going on between us, but it isn’t love.

  Time passes in grey waves and I have no real concept of it outside of hourly telephone calls, bruises, insults and terrifying moments of affection. I have closed down. There is me and him and I can’t give attention to anyone else. It’s too exhausting. Penny goes to Turkey to live on a boat with a man she has met, and Paul disappears. I don’t worry about Paul and I doubt Penny does. We understand. Another business has gone bust and he is hiding.

  Paul owes him money, though. Not a large amount, and I never even knew about the loan, but it’s great fight ammunition. How my family are a drain on him. Just like me.

  I don’t see Paul for two years. Like Penny, he prefers things easy, and out of sight is out of mind. He doesn’t like to look at things that make him feel bad, but then you know that already. You don’t see him much either and I figure he owes you money, too. You have come back from the Shetlands, admitting defeat on your second attempt at marriage, determined to clean up and I fob you off. I know it upsets you, but I need to live my insanity in peace. I’m sorry, Dad.

  Then things change again. My eyes constantly burn with exhaustion. I don’t sleep much anymore and that’s probably why, once again, I don’t notice the early symptoms. I’m too preoccupied with surviving day to day and telling myself that things aren’t that bad to realise that a little thing like a period has gone missing.

  I am at the counter in Waitrose when I suddenly feel sick, badly sick, dizzy and queasy like the first attack in a dangerous case of food poisoning. I leave my basket and dash into the toilets. I am sure I am going to throw up. My skin sweats cold and I throw handfuls of water on to my face before sitting heavily on a toilet seat, locking the cubicle behind me. I hug the cistern, not caring about any germs, enjoying the cold ceramic. Dark spots gather in the corners of my vision and the world swims slightly as I fight to control the nausea. I can’t be sick. I don’t want to be sick. I have to get home before the next phone call.

  I sit very still for ten minutes or so and then trust myself enough to stand. The worst of it has passed, only a clingy wet feeling is left in my gut and my mouth tastes stale. Ignoring the strange looks that must be coming my way I collect my basket and pay. I need to get home.

  At eight o’clock the next morning I am dry-heaving over the kitchen sink, the sickness grabbing me too quickly to get to the toilet. He stares at me, putting down his toast.

  ‘Maybe you should go to the doctor,’ he suggests quietly.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ I say. ‘It’s probably just a bug.’

  He nods and hands me some kitchen roll to wipe the saliva from my mouth. The doctor can be tricky. I only go if I really have to because I just can’t be sure of the reaction. A doctor, like a book, is out of his control. He can’t be sure of what I might say within those private walls.

  I don’t go to the doctor, I just fight the queasiness for a couple of days, but he can see that I’m doing it. I see him watching me. That causes more sharp twists in my gut that don’t help the nausea to fade. I wait for a reaction, but there is no sign of his loss of patience. He smiles at me and strokes my hair as we watch TV. I wonder what is coming, but there is only more tenderness. It sets my nerves on edge and I can’t sleep.

  He brings home a pregnancy test and waits outside the bathroom chewing on a fingernail. He smiles at the fact I hadn’t thought of this and as he patronises me I grit my teeth and read the instructions. When I come out and show him the definite blue line, he laughs like he did in the beginning and kisses me all over.

  I relax slightly. Maybe things will be better when there are three of us. For the first time in a long time I feel the fizz of excitement. In fact, it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve felt anything at all.

  I sleep with a hand on my belly and when we go to the doctor, we go together. All smiles.

  *

  Leopards don’t change their spots. Another cliché to fill my empty thinking space. I’m lying at the bottom of the stairs, the pain not quite gripping me fully, too shocked to feel and I’m angry at myself for my stupidity, for not realising. For still wanting to believe in fairy-tale endings, when I know they don’t exist. For not getting my shit together and getting out of there.

  Unmoving, I can see red spreading outwards through the fibres of our thick cream carpet and I feel the first wave of panic. I think that maybe I blacked out for a couple of seconds because somewhere behind me I can hear him calling an ambulance. My head is foggy. This can’t be good, I think, if he’s getting a doctor.

  I try to move, but I can’t. When you’re seven months pregnant moving isn’t easy at the best of times, and when you’ve just been shoved down the stairs it’s another matter. Or tripped down the stairs, or walked into a cupboard, or whatever else he’s going to tell them so convincingly that he’ll end up believing it himself.

  I almost laugh. I hate myself. I can see my heeled shoe on the floor beside me. It has come off as I’ve tumbled. The red is creeping towards it and it’s trying to tell me something but I don’t want to listen. Not yet. My chest hurts from where he slammed his knee into it only minutes ago. Something cracked in there. I’m sure of it.

  I can hear him crying. I hate him almost as much as I hate me. His words are slurring into the phone. He’s drunk. That’ll be his excuse when he begs me to forgive him. He was drunk and I laughed a little too loudly at something his partner had said over dinner and why the hell was a pregnant woman wearing so much make-up anyway?

  I look at the shoe and the blood and know there won’t be a next time. I’ll either die tonight or leave him and, from my place on the carpet, it feels like fifty-fifty. I don’t realise that dying is not as easy as people presume.

