Suddenly, where there had been no pain, there was a searing cacophony of unbelievable pain, a shooting agony that made Michael feel his head was going to explode. He almost blacked out again.
Reg repeated his command. “Don’t try to move. Lie still.”
A moment or two later, Michael managed to open his eyes again. Then he suddenly remembered: he was in a crash. He had crashed the plane!
“We’ll get you to a doctor, mate. Don’t worry,” said Jack. “But first, we’ve got to pick you up and put you in the truck. Okay?”
Michael could barely speak, for the pain, but he managed to croak out a few pathetic words. “The others. You’ve got to get the others. There’s ... four people in that plane. Three people ...”
To Michael’s horror, as he looked past Reg’s shoulder, to the wreck, he saw some small flames starting, despite the rain, near the front of the smashed fuselage. “It’s on fire ...” he breathed.
Reg looked around. “Ar, shit. I was afraid of that. Right, son, we’ve got to move this man and move him quick. That lot could go up any minute.”
Michael tried to protest. “No. You don’t understand ... there are people in there. My wife ... my wife’s in there ...”
Jack and Reg lifted him up, ignoring his disorientated protests, and lay him out as best they could in the back of the Land-Rover.
Michael was crying now, half from concussion and disorientation, and half from frustration at not being able to get these two farmers to listen. Didn’t they realise his wife was in there? His friends were in there! The physical pain was almost enough to make Michael black out again, as the Land-Rover bumped slowly over the paddock on the way back to the farmhouse, but the physical pain was surpassed by the emotional pain when a loud crack, the sound of an explosion, whipped across the landscape. Michael never saw the fireball directly himself, only a flash of light, but later, in his nightmares, he would imagine it over and over, and no amount of explanation, from old Reg Johnson, or from the counsellor at the hospital, or from the bloody shrink that he had to report to every Wednesday, that Marie, Ian and Diane were already dead when the horrific fire engulfed the wreck, could ever soothe his fractured conscience, that his friends had been devoured by flames. Michael’s pelvis was fractured, and both his legs, but it was the rip in his conscience that came closest to killing him.
Jack worked the radio. “Mum, get on the blower and get an ambulance, fast as you can. This bloke looks like he’s peggin’ out.”
Chapter 4
Time had stopped, in Michael’s world, stopped precisely at the moment the right wingtip of the old Cessna had swung down like an axe into the wet ground of Johnsons Farm, splitting first the ground and then the aircraft itself. Since that moment, time meant nothing.
Michael knew he deserved to be dead. Why should he have been the one to survive? He would have given anything for Marie to have lived. If he could have chosen, he would have laid down his life for her without hesitation. But she was dead. And he had killed her, for no matter what the aviation authority said – that it was a tragic accident caused by a freak gust of wind – he knew only that his wife was dead and his closest friends were dead and that his heart was still beating.
Michael had always accepted that one day he might meet his death in an aircraft, and that was a trade he was willing to make for a lifetime spent celebrating the freedom and beauty of flight, but for flying to have killed the people he loved while he was at the controls was more than he could reconcile. Those people had put their faith and their trust in him. They didn’t deserve to be dead. He did. And so the three months in the hospital, barely able to move, meant nothing to him. And when the counsellors came to his hospital bed, and then the psychiatrists, he would tell them anything just to get them to go away, to leave him alone with his thoughts.
There was still the memory of his life before the accident, his happy life, which he could see in his mind almost as clearly as he could watch the river through the big windows of Ruth’s sitting room. But he could no more get back the life he once had than he could reach through the glass and touch the distant waves. His happy memories were diamonds, beautiful but sharp, and they cut at his tortured mind whenever he thought of them. Yet the happy memories were the only thing he had to hold onto. Without the past there was no reason to live, and he knew that Marie would have wanted him to live. But it was hard.
