Sun at Midnight

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘Hello.’ The low voice was warm, and sweet as molasses.

  ‘Hello, Beverley. This is James Rooker.’

  ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘I might be going to London.’

  Beverley laughed. ‘And?’

  ‘I’m thinking of looking some people up.’

  The laugh again. ‘You already have my number, apparently.’

  ‘I’ll call you. Can you help me with something else? I’d like to see Alice Peel, but the Polar Office won’t bend the rules. It’s like dealing with some Brit secret society that I’m not eligible to join.’

  That touched a chord, as he had intended it to do. After a fractional hesitation she said, ‘I know. It’s comical, isn’t it? Wait a minute.’

  Rooker leaned against the glass, breathing in the scent of dirt. He heard a keyboard clicking.

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  The only telephone number listed belonged to Alice’s parents, but the address was hers: 32 Cranbrook Street, Oxford. He wrote that down too, although he didn’t need to because it had already stamped itself in his mind. He said goodbye to Beverley.

  The bus was waiting in its bay, sweating people milling around it with their suitcases. Rooker lifted his single bag. He was travelling light now. His feet carried him forward. Ten minutes later the bus swung out into the late-afternoon Manhattan traffic.

  At the airport, while he tried to decide whether or not to board the London flight, he went to a bar and bought a whisky that he didn’t want.

  He stared down into the glass. After the lonely weeks of travelling, Frankie’s generous goodwill had unshackled him. Frankie liked him, loved him, even, and she trusted him to be around her kids. Meg would grow up, like Corinna was growing. He wanted to see that happening and he wanted to share it with Alice.

  For how many years, Rooker thought, had he hated the sound of we, for all the obligations and restrictions and the potential for disloyalty and bitterness that could be contained in a single syllable?

  Ever since she had failed him, he supposed. It hadn’t been her fault, he didn’t blame her. All he felt now was the soft ache of sympathy. But aversion was what there had been, ever since we hadn’t meant the trust or security of a real family.

  But now there was a chance that we might mean himself and Alice and her daughter. If Alice would allow it. If he hadn’t already spent too long wandering the world, ruled by fear and self-disgust, instead of believing that love might take root and flourish, even for him.

  Outside the windows of the terminal the jets took off in a steady stream, lights blinking in the thickening sky, chains of them linking all the airports and all the people who were waiting and watching. When the ‘Boarding’ sign flickered against his flight, Rooker got up and walked uncertainly to the gate.

  Alice sat upright in bed. She looked at her travel clock and saw that it was only 2.15. Her heart was thumping but she couldn’t recall the details of her dream, only that it had been to do with hurrying and missing something that was terribly urgent.

  It’s all right, she told herself.

  She was ready. Everything was packed and ready to go. Her luggage stood out as a dark hump on the bedroom floor. Meg was asleep. Trevor would drive them to Heathrow again in time for the evening’s flight, London to Auckland, via Singapore. Twenty-five hours of travelling and then a stopover in Auckland before flying on to Christchurch.

  She lay down and settled herself for sleep once more.

  In the morning, Trevor arrived in good time. ‘All set?’ he asked. Meg’s carry-seat was strapped in the back of the car, their two suitcases were loaded in the boot.

  Alice stood back and looked up at her house. It was clean, closed up, waiting for the new tenants. The sun reflected back from the windows, making her shield her eyes. ‘All set,’ she answered. She put the keys in her pocket. They would drop them off at the lettings agency on their way out of town.

  They headed east and the homebound traffic whirled past them in the opposite direction.

  The centre of Oxford, when Rooker finally reached it, was a tangle of one-way streets and pedestrian zones. He fumed in his hire car as another massed party of Japanese blocked the road. He wound down the window and asked for directions, only to be told that he shouldn’t really have come this way because the bypass would have been much easier. At last he was turning into Cranbrook Street. He saw a row of rosy brick houses, all with pointed gables and recessed porches with stone-lined arches. He could smell roses and fresh paint.

