After You'd Gone

by Maggie O'Farrell

  Dr Colman offers Beth his hand. ‘You can call me Mike.’ Beth snakes her way from the toilet through the tables in the hospital cafeteria to where her parents are sitting and slumps down into a seat opposite them. They have ended up eating here after all. The room is empty apart from the woman in a green overall behind the glass food counter and a couple of doctors talking in hushed tones over a trayful of food that neither of them is eating. Her father pours her a cup of tea from a dented stainless-steel teapot.

  ‘What’s with that guy Mike?’ Beth asks.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, is he in love with her or something? Typical of Alice — people still falling in love with her despite the small fact that she’s in a coma.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Beth.’ Ann purses her lips and takes a sip of her cooling tea. ‘He’s a doctor. He’s just doing his job.’

  ‘Are you missing many lectures?’ Ben says, trying to change the subject.

  Beth adds milk to her tea and swirls it around with a plastic spoon. ‘Some. I spoke to my director of studies yesterday after Neil came to get me. She said to take as long as I needed.’ ‘That was nice of her.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  Ben squeezes his daughter’s hand. ‘She’s going to be all right, you know,’ he says.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Beth raises her eyes to her father’s. ‘Yes. I do.’

  Beth swallows a mouthful of tea. It tastes thick and over-brewed.

  Ben stands. ‘I’m going to call a taxi and then we can go back to the house,’ he says. ‘You look very tired, Beth. I’ve put up a camp bed in Alice’s spare room for you.’

  Beth watches her father walk across the room to the row of telephones. Ann pulls a cigarette out of her bag and seems to be searching for a lighter. ‘Mum! Don’t do that.’ Beth points at a sign. ‘It’s no smoking in here.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ann fumbles with the cigarette, dropping it under the seat, ‘I forgot.’

  Beth expects her to start feeling about for it around her feet, but she is leaning over the table, looking Beth straight in the face. ‘Beth, tell me about Alice coming to Edinburgh.’ ‘There’s not much to say, really,’ Beth says, taken aback by her mother’s sudden intensity. ‘She came, and then she left.’ ‘Was she . . . Did she seem . . . upset when she left, do you think?’

  ‘Um. Yes. She was, I think.’

  ‘Do you know what had upset her?’

  ‘No. Not at all. Kirsty and I were trying to work it out. She got up to go to the loo, was gone for about five minutes, then when she came back she was all strange and distant.’ ‘The loo?’ Ann repeats. ‘She went to the loo? Which loo?’

  ‘God, Mum, I don’t know. That big Superloo place, I think.’ Beth thinks hard. ‘In fact I’m sure it was the Superloo because she asked us if we had change.’

  ‘Change?’

  ‘Yeah. You need a twenty-pence coin to get in there.’

  ‘What time was this?’ Ann is no longer looking at her, but craning over her shoulder to look at Ben. He is speaking into the phone, his hand held over his other ear.

  ‘Why are you asking about all this?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ Ann says, in a near-whisper. ‘Because I want to know. Just tell me, Beth. What time was it?’

  ‘Um . . . well . . . Alice’s train got in about eleven. So this would have been — I don’t know — quarter past, twenty past maybe.’

  ‘Twenty past eleven? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ Beth says. ‘But what’s this got to do with anything?’

  ‘Here’s your father,’ Ann announces in a loud voice, and Ben is loping back towards them, jangling the change in his trouser pocket.

  I still cannot believe you have gone. Before this, I used to wake up and wonder for a split second why I had this weight of grief pressing down on my chest and why my pillow was wet. I used to forget because it was just absurd for me to be without you. Absurd.

  But you did die. And for no reason at all.

  A few days after you had died, the papers printed a photo of the man who planted the bomb that killed you. He died too and he was only young, younger than you. My family tried to make sure I didn’t see the papers at that time, but I did see it and do you know I didn’t hate him. I wanted to go to his mother and father and say, how do you feel do you feel like I do tell me how you feel?

