The Falling Sky

by Pippa Goldschmidt

  ‘Yes, I would have been there,’ and he cries some more.

  Like looking down a microscope into the past, Jeanette remembers the coach standing in their hallway, saying to her mother, ‘You weren’t there.’

  ‘That’s what the coach meant, that day,’ she says.

  ‘He made a point of it during the inquest, but the coroner slapped him down. He was there and he didn’t see anything. He was just trying to divert attention from himself,’ her mother says.

  ‘Well, we don’t know that. Clearly, he felt awful, but it made us feel awful too. I couldn’t have done anything. I wouldn’t even have seen her slip under the water from where I was sitting.’

  The woman. ‘Did you ever see the woman again?’ she asks.

  ‘He found another one,’ her mother says, sharp. ‘It makes no difference, one woman or another.’

  Her father says nothing.

  What difference would it have made if her father had been there? Even if he couldn’t do anything about it? She has spent so long assuming that they knew what happened but didn’t tell her, that she feels almost giddy with the realisation that they know as little as her. It makes her feel as grown up as them. There is no difference between them any more and perhaps there never has been, not since that day.

  Perhaps it is right that this death was unseen. Death is never understandable, it is the only thing we cannot know. She’s always hoped for some explanation, but Kate’s death is still too large to encompass in her model of the universe.

  And perhaps that’s why her father has another woman, to take him back to that last moment before he knew about Kate. The gap between his words and what has happened is infinite because the facts are unknowable, so all they have are his words. The realisation shocks her, there is no external reality. No balance, even, between objective and subjective.

  Kate’s death, that hard crystalline ever-present feature of her life, is dissolving into red sunset, a smear of colour washed across the sky. She still doesn’t know anything about it, it is a meaningless event. But if this means nothing, then what about all the other information she has fought and struggled so hard to find? What meaning does any of that have? And for a moment her mind tips beyond the see-saw balance down into the vacuum.

  But even in nothing there is always something. Nothingness never actually exists. Nothing plus the uncertainty principle will always make something, particles of energy that pop into being and out again. The higher their energies, the shorter their lives. That’ll do for her. She can play with that.

  ‘That’s it,’ her mother says. ‘I know you think we never thought about you, but we used to lie awake at night worrying about what to tell you, how to talk to you about it. It was just too difficult. But we should have. Anyway, now you know it all.’

  Now she knows what they know, but there is still one secret left. Hers. She hugs herself, wondering if she should let it go.

  The rest of the day is peaceful. They go for a walk to a nearby park, where the path is just wide enough for the three of them to walk side by side.

  As they walk quietly through the almost deserted park, she thinks about the future, her life beyond the voids. She can finish the void project soon, and then what? If her lectureship gets renewed, she’ll have to start thinking about next year’s courses. If it doesn’t get renewed, there will be nothing for her in Edinburgh and she’ll have to look for jobs elsewhere. Instead of panicking, this feels like an opportunity. Perhaps she’s been there long enough. Perhaps she should go to new places, get away from what she knows. Leave Paula behind.

  She may be able to predict the future of galaxies or even stars but there’s something exhilarating in not being able to know her own future. To be the ghost in the machine.

  Later that afternoon in her parent’s house, they’re all drinking tea when the phone rings.

  ‘Jeanette,’ her mother says, ‘There’s a woman on the phone for you.’

  It is Becca. Jeanette has forgotten that Becca would have had this number, from years ago.

  ‘Jeanette, are you alright? I phoned your flat but there’s no reply. Paula doesn’t know where you are…’

  ‘Paula…’

  ‘Do you want me to tell Paula where you are? When you’re coming home?’

  ‘No. Don’t tell her anything. Please.’ She’s aware of her parents standing nearby, listening.

  ‘Ok.’ Becca doesn’t sound surprised.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good.’ Becca pauses. ‘Will you be back by the weekend? I could come round for a cup of tea, if you like. I haven’t seen you for ages.’