A month had gone since Michael had come to stay with Ruth. The days passed quietly. Christmas was approaching and it was hot. Michael spent most of his time inside, keeping cool, thinking, reading, sometimes watching television, or just looking out from the sitting room to the river beyond. Ruth went for long walks in the evenings, by the river, and during the day she gardened, or read in the library. She seemed to have an innate respect for Michael’s privacy, as if she must have known what it was like to go through a terrible loss. For this quiet distance, Michael was deeply grateful.
As the weeks passed, Michael became a little more mobile. It was easier for him to walk further before resting, and he did not need to take quite as many painkillers to control the ache from his healing fractures.
One morning he limped down the hallway to the back door and stood there watching Ruth work in the hot sun. He marvelled at the old woman’s stamina. She was watering her roses, carefully spraying the hose at the trunks of the bushes, not on the leaves or the flowers, since the sun would burn these if the water droplets settled on them.
The truth was, Ruth thought often of her own great loss. It had been nearly two years since Sally’s suicide and Ruth still felt the pain of it. As she worked in the garden, Ruth would think back to the happy times she had shared with her granddaughter, to the six years they had together. She remembered the day, after Sally’s fifth and final year of the veterinary course was over, and all the exam results were in, and Sally had passed with honours, that Sally showed her the first piece of mail addressed to Doctor Sally Johanssen.
“Well, you’re a doctor, now,” Ruth had said.
“It sounds strange, you know, Gran.”
“You should be very proud, Sally.”
“I am, Gran. I am.”
It was a happy day. Ruth was very relieved that Sally’s degree was finished. It had been a gruelling and stressful course for the young woman. Although it was wonderful having Sally staying with her, and their life at home was happy, Sally had often returned from a day at the veterinary college looking exhausted and on edge. There were times she would stay up all night studying, and other times that she would not come home at all, when she was on emergency duty. The young woman would do lectures and practical work all day and then study at night, or get up to deal with emergency cases in the small hours. Sometimes Ruth had worried that the stress might be too much for Sally and that she might not make it through the course. Ruth knew Sally wanted to be a vet more than anything, and that Sally would be crushed if she did not make it. More than once, Sally had come home in tears. On one of these occasions, the surgery lecturer had yelled at her during a practical surgery class, as if Sally were not a hard-working student, worthy of respect and courtesy, but a nobody, a nothing, someone who should be lucky to be addressed with anything above contempt if she were to make the slightest mistake. To Ruth, there was something unhealthy about that kind of culture, where one’s whole self-esteem was supposed to come from attaining the title of Doctor, and until one had done so, one was not worthy. But although some of Sally’s friends did not make it through the course, Sally herself weathered the storm and graduated. The greater struggle, sadly, she did not survive, and Ruth could still barely accept that Sally had died only a year after graduation.
One day, Michael wandered into the library. Ruth was outside, in the back garden as usual, and he could see her through the little windows when he pulled aside the crepe curtains. Michael hadn’t spent much time in the library, until then, and now it intrigued him. Ruth must do a lot of reading, he thought. The walls were hidden by big jarrah bookcases, s
even feet high, packed with books of every description. There was a whole section devoted to gardening, and another to thrillers—Agatha Christie and the like. The thrillers were in large print. The old lady’s eyesight must have been failing a little. Michael came across another section, three shelves of medical textbooks, or to be more precise, textbooks of veterinary medicine. These were an unexpected find.
