I winced and jerked my head, as if the words had been spoken to me. Yes, they did come here to die, eventually, but that didn't make it into some dark receptacle. It was a village with an aged population, with a reputation for being a winding-down sort of place, a place of rest. I saw old men and women sitting on deckchairs or benches or wheelchairs, staring out to sea as if unpicking a code that could be read by them alone. In the summer they shifted dune-slow across the gravel and wore their best clothes for lunch in the local pubs. They stared straight ahead and chewed and chewed. It was a sort of lethargy, this business of ageing, of dying. It was about slowing right down to a point where your body could begin the business of consuming itself.
Which was pretty much where I was up to. Was I kidding myself? Would I ever run along the beach? Would I ever kick a football again? I could not even bend over to touch my knees. I was here to die too. It was just going to take much longer than it did for most. But it wasn't this, or the ugly graffiti, or Southwick's unpleasant history, that was gnawing at me. I was leafing through books, drinking tea, pinching Ruth's fruit shortcake, and somewhere Tamara was getting on with her life. Perhaps she was wondering about me. Or was pushing me from her mind, thinking me dead. Maybe this was some kind of Ukrainian test. I go, you find me. Was I failing her?
Restless, I left the shop, locking the door behind me. Out of season, the streets of the village were invariably empty. All the old people were inside, staring at walls, at televisions, chewing, all Windsor knots and pearls. Waiting for the sun, or the end.
I bit down on that thought, trying to gnaw it off, spit it away. I made my way up to The Fluke and ordered a pint of Broadside. The barman told me to sit down; he'd bring me my drink. I thanked him, to divert the mouthful of abuse I wanted to spill his way. I was no invalid. I could carry my own pint. But then I caught the ghost of myself in the glass of the door as I turned. I was an old man. The skin of my face was tired; it couldn't just be the scars that were doing that. The metal in my back held me upright, but the rest of my body seemed to be railing against it, failing. I was thin and weak. I was wasted.
I sat in the corner of the pub, in shade. There was nobody else, apart from a black Labrador sleeping by the slot machine. The barman put my drink in front of me and I nodded. If Tamara had not left me, what did that mean? My mind wouldn't hold hands with that thought.
I drank half the bitter quickly and asked the barman to change a five-pound note for the phone. I pulled out my address book and flicked through it. I had tried Tamara's mobile phone number a dozen times in the past three weeks. It had not been answered once. I hadn't panicked about this; she didn't like mobiles and rarely used hers. I certainly hadn't seen her receive any calls and she had chosen not to activate an answering service. When I asked her what I would do if I needed to get in touch with her, she had told me she wouldn't be away from me long enough for me to need to call her. I had to assume it was switched off, or shut away in a drawer. It could have run out of juice. She might have lost it.
Nothing of help in the address book. Both her parents were dead. She had no siblings. She had a few friends in the airline business, including one, Catriona, who had been closer than most. They had worked together on a series of flights over the course of a year, shortly before I met her. I called Air France and asked to speak to their personnel department. I was put on hold and then a female voice, in French, asked me how she could be of assistance.
'I'm trying to track down a member of your cabin crew. She might still be working for you, but she was definitely employed by Air France throughout 2010.'
'And you are?'
'Paul Roan. I was a first officer with Lufthansa until last year.'
'Was?'
'I retired.'
'You don't sound so old.'
I laughed. 'I retired for personal reasons.'
'And the person you're looking for?'
'Catriona Beck. She was part of a cabin crew that included my girlfriend, Tamara Dziuba.'
'Ah, yes. I know both of them.'
I felt my heart pitch. 'You do?'
'Yes, Catriona and I are friends. I met Tamara on a number of occasions. Work functions. That sort of thing.'
'Do you know where I can find Tamara?'
There was a hesitation. 'You said she was your girlfriend?'
'That's right. She... We decided on a trial separation. But I haven't seen her for a while.'
'How long is a while?'
'Look, it isn't important,' I snapped. I caught the barman looking up at me in my periphery. I thumbed some more coins into the phone. 'Sorry. It's been six months.'
