James looks up. “Paul,” says my father. “He said he’d be back about now.”
“Should we ring Adrian and Jake?” says Martin.
“No,” says my father. “They can wait. As long as Kitty’s safe—that’s the important thing.”
James still says nothing. He sits down beside me again. He doesn’t smile, but he looks at me, and I think he is gathering every ounce of energy he has available and pouring it into me. How could I ever have forgotten to include him in my plans?
My father walks to the door. “Paul,” he calls, but there is no answer. “Funny,” he says. “You’d think he would come in and say hello.”
“I’m sure he will when he wants to,” says James.
My father opens his mouth to contradict James, then stops, surprisingly. “Food,” he says. “What can we have? Chinese takeaway, fish and chips, balti, eggs, bacon, sausage, cheese on toast …”
There are footsteps in the hall and Paul comes in. “Hello, Kitty,” he says nonchalantly. “Nice to see you’re all right.”
I don’t reply. I can’t think of anything to say.
“Anything to eat?” he says, looking inside the bread bin. “Where’s all the bread gone?”
“In the freezer,” says my father.
“Not much good there, is it? Shall I go for a takeaway?”
“Yes,” says my father.
“By the way, you left the door on the latch. Anyone could have come in. You shouldn’t leave it like that.”
“Are you going to fetch some food then?” says my father. “We’re all starving, aren’t we, Kitty?”
I try to nod, but I’m not sure if my head is moving properly.
“Right, I’ll go for a Chinese, shall I?”
“Great,” says Martin.
“Cough up,” says Paul to my father. As I sit here watching, it’s difficult to believe that we’re all grown-up, middle-aged even. Paul’s hair is starting to recede as well as going thin on top, Martin is growing a noticeable paunch, my father has to put his glasses on to check the money in his pocket. But the hierarchy is the same. My father is in charge, my brothers still boys.
“Cheers,” says Paul, taking the money.
“Get a selection,” says my father. “Be extravagant. Get a couple of bottles of wine.”
“I don’t think you’ve given me enough money for wine.”
“Hurry up, Paul. We’re starving. We’ll sort out the money later.”
Paul goes to the door. “Back in thirty minutes,” he says and leaves, jangling his car keys in his hand.
He comes back in again almost immediately. “Can anyone smell burning?” he says.
The smell comes strongly through the door. We get up and go into the hall, just as a violent, nerve-jangling shriek comes from our only smoke alarm on the first-floor landing.
Megan, I think. Megan and her matches. She must have followed me here, come through the open front door, crept up the stairs on her own, found a neglected bedroom, made a pile of chairs, beds, sheets, towels, anything, and used her matches—
“Megan!” I shout, and run to the stairs.
James is with me, behind me, somehow keeping up on his uneven legs. He knows, I think.
I don’t know where anyone else is. “Megan!” I shout again as we race up the stairs, opening doors on the first floor, checking the bedrooms, the bathrooms, along the creaky landing and up the spiral staircase to my father’s studio. I can hear the fire now, crackling, almost comfortable, and I know that Megan is here, sitting on top of the world, lighting matches in my father’s studio. She’s creating her own secret, fascinating world.
I stop at the open door. A pile of objects in the middle of the room—Megan’s wigwam—everything alight: Dad’s easel; canvases; the red and black throw from the sofa; books and magazines. But it’s still only a bonfire, still controllable. Megan’s on the far side, perched on the window sill, gazing calmly into the fire, with no awareness of the danger. The smoke alarm is shrieking downstairs, hammering its way inside my head, pushing out all coherent thought.
“Megan!” I shout. My voice is swallowed instantly, and then I realize that the fire is much bigger than I first thought.
Megan looks across at me quite suddenly, as if she is waking from a dream, and her expression changes. She looks lost, bewildered, her fascination turning to fear. The noise from the smoke alarm and the fire itself overwhelms all other sounds. I need to reach her, before it’s too late. She’s staring straight at me, her mouth opening and shutting, and I know she’s calling me. She needs me now. I am here.