  His chest felt hollow round the drumbeat of his heart. His mouth was dry with anxiety as he counted off the house numbers: 26, 28, 30.

  This was the one. He checked in his inner pocket for a curled scrap of Velcro fabric that he had carried with him since they half dragged him out of the Squirrel at Kandahar. It was still there.

  There was someone standing on the path in front of number 32.

  Not Alice.

  Rooker stepped stiffly out of the car. The young man outside Alice’s front door glanced incuriously at him, then with more attention as he unlatched the little gate.

  ‘I’m looking for Dr Peel.’

  The man had spiky gelled hair, unhealthy skin. He was wearing a suit and tie. ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed her.’ He stepped hastily back as Rooker advanced on him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She is travelling abroad. I’m just the letting agent.’ He glanced down for reassurance at the inventory sheet in his hand. ‘We have tenants coming in…’

  His back was against the porch now. He shrank as Rooker loomed over him, black-faced. ‘I have to know where she has gone. It’s very urgent.’

  The man faltered, ‘New Zealand, I believe. But…’

  Where? The white light of instant comprehension exploded painfully behind Rooker’s eyes. Their paths had crossed. He had arrived just too late because she had set off to look for him. It dawned on him in the same second that he must reach her. He knew with absolute certainty that without her there was less than nothing in the world.

  ‘When?’

  ‘An…hour or so. She dropped these keys in…’

  Rooker’s mind was tearing away, leapfrogging hours and miles. Wait. He had her parents’ telephone number somewhere, scribbled in New York on the back of an airline ticket wallet. He held the alarmed agent pinned against the porch while he searched his pockets. The creased folder was still there, with the stub of his boarding card.

  ‘Phone. I need to telephone.’

  The man swallowed. ‘There’s a call box…no, you can use my mobile.’

  Rooker took the miniature device and stabbed out the numbers. A woman’s voice answered.

  ‘My name is James Rooker. I need to speak to Alice.’

  There was a beat and then, ‘I am afraid she’s gone. She’s at the airport.’

  Unrelated impressions worked at the margins of his mind. Her voice reminded him of long ago. Way back. The divorcée he had lodged with after leaving the Jerrolds, she had come from Yorkshire too, like Alice’s mother. The tiny phone felt slippery, he was afraid of crushing it between his fingers.

  ‘Do you have the flight number?’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ The voice was cold. Alice’s mother didn’t approve of him. It didn’t matter now. He could pick up on all this later, stitch all the contexts and memories back together, try to reintroduce himself. The only thing that mattered at this instant was reaching her.

  ‘Here it is. Singapore Airlines. SQ 328. Terminal Three. Ten p.m.’

  Rooker waved his hand at the agent. The man was sweating, he noticed, but he obligingly produced a pen from his pocket.

  ‘Thank you. Does she have a mobile with her?’

  ‘No. Not for New Zealand.’ The voice turned sharper still. Of course, because he was at the root of all this. ‘Her father is driving her. But I see his telephone is still here.’

  ‘Thank you.’ There was no time for anything else. He would just have to retrace his steps
to Heathrow. Rooker tossed the little phone back to its owner.

  As he accelerated away, he saw the agent mopping his face in relief.

  Alice and Trevor were at the check-in desk as it opened. Alice was assigned a bulkhead seat and promised a sky cot for Meg. They watched the suitcases as they travelled along the belt and disappeared. Afterwards they went and drank tea at the same food court as when they were waiting for her flight to Antarctica. They didn’t talk very much, but the silence between them was comfortable.

  When they had finished their tea Trevor put his hand over hers. ‘This is what you want, isn’t it?’

  Alice nodded. Not the flying and the lonely distance and the weight of uncertainty, but to be doing something that would connect her to him instead of waiting and fading in a life that no longer fitted her.

  ‘You will come home if you can’t find what you’re looking for?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ But she didn’t want even to consider that possibility, because it left too much aching space that didn’t have Rooker in it.

