Mourning Ruby

  Our front door was blue. A beautiful duck-egg blue. It had taken me weeks to find the exact shade. Of course no one would want to alter its colour. Adam wouldn’t want it changed.

  ‘She will tell Adam that it’s time for something new. She will repaint your daughter’s bedroom and take the furniture out of it, because it’s not needed any more. She will want to free him from the past.’

  ‘You can’t do that. The past is what you are. Anyway, Adam doesn’t want to be free of us.’

  ‘You think so… Did you have a carpet in Ruby’s room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She will have removed the carpet and stripped the floor, you can be sure of that. She will have hired the stripper and done the work herself, wearing a mask so that the wood dust wouldn’t choke her. I know what these women do.’

  ‘Why are you saying these things?’

  His face seemed to glint and glitter. ‘Because they are true. And your husband’s clothes will have changed, too.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You’ve been there.’

  ‘No. How would I know where your house was, or where you lived when you were married? You never told me.’

  ‘Things like that are easy to find out, if you want to.’

  ‘Believe me, Rebecca, I haven’t visited your house. But do as I say. Go there. See if the front door is still the same colour. Then come back and tell me if I’m right or wrong.’

  *

  It was more than three years and a hundred and thirty miles that separated me from Adam. Mr Damiano did not see the film in my head that started each time I thought of Adam. Although it was my own film, I couldn’t edit it. It started to roll and I was helpless to do anything but watch. The empty, sunlit house, the minute I spent by the mirror doing my hair, the open front door, the steps going down. The blue car driving innocently four streets away. It would happen and there was nothing to stop it.

  I was afraid of what Adam saw. We couldn’t comfort each other. He was locked into it, as I was.

  People had rushed to tell us that we weren’t guilty of anything. There was a bereavement counsellor at the hospital, with the blondest hair I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t listen to a word she said.

  We couldn’t have done anything. It was an accident.

  But if it was an accident then everything is an accident. Ruby was born to us by accident. The joy of her was an accident. No matter how solid and safe it looked, all the time our household had been an accident, a frenzy of atoms butting against each other. And now it had all flown apart.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourselves. It was an accident.’

  We couldn’t have another child together. I knew it as soon as Ruby was buried. I could not keep a child safe. One stupid second, one mouthful of food going the wrong way, one reaction to a vaccine, one phone call from the teacher in charge of the school trip. I understood what it meant now. All the ills that flesh is heir to. Those ills were real, they were here and now. They were what we got, for being human. We inherited our lives by accident and we were haunted by what could happen at any minute.

  The day I knew I had to leave home, I’d passed the primary school two streets away. Ruby had been in the reception class there.

  A car was parked on the yellow zigzag lines outside, beside the notice in red lettering stuck to the iron gates, which read: Stopping or parking here will endanger your child’s life.

  Leisurely, the woman who’d parked her car there undid the seat belts that protected her two children and helped them out on the pavement side. They were only a step from the entrance gate. She wouldn’t have to take them in. She could watch them safely into school from her car, which blocked the sight line of every other child crossing the road.

  ‘Don’t forget, VIOLINS,’ she hooted after her children.

  I took hold of her open car door. I shook as if an electric current had got hold of me.

  ‘Children could be killed, trying to cross the road here with your car in the way,’ I said.

  She looked at me, her face blank and smooth and unsurprised. This wasn’t the first time. Other parents must have got hold of her car door and shouted. She was bland, and smooth and sure of herself. Shut off from me and I couldn’t reach her.

  ‘They could be killed,’ I repeated. I thought I would kill her. I would drag her out of the car by the roots of her hair. But she didn’t see it. Her right hand tapped the steering wheel.

  ‘I’m just dropping them off. It only takes a minute.’

  ‘It only takes a minute to die,’ I said. She heard me then. Her eyes stretched, but she tightened her lips self-righteously.

  ‘Please take your hands off my car.’

  ‘If I ever see you parked here again, I’ll slash your fucking tyres.’

