No—she wouldn’t let them get bad. If God chose to keep his distance, well, that was His privilege. The lower ranks couldn’t expect to hobnob with top brass. It was enough that He was there, running the whole show.
Martin had finished his peaches, made inroads on the biscuits. He folded up his napkin, pushed his chair back. ‘I really must be going, Mrs Conyers. My Mum’ll be back by now and she’ll wonder where …’
‘Off you go, then. And mind you wrap up warm. That wind’s really whipping up now. Can I lend you a woolly scarf?’
‘No. I’m okay. And thanks for the meal and everything. Can I … er … help you with the—you know—clearing up and stuff?’
‘Good gracious no! That’s my job. I like to keep busy, Martin. If you want those postcards, by the way, you’re welcome to take them with you.’
‘But … I thought you always kept your cards? Chris said you’ve got hundreds—all the ones she sent you as a kid.’
‘Well, I don’t need any more then, do I? The cloakroom’s down the passage, if you want it—second door along. That’s it.’
She went to fetch the cards, slipped them in a carrier bag with the last few almond fingers and three quarters of the date and walnut cake swathed in one of her lupined damask napkins; pushed it into his hand as she waved him off. Charity was easy, faith harder. Hope she had almost forgotten these last few months. Now she had it back—hope in God, in heaven, in being reunited with her darling Edward. She ought to be prepared—just as she was always ready for an accident, wearing decent underclothes with no safety pins or ladders, so that if a doctor scooped her off the road, she wouldn’t feel ashamed. The rest of her life—and there wasn’t that much left of it—must be a training period, to make her worthy to meet her two Beloveds.
She returned to the kitchen, filled the sink with soapy water, started on the dishes. It was nearer one than midnight now, but first things first.
‘I’m ready, Lord,’ she said, scrubbing at the stubborn burnt-on cake tin. ‘When You are.’
Chapter Sixteen
The cab was still roaring, lurching on. Morna shifted position. It was the longest ride she had been on in the whole long day at Disneyland, except time was lost, meant nothing. She had pierced through the smallest smallest scintilla of a snowflake, come out the other side, still reeling at its vastness, stunned by worlds she had never glimpsed before. She rubbed her eyes. Strange shapes and patterns were flickering in front of her, not snowflakes any longer, but distorted human figures. The soundtrack had fouled up again, jarring even more now that new voices had joined in, discordant, overlapping, shuddering through the cab. She covered her face with her hands, tried to block her ears. She couldn’t take in any more. She was exhausted by the queasy swooping motion, the insistent whining roar.
When she opened her eyes again, the shapes had disappeared, the flickering stopped, the voices silenced or blurred into the roar. It was darker now, save for tiny points of light above, like stars, except stars had never been that close before. She tried to reach up and touch one, but her arms seemed padlocked to her side, her whole body weighted down. Perhaps they were going from inner space to outer space. But wouldn’t she be weightless, then? Her limbs felt heavy, leaden, as if she had changed her density, been given a transfusion, not of blood but mercury. It was hard to breathe, impossible to think. The reverberation of the cab was throbbing through her ears, dulling her whole body.
She let herself sink down, woke again to voices—different voices, softer and more distant, soothing like a chant or lullaby. Someone had nailed her eyelids down, but she was aware of a bustling around her, people stirring, getting up. The ride must be over. Time to get out, join Neil and Bunny, Chris and Dean. Was that Bunny she could hear—a female voice with a Californian accent, speaking very loudly above the rest?
‘Snow,’ Morna heard. ‘Something something snowing.’ Surely not. They had already had the snowflakes. The ride was finished now. Or had she missed the exit and been carried round a second time? A third?
She groped for the push-bar, felt something soft instead, fuzzy like a rug. This couldn’t be the cab. There were no rugs on rides in Disneyland and the seat had been harder and more rigid than the one beneath her now. She forced her eyes open, stared at the fistful of red blanket glowing in her fingers. They’d had red blankets in the infirmary at school. Blue on all the ordinary beds—blue for the Blessed Virgin—red when you were ill.
