—
HE LOOKED AT HIS watch and saw that it was almost eight. He went over to kiss Cathy, and as she lifted her face to his, porridge slid from the spoon and dropped onto the tray of the high chair. Gracie studied it, poked it, traced spirals with her fingers round and round the tray. Cathy just shrugged and mopped up the porridge with the sleeve of her dressing gown. There were mornings when he was unsettled by her eagerness to please him, by the transparency of her efforts to affect happiness. This morning she seemed more relaxed, brighter, her smile as she said goodbye less forced.
But a few minutes later as he sat in his car, key in the ignition, she appeared at the front door. She picked her way across the graveled driveway in thin fabric slippers, arms wrapped around herself to fend off the cold.
“You don’t have to go to Manchester this month, do you?” she said, as he rolled down the window.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so,” and he saw relief in her face as she waved him off.
He drove out through the gate and down the lane, shattering membranes of ice stretched across the puddles, and turned onto the main road. At Twomey’s bridge, a buckled fender and side panel lay bone white in the verge, like skeletons along an ancient silk route, a warning to other travelers. His phone sat on the dash. He liked to keep it where he could see it, though he knew it would not ring. Once he joined the river road he was out of coverage until he reached the dual carriageway. The river road was a portal between worlds: his home on one side, the city on the other, and in the middle a no-man’s-land of space and time when his wife and daughter were beyond his grasp, unreachable.
Mist rose from the river, ghosted through black and empty trees. The herons that lived along the bank were out in force, balanced on spindly legs. They stood motionless, their long, curved necks thrust forward, as if they, too, like the trees and the grass, had been stilled by the frost. The road was rough and uneven. Every spring, the county council sent out men and machines with truckloads of asphalt to lay a new surface. And every winter the river tore it away again, so that, come February, what remained was not so much a road but a dirt track.
His office was in a 1970s square-fronted building in the city center. Steps, pockmarked with gum and doused in bleach, led to a foyer hung with advertisements for various financial products. He saw Cahill, his manager, waiting in the lift lobby and decided to take the stairs. Cahill, he knew, was losing patience. He had considered talking to Cahill, but the time had never seemed right, and now he thought the time might have passed. Lately he had noticed a change in the way Cahill spoke to him, and if they passed each other in the corridors or in the canteen, Cahill mostly looked away.
His cubicle was on the fourth floor, in a long, rectangular room with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. More glass separated the office space from the stairwell and the staff canteen. He switched on his computer and saw Cahill had included him on an email about the trip to Manchester, scheduled for the following week. He clicked “Reply,” typed a couple of sentences, and stopped. For a while, he stared at the screen without typing anything, then saved the reply to “Drafts” to finish later.
He made a mug of coffee in the canteen and brought it back to his desk. The woman in the next cubicle raised her head above the partition. “Cahill was looking for you,” she said, in the singsong, lisping voice that grated on him, and then she went back to work, synthetic nails scuttling click-click across her keyboard. He opened his emails and resumed the reply to Cahill. He read over what he had written, added a word or two, then closed it and started on something else.
At 11:35 A.M. his mobile rang. It was Martha. “I’m worried,” she said.
He had told Martha time and again that he worked in an open-plan office.
“Hold on,” he said. He got up and went out to the lobby. He pictured Martha on the other end of the phone, her cheeks sucked hollow in annoyance at being kept waiting, tugging at the buttons of her cardigan as if even they had offended her. Between the lifts and the cleaning-supplies cupboard was a narrow recessed space. He had discovered that if he pressed close against the wall, he could see his cubicle through the glass, but could not easily be seen himself.
“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Have you noticed anything lately?”
“Nothing worth talking about.”
“That means you’ve noticed something.”
He wondered how two people who both loved Cathy could dislike each other so very much. “She doesn’t go jogging anymore,” he said, “but that’s mostly down to the weather.”
“Anything else?”