  ‘Don’t you dare threaten me.’

  ‘It’s not a threat,’ I said. ‘It’s a promise.’ I tightened my grip on her car door. I was pumping full of murder and she knew it. She rammed the car into gear and its acceleration shook me off and left me standing in the road.

  I would have hurt her. She’d known it and I knew it. I was going crazy with Ruby. This was what Adam would be left with, if I stayed. A crazy woman keeping guard outside the school our daughter no longer attended, until the school secretary had to call the police.

  ‘I’m tired, Rebecca,’ said Mr Damiano. ‘I must sleep.’

  I saw that it was true. The fire and glitter had gone out of him. I was used to his gift for being any age when he wanted, but he was old now. He sagged forward, then he clambered to his feet. He smiled at me, as he always did, with his formidable courtesy. With the warmth that made you feel he had a world to offer each time.

  ‘I’m too tired to go home tonight,’ he said. His voice was thick and blurred. ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa upstairs.’

  He planted the palms of his hands on the iron table, bracing himself for the walk across the courtyard. He’d told the truth when he said that he was older than I thought. He was old. It was easy to believe that he was seventy-one, or even older.

  ‘Turn the lights off,’ he said. His head was bowed and I couldn’t see his face. ‘Make sure the tent is cleared.’

  ‘What?’

  He gestured impatiently. ‘You know. And we must watch Gottfried. He’s been drinking. They all drink, if you give them a chance.’

  ‘Who do you mean, Mr Damiano?’

  ‘All of them, Bella, all of them. They drink too much and then they no longer give pleasure. But our business is pleasure.’

  ‘I’m not Bella, Mr Damiano.’

  He was silent, supporting himself.

  ‘I know that,’ he said after a while, very quietly. ‘You’re Rebecca. I know you.’ But he stared up at me as if he was finding the lineaments of another face in mine. ‘Yes, I know you. How did you come to find me?’ He stared at me and his face was tired and naked.

  ‘Shall I take your arm?’ I asked. ‘You don’t look well.’

  He shook his head, ridding it of something.

  ‘You’ve never been inside one of our Dreamworlds, have you, Rebecca? You’re too young. It was all over before I knew you. But I’ll make one for you. The last of Damiano’s Dreamworlds, it’ll be for you, Rebecca. I’ll send an aeroplane overhead when it’s ready.’

  ‘But I’m leaving –’

  ‘I know. You told me. I heard.’

  20

  Adam

  If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!

  Six-thirty on an August morning. There is the promise of heat in the sky already, but for now everything is cool and still. In the distance the city is beginning to grumble.

  Adam opens the back door and sits to lace his gardening boots. A blackbird stops tugging at its worm and looks at him, then seizes its prey again before the worm has time to slide back into the earth. Adam stands, walks to the garden shed, pokes about in the dusty dark for his garden fork and his spade.

  Th
e end of the garden, where Ruby’s swing and climbing frame were planted, is overgrown with weeds and rough grass. This is where Adam is digging his vegetable beds. He’s planning to make four beds, with grass paths between them, and their edges shored with wood. He has never done this before, and he eats few vegetables, but it’s a project. The scuff marks where Ruby’s feet used to strike the earth under the swing have gone. The careful holes where the climbing frame was securely fastened have been filled in.

  Adam has staked out four oblongs where his vegetable beds will be. He sets in his spade, drives it deep at the side of the bed, and lifts his first spadeful of earth and matted grass.

  In an hour he has double-dug the first bed. He has worked methodically, shaking loose soil off the roots of the grass and laying the tough yellowish clods in a pile. The soil is clay. Adam has bought bags of rotted horse manure and they lean against one another, sagging. He’s digging in the manure and a little sharp sand to improve the drainage of the soil. This, he’s been told, is the right thing to do.

