I got up to smile at his saviour, who they would surely talk about on the evening news, but my smile faded when I realised there was no one there.
My eyes moved frantically from one side of that dark mass of water to the other, and a sour taste rose in my throat.
Oh where is he? Where is he? Where the fuck is he? Where are you Pat?
I ran up and down calling to him with all the breath in my body.
‘Patrick!’ I screamed, entering the water up to my waist, ‘Patrick where are you?’ I can’t see you! Patrick.’
I was sure my eyes must be paying a terrible trick on me, that he was there in front of me, somehow hidden in the cold grey of the sea, and that he would run out of water any second now, his teeth chattering, and I would breathe a sigh of relief and fall to my knees in the sand.
But I couldn’t see him.
The minutes passed and I couldn’t see him.
I turned, dazed and helpless, towards the crowd that had gathered on the shore and whispered, ‘Somebody, please? Somebody call for help. I can’t see him anymore.’
22
I remember the rest in slow motion, as if a bomb had exploded next to me. Muffled, distant voices, blurred vision, curious people doing nothing, the ambulance, the darkness coming down, questions, questions and more questions and the pain that shot through my legs and made me collapse onto the cold sand.
They took me home late at night, wrapped in a blanket, with Pat’s jacket still in my arms. The police had called Mum when she was on the way back from Brighton and she was waiting for me in tears at the door. I remember looking at her without recognising her, and then the big hands of the gentle giant picked me up and carried me to my room.
23
I stopped talking, sleeping and washing myself.
I spent days in my room looking at the bare wall, without shedding a tear. I had lost the thing that was most precious to me. The one beautiful thing I had ever known in this whole miserable world, and the sea had grabbed him with its icy fingers and dragged him away.
God had mocked me.
Always remember to be very specific when you pray, because although God knows what you want, He only gives you what you ask for.
My grandmother, worried about the audition and offended that I wasn’t taking her calls, eventually rang my mother to find out ‘What my intentions were.’ My mother informed her of the facts and then hung up, but she still kept calling me until I finally turned off the phone.
Had I really cared so much about ballet? Was it me that had spent so much time and energy preparing for the audition? I barely remembered. It seemed like someone else’s life, someone with hopes and dreams. Someone who had died with Pat.
My mother was desperate, coming into the room to replace one full tray with another, trying everything to get through to me, sometimes coaxing, sometimes frustrated, but all I could offer in return was an empty stare.
‘You’ve got to eat something Mia, please? Please do it for me, do it for Mamma.’
But all I heard was a distant voice echoing around the empty space that was my soul.
York hadn’t left my side once since that night, watching over me like a dying relative. Even he had changed. He refused to leave the house and pissed by the door. We were together in hell.
At night I lay in the dark with my eyes wide open, terrified that I would fall asleep and stop breathing. When I did sleep I dreamed that I was locked inside a box under the water, and woke up soaked with sweat.
And no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t remember Patrick’s face. In its place was a hole, filled with black, churning water. I was going crazy.
The idea that I would never see him again was so unacceptable to my brain that it would focus obsessively on trivial details in order to avoid reality. I could have spent ten hours staring at a pulled thread on my sweater, but if, for a moment, I remembered that he was gone, and that I would never see him again, I was assailed by a pain so atrocious that it engulfed me and crushed me enough to paralyse me.
Paul came upstairs to see me every night after work. He sat at the end of the bed and kept me updated me on what was going on in the world, with William and Kate or Lady Gaga and then went on to tell me about his day at work, what the specials had been, all about his worst customers, and if he had got caught in traffic. He would speak to me for half an hour in his calm, level voice, then kiss me on the forehead and go away. Leaving me to fight my ghosts for another interminable night.
I became like a shadow. My eye sockets swallowed up my eyes, my skin turned sickly yellow, and the constant, insidious, slimy feeling of being always soaked with water never left me.
‘They’re having a service for Patrick this morning at St Nicholas Church,’ my mother informed me, ‘Paul and I are going, I don’t know if you feel up to it.’
I didn’t move or reply.
His funeral, the same day as the audition.
Then suddenly I remembered Nina.
Nina was suffering like me, Nina would understand, she had to understand - this thing now united us.
I stood up and the room spun wildly around me, so I had to lean on the headboard to stop myself from falling. My legs were numb and weak and there was a bitter taste in my mouth. I went down the stairs slowly, wrapped myself in Patrick’s huge jacket, stumbled into my shoes and went out.
It had snowed and the air was pungent and hostile. Breathing hurt my nose. I buried my face in my scarf and started walking, followed by York, towards the bus stop. Mrs Fancher came outside house to tell me something, but I passed on without even giving her a glance. I walked like a tired old man, stopping every now and then to catch my breath. I got onto the bus and got off again after about ten stops, York following along behind me like a shadow.
Outside the church, people were gathered in small groups. Former classmates, some teachers, the head, and two officers of the Royal Navy. Incredulous people who shook their heads, remembering and crying, trying to console one another. I also recognised the baby’s mother and Carl, who greeted me with a nod from afar.
