Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel

by Claire Fuller

  The shine had been scuffed from the toes, but I liked them. I pushed the bedcover off my legs and stuck out my feet. A little cry came from the woman, but she covered her mouth to hide it. My feet were swollen and purple bruises had blossomed, mutating into green algae where they reached my toes. A nurse had wrapped my ankles with bandages where the skin had been rubbed off. I eased my feet into the shoes, pressed the tongues onto a corresponding patch of bristles and then ripped them off, with a sound like tearing paper. I did it again.

  “Velcro,” the woman told me before she left.

  I put on my new clothes. They were an improvement on the hospital gown, but their smell made me worry about the health of their previous owners. I played with the Velcro and wondered whether the detective had found my father yet. I thought about Reuben and tried to imagine him in this new white world, but his hair was too long, his beard too tangled, his smile too natural. He didn’t fit. For the rest of the morning I stood at the window and watched the wind in the leaves. I breathed on the glass and, with a fingertip, traced the outline of the tree on the misty pane. Only the visits from the nurses coming in to perform their regular checks and the arrival of food broke the monotony of the little white room. Thin soup, watery porridge, rubbery egg, rice pudding—all of it wonderful.

  In the afternoon, when Wilhelm poked his head around the door, I was pleased to see him.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your . . .” he started to say as he came in, but he blushed, and his hand rushed to his own hair.

  He seemed even younger than he had the day before. He was walking awkwardly, with one arm hiding something under his white coat. I hoped it was food, but instead he whipped out a newspaper and slapped it down on the bed.

  “You’re famous,” he said.

  On the front page was a line drawing of a girl with sharp cheekbones and a small, downturned mouth. The artist had drawn her crudely, her eyes too big for her face, and part of her ear was missing. The writing underneath wasn’t in English, but above the drawing was a headline starting with a word I knew.

  “Rapunzel, the forest girl,” Wilhelm said. He picked up the paper and translated: “Police are trying to trace the family of an English-speaking teenager who was discovered wandering in Lügnerberg, a Bavarian village about twenty miles north of Freyung. The girl, who says her name is Rapunzel, claims she has been brought up by her father in a remote forest cabin. After a . . . after a . . .” Wilhelm struggled to find the words. “. . . deadly fight between her father and a wild man of the forest, the girl, who is about fourteen, walked—”

  “I’m seventeen,” I said.

  Wilhelm stopped reading and his eyes widened.

  “I worked it out.”

  “Seventeen,” he repeated.

  “If it’s 1985.”

  Wilhelm gave a whistle and a roll of his head. “What else? Have you remembered anything else?” He sat down on the bed and smoothed his hair. “Were you born in die Hütte? What about the rest of your family?”

  “They’re all dead,” I said. “But I remember London. We had a big house, with a grand piano.”

  Wilhelm bounced. “Did you play it?”

  “There was a cemetery at the end of the garden.” Wilhelm was getting more excited, but when I thought of the garden, my bedroom, and the glasshouse, I remembered they had all been sucked into the Great Divide years ago.

  “What else?” said Wilhelm, but I slipped back under the sheets, fully clothed, and turned my head toward the window.

  After a while Wilhelm left. I stared at the white bedside table until it came into focus. A nurse had put a plastic jug of water there, with a pink beaker, a box of tissues, and a soft toy which had a squirrel’s tail, a mouse’s snout, and the paws of a bear. It was a ridiculous animal. I gazed at it for a long time until the room grew cloudy, and it was then it came to me that the old world had carried on rotating without me. That Becky had grown up and started secondary school, that double-decker buses still drove past the fish and chip shop on Archway Road, that my bedroom continued to overlook a north London garden and cemetery, that Omi still visited from Germany, that Ute still ate Apfelkuchen on Sundays, and that my father had lied.

