Strangers, page 16
They helped her into bed. The sheets felt crisp and smooth under her feet, and the pillows were soft behind her head. The tears were drying stiffly on her face and Annie sniffed a little.
‘That’s more like it,’ Brendan said. When they had made her comfortable he kissed her on the cheek and waved at her as he left.
‘You’ve done well. We’re proud of you, upstairs.’
‘That Brendan,’ the other nurse exclaimed when she brought back the chrysanthemums in a tall vase. She pulled the curtains tight around Annie’s bed. ‘Shall I leave you to get your breath back now?’
Annie lay in her quiet space. She looked around it, examining each detail as though she had never seen anything like it before. The light from her window lay thickly on the white covers and the cream-painted curve of the bed-frame, and on the flowers in their place on the locker.
Very slowly, Annie put out her hand. With the tip of her finger she traced the waxy curve of a chrysanthemum petal. The intense yellow of the flower seemed to trap the light, and then to beam it out again, as rich and buttery-warm as burnished gold.
In that instant Annie felt a beat of pure happiness. The charge of it diffused all through her body, warming it and weakening it with its glow until her hand dropped to her side and she lay back helplessly against her pillows.
The world had never seemed so beautiful or so simple. She understood not only that she was going to live, but how precious life was. Gratitude for it took hold of her. It swelled in her chest and throat until she could hardly breathe, it danced in the light and dazzled her eyes, and it sang in her ears and blocked out the mundane clatter of the hospital ward.
Annie was smiling. She was awed by the munificent beauty of the gift that had been presented to her, and the reflected glow of it bathed and transformed everything around her. Even her own hands were beautiful, stretched out on the sheet in front of her. Her vision was so penetrating that in her mind’s eye she could see the tiny threads of capillaries as they branched away, full of resourceful life, under the bruised and discoloured skin.
Annie was weak, but she was also unshakably strong again. I am alive, she told herself. I won’t be afraid any more.
Annie was still smiling when the curtains parted a little at the foot of her bed. She had heard murmuring voices beyond them, and now a nurse’s cheerful invitation, ‘Go ahead. She’s quite decent.’
The curtains opened wider and a man came through them. He was moving awkwardly, on crutches, and one of the flowered hangings caught over his shoulder. The man shrugged it off without taking his eyes from Annie’s face.
Annie saw his slight frown of concern or concentration. His eyebrows were very dark, darker than his hair, and they drew close together over his eyes. There were deep lines beside his mouth and she saw that his hands were clenched too tightly on the arms of his crutches.
She had never seen his face, but she knew him as well as she would ever know anyone.
‘Steve,’ she said softly.
His frown disappeared then.
Annie put her hand up to her bruised face and then, with the recollection that she had nothing to hide from Steve, she let it drop again.
At last, still looking at her, he said, ‘You look so happy.’
‘I am,’ she answered. She held out her free hand, the same hand that had held on to his all through their hours together. Steve balanced upright as he put his crutches aside and then, holding on to the edge of the bed for support, he swung himself slowly along until he could take her hand.
The memory that the touch brought back caught them and held them. It was a long moment before either of them could move.
Then Steve came closer, perching on the bed beside her. He lifted his other hand and reached under the torn ends of her hair to touch his fingers to the nape of her neck. Then, quickly and quite naturally, he leant forward and kissed her cheek.
Annie felt the colour rising into her face as if she was a girl again.
‘You look so happy,’ he repeated and Annie found herself laughing.
‘I look dreadful.’
‘No, Annie, you don’t.’
Steve didn’t see the bruises, or the unhealthy pallor of the rest of her skin, or the half-healed graze blurring the corner of her mouth. He saw the Annie he had imagined when her husband told him that she was going to live. Laughing, as she had been a moment ago, with her fair hair loose around her face. She had blue eyes and warmly coloured skin. She wasn’t beautiful, or even particularly striking, but she was full of life.
