Metronome, page 9
But the letter back was weightless, prompt as it was curt: Permission to Conceive denied. Somehow they had come up short.
There was no explanation. The mandatory termination was booked for the same week.
‘There must have been a mix-up,’ she said. ‘There must be something we can do.’ She suggested they might obtain the necessary paperwork through backchannels. She had an old school friend – Amal – at District Hall, who might help. Or they could forge one. ‘Maybe you could speak to your boss,’ she said. ‘Do you think he’d appeal on our behalf?’
Whitney shook his head: they would be mad to risk it, mad to tell anyone, especially his boss, and he was right. There were no concessions. No lottery. No bribes. It was law; every child needed a permit, and theirs had been denied. It seemed so unfair. So ridiculous to have to apply, after the act, ex post. It was vindictive, cruel, exploitative. But there was no way of fighting it now. There was no appeals process, no form of recourse. What choice did she have? On the date shown, she took a taxi up the North Sea Road, to the address in Ullamoor, printed on the slip. The clinic was rundown, above a noodle shop, not far from where she grew up. A backdrop of refineries and the broken dome of the old LNG terminal. A nurse buzzed her in. A flight of stairs. ‘You the ten a.m.?’ asked the nurse. ‘Come in, please. Don’t tell me your name. You should have a slip, a piece of paper … Thank you. Dr Nangelis won’t be a minute.’
Dr Nangelis. Tall, thin, with age spots on his hands. He spoke calmly about what would happen. There would be a blood test. An ultrasound. One pill that she had to take in the presence of the nurse, and another to be taken at home two days later. The first would shut off the pregnancy. The second would flush it out.
The sun is starting to dip. Soon she will light the candle. Twelve hours now. It feels tangible; the culmination of so much hard work. Only her restlessness affects the tempo of the day; the minutes span out in widening plateaus.
Daylight gradually wanes and early-evening raindrops settle on the window; each a prism for the grey sweep beyond. She watches them, fed by tiny tributaries until adhesion is lost and one jags away down the pane. It closes in on another, fatter drop. Buffeted by the wind, it edges closer until the two collide, and a single drop runs on.
She has been doodling. Her music book is open on her lap. On a fresh page, she lines up the five horizontal staff lines so that the shadows of the raindrops fall upon them. She circles some, adds stems and fixes them as notes. A tune rises. A familiar melody. She hums: one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three-four-five.
Her second pregnancy was unintended. An error. It followed quickly after the first. She had been drunk. And neither she nor Whitney had contraception to hand. She told Whitney it did not matter. She said she was at the wrong point in her cycle, and that it would all be fine. And he did not take much convincing. She just wanted to forget the process, its mechanics, to enjoy a few minutes of carefree abandon for a change. But she woke, the next morning, and she knew right away what was coming. Dreading everything, it was almost a relief when it was confirmed. Whitney called her stupid and reckless, and he did not speak to her for days. It would have been easier to just skip the PTC altogether, manage it off-book, but the tiniest sliver of hope convinced her otherwise. She should have known better. The result was another letter. Another trip up the North Sea Road to see Dr Nangelis. Blood test. Ultrasound. Two pills. Kept in overnight this time.
In the months that followed she barely spoke to anyone. What could she say? She certainly could not speak to Whitney. Instead, she began to imagine a dark cubby under the stairs in their apartment. A place for hiding. One strike remained, and the months wound on, and her rage crystallised, turned dark, beyond despair into something resolute. Grit, or stubbornness. She could not tell.
Whitney coped in the most unimaginative way possible. He threw himself into his work. Scared, feeble, but he was busy. She saw it as a weakness. She did not want to be rid of the pain, or to smother it somehow. She wanted to endure it. Outlast it. To fortify. And soon they were moving into a nice new apartment in a smart high-rise where they kept to themselves. And the apartment became her chrysalis. Almost without trying, their credits started to tally. Whitney won a promotion to the press office, handling strategy and communications, and occasionally she started going out. She felt aged. Her smile a fabrication, drawn. She cut ties with the Arts Club, and took up swimming. And she started playing at luncheons and dinners. Private recitals at rich people’s houses, taking their money, watching the kids eating long-tailed tempura with quiet disdain. Meanwhile, Whitney was made a director. And he had an inside track on things now. Status. More things to lose.