He imagined Martha’s fidgeting becoming fiercer, a button popping off her cardigan, rolling across her kitchen floor. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was about to betray his wife. “She’s skipped her meds a couple of times, but only a couple. And she’s tired, but then Gracie’s been a handful lately.”
There was silence for a moment and then Martha said, “Gracie isn’t at daycare today.”
“How do you know?”
“I rang the daycare and they told me.”
“You had no business ringing them.”
“I ring all the time,” Martha said. “Somebody has to. Did you know she forgot to collect Gracie twice last week? They had to phone her when she didn’t show.”
“She was probably just late,” he said. “Late isn’t forgetting.”
“She was over an hour late. And yesterday? When they were changing Gracie? Her dress was filthy. Filthy and frayed along one side, and she wasn’t even wearing a vest.”
He rested his forehead against the wood of the supplies cupboard, inhaled its smells of bleach and disinfectant. Every small thing had been taken from his wife’s possession, laid bare under a harsh and artificial light; every failing paraded before a fairground mirror, magnified and distorted, until even the smallest lapse came to signal catastrophe. “They told you all that?” he said. “They had no right. That stuff’s private.”
“I don’t give a shit about your privacy. Your daughter isn’t at daycare today. You need to start thinking about that.”
Over the top of the cupboard, he saw Cahill weaving through the maze of cubicles heading for his desk. He saw him rest his hands on the back of the empty chair and look around.
“Did you hear me?” Martha said.
“Are they sure she’s not at daycare?”
“Of course they’re bloody well sure. They sign the children in; they sign the children out. Your daughter isn’t there.”
He could see Cahill bent over the desk, scribbling something. “I’ll ring Cathy now,” he said.
“You think I haven’t tried that? I’ve been ringing this past hour.”
“She might be upstairs. She mightn’t have heard the phone. Sometimes she takes her bath while Gracie’s at daycare.”
“I told you,” Martha said—and he pictured her knuckles growing white as her grip tightened on the handset—“Gracie’s not at daycare.”
“I’ll give it ten minutes and try her then.”
“Well, let me know how you get on.”
“I will,” he said, “and thank you, Martha,” but she had hung up.
He dialed Cathy’s mobile but it went to voicemail. The landline also rang out. When he returned to his desk, the woman in the next cubicle appeared again above the partition. “Cahill,” she said, nodding at a Post-it stuck to his computer screen. He peeled it off and read it. He was to bring last month’s figures to the lunchtime meeting about Manchester. He crumpled the note into a ball and dropped it into the trash. He tried Cathy’s number again. He thought of ringing the daycare, asking if Gracie had arrived in the meantime, but decided against it.
He took the stairs to the third floor to collect some documents, and, when he got back, he saw he had a missed call from Martha. He looked around the office. Cahill was standing a little way off, talking to one of the IT people. He went back out to the lobby and dialed Martha’s number and, when she didn’t
answer, Cathy’s. When there was still no reply, he returned to his desk, took his jacket from the back of his chair, and left the office.
He drove out of the city, past tourists shivering around the war memorial statue, past the park where mothers in hats and scarves chatted over buggies, and took the exit for the dual carriageway. Shortly after he turned onto the river road, Martha rang but the line was patchy, interspersed with bursts of static, and then there was nothing. It was not raining, but drops from overhead branches fell in an insistent patter upon the windscreen. Nature had swung on its hinges: The thaw had started, and once it had started there was nothing that could stop it. Frost was melting from the trees along the riverbank, revealing strips of torn plastic and other debris wound around their trunks in times of flood. There had been an unsilvering: The whiteness had receded, leaving soiled browns, mildewed greens. From a low-lying branch, a plastic bag hung heavy with river water. He remembered a summer at his grandparents’ farm as a child, when he had found a bag, a knotted pouch of water, by the edge of a stream. Opening it, he had discovered half a dozen slimy, hairless pups, their eyes tight shut.