Ruth had said nothing to Michael about her family and Michael could only suppose that her husband had been a vet. He turned his attention to the framed family photographs on the sideboard. There was an old black-and-white wedding photograph, which looked like it was from the forties, of a young Ruth and her husband. Another old photo showed them with two young children, a boy and a girl. Then there was one, in colour, of her husband, a little older, standing proudly in front of a shop named MacDonald Printing. This ruined Michael’s theory that he had been a vet. Strangely, there seemed to be no adult photographs of the boy and the girl, who would have long since been grown-up. There was, however, a modern, colour picture, from the eighties, Michael guessed, of a teenaged girl with long, straight blonde hair. Then there was another of this girl, but now grown into a young woman, standing with her arm around Ruth. Michael recognised Ruth’s garden, with the rose bushes in the background, as the setting for the portrait. And then, the final photograph solved the mystery. There was the young woman again, who was quite beautiful, with her long hair tied back and a stethoscope hanging over her shoulders, kneeling by a big German Shepherd. Even the dog seemed to be smiling, its mouth open and panting. There was an engraved plaque on the frame, which read, ‘Dr Sally Johanssen and Emmy. January, 1995.’ Michael guessed the young woman in the photograph would have to be Ruth’s granddaughter, although in the month he had lived here, he had seen neither the woman nor the dog. Silently, he chastised himself for being so snoopy, and left the library.
There were few visitors to the house, and little to disrupt the routine. On quiet afternoons, Michael would relax in the sitting room, and Ruth would read in the library. The week before Christmas, Ruth got out an old photo album and sat in her recliner chair in the library, put on her glasses, and turned the pages, slowly. She came across a picture of Claire and Karl, not long after they had gotten married. Miserable bastard! she thought, and decided she would rather not look at old pictures, after all. She got out another book, a gardening volume, and settled back to study how to grow a better rose. Little things, she had come to realise, meant everything in life.
Once a fortnight, Michael would write out a cheque for his room and board, and every Wednesday he would leave the house by taxi to see the psychiatrist and to have physiotherapy. The physiotherapist wanted him to go more often, but the psychiatrist counted herself lucky that Michael came at all. The psychiatrist, a wise young woman who had seen men like Michael before, made him take antidepressants, and he duly swallowed down a pill every evening with his dinner. She also asked him probing questions about his inner thoughts and about how he felt, questions which Michael skilfully deflected with his charm and with a wry smile, giving vague answers designed to keep the woman out of the private sanctuary of his pain, his guilt, and his grief. He never showed his annoyance with the psychiatrist’s questions, but it was obvious to her that he was the most dangerous kind of patient: one that did not want to be helped. And so she had the agency request that Ruth keep a close eye on him, for he might well be suicidal.
To her face, Michael always referred to the psychiatrist by her first name. He tried to circumvent the power structure of the doctor-patient relationship by turning things into a friendly chat over a cup of tea, where no really important questions could be asked. He was invariably successful at this. But behind her back, Michael referred to the psychiatrist only as, “That bloody shrink.” Psychiatrists, Michael knew, were like any other group, a mixed bunch, some of them were good and many of them were bad. Actually, this one seemed to be good, but he still did not want to have to see her. What could she possibly know about what he had done? What could she possibly know about how it felt? Medicine was irrelevant.
“Are you taking your medication?” the psychiatrist asked, one Wednesday afternoon, eight days before Christmas.
“Yeah,” said Michael, nonchalantly. He hated being in that little room, with its padded leather swivel chairs, its immaculate carpet, and its cheerful pictures on the walls. It reminded him of being in hospital, and anyway, as a pilot, he had always had a healthy distrust of doctors. With a signature on a medical report, they could stop you flying. The only difference now was that he didn’t care whether he ever flew again or not. It didn’t matter any more.
The psychiatrist looked at him. “How are you feeling?”
Michael flashed a smile. “Oh ... good as can be expected.”
Sometimes silence was more effective than a question.
Michael felt uncomfortable. “How about a cup of tea, eh, Kathy? I don’t suppose you’ll give me a beer.”
The psychiatrist laughed. She pressed the button on her intercom. “Mandy, could you bring us some tea?” Then she turned in her chair and faced Michael once more. “Have you been walking?”
“Not much. I’m still a bit stiff.”
“So, you’re living by the river?”
“Yeah. In Mount Pleasant.”
“Must be nice, there. Maybe you can go walking, soon.”
“Maybe. Another couple of weeks, maybe.”
“If you can walk, maybe you can fly.”