  I got off the bed and, holding my skirt tight to my waist, I hobbled around the room, searching the cupboard beside the bed, the yellow bin, the shelf above the sink, and behind the machines that I was occasionally plugged into. I had no plan. At the back of the drawer in the bedside table I found a metal hair grip. With my teeth, I pulled off the plastic ends and gave it a flick with my fingers. I went into my private bathroom: toilet, bath, towel, rubber mat, another sink. I sat on the toilet with the lid down and examined the toilet-paper holder. With the hair grip I worked at one of the screws which held it to the wall—poking the metal end into the screw-head, working it loose until it turned and with my fingers I was able to withdraw the screw. It was long and thin. Plaster dust lay in its threads. I ran the pointed end down my middle finger, across my palm, and over the pale blue veins in my wrist. I thought about the woman with thin skin who had brought me the clothes, and whether her husband, or whomever she lay next to at night, would be able to see her pupils and irises when she closed her eyes and slept. There was something loose inside me, rolling around in my head or my stomach.

  My shoes sounded like the nurses’ and doctors’ as I squeaked painfully back into the white room. I didn’t think it was going to be possible to fit into this new world. I crouched in the gap between the bedside table and the wall, and with the point of the screw I gouged an R into the wall’s white plaster. The R’s tail curled; an e followed it, and after a u, b, e, and n. I sat back to admire my work, joined up, cursive. From an oblique angle the writing was clear, highlighted by the evening sun. Then I scratched the name Punzel next to his. When I stood up at the window the light was all but gone from the garden. A bearded man with long hair was sitting on the bench under the tree, looking up at my window. He raised a hand in a half greeting, then dropped it.

  For a minute we stared at each other. He picked up a bag beside him on the bench, slung it over his shoulder, and hurried across the grass toward the building.

  “Reuben!” I said, and my breath steamed the window. I ran, limping, to the door of my room, opened it, and stepped out into a long white corridor. To my right were several closed doors, leading to a high desk with a nurse behind it, her stiff hat just visible as she bent down over an unseen chart or paper. I turned the other way, and the swing doors in front of me opened to let in a man pushing a mop handle that stuck out of a bucket on wheels. Fighting the urge to run, I hobbled around him with my head lowered and my bandaged ear toward the wall. He let me pass without a second glance. Through the doors I was in another long corridor, wide and empty except for a queue of wheelchairs waiting for their next passengers. I went left and broke into a loping run—pain in my ankles, new shoes already rubbing my heels, skirt loose around my waist. Up the slope, past tall windows providing glimpses of the tree and the bench. I couldn’t see Reuben. I ran past more swing doors and a white-coated man who turned to stare. He called out, but I kept going. At the top, there were lifts, their doors pressed together. I pushed the down arrow and waited. Pushed it again. The doctor shouted, and I looked back to see him hurrying toward me. I slammed through the doors beside the lifts—NOTAUSGANG, the sign said. Stairs. I ran crookedly down them, the smell of fresh air drawing me on. Another door—NOTAUSGANG again. I shoved its horizontal bar. The door opened into space and green and sky. Behind me a siren wail rose, insistent. I looked for Reuben. The man with the beard was running toward me. He lifted a camera to his face.

  “Rapunzel!” he shouted, as his flash went off.

  I stayed in my room after that, with the curtains closed. The detective came back with another man who spoke English. This one sat beside my bed, and I watched his grey moustache move in a circular motion while he asked lots more questions about die Hütte and Reuben and the forest. I told him about the journey there wit
h my father, and what happened the day before my father died—me sitting in the tree, him collecting the mushrooms—and the day after, but from embarrassment I left out what Reuben and I had done together in the nest. They took my fingerprints, rolling each finger against a pad of ink and pressing them onto a card which the fat man had in his jacket pocket. Nobody thought to wash my hands, least of all me, so that when the nurse came in, she tutted and huffed at the black smudges on my pillowcase and sheets and made me get out of bed so she could change them.

  Wilhelm came to visit, telling me hospital stories to try to make me laugh or at least smile. A day later he brought an English newspaper with him. So many words—news, ideas, thoughts, events—more words than I knew what to do with. The front page showed a woman with blow-dried hair, and a young boy. PUPIL PRINCE’S DEBUT, the headline read. Wilhelm flicked forward a couple of pages to my photograph—crew cut, emaciated and wide-eyed, with the emergency door open behind me. I kept the paper under my pillow with my balaclava and read it when he had left. The print was small and I had to follow the lines with a finger, but even then the words jumped about the page, especially those I didn’t understand. The piece repeated much of the story Wilhelm had translated from the German newspaper, playing up the theory of the wild man and saying that inhabitants of Lügnerberg and the surrounding area had been asked to stay vigilant and make sure their doors were locked at night.

