We Are All Made of Stars

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Yes,’ he says, and his smile is deliberate and carefully placed. I don’t comment on it, because I know he is trying, and I know that to try he has to fight the many demons that I don’t understand. ‘You look nice; I always liked that dress on you.’

  Tonight he sees me. I exist.

  The restaurant is busy, and, dimly, I remember it’s a Friday night. I lose track of the days of the week, in my job; there is rarely such a thing as a weekend off, and night after night seems the same. But Baki, the restaurant’s owner, remembers us, and greets us like we are long-lost family.

  ‘I saw your picture in the paper,’ he tells Vincent, shaking him firmly by the hand for several seconds, not wanting to let go. ‘You are a hero, a hero, my friend. So brave, a hero and a true man. For you and your wife, my finest table and free wine!’

  His finest free table is more accurate; we sit at the back of the small dining room, near the kitchens and the loos, but it doesn’t matter – it’s the perfect spot for us. In a corner, two walls encroaching on our tiny table. We’ve barely hung our coats on the back of our chairs when a carafe of house red arrives.

  I pour us both a large glass and smile at Vincent. I can tell he feels as uncertain and as shy as I do, but maybe that isn’t a bad thing; we are trying to get to know each other again, after all. And in the candlelight we both look softer, younger – almost like the last year and a half didn’t happen.

  ‘So …’ I reach across the table and place my hand over his. ‘How is it going at the gym? Are you enjoying it?’

  ‘Not really.’ He smiles wryly. ‘I’m mean, the guys are nice enough, and the clients love me, you know, especially the women.’ I smile at the trace of his old bravado. ‘But it’s boring: same old, same old, one person after another, and I’m … well, I’m a novelty.’ He pats his bisected thigh.

  ‘Well, it was only ever meant to be temporary,’ I say. ‘While you decided what you really want to do next.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, and the conversation peters away to nothing for a few moments. And then I remember something that always used to keep us talking – all night, sometimes.

  ‘We talked about moving, didn’t we? Once you’d left the army, remember? Going to Cornwall, becoming surfers, growing our hair out and wearing tie-dye?’ I smile, and for a moment, just the briefest of moments, he looks unutterably sad and the joy of that old dream is lost. ‘We talked about selling the house and just travelling around the world until we got old. And living on a canal boat. And you would grow a beard and I’d have long grey dreadlocks and we’d get a dog.’

  ‘I remember,’ he says.

  ‘We could still do that,’ I say. ‘We can still do anything we want to; that hasn’t changed.’

  He regards me in the candlelight, his eyes searching my face, intensely, as if he’s looking for something, anything that he might recognise.

  ‘Let’s just have dinner,’ he says eventually. ‘Tell me about work.’

  I think of Grace’s letter, in the pocket of my jacket. It’s been at the back of my mind since I sealed the envelope, but I have no one to ask what to do with it. I can’t ask Vincent, not with this fragile peace between us. One sheet of paper folded in half feels like a rock there, cold and heavy. Carrying someone else’s secret is hard enough, but I made a promise to Grace. I made it twice.

  And yet this letter. This is a letter that makes it seem impossible to keep that promise, especially when I know exactly where it will go one day, when I’ve walked past the house it is addressed to a hundred times or more.

  If the address was in Scotland or France, or Ireland, or even just a city away, what would I do? Would I think about it twice, or just leave it with the other two letters in my backpack, waiting to be posted? I promised Grace I would wait until she is gone; I promised her, and yet … The address is just a few streets away. There is hardly a mile between Grace and the person named on the front of the envelope, and how many hours left for her I don’t know.

  Did she mean it, what she asked of me? Did she really mean it, or does she want me to ignore her instructions? Does she really want me to wait until it’s too late to mean anything, to anyone? Is she asking something of me that she doesn’t feel able to do herself? I just don’t know.

  I think of the letter, feel its cold heavy weight, and press it back down. This time is supposed to be about me and Vincent.

  ‘We lost a patient yesterday,’ I say. ‘A young girl, only fourteen. Sort of puts it all into perspective, really – the things that are worth fighting for.’ I glance up at him. ‘It’s a peaceful job, mostly. I know some of it is sad, but it’s not all palliative care; we have respite patients too. And it’s a place full of love, you know? Like all the love a person accrues over a lifetime is gathered up in those last few moments to cushion them on their way.’