Michael nearly lost his composure, but he kept himself in check and answered the question as calmly as he could. “No.”
The secretary brought in the tea. Michael was glad of the interruption. Then she left them alone again.
“That’s good tea, Kathy. Irish Breakfast tea, for an Irish girl?”
“Hmmm. So, how are you feeling, Michael?”
Michael looked at the clock. “Quite good, actually. Time’s up.”
When Michael arrived home that evening, Ruth greeted him at the front door and led him through to the kitchen to give him his dinner. She got his plate out of the oven and put it on the large kitchen table. Michael watched her. He was in a desperately bad mood. He felt morose, far too much so to be charming, so instead he hid his sadness behind exasperation.
“That bloody shrink! She thinks she can read minds.”
“If you don’t like your doctor, you could get a new one.”
Michael felt ashamed. “Ah, sorry, Ruth. I’m just tired.”
“It’s okay.”
“Thanks for dinner. It looks nice.”
“You get some rest, Mike. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Yeah. I suppose I will.” Michael picked up his plate and started to walk away.
“Oh, and Mike ...”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t like shrinks, either.”
Michael nodded, but he couldn’t manage a smile.
Ruth watched him trudge up the hallway to the sitting room. She was becoming increasingly concerned about his grim moods. Sally had moved out of Ruth’s home shortly after she graduated, to live at the veterinary clinic where she had worked, so Ruth had not seen, first hand, the kind of moods that a suicidal person exhibits. When Sally had come to visit Ruth, she had seemed all right, just a little distant, and although she complained bitterly of the stresses that her new job involved and seemed very disappointed with it, Ruth had never suspected that her granddaughter would soon be dead. It seemed to Ruth, now, as Christmas approached, that Michael was more depressed than ever, and she was worried about him.
Christmas, Ruth knew, was one of the hardest times for anyone who had lost someone dear. It was not a matter of religious faith, for neither Ruth nor Michael were religious people. They both came from secular families and they both saw life in their own ways, with their own personal dignity and their own secret faiths that no religion could define. Ruth was a kind-hearted woman, strong in spirit and practical in her approach to life, and she believed that
life, apart from all the tragedy and behind all the suffering, was fundamentally good. She had a kind of intangible faith, that it was good to be, good to live, and good to care about others as well as about oneself. She had no particular fear of death – it was just the natural way of things – but she was glad to be alive, glad despite everything that had happened to her, glad despite the countless times her heart had been broken, and glad that she could help another person, before the end. Michael was also a person who valued love, and he thought it enough reason in itself to live, and enough reward. He didn’t know what happened after death, and he was prepared to accept that he didn’t know. Somehow he couldn’t believe, like others did, that one particular religion was correct and that all the others were wrong, that one particular segment of humanity was worthy of being saved and worthy of greater respect because of the particular faith they held, while the rest of humankind was doomed to perish or to suffer or to be lost, simply because they held some other faith or none at all. Michael was a peace-loving man and he could never accept the countless wars and violence caused by the clash of different faiths. Now that he had lost the three people who meant more to him than anyone else in the world, and now that his beloved Marie was dead, he sometimes thought it would be easier if he were a religious man. At least then he would have some kind of reassuring belief in where his dead wife now was – in the salvation of her soul or in the continuance of her consciousness. If it was true that it took courage to have religious faith, Michael thought, it was also true that sometimes it took courage not to have it. Michael had to find the valour to face these three deaths alone. So it was not the religious significance of Christmas that made it such a difficult time, but rather the absence of loved ones.
As the twenty-fifth of December drew closer, Michael remembered the many Christmas barbecues he and Marie had held for friends over the years. He remembered the happy times, the friendship, the laughter, the gifts, the tradition of it all. Fifteen long years he had loved Marie and his life had been full of the joy of her genuine love. That was all gone now. His two closest friends were dead, with her, and Michael could not face up to seeing his lesser friends after what had happened. This would be the first Christmas in over a decade that he had been alone.
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