'I can't help you,' she said, her manner more clipped now. 'If you give me your contact details, I'll pass on your message to Catriona and - '
'Can't you put me through to Catriona now?'
'She's away. Working. She won't be back until Thursday evening.'
I sighed and the sound lingered in the receiver. 'Okay,' I said. 'If you could ask her to call me, as a matter of great urgency, on... '
I gave Ruth's phone number and email address, wishing I had sorted out my own contact details since my recovery rather than plodding around in a daze, owlishly ranging to see if Tamara was anywhere close, carrying a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates. I imagined Catriona rubbing Tamara's shoulders, saying It's for the best. You did the right thing. Tamara nodding. Tamara turning. Tamara seeing some young thing. Tamara falling in love. Christ.
I flicked through the rest of the book and noticed the address of Tamara's old bolthole in Amsterdam. I tried calling that too, but nobody was answering. I couldn't remember the name of the guy who lived next door, and the address book didn't give up any other Amsterdam addresses. Amsterdam, I thought. Why would she go there?
I pocketed the rest of the change and drained my pint. I felt better. Positive action. It wasn't much, but I had made the first move; everything from here on in would be easier to decide upon, I thought. I felt a burning low in my chest. Acid reflux. Or my jigsaw ribs making themselves known. I could no longer tell when I was hungry. Too many other sensations jumped the queue. I ate according to the clock now and it was pushing on for noon.
I stayed away from the beach that morning, despite an ache to return. There was something about the expansive skies that helped me forget myself for a while, stopped me from feeling so limited. But I stayed away because Ruth had asked me to. It wasn't just that she was right, but also because it felt good to do as someone said. Being responsible for an aircraft filled with people blunted your appreciation of a command structure. You took orders that had to do with the process of flying. You requested and were either granted or denied. It wasn't down to personality or reliance. It was mechanical, on any number of levels.
I mooched about. I ate fish and chips. I read the papers. Three weeks after waking up, the world seemed no different to how it had been before my accident. One hundred and eighty nine days of people kicking footballs and arguing and fighting and killing and being rescued. Four thousand five hundred and thirty six hours of people watching TV and fucking and eating curry. Two hundred and seventy two thousand one hundred and sixty minutes of waiting for a bus and shopping at Tesco and wiping your arse. Sixteen million three hundred and twenty nine thousand six hundred seconds of watching somebody wither in Intensive Care.
Ruth came home tired at lunch time. She ate soup and went to bed for a nap. She didn't feel much like talking, beyond: 'Another couple of weeks and that's me done. I can't cope with much more of that or the baby will suffer.'
I welcomed the news. We could sit together on the sofa and watch afternoon films. I could help her eat whatever weird dietary urges her pregnancy demanded of her. It was important to find that groove again, that way of interacting with other people, develop a sense of belonging. I sensed that people brought me secrets to burn because of my detachment. I reeked of loner.
I performed my exercises. Diaphragmatic breathing. Static quadriceps exercises. Pelvic tilting. Transversus abdominus. I b
athed. The sky was crowding with clouds, high and thick and grey. A storm was pressing the air into the village. I opened the bathroom window an inch to let the steam escape and sat in my hot, sudsy well, feeling my muscles slowly untie themselves. I soaped my chest gingerly, despite everything there having healed some time ago. I felt fragile, like some wet piece of bone china handled by a butter-fingered child. My ribs felt dog-chewed. They had collapsed under the punch of the radiator grille. One of them had torn into my lung. I recalled some of the literature I'd been given at the hospital from the impressively titled Therapies Directorate. To be realistic you must give yourself two years to be the best that you can be.
Cool air eddied through the mist from the bath. The bathroom mirror fluxed in stages of opacity. Ridges of clarity formed. I saw my ribs opened out like the claws of a giant crab. I saw the ruined seagull clatter into the red fist at its centre, beak stabbing and rending. Blood pinked the tip of it and the curled cone of its tongue. Its wingtips raised like the arms of some nightmare conductor priming his orchestra. The squeal of bone grinding against metal. The best that you can be is not the same as the best that you once were.
