by Cole Moreton
Sarai watches from the shadows as her wizened husband dips both his aching hands into a bowl, fingers and fists, and rubs his face and eyes with the water. She hears him mutter to the strang-ers and hopes there will not be trouble. In the days of her great beauty, she was sold as a slave – to the pharaoh, no less – for gold, and animals and food. The man who did that to her so many years ago is still her husband now. He is forgiven. You have to compro-mise if you want to live. But there is no danger of being sold again, not at her great age.
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‘She’s going to have a baby, wait and see,’ says the visitor, wiping meat grease from his fingers with the end of his robe before tak-ing his turn with the bowl. ‘I’ll be back this way next year and she will be nursing a son.’
Sarai cannot help herself then. She laughs out loud.
‘Why are you laughing, Sarah?’
It’s a good job you can’t see me, she thinks. I am exhausted. If you saw these gnarled fingers, these slack breasts, you would know. I have lost hair in some places and grown it in others I never expected. My beauty blew away like sand years ago. As for that old man who lay down the skins for you, he is losing his mind.
She calls back from the darkness, unwilling to show her face:
‘I did not laugh.’
‘Oh, you did,’ says the stranger. ‘No matter. You will see.’ Madness. Utter madness. But later, when she thinks about the
voice of the visitor who called her Sarah and her mad old hus-band Abraham, a question forms within her like a tiny spark that might so easily blow out. ‘Do I believe this nonsense? Do I dare?’
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Forty Three
‘So the happy day arrives. You can’t eat breakfast but you must. You feel strong, in your blood, like this is the day you become invinci-ble; but afraid, like you’re made of glass. Brittle. You go to the clinic together, but in the car on the way there is nothing to say.’
Sarah goes on, but Gabe is lost in thinking about Rí and won-dering if he ever really realized what it was like for her when they were trying for a child. They didn’t get far. There wasn’t time.
‘The clinic is like a bad hotel. There are flowers, and prints on the walls. It isn’t like the hospital that failed you, that was knack-ered and run-down and free. You are in safe hands now. Expensive hands. The anaesthetist is like an uncle, an older man who would pat your knee if that sort of thing was still allowed, and he says, “Everything will go smoothly. We do this every day.” But you do not do this every day. You are scared stiff. Do you have a cigarette?’
She’s caught him out – listening but not really listening, letting it slide over him – then he realizes she’s serious. ‘Sorry. I don’t any more.’
‘Good. I’m glad. Thank you. Right then. Sperm. You may wish to go together, the nurse says. You may not. You may wish him to get it over with on his own, as quickly as possible. Too much information?’
‘A bit.’ Helping? He doesn’t want to think about her doing that.
Not to Jack.
‘You may then relax. They give you the anaesthetic. You count backwards from ten and drift away. You wake up unsure of where you are, with pains in your shoulders and you feel bloated, but this is normal, says the nurse. They’ve inflated your abdomen in order to aspirate and flush out the eggs. You’re halfway there, she says, but she’s wrong.’
Now Sarah is in full flow, transformed by the chance to say all this out loud, and Gabe is listening, properly. As hard as he can.
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‘You can go home this afternoon, but you want to stay and be safe. You don’t want the cold of an empty house. You don’t want to go back to work in a couple of days’ time. You don’t want to walk or do anything at all that might agitate your womb and the contents thereof. You want to be still and sleep,’ she says, pushing fingers into her hair and pulling out the curls. Her scent reaches him across the room. Somehow, she smells of oranges. It’s getting colder. He switches on a single bar electric heater as a help to the other fire, and the smell of burning dust rises to mingle with that of paraffin.
‘You want to be able to believe that it might happen. You want to put all your eggs in that basket. That was a joke.’ She doesn’t bother to look round. ‘So. You will take the pain that burns like acid, you will accept it, for the few sweet moments when you think it might work. You’ll do nothing to endanger that possibility. You feed on it. At first.’
She stops and waits, scratching the side of her nose, checking he’s listening.
‘At first?’
‘I saw the cells. I looked into a microscope and saw five cells pulsing. It made me weak. It gave me hope. Jack was there too. Later, when they had been placed inside me, he said, “What shall we call him?”’
She pauses again and Gabe wonders if this is for emotion or to catch her breath.
What should he say? This mesmerizing woman is in his house, in his tower – in their tower – and she should be somewhere else.
‘What about Jack? How does he cope?’
‘He hits me.’ She says it simply, coldly. When he looks confused, she says it again. ‘He hits me. Every time we go through this. Beats me, if you like. I fail him. That is what he says. I am useless and I fail him.’