She must be very ill. You were only allowed in the infirmary if your temperature was 102 degrees or more. With mere colds or minor flus, you stayed on your feet and suffered. She felt her head—it was clammy hot, throat parched and dry, eyes closing down again. She could hear footsteps coming closer, the clink of something on a tray. A bedpan, a thermometer? She squinted through her eyelids, tried to see which nun it was.
‘Breakfast time.’
Morna sank back. It wasn’t a nun at all—not in that swingy pleated skirt, that dapper little jacket edged with scarlet braid, and speaking with a Californian twang. Anyway, she couldn’t be at school. Even in the infirmary, you didn’t get your breakfast before prayers—prayers for the sick, followed by a long Latin blessing and, only then, your bowl of tepid porridge.
She struggled up, clutching at the blanket, gasped at the sudden dazzling light streaming through the windows, cutting golden swathes across the padded seats.
Windows? Padded seats?
‘Er … where are we?’ she asked, confused.
‘Right over the Scottish Highlands. That’s the sun shining on the mountain peaks. Aren’t they pretty? There’s no sun in London, though. They had gales last night and now they say it’s trying to snow. There was an announcement earlier, but I think you were asleep. You slept all through the move and …’
‘Movie?’
‘Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. It was kind of a boring one, to tell you the truth. Anyway, we’ll be arriving at Heathrow in less than two hours now, so you better sit up and have your breakfast.’
Morna rubbed her eyes. Heathrow. That was in London, wasn’t it? London, England. Place names hurt her head. They were too big, too full of jostling crowds and booming traffic.
‘Wh … What time is it?’ she faltered, above the traffic noise.
‘Quarter of two.’
A.m. or p.m.? Neither was breakfast time. She glanced at her own watch. Almost six o’clock. It hadn’t stopped. She could see the second hand circling slowly round. A yellow plastic tray was slotted in across her lap, trapping her in her seat. The tray was confused as well—breakfast, lunch, tea, all jumbled up together—orange juice and croissants, a dish of tinned fruit cocktail, a slice of cheese with three cheese biscuits wrapped in cellophane, a sickly looking cake. She sipped the juice. It tasted sharp and sweet at once, cold and clean on her furred-up palate. She had better try and eat. She bit into the cake—cream oozing out like the clouds outside the window, whipped-cream clouds sprinkled with a pink and golden topping. How could there be snow in London when that blazing sun was turning the yellow tray to topaz, the sky to knickerbocker glory?
Perhaps it was all a trick again, a staged effect like Hollywood? Except things were coming clearer now—other people with proper faces, working hands; rows of seats with heads above them, rows of letters which spelt words she could understand—‘NO SMOKING’, ‘PUSH FOR STEWARDESS’.
‘We’re nearly there,’ said someone. She turned to her right. A frail old woman, with thin and papery skin stretched across the skull beneath, was buttering a croissant with a veined and bony hand.
‘You’ve been sleepin’ for a good wee while.’ The accent was Glaswegian, the voice not frail at all, harsh and almost mocking.
Morna nodded. She remembered now, she had taken sleeping pills. Wasn’t used to them. A giant gin-and-Mogadon cocktail gulped down after take-off.
‘Are you on a visit to London?’
‘Er … no. I …’ Morna put her cake down. She had been visiting California, not Londo
n, seeing the sights. Disneyland. Adventure Through Inner Space. She shut her eyes, stepped trembling from the ride again into a world she didn’t recognise. The sun had gone down, natural daylight faded into fluorescent glare, fairy lights twinkling in the trees.
‘Chris!’ she had shouted, panicking; was answered by the laughs and shouts of strangers. A hundred thousand strangers. She had lost her party, would never find them now with all that razzle-dazzle spangle swamping individual faces into a general glow and sheen. She struggled along the path, out of Tomorrowland and into Main Street, all firm outlines blurring into iridescent mirages, illuminated façades. Trees were coloured cutouts, water only ripple and reflection, buildings one-dimensional. She had blinked against a burst of neon flowers. Every bloom was breaking into molecules and she was being whirled into the centre of each shining blinding atom—new galaxies in a millionth of a pollen grain, a cosmos in a sliver of a stamen.