‘Look,’ Annie said.
She held out their linked hands to touch the tightly furled petals of the yellow chrysanthemum.
They looked at the flowers, and then at the simple things all around them, a plastic water jug and a glass, the chipped wooden locker, the curtains and the dingy view from the window. They were both thinking about the pain in the darkness, and their fear that they would never see anything so ordinary and beautiful again. Annie felt her happiness rising once more, rippling and ballooning outwards until she could have floated with it. She looked at Steve’s face and saw from the light in it that he felt it too.
They smiled at each other in their triumphant pride that they had survived. Steve lifted her hand and touched his mouth to her knuckles. For a moment there was nothing to say. They knew everything already, yet they had to begin all over again, here in the warm daylight.
When they did speak again the questions came spilling out together and they broke off together too, half embarrassed and half laughing, like adolescents.
‘Go on.’
‘No, you go on,’ Steve said.
‘I was just going to ask how you are. Is your leg bad?’
He told her briefly, shrugging it off. As he talked Annie listened to the familiar sound of his voice, trying to piece it together with his face and the shape of his head. His attractiveness surprised her. In her mind’s eye, down in the darkness, he had been a bigger, bulkier man with blunt, assured features. But this Steve was lean, and she guessed that before the accident he must have been very fit. His dark hair was cut short over his forehead, which made him look younger than the age she knew he was. There were marked frown lines between his dark eyebrows and more lines beside his mouth, but the mouth itself curled humorously. When he smiled, she found herself smiling back.
‘I know how you are,’ Steve told her.
‘How come?’
‘I’ve had regular bulletins. Mostly from the nurses, once from your surgeon. And your husband came to see me on Christmas Eve.’
‘Martin did?’ Annie was startled.
‘He told me that you were going to be all right. He said that you smiled at him.’
‘I don’t remember.’ Annie was thinking about the blur of the overhead lights and Brendan’s face looming over hers, the possessive pain. ‘I remember hearing the carol singers. My nurse told me afterwards that it was Christmas. What else did Martin say?’
‘He wanted to thank me for helping you through.’ There was an expression in Steve’s eyes that Annie couldn’t fathom. ‘I told him it wasn’t necessary, because we helped each other.’
‘Yes,’ Annie said.
The raw recollections gathered around them. Annie knew how badly she needed to talk to Steve. Not to Martin, because to tell him how it had been in the darkness would be to start at the beginning. It was only Steve who could exorcise it.
‘Are you still afraid?’ he asked, his voice gentle.
Annie looked around again, at the flowers on the locker and the curtains’ pattern. The radiance of the light had faded.
‘No, I’m not afraid. We’re safe in hospital, aren’t we? You said all along that we would be. Do you know what? The first thing I remember thinking, when I came round afterwards, with a tube in my throat, was, Steve said that they would come for us in time. I tried to reach out for your hand again, but I couldn’t move. I was afraid then. There were more tubes in my wrist. I could feel them touching my skin.’ Annie put her fingers up to touch the corner of her mouth. ‘I’m only afraid now when I dream. I dream that we’re buried again, and that we won’t be rescued. And that there’s no air, so we can’t breathe. I wake up choking, then. The worst dreams, nightmares, are the ones where I’m alone. You aren’t there.’
Steve took her hand and held it. He fitted his fingers between hers and clasped them to hold their palms together.
‘Remember?’ he demanded. ‘I was there. I’m here now.’ And then, as if she might reject the intimacy that that implied, he said quickly, ‘The dreams are only dreams. They’ll go away.’
‘Will you stay?’ Annie asked suddenly. ‘To talk?’ They had already talked so much. ‘Not now, I mean. But some time?’
‘Yes,’ he promised her. ‘I need that, too.’
He could hear someone walking down the ward. Not too long, the staff nurse had warned him when she showed him in. Steve let go of her hand. He tapped at the solid leg plaster under the folds of his bathrobe.
