Out of Sight

by Isabelle Grey

  ‘Of course. All the time. But I can’t, can I?’ He met her steady gaze and sighed. ‘But then, I think maybe it’s the best thing I could do for her. I’m sure her family would agree.’

  ‘Has she ever said so?’

  ‘Never. The opposite.’ His heart clenched and he had to look away into nothingness as the image of Belinda crying with guilt at the kitchen table washed over him. ‘She blames herself for his death.’

  ‘That must be tough.’

  ‘She doesn’t deserve this. How could I do it to her? I don’t understand how she can forgive me.’

  ‘Maybe you need to let her.’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘I have to find a way to make it up to her. It’s all I can do now.’ Sensations from the previous night flushed over him, and he tried to calm himself before going on. ‘But what if I can’t? However much I want to do what she wants, no matter how hard I try, I’m not sure I can.’

  ‘What do you fear might happen if you fail?’

  He stared at her, unable to find words. ‘There’s something bad in me,’ he said at last. ‘I’m no good for people.’

  An hour later, on the train, a young woman caught Patrick’s attention and smiled. Though he seldom responded, he was used to women putting out signals that they found him attractive. Now, however, he wondered how this girl would react if someone told her the truth about him, if she had been witness to what he had done. He shrank back into his seat, staring instead at the unfolding view through the window. It was a walk of a mile or so to Ditchling, which had no station of its own. As he neared his office, Patrick tried not to imagine how the occasional passer-by must be pretending not to notice him, then afterwards turning to stare. He kept walking, facing straight ahead.

  At the entrance to the enclosed yard behind his building, he hesitated, then, his mind long made up, straightened his back and walked purposefully up the blind alley. He had never really looked at nor committed to memory this nondescript, convenient space where he had regularly parked his car. The August sun cut a diagonal line of shadow across the uneven ground. A couple of self-seeded elder saplings thrived in one corner, straw-like weeds grew out of cracks in the dry mortar of a flanking wall and bright green algae glistened below a pipe dripping from the empty flat above his office. What Patrick at first thought was litter turned out to be a rotting bunch of flowers that someone had laid on the ground. He could see a small card stapled to the cellophane wrapping, the message written in florist’s biro by an immature hand, but he did not approach close enough to read the words. The air enclosed between these red-brick walls was innocent of what had happened here. Patrick remembered a teenage visit to the Coliseum in Rome when he had endeavoured to extract from the stones some tangible trace of all the years of fear and savagery they had witnessed. But they were just stones: any awareness of what had taken place was in his own head.

  He went back down the alley and turned out onto the narrow pavement. He stopped at his office doorway beside the brass plate. He had his key ready in his pocket, but it was a few moments before he could will his arm to move. He had to push the door open against a small mound of mail collected on the mat. His half-drunk mug of tea was on the desk where he had abandoned it. Thick mould covered the surface of the once milky liquid. The message light on the phone flashed. When he touched the keyboard, the computer screen sprang to life, the cursor blinking at the end of the sentence where he had left off writing up his notes on a new patient. He could still remember his thoughts about her. For a second it seemed as if time had stood still, and his heart gave a wrenching leap – It was not true! It had not happened! – before jolting him back into reality. He bent to pick up the post. Among the bills were quite a few handwritten letters that he assumed would be abusive.

  Sitting down at his desk, he decided to deal with those first. The majority turned out to be letters of condolence. He read each one quickly before dropping them all into the waste bin. Some of the phone messages, too, expressed sympathy and regret, though most were about appointments that he had failed to cancel. To begin with the tone was of annoyance, replaced by shock and embarrassment as the news spread, and finally by self-interest as concern for their own migraine or sciatica closed over the unnatural chasm of his personal tragedy. ‘Please let me know when you’re coming back,’ requested one voice with faint apology. ‘I’d much rather keep coming to you, Mr Hinde, but I do need more pills.’