I came out of this breathless. I had not fallen asleep. My eyes had remained open throughout it. The doctor had warned me about flashbacks. The trauma had been purged, to some extent, from my body, but it would be a while before I felt mentally healed.
I heard footsteps outside, voices murmuring, edged with sharpness in the crisp night air. Two people, returning from the pub. Slightly breathy, a little tipsy. A her and a him. I heard her say Don't believe the truth.
Sudden, site specific heat: I lifted my fingers (any number of muscles and nerves jangling as I did so) and dabbled my fingers in the bauble of blood sliding from my left nostril. The footsteps paused, gritted around for a few moments - him kissing her? her kissing him? - before moving on. I suddenly felt exhausted, as if I'd been reading for too long something I didn't quite understand. I wiped and rewiped my nose with my forearm until it had stopped and I looked as though I had tried to open the old Median Basilic and end it all.
I rinsed the blood off and elbowed the lever that opened the plughole. Pink water sank around me, returned to me my weight and discomfort. I dried and applied. I flinched my way into the bathrobe. Sweat greased me; ghosts of copper had settled against my skin: I could have done with another bath. Instead I moved to my bed and lay down, using the hand-held controls to dent the bed so it cradled me just the way I needed.
I closed my eyes and there was Tamara. She was wearing a grey wool duffel coat, floral print top and pale Diesel jeans. Her hood was up and her hair was down and the wind was striping her face with it. I tilted my face to better hear what she was trying to say but the wind was messing with that too. I couldn't read the message on her lips. Hair whipped across the dark red of her mouth.
I heard a sound like a horse's hooves at a gallop on hard earth. I felt it in my bones. But, I realised quickly, there was more than one horse; another was behind it, at distance, catching up. Fast, faster. The percussive sounds tumbled against and over one another, and it reminded me of something I couldn't put into words or pictures. I felt the back of my neck tighten and knew that it wasn't horses. I don't know how, but I knew that it was the worst sound in the world and that if I turned around, whatever it was would destroy me.
I opened my eyes and waited for it to pass.
I cooked dinner in Ruth's kitchen, a surprise for her, while she was sorting books downstairs. I marinated some salmon in lemon juice and soy sauce and made mashed potatoes and French beans in garlic. I slapped the fish on a hot griddle as she came up, pushing the scent of old books in before her. She took a glass of wine with only the slightest grimace and I led her into the living room. She was pale. She fidgeted on the armchair, unable to get comfortable.
'Is it kicking?' I asked.
'A little,' she said, with a pained smile. 'Sometimes he gets hiccups. Sometimes I can feel him flinch when a door slams or a car horn sounds.'
'It's a boy, then?'
'I think so, yes.'
'You don't know for sure?'
She shook her head. 'I don't want to know. I want it to be a surprise. But I feel it's a boy. Burly. Throwing his weight around.'
'Can I feel?'
Another shake. 'I don't want be touched,' she said. 'I don't... it just doesn't feel right. No matter how gentle you... it would feel like an assault.'
I digested this, keeping quiet despite wanting to protest. I thought we were friends. She'd saved my life. We were closer than friends because of that. But here she was, putting up a shield. I knew what had happened to her, but it didn't make it easier to deal with. I was a man, but I wasn't a threat.
I said, 'Have you thought of any names?'
Again, a shake of the head. There was something wrong. She was white, glassy. She seemed on the verge of tears, more so than usual. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I didn't mean to spoil the mood.'
'It's all right. It's my hormones. I'm all over the place. And it's also... the baby... whenever I think of it I think of him.'
'We don't have to talk about this. Really. I'm sorry I even started this.'
She took a sip of her wine and it seemed to fortify her. 'It's all right. I mean it. I need to get a grip. And I will.'