James and Martin are shouting behind me. “Water—” I hear ”—blankets—” There isn’t time for all that now.
I pick up one of the large blank canvases by the door, and use it as a shield. I have to get round to Megan before the fire gets too powerful. Someone is trying to grab me from behind, catching hold of my cardigan. I can hear voices, but I don’t know what they’re saying. I struggle out of my cardigan, leaving it behind with the pulling hands. Then I’m free, inching round the edge of the room, holding the canvas in front of me to protect me from the heat.
“I’m coming!” I shout to Megan. “I’m coming!” I can’t hear myself. My voice doesn’t exist—I can only shout silence.
Time seems to have grown and stretched, like Dali’s clocks, so a second is an hour, a minute a thousand hours, and I feel as if I’ve been crossing the room for ever. Behind my canvas I can see the flames: they’ve grown into something unreal. They’re in front of me, on either side of me, but their roaring, flickering strength seems more exhilarating than dangerous. Every colour that ever existed is here in this room: the reds, the blues, the yellows, oranges, purples, green, brown, black, white, leapfrogging over each other, fighting for dominance, their dangerous fascination weaving beautiful and complex patterns around me.
I’ve lived all my life, come all this way to be here. This is my own, my only unselfish act, my chance to give a child life. This is it.
I get round the edges of the flames in the middle of the room, and reach the other side with Megan, watching myself from above. Kitty—incompetent in every trivial detail of her life, incapable of having children or even looking after them—is suddenly fearless. Kitty, the heroine, who leads a child to safety. I watch myself stamping at the fire with my feet, grabbing another painting from the corner, trying to smother some of the flames before they spread. But I’m mad. This fire is big. I arrived too late. The easel at the centre of the room is no longer recognizable, swallowed by the insatiable monster in the flames, which are spreading outwards now, towards Megan and me and towards Martin and James on the other side of the room.
Megan is huddled into a tight ball on the window sill.
“Kitty,” I think she says. I can’t really hear her. She puts her arms out to me, and I hold her tightly. She’s trembling with fear.
“It wasn’t my fault,” she shouts into my ear.
“I think it was mine,” I splutter. But I don’t think she can hear me. We’re both coughing now, choking in the fumes. The sound of burning dominates everything—a rushing, cracking, angry roar that batters my mind.
I look back to the doorway and see James shouting. He tries to dive into the room towards me, but Martin grabs him from behind, holding him back. Good, I think. No point in both of us risking our lives for Megan. I’m the one who has to do this. I’m the one who brought her here. No one else should have to make sacrifices.
I climb on the window sill with Megan and we squeeze together in a corner. There’s no chance of getting back. Martin and James have had to retreat from the heat. I keep hearing James’s voice—”Kitty, Kitty!” but I realize that the voice is in my head, because nobody could shout louder than the fire. I try to shut him out. I can’t concentrate if I think of him.
I look to see if we could climb out of the window. But we are two storeys up with a sheer drop below. There are rhododendrons beneath us. Would they break our fall? If I open the wi
ndow the air will feed the fire.
You have to lie on the floor. Why do you have to do that? Something about the fumes. They kill you before the fire gets to you. That sounds less alarming. I don’t want to be burnt alive—I would rather be dead before it gets to me. But we are both coughing.
“Get down!” I shout at Megan. “We have to lie on the floor.”
She looks at me without understanding. I try to edge her from the window sill, but she’s rigid with fear, mesmerized by the fire.
Another of my father’s paintings has fallen into the flames. The sea, of course, the pebbles on the beach, a fishing boat coming in. It looks like my mental image of the seaside, not the real one where I went with Megan. The fire is eating its way through the picture, devouring my father’s red, rippling through the sea, swallowing it whole.
