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Swallowing the Sun

Page 9

by David Park


  She is running now through that space. Past the glass cases full of jewellery and coins, the butterflies and insects, the sea shells. Past the crystals and quartz, the gleam of the gem stones. Past the stone axes and the paintings. Past the giant deer and the beautiful glass and ceramics. Past Takabuti. And it’s the first time that there are no other children draped across the glass so she can stop and look as long as she wants. But it’s too scary when you’re on your own so she doesn’t look at her withered face, the dried-up blackness of her shrunken head. Her own mouth and throat are dry. She’s been talking too much. What time is it? She’s too warm. There is a pain somewhere, a tightness that she suddenly realises has been there for some time. She wants a drink and she looks about to ask someone, but the music is too loud and when she speaks something happens to her words and she’s not sure if they have any sound beyond what she hears in her head. She’s too warm and the heat is somewhere inside her body seeping out through the pores. She thinks of the mountains, of the coolness of the snow. She wants to be inside that little glass dome, for someone to take it in their hand and shake it. For the snow to fall and cover her. It’s what she wants now more than anything. She needs to tell the girls, but no one’s listening, no one’s listening, and her arms which try to reach out to them are only the falter and flail of her dance.

  *

  He’s already started to think of his unfaithfulness as a crime. A shameful and inexplicable crime; one that will escape detection but not punishment, because he has the capacity to inflict that on himself on a daily basis and in new and ever more bitter ways. So when he drives into his street and sees the police car parked outside their door, his first thought is that he’s been discovered, called to account and every detail that he’s tried to bury deep inside himself will be summoned to the surface and paraded for all to see.

  ‘We’ve had a break-in,’ Alison says.

  ‘A break-in?’ he asks, and for a second almost feels glad. Tom’s hand squeaks the glass as he rubs it to get a better view. A policeman and policewoman get out of their car to meet them. They both have their caps in their hands and as they step forward, putting them on, the policewoman smoothes her hair with a movement that looks like a salute, then uses both hands to fix the cap securely in place.

  ‘Mr Martin Waring?’ she asks. Her voice is businesslike, neutral in its tone. It’s clear that they’ve decided that she’s the officer who will do the talking.

  ‘That’s right. Have we had a break-in?’ he asks, already uncomfortable with the way she’s staring at him, her unbroken gaze focused on his eyes. It makes him feel as if she’s watching, waiting for him to tell her a lie. Behind her, her colleague hovers, as if he’s not quite part of what’s happening, his eyes directed at the side of their car.

  ‘You’re the father of Rachel Waring?’ Her voice is suddenly soft, personal, and he mistrusts it even more than her other voice.

  ‘We’re her parents,’ Alison says, brushing past his shoulder. ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened?’ He hears the panic in her voice, wants to say something that will calm her, tell her that everything’s all right, that there can’t be anything to worry about with Rachel.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that she’s been involved in an accident. She’s in the Ulster Hospital and if you get in the car we’ll take you over now.’

  ‘An accident? What sort of accident? Is she all right?’ Alison’s voice is high and quick. He goes to say something but nothing comes out and it feels as if something is blocking and constricting his throat.

  ‘She took ill at the club she was at. She’s in the hospital now and it would be best if the doctors tell you the details.’ Alison fires out more questions but doesn’t get any answers and as they get in the back of the car the policeman holds his hand over the top of their heads. In the car Alison sits on the edge of the seat and tries to get more information but it’s as if the two officers are closed off, separated by the barrier of their seats, and their heads stay facing grimly forward. Sometimes they speak to each other but he can’t hear what they’re saying and only the cackle of the radio and sudden, frantic bursts of static break the silence. Alison pushes her elbow in his side and when he looks at her, the expression on her face nods him on.

  ‘What sort of accident?’ he asks again. His voice isn’t his but someone else’s, someone he doesn’t even know. The policewoman half turns her face to them, her cheek brushed by a green light. She looks at her colleague but he is locked in the mechanics of his driving and doesn’t return her glance.

  ‘I’m not really able to tell you more because I don’t know all the facts and it would be best if you heard firsthand from the doctors.’

  ‘We’re almost there,’ the driver says. They’re the first words he’s spoken and in a few minutes when they look out of the windows they see the lights of the hospital. It’s starting to rain and as the first drops stipple the windscreen, the wipers are turned on and they scrape and scud across the glass. The car stops at the front door and the policewoman gets out and opens their door, then goes through the same routine with her hat as before. People coming out of the entrance look at them and as the car drives off, she leads them through the doors and it’s clear she knows where she’s going and they follow in silence, only Tom’s trainers slithering occasionally over the tiles as if his feet were polishing them.