We sat in a silence that was far from companionable. I fetched the plates of food and we ate it and put our knives and forks down. I felt like an unwanted, uninvited guest who has overstayed a welcome that had never really been extended. I considered turning in, or going for a walk, but merely the thought of it made my legs burn. I thought of the cockpit of a 777. Right seat. Night flight out of Schiphol, AMS. Velvet sky, deepening. The clean, superbright glimmer of the runway lights. Light wind. Cool, crisp shirt. The power hanging there in the night behind you, as near as dammit one hundred thousand pounds lbf in each engine. The winding up. The knowledge you are flying with a fine captain. Thomas Sheedy, 52. Closing in on 30,000 hours of service. We are confident. We are good. Captain Sheedy says something, but it's all wrong. I turn to him and the top of his head is gone.
'I tried to contact my girlfriend today,' I said.
'Paul,' she said. The nurse voice.
'I have to know,' I said. 'I can't just let things lie as they are.'
'She left you. She went home.'
'Her home is here,' I said. 'With me. She's my girlfriend.' It felt strange referring to Tamara like that. It was beginning to feel as though she was not real, as if she were a dream. Details were softening. One of her breasts was slightly larger than the other; I couldn't remember which one. I couldn't summon the sound of her voice. That she was somewhere else in the world, but still my girlfriend, seemed the most ridiculous idea.
'So,' Ruth said, undercover of a sigh. 'Any luck?'
'A possible lead,' I said. 'Someone who knows someone who worked with her. She's going to call me back.'
'Be careful,' she said.
'I know the risks.'
'Maybe. There might be more than you think. You discover something unpleasant, she's with another man... it might put your convalescence back months.'
'Anything would be better than this... not knowing.'
'I hope you're right. Thanks for dinner.'
She stood up and moved past me, touching my shoulder briefly.
'Ruth,' I said.
'What is it?'
'Does the word... have you heard the word "craw" mentioned around here?'
'What?'
'Craw.'
'As in "stick in the craw"?'
'Maybe, yes. Maybe, no. Anybody use it?'
'Not around me,' she said.
She moved to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. I heard the snick of her bedroom door as it closed.
I cleared away the dinner plates and had another glass of wine. Ruth wasn't coming back. She'd spent another tough day patching up the walking wounded. Perhaps I was getting her down. How miserable must it be for her to come home just to find anothe
r patient?
My things - our things - were stored in Ruth's garage. I went downstairs and into the yard. I pulled open the garage door, switched on the light in there and stared at the boxes. Vulcan made figure-of-eight entreaties at my ankles. I opened a box. I didn't recognise any of the contents. It was only after a while spent picking through books and folders and plastic tubs that familiarity began to sink in. I found a box of Tamara's blouses, individually wrapped in polythene bags. Her smell was in all of them. I found an album of photographs, most of them self-timed ones of us squeezed tight into a 6"x4" frame as if we were unsure that the camera would capture us both in the shot.
I looked hard into her eyes as if the reason for her subsequent abandonment of me could be read. Rubbed the seams and hems of her clothes, searching for splinters of doubt. I closed the boxes and repositioned the packing tape. I could not foresee an occasion when I might unpack all of this again. It was frighteningly easy to imagine taking each box to the beach and setting fire to them under the pier.
I sat and fondled Vulcan's ears for a while, thinking of Tamara, thinking of Ruth. Ruth's own little storage corner seemed pitiful in comparison, but the fruits of her life were surrounding her all the time. She had space to stretch out. She was living. A box contained a first aid kit and a vintage leather bag, the kind you might have seen a country doctor pootling around with in the 1950s. There was a chipped dinner plate with a picture of a duck in the centre - her own, from childhood? - and a clutch of old Ladybird books bound together with elastic bands. There were a few other things. Pencil cases and egg-cups and dried flowers in polythene envelopes. Junk or treasure, depending on who was looking at it.
I closed the door and walked back to my room. Vulcan followed me, weaving around my ankles. I gave him some food and patted his head, stared at my stranger's hand for a while. The scars there didn't shock me as they had at first. Sometimes I would reach out for something and flinch, as if someone else were inhabiting my clothes, a thin imposter controlled by my mind. I was getting used to the fact that my appearance had changed. I was coping. Now it looked as though I would have to come to terms with Tamara's removal from my life. There would be no plastic surgery to treat those scars. No bandages and ointment. My black, scabbed over heart would just have to chug on with the burden.
Loss of Separation Page 4