  The next morning the detectives came back, this time looking serious. The fat one settled himself in his usual corner, while the other remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Are you Margaret Elizabeth Hillcoat?” he said, his accent heavy but his English perfect.

  I was shocked to hear that name again, to recall my surname. But before I had time to answer, there were shouts from the other side of the door, raised German voices, and Ute burst into the room, followed by a nurse who had hold of her coat sleeve. Ute had widened, but it was her. Her eyebrows were still plucked into perfect semicircles, her dark hair still swept back from her face, her lipstick still neat. When she saw me she stopped shouting and the nurse let her go. Her eyes looked me over, compared me with an image I supposed she kept inside her head. I put my hand up to my shaven hair and bandaged ear. I wasn’t sure I would match up.

  “Peggy? Mein Gott, Peggy?”

  The police officer stood back to let her pass.

  “Is it really her?” she asked him in English, as though I weren’t there.

  “We have more questions,” he said.

  Ute came to me and took my face in her hands, moving it this way and that—examining me like a mother might check her newborn baby. She touched the scar that ran through my eyebrow where the hairs hadn’t grown back. She held my hands in hers, turning them over, tutting at my callouses; at my fingernails, short and cracked; at my red skin—the hands of an old lady. She spread my fingers out against her own and looked up at the detective.

  “Peggy always had good strong fingers and a wide span,” she said to him. “I used to think she would make a fine pianist one day.”

  It was funny, I thought, that I had never heard her say that about me before. When she turned back to me there were tears in her eyes, but mine remained dry. I was one step away from the action, watching it unfold in front of me, curious to find out what would happen next.

  “Are you Margaret Elizabeth Hillcoat?” the detective asked again.

  “Of course she is,” Ute snapped. “Do you think I would not know my own daughter?”

  “In which case,” he said, “I have to inform you that we have recovered the body of your father in the location you described to my colleague.” He nodded toward the fat man. “Frau Hillcoat”—he used her married name—“has already provided positive identification.”

  “Oh, Peggy,” said Ute, sitting beside me on the bed, shuffling me along to make room. “What has happened to you?”

  “And Reuben?” I asked the police officer. “Did you find Reuben?”

  “We would like you to explain again what happened on the day your father died.”

  “Did you find his camp?”

  “Ja,” said Ute, “did you find this wild man?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said. “He isn’t a wild man.”

  “We are doing everything we can, Frau Hillcoat, but for the time being we need your daughter to tell us again what happened.”

  “Meine Tochter,” Ute said in awe, and stroked my cheek.

  “But I’ve told all of it already,” I said.

  “Again, please,” said the policeman.

  I sighed. “Reuben woke me up, early in the morning.”

  “Why was that?” said the policeman, his moustache moving.

  “I told you, that was the day my father was going to kill us both.”

  Ute put her head in her hands. “Nein, nein,” she said.

  “And what happened when Reuben woke you up?”

  “We ran away, into the forest, to my nest, my den, and then down the gill and across the forest back to die Hütte. My father was crazy, he was hunting us like we were animals. I didn’t have my shoes, we had to go back to get them. He came in with the knife, he was angry with me for running away. He wanted me to choose—the knife or the spyglass—then he lashed out at me so Reuben hit him, with the axe.”

  “Are you certain?” he pressed me.

  “I’m certain.” I raised my hand to my ear.

  “What happened after that?”

  “My father fell down, of course!” I shouted.

  Ute put her arm around me and gave my hand a squeeze.

  “What happened to the axe and the knife?” The detective’s tone didn’t change: level, calm, infuriating.

  “What do you think happened? Do you think Reuben ran around chopping at everything?” I spat out, and looked away toward the window, shaking.

  “The cabin had been ransacked by someone.”