  As something shifts badly inside and the terrible pain starts in my belly, I know that as usual I’ve left things too late. My weakness is killing my baby. I scream, but not from the pain. Awful as that is, the scream comes from somewhere else, for something else and someone else. Someone I’m never going to know.

  In the distance I can hear the wail of the ambulance, but I no longer care. I should have seen that blue line and walked right out of the house. But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Squeezing my eyes shut, unable to ignore the blood anymore, I cross my heart and hope to die.

  I don’t, of course. Wishes and fairy tales don’t come true.

  I am in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I give birth to my baby, but she’s already dead. She’s gone straight from the A of life to the Z of it, without any of the ups and downs and shapes of the letters inbetween. I landed badly and her tiny neck snapped and her skull was damaged. She was dead before we left the house.

  They clean me out with brisk efficiency, adding to the hollowness inside me. I wonder if they’ve taken my organs out with her. It certainly feels like it. I am an empty balloon and there is nothing that can breathe air into me.

  He comes to see me and realises that it’s all over. He is afraid, which surprises me. It diminishes him and I hate that someone so small has caused all this pain.

  ‘I want a divorce,’ I hear myself saying.

  ‘Are you going to go to the police? About the … accident?’

  I stare at him for a long time, his self-concern etched into his shallow face and I wish I could have seen this clearly on all the other days. Like I see now. Right through the cracks.

  We agree a deal. I want to buy your house. It’s all that will stay in my head without wriggling out. I want to go home. And I want him to pay for it. I want him to pay for a lot of things, but I don’t have the energy for that so I take what’s easiest for
him to give. Money.

  He doesn’t argue. He can’t. He nods numbly. He has too much to lose. Not like me – I’ve already lost everything. There will be no more babies. The doctor was quite clear on that.

  After I’ve signed the papers, after I see the relief in his weak and broken face, I sink back into the drift that’s been waiting impatiently for me and I let the pain take over. I hear the doctors whispering. They talk about pills and rest homes. I push myself further into the bed. The pillow is soft. I wonder how it would feel over my face. Not too bad, I imagine. Not compared with this.

  I go into the drift for a long time. From somewhere inside I know there are people looking after me and I wish they would stop. They insistently drag me back to the world with their talking and medication and care. Eventually I can’t fight them any longer and let them bring me round to not-quite-normal. It’s a couple of months, however, before they let me leave and I can feel their eyes on me, wondering how long it will be before I return. The drift is like that. It never really lets you go. And they know that.

  I go straight home and buy your house, ready to fade away in it, and so the new chapter begins. I go into the bedroom. I find the fairy tale book. It tears at my heart and I drift a little.

  *

  I come out of the drift slumped against the windowsill, the fairy tale book discarded on the floor. I can just about make out the white of its worn cover. The cold fills me and I shiver, only vaguely confused at the loss of time. I’m used to these things now. The world is often disjointed at the edge of a drift. My eyes slowly adjust to the gloom. They feel sore and gritty from crying. I rub them.

  The room is dark with only the street lamp glow creating shadows in the corners. At first I think I can hear her ghostly second heartbeat inside me, and all those others that will never have the chance to be. I listen to it and wonder if at last I’m truly slipping from drifter to madness, and then, as the sound grows louder, I realise that it’s hoof beats I can hear, hoof beats pummelling hard into tarmac, heavy and angry. The kind of angry gallop that could leave the road chipped and damaged no matter how strong the tar. Its roar fills my ears and it stops outside the house and I think I can feel the wall tremble behind me from the blast of its voice and hot breath.

  I raise my head slightly and stare at the wall. The streetlight filtering in from outside has created a silhouette movie on it. Even though the beat of hooves has stopped I can still feel the throb of energy pumping through the floor.

  Ignoring the logic that I am too high in the house for such a thing to be possible, a shadow on the wall rises up on its hind legs. It is magnificent and I hold my breath in wonder as that matted mane shakes angrily in outline. My eyes don’t hurt now, the grit in them gone. I watch for a long time as the shape dances and twists on the wall, whirling into a blur of blackness. Occasionally, I catch the glitter of a red eye.

  My body is stiff from holding one position for so long and I turn carefully around, each movement an effort, until my fingers are gripping the sill and my eyes and nose can peer over the ledge. I wipe the glass where my breath fogs it. The creature is standing in the centre of the empty road, just as it was all those years ago. This time, though, despite the shadow on the wall, it is still: totally and completely still, as if it is outside of time and the world around us. There is no impatience in those heavy hooves. I take it in. I think the gnarled root that protrudes from its vast head has become more twisted, more empty of colour over the years, but the solidity and sheer strength of the beast is unchanged.

  There is no laughter in its red eyes as that dark head looks up at me. There is a wind outside, but the stillness it holds as the trees sway is perfect. Statuesque. I stare. I know that on the wall behind me it is still whirling madly, but I know that the dance is coming to an end. Below me there is only calm and serenity. Its presence fills the street and fills me. My stomach swells out from the hollow. I can feel my organs again.