  ‘That would be great. Thanks.’

  After she’s hung up, she remembers her father making his secret phone calls from this same spot.

  ‘Who was that?’ her mother asks.

  ‘She’s a friend.’ And this seems as good a way of telling them as any other so she carries on, ‘she’s not my girlfriend.’ As she says it, she’s not sure why she ever hid it from them in the first place.

  ‘I know,’ says her mother. ‘You’re living with your girlfriend, aren’t you? You tried to convince me she was your flatmate but I could tell.’ She turns to Jeanette’s dad. ‘She looked just like she did when Alice Airy was around. She looked happy.’

  ‘Paula’s not my girlfriend either. Not any more,’ and she bursts into tears.

  ‘It’s ok.’ Her mother strokes her hair. ‘It’ll be ok. You’re going to be fine. You’ll be happy again. I promise.’

  When she arrives home, Paula’s sitting on the sofa, painting her fingernails. She’s got black hair and red lipstick, with traces of blue paint worked into the creases of her white fingers. She looks at Jeanette standing in the doorway of the living room and says, ‘I won’t be long, I just stopped by,’ before returning her attention to her nails.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Jeanette replies. ‘Do what you like.’

  Paula takes off her shoes and socks, and starts painting her toenails. Jeanette watches her, admiring the precision with which she covers up the pale extremities of her feet, and the way she gently strokes the brush three times; centre, left, right, down the tip of each toe.

  ‘Where have you been?’ asks Paula.

  The nail polish is dark red, a fashionable shade of blood. Paula’s fingernails glitter wetly, as though she has been working in a butcher’s shop. Perhaps she has.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asks again, and this time she pauses, her brush held in the air like a tiny wand, as though what Jeanette is about to say matters to her.

  ‘My sister died twenty years ago,’ says Jeanette. ‘I missed the beginning of her death.’

  A bead of nail polish drips off the brush onto the sofa, but Paula stays motionless. Her mouth is slightly open, so that Jeanette can see into the soft, damp cavern.

  ‘Do you know why the Ancient Greeks thought that dead people lost their memories in the underworld? Why they drank from the waters of forgetfulness when they died?’

  Paula slowly shakes her head.

  ‘Because death is outside time and you need time to construct your memories. You need past, present, future. A beginning, a middle, and an end. But death is too constant for that. Too unchanging.’

  Paula shakes her head again but it’s not clear whether she’s disagreeing with Jeanette.

  ‘But the Universe isn’t that unchanging. So you see — death is outside everything. It can’t be explained by anything.’

  ‘Did you go to visit your parents?’ asks Paula. Jeanette nods. ‘You always go a bit doo-lally after you’ve seen your parents,’ and she returns to her nails.

  Jeanette flops down suddenly, without her body warning her, on the floor. Paula looks up again, ‘Are you ok?’ and she screws the lid onto the bottle of nail polish. ‘Shall I make us some tea?’ She pads off into the kitchen, her feet slightly splayed to avoid disturbing the wet nails.

  Jeanette listens to her bustle and clatter. An old tune begins to play in her head. Something
forgotten that’s now being remembered.

  When Paula returns with two steaming mugs she doesn’t go back to the sofa, but sits down on the floor next to Jeanette. Her eyes are as blue as the daytime sky. Jeanette has gazed at this colour countless times, waiting for the night.

  ‘I’ve stopped doing portraits,’ says Paula. ‘I’m onto less representational stuff now. More abstract.’ She sips her tea. But it’s still too hot for Jeanette. ‘What do you want for supper?’ She holds her fingers out in front of her, admiring them.

  ‘Supper?’

  ‘I could make us something comforting, like kedgeree.’ The fingernails are only inches from Jeanette’s face, they hang between her and everything else in the room. She looks away and sees a suitcase next to the sofa.

  ‘Have you come to pick up your stuff?’ she asks.

  The fingernails falter in the air, ‘I don’t actually have a new place sorted out yet. I thought I would by now, but it — didn’t work out.’

