When I woke, even before the bagpipes turned themselves into the sound of the phone ringing, I knew it was later than it should have been. The flowery curtain was filling up with light.
The nurse had to ring twice. When she told me first, I thought, what poor taste, they say the best thing to do with hoaxers is to put the phone down on them straight away. But when she rang back I believed her, because she sounded so embarrassed. I apologized over and over for having slammed down the phone, and she kept telling me it was understandable. But there was nothing understandable about any of it.
Even as I sat here in the darkening car park of the hospital, I could make no sense of the story. I remembered the order of events, but that was all. My forehead pressed on the wrinkled leather of the steering-wheel.
Once the nurse had got it through to me that there was no point dashing in to the hospital, I started asking for details. I supposed I was afraid to stop talking, cut the umbilicus of the phone-line. I made her tell me all she knew, which wasn’t much. ‘Some kind of crash on the dual carriageway; sorry I don’t know any more’, she kept repeating. I got her to admit that the crash had happened round one in the morning, and the surgeons were finished by three. She said I wasn’t rung till six because I’d need all the sleep I could get. I expected to be angry with her, but I found myself touched at her concern for such a small thing as sleep.
After I had put down the phone, I stood there, telling myself ‘Be brave’, over and over. Then I got dressed, pausing for quite a long time to decide between a blue and a grey cardigan. I went about all my immediate duties, including telling Mr. Wall, though now I came to think of it I could not for the life of me remember what ghastly words I had chosen, and I would never dream of asking him. All I could remember was standing in his doorway, the hall light spilling in as far as the bump his knees made in the blanket. Not a sound came from his face, lifted off the pillow. I could tell he’d heard me.
Then, I remembered, I’d looked at the kitchen clock and it was still only a quarter past six. The best thing, the nurse had insisted, would be to visit the mortuary in the evening. So there was the whole of Sunday to fill. I was sitting at the kitchen table, considering whether or not to have breakfast; I was hungry, but under the circumstances it seemed vulgar to do anything about it.
And then it hit. It was as if I was crushed in a giant hand, like the tiny people in the fairytale illustrations. I was dangling by my hair one minute, my ribs popping between the giant’s thumb and finger the next. A scream too wide to let out bulged behind my teeth.
I ran out the front door, as far as the gate. It was such a pretty morning. Hacking drily, I ran up the hill towards the woods; I must have had some notion of finding a space big enough for such a scream. I stumbled, jogged faster. Past the hair salon, pet shop and bridal boutique with all their metal shutters down. Past the inaccurate wrought-iron house names: Three Wishes, Four Willows, Seven Oaks, Avalon. As always when I passed the wall with its ancient white graffito that said ‘the cure’, I wondered what would be cured, and when, and how. My lungs failed; my steps slowed and faltered. I was no longer running to get anywhere, just running.
When I got to the woods there was no more room than in the big house, and I had no breath left. I opened my mouth and the wind pushed in and sealed it up.
A woman and her golden labrador emerged from the cluster of horse chestnut trees. I waited till they were gone; I didn’t want to frighten her, or have to give embarrassing explanations. When she was out of sight I opened my jaw again but only managed to produce a little gasp, a sort of yawn of pain. I realized that I was such a tame conditioned creature that I couldn’t scream, even under circumstances that should have allowed for anything.
And it seemed that even here, hours later, soundproofed in my own vehicle in a deserted car park, I couldn’t let out a sound. Mr. Wall was taking a long time in there. Glancing at the old-fashioned dial set into Minnie’s dashboard I saw that only ten minutes had passed. Was every hour from here on in going to be played in slow motion? Was each of these new days going to feel like a week?
I wondered why Mr. Wall wanted to see his daughter’s body. It was not something he and I would ever bring ourselves to talk about. We would each be far more afraid of upsetting the other.
He really was taking ages in there. Maybe I should go in and see if he was all right. Maybe I should stop being such a chicken and go and get it over with, this being the last chance to see what was left of Cara. They said it made it real, seeing the body. Not that I particularly wanted to make it real, I was much more comfortable with unreality, thank you very much. But if it was likely to become real on its own behalf one of these days – in a traffic jam, say, or while lifting a dish out of the oven – then I supposed I would prefer it to be now, with her in the flesh, or rather, the flesh but not her in it.