  Trevor blew his nose. ‘I think I’ll get back to your mother. Do you mind if I don’t wait until the last moment?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  He pushed Meg towards the exit and Alice linked her arm through his.

  ‘I love you,’ they told each other at the terminal doors. Trevor tried to smile, then smoothed his hair over the dome of his head and turned abruptly away. Alice watched him go, one hand raised and the other gripping the handle of the buggy, torn between the old familiar and the new desire.

  When she could no longer see him she turned back into the endless cycle of the airport.

  Rooker weaved his way through the fast traffic. The road signs and the miles flashed past. ‘Wait for me, wait for me,’ he muttered. The first sign for Heathrow whirled at him and then the second. The daylight was turning blue-purple as the sun sank.

  He was almost there. A plane rose on his right hand, its nose lifting towards the sky. Wait for me, wait for me. Fifteen minutes later he was at the airport turn-off. He hunched forward over the wheel, searching for signs to guide him through the unfamiliar layout of flyovers and underpasses. There was no time to return the hire car. He slammed it into the terminal car park and ran.

  The airport was packed. Queues stretched from the check-in desks for all the overnight long-haul destinations. He stood at the top of an escalator and scanned the crowds. She was here. She was here somewhere.

  He ran to the enquiries desk. A plump woman in a uniform blinked at his gabbled request.

  ‘Could you repeat that?’

  He repeated himself, wrote down her name, begged for help.

  ‘I’ll see if we can do that for you.’

  He tore himself away from the desk and ran again. ‘Departures’ a sign informed him.

  Alice changed some money, bought herself a magazine, wondered if she had the right clothes for Meg. There would be shops in New Zealand, she reminded herself. She went into a cloakroom and changed Meg’s nappy. There would be time to find a quiet corner to feed her and change her once more before they boarded. Her head was bent over Meg and a distant tannoy announcement was no more than a scramble of words.

  She put the baby back into the buggy and slowly wheeled her towards the ‘Departures’ barrier. There was a long crowded slope, divided into aisles by chrome handrails. An electric zigzag of carpet led to boarding controls, and beyond that she could see baggage scanning machines and the white glitter of duty-free shops. The buggy was rolling down the slope, drawing her with it. There were people flowing around her, some of them walking backwards, in tears, eyes fixed on those they were leaving behind. There was a bored man behind a tall desk, holding out his hand for her boarding card.

  Rooker pushed through the crowds and sprinted past shops. The aimless surges became a steady slow tide, creeping towards ‘Departures’. He scanned the backs of heads as they bobbed in front of him. He reached a chrome rail and a slope leading downwards. The press was thickest here. People leaned over the rail with their hands to their mouths or stretched out in a final wave. He stared down at the sea of heads.

  She was there. There she was. He could see her dark head, held upright.

  She was at the desk, boarding card in hand.

  ‘Alice,’ he roared. ‘Alice, Alice.’

  The airport stilled for a second.

  He was aware of a flowering of faces as the people all turned to stare at him.

  Someone was calling her name. She froze, with her hand raised to take back her boarding card.

  It was his voice.

  Her head turned, the eyes of strangers catching the corner of hers.

  It was Rook. Blood rushed to her head, hammered in the chambers of her ears. He vaulted over a rail, stumbled and pushed his way through the crowd as the slow tide crept forward again.

  ‘Could you stand aside, please?’ an official voice ordered.

  But she couldn’t move in case something might break and admit reality again.

  It was him. He reached her and caught her in his arms and held her against him. She could hear his heart, feel the pulse in his neck. Their mouths met blindly.

  ‘Stand aside, please.’

  The current was flowing around them as if they were two rocks standing up against a lee shore. His mouth moved against hers, shaping her name. She tasted and smelled the familiarity, the strangeness, the solid manifest reality of him, after months of waiting and wishing.

  ‘It is really you, isn’t it?’ Her mouth suddenly curved against his, warm with amazement and delight.