—
THERE WAS AN INCIDENT the previous November that he had kept from Martha. Cathy, he guessed, had kept it from her, too, because if Martha knew, Cathy and Gracie would be living in Castleisland now, and he would be living by himself in the house above the river. He had arrived home one evening to find the front door open, leaves blowing about the hall. “Cathy?” he called, putting down his briefcase. In the kitchen, a bag of flour had been pulled from a cupboard and upended. Gracie was under the table in just a nappy, digging jam from a jar with a fork and smearing it on the floor. She was utterly absorbed, the kitchen quiet apart from the sound of the fork striking the tiles. It was only when she looked up and saw him that she began to bawl. “Where’s Mummy?” he tried, picking her up and going from room to room, but she had only cried louder.
He dressed her in clothes pulled from the laundry basket, and got a flashlight from under the stairs. Cathy’s phone was on top of the kitchen table, her car parked in the driveway. He searched the garden first, quickly, because he did not expect to find Cathy there. The shed, when he checked it, was padlocked on the outside as usual. Gracie had stopped crying, distracted by the novelty of being outdoors in the dark. She waddled ahead of him, chasing the flashlight’s circle of light, jumping on it, shrieking when it slid from under her feet. He climbed over the ditch into the farm next door, lifting Gracie in after him. He hoisted her onto his shoulders, steadying her with one hand, his other hand sweeping the flashlight across the shadowy grass as they made their way from field to field.
From the farm, they crossed the road to the stretch of marshy ground beside the river. The countryside at night was a different creature, the soft ground sucking at their shoes, the air thick with midges. As they got closer to the river, he noticed movement ahead, black, lumbering shapes at the edge of the trees. It was a herd of cattle, the white patches of their hides emerging like apparitions from the darkness. They were gathered in a circle, heads dipped low, steam billowing from their noses. “Moo!” Gracie shouted. “Moo! Moo!” and they stumbled apart to reveal Cathy sitting on a metal feeding trough, the ground all around her pulped muddy by hooves. She was dressed in a skirt, a short-sleeved blouse, and slippers, and when he got nearer he saw that her arms and legs were torn by briars and she was bleeding from a cut on her ankle. She looked up at him and then she looked away. Later that night, after he had bathed her and dabbed antiseptic on her cuts, after he had put her to bed and placed Gracie, sleeping, in the crook of her arm, still she wouldn’t look at him.
—
PASSING THROUGH LINDON’S CROSS, the car slid and crossed the center line before he managed to right it again. A heron spread its wings and rose up, flying low through the trees, toward the road. It flew so close he feared it might strike the windscreen, but it rose higher and for a moment flew ahead of the car, a silent outrider, before rising higher again, higher than seemed plausible for such a large bird, and disappearing behind a copse of trees. He touched a hand to his face and realized that he was crying. If he got home and they were safe, he would never leave them again. He would stay with them. He would not go to the office, and Cahill could do what he liked. It didn’t matter anymore what Cahill thought or didn’t think; it was impossible to imagine anything that mattered less than Cahill. They would manage. He would find a way. He would talk to Martha.
When he turned into the driveway, he saw that the ground surrounding the pond had been disturbed. Sods of red clay had been hacked from the lawn, their scalps of white grass run through with blades of green. A number of wooden posts had been brought from the shed and lay in a pile beside a pickax and a roll of wire mesh left behind by the builder. He stopped the car and got out. The pond itself was a mess of earth and grass, too muddied to allow sight of any fish. Part of the concrete surround was cracked, the ground beside it swampy where the water was slowly seeping away. He looked toward the house and realized that Cathy’s car was missing.
He became conscious of the sound of his own breathing, of the ticks and shudders of the settling car engine. He had the sensation of being underwater, of straining against some vast, sucking tide. And then Gracie came barreling around the corner of the house. She made her way across the lawn, slipping on the wet grass, falling, getting up again. She was wearing a red dress with pink puffy sleeves, the belt flapping around her, and her Tinker Bell sandals. He ran to her and swung her up into his arms, this child he had driven away from this morning, this child he was entrusted to protect from everything and everyone. He clasped her tight, so tight that her chatter was muffled against his shirt. When he lifted his cheek from her hair, he saw Cathy walking up the garden toward them. She was carrying one of Gracie’s sandals that had come off when she fell.