  ‘Best way to go, if you’ve got to,’ Vincent says.

  Baki arrives with a flourish, and we order what we always used to: lamb kofta, pitta bread, mezze including homemade hummus and stuffed vines leaves, and salad.

  ‘Doesn’t it get to you?’ Vincent asks me. ‘Getting to know someone and then seeing that person, that essence of a person, go? Don’t you always feel sad? When I think about … the mates I lost … I never get used to it. I don’t want to.’

  I remember opening the window in Issy’s room. Closing the door on her mum, as she wept in the arms of Issy’s grandmother.

  ‘It is hard, I suppose, but I know why I am there, and what I am doing it for – to make the final stages as easy as possible for the patient and their family. To help them. Before, when I worked in trauma, I used to think it was all about beating death, giving people back their lives, but sometimes, it’s a game you can’t win, and helping people make that last journey, that transition, it’s just as important.’

  ‘Transition.’ Vincent picks up on the word. ‘But there isn’t anything else afterwards, is there? It’s not a transition, it’s an ending.’

  I don’t know how to answer or to explain how I feel or what I see, so I don’t. Only I feel sure somehow that once that essence of life leaves a person, it changes what’s left behind so completely that it must be some kind of entity, some kind of force that goes somewhere – even if it’s just out amongst the stars.

  ‘Well, as I said, it’s not always all about dying, anyway,’ I tell him, trying to lift the mood. ‘We have patients who are recuperating too. Recently we’ve had a young woman with cystic fibrosis recovering from a very serious infection. She’ll be leaving in the next day or so. It’s not all about opening windows at a hospice, you know; it’s mostly about life, living, enjoying, loving people, finding … purpose.’

  ‘Opening windows?’ Vincent asks me.

  ‘Just a nurse’s thing,’ I say.

  Our food arrives and we eat for a few minutes in silence, and I drink a lot of wine very quickly. Vincent doesn’t touch his, but I see him looking at the glass every few seconds with naked longing. He’s as nervous as I am. I wasn’t this nervous and uncertain on our very first date. I remember it. I remember walking into the pub, where Vincent was leaning against the bar already, black T-shirt, tan, his eyes on some football match, and how I’d felt lust for him at once – physical and deep. Just looking at him made me need him, and I think I would have run over the edge of a cliff to get to him. Maybe that is exactly what I did. I felt consumed, obsessed, thirsty, hungry for him from the moment I saw him, but not nervous, not self-conscious or afraid, like I feel now. I suppose, perhaps, it’s because at our beginning nothing was particularly at stake, except for our pride. Now everything is at stake, everything we gambled on. The wheel of our choices is about to come to a standstill, or the dice are about to fall. This is where we find out if our luck will hold.

  ‘Look.’ He speaks first, setting his fork down on the plate, pushing it into a perfectly vertical line. ‘Since I came out of Headley Court, I’ve been … Well, you know how I’ve been. Struggling with civvie street. Struggling with what ha
ppened to me, to my mates. With what happened to Kip. I wanted to come back alive. I wanted it so badly, and I have. And now …’

  ‘Now you don’t know why?’

  ‘Now I don’t know what, or who I am. Surviving has taken that away from me,’ he says. He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

  He stretches his prosthetic leg out – most likely a sudden cramp in his thigh muscle – which inadvertently forms a barrier across the narrow gangway between tables, stopping a man on his way to the loo in his tracks.

  ‘All right, mate,’ the man says, affably enough. ‘You don’t own the place.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Vincent retracts his leg with some difficulty, wincing. A flash of the metal shows under his trouser leg.

  ‘Shit, sorry,’ the man says. ‘I didn’t know you were … disabled.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Vincent says, looking at the tabletop.

  ‘Still, these days it’s nothing, it is? I mean, look at the Paralympics, super humans and all that, hey?’

  ‘Yep,’ Vincent says, but the man doesn’t move on.