  ‘You can’t stay here.’ Jeanette starts drinking her tea which has finally cooled to the right temperature. The fingernails flutter down onto Jeanette’s knees. She regards them, a set of blood-filled leeches.

  ‘No?’ There is a slight pressure from the fingertips now, she can sense the leeches are waiting for orders to inch their way up her legs, try and get inside her.

  Her body shudders against the hand and bucks it off her knee. She stands up. ‘No. It’s over. It belongs to the past.’ After she’s spoken, a pure, deep, rich silence spreads inside her, expanding out through the pores of her skin. She knows she doesn’t need to say anything more.

  Paula doesn’t seem hear the silence. She waits for a few more moments, for something else to be said, before finally giving up. ‘Guess I’d better get a move on, then.’

  At work she checks her emails. There is one from a journalist at New Scientist who is working on a story about unusual results in science, and who wants to talk to Jeanette about the connected galaxies and the difficulties of interpreting data. She replies, agreeing to be interviewed by him as long as he talks to Maggie as well.

  There’s another paper by the consortium published today and, as with the last paper, Richard’s name is submerged in the lengthy list of authors. She thinks it might be a bit higher up than the last time, maybe he is rising to the surface. Perhaps she should go and ask him.

  She finds him in his office, unpacking a new computer. White polystyrene shapes have settled on every surface, like fake snow.

  ‘New toy?’

  ‘Yup.’ He’s grinning. Not quite at her.

  ‘What are you going to use it for?’ She’s almost jealous of it. She’s not really that interested in computers, but this one looks so obviously newer and faster than hers.

  ‘Running simulations. It’s the next step of the project. We’ll be doing more detailed simulations of the Universe to compare with our data.’ He positions the computer just so on his desk and stands back to admire it.

  ‘And what if they don’t agree with each other? Which would be wrong? Your simulations or your data?’ She shouldn’t wind him up, she is genuinely impressed. Simulations are fun, building your own toy universe in the privacy of your computer. Actually doing what scientists are always accused of doing — playing God.

  He glares at her. ‘The simulations of course. The data are always right.’

  ‘Of course.’ She tries not to think about her own data. ‘And you’re writing the code for the simulation?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘Are you going to put in humans? Little tiny people running around your artificial stars and galaxies?’

  Now he grins at her properly. ‘That would be fun. You could model yourself. And predict your own future.’

  ‘And at what point do you model yourself running a model of the Universe and the whole thing disappears up its own arse?’

  ‘Ha! I don’t care, as long as they give me the money. I’ve just been awarded three more years of dosh to do this.’

  ‘That’s fantastic.’ She means it, too. ‘And well done on the latest paper.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ He waves his hand dismissively. ‘There’ll be another five papers published by Christmas. They’re coming thick and fast out of the sausage machine now.’

  ‘And all with you as a co-author?’

  ‘Yup. Buried in the et al.’ He quotes her easily, almost jokingly, but it’s clear from the fact that he’s remembered it that he’s been thinking about it. ‘Surrounded by all the other drones.’

  ‘No, you’re each doing your own thing and it all fits together. That’s what we all work on, isn’t it? Little pieces of the puzzle.’ She’s almost uneasy at his demonstration of humility. Does it make up for him and Paula? Nothing cancels that out, but for the first time she can see that perhaps it doesn’t matter. And not just because of the usual cosmic reasons, that they are all just dead stardust floating around one of billions of stars in one of billions of galaxies. There’s a better reason; she doesn’t care anymore. Paula hurt her and that’s the end of it. It’s in the past. Lots of stuff has happened in the past and she is where she is.

  He interrupts her thoughts. ‘I saw your paper on the void distribution has been published too. Nice job.’

  ‘Thanks. It may help save my bacon here. With the Death Star.’

  ‘And you were the sole author. So you can take all the glory for yourself.’ Just a hint of sarcasm there, but then he continues, ‘It’s funny how we concentrate on the things we can see, the galaxies and stars, and we forget about the absences. All the spaces in between. But they’re just as important. Trying to work out why things aren’t there is just as important as why they are.’