  Patrick found himself amused: for once, his patients’ self-involvement was refreshing. Here at least he could be of use, could carry on with some aspect of his life that was not about him. He had not fully appreciated until now how vital a refuge his work provided nor how deeply he would have mourned its loss. If his patients were to go on entrusting him with their intimate troubles, then here was some vindication of his continued existence. For time was his real enemy now, his task to find some way to get through each of the thousands of days that lay ahead; without work, he wondered how on earth he would fill the void.

  He felt the impact of the past thunder through him, all the weight of distant unresolved traumas, of other unforgiven deeds and insufficient atonements. Recognising in himself the destructive symptoms of inherited predispositions, he realised he must fight against becoming an outcast, a leper. Though he knew he lacked the objectivity to prescribe for himself, he could safely assume which miasmatic remedy a colleague would suggest, and went to fetch it for himself.

  Swallowing the pills gave him enough courage to deal with the list of his patients’ queries and complaints, and gradually he found an easeful distraction in the practical concentration on other people’s problems. Although not yet ready to speak to any of his patients on the phone, he wrote the necessary messages in emails or on cards. Offering new appointments – though God knew whether they would be taken up – constructed a framework around which he could foresee himself building a future; which, he reminded himself, was what Belinda wanted. An hour later he found himself sticking stamps onto envelopes in a luxurious interval during which his mind had not once been snagged by pain. He silently blessed each and every patient for the gift they had unwittingly bestowed.

  A short account of the inquest appeared in the local Brighton paper. It reported how the coroner had delivered a narrative verdict, finding no evidence of gross negligence or reckless disregard, and also confirmed that no criminal charges were to be brought. The following day, Belinda told Patrick, the parents of one of her music pupils withdrew their daughter from her private lessons and harangued the principal to dismiss her from the school. Although the principal refused, she felt she should not keep Belinda in ignorance of how the couple had vented their belief that Patrick was guilty of child abuse and that Belinda, in not divorcing him, must be complicit.

  Despite the coroner’s sympathetic handling of the process, the inquest had left Patrick feeling wretched. Belinda had wanted her sister there, and by the end of the proceedings Patrick half-agreed with Grace’s poorly concealed belief that Belinda needed to be protected from him. It had been hard enough giving his own evidence, trying to weave a meaningful account of his actions that day, but even worse to witness the strain on the faces of the young police officers, and even of the experienced paramedics, as they recorded, with valiant attempts at objectivity, their horror at discovering Daniel’s body.

  He had stared at the floor, burning with shame as each of these well-meaning and diligent people attempted to account for his crime of forgetfulness – a crime he remained unable to explain. When one of them happened to catch his eye, Patrick wondered how the man could so successfully hide the disdain he must surely feel. Listening to the pathologist recount the details of the post-mortem, with Belinda sitting rigidly beside him, Patrick had thought his heart would burst as she endured the list of atrocities inflicted on her child.

  After the coroner’s verdict, he and Belinda had emerged from the court into the oblivious September sunshine, standing like lost children, unable to comprehend the bizarre nature of t
heir freedom.

  Grace had shepherded Belinda across the road to a coffee shop, making it plain that Patrick might follow or not as he pleased. Belinda had sat staring into her mug, shut off from her surroundings, while Grace fussed over her, helping her off with her jacket, offering to fetch more milk, urging her to drink before the coffee went cold. Grace had ignored Patrick until Belinda got up to go to the loo. Then she had immediately leant in towards him. ‘Why are you here?’ she had hissed at him. ‘If you loved her at all, you’d clear off.’

  Patrick had been taken aback. ‘Is that what she wants?’

  ‘Can’t you see how much she must hate you?’

  He had swallowed hard and nodded. ‘If it’s really what she wants, then of course I’ll go.’

  ‘None of us can understand why you’re still here. How can you face her? How can you face any of us?’

  ‘Has she told you she wants me to go?’

  Patrick had watched the struggle in Grace to be fair. ‘No,’ she had conceded.

  ‘I can only do what she wants.’