  Over their heads a disembodied voice spoke her name, advising her to contact the information desk.

  ‘It is. You can’t escape,’ he answered. He held on to her and to Meg’s buggy as they pushed their way back up the ramp, against the endless outwards current.

  When they reached a quieter place he propelled her aside and took her face between his hands. ‘Why are you going to New Zealand?’

  He had to hear it from her, spoken in her voice.

  She looked down, seeing the top of Meg’s head. ‘I’m going to Turner. Russ found a newspaper report from the Turner & Medfield Clarion.’ She had the printout of it in her hand luggage along with the picture of him standing outside Margaret Mather House. ‘It’s your family, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I tried everything else, Rook. I couldn’t think of any other way to find you. I thought if I went there I might find a link and I could follow the chain and in the end it would have to lead me to you.’

  There wasn’t a shiver of unhappiness in her but her eyes filled with tears. They ran down her face and he tried to smooth them away, wordless, amazed that she was prepared to do this much.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she whispered.

  He was looking down too, at Meg asleep between them.

  ‘Cuba. Mexico. New York State. Oxford. It doesn’t matter where. Forgive me. Running away, then running to get here.’

  ‘Oxford?’

  ‘I flew in this morning, drove straight to your house. I missed you by about an hour.’

  She was shaking her head, gazing at him through her tears. ‘You have to tell me the truth.’

  ‘I’ve never told you a lie, Alice. I swear. I swear on her life.’ He kneeled down then in front of Meg. She was transformed from the tiny, blood-smeared grey-pink fragment of humanity he had seen in the Zodiac on the frozen shore. Meg was round-cheeked now, with a crescent of dark eyelashes showing against her translucent skin. Her hand was curled on the blanket. The fingernails were perfect, the colour of rosy shells.

  Alice said in a quiet clear voice, ‘You told me that you are a murderer. What does that mean?’

  Rooker stood up, the terminal briefly swimming around him. The time had come to tell the secret that he had never confessed to another living soul.

  He looked blankly at the throngs of people. ‘Can we go somewhere?’

  ‘There’s a place just up
here.’

  The tables were crowded and messy with spilled drinks and food debris. They found one as two people stood up to go. Alice moved aside two tall paper cups, a plate of cold chips smeared with ketchup. They sat down close together, their heads almost touching, Meg’s buggy drawn up beside them. He held her wrists in his hands, one thumb resting on the puckered skin of the long scar, as if to restrain her when she tried to run away.

  ‘Tell me now.’

  He closed his eyes. It was hot and Tannoy announcements boomed over their heads.

  ‘Fire’ was the first word he managed to say. They both remembered the smoke and the flames, and the roar as the walls of the old hut were engulfed.

  Alice waited, but he seemed lost for what to say next.

  ‘Why did your mother do what she did?’ she gently prompted.

  He took a deep breath. Close, grease-tainted air filled his chest.

  ‘She was an alcoholic. I was used to that; we could have managed between us. I looked after her when she needed it; she was a good mother in the in-between times. She was funny and clever and good company. I didn’t feel deprived, you know. I was luckier than some of my friends.’ Gabby Macfarlane, for instance. ‘Then Lester arrived.’

  ‘Was he her lover?’

  ‘No.’ Rooker turned his head away. She studied his quarter-profile, still only just able to believe that he was really here. ‘He tried to be mine.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Twelve.’ The dam was cracking. Words started to spill out of him. They were ugly in his mouth, but relief was already flooding in after them. ‘I didn’t know he was there, Alice. I swear to you. He was at our house, drinking. He’d just come on to me, not for the first time, and I was disgusted. I hated him and I wanted to hurt him, but I didn’t want him to die. I stole a bottle of scotch and ran out of the house. I drank as much of it as I could, then I went round to his caravan and set fire to it.’

  The flood broke loose now. He talked faster and faster. Alice leaned forward, holding his hands. Her eyes never left his face.