Night. Cufflinks in the saucer. A dossier in hand. ‘You want the good news or the bad?’ he said.
She sat curled on the sofa with an ice-cold vodka, watching the lights of the city beyond. ‘Let’s go with the bad,’ she said.
‘They’re bringing in a new law. An amendment. If you’re not pregnant by thirty, that’s it.’
‘What do you mean that’s it?’
‘I mean’ – he patted his midriff – ‘No more chances.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s coming. Trust me.’
Her birthday was months away, not that it would make any difference. ‘What’s the good news?’
He slid her the dossier. ‘Early birthday present.’
She did not understand at first. The dossier was slim. Their whole lives, tallied up and weighed. He explained what it meant, explained how he had paid a high-end consultancy firm to carry out a special type of credit check, something off-book. He insisted they were reputable. ‘Just think about it, please,’ he begged. ‘This puts us in the clear. Fully vetted. We can try again. It’s safe. This is our green light.’
And yet, to move ahead on this, it felt like a concession of sorts. She did not want to go there again, to tread in those dark rooms. But she could not shake the thought. The possibility … it gnawed at her. She had to appraise the situation logically: in a few months she would be thirty, and after that, all hope would be extinguished. What was there to lose? She looked at their file. Their score was off the charts.
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘Okay?’
‘Let’s do it.’
She would turn thirty in eight months. Then seven. Then six. And it happened with five months to spare. The euphoria … And Whitney’s smiling eyes. Her veneer softened. She filed for PTC a third time, and she did not feel anxious, nervous or threatened. She let herself believe that things were under her control once more. And she felt a warm serenity take hold. Pleasure in simple everyday scenes, on the tram, at the park, watching kids on swings, which made it all the worse when the same letter came back. Wafer thin. A slip. The address of the clinic in Ullamoor. Permission denied.
He took it worse than she did. He wanted to go down to District Hall, flash his status and query the decision in person, but she talked him out of it. And instead, without his knowing, she went alone. All morning, in the lobby, waiting. A clerk in a plum blouse passed in the corridor, the girl from the year above her at school. ‘Amal?’ she asked. ‘Is that you?’ She did not have to play up her distress, but she made out that their meeting was happenstance, and Amal took pity on her. She was on her way back from her break, had a meeting to get to, but she told Aina a time and a place, and they met in a coffee shop nearby.
‘It’s the not knowing,’ Aina said. ‘I just want to know … My husband had a record …’
Amal had kindly dug out her file. She was not supposed to, but she was discreet and there was no harm in it. ‘You’re right. There’s a history of malfeasance,’ said Amal. ‘But it’s not on his side. It’s yours.’
The coffee in her mouth tasted suddenly dank. ‘What? How?’
‘Your grandmother’s listed here as Kithi Nieminen.’
‘Yes?’ Aina still did not see.
Amal continued, ‘According to this, she wrote some kind of protest song in her youth. She was embargoed.’ She looked up. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Knowing was worse in a way. She told Whitney, she had to. And he was furious. ‘You didn’t think I had a right to know?’
‘I had no idea—’
‘Your grandmother wrote “The Bridge of Tralloon”.’
‘She was a farmer, Whitney. That’s all I knew.’ She pauses. The date on the slip was two days away. ‘Oh, Jesus, what do we do?’
‘What can we do?’ He touched her belly. ‘Nothing will overturn that.’
Another taxi. And this time it is all the worse. She remembers the engine’s low thrum, her shoulders wet against the seat. Wipers eradicating the queue of tail lights ahead as the driver taps the gear-stick. Flooding on the North Sea Road up to Ullamoor. Everywhere backed up. The wipers going faster, flapping down, bouncing back. One-two-three-whump. One-two-three. The driver changes the station. Jazz. Country. Static. Serious tones. He switches it off.
‘There’s a diversion round Tillerson,’ he says. ‘Miscreants, probably.’