I can see anything I want in the fire. All the colours of the universe, swirling round each other, and merging, so they become one colour, shades and variations of a perfect whole. I can see the pink van with the circling question marks. It’s real, fully formed, inviting me in. And I see Dinah, my mother, falling through the air, her multi-coloured dress billowing out round her, all the colours I have ever encountered, swallowing each other up and becoming one smudged, confused brown. I can hear her cry. I know it’s her. I know that she’s crying my name, realizing that she’s going to die. And I know that I was there, that I saw her fall.
A bookcase from the side of the room crashes down, the books queuing up to be the next victims of the fire. The crash jerks me awake. I must do something. Someone’s at the doorway, covered in a blanket, holding a coffee table as a shield, moving forward slowly into the flames. I can’t look, the heat is so intense. I put my hand up and try to see through my fingers. Is it Martin or Paul, my father, or James? It could be any one of them. They would all rescue me if they could.
He’s pushing burning objects out of the way with the table, clearing a passage to us. He shoves everything aside, stamping out flames under his feet. The blanket is on fire, but still he keeps coming. He’s going to make it. He’s going to save us.
A second bookcase topples directly on to him. He falls, tries to save himself, but loses his balance. I can see him trying again, but then he gives up, and lies there, surrounded by burning books. I hold my breath for him, willing him to get up. The floor collapses underneath him, and he and the blackened books disappear into a raging furnace.
“No!” I scream without sound. “No!” And I don’t know who it is that I’m crying for.
Megan moves beside me and I force myself to concentrate. The flames are reaching upwards to the roof. We have to get down. I climb off the window sill. The fire has not quite reached our side of the room. There’s a hard-backed chair by the window and I grab it, hoping to use it to hold back the flames. There’s still room for us to crouch down on this bit of floor.
I lift Megan off. She comes surprisingly easily. She thinks I’ll save her. She believes I can do this miraculous thing, and I don’t know how to tell her that I can’t. She trusts me, but she really shouldn’t. She clings to me, putting her arms around my neck.
“It’s all right,” I mutter into her ear. “It’s all right.” She can’t possibly hear me. I can’t hear myself. But I feel calm. How is this possible when I could live or die? It doesn’t matter which. But now, only now, I know instantly that it does matter.
I lower Megan to the floor and wrap my body round her. I want her to live. I will save her, even if I sacrifice myself. She needs to live. She’s only a child and she has so much further to go than me.
The heat is like a solid wall, and I know we can never escape by going back through it. I think of us cooking, like sausages in an oven, turning brown, rolling over, splitting open. The flames are nearly upon us, and we can’t last much longer. They have swallowed up my father’s entire creative output for the last three months. They won’t hold back when they reach us.
I hear a violent explosion. It takes a few seconds for me to realize that the window has broken, shattered glass sprinkling down on us. Why don’t they use oven-proof glass for windows? I wrap Megan more tightly, close my eyes and wait. I’m curiously unafraid.
There are new noises, bangs, crashes. I open my eyes. Two black legs have appeared. They move, they walk around and I am being picked up.
“Megan!” I scream, afraid that she’ll be left unprotected. But there are two more legs, and she’s being picked up too. We’re carried back to the window. I wonder if this is death, come to fetch us personally, to check we don’t escape through some unexpected loophole.
I’m wet. There is a another roaring sound, and water streams past me as I’m lifted through the window. The fire brigade. I forgot about the fire brigade. Someone must have phoned them. I’m carried down the ladder by a fireman, and it’s difficult not to see him as superhuman. He seems enormous, at least ten feet tall, strong as an ox, safe as houses.
“Wait!” I scream. “There’s somebody else in there. Go back!”
“Don’t worry,” says a deep voice. “We’ll find him.”
I’m astonished by the calmness of his voice, the voice of someone who’s in complete control.
Outside, they make me lie down. “I’m all right,” I say to everyone. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
James’s face is above me. So who was it who tried to save us and got swallowed up himself? I think James is saying, “Kitty, Kitty,” but I’m only guessing. He has blood dripping down the side of his face. He’s hurt, I think, and I try to touch him, but my hands are not where I think they are. He doesn’t seem worried by the blood, but he’s crying. Tears are pouring down his cheeks, and I feel his hand gently touch my cheek. I’ve never seen James cry before. I didn’t know he could.
