by Bella Pollen
I scoop her up and put her in her own bed.
‘Mummy . . .’ she holds on to my arm under the covers, ‘aren’t you happy Daddy’s here?’
‘Of course I am, darling, of course I am.’ Mindlessly, I stroke her hair until my hand feels unbearably heavy and the darkness of the room sweeps over me like the blue-black of a raven’s wing.
I wake to a halo of red light on the horizon. It’s three-thirty. Extricating myself from Emmy’s octopus-like grip, I hurry to the big window in my room. In the east, a gibbous moon throws a hazy light over the escarpment of the mountains. The reddish glow is coming from the south. From the direction of the schoolroom. I jackknife with fear. Fire. It looks like fire. I stand fixated, in an agony of uncertainty, until the growl of a truck jerks me from numbness and almost immediately a pair of headlights swing round the corner from the direction of the town. Duval! Benjamín! The engine cuts, a figure jumps out, but there’s no mistaking the heavy set of the shoulders and the square-cut silhouette of his head.
‘Robert, what happened?’ I say, but he pushes past me through the door and collapses onto the sofa. He puts his head in his hands.
‘What is it?’ I say urgently.
He groans.
‘Are you hurt? What happened?’ I kneel beside him and drag his hands from his face. ‘Robert, talk to me!’
‘Alice, oh, God.’ He fumbles me to him. His breath smells sour. He groans again. ‘What have I done? What have I done?’
‘Yes, what have you done?’ I ask sharply, and when he still doesn’t answer, shake him. ‘Robert!’
‘I had no idea.’ He raises tormented eyes. ‘I should have listened to you. Why didn’t I listen to you?’
‘For God’s sake. Just tell me what happened.’ Struggling not to beat him with my fists, I take his hand and squeeze it and finally he starts talking.
They’d driven as far as they could in the vehicles, then continued on foot. Robert had been uncomfortable, in the wrong clothes – in the wrong shoes, but eventually Hogan had stopped and made everyone take up a position in a line, each person finding cover a few hundred yards beyond the next. It was to be like a stake-out, Hogan explained. They would rest up a couple of hours and see what moved. And at that point, everything had seemed fine. In fact it had been exciting, a bit like deer stalking, except . . . well, except Robert had been close to Tucker and had been worried that the boy was secretly drinking . . .
‘And . . .?’
‘Eventually, we spotted a group of people in the da—’
‘How many!’
‘I don’t know. I saw them through the night-vision goggles. They were walking one behind the other and I thought this is it, this is it.’
‘Yes, but how many were there?’ I say, sounding almost as agonized as he does.
‘What does it matter! I don’t know.’ He cries.
‘Okay, okay,’ I try to calm him, ‘just tell me what happened.’
When the line of Mexicans got close enough, Hogan and the others revealed themselves. They stood up and produced their weapons, forcing the illegals first to their knees, then down on their stomachs. ‘It was all going according to plan,’ Robert said, ‘they were no trouble.’ In fact he’d been surprised at just how subservient they were – all except one. Bob was having difficulty securing the plastic tie around the illegal’s wrists and the Mexican had begun swearing and shouting.
‘I don’t know what he was saying, I didn’t understand,’ Robert says, but it was at that point that everything started to unravel. Tucker shot his gun into the air ... a woman screamed. ‘A woman, Alice. I hadn’t thought . . .’ He tails off and my fear overspills again.
‘What did she look like? Who else was with her? How many people exactly in the group?’
Robert looks up at me with a sort of tired frustration, as though I have completely missed the point. ‘Why does it matter? I don’t know, nine, ten, eleven maybe, I couldn’t see properly, none of them dared look us in the eye and besides they were all on their stomachs . . .’
And I’m thinking ten people. Not Dolores, not Benjamín or Duval, just another random group of strangers shackling themselves to fate.
‘Tucker struck the Mexican with his gun. He went down, but before I could move, something came out of the dark, like a ghost.’ He shudders. ‘I suppose it was one of the other wetbacks but it was all so confusing. Bob got pulled off his horse right in front of my eyes . . . there were more shots, then all hell broke loose and I . . . I . . .’