  At the house-backs the curtains are still drawn. It is Saturday morning. Adam always wakes early, and never lies in bed after waking. It’s the best way. He comes out of the silent house as fast as he can. He works in the garden, or runs circuits through the quiet streets. More often than either of these, he drives up to the hospital, whether he’s on duty or not. These babies are not like other patients. They can ask for nothing and tell nothing. They need a minute, almost infatuated watchfulness that the NHS doesn’t pay for. And because they can’t vote or write letters or frighten politicians by speaking eloquently of their plight on television, they need to be spoken for, too, in the grim, sweaty tug-of-war that is hospital funding.

  There are footprints in the dew, and a stink of fox. The spider webs are unbroken. Under the black, pointed leaves of the pear tree there are dozens of immature fruit. Adam lifts the leaves to check the size of the pears. This year he has encased several pears inside glass bottles. They grow inside the glass until they are much too big to slide back through the neck of the bottle. When they are ripe, he’ll cut the stem, clean the outside of the bottle, rinse the inside, let it drain until fruit and bottle are completely dry and fill the bottle with Calvados. Adam will give the bottles to friends. His own drinking is strict. He checks himself, drinks beer and red wine but never spirits. He’s seen too many doctors on the bottle, washing away the crowds of patients who clamour in their heads.

  Adam settles the leaves over the fruit. A slug has got inside one bottle and eaten at the pear. But the slug has gone, and the hole in the flesh is small. As the pear grows, the damage may heal.

  Carefully, Adam cleans his spade and fork with an oily rag, and places them back in the shed. But then he stands still, as if he has forgotten what comes next. He’s seen something no one else would notice, under the shed. A small, dirty piece of Lego. He’s certain it wasn’t there yesterday. Maybe a cat has slunk under the shed, and pushed the piece of Lego out. Adam bends down, puts the Lego brick on his palm and turns it over with his finger. It is packed solid with dirt. He catches himself thinking that he could clean the dirt out with the point of a knife. He bends down again and scoots the Lego piece back under the shed.

  Adam looks at his watch. Seven forty-five. Pascal will be here in fifteen minutes. And he’s sweating. He’ll get his gardening clothes off, have a shower, put on his running stuff before Pascal gets here. Crazy to have a shower before running, but that’s what he feels like doing. There’s time to make coffee and take it up to the bathroom. But he’ll have to hurry.

  The hot, fine prickling of the shower is good. He turns the water up until it’s so hot it’s only just bearable. Steam oozes around the shower cubicle. He lathers his body in a business-like way, not really looking at it, not really feeling it. The touch of water is good. The touch of his own hands is disturbing.

  A clean, worn towel, his running stuff clean on the bottom shelf of the airing cupboard. He rubs his hair dry. It’s grey now, but it has stayed on his head, for which he’s grateful. His body is much as it always was. He looks after it, without letting himself get too close to it.

  He slaps the towel against his thighs, then tosses it into a corner of the bathroom. There, Pascal will be here in a moment.

  The bell sounds one sharp but short ring. Pascal knows the neighbours are in bed and that these skinny terraced houses have thin walls. Adam runs downstairs. His keys, his water, that’s everything.

  Pascal, stronger and shorter than Adam, seems to bounce lightly on the balls of his feet even as he stands still on the doorstep. He’s wearing a tracksuit. He dumps his sports bag inside the front door.

  They jog away slowly down the street. The postman glances then rests his eyes on the intense blackness of Pascal’s skin, the whiteness of Adam’s.

  ‘Morning,’ they call.

  ‘Beautiful morning,’ he replies.

  They are going to run along the river, loop through the playing fields, across the park and back through the allotments. This is their regular Saturday run.

  Afterwards they’ll shower at Adam’s, change and go out for breakfast.

  Adam had never thought of running, before Pascal. It was Pascal who came with him to buy his first pair of running shoes.

  ‘You will take the first pair they try to sell to you.’