  I turned back to him, pushing my anger down into my stomach. “That was my father,” I said. “He destroyed everything before Reuben and I returned.”

  “Peggy,” he said, pulling up the chair next to my bed and sitting down. “May I call you Peggy?”

  I nodded.

  “This is very important. Did you touch the axe or the knife after Reuben hit your father?”

  “Reuben told me to go back in, to get things to take with me. I left them on the floor; I only took my father’s boots, the spyglass, and my balaclava.”

  “So you didn’t touch the knife or the axe?”

  “No,” I said.

  “We found a bag near the river with some items in it.”

  “My rucksack, with my toothbrush and the comb.”

  “So you did take something other than the boots and balaclava?”

  “Yes. No. I left them by the river.”

  “Does she have to answer all these questions right now?” asked Ute. “Surely you can do this another time.”

  “It is important.” The detective spoke in German to his colleague. “You said Reuben lived with you and your father in the cabin.”

  “No,” I said. “Not in the cabin, in the forest.”

  “I thought Reuben’s camp was on the other side of the river—the river you crossed.”

  “It was. It is.”

  Ute held me tighter and gave the man a hard stare.

  “But you lived together in your den?”

  “I only meant . . . we spent some time there,” I said, my voice rising again. “We ran there from my father. You can see it for yourselves. I’ll draw you another map.” I turned to the fat man in the corner. “I need more paper and your pen,” I said, making drawing motions with my hand.

  The man stood, but he didn’t give me the paper.

  “Reuben left his hat there. Reuben left his hat behind.” I knew I was gabbling. “We were running away from my father, for God’s sake. Reuben saved my life!”

  “That’s enough!” said Ute. “She needs to rest.”

  Both de
tectives were standing now, and the one who had asked the questions inclined his head toward Ute in agreement.

  “I would like to take my daughter home,” said Ute, “to London.” The two men talked together in German, and Ute interrupted them. They appeared to have forgotten that she understood them. They spoke for a few minutes, back and forth, arguing until an agreement seemed to be reached.

  “What about Reuben?” I said.

  Ute’s arm tightened around me again. “The police will carry on looking. They have agreed you can come home, Peggy, to London.” There was a catch in her voice. “They will telephone us when they know something more.”

  The big man coughed, a clearing of his throat behind his fist, and we all looked at him. His large face was flushed. He held out his hand to Ute across the bed. Ute’s face took on a practised smile. I had forgotten it, but as soon as her lips closed and curled I knew it was the one she saved for her audience and photographers, the one on her albums in London. She released me, placed her hand into his, and he bent down to kiss it.

  “Ute Bischoff,” he said. “Enchanté.”

  She bowed her head.

  As the men were leaving, I said, “Reuben carved his name in the cabin—under the shelves, beside the stove.”

  They looked at me but didn’t reply.

  When the door had closed behind them, Ute sat on the chair beside the bed, seeming to take strength from the detective who had just left it.

  “Omi died while you were gone,” she said, and her face crumpled and folded in on itself like a glove puppet squeezed by an invisible fist.

  I looked for the tissues on the bedside table but they had been removed, along with the peculiar animal. I reached for the blue balaclava under my pillow and held it out to her. She took it, burying her face into it and inhaling. I thought she might be checking if it still held Omi’s perfume, but I could have told her that it smelled of blood, dirt, and honey.

  28

  London, November 1985

  In my bedroom I picked up the purple skirt from the floor where it lay crumpled and forgotten. I took off my dress, and the bra I had cut in half, stuffing it back into my underwear drawer but not bothering to get out another. I put the skirt on. I couldn’t do the zip up to the top, and when I sat down it gaped open. What would Becky be wearing? I tried to imagine her grown, but she stubbornly remained a smiling eight-year-old in flared jeans and a yellow T-shirt. In my memory her face seemed pink and white, lips stretching wide over teeth and gums. I could remember a turned-up nose, a line of hair which stopped short of her eyebrows, so fair they were almost invisible; but none of these features would be still for long enough to form a face. I took off the skirt and put the dress I had been wearing back on.