‘That’s not good,’ says Gabe, unsure of himself. Feeling stupid. ‘Ha! No. Very much not.’ Throwing off the blanket, she turns to sit facing him, leaning forward. ‘Thank you for asking me these questions. I’ve been silent. I realized that, on these hills, walking
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around, before I met you. I’ve been silenced by this man and his fists. You want to know about that? I will tell you. Jack is restless, you’ve seen it for yourself, he is quick to anger. The drumming is a warning. When that starts, watch out. He used to throw tan-trums when we first met, but only ever little ones. A glass might get smashed, accidentally. It was never directed at me. I thought it would stop when he calmed down, and it did. But IVF is vicious. The frustration, the helplessness, gets worse and worse. The band around your chest gets tighter. I’m not making excuses for him, although I could make a case. I’m trying to make sense of it, you understand?’
She checks in with him, then goes on. ‘We stopped talking, really, about anything, and when we tried, there would be an argument. Everything I did was wrong, and he was just a jerk. The whole time. We were sick of each other. The love gets drowned out. So anyway, on the day of the first test, when I had built my hopes up so much and been so disappointed, I cried and cried. He held me, in the kitchen. I mean really held me. Tight. It was comforting at first, but then I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move. I said, “What are you doing?” I broke away and the tears came again – I had no control over that – and he hit me. I am not sure he even meant to.’ She sniffs and shrugs. ‘The back of his hand, out of irri-tation, more of a flick than a slap. It stung. Maybe he was trying to shut me up – you know, like in the movies. Shut the hysterical woman up by slapping her. Maybe that was it. Of course, he was horrified. Good for him. He was so, so sorry. So sorry. “It will never happen again,” he said. It did, of course. Every time, after every test. Every failure.’
So that’s why she doesn’t want to be found, thinks Gabe.
‘The first time, I did not see it coming. That seemed to give him permission somehow, he said he was taking control. For a change. As if. I don’t know. The second time, I freaked at the thought of what he was going to do and grabbed this knife from the sink top and threw it at him and missed – the handle hit the wall and it clattered into the sink – and he looked at me as if he was pleased. I was like him. I smashed a glass – the knife did – his
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best pint glass, but now I was down in the dirty place with him. The next time I was crying, he just hit me properly. Flat of the hand that time, like it was what I deserved, or even wanted.’
Gabe closes his eyes, and hears her tell him off.
‘I’m not a victim. I told you. No sy
mpathy, please. It doesn’t help.’
Why does she stand it? The question is unspoken but she hears it anyway.
‘I love him, Gabe. I loved him.’ It sounds, even to her, as if she is repeating those words from memory. ‘I knew in my head that what he was doing was wrong, of course; it hurt like hell, but I was so numb, I couldn’t feel anything. Even when we went to the Long Man, he had this ridiculous idea that we would – you know – have sex on the hillside, by this fertility symbol—’
‘I thought it was graffiti. Civil war.’
‘Who knows? I said no, of course I said no, but he got angry, really angry. He pushed me down on the ground and winded me, then . . . well.’
‘Seriously?’ Gabe puts his hand up, realizing what she is telling him.
‘He got his way.’
The bastard.
‘You think that is horrifying, do you? Your face says so. Yes, it is. I think so, now. I thought so then, but I didn’t feel anything, or see a way out. It was what it was. That’s the hell you’re in, the madness, you think it will stop if you can just get pregnant. Everything will be made right and you’ll be okay then. Back in love. So you push the feelings away and try again. You wait. After the procedure there is nothing else you can do. You can’t eat much, or sleep much. You have two weeks to wait. This is where we are now, Gabriel, with hours to go before I can find out if it has worked, although I know the answer. I’ve always known, but still the hope won’t quite die, so the hours feel like days. You dread the test but you want it to come. Time moves so slowly. You close up then. You feel the hope subside and it’s a relief. You know before the test that the life inside you, if there ever was
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one, has died. You know but you dare not say so. Only I just did. I know it, right now.’
She retrieves her glass and drains the bourbon in one gulp, and winces. Then holds it out to be topped up again. ‘So you have the first drink in a very, very long time.’
He stops halfway out of his seat, bottle held towards her, sitting back down. ‘No more. Just in case.’
‘In case of what? A baby? No chance. There is nothing. Why should you care?’
He shouldn’t. That’s the truth. He feels guilty, although he has done nothing to feel guilty about. Who is he accountable to now – a voice in his head? Rí, where are you?
‘I had to come here,’ says Sarah, putting the glass down. ‘To get away from him. I took a train to Seaford, then a bus to Cuckmere Haven – you know the Coastguard Cottages by the sea where the river comes out? We went there once when I was young, but I never told him about that, for some reason. That’s where my bags are.’
That makes sense. The other end of the Seven Sisters, half a dozen miles away over the hills without roads. There are no patrols there. You can hide if you want to.