  That afternoon she’s in the seminar room with everyone else, perched on one of the uncomfortable little fold-down seats. This week’s seminar is about the recent discovery that the expansion of the Universe appears to be accelerating, not slowing down as used to be thought. This acceleration can be explained by invoking a substance called dark energy.

  The seminar speaker reminds the audience that only four percent of the Universe is ordinary visible matter and everything else is dark. Jeanette thinks about all of this dark stuff; the stars too dim to be seen, the black holes, the elementary particles that don’t interact with light, and the gaps between things are all dark. The ordinary stuff makes a sort of surface crust of light which is scarcely consequential anymore, like dead autumn leaves on a swimming pool. Dark is where it’s at.

  And all these unseen things have so much effect. They can slow things down, speed things up. Push people apart, pull families together. She may never be able to see Kate, but the effect is always there. It lives on.

  She watches the Death Star snoring in the front row, his bow tie quivering with each exhalation. One of the students asks the speaker, if dark energy is so important then why has nobody found it before now? How can there suddenly be a new substance that accounts for most of the Universe? The speaker just shrugs; that’s the way it works. The student writes something in her notebook.

  It is night. Becca has just gone home after sharing a pizza with her, and she’s sitting outside in her garden with a pair of binoculars, waiting. She’s not sure the binoculars will help that much. Sometimes they don’t when you’re trying to see really faint things.

  She’s expecting the comet at half past eight. It should appear in the south-east, above the roof of the old hospital. The comet’s officially named after the Japanese astronomer who first discovered it twenty years ago, but she prefers to think of it as nameless.

  Comets used to be harbingers of doom. She has no answer to that, she knows what happened the last time the comet was in this part of the solar system. But still, she feels hopeful. It cannot be any worse than last time. It is not likely to be the same. The comet will perturb the orbits of other objects around it. It’s difficult to say how far away the influence of the comet will be felt, given the complex movements of everything else in its neighbou
rhood.

  A smudge appears in the sky. Even as she sees it, it gradually gets brighter until finally she can look at it face on. It looks painted onto the rest of the sky, you can tell it doesn’t really belong here. It’s as if a glamorous neighbour has just popped in.

  She continues to watch it as it sweeps across to the west of the city and sinks beneath the rooftops.

  As she goes inside, she wonders what she’ll be doing with her life the next time she sees it.

  Acknowledgements

  I wrote this book partly because I wanted to bring to life the process of doing astronomy and show both the beauty and the uncertainty of that process. So, I would like to thank my fellow astronomers; in particular Alan Heavens, Marek Kukula, Bob Mann, Lance Miller, Seb Oliver, Michael Rowan-Robinson and Suzie Ramsay, from whom I have learnt much over the years.

  This book would not have happened without the terrific guidance and hard work of Adrian Searle and Helen Sedgwick at Freight Books.

  I’m very grateful for the various types of help that I’ve received from fellow writers during the journey of writing this book. Mary Paulson-Ellis has offered detailed advice on several drafts. At the University of Glasgow Michael Schmidt, Alan Bissett, Colette Paul, as well as Kate Tough and the other student members of Group D, saw and commented on parts of an early draft. All the members of the editorial group Ink Inc; George Anderson, Jenni Brooks, Sophie Cooke, Roy Gill, Theresa Muñoz and Allan Radcliffe have provided much needed feedback, wine and laughter. Ken MacLeod, John Ward and Zoë Beck have been endlessly kind and supportive.

  Since 2010 the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum has generously provided a haven in which I could write. I’m very grateful to their support which continued long after it was officially supposed to end. I also acknowledge a Scottish Books Trust New Writers Award for 2011/2012.

  Lastly and most importantly I’m grateful for the love and guidance from my family and other animals; Graeme Busfield, Herb Goldschmidt, Belle Brett and all the cats.