  Long corridors, empty mostly but for the occasional nurse or orderly. They pass an old man in a dressing gown, sliding his slippered feet behind a zimmer frame in a whispery wake. He greets the policewoman who nods in reply. Taken ill at a club. He runs the words through his head again and again until he’s constructed a range of possibilities: too much to drink – the other girls have taken advantage of her inexperience and plied her with booze; someone’s spiked her drink – there was a programme on television about it recently; maybe just got sick and fainted or something. And everything will be all right when they get her home again because they know how to look after her, how to take good care of her. And she’ll have a bit of a hangover, or a sticking plaster over a bump, and in a couple of days Alison will have a talk with her, but in a couple more days they’ll have a laugh about it. Maybe Alison will ask him to give her a bit of a father’s talk, just the way she did with Tom. He glances round for Tom and sees that he’s started to lag behind a bit, so he signals him to keep up, watches as he shuffles more quickly towards them, notices the flounce and roll of his body as he starts to hurry. And there’s another thing, this accident that has happened will be an opportunity to really be her father again, to hold her hand at the bedside, to drive her home, carry her things for her. She’ll realise that she still needs them, that despite the stars she’s still their child and that they’re both there for her when she needs them.

  He goes to tell Alison that she mustn’t worry, that everything will be all right, but says nothing as he can see now that they’re arriving at their destination. He’s confused because it’s not a ward but an empty waiting area and the lighting is dimmed, apart from the brightness coming from an office. There is another policewoman standing in the arc of light and at the sound of their footsteps she straightens and knocks the already open door. His feet kick an empty plastic cup from the shadows and sends it skiting under the seats. A vending machine glows red and black in the corner of the waiting area. Some of the chairs have magazines strewn across them. A young woman in a white coat has come out of the office with a man in a suit behind her, his hand straightening his tie. On his lapel is a plastic name-tag.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Waring,’ their policewoman announces, then stands aside in a gesture that suggests her job is over, that they have been safely delivered.

  ‘Please come in,’ the doctor says. ‘It might be best if your son waits out here and you can speak to him yourself in a few moments.’ At her words Tom slumps into a seat, out of breath and his eyes full of suspicion as if he thinks they’re going to be talking about him.

  In the office the man shuts the
door behind them as soon as they are seated, then goes behind the desk but doesn’t sit. ‘Mr and Mrs Waring, you are the parents of Rachel Waring?’ She reads their address to them and asks them to confirm it and Rachel’s date of birth. Alison goes to interrupt, but he stays her voice by touching her on the arm and already he knows, but tries to tell himself that the doctor’s voice is not going to confirm, but deny, what’s started the crazy shake of fear that’s seeding itself in his mind, the spores scattering and beginning to spread to every part of his being.

  ‘This is a very painful moment and it is with the deepest regret that I have to tell you that your daughter Rachel died this evening at fifteen minutes past ten.’ Her words vanish into the wail of Alison and then her screams of ‘No! No!’ Her movements beside him collapse into a sobbing thresh on the chair but he can’t touch her, can’t look at her, can’t take his eyes from the face of this young woman telling him that Rachel is dead because he’s desperate to see something that will tell him she’s a liar, that with her youth and her inexperience she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And so it’s her arm that comes forward now to comfort his wife and the man comes from behind the desk and he’s saying, ‘We’re very sorry, very sorry,’ over and over as if the words will calm him, ease the pain. But there is no pain, no pain at all because now everything in the room – the doctor’s voice, the tightened knot of this man’s tie, the greyness of the filing cabinet and the wilt of the plant that sits on it, the cries of his wife – conspires to create an unreality that anaesthetises every nerve end and detaches him from where he is and what’s happening to him. So it can all be ended with the flick of a switch, the changing of the channel, the wakening first gleam of the morning – some assertive act of his consciousness. Alison’s questions, the doctor’s answers, only filter slowly through the thick mesh of what his mind has created and if he is to stand up now, he will shake off everything they say like a dog that shakes itself free of so much water.

  ‘She died from heart failure. Very quickly. She was dead on admittance to hospital. There was nothing we could do. The ambulance crew tried their very best. I’m very sorry, very sorry.’

  In the photograph she wears a blue dress with white and yellow flowers. No shoes on her feet. She holds the camera to her eye. Eyes that he can’t remember whether they’re blue or grey. All the light of a future world flowing into her eye.

  ‘Does Rachel have any known heart condition? Is there any history of heart disease in your family?’ He stares at the doctor, tries to understand what’s she’s saying. She’s said ‘does’, she’s said, ‘have’. It’s all been a mistake – Rachel doesn’t have a bad heart, she’s never had anything more than a cold, hasn’t missed a day of school in the last five years. Five years. Why do people throw coins into water? Because they think it will bring them luck? The next chance he has, he will throw all the coins he can find into water. What did she wish for that night in the restaurant? What did she wish for all those birthdays?

  ‘I want to see her.’ He stands up. ‘There’s been some mistake.’

  ‘We’ll take you to her now,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry. You’ll have to tell your son. We thought it best if he heard from you.’ She hands more tissues to Alison and he looks at her, at the twisted blur of her face, at the fistful of shredded paper, hears the gasping sobs that break like waves on the broken shore of her being and he still can’t touch her or speak to her because he can’t give himself to this grief, this grief he won’t accept or believe is needed.