She had tried to walk straight, kept tripping on debris—suns, planets, bits of star. A band was playing in Main Street Square, adding to her confusion. Tubas in her stomach, drums inside her head. Even the music was splintering into atoms, every demi-semi-quaver exploding in its own symphony of ever-crescendoing blare. She had to get out, escape from Disneyland. She fought her way to the car park through the clumsy sluggard crowds, found Neil’s silver Jaguar among a galactic waste of cars—all empty while their owners orbited the rides. She scribbled a note, secured it under the windscreen wiper, fled towards the exit and the bus stop.
The high-speed bus swallowed up the darkness, spat out lights both ends. More lights stretching out each side, cancelling the horizon, distorting shapes and distances. No band now, only the judder of the engine, the roar of passing cars. A sudden burst of fireworks as they passed a motel and someone’s private party. Rockets exploding in her skull, catherine wheels spinning her round and round with them, the Big Bang throwing up creation, then scattering it to the winds, the whole heaving universe burning out like a squib.
At last, she had reached the Ocean View Motel. An ambulance was throbbing just outside, with its gaggle of voyeurs. An accident, a mugging. Blue flashing lights breaking down the blood into whirling scarlet corpuscles, a murder in each congealing drop. She pushed through the crowd, panted up the stairs. She had to get away. It wasn’t safe. She flung her clothes in her case, phoned for a cab, directed it to Neil and Bunny’s house. No key, no one back yet. Dark windows, yapping dog. They must still be in Disneyland, still searching for her, still plunging up and down on all the rides. They would never find her—she was breaking down herself—cells, pores, corpuscles, hurtling around a central sphere of panic. Swept by the panic, she raced to LA airport in the cab. More confusion. Wrong ticket, wrong day, and only one last flight to London, almost leaving. She had to catch it, had to. She begged, stormed, changed the ticket, checked in, dashed through the departure lounge and out to the waiting plane.
A huge plane—huge and noisy. People pushing down the aisles, folding coats, stowing luggage, clambering over each other to find their seats. She collapsed into her own seat, heard voices babbling round her—laughing, chatting, Captain Brady speaking, safety regulations. Nothing safe. A great hurting lurching shudder in her stomach as they gasped into the sky. She peered out of the window—a dizzy tipping world, shrinking as she looked at it, falling away into only roar and light. Squares of light, strings of light, a city built of neon. Even that fading as the plane climbed steeper, was swallowed up in cloud. She could feel the cloud choking down her throat, clammy on her face.
‘Are you all right?’ asked someone—later—although time had disappeared still.
She nodded.
‘Like a glass of water?’
She sipped it, heard the liquid slurping in her stomach, changed the glass for gin when they brought the trolley round. A double gin. Another. She needed a drink to wash down the sleeping pills stolen from Neil’s bathroom. The last thing she remembered was holding the second pill between her thumb and index finger before she swallowed it—a tiny white pill swelling vast, immense, as she transferred it to her mouth, as if she were face to face with one gigantic snow-flake. Then piercing through the snowflake, shrinking smaller smaller as she burst into its atom, was swallowed up in its deafening roar.
The roar of the plane. Morna surfaced to it again, opened her eyes. The mouth on the right was opening and shutting, the same pumice-stone Glaswegian voice.
She tried to find her own voice. ‘I’m s … sorry, I didn’t quite hear what …’
‘Och! You’re English, are you? I thought you looked like an American.’
Morna glanced down at her feet. Were they her feet? They were wearing bright pink sneakers with Snoopy laces, stripy socks. American feet. She remembered now. Those were Bunny’s socks and shoes. She had borrowed them for Disneyland—something comfortable and casual—hadn’t changed her shoes since Sunday morning. Was it Sunday still? Or Monday? Tuesday morning?