  Someone has put Annie on my lap. I am surprised by this. I don’t remember anyone doing it. It must have been Kirsty. I turn my head to the right. Kirsty is sitting in the back of the car too, her face turned towards the window, our father between us. My mother is driving, her ringed hands grasping the wheel. She hates driving in London. Beth is next to her. I wonder vaguely where Neil is. I’m sure I saw him earlier with the new baby. Jamie.

  I feel hot. I am wearing funny clothes. I had a bath this morning and when I came back into the bedroom, my mother was standing by the window wrenching the labels off a new skirt and jacket with an angry flick of her arm, muttering, ‘If you’re going to meet those bastards I’m going to make damn sure you look good.’ The material is black woven wool, the nap of it itching my skin, the jacket sleeves too short and the skirt an odd calf-length. It’s tight around the knees and I have to take shortened steps when I walk. I feel old in these clothes.

  I reach forward, my head touching Annie’s, and turn the window handle a few times. The top of the window shudders down and a jet of icy air is sucked through the gap. Annie goes rigid in my arms, her almond-shaped blue eyes opening wide. I watch as she extends an arm upwards and sticks her tiny, pliable fingers into the gap. She snatches them back immediately, cradling her hand against her chest. I curl my own fingers round hers. ‘Was it cold?’ I ask her.

  Suddenly everyone in the car has turned to me.

  ‘What did you say?’ ‘What was that?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘Did you say something?’ they all say over each other.

  I look down at Annie. Her hair, growing in wisps across her fragile skull, is so blonde it’s the spun white of raw silk. Charts of blue threads run over her forehead. I can’t remember when I last heard my voice. I clear my throat experimentally but then press my lips together. I allow myself to say his name inside my head: John. I try it again: he is dead.

  Annie’s eyes flicker to and fro at the streets we are passing through. Suddenly she lifts her arm again, the whole of her springy, compact body tensing in effort. Each of her knuckles is dimpled and she sticks out her index finger. ‘Og!’ she exclaims carefully, looking round at me for confirmation.

  There is a pause.

  ‘She’s saying “dog”,’ says Kirsty. ‘She can see a dog out there.’

  I look out of the window. Not three feet from us, a couple are walking along the pavement. The man has slid his hand into the back pocket of the woman’s jeans, but she is angry. Her face is frowning, turned towards his; she is speaking in short, emphasised jolts and with every expressive jerk, the arm attached to her by her jeans pocket twitches like a marionette’s. Trotting beside them, a red lead held in his mouth, oblivious to their anger, is a brown, shaggv-coated dog.

  The car moves off. I crane my head round to see them and as we turn a corner, they are still arguing. They have stopped walking and he has removed his hand from her pocket. They disappear from view. Annie has turned and is gazing intently at me. She doesn’t see me very often. She presses the tip of her index finger against my chin. One of my tears catches it and rolls down her finger, over her hand and up her sleeve. She takes away her hand and peers in surprise up her jumper sleeve.

  The car stops and everyone is getting out. I release the catch on the door and clutch Annie to me. I have to bend my knees awkwardly and stagger forward so as not to bump her head on the car door. I am aware of a sudden movement among the people standing about on the pavement and there is a muted slapping sound as feet hurry across the tarmac towards me. I am surrounded by jostling people, a stuttering volley of questions and bright flares of flashbulbs.
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br />   ‘Mrs Friedmann, do you have any comment on your husband’s death?’

  ‘Is it true that John was estranged from his family?’

  ‘Mrs Friedmann, do you have any message for the bombers?’ ‘Alice, is that your baby? Is that John Friedmann’s child?’ ‘Alice, can you look this way?’

  I am shielding Annie’s head with my hand. She is clutching the neck of my blouse so tightly in her fists that I feel I might choke and her rising screams are drilling into my ear. Then someone - a friend of John’s from the paper who has appeared from somewhere — is shoving at these people and dragging me forwards, his hand gripping my arm. Then we are through some doors and Beth is there beside me and Annie is pulled away from me and my father is holding my hand. It is very quiet suddenly.