As I passed I felt the silence descend. No one had the courage to greet me, the scale of my grief was too monstrous to be relieved by platitudes, and so I walked through the silent crowd as if I had been shut up in a glass coffin.
Mrs. Jenkins came over to me anxiously, asking how I was, but when she saw my tired face, she just hugged me tightly without another word.
I was stunned and frightened. This was bigger than me. It was too much. The body had not been found and the family had asked for a commemorative service from the minister who had baptised him.
Why are you in such a hurry? Maybe he’s alive, maybe he’s on a secret mission hidden somewhere. Wait a little, look again.
Please…
Then I saw Nina’s family in the front row.
Nina, Laetitia and Nina’s father, standing together in dignified silence. Laetitia was destroyed, and seemed very small, standing between her husband and her daughter and trying not to cry, her mouth covered with a handkerchief. Nina and her father huddled around her and supported her like two bodyguards, their faces grim. My mother and Paul were seated at the back and waved me over to join them.
It was a beautiful but pointless ceremony. Everyone knew that Patrick was good and generous. Everyone knew that he was always ready to sacrifice himself for his neighbour. That he was always smiling, optimistic, cheerful, a friend, a son and a beloved brother.
But these were things you might say about anyone, at any funeral. When someone dies, people only remember their good points, but Patrick really had all those qualities, and so many more that they left out.
It was as though he had radiated light. He could bless you with strength and courage just by looking into your eyes, he made you laugh like no one else, smelled of night air and jasmine, was always at ease with everyone, never judged people, and loved everyone. He had lousy taste in music and couldn’t dance a step, but he loved life and beautiful things and above
all he knew how to make other people feel important.
That was Patrick, not some one-size-fits-all identikit eulogy.
The neat rows of people and their polite grief gave me vertigo. More than anything I wanted to be back in my room, safe, but first I had to see Nina. I wanted to hug her, be with her, see Patrick in her face, and make her feel my love so we could try and face all that absurd pain together.
We waited, off to one side, for the crowd gathered around the family to move away. Laetitia thanked everyone kindly, trying to smile, like she was worried about seeming rude. When the last hand had been shaken and it was our turn, Laetitia, who until then had held herself together, almost lost her senses at the sight of Patrick’s jacket, collapsing against her husband.
Then Nina saw me, and her eyes flashed with hatred, her face a mask of contempt.
‘I don’t know how you have the nerve to show yourself, you fucking bitch!’ she screamed, and in a fraction of a second she had pushed me to the ground and began hitting me in a frenzy of violence, slapping and punching, weeping bitterly all the while.
He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you! He died because of you and your piece of shit dog!’ She scrambled wildly to her feet and gave York a kick in his belly that left him stunned.
Paul grabbed Nina under her arms and lifted her away from me, while her parents, in tears, tried to calm their daughter. They clung to one another, united against the grief that assaulted them.
Mum helped me to my feet. She stroked my forehead, crying, trying to protect me from all the horror and confusion. I was dazed and my nose was bleeding, but I barely noticed. Even when she was hitting me, I hardly felt a thing. A lady had taken York in her arms and brought him back to me. When she put him on the ground he limped.
Paul walked me back to the car, sat me carefully in the back, and gave me his handkerchief to stem the flow of blood from my nose. I saw him go over to Nina’s father and say something, pointing his finger at him, and every so often towards me. Paul could be pretty scary when he was angry, I remembered it well.
‘I told him to control his daughter and make sure she never attacks Mia like that again. She could have killed her! Did you see what she did to York?’ he said, fuming.
‘They’re destroyed, that family is destroyed,’ my mother said sadly.
I’m destroyed, Mum, I’m done for, can’t you see? I’m dead too.
The doctor came round in the afternoon.
I didn’t understand why. I wasn’t sick, I just wanted to be left alone, it wasn’t so difficult to understand. He examined me, asking lots of questions to Mum and Paul, who stood in the doorway. He said something about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and gave me lots of pills.
The pills made me sleep for hours upon endless hours, with no dreams and no night terrors. I felt numb, muffled. It was almost pleasant. I felt nothing, I could hardly remember the reason why I was always in bed, but the strangest thing was that I was no longer interested.
Paul didn’t approve of me taking ‘all that stuff’, as he called it, but my mother replied exhausted that she wanted her daughter back as soon as possible, because she was going crazy.
My grandmother called her again to say she would find a way to get me another audition, but she cut her short, saying she had far more important things than my grandmother’s ego to think about, and my health was one of them.
Dance? I didn’t know what it meant anymore.
Sleep. Yes, sleep forever, that was the answer.
24
Betty crept quietly into my room one afternoon. Judging by the look on her face, I supposed I must be in bad shape.
‘What happened to you my love? What have you done to yourself…?’
She brushed my clammy hair back from my face.
Wrapped in the duvet, I tried in vain to fight the bitter cold of the water that rotted my bones, staring helplessly at nothing.
‘Mia, you’re skin and bones, when’s the last time you ate something?’