  ‘No! You have to decide what’s best for her! Give her some peace. Leave her free to rebuild her life. If you had any true feeling, you’d know what was right!’

  Seeing Belinda making her way back to the table, Grace had retreated. Belinda had glanced curiously at the two of them, but when Grace made an effort to smile and appear relaxed, had let it go.

  For the rest of that week Belinda was withdrawn, clearly undergoing some tense inner struggle of judgement and conscience. Patrick watched her closely, turning over Grace’s furious admonition and wondering despondently what to do. Towards the end of an unhappy weekend, Belinda came out to him in the garden where he was trimming the hedge. While she waited for him to switch off the whirring blades, he was certain that this would be his dismissal.

  ‘I want to apologise,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I couldn’t be sure, couldn’t make up my mind to be sure, that I believed you. I had to doubt you, for Daniel’s sake, do you understand?’

  ‘Of course. Sweetheart, you don’t have to do this.’

  ‘I do. I want to say I’m sorry for the terrible thoughts I’ve had. And that they’re over now.’ She stroked his cheek. If he had not been holding the hedge trimmer with its dangerous teeth, he would have struck her hand away.

  ‘Don’t!’ he implored her. ‘Please. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘I still love you,’ she told him. ‘But there is one thing you have to do for me.’

  ‘Anything. Whatever it is, I’ll understand. And I’ll do it. No matter what. Don’t be afraid to say it.’

  ‘I want you to forgive yourself.’

  Patrick never imagined the effect that words alone could have upon the body: he was so overwhelmed that for an instant he believed Belinda’s words must send him mad. When the red mist cleared, he found himself standing in the garden, the electric tool in his hand, and Belinda retreating into the house. A little later, she called him indoors for supper, and he made himself obey her summons.

  V

  It was not long after dawn when Belinda and Patrick made their way up the steep footpath to the place on the Downs where they had picnicked less than three months earlier. As the slope evened out, they stopped to get back their breath, turning to look at the view. Though the early morning mist obscured the horizon, they could see how the landscape was bleached and yellowing, already autumnal.

  It would be a long time before either of them could bear to bring to mind any detail of Daniel’s cremation the previous afternoon. Overnight, they had placed his ashes in his room which, except for Belinda cleaning and tidying it as she would have done were it still occupied, had been left unchanged. Both of them liked to sit alone there occasionally, finding comfort in the touch of the bright cotton duvet cover or soft toy animals, and the sight of his plastic play figures, folded clothes and cast-off shoes. Belinda had wished to carry the metal canister, and she hugged it to her now. They had easily agreed that this was where they wanted him to be – up high near the sky, blown by the wind across the grassy masses of the chalk downs. This was where they would be able to come and find him, part of nature, not under some memorial stone in a municipal cemetery. But now that the time had come, its inconceivable finality gripped them both. They sat on the grass, not touching but not apart, and stared out at the rising mist, trying not to shiver in the damp early morning chill. Belinda’s fingers were white where she gripped the canister.

  ‘I don’t think I can do it,’ she said, handing it across to him.

  Patrick accepted it from her. ‘Now? Are you ready?’

  Belinda nodded. He pulled off the close-fitting lid. The contents made him feel faint and distant from himself. He sat still, fearing collapse if he attempted to stand.

  ‘Do you remember how he rolled that day?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. He loved it.’

  ‘If we think of him tumbling down, like he did that day, do you think we can do it?’

  ‘Yes. Go on. Please.’

  Patrick rose and took a step or two down the slope. Belinda came to stand behind him, her hand resting lightly on the small of his back. He bent forward and gingerly shook some of the pale ashes from the container. There was very little wind, and only the finer dust was picked up and carried further off. Belinda reached out and took her turn and together they emptied all that remained of their child’s once small and vivid presence across a short stretch of cropped grass. They went back a little way up the slope and sat down. Patrick grasped Belinda’s hand, the clutch of each other’s fingers communicating their struggle to subdue an animal howl of repudiation. They remained there, watching each tiny gust of wind until at last the breeze had left nothing that would be remarked on by any walker straying from the main pathways.