I got out, stretching my stiff knees. I’d parked beside an electricity generator; it was humming like some alien space-craft. ‘Dang’, said the notice, above half a lightning zigzag; the rest of the message had been ripped away. As I was locking Minnie’s door, a horrible thought occurred to me: they might have made Cara up. She had always been intimidated by women who wore makeup, because they looked dramatic, and equally intimidated by those who wore none, because they scored higher on politics and self-confidence, so she compromised by putting on eyeliner, then wiping it off till you couldn’t be sure she was wearing any. If they had got some mortician beautician type to do a full job on her, she might look grotesque.
Get on with you, PenDulous, stop procrastinating.
A knot of people emerged from the mortuary entrance. The only face turned up was that of a small girl sucking on the end of her plait, her eyes raised to the bulging moon. Couldn’t be more than eight, and she was coping. I slammed the car door, goading myself into action. As I strode past the family the child gave me a thoughtful stare, with – bless her – no pity in it.
The corridor was white. The last of their group, an emaciated grandmother, was coming out of a door which she held open for me. I headed blindly through. No sign of Mr. Wall; he must have gone out another way. The coffin was on a sort of marble plinth, with a sheet up to the chin. Otherwise the room was empty. I was glad not to be observed.
Leave the face till last. Begin on the creamy cotton of the sheet. How small a body was, laid out this way; how little even Cara’s long limbs came to in a standard box. The hands were waxy, knotted together in the clasp of prayer; I had expected that. Come on now, I hissed at myself, one look at the face and you can go back to the car. Get on with you. I turned my head and looked.
My first wild thought was that death had drained Cara’s blood-red hair to a muddy blonde. Then the face below me was that of a young girl, twelve or so, and I ran, lungeing through the swing-doors and out into the cool air. Seat-belt on, door locked, radio filling the car with seventies rock, I coughed and sobbed and coughed again. My cheeks stayed dry as paper. The tears were dammed up in my head, scorching me from the inside. They were not for Cara. They were for the girl on the wrong slab, with shiny knuckles and a nose pointed at the ceiling. It occurred to me that she must have been sister to the child I saw at the door, the one who had seemed more interested in the moon.
I could, of course, have gone in again and found the right slab this time, but I came to the swift conclusion that no slab would be the right one. By the time Mr. Wall tapped on the window I was calm again, and before I let him in I remembered to turn off the radio, which was playing something unsuitable about holiday, drive away, babe-ayyy.
Crossing the city, the only sound was the rain returning to spit at the windscreen. Mr. Wall sat upright, his hands clasped in his lap. I offered him not a single opening to tell me how it was, how she looked, what the small mercies were. Instead, I planned how to fill in each half-hour: The Living Planet, cocoa, Cagney and Lacey, a game of chess if Mr. Wall and I got desperate, and half a sleeping tablet just in case.
I was so worn out I fe
ll asleep before I even took the tablet.
I dreamed of the big house, of chasing someone who was Cara but also a nun. We danced through the rooms, falling on soft carpets, sporting on the stairs. It was dark but we knew our way around. Halfway through we got the munchies and she, this nun who was Cara but also not Cara, went out to get twenty packets of crisps. I lay in a doze of content, the dusty fibres of the carpet under my cheek. At one point I heard the chimes tinkling madly outside, but I thought it was the wind. Surely if it was Cara she would use her own key or ring the doorbell? I did think of throwing the front door open, but was afraid all of a sudden in case it was an intruder. I curled up on the carpet and fell back asleep.