‘What, Robert, what?’
‘My gun jammed.’ He looks incredulously at his hands, as though he was seeing the Mossberg still in them. ‘I never meant to fire it in the first place.’ His voice rises. ‘I wasn’t even aiming it, I swear – but there was so much happening and everyone was so jumpy .. . I panicked, I just panicked . . . Bob threw me his knife . . .’ He covers his face again and grimly I realize there’s worse to come. ‘Alice, I think I may have killed someone.’
The words slam into me. I fight for breath, stand up. Robert grabs at my hand.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Alice. Please don’t look at me like that. I don’t know – I can’t really remember, there were others close to me, people were shooting, there was a black car driving round in circles, everyone running all at once, but then someone came straight at me and I don’t know . . .’
‘Robert! Oh, God,’ I whisper, and I cannot keep the disgust from my voice.
‘Alice,’ he pleads, ‘the last few months have been torture. You and the children gone, I felt so .. . I don’t know . . . rootless, flying backwards and forwards from London to Switzerland, those interminable legal meetings, nothing but that grungy rented flat waiting for me, every business collapsing around my ears, so when Hogan called me and offered me this deal, it seemed like light at the end of the tunnel. I always knew there was opportunity round here.’ He balls his hand into a fist. ‘I could smell it, right from the start and, God knows, Alice, I thought it was a chance to escape, leave all our problems behind and start over again but then Hogan told me what was going on and well–’ He laughs bitterly. ‘I know you, Alice, you have all these funny ideas, you’re a dreamer and I thought you might do something stupid, irresponsible, ruin it for both of us.’ He looks up at me in total misery, all bravado stripped away and in an instant I see my son in his face and I remember Jack that night, his arms wrapped tightly around me as he’d listened to the coyotes howling out their secret trysts to one another.
‘I told Winfred I was afraid of nothing,’ Jack had said, ‘but the truth is, I’m afraid of everything.’
‘Oh, Robert.’ I hold him to me and when I feel his shoulders slump, I hold him closer still. ‘I’m so sorry.
I’m so sorry.’ But even as I’m mumbling it over and over again, I realize he cannot understand what I’m apologizing for.
Robert stirs. ‘We have to leave. We have to get out of here.’
‘What do you mean?’ I release him.
He pushes up off the sofa. ‘It’s not safe, we should pack the children’s things and just go.’
‘Go? What are you talking about? .. . Go where?’
‘Home!’ he says, and still I stare at him, unable to grasp what he means. I am home.
‘We’ll drive to Tucson,’ he says wildly, ‘to the airport. Get on the next flight.’
‘But our tickets are from Phoenix,’ I say stupidly.
‘To hell with that! We’ll buy new tickets.’
‘Robert, no!’
But Robert has thrown off his shock and awe. He paces around the room, talking, making plans. We will camp in his rented flat, he will speak with the agent, see if we can get our house back early. We’ll pick up the threads of our old lives. Our London lives . . .
‘Alice, we never have to come back here,’ he says emphatically. ‘Don’t you see, it’s perfect! We’ll sell this place to Hogan if he wants it so badly and in a few months we’ll look back on this terrible night and it will just b
e a bad dream.’
I turn my head and see Duval’s face in the flickering light of the fire. ‘These few months here will become a memory, an amusing story to tell at dinner parties. Your year out in the Wild West.’
Robert grabs me by the shoulder. ‘Alice, it’s okay. Together we’ll get through this. I’m here now, you don’t have to think any more. We must do what’s best for all of us, you, me, the children. You want that, don’t you?’
And when I still can’t answer, it’s his turn to shake me. ‘Don’t you, Alice?’
‘Yes,’ I say mechanically. ‘Of course. What’s best for the children.’
I move around the house, finding passports, opening drawers, folding great piles of clothes into cases without knowing or caring to whom they belong. The children sleep on and I can’t stop thinking . . . What if it’s Benjamín lying in the desert with Robert’s knife inside him? What if it’s Duval? I should have rung Chavez, I should have done something, anything, and I have to call on every ounce of self-control left not to run down the path and along the track towards the schoolroom.