  The coffin is a shock. He is in there, I tell myself inside my head, his body is just under that wood. It seems very important to examine it closely, run my hand along it, feel the grain of the wood against the striating lines of my hand. I am walking towards it and now I can see the large, wide-ended brass screws holding down the lid. There is a suffocating tightness across my chest. I am working out what kind of a screwdriver I would need to undo them and now I am getting closer, so close; I am putting out my hand ready and I can nearly touch it when I feel a restraining tug on my other hand. Puzzled, I look down and see that my father is still holding it. ‘This way, Alice,’ he is saying to me. ‘Come and sit down.’

  But . . .

  ‘Come on,’ he says gently.

  I am so close. Another two steps and I could press my hand to it. Is it smooth? Would it feel warm? Could I lay my cheek against it? I look back at my father. It wouldn’t be difficult to wrench myself from his grasp and take those two steps. Beyond him, I can see my family sitting down in the front row, looking at me, anxious. Neil is there too, with Jamie in his arms. And beyond them there is a mass of faces, so many faces — did John know this many people? - all looking at me but trying not to and I suddenly think that in those people, somewhere, must be John’s father. I let my father lead me to the seat and I sit down between my parents. Maybe they’ll let me touch it later..

  I listen to myself breathing in and out, in and out, lungs filling and then pressing out the air again into the atmosphere.

  I imagine the air entering me as light filling a dark space. Then, before I can stop it, I find that my thoughts are hurtling along the familiar track of what it must be like trying to breathe when you’re pulling in only dust and old, stale carbon dioxide; or trying to breathe at all when you are weighted down beneath tonnes and tonnes of concrete and metal. Did he die straight away or was he alive and conscious for hours, fighting for breath, hoping to be rescued? The police couldn’t tell me. I feel again that tidal panic welling somewhere near my stomach and I have to look hard at the person standing at the front and concentrate on what he is saying to stop myself from screaming.

  It is Sam, John’s friend from university, and he is talking and talking and when he starts a sentence he spreads out his hands, opening up his fingers like petals and when he finishes the sentence he brings his hands back together. In and out, in and out. I watch him but don’t listen because I don’t want to hear because none of this is any good and none of it will bring him back and nothing any of these people say will alter the fact that he’s lying there in that box and how I want just to go and touch it. I hear Annie exclaim something and Kirsty murmuring at her to shush, not long now, and poor Annie she must be so bored. Then I hear Sam mention my name and it’s like a needle crunching on a scratched record and I am scared, scared in case all these people want me to get up there and say something because I don’t know what I would say, what is there to say now because all I want to do is just run my hand along it, just once would be enough, and I would be really brave and not cry and cause a scene in front of all these people, because that’s what my parents are worried about, I know that. In front of his father.

  His father. I twist round in my seat. I want to see him.

  I scan the rows and rows of faces. I know all these people. Some of them give me a little smile and some of them nod. One person waves. I don’t wave back — and I feel bad about ignoring them — but I just want to get a look at him. I just want to see who he is and I want him to look at me and think, that’s Alice.

  My mother is plucking at my sleeve and muttering ‘Alice’ in that way so 1 know she wants me to turn around and sit nicely, but I won’t. Over the other side of the room, across the narrow aisle through all the seats is a group of people I’ve never seen before. John’s family. I know it. Six or seven of them. There are four middle-aged men in dark overcoats. I realise that I’m looking for someone who looks like John, I’m searching for an older face that echoes his, but none of them do.

  A woman from John’s work is reading a poem. I can hear people sobbing in the room and beside me my father is supporting his forehead in his hand. It’s funny because I used to tease John about how I thought that this woman fancied him. I am just about to turn round again to look at his family when there is a strange electronic whirring sound. Little wheels under his coffin are rotating and the coffin is moving slowly towards an opening in the wall that was hidden behind some curtains. Nobody told me this would happen.

  I spring upright, my legs barely holding out, but immediately my parents seize hold of me and pull me back down.

  ‘No!’ I struggle. ‘No, please, I just want . . .’

  Both my hands are being crushed by my parents’ and I watch in horror as his coffin trundles slowly into the hole and disappears. Then I wrest my hands free because I want to cover my face. I clamp both my hands over my eyes and won’t take them away because I never want to look on anything ever again.