  ‘How’d it happen?’ the man asks, any natural reserve he might have had stripped away by wine. This time Vincent looks up at him, actively wanting to see the person who is tactless enough, drunk enough, stupid enough, to want to intrude on someone else’s privacy this way. I see a dangerous new edge to the set of his jaw.

  ‘Afghanistan,’ he says. ‘Ambush. One dead, two injured,’ he says, and his matter-of-fact voice breaks my heart.

  ‘Fuck, can I shake your hand?’ The man holds his hand out, and I notice that the people on the tables around us are all watching now. Vincent looks at me, and I give the slightest of shrugs.

  ‘Sure,’ he says, taking the man’s hand. He shakes it once.

  ‘I think you guys are heroes.’ The man will not let go of Vincent’s hand. ‘I think what you’ve done is amazing – the sacrifices you’ve made. I mean, Jesus, no one knows why you were out there for so long, or what difference it will make in the end. None, probably – it’s all politics, isn’t it? You go out there to keep the terrorists at bay, but how long for, really? And does anything change, really? Lads like you, coming home in bits or in boxes, and what was it all for … really? Nothing. It’s all a waste.’

  Vincent is still holding the man’s hand as he surges up out of his chair and punches him so hard that he flies across the narrow gangway and careers into a table, sending a woman sprawling to the floor, with a crash of plates and crockery. There are screams all around.

  The look on Vincent’s face is pure fury, and if he could kneel easily, I know he’d have grabbed the bleeding man by his ripped shirt and punched him again and again, and I’m not sure that he’d be able to stop.

  ‘Get up.’ He spits out the words in quiet, cold fury. ‘Get up and tell me again that my mates died and I lost my leg for nothing. Get up, go on.’

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ a woman behind me says, her voiced laced with genuine fear.

  The man scrambles to his feet, backing away terrified without taking his eyes off Vincent. He holds his hands out in supplication.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘No, you weren’t.’ Vincent takes a step towards him.

  ‘Vincent.’ I reach out and touch his tense arm, and in one sharp movement he turns and pushes me away. It is not a hard push but I am caught off balance and knocked back against the wall, my head following on a second later with the sharp whip of my neck. I’m not hurt so much as shocked. Leaning against the wall, I stare at him. He stares at me, and then, taking a deep shuddering breath, he steps over the man and leaves.

  ‘I’ve called the police,’ the frightened woman says. ‘They’re on their way.’

  Grabbing my jacket, I put all the cash I have on the table and follow Vincent out into the busy street. Looking both ways, I can see his head, his determined gait, already far ahead of me, swallowed up in the crowd, heading towards Regent’s Park. I break into a jog to follow him, catching up with him as the street gives away to parkland and the path disappears into a hazy darkness.

  ‘Vincent!’ I call his name, but he marches on, his fists still clenched at his side. ‘Vincent.’

  Eventually I catch up with him, standing in front of him, challenging him to push me out of the way again.

  ‘Stella, go away,’ he says. ‘Go away. I don’t want you to see this. I don’t want you to see me like this.’

  ‘Too late, I’ve seen you,’ I say, touching my bruised shoulder. ‘I’ve felt you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He covers his face with his hands. ‘I didn’t mean … I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to get away, and so I pushed you. I didn’t meant to; it just happened. I’m not the sort of man who hurts a woman, not any woman. I just … I’m not coping, Stella. I’m not coping. And I don’t know how to ask for help.’

  ‘Vincent.’ I press my hands against his chest; I feel his heart fiercely pumping. ‘Tell me. Tell me what it is. Let me help you. If you tell me, it will be a start and together we can go back and ask for whatever help you need. Just tell me, because you can’t go on like this.’

  ‘You can’t help me,’ he says. ‘How can you help when you’re the reason that I wish I had died out there?’

  ‘What?’ His words make no sense. ‘What are you saying?’

  He sidesteps me and walks – no, marches – on.

  ‘Vincent, what did I do? You have to tell me what I did. You can’t say that and walk away. Where are you even going?’

  ‘I’m trying to get away from you,’ he says, his eyes locked forward.

  ‘Vincent!’ I howl his name, so loudly it echoes in the damp air. ‘Tell me what you mean.’

  At last he stops. He bows his head, dragging breaths out of his chest, closing his eyes; he trembles, fighting tears, fighting fury.