  We stare at each other through the glass and although I still know, deep down in the core of me, that we belong together, I feel no urge to run down and clamber on to its rough back. The longing is there, yes, but no urge. I don’t have the energy. I think it knows this. I think I see understanding in those red, inhuman eyes.

  I sit this way, staring out and time passes. I don’t know how many hours our eyes are locked, but I am aware of the moon creeping upwards behind the frozen beast. I could sit like this forever, however long that may turn out to be.

  Eventually it breaks our gaze and turns, energy once more unleashed, and loses itself in the field, disappearing into the night. I feel its loss and I cry some more. But I don’t drift. These tears are hot and wet and I feel every one of them. I finally pull myself to my feet, ignoring the cramps and pins and needles that scream from my extremities, and go downstairs to make a cup of tea. I taste for the first time in a long time.

  The next day I pack up the children’s books and put them in the loft. I am still sad, but the dark drift is over.

  *

  ‘Paul’s here,’ Penny calls out, her head peering round the kitchen door. I can see the steam of her breath escaping as her sharp voice breaks my spell. I jump a little as I come back to the here and now.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I answer, releasing my hips from the grip of the swing. I take one last look up at your window and my fingers absently trace the outline of the dent in my chest. I smile a little.

  I may only have come home, Dad, but I’ve come a long way since my married days, I really have.

  7

  It feels warm and humid in the kitchen after being in the clear, crisp air outside and I can feel my cheeks burning. There is a throb of energy at the heart of the family as we laugh and hug. I glance at the clock on the wall and am surprised to see that it is nearly seven. Time has flown away from me again. Paul is tipping a Chinese takeaway on to a plate and he grins at me in his helpless charming way under his cropped hair. I preferred it when it was longer. It was more him. He wiggles an eyebrow at his plate.

  ‘I thought you’d all have eaten. I only got enough for one.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, darling.’ Penny smiles at him. ‘I’m making bolognese.’

  She will forgive him anything. I feel redundant in my kitchen and so, even though dinner isn’t nearly ready yet, I begin to lay the table while Paul eats. He doesn’t go upstairs. He distracts us from that by dazzling us and making us laugh.

  Whereas the twins are tall and would be broad if they ever got their lives sorted out, Paul is like Penny, shorter and darker. He is a chameleon, Paul. With every failure, he reinvents himself. He has reinvented himself a lot. The thought is unkind and I try to push it away, but it rings true. I envy Paul’s easy, in some ways more than Penny’s. Penny can never quite put things out of sight, out of mind. Penny’s easy doesn’t impact people’s lives the way Paul’s does. I never told him how I paid in so many ways for his loan during my marriage. I don’t see the point because he wouldn’t get it. And maybe he’d be right. After all, even I didn’t know I’d married damaged goods until it was too late, so how was he supposed to? I know I’d be the one who ended up feeling bad, wondering how the hell it happened.

  Still, he is my brother and I love him. I can keep my honesty to myself. I get knives and forks out of the drawer and start laying places at the long wooden table.

  ‘So, what are you doing these days?’ I ask. ‘Penny says you’re doing a college course or something?’ Paul’s life is still a mystery to us. Not long ago he was married and living in a big suburban house and doing well – maybe too well. He disappeared under the radar and then a year later he was divorced and sharing a house with a younger girlfriend and her ex-university housemates. There’s a story there and I doubt it’s a happy one.

  He nods. ‘Art and design. I’ve brought my portfolio to show you. I’m doing some really exciting stuff at the moment.’

  I smile at him. It had to be something arty. That would explain the new look. Gone are the expensive sui
ts and sharp shirts of his entrepreneur days and in are the hip and probably equally expensive jeans and thin jumpers. He has a scarf round his neck. He’s forty-five. I want to tell him to grow up. I want to tell him a lot of things. But I don’t. Luckily there is no wine tonight because of the boys, otherwise who knows what would be said. It’s that kind of night. The cracks in our family may not be showing, but we all know they’re there.

  I don’t look at the pictures he wows the boys with. I know they will be good, but nothing original. Art isn’t him. The suits were him. If I thought he would listen I would tell him that he is a good businessman. All he has to do is spend less money and care less what the world thinks of his car. I almost giggle but manage to contain myself. And they think I’m the one lost in my own world. I guess sometimes you have to hide from the world to see it properly.

  I make a cup of tea while I wait for dinner to be ready. Paul and Penny are already exchanging grins that I don’t understand and the boys have gone into the lounge to watch some TV. I can hear their childlike laughter coming up the hall. Everything is back as it was when we were children. The two above and the two below and me, stuck in the middle with you. The tune fills my head. Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am … More clutter in my head. I wonder if you like that song. I wonder how many songs you have loved and how, even if I happen upon one on the radio in a day or a month or a year from now, I will never know. I want to run upstairs and shake you awake and force you to tell me. But there isn’t enough time for you to tell me everything I want to know and, as well as the drumming of hooves and the ticking clock, I can hear a part of me breaking inside as I take another small step towards accepting your loss. I feel guilty and ashamed. I don’t want to let you go.