“Why are you home?” she said. She was wearing Wellington boots and a dress she had bought for a cousin’s wedding the year before, a summer dress in flimsy material patterned in blue and yellow parrots. He saw how much looser it hung on her now, how her collarbone pressed sharply against her skin, as if it might break through.
“I forgot a file,” he said.
“What a day for it to happen,” she said, “with the roads so bad. We didn’t even go to daycare, did we, Gracie? We went to the end of the lane and turned back.”
“Where’s your car?”
She was easing the sandal back on her daughter’s foot, fastening the strap. “It’s round the back by the shed. I was using it to move the posts. They were too heavy to carry.”
Gracie wriggled out of his arms and went over to the pond. “Poor fishy,” she said. She knelt on the concrete surround and dipped her arm in the water, wetting the sleeve of her dress to the shoulder. She lifted out a dead gray fish. Holding it by the tail, she swung it back and forth like a pendulum.
“That damn bird again,” Cathy said. She took the fish from her daughter and laid it down on the grass. “We saw him through the window and ran out.” She pointed to a gash in the fish’s neck, just below the gills. “He dropped it, but we were too late. Two more are missing. Maybe three.”
“Bad birdie,” Gracie said. “Bad, bad birdie,” and she stamped her foot.
He wanted to say that it was winter, that the bird was only doing what it always did, what it had to do. That there had never been any hope for those unwitting koi, here in this desolate place where even the river fish struggled to survive. Cathy picked up the ax. “What are you doing?” he said.
“We’re going to keep the fish safe. We’re going to build them a cage, like in the zoo. Right, Gracie?” When she brought the ax down, the end lodged in the lawn and she leaned on the handle, worked it like a lever, until another sod broke away. She flipped it over to reveal a tangle of roots on the underside. She was not wearing a coat or even a cardigan and her arms were purple and goosebumped. So, too, were Gracie’s, he realized. The hem of her dress had trailed in the pond and the
wet was soaking upward.
“Let’s leave it awhile and go inside,” he said.
Cathy stopped hacking at the lawn. He saw how she was looking at him, confusion in her face, trying to work out if she had displeased him. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s cold, that’s all. We can see about it later.” He took Gracie by the hand and began to walk toward the house, Cathy at his side.
“I rang earlier,” he said. “I tried a few times.”
“Did you? We’ve been out here most of the morning, haven’t we, Gracie?”
Gracie nodded solemnly at her mother. “Poor fishy,” she said again.
At the front door, Cathy took off her boots, left them on the step. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “about the daycare. It’s a lot of money for Martha to come up with every month. And we don’t really need it anymore, do we? I mean, I’m fine now. I can manage.” She ruffled her daughter’s hair. “We had fun this morning, didn’t we? Just Mummy and Gracie?”
“We don’t need to decide about the daycare now,” he said. “We’ll talk about it over the weekend.”
Inside the house, Gracie toddled down the hall after her mother. He glanced at his watch, saw that the Manchester meeting was about to start.
“You might as well stay for lunch now that you’re here,” Cathy said.
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
Upstairs in their bedroom, he took off his jacket and threw it on the bed. In the en suite bathroom, he opened the cabinet and took out the box containing Cathy’s medication. He counted the pills in their blister pack: exactly the right number, neither too many, nor too few. He splashed water on his face and lay for a while on the bed with his eyes closed. In the inside pocket of his jacket, his phone beeped. He had three messages: a text from the in-house travel department, with booking references for flights and hotels, three nights in Manchester and then—something that had not been mentioned previously—two in Birmingham; a brusque voicemail from Martha, saying she was on her way to check on Cathy; and one from Cahill, asking where the hell he was. He switched off the phone, put it back in his jacket pocket, and went downstairs.
Dinosaurs on Other Planets Page 5