Why was everyone so interested in food, was it really so important? If I ate something would I suffer any less or would it just make them feel better?
People ate to stay alive and I had no interest in being alive.
Suddenly I remembered something.
‘Did you always know, Betty?’ I whispered.
I hadn’t spoken for weeks and my voice sounded hoarse and frightening, as if I were speaking from beyond the grave.
‘Did I always know what, darling?’ she asked, worried, moving closer so she could hear me.
‘You knew he was going to die. The Tower, The Tower always came out and you said it was nothing .’
‘Mia, they’re just cards, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a game …’
‘You knew Betty, you knew he would die and you didn’t say.’
‘I didn’t know anything. How could I say something like that to you, even if I did think…?’
‘You knew and you didn’t warn me. I could have saved him, kept him away from the water.’
‘No Mia, not if it was already written. There was nothing you could have done, not against fate.
‘Go away Betty,’ I said, closing my eyes, ‘Go home, I don’t want to see you anymore.’
‘Mia.’
‘Go away,’ I muttered.
In the evening Mum came up to see me. She no longer looked like herself, she was like a ghost. Thin, disheveled, with a sunken face and the eyes of someone who is always crying.
‘If you won’t do it for yourself, please do it for me, please live for your mother.’ She shook me by the shoulders, crying, ‘At least talk to me, Mia, talk to me, I’m still here, I’m alive, we’re alive. Me, Paul, York, your father, dance!
‘The ballet is still waiting for you, you can still audition, your grandmother said she can get you another audition! Isn’t it incredible? I had an entire conversation with your grandmother about dance! It’s a miracle, isn’t it?’ she tried to laugh, but her eyes betrayed all her pain.
No, Mum there’s nothing left, nothing that interests me now. I’m sorry, I’m a horrible daughter and you deserved better, but I just don’t have the strength. I love you with all the heart I have left but I can’t take it any more. I’m so miserable, I can’t take it any more.
Weeks passed and nothing happened.
It was still cold, although Paul had told me spring was coming.
Mum told me that Carl had been round, and Mrs Jenkins came round regularly to see how I was. But the more time passed, the more I struggled to remember who she was talking about. It seemed impossible to me that I had had a life before that room, a life with friendships, passions, and love.
I was skin and bones. I drank a couple of glasses of milk to wash down the drugs and that was more or less all, for the rest of the day I slept, floating in a pale and confused dimension.
Until one day when Betty felt the need to talk to me again. It must have seemed that she was walking into a mortuary. The acrid smell, the cold, the half-light and my breathing reduced to little more than a rattle were all that remained of me.
‘Mia, love.’ She shook me gently to tear me from my slumber. ‘Mia, listen to me, I know you don’t want to see me, but I have something I need to tell you. I don’t know why, but I think it’s important.’
I didn’t see her, but I sensed her. A familiar, distant voice broke the white noise in my head, in that unreal place where I lived, without corners or curves.’
‘I had a strange dream, Mia. Maybe it’s nothing, but you’re the only one who will know for sure. Are you listening to me?’
I didn’t answer.
‘I’ll tell you anyway. I dreamed of Patrick, or at least I think it was him. I haven’t seen him for a few years, so I don’t quite know what he looks like now apart from the photo in the newspapers, but he was older than I remembered and… Oh God, I know I shouldn’t be here, but I feel like I have a duty to tell you. He... he asked me to, in the dream. He insisted so much and it seemed so
real that I thought I was awake.’
My pupils twitched imperceptibly.
Betty went on, ‘His hair had grown, and his beard, too. He was wearing jeans and a dark green jumper. I don’t know if that’s important or not, what matters is that he told me to tell you this ‘Keep dancing, Mia. Keep dancing for me. When you dance I will live through you and we’ll be together.’
I didn’t move.
It sounded like something from some ridiculous soap opera. The dead lover speaking to the heroine from beyond the grave, telling her to carry on for his sake. What rubbish.I loved Betty, but this was really an insult to my intelligence. Maybe it was Mum’s idea.
‘Mia,’ she continued, ‘There was something else he told me, in the dream, and I had to write it down because it was in Spanish or something, and I didn’t understand.’
She took out a crumpled piece of notepaper. ‘He said “Serva me. Servabo te.” I don’t know what it means, but he said you would understand.’
My pupils dilated like a cat’s in the dark.
‘Latin.’
‘Latin?’
‘You save me. I’ll save you.’
No one else knew about the bracelet except Carl, who had never met Betty.
‘Who told you?’ I asked sharply
‘What?’
‘The bracelet, the writing on the bracelet, who told you about that?’
‘I don’t know of any bracelet, he just told me to say those words to you. What does it mean, Mia. Do they mean something to you?’
‘No, Betty. They don’t mean anything.’
Betty looked disappointed, and placed her hand over my forehead.
‘Well, then I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t upset you. It just.it seemed so real. My god, sweetheart, you’re so cold.’ She wrapped the duvet more tightly around me and went out, trying not to cry.
If I Can't Have You Page 31