‘Jack was convinced you were at Beachy Head.’
‘Good. I was never going there. We stayed at a farm once, back over the other side of the Head towards town; he will have asked there. The Seven Sisters are even more beautiful and almost as high. I didn’t mean to come this far, but I was walking and the tower drew me. Then the storm came down, so suddenly. How can it do that? I had to take shelter. I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t mind. I’m glad.’
‘Why?’
He doesn’t know. Or doesn’t want to say.
‘Me too,’ she says, with surprising warmth. ‘I knew he would come looking for me but I need this time, this space. I want to do the next bit on my own. My life. My choice.’
‘Someone should say this, Sarah, so I will. You don’t have to do it.’ ‘Thank you, I do know that.’
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This can’t happen, thinks Gabe with rising panic. This aston-ishing woman, filling his lighthouse with her presence, cannot be allowed to take her own life. ‘You can’t—’
‘Yes I can, if I want to. That is the point. All my life I have done what other people want. My father, always telling me to be a brave girl. The Bible, saying marry or burn. Do you know that saying? Marry or give in to the flesh and burn in hell. So I did. The doctors, saying no babies for you. You are barren. You are worthless, you are not a woman, but a husk of a body—’
‘They don’t say that.’
‘A shell. A dry skin left on the dirt by a snake—’ ‘Stop it—’
‘An empty tin can rattling in the bin. Why, Gabriel? Do you
not like me saying these things? This is me. This is what I am.
Nothing, nobody.’
‘That’s not true.’
She’s getting worked up. ‘This is me. The real me. You want to see me? Here I am. Come on! You want more? Get ready for it.’ She looks at him strangely, suddenly suspicious, and her voice changes. ‘What is your game anyway? What are you doing, keep-ing me here? Do you think you are going to have me? Is that it? You want me?’
He turns away, not wanting her to see his face and not want-ing to accept what he knows he feels but can’t feel, not now, it’s impossible and wrong and it hurts. For God’s sake. What is she doing here?
Looking out of the window is the answer, with her hands and forehead pressed to the glass.
‘We might as well get that out in the open, Gabe, if that is your intention. Is that what it takes to stay here for the night?’
‘No.’
‘Say now if it is.’
‘Sarah . . .’
‘You are a man, Gabe. You are alone.’
‘You are out of order. You hear me? Shut it. Shut up. I didn’t ask you in here—’
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‘Yes, you did.’
‘That’s—’
‘Come back to the house, you said. For a nice cup of tea. Cheer yourself up. Well, mister lighthouse keeper, is that all you had in mind? Tea? You got more than you asked for. So, you want it?’
Gabe is at a loss. If only this were for real. No, don’t think like that. If only, he would . . . no. Rí, for God’s sake, where are you? He throws his hands up to say please, stop it, just give it a rest. He has to calm her down.
Say her name.
‘Sarah . . .’
‘Oh, you don’t want me, I’m not enough, okay. Empty husk. Useless. Worthless,’ she says, mumbling, sliding down the win-dow, down to the floor like a coiling rope, head down and all closed up.
‘You’re not,’ he says, going across and kneeling beside her but being careful. ‘You shouldn’t say those things, they are not true. You’re amazing, Sarah. You’re incredible.’
‘You are full of crap.’
‘Maybe. Most of the time. Not now.’ He softens his voice, gets right down on the cold stone floor there, but doesn’t touch. Mustn’t touch. ‘You need to know something, Sarah. You are safe here.’
She looks up at him, hair in her wet, wide eyes.
‘You can stay. I promise.’
‘I am tired, Gabe. I need a place, just for now.’
‘Sarah, stay. Alive, I mean. Not here. Wherever your life is. Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. Yes I do. Live, Sarah. Please.’
She hangs her head again and is still for a long, long time. So long that he lets her be and moves around the room, putting things back into order, waiting. For what, he is not sure.
‘You don’t understand,’ she says quietly, on her feet again. ‘I must confess I don’t.’
‘I have not been myself for so long. I’ve been what they wanted me to be. My father, the church, the doctors. Jack. I told you that. I am repeating myself. I lost sight of who I was, but coming
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here – not to you, no offence, but to this place, this sea and sky – I remember. I have denied my real identity, my self, my mother . . .
all of it. I am Sarah Hallelujah Jones, the daughter of Jasmine who has gone, so long ago, but has never left. I want to be able to see her again, Gabe. I only remember the light. I can’t see her face, only a light.’
‘You are going to have a child, Sa
rah. Maybe.’
‘Ha! You think? There is no child. That won’t happen.’ ‘It might—’
‘Do you know my body? Are you inside me?’
He can’t help his reaction – a flashing thought, no more – and she notices.