  Neither of them spoke for the rest of the day, but that night they slept in one another’s arms.

  For Belinda’s twenty-ninth birthday a week or two later Patrick bought tickets to hear a soloist she admired at the Royal Festival Hall. It was his only gift – the kind of presents he might usually have chosen for her seemed trite and pointless – and he hoped it would re-ignite her enthusiasm for teaching now that the school term was underway. They sat together on the train to London, watching as fields and woods gave way to Thirties ribbon developments and then to yards full of used car tyres and white vans.

  They arrived into Waterloo as the first rush-hour crowds were beginning to fight their way across the concourse, and Patrick put his arm around Belinda’s shoulders to guide her through the onslaught of elbows, laptop cases and backpacks heading ruthlessly for the platforms or Tube entrance. He liked having something real to protect her from, while simultaneously feeling guilty that it was he who had brought her here. This was how he often felt these days. When he had presented her with the concert tickets, she had been pleased – she wanted them to ‘get back to normal’ – but he was aware that the prospect of a pleasure jaunt to London was daunting, and that she had not suggested setting off any earlier in the day so that they might go shopping beforehand or meet up with one of her family for lunch. Escaping the commuters at last as they emerged from the underpass to the South Bank, she already looked anxious and exhausted.

  They had a drink in the bar overlooking the river, though neither could bring themselves to suggest or want champagne to toast her birthday. It was a pretty view, the twinkling décor accentuating the lights of the city that were already beginning to be reflected in the choppy water, and the place was animated and noisy. In the past, their shared silence as they took in their novel surroundings would have been understood and enjoyed, but now it was brittle and unhappy. They did not belong here. But this, they had promised each other, was what they must force themselves to do – to join in where they no longer belonged.

  Belinda had returned to work and Patrick, to his grateful surprise, had patients to see, but with the resumption of their regular activities it had begun to si
nk in at last that their pain was no aberration; that it was not going to come to a convenient end, and that it wasn’t possible to experience grief once and for all and be done with it. This is what their lives now had to encompass, and always would.

  During the recital, Patrick found himself unaffected by the sweeping romanticism of the music, and was unable to detect whether Belinda was similarly unmoved. He took her hand and continued to hold it until the time came to applaud. During the interval they mingled with the rest of the audience. When Belinda commented appreciatively on the pianist’s technique, admiring his interpretation of one of her own favourite pieces, Patrick began to hope that maybe he had not after all made a mistake in bringing her here. On the hour’s train journey home, she rested with her head on his shoulder while he stared at their flattened reflections in the darkened glass, trying to penetrate the blackness beyond.

  In bed later that night, Patrick submitted to the ordeal of Belinda trying to make love to him, and had again to endure his own chronic failure to respond to his beautiful young wife. Eventually she turned away and wept into her pillow, refusing all his frail offers of comfort. He lay awake long into the night, wondering if the Judas goat were similarly impotent.

  Two removal men in liver-coloured uniforms beckoned to the driver of the Swiss pantechnicon to back it up into the narrow driveway of Agnès and Geoffrey’s new home in Esher. Standing by their front door, caged canaries at their feet, and intent on the encroaching vehicle, neither of them noticed Patrick’s approach on foot from the distant station. He had stopped to buy flowers, and carried an insulated picnic bag full of home-made soups and vegetable stews that Belinda had prepared.

  Geoffrey shook Patrick’s hand. ‘Hello, there,’ he said, looking up at the pale sky. ‘At least we’ve got a clear day for it.’

  With a pang, Patrick realised that his father was glad to see him. He presented his flowers and kissed Agnès, who looked distractedly over his shoulder at the men opening the van’s vast rear doors. As a boy, Patrick had seldom been permitted to take part in the family’s transcontinental moves, but he had seen enough to know that, legitimately occupied with checking and re-checking, Agnès was in her element.