She is going to be late. One-two-three-whump. One-two-three. They edge forward. Halt. Everything underwater. She tells the driver to pull over, she will walk from here, and by the time she reaches the clinic, she is drenched. The noodle shop is boarded up. She rings the buzzer in the doorway. Up the stairs. And this time Dr Nangelis greets her himself. There is no nurse. Just Nangelis, skinnier than ever. Pallid, like he has been coughing up blood.
‘Ms Ollasson? Come in. I’m on my own today. Won’t be a minute.’
Ten p.m. The pill clock turns green. She places her thumb and her pill is dispensed, and she stashes it in her pen, quickly. The euphoria is brief, and she is mistrustful of it, and with every passing minute, the pen grows heavier and she grows less assured. Can she really leave Whitney after all they have been through … And this choice, to go, risking everything without knowing what she might find … the plan seems suddenly absurd. And even if Maxime is alive, and he is out there somewhere, how will she ever find him? It is a gamble, and how can she do that to Whitney? On what grounds? On the presence of a sheep. On Whitney’s minor imperfections. Whims, them all, feeding an impulse, derived from time and rage, emotions that would otherwise be directed at herself. For Whitney is not a bad man. He never was. It is just … all this time … together … distorting things.
Maybe she should leave a note. He will assume the worst otherwise. But there is something exquisite in the idea that she might simply vanish. No body. No sign. No knowing at all what happened. Maybe then he will understand what she has suffered, all these years.
Night has fallen. Raindrops cluster the window like spiders’ eyes.
Da-da-dum. Da-da-dum. Da-da-da-da-da-da-dum.
Whitney looks up from across the nook. ‘That tune …’ he says, listening intently. ‘Is that …?’ His eyes light up. ‘Friday 22 September,’ he says. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? Seven p.m. St Luke’s.’ He crosses the room, peers cheerfully over her shoulder at her musical notation. Her body is alert to his proximity. Shift of his head. Breath on her neck. His warm staccato, Da-da-dum. Da-da-dum. Da-da-da-da-da-da-dum. She stares at the wall, grips her pen, and he hovers, kisses the top of her head.
He is right, but she will not admit it. ‘It’s “The Bridge of Tralloon”,’ she says, lying. And though the night is loaded with insinuation, he doubts himself just enough not to push her on it. He stands, colour draining from his face. It was a mean thing to say, but it was not meant in spite. This is her choice, and she needs to get on.
‘You’ll be up soon?’ he asks, instead of pressing her.
She tells him to go on ahead. ‘I’ll be a while yet.’
If she is to leave at 6 a.m., she should pack her bag now. It will help occupy her mind, having something practical to do. Mutton, oats, binoculars, a few extra layers for crossing the spine. Nothing much. He just needs to think it is another of her morning runs.
‘Well, goodnight,’ he says.
She watches him go, waits for the door to the stairs to latch, then quietly sets to work.
16
Departure
The ground is soft beneath her feet. Softer than she would like, but she feels nimble, running barefoot, scrambling, repeating her mantra: Long sky. Charged earth. Warm fire. She heads up the valley, following the brook and the line of dead willows whose branches have been stripped bare by the storm, and she is fast, quicker than ten-minute miles, even with the incline. She knows the route, knows the path is clear of traps, and for the first time in years, she feels full. Her legs, strong. The mutton has seen to that.
At the sculpture, she takes the right-hand fork, crossing the stream and doubling back up the headland. She has been going a mile, and the crosswinds blow stronger as she comes out of the valley. She concentrates on her gait, keeping an efficient stride as she runs on, leaving the croft behind. Ahead is the tor, then the next two miles are across open fields, and there is no trail. The ground is uneven. There is rain on the wind, fat cold drops, but running is like the opposite of wind chill, it makes her feel warmer.
The sound of thunder rolls, a rumbling cannonade that she mistakes for the sound of waves until the grey sky flashes green overhead. Lightning tears slogans across the sky. It strikes somewhere behind her, and her shadow steeples across the headland. She stumbles, trips and falls headfirst into undergrowth. Brambles. Blackthorns. A thicket. Up ahead, another detonation strikes the clifftop and rocks tumble down to the ocean below. The weather is deteriorating, the rain torrential, but she cannot turn back. She breathes, pushes on. She has never seen it like this.