‘I’m Scots myself—aye—born and bred in Langside.’ The wrinkled mouth paused to swallow fruit. ‘I’ve been stayin’ with my daughter in Santa Barbara. I only had the one wean. Wean!’ She made a face, spat a piece of peach into her hand. ‘She’s sixty-nine now and has mair aches and pains than I’ve got, and then she’s the cheek to say I’m too old to fly. I may be eighty-seven, but I’m strong as a horse. Feel that.’
Morna’s wrist was gripped in cold but steely fingers. This woman was close to ninety, close to death, yet had more strength in her arm than she did. She turned to look at her—near transparent skin, age spots on her hands, gaunt body in its chain-store frock, one cheap brooch in the shape of a black cat with a fake gem studded collar. The grip was hurting still, the grey eyes challenging—keen unfaded eyes, not even wearing spectacles. She let go of Morna’s wrist, clawed the biscuits from their cellophane.
‘Those cracker things. I’d rather have had the sweet ones.’ She picked one up and sniffed it, turned to Morna again. ‘Have you got any weans?’
‘Yes, just one.’
‘A boy?’
‘No, girl.’ Morna stared down at her own dismembered cake, jam bleeding into cream. How could she have left her daughter, run away on impulse like a child herself? Chris would be upset—worse, contemptuous. She had left a note which no one would believe—flimsy lies, excuses—told them not to worry.
‘My daughter never married.’ Gnarled and yellowed fingers dunking salt biscuits in a sweetened cup of tea. ‘She went to California with some man she met at her work. He talked her into it with a few vague promises. It didn’t last, though. He soon dropped her for a native. Is your girl married?’
‘No. She’s … er … only seventeen and a half.’ More stable than her mother, though. She was the adolescent—moody, mixed-up, acting like an irrational impetuous fool. How could she have done it, given way to panic, let a kiddies’ ride unhinge her?
‘I got married at sixteen and a half. Two years later, my man had scarpered—run away to sea.’
‘R … Run away?’
‘Aye. Though my old mither used to say that people never run away. They run to something—something else, something they think is more important—love and adventure, mibbe, or security and home. Anyway, I never mourned him. Nae regrets, as the song says.’
Morna glanced down at her stupid pink-striped knee-socks. Her own regrets were swarming as the haze of drugs and alcohol receded; shameful distorted snapshots rushing in to take their place—her vomiting and naked in a garish hotel bathroom, sobbing like a booby in Martha’s fleshy arms, slurring her words on Bunny’s patio, bolting out of Disneyland. The whole time she had been in California, she had acted out of character, lost her inhibitions, almost lost her mind, bared first her body and then her soul to total strangers, spewing up emotions she had kept down for twenty years. Always before, she had believed in self-control, even bottling up her grief at the time of the divorce. But now she had poured out everything—grief, tears, panic, pain—reached the gritty dr
egs. Was it still the impact of that strange flotation tank, or the fact she was abroad, freed from her usual restraints, cut loose from home and friends? It was David she was missing, not her other friends—which hardly made much sense, since she hadn’t even seen him since September, had spent only a few short hours with him in total. Yet she found herself clinging to his memory, as a sort of anchor, a shaft of hope and strength, despite the fact he still seemed so remote, not only in terms of miles, but in the way his frame and features had faded and receded. She longed to lay eyes on him again, see him sharp and solid in the flesh; let his own steady seriousness calm her down, set her an example. But he was away for months yet, committed to his work and to his island, and even when he did return, there was still no guarantee that they would meet.
She took a sip of tea, already tepid and curdled by the creamer. It was Chris she should be concerned about, not David. So what did she do now? Board the next plane back to California, tell her daughter it was all a joke—an April Fool in January—that she had merely caught a local bus to Long Beach, rather than a jumbo-jet to Heathrow? Impossible. She had no more money for transatlantic fares, no more strength.
‘Are you no eatin’, hen?’ The old lady peered across at Morna’s almost untouched food. ‘If you don’t want that cheese, I’ll take it with me. I’ve got another flight after this—the shuttle up to Glasgow. It’s on and off that quick, I didn’t even get a drink last time.’
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