‘I’m going to be here for weeks,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Long after they’ve sent you back to the real world. I should think we’ll have plenty of time for conversation.’ He nodded past the curtains. ‘I’m in the next door ward. It links to this one via a charming day room. There are a great many vintage magazines and a dozen or so videotapes of bloodthirsty films. I can’t wait to show you round.’
Annie smiled at him. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’
The staff nurse came and began briskly pulling aside the curtains. Annie saw other beds across the ward, women looking over at her, more flowers.
‘Don’t tire her out, will you?’ the staff said. She looked pointedly at Steve and added, ‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the chair?’ Meaning, Annie translated silently, ‘Don’t sit on the bed.’ She sensed Steve’s amusement answering her own.
‘I would,’ Steve said regretfully. ‘But I couldn’t lower myself into it. I’m going to hobble back now and leave Annie in peace. Will you help me?’
Annie recognized his charm. The nurse moved happily to take his arm.
‘I’ll be back as soon as they let me,’ he promised Annie. They began to shuffle slowly away. Without knowing why she did it, Annie told him, ‘Benjy and Tom are coming this afternoon. I haven’t seen them since it happened.’
Steve paused, looking back at her.
‘I’m glad they’re coming,’ he said gravely. Then the nurse led him away through the day room doors.
There were three hours to wait until afternoon visiting time. Annie made herself be patient.
One by one the women in the ward came over to talk to her. Two of them had been injured in the bombing. Others had already been discharged, and new patients unconnected with it had taken their places. Annie had the sense of other tragedies and losses, piling up within the hospital walls, each one obscured in its turn by the next.
She remembered that she had wanted to ask Steve if he felt angry. She looked towards the door, thinking about him. He had said that he would come back. The knowledge was a firm, steady point in the thoughts that moved like fish, directionless, inside her head.
At two-thirty exactly, Martin and the boys came in. They must have been waiting outside for visiting time to begin. Annie saw them immediately. They stood at the end of the new ward, looking around for her, Martin stooping protectively behind the children. Tom’s face was anxious and serious, but Benjy was swinging Martin’s hand and staring along the beds. Suddenly he pointed and called out.
‘There’s Mummy. There she is.’
Annie’s happiness swelled up again. She held out her free arm.
Tom came first. He ran to her and then stopped just short of the bed.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, looking at her face.
‘Yes, Tommy, I’m fine.’ The sound of her voice reassured him. He put his arms around her and she hugged him, rubbing her cheek against his hair. She kissed the top of his head, smiling, with the heat of tears in her eyes.
‘I’m so glad you’re better,’ he murmured against her shoulder. ‘Christmas wasn’t nearly so much fun without you.’
‘I know,’ Annie whispered. ‘There’ll be next year, you know. Lots and lots of Christmases to come.’
Benjy was hanging back with his head against Martin’s leg. He was watching her, half-eager and yet reluctant. Annie had never been away from him for more than a day of his life before, and she knew that he was distrustful of her now.
‘Come on, Ben,’ she said gently.
Martin lifted him on to the bed beside her and Annie took his hand. She wanted to squeeze it in hers and then kiss his round face, pulling him to her so that no one could ever take him away. But she made herself suppress the intensity of feeling in case it frightened him. She smiled and hugged him, and said cheerfully, ‘I’m sorry you couldn’t come to see me in the other ward. The doctors were very strict. It’s much better in here, you can come whenever you like.’
‘I want you to come home,’ Benjy said. ‘Straight now.’
They laughed and the little boy squirmed closer to her, reaching out to touch the marks on her face.
‘Is that a bad hurt?’ he asked and Annie said, ‘Not very bad. Benjy, I’ll come home just as soon as I can. I promise I will.’
Over the boys’ heads she looked at Martin.
‘You look much better,’ he said.
‘I know.’