But when at last I seemed to wake, still in the dream, it was morning, and I was cold. Then I found Cara’s key, forgotten beside the teapot, and I knew she was lost out there. I ran on to the road then, and hurtled down to the traffic lights. There was an unexpected opening in the tall hedge. I heard laughter, light and metallic. When I climbed through the glossy branches, I found a garden. There were hedges in the shape of letters I couldn’t read from that angle, and fruit trees pruned into elegant poses. There was a summer-house painted white, with lanterns that trailed ribbons. I glimpsed Cara disappearing round a corner in knickerbockers and a frock-coat, her hair powdered high, her cheeks whitened above a beauty spot and a startlingly red cupid’s bow. When she reappeared from a nearer corner of the maze, she laughed and glanced back over her shoulder at her pursuer. I could hear the swish of skirts along the hedge, louder than the wind in the trees. I turned away in terror of seeing the face of the one who was taking her away from me.
I woke up for real then, and found myself shivering under the heavy duvet. I was flat on my back, stretched out like washing on a line. The minutes passed, one by one. No more sleep for me tonight. Cara had this irritating habit of asking life’s biggest questions in the dark just before falling asleep herself, leaving me flat on my back in existential turmoil. Or sometimes we’d lie together in a post-erotic daze, and just as I’d be slipping away from consciousness, she would turn with a great heave of the quilt and announce ‘I’m wide awake, are you?’ Other nights she was convinced she heard burglars, and even if I knew it was the wind against the larder’s broken window, I had to pull on my dressing-gown and go see. I was not sure what I was meant to say to any burglars I might meet: ‘My girlfriend’s upstairs and she’s taller than I am, though thinner’?
At least we did sleep compatibly together once we managed to stop talking. One couple I knew at college just couldn’t do it. He got snoozy after sex, she got wired; he liked heavy blankets, she threw them off; he fancied sleeping all squashed together like tiger cubs, whereas she needed to turn her back and get him out of her head. They tried single beds, then they broke up.
The only other person I’d ever slept beside was my mother. Not at night – Dr Spock’s child-rearing manual would never have allowed that – but sometimes on Sunday mornings when I was small she’d let me into her bed and we’d snooze till we had to leap up and go to mass. It was like being in a bird’s nest; all sharp bones and warm curves. Her skin was infinitely softer than mine, starred with tiny creases, and it hung slightly loose on her bones so it moved when you squeezed her. Skin like that was what I still looked forward to about getting old. As we lay there, we’d play a game where Mammy would name the parts of my body, her firm palm descending in turn on Timothy Toe, Edgar Ear, Nelly Knee.
I wondered did she sleep well these nights, my mother. I remembered her saying once that you couldn’t expect to sleep as long or as deeply when you were getting older, so it was best to keep a book by the bed. I didn’t like to think of her propped up on her narrow headboard, reading Stephen King late into the night; how could someone so gentle relish such horror, and how on earth did she get to sleep afterwards?
Over on my back. I reached for my headphones, and turned on the Goldberg Variations. I was all right for the first few minutes, letting the trustworthy rhythm row me along, but then came a series of minor chords that pulled at my heart. I fumbled for the stop switch. At first the unemotive silence was a relief, then it began to sound just as loud as the music.
I turned on my side. Then on the other side. This was ridiculous. I couldn’t be expected to get through the days if I didn’t sleep through the nights. I fumbled for the two halves of the sleeping tablet on the dressing-table, and swallowed them down. The edge of the pillow wrapped round my eyes, I reached for an image of something warm and real, to clear the shreds of that costume-drama nightmare out of my head. A memory of our beginning, maybe, to ward off our end.
Sun and skin were the things that brought us together in the first place. Not a Greek island but our own island of concrete and iron, floating above Dublin. This was a film so old and re-run I couldn’t tell fact from fiction. It was a memory I saved for when I really needed it, in case I wore it out.
Light spills across my desk, bleaching inky scrawls off the page. I know I won’t mess the exams up again, because this year I have a friend. Cara thinks she will. She is taut and baking whiter in the hottest June in years. She grabs the elbow patch of my jumper when the bell rings for lunch. ‘Come with me, little girl.’
‘There’s something I want to look up…’
‘Shut your face and come with me.’ She stands imperious, balancing pencils and rubbers on her sketchpad.