She skirts close to the cliff. The tide should be on the way out, but diesel-black waves angle in towards shore, shooting spray up the cliff. Once the mist clears, she sees it. A speck out in the bay. The boat – the cutter – it is back. She slows to a walk. Drops her bag in the dirt. Why does it have to be today? She watches as the boat is tossed violently; every passing wave pushing it closer to the needles.
She curses the wind as she is buffeted again, and sinks to her knees. The cliff is impassable. And the pain at turning back is a physical thing, as real as the burning in her lungs and the aching in her legs. But there is no alternative. To carry on would be a decision born from bloody-minded recklessness, and it is too great a risk. She must turn back. There will be something aboard that boat she can use. And she needs every edge. Every advantage.
She will delay a day or two, that is all. Sometimes it can be worthwhile to wait.
17
Håvsra
The weather becomes progressively worse, and by the time she makes it back to the croft, she has lost sight of the vessel. The sea is angry, vengeful, and it takes her a moment to locate the boat again. It is wedged, dead centre in the middle of the bay, high between the tallest two needles.
‘Whitney, come quick!’ she yells. ‘Look!’
He squints for a long time as the rain pastes his face, and when he sees it, he goes running back inside. He re-emerges with the speargun and three harpoons. Clack-clack-back. He loads the barrel. ‘Better we have it to hand and not need it, than want for it and not have it.’
She makes no objection. The gun is oiled and gleaming, and he checks the mechanism before slinging it on to his shoulder.
‘Have you seen the binoculars?’
Her cheeks flush, burning hot, even in the rain.
‘The binoculars …’ he repeats. ‘They’re not in the drawer.’
She takes them from her bag, passes them to him, and he looks slightly confused, but he does not wait for an explanation. He trains them on the boat, scans a little to the left, the right. Then he hands them back, returns inside, and she hears him in the kitchen, saying, ‘Warden, we have an unidentified sailboat trapped on the needles. A yacht. Thirty feet long. No sign of any crew.’
She takes a look herself. The boat perches above the sea. Someone has made repairs to the hull, but even with the binoculars, it is impossible to tell the extent of the damage from the way the boat is fixed, like a grain of rice between the prongs of a fork.
Whitney’s voice comes, muffled from inside. ‘Requesting permission to make a preliminary investigation,’ he says. ‘The time is zero-eight-forty-three.’
He hangs up the receiver as she enters the kitchen.
‘There’s no going out in that,’ he says. ‘We’ll have to wait until low tide.’ He smiles, suddenly, buoyed by some idea. ‘You think this is it?’ he asks. ‘Do you think they’ve finally come?’
‘Who?’
‘The Warden.’
She thinks about it for a moment. ‘If it were the Warden, there’d be an official vessel. A landing party. He wouldn’t wash ashore in an unmarked yacht.’
‘Maybe that’s part of the test. Parole, remember. It fits.’ He disappears into the cupboard and returns with rope, the waders and a wetsuit. He coils the rope and hands it to her. ‘Do you mind taking this one?’ he asks. ‘Only my back’s killing me. And, if I remember right, I did the last one.’
She does not argue. For one, she is the better climber, but there is also the lure of having first dibs on the hoard. There might be food, or a compass, or a new pair of boots. This way, she can have her pick of the wares.
At mid-morning when the tide is as far out as it is going to go, there is a break in the storm and they set off. He goes with her, as an escort, carrying the speargun in case. She has the rope, hanging from her shoulder.
The sand is a wet sponge and the tide is so low that they can walk all the way out to the needles. Whitney follows behind in the waders, carrying a bundle of netting. The vessel is twenty feet or so above the water. The sails might have ripped off in the storm, or else they have been stowed away for safekeeping.
‘You see that,’ says Whitney, pointing at the barnacles. ‘Been a while since this one’s been inside a dry dock.’