  ‘We can’t be sure until we’ve done an autopsy, what were the exact causes of death but we have reason to believe that Rachel took something at the club – possibly the drug Ecstasy. It’s possible that this precipitated heart failure. I know this is very painful but have you any knowledge of Rachel ever taking any illicit substances?’

  He almost smiles. He knows for sure now that it’s the wrong girl. He thinks of telling the doctor about the stars, about who Rachel is, but instead says. ‘Let me see this girl. It isn’t Rachel.’

  ‘I know this is very difficult,’ the man says, ‘and I wish you were right but Rachel’s been identified by her friends. One of them came in the ambulance with her. Someone she’s at school with. We’ll take you now but is there a minister or family member you’d like us to contact for you? We could wait for them to arrive. It would give you time to speak to your son.’

  ‘I want to see her now,’ he says and then for the first time touches Alison, lightly and quickly on the sleeve of her coat. The man lifts the phone and tells someone they’re coming. When they leave the office the policewoman comes with them but the doctor stays behind with Alison – she’s offering her a sedative, asking who her local GP is. In the waiting area Tom is working at the vending machine, lifting its flaps, pressing buttons, looking for change. He goes to follow them but he tells him to stay. A few minutes later they are down in the casualty area. There is the muted sound of television, the echoing, discordant voices of people waiting and then in another corridor they push through plastic double doors and come to a closed door where two nurses whisper to each other, then fall silent at their approach. No one moves to open the door.

  He has seen Rachel dead twice. Once when she was a baby and for the first time slept through the night. When he woke, looked at his sleeping wife, looked at the bedside clock and heard only the cold silence thicken and expand inside his head, he knew she was dead. Down the hall, his bare feet fired by the rising panic, the words ‘cot death’ slowly tightening round his throat: he flings the door open so hard it bounces against the radiator and clatters in the sleeping quiet of the house and his ears are honed and desperate for his daughter’s breathing but all he hears is the beat of his heart. She’s in the cot, part of the blanket covering the side of her face, and he pulls it back and for a moment she’s still as stone, then suddenly her mouth puckers, before a wrinkle spreads across her face. And he’s on his knees, hands holding the bars of the cot, face pressed against them, his eyes level with hers. He holds the bars a long time, then goes back to bed and hugs himself, careful not to waken Alison and in the morning says nothing.

  The second time was only six months ago. He can’t sleep, doesn’t know why. Something in his head feels unsettled, unfinished, like a window or door that hasn’t been locked against the world’s intruders. Alison’s breath comes in a steady stream, sometimes her shoulder shrugs the duvet tighter. He gets up and makes his way downstairs. In the hall there is the fray of flickering light – someone is watching television with the sound down. He thinks it must be Tom. Perhaps even sneaking more time on the computer. But when he goes in, it is Rachel on the settee, an outdoor coat draped over her. It is her back he sees because she is curled into the settee, her head pressed against its folds, buried in the shadows, and the light of the television is frantic, making her stillness more resolute, more permanent. He stands close, picks the open book from the floor and wants to speak to her, to shake her awake so that he can banish the stupid fears that scurry about his head. Instead he only stands close until she stirs and stretches a little before he returns the book to where he found it and goes to turn off the television, but then hesitates, reluctant to plunge the room into darkness. So he leaves it on and as it blinks like an eye he quietly leaves the room, glancing back over his shoulder when he reaches the door.

  The sheet is slowly removed. Her eyes are closed. She is asleep. Soon she will stir and stretch, soon her mouth will pucker and the muscles in her face will wrinkle. Soon she will stretch her limbs into life. Her skin is washed in blue as if she’s cold – the whole room is cold – why does no one turn on the heat? Maybe if he held her, he could cradle heat into her veins, smooth the blueness from her lips. His hand moves to touch her but doesn’t. He can’t bear for his fingers to touch this cold, a coldness he knows will burn his skin. Her eyes are closed, he can’t see what colour they are.

  There is a voice asking him if it’s Rachel but he knows if he is to speak, his own voi
ce will crack and splinter like glass. So he nods and the voice is saying other things but they’re lost in the rush of what feels like a molten flow that threatens to carry everything before it. He tries to save himself, to dam the flood and so thinks of sixteen polished stone axes, of giant metal wheels and cogs of polished machinery, of money thrown into water but these things he knows and stores are powerless and breached by the relentless tide. But he cannot cry, can find no release as his fingers tighten on the sheet and the only voice he hears now is telling him that he’s a little bastard, a useless little cunt for letting them take what was his.

  He’s circling him, moving constantly, weaving his words and movement into one curse and his hawking laughter is expelled from his throat like a spit. Laughing because he was stupid enough to think he’d escaped. There is the slap of his palm on his cheek which flames and quivers with the pain. He tries to think of the stars, to pull them out of the night sky and hold them like a shield in front of his eyes but they’re brittle and snapped by the smash of his father’s fist. He looks for help but there is only Rob cowering in the shadows, his mother’s face behind the glass.

 

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