  ‘I should have died, the day of the ambush,’ he says. ‘It should have been me and not Kip. Or, at least, not just Kip.’

  ‘A lot of soldiers feel that way, remember?’ I say. ‘The counsellor said …’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Stella, I’m not your patient! I’m your husband! Will you let me talk to you like a man, for once in my life?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ My voice is small, frightened. I’m not scared of Vincent, but of what he is about to say and how whatever it is will change everything. The park is not empty – groups of people and couples stand in their own little pools of darkness, but I know they are all straining towards us now.

  ‘I’ve been over and over it, again and again,’ Vincent says. ‘And every time it’s the same, it’s exactly the same, but it didn’t have to be. It could have been different. We were out on the road – routine patrol, all the precautions taken – looking for IEDs; everything was as it should be. Kip’s little dog was trotting at his side. We got used to her stopping every few metres. We paid attention to her – she heard things we didn’t, sensed stuff. But that day she was relaxed, happy. You should never relax, they tell you that; you should never let your guard down. But it was hot, and me and Kip, we were laughing about this YouTube video we’d seen – a cat and a photocopier. So fucking stupid; the sort of bollocks that Kip loved. And the dog was chilled. I looked up at the trees on the horizon, scrubs, really. And then I saw it: this flash, this reflection in the foliage, sunlight bouncing off metal where there shouldn’t have been any. And I knew that, whatever it was, it was aimed at us.’

  As I watch him talk, I realise Vincent isn’t standing with me in soggy Regent’s Park any more – he’s thousands of miles away, back on that dirt road again, in the final seconds before his whole life was torn apart.

  ‘I had a second, one second. Kip was right next to me, oblivious. He didn’t see it; he didn’t know it was coming. I should have warned him, grabbed him, pulled him out. I should have told him to run, to dive with me. I had one second, you see, Stella, one second, maybe less, and I knew if I used it to try and warn Kip, I knew it
would be one second too late for both of us. And I saw your face, Stella. I felt your skin. And I wanted to come home to you. I ran for cover. I didn’t get far, a few feet at most. The rocket hit us square, hit Kip dead on. Took my leg off. And I saw it: I saw it go up in the sky in an arc, like it was a dream, and then there was this pink mist raining down on us, all of us. And it was a second or two before I could hear again – the thud of my leg in the dirt and the screams. My screams. And pain – pain that I had no idea was possible. I remember my squad facing sniper bullets to drag me to shelter, and realising the pink mist, the pink mist that was slicking my face and my hands, that was what was left of Kip.’

  For several long seconds I can’t say anything; there are no words. Before, I just knew the bare bones of what had happened to him, but now the images he has conjured up, the secrets that he’s kept to himself all this time and the nightmare that keeps him awake, are all too vivid for me as well.

  ‘But Vincent, you couldn’t have done anything … There wasn’t time. You didn’t know …’

  ‘Now, see that is where you’re wrong.’ Vincent takes a step towards me. ‘I could have done one thing very differently. I could have been a mate, I could have been a soldier, I could have been a man – and reached for him, warned him, taken him with me. We might have both died, but we might have both made it. It was a risk, a risk that I didn’t want to take. I had to choose, Stella. I had to choose between being the man I always thought I was and coming home to you. And I chose you.’

  The air smells of distant smoke. There are shrieks and howls somewhere in the distance, and it feels as if the world outside the pool of lamplight we are standing in doesn’t exist.

  ‘And I thank God every day that you did,’ I whisper.

  ‘Well, I don’t.’ His shoulders heave with the effort it takes him to speak in a level tone, fighting to keep his voice calm. ‘I’m not glad. Every night, every time I close my eyes, I feel that mist, the rain of my best mate, sticky on my skin; I smell it. I see the photo of his wife and kid that he kept taped above his bed. I know that I failed him; I failed my unit, my regiment, myself. I know that I am not the man I always thought I was. The man who when the moment came would step up, would do what he was trained to do. I didn’t think it would ever be in doubt, because that is who I am. Who I thought I was. But the moment came and I failed. I’m weak, I’m useless. Broken body, broken mind. Not a soldier any more, not anything …’