Annie wanted to share the glistening happiness she had felt. She wondered for a moment how to express it, and then gave up the attempt to make it sound rational. She let the words come spilling out. ‘When they brought me downstairs this morning it was like waking up after a long, disturbed night. Or like recovering my sight after being blind. I could see everything so clearly, colours and shapes and people’s faces.’
Steve’s face, she remembered.
‘I felt so happy. As though there were no flaws, no ugliness or misery anywhere. Just for a minute. I’ll never forget.’
She thought that Martin didn’t understand what she was saying. He was listening, but not responding, and so she couldn’t share the miraculous delight with him. If joy in the simple rhythm of the ordinary world didn’t touch him, then it must be her words that were inadequate. Regret and guilt touched her briefly with their light fingers.
‘Do you see?’ she asked humbly.
‘It’s natural relief,’ Martin answered. ‘After what’s happened. Don’t take it too fast, Annie, will you? Don’t expect too much of yourself too quickly.’
So cautious. Not to seize on the happiness? Annie thought. Why not?
‘I won’t ever forget,’ she murmured, almost to herself. Then she made her attention direct itself outwards, beyond her own selfish concerns.
‘How is it at home?’ she asked. She felt the house, too, so clearly.
‘Oh,’ Martin shrugged with a touch of weariness, ‘we’re managing. Aren’t we, Tom?’
He told her that his mother was helping wherever she could, and Audrey was coming in every day. But Annie knew that the responsibility for the boys’ daily life, always hers in the past, would weigh heavily on Martin. He had less patience, and in two days’ time he would have to go back to work after the Christmas break.
‘McDonald’s every day?’ she asked Tom, and he grinned at her.
‘Just about.’
Benjy was lying quietly with his head against her good shoulder, his thumb in his mouth. Annie was still thinking about the house. It was so much part of her, she realized, that it was like an extension of her body. She could see the tiles in the kitchen, two or three of them cracked, the patches on the walls, the ironing basket overflowing next to the washing machine.
‘Can we get someone in? A temporary mother’s help?’
‘Very expensive,’ Martin said stubbornly. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll muddle through.’
Annie felt the ties of responsibility beginning to pull at her. She felt both guilty and relieved that she couldn’t respond to them yet. The hospital felt, momentarily, like a haven of peace and she remembered the brilliance of light that had illuminated it. It was a sanctuary from the demands that had followed her since the boys were babies. She loved them, all of them, but she couldn’t respond to their needs. Not yet.
‘What about my Mum?’ she asked. ‘How is she?’
‘Um. About the same. She wants to come in and see you. Are you up to it?’
Annie picked at a thread in the bed sheet.
‘Tell her to come. Whenever she can.’
They talked, the four of them, for a few more minutes. The boys told her about Christmas, shouting one another down as they listed their presents.
‘How marvellous,’ Annie said. ‘I wish I’d been there.’
Family. Gathered around her, needing her to pick up the threads again. It was hard to be all things, she thought, even some of the time.
Her head and back ached overwhelmingly now.
Martin stood up at last. Reluctantly she let the boys scramble away from the warmth of her hug.
‘Come back soon. Tomorrow?’
Martin kissed her, and she put her hand up to touch his cheek. ‘Thank you for being here.’
‘Where else could I be?’ he whispered.
They held hands for a long minute. Then, remembering something, Martin reached for a bag he had put down at the foot of the bed.
‘I brought you these. Essentials of life.’
Annie peered into the plastic carrier. There was a jar of Marmite and another of anchovy paste, both of which she loved. There was a big box of Bendick’s Bittermints. They always gave one another the dark, bitter mints as a consolation or a gesture of reconciliation. There was the latest copy of her gardening magazine, and the plant encyclopaedia that Annie often sat poring over on winter evenings. Every winter she drew up lists of the plants she would stock her garden with; every spring she failed to put her elaborate plans into force.
The little things were an expression of how well they knew one another, of how their lives had woven a pattern together.
What else? Annie wondered. The question pricked her, disturbing.