Finally, the packing is done and the hired car loaded. ‘Wake the children,’ Robert says.
Jack is lying on his back, his hand curled protectively around his balls. Emmy is rucked up on her stomach, her mouth open, a circle of damp on the pillow beneath her. I kneel between them and slide Emmy’s hair out of her mouth, then I lay my head on Jack’s chest and inhale his sweet smell, thinking that if I can just breathe deeply enough, maybe a part of him will stay inside me forever.
‘Can I sit in the front?’ Jack asks.
‘Course you can.’
‘Why can’t I sit in the front?’ Emmy says. Jack always gets to sit in the front, it’s so unfair.’
‘Emmy, shhhh,’ Robert soothes, wearied already by the tears, by the exhortations, by the patience and the sheer imagination required to explain to two children why they are being woken at dawn and suddenly, bewilderingly, going home.
Real home. London home, was how Robert kept putting it, and Emmy’s initial wails had turned to joy at the prospect of a reunion with squirrel, rabbit and other lesser members of her Camden High Street stuffed-animal family.
‘No one’s sitting in the front except Mummy,’ Robert says.
‘But Mummy said she didn’t mind,’ Jack says resolutely. ‘And it’s her decision, isn’t it, Daddy?’
‘Mummy can sit in the back with me.’ Emmy sweeps her pink backpack to the floor.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Robert says querulously. ‘As long as Mummy doesn’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind.’ I shake my head, smiling at all of them.
‘Right! Everyone happy now? Can we go? . . . Alice?’
And still I’m smiling.
‘Alice?’ Robert presses evenly. ‘Can you get in the car, please?’
‘You know, I was just thinking . . .’ I speak in a bright normal sort of voice, as though we were negotiating arrangements for a picnic in the park, ‘why don’t you all go now and I’ll follow you later?’
Robert decides not to hear me.
‘Please get in the car, please, Alice.’
But I go on shaking my head.
‘Get in the car, Mummy,’ Jack says. ‘You’ll only end up arguing with Daddy.’
‘No, really, why don’t you guys go on ahead?’
Robert turns off the ignition and gets out. ‘What are you doing?’
I tell him I can’t go. I promise to come later. ‘I can’t leave all this,’ I say. The children’s faces are pressed to the windows.
‘All what?’
‘Everything. Temerosa.’
‘Temerosa!’ he says incredulously. ‘Alice, this is a war zone! This is a place of hell! What do you mean you can’t go? You can’t stay!’
‘I have to.’
‘Why?’ he asks desperately.
‘Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t explain.’
‘Alice . . .’
And I turn away, too spineless to face the pain in his eyes.
‘Alice . . .’ Robert takes a huge breath. ‘We. Are. A. Family.’
‘I know.’ Of course I know this is my family, but a man I love is out there somewhere and he may be hurt, and he may be dead and I need to find him and hold him, otherwise all the days I have left in my life will stack up one after the other, grey and pointless except to torture me with what ifs.
‘Alice, unless you get in the car right now, this marriage is over and, so help me God, you’ll never see me or the children again.’ White spittle has collected in the corners of his mouth.
‘Don’t be silly, Robert.’
‘Alice, for God’s sake, don’t do this.’ He grabs my arm. ‘Get in the car.’
The children are watching. They know we are fighting. I bathe them in a dazzling smile of normality as I yank my arm free.
‘Then none of us will go,’ Robert changes tack. ‘I simply won’t allow you to stay behind and that’s all there is to it.’
I harden everything left in my heart and turn my back on my children.
‘And what if you have killed someone, what then?’
The remaining spots of red anger fade from Robert’s cheeks.
‘You go round knifing people, even Mexicans, and the police tend to want to talk to you.’
‘Alice . . .’
‘Listen to me. You have a chance to get out now, probably one chance only. I think you should take it.’
‘Alice, I’m begging you—’
‘I’ll come later. I promise.’
‘No,’ he says flatly. ‘You won’t.’
The children stare at me as if I’ve decided to speak in another language.
Very slowly, Emmy’s mouth twists, her brow puckers and she’s off. I hold her through the window, kiss the tangled hair on her head, reassure her with everything I have left, but nothing is big enough to stop the flow of her misery.