  Rachel has her arm through Alice’s and they are standing near the door. Lots of people are coming up to Alice — kissing her lightly on the cheek, shaking her hand, saying things which, once they are out of their throats and into the air, she can’t recall at all. She looks at their mouths moving, nods a lot but doesn’t speak. Rachel speaks and so does Alice’s mother who is standing somewhere nearby but Alice can’t see her. Someone puts into her hands a yellow plastic pot.

  She stares at it blankly, her hands curled round its sides. Rachel’s hand supports it from underneath. Rachel thinks she’ll drop it. It has a tiny silver plaque on the front with the words ‘John Daniel Friedmann’ in a nasty italicised script. She is looking at this plaque, wondering if she can remove it when someone to her left says in a quiet voice, ‘You must be Alice.’

  She turns. It is one of the men in dark overcoats, offering his outstretched hand. She has to shift the pot into the crook of her left elbow to take it. His hand is warm and he holds on to hers for longer than she expected.

  ‘I’m Nicholas,’ he says, then adds, ‘John’s uncle.’

  ‘Yes.’ Alice tries out her voice cautiously. It sounds unnaturally high and cracked. She passes her tongue over her lips and draws in a deep breath. ‘John’s told me about you.’

  ‘Alice,’ he begins, ‘we . . . that is, the rest of the family . . . want you to know how very sorry we are about . . . everything.’

  Rachel is holding on to her very tightly. Alice nods.

  ‘Also,’ he glances involuntarily behind him at a man standing a few feet away, ‘Daniel would like to know . . . if you don’t mind telling us . . . where you’re going to scatter those.’ He points at the yellow urn.

  Alice looks over his shoulder at John’s father. He is shorter, stockier than she imagined, with grey hair cut very short. He is standing alone, gazing out of the doors at the crowds of people on the pavement outside and as she watches he draws the side of his finger across his eyelid in a slow movement full of weariness and grief. At precisely that moment, and just for a moment, she loves him. She actually loves him. It feels like the unfamiliar, cramping stretch of rarely used muscles. She even looks at her watch. At 3.04 p.m. I loved your father.

  She unscrews the lid of the urn an
d looks inside. It is filled with a finely sifted, whitish powder. She dips her fingertips into it and rubs the grains between finger and thumb. They dissolve and flake under her touch. She screws the lid back on and pushes it into Nicholas Friedmann’s hands. He is astounded. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks.

  Ann, who has materialised at her side, is saying, ‘Alice, you don’t have to do that, you know. You might regret it. You don’t have to do that.’

  He is touching her sleeve hesitantly. Alice nods at him, twice. He walks back across the room and, saying something in a low voice, hands the urn to John’s father. He cradles it in his hands and, just as Alice did, tilts it back to read the plaque. Then he looks over at her. Their eyes meet, briefly. She stands there thinking that he is going to come over and she is pushing down all the words that are crowding into her throat, but then he turns and, clutching the urn to him, goes out of the door and down the steps into the bright winter sun.

  Ann hated North Berwick at first. Hated it. Hated that everywhere she went - into shops, on to the beach, into the park, into the library — everyone knew exactly who she was: 'You must be Ben Raikes’s wife,’ or ‘You’re the new Mrs Raikes,’ or ‘This must be Elspeth’s daughter-in-law.’ She would draw her coat around her, run her hand around the edges of the coins in her pocket, not knowing how to respond to these greetings. She wras, she knew, at a disadvantage straight away, because she had no idea who anyone was, let alone have all sorts of inside information on them and their families going back four generations. People she’d not only never met before but would never want to meet would just stop her in the street and ask her questions as if they knew her: ‘How do you like it here?’ ‘Do you play golf at all?’ ‘Why don’t you call round for some coffee?’ ‘Where is it you’re from anyway?’ She couldn’t be invisible. It was as if she was walking around with a big sign on her back. To her, the town, trapped as it was between the sea and the flat monotony of the agricultural fields, was a pit that seethed with gossip, circles of knowledge and people who clawed information from you. And they didn’t like her, thought her a stuck-up Englishwoman — she knew that and she didn’t care.