10
that pinprick of time
The nurses bring cups of tea at 6:30 in the morning, walking in cheerfully and loudly, pulling back the poppy-strewn curtains. They talk to us to wake us up: “Morning, Helen. Did you sleep better, George? Why are half your pillows on the floor, Katherine?” They don’t call me Kitty. I like that. I can believe that Kitty is the inward, secret part of me that I don’t have to share with strangers. I hear everything coming to life before 6:30, when they start making the tea. A clink of cups and saucers, a murmur of voices, sometimes a stray giggle, followed by someone saying “Shh.” I’m glad they’re happy.
I can’t use my hands because of the bandages, so they give me a cup with a straw, carefully positioned on the locker beside me. I lean over and sip slowly, waiting for the tea to cool. I feel like a child again, drinking Coca-Cola through a straw—except it’s hot and not sweet.
I’m usually awake long before the tea comes. I think sometimes that I never sleep, but maybe I just can’t tell the difference between dreams and reality. I’ve stopped taking their sleeping pills because they keep me awake. There are far too many other pills to take, anyway.
I lie painfully in the dim half-light and watch the other patients moving restlessly, creaking on their plastic mattresses. I hear the rasping of their breath, the snores and snorts, the sudden gasps for air. I listen to the nurses talking, watch them wheel beds around when a new patient is brought in, a motionless, sleeping body tucked up kindly in a blanket.
Then I remember and cry again. Tears that never want to stop.
James comes and helps me eat my meals. He cuts everything up, chasing the food around with a knife and fork, until he has a reasonable mouth-sized portion. I open my mouth and he pops in the fork. We tried a spoon at first, but it wasn’t very successful. Spoons are not cleverly designed, we discovered, and it’s almost impossible to get the food out of the hollow. We use a fork now. I chew, swallow and wait for the next mouthful like a child, three years old. I wonder sometimes if that’s why James stays, puts up with me. He sees me as a child; it makes him feel wanted. Or maybe he’s just feeding the child we’ll never have.
“How would you feel about adopting a child?” he says one
day—earnestly, afraid he might upset me. He’s spent the last thirty minutes getting to the point.
I’m surprised that he hasn’t thought it through. “They’re not going to let us, are they?” I say. “Not after all this.”
He doesn’t reply.
It was Martin, of course. I think I always knew it was Martin, wanting to be like Samson, or Porthos in The Man in the Iron Mask, powerful as a mountain, holding up the doomed building so that everyone could escape, dying in the process. And he didn’t manage to save us. He didn’t even need to try, because the fire brigade was just around the corner. James had made the first rescue attempt, but Martin had pushed him downstairs and taken over.
I like the quiet, dull routine of the hospital. The boredom of it all pleases me: I’d be happy to lie in bed and think of nothing all day. Pain needs a lot of concentration. But they won’t let me. I have to walk around the ward once every two hours. It’s not very far, but it feels like twenty miles—I have to stop after every four steps because I can’t breathe. They tell me there’s nothing wrong with my lungs, that I’m holding my breath because of the pain. Am I holding my breath? I can’t catch myself doing it. They bring breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, tea, supper, a soothing night drink. The price of a drink is conversation. They want to talk to me and I have to answer.
James comes in for all the meals except breakfast, feeding me, reading to me. He uses taxis, so he can keep his work going at home. We’re reading the Narnia chronicles. We have reached Prince Caspian, and I love the ruins, the sense of nostalgia and loss, the children’s return to a world which has gone on without them. I could be there, I think. Everyone has moved on while I’ve been standing still. I might even have been slipping backwards.
Sometimes, James just sits with me while I cry for Martin. He doesn’t say anything, but I think he cries for him too, in his quiet, private way.
Dr. Cross came to see me shortly after the fire. I opened my eyes one day and found her sitting next to me, calm, patient as always.
Astonishing Splashes of Colour Page 28