  He showed Adam how to run his finger inside the shoe to check the fit at his ankles. He debated fiercely over grip and cushioning. He took hold of Adam’s foot and squeezed it here and there and Adam was thrown back to childhood and the assistant pressing hard on the toes of his new shoes to judge where his flesh-and-blood toes fitted. The loose-limbed teenager who served them dropped his cool and wanted to please Pascal, find what he wanted, make the day good for him. That was the way Pascal worked on people. His serious, carved, intellectual face that you strove to please, his sudden smile that licked you like a flame and caught you alight.

  They emerged with the running shoes pristine in their big square box and Pascal said, ‘Tell me the truth. You would have taken the first pair he offered you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your heels would have been bruised in a week. You would have given up running because your back ached, Adam, and you would have thought it was because you were too old.’

  ‘You’re right. You’re completely right about that.’

  ‘But you are young.’

  ‘I am forty-eight, Pascal. I’m not immortal.’

  ‘Forty-eight is nothing for a man who keeps himself in shape.’

  Pascal was right. Adam was not too old. Adam runs. Sweat breaks over his skin, the firm, cushiony cuffs of the trainers grip his ankles and his feet thud on the grass. He accelerates, and for a moment believes he could accelerate for ever.

  They slow. They fall back from their rush of speed and hit the rhythm they’ll keep to the end of the run. They’re side by side and Pascal glances across and grins to acknowledge that this is it, now they’ve hit their pace, now all they’ve got to do is keep on. Even the brown, suspicious river is bright as they run alongside it.

  The noise of breathing is what Adam notices since he began running. The snort and rush of it, like horses in a field, startled. How much effort breath takes. Not the slipshod breathing of city life as you ease from car to home. Real breathing.

  He knows about breathing. All its mechanics and how it fails. The crushed butterfly lungs of newborns whose wings for breathing won’t open. Collapse and scarring. Everything hard air does to soft stuff that isn’t ready for it. The anguish of parents watching the monitors that they don’t understand.

  But he and Pascal run on. That boy there, fishing with his father. Adam wishes they would catch a fish now, before he’s passed them. That it would be on the boy’s line, the tug and thrum of it. That the boy would haul it into the air and go home proud.

  After their shower, Adam and Pascal amble down the road to the café which for some reason has become their regular. It’s not the best caf?
? around, but they like it. A thin little dark-haired girl is inside, cleaning the window, rubbing hard. She’s new. In a few weeks’ time she won’t rub so vigorously and willingly.

  After their run they deserve the fug of inside and sausages, bacon, eggs for Pascal, mushrooms for Adam. They drink tea. Pascal will not touch the coffee here, and he eats his full English breakfast with a mixture of relish and suspicion which is the same each week and has once or twice led Adam to suggest a different café, a more expensive one where they sell bagels and proper coffee. But Pascal refuses to change.

  Pascal wipes egg yolk from his plate with the soft white bread. He looks up.

  ‘Marie-Louise is pregnant,’ he says abruptly.

  Adam feels his face spring into a shield of pleasure. ‘That’s fantastic,’ he says. ‘Congratulations. I didn’t know –’

  ‘That we were trying? No. But it’s taken us a long time. My sperm were not so active,’ says Pascal, astonishingly. Adam stares at him, unable to picture any other man of his acquaintance saying that with the satisfied candour of Pascal.

  ‘But they got there in the end,’ says Pascal. He grins and lifts his mug as if to toast the success of his sperm. ‘Fourteen weeks.’

  ‘That’s great,’ says Adam. He lifts his own mug of tea, to hide his mouth. His lips are not doing the right smiling thing. But his hand shakes and quickly he puts down the mug. ‘That’s great, Pascal,’ he says again, baring his teeth.

  But Pascal is watching him with narrow attention, the way he watches patients on the operating table. All the details of them, colour and pulse and pressure. Pascal is a consultant anaesthetist, and his reactions are knife sharp.

  ‘Adam –’

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Adam. Then he does something he has never done before, because he can’t bear the sensation of his own face, naked in the café. He bows his head, lifts his hands, covers his face with them.

  ‘Adam, do you want to leave?’