‘Mummymummymummy,’ she wails and clings to my arm and I know it’s only a matter of time before I lose it too. ‘Emmy, my darling . . . please.’ But my resolve is nearly spent.
‘Emmy, let go, for God’s sake!’ Robert utters in desperation.
‘Let go, Emmy,’ I say gently. ‘Please .. . let go.’
‘It’s all right, Mummy, let me talk to her,’ Jack says. He climbs over the divide into the back seat and shuffles in close to his sister, then puts an arm round her shoulders and starts stroking her hair, smoothing it down on either side of her blotched, teary face over and over again. ‘It’s okay, Emmy,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s okay.’ He pulls a strand of hair out of her mouth with infinite tenderness. ‘Jack is here now, Jack will sit in the back with you.’
29
I make it upstairs, throw myself onto Emmy’s bed and shut my eyes tight, but they’re still there, like ghostly negatives, Jack biting down on his lip, Emmy mouthing my name, Benjamín’s name, her fists banging against the glass. The tears come then, in great gulping sobs. I beat my own fists against Emmy’s pillow, find a small hole and rip into the cotton in a fit of rage and guilt. When it’s over I give way to some kind of semi-conscious paralysis and lie there in a fug of self-loathing for what seems like hours until, finally, I become aware of a sound. A scraping noise then another, coming from the stairs.
I push up off the pillow and listen. If you live in a house built of wood you become an expert on its idiosyncrasies. A sort of Miss Smilla of the creak, able to identify every sound it makes. Apart from the fact that every floorboard takes it upon itself to moan at will as though the breaths of the miners’ ghosts are forever blowing on them, there are other noises I’ve come to recognize, a shudder prompted by wind, a stingy little protest induced by the unrelenting dryness. I have tried to exorcize the children’s night fears, explaining that it’s only when we’re asleep that the house gets to relax and succumb to its aches and pains – but the creak on the stairs has a furtive, dishonest quality to it, that of footsteps being deliberately suppressed – and
it scares the hell out of me. I grab the small fire extinguisher from the corner of the room and, raising it, step out into the hallway.
He stands motionless at the top of the stairs and there’s something so fragile in the way he’s holding himself that I stop dead. ‘Benjamín!’ I put down the fire extinguisher and take a step towards him, fearing the worst, fearing that any closer might somehow send him spiralling backwards and down. For a second he looks straight through me, then he collapses – slowly, almost neatly, the way a building falls during demolition when its central structure has been removed.
‘Benjamín!’ I crouch down beside him. ‘Are you all right?’ He nods his head almost imperceptibly but his eyes are dull and his skin a flat grey colour. ‘Benjamín!’ I fetch a toothmug of water from the bathroom and hold it to his lips. He coughs and shifts position. Under the harsh light of the naked bulb, the dark patch on his shirt reveals itself bright red.
I help him onto Emmy’s bed. My attempts to unpopper his shirt elicit a weak protest. ‘Oh, come on,’ I say feverishly, but he pushes my hand away and eases his shoulder out of the sleeve. I suck in a breath. Just below his armpit, running up to his collarbone, is a yawning gash.
‘Wait there,’ I instruct him, then race down to the kitchen, fighting mounting panic. What to do? What to get? Boiling water? Clean towels? But this isn’t a pregnancy, dammit. Nevertheless I fill a bowl with hot water, grab a clean dishcloth along with the first-aid kit from under the sink and race back upstairs.
I daub away at the soft edge of the wound, biting my lip, because what do I know about knifings? What do I know about gunshots and vigilantes and the murder of Border Patrol guards? The gash is uneven, the flesh on either side shredded and raw. I flash back to the weaponry of Hogan’s army, to Robert’s stumbling confession and feel a white-hot rage. Tiny fragments of shirt are embedded inside the wound. The gash is deep but from Benjamín’s breathing it doesn’t appear to have punctured his lung. He can move his fingers, he can lift his arm. He raises his eyes to mine. ‘You have to go to the Border Patrol, Alice.’
I draw back and stare at him. ‘Benjamín, no!’