I leave my jumper sprawled on the back of my chair and follow her upstairs past the assembly hall, past the sixth-year common room, upstairs again past the art room, up once more past the bedridden nuns, up to the dead end where a small diamond of window looks on to the roof.
‘This door’s never open.’
‘Never say never.’ Cara is fiddling with the lock, her hands shaking. I take the key from her, and after a minute the door does shudder open. Blue comes to meet us. Breeze snatches at our long skirts.
‘But do you know the best thing?’
‘No, my lanky miracle-worker,’ I say, ‘tell me the best thing.’
Cara cranes upwards. ‘The best thing is, it was her who gave me the key.’
‘Which her?’ I ask, knowing the answer.
‘Mrs. Mew.’ She is hushed. ‘I told her I’d love to see what everything looked like to the birds. She just slipped it off her bundle of keys and said, “Then you must go up on the roof at lunchtime and draw”.’
‘She never. You nicked it.’
‘I wouldn’t.’ Cara’s voice is stern.
‘I know.’
We lock the door behind us. Over the baked black roof we pick our way, half-expecting a foot to rip through into reality again. Our steps get bolder. Cara does a twirl, her red pleats lifting like cramped wings.
‘Want me to pose?’ I ask, spreading my arms.
‘Nah, it has to be the environment.’ She chooses the longest pencil. For a while we sit against the warmth of the wall, peering over our elbows at the world we have escaped from. Black-habited ants inch along the front drive; red jumpers loll and chase across the back lawn. Cara draws and rips, draws and scribbles out, showing me nothing. I shut my eyes, and everything disappears but the sun, scarlet through my lids.
‘I can breathe up here, Pen.’
‘Mmm.’
‘No, seriously, the air is different. Down there, I dunno, I can’t be doing with it.’
I sit up and remember my lines. ‘What’s up with you today? Is it the exams?’
‘Only partly.’ Cara shades in a curve, her mouth pursed. ‘It’s the bloody summer. I won’t see Mrs. Mew for sixty-seven days, minimum.’
‘Don’t think about that yet. We’ll work something out.’ My eyes are full of light, I can’t come up with any practical suggestions. Why can this girl not just sit in the sun? ‘Maybe –’
‘No but you’re not listening to me.’ Cara slaps down her pencil on the concrete and turns her angry eyes, almost colourless in this glare. ‘It’s like I’m carrying a stone urn on my head across a desert, right,
only no one can see it but me. The voices are all going “Caaaa-rah! come play tennis, come to a disco, come down to breakfast, come on” – when any minute now the urn’s about to topple.’
‘And what if it does?’ I surprise myself by the question.
The corners of her mouth sag. Her breath hisses out. ‘Everything will soak into the ground, and there’ll be nothing left.’
‘Nothing to carry either.’ I cannot prevent the breeze from lifting my voice.
‘You don’t understand,’ Cara tells me. ‘If I didn’t love Mrs. Mew I’d be nothing. I’m just a haze of iron filings round her magnet.’
How can such a tall girl look so small, as if she is being dragged backwards through a tunnel? ‘I wish I could help.’
Her look is gracious. ‘You do.’
‘I wish I could carry your damn urn for you.’
Cara takes my hand, shyly. It’s not something we tend to do. ‘You have the second-nicest eyes in the world.’
‘Why, thank you kindly, ma’am.’
‘I wish, Pen, I dunno, I’d like to smile at you. I haven’t given you a real smile in ages.’
The faint lips are opening as if to go on explaining, and I kiss them. They are so much softer and less frightening than I expected. I kiss them again, because she hasn’t said no.
Then Cara does the most extraordinary thing. She opens the top three buttons of her blouse, picks up my hand and puts it in. She has always claimed to be flat, but under the hot sheen of fabric something is pointing into my palm. I have no idea what to do.
Her eyes are white with surprise.
Experimentally, I curve one finger down, and her eyes narrow, and her mouth slides as if to say something. I kiss the dry lips again. The bell for end of lunch goes, ten times in all. This is the signal for breaking the spell, gathering our possessions and wits, going back to the real world. Neither of us moves.