Her mother used to shake her head at Martha, particularly in sunny weather. Never Hugh, of course. Her mother’s scorn was reserved for women.
‘Poor Martha, carting that bulk around in this heat. No wonder she’s hidden away in that bus.’
Lucy liked the comforting look of Martha in her mid-calf skirts, showing a slip-on shoe underneath or, in the summer, a man’s wide backless slipper, cut up the inside seam to give her swollen foot room to breathe. From time to time, she imagined that Martha would confess she was her real mother and they would live happily ever after in their world of books. The guilt after such daydreams was enormous, she could hardly look at her own mother. She would potter around trying to make it up to her. Bringing her a glass of wine from the screw-top bottle in the fridge, rushing over with the bottle whenever the level dropped below halfway. It was too much and never enough, but it was all Lucy knew how to do.
Those days, there was no bigger world than the one inside that narrow little bus. Nothing since had come close to the sense of possibility she felt walked up the steps, the pleasure she took in imagining all of her futures, all the things she wanted to do. Yet what had she done in the end? Stumbled from course to course. Lurched from man to man. Every decision slightly worse than the last. Telling herself she was too young to settle down, even though that stopped being true a couple of years, and at least one postgrad course, ago.
Lately, she had browsed the postgrad catalogue again, trying on and discarding other possible futures. Well, all that was fucked now. She downloaded it the night she had the idea for the poker party, the first night James hadn’t sent her a hurried text from his family dinner table. It thrilled him to text her with his wife sitting in front of him. She could picture him, handsome bastard that he was, hard against the vibration of his phone in his pocket. She thumbed through the catalogue and thought that epidemiology sounded interesting, the underlying causes of communicable diseases and syndromes. It was a pity there was no hope for the terminally stupid.
‘You were already five when I was your age,’ was another of her mother’s frequent observations. She didn’t want the same for Lucy, she said, and yet she lorded it over her, the one small success she had that her daughter did not.
‘They all rode off together on the four horses.’ She finished the story, finally. There was only silence. ‘Did you like the story? It’s a famous film.’
Still nothing. Maybe they had fallen asleep. That might be a good thing, at least there would be no more tears for a while.
‘Did you… pee again?’ Paul asked, after some time had passed.
‘No! I didn’t the first time! I just said that to make Orla feel better,’ Lucy said.
‘Water around… my… ankles,’ Paul said.
Lucy moved her legs back and forth as much as she could. He was right, there was water on the floor of the bus. She was almost certain it hadn’t been there before.
‘Something must be leaking.’ Brilliant deduction, Lucy!
‘Drink?’
‘Groundwater would be dirty,’ she said, firmly. That was one decision she could make for the three of them.
‘Where—?’ Paul began, but she cut him off.
‘We should be quiet now and save our energy for the rescue.’
She couldn’t bear any more questions to which she had no answers. Besides, she had read somewhere about the amount of calories that thinking used up. At the time, she was surprised, but couldn’t remember now if that was because of how many it was or how few. How long since she had eaten? How long since the crash? She wished she wore a watch.
‘Are you never afraid of being late for things? For work, even?’ James had asked her, his fingers tracing the watchless span of her wrist.
‘I’m worth waiting for,’ she said, leaning so close she practically transferred the words from her mouth to his, no ears needed.
God, but he was an asshole. What was she playing at, making herself into something designed to attract him? Kieran was a weirdo, true, but at least she hadn’t shared him with anyone else. Although he was the reason she didn’t wear a watch any more. He gave her a pink Swatch once, far too girly for her taste. She felt like asking him if he ever actually looked at her.
‘I worry about you when you’re late,’ he said, not letting go of her wrist even when he finished tying the strap.
That was before the properly claustrophobic stuff started: reading her emails and screaming the name of every man she mentioned, up to and including the professor in her department, a man who was eighty if he was a day. Before he started phoning her friends to ask where she was.
‘Why are you waiting up for me?’ she shouted at him. ‘You’re not my father.’
‘You don’t even know who is!’ he shouted back.
He apologised, holding her close and explaining how much he loved her. How love made people worry.
James barely acted like a father to his existing child. How would he react to the news of a pregnancy? With money and a plane ticket, most likely. Hadn’t her mother always told her that her father ran off before Lucy was born, that the reality of a heavily pregnant Pat was too much. There was something deeply unforgivable about a baby, it seemed.
She imagined herself being interviewed, one hand on her bump in a classic Madonna-and-child pose. ‘I knew I had to survive the crash, for the baby’s sake,’ she was saying.
It was all well and good imagining herself being admired for her maternal strength, but what kind of mother would she make in real life? Her patience with Paul and Orla was stretched to the limit in the space of a few hours – assuming it was a few hours, it could well have been a few days for all she knew – and she was practically holding her breath in case they woke up again.
Oh, Christ. What if she had a baby like Orla? Stuck with a child with special needs, how would she cope?
Ailish and Emer. There had been an Ailish in her year, with a younger sister. She saw them once with their mother. The woman was beautifully made up and well turned out, in her leather jacket and heels. She held the hand of a small girl whose backpack was carefully strapped over her two shoulders. Look at Orla now. She seemed to be managing fine, able to get up and out and live her own life. Granted it was less of a life than most people would want, but she didn’t seem bothered.
A normal baby would be the easiest thing and even that seemed impossible. How would she do it on her own? She couldn’t, was the simple answer. Plenty of people were naturally caring and protective and that was what this baby should have. Someone who worried. Someone who waited up. Someone like Kieran. The maths could be made to work in her favour, couldn’t it? The accident, after all, could surely cause all sorts of anomalies with the length of a pregnancy.
The march of dates through her head soothed her and she fell asleep. She dreamed she was on a talk show. She sat on the sofa, naked, her hair too short to cover anything.
‘I want my hair back!’ she cried. A fairy godmother in a police uniform appeared and waved a machine gun at her. Then she was sitting on another couch with long, lustrous hair down to her feet, but when she leaned down to touch it, she felt a snap of pain and saw the ends of her curls caught in a mousetrap. She got up and ran to a window, where she could see out over the hills and mountains of her childhood. She flung her hair out of the window and the mousetrap fell, only to be caught in the beaks of passing birds and borne away to nests where baby birds would hatch into their deaths. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cried. To her surprise, someone shouted back, ‘I’m coming!’ She felt someone begin to climb up the length of her hair and she wished it gone again. She began to pull and tear it from her scalp, sobbing as the clumps fell on the floor by her feet. Outside the window, someone hammered on the wall as he climbed and she froze, waiting.
‘Hello?’ Hello?’
‘Hello!’ Lucy answered.
‘Got one!’ the voice said. ‘I’m Leo. What’s your name?’
‘Lucy. I thought I was dreaming.’
‘No
dream, Lucy. We’re really here. We’ll be in there to you shortly.’
His voice was so warm and calm. Nobody would have time for that kind of warmth if there was any real danger.
‘Who else is there with you, Lucy? Do you know?’
‘Paul. Orla. Some woman, a teacher, I think, but she hasn’t said anything. An old man. Someone else. I can’t remember.’ Her voice broke and she stopped.
‘Is anyone else talking?’
‘Yes. Paul and Orla. But not for a while. They’re asleep, I think. And the water, there’s water…’
‘How much water, Lucy? Where can you feel it?’
‘I don’t know. It started around my feet, but now my legs are cold. I can’t tell where it stops.’
‘Paul? Orla?’ Leo called. Nobody answered.
‘Orla… Orla is below us,’ Lucy said. ‘Orla is where the water is.’
‘When did Paul and Orla stop talking, Lucy?’ His voice was chatty. He might have been an old woman taking her time at the church door after Mass.
‘I don’t know. They both fell asleep a while ago. I don’t know what time it is. I don’t wear a watch.’
‘Okay, Lucy. That’s great. You’re doing fine. Tell me about the water, did it come in all at once in a big gush or is it coming in slowly all the time?’
‘Slowly, I think. We just sort of noticed it, Paul and me. Paul is hurt, I think. His breathing sounds funny. And I think Orla is caught in her seat belt.’
‘Can you move at all?’
‘My leg is trapped in the seat. It hurts when I try to pull it out.’
‘How much does it hurt?’
‘A lot. A screaming amount.’ She laughed shakily. ‘Is that bad?’
‘You can still feel it so that’s a good sign. The ambulances are all waiting outside and you’ll be whisked off to hospital and fixed right up just as soon as we get you out of here, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Now, we’re going to have to be really careful getting you all out so that we don’t move the bus around too much. That means we’ll be moving slowly and it’ll be noisy, I’m afraid. You might feel some rocking and swaying but just a little bit, hopefully. We’ll lift this guy—’
‘Paul.’
‘Okay. We’ll lift Paul and get him out and then we can get a proper look at whatever it is that’s trapping your leg, all right? Do you understand, Lucy?’
‘Orla. Start with Orla. She’s… that’s where the water…’
‘You let us worry about all of that, Lucy. Okay? We’ll get to everyone. One last big effort, that’s all. It’s nearly over. I need you to hang in there just a little bit longer, all right? We want to keep you all as safe as we possibly can. Otherwise your mam will kill me, right?’
‘My mother is there?’
‘She certainly is. Pat has been keeping us all on our toes. She’s waiting to see you safe and sound, so let’s do our best to get you out to her, okay?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice cracked on the word.
‘You ever been in one of those little turbo-prop planes, Lucy? The ones that… well, excuse my language, but there’s no other way to say it, they shake like fuck, but they get you there in the end. This is going to be like that. Do you understand?’
‘Shake like fuck. Then out.’
‘Good girl.’
‘Do you hear that, Orla? Just like a roller coaster.’
But there was no answer.
In the darkness above her, she heard Leo’s voice. ‘Three confirmed alive post-crash. One talking. No other confirmations yet.’
She imagined the words travelling up through the rock and out into daylight, racing through the air to her mother’s ears. Her mother was waiting for her. She would see her soon.
Her mother was going to kill her, but it didn’t matter. She would see her soon.
PART FOUR – UP
INCONTINENCE OF THE SOUL
If this were a film, the camera would show the bus emerging from the ground. A giant split-snake shaking off its old concrete skin. Spirited survivors waving from between the teeth of its windows. Wouldn’t that just warm the heart?
Instead, everything happens with Marx Brothers speed. The lifting of people out of the ground, onto stretchers and into waiting ambulances. No cheers, just a frozen hush. Information relegated to the bottom of the list.
The vigil becomes elastic at the edges. The families a convoy of fear on the greasy road from here to the city. At the hospital, fear sets up a new kind of stall, powered by other kinds of machinery and fallibility. People stand in small groups, saying the wrong things. Endless questions crushing the mercy that might be found in silence.
In this place, this new quiet place, answers – unlike hope – can wait. They do not come in response to questions. They must be tempted forth by silence.
They must be heard.
ALINA
Alina stood at the kitchen door, watching Seán get ready.
‘Are you sure it’s okay for me to leave?’
The question wasn’t really about her, he was simply asking for permission to leave. He needed to remain blameless in this abandonment.
Alina nodded. ‘There’s no one else to cover for you today.’
‘Exactly!’
He was quick to write off possible misunderstandings as small, amusing quirks. Her parents’ English coming through, he called them. He didn’t hear his own ‘amn’t’s and ‘twasn’t’s stacked up beside her careful grammar.
‘I’ll be back at lunchtime, with your mother.’
He didn’t know he did a little dance each time. Left hand pat left trouser pocket for wallet, then breast pocket for glasses. Right hand pat right trouser pocket for keys, then a tap on his rear end for phone. Kiss for Alina. Caress for the holy water font hanging by the door, two fingers into the wetness. Something almost obscene in the flick of his fingers towards his face, sprinkling himself.
She closed the door to her bedroom quietly, not wishing to alert Annie that she was awake.
Is this what it would be like if they had a child? Seán leaving for a life outside while she tiptoed around like a thief in her own home?
* * *
‘Still resting, are you?’ Annie knocked and entered in one fluid movement.
As if she herself was not still in her dressing gown, with sleep crusted in the corners of her eyes.
Alina closed her eyes and counted to ten. Without actually closing her eyes, of course. That would be rude. But it was possible to achieve the same effect with her eyes open. The trick was to glance at the floor and unfocus the eyes. She could have drawn from memory every line of the carpet in the cubicle she shared with Margo.
‘I would have thought you’d be up watching the news,’ Annie said. ‘They got those poor people out. Dead, every last one of them.’ She crossed herself. ‘Merciful hour, but you’re lucky to be alive, child. Wouldn’t you get up and be thankful you can?’
She meant well.
Alina dressed slowly, her body stiff and sore. They died. All of them. The boy with the headphones and backpack. The young woman with Down’s syndrome, who was so careful to close her seat belt. The man who had tipped his old-fashioned hat. The middle-aged woman with the smart handbag. The girl with the ragged hair, who Alina recognised from her university days. The man in the tracksuit who stared openly at her. All dead.
In three short days, they would be returned to the ground that had done such harm. Boxes made of wood, not metal. She shivered. Her father, when he died, had left instructions. His surprising wish that his death should follow the traditions of his homeland. Modesty, compassion, speed. Shrouded and buried within twenty-four hours. It disappointed her, somehow, that the integrated convictions of his life were undone by fear in his final weeks. ‘What could be more integrated than eternity here?’ her mother wondered when Alina voiced her concerns, but it did not satisfy her. She told herself that was why she visited so rarely. A choice rather than the practicality of the three-hour drive to the
cemetery.
The TV in the kitchen showed pictures of them all, dressed up and smiling, tilted at awkward angles where others had been cropped out, stiffer versions of the people she remembered getting on the bus. The older woman was photographed alone, looking out to sea as if remembering, or deciding something. Her face, its foreboding or longing, made Alina shiver.
‘They said two of them drowned, imagine. Lord have mercy on them.’ Annie took butter from the fridge and began to layer it on thick white toast. ‘Here you are, love. I’ve tea on.’ Annie must have brought the bread with her. Chew for thirty seconds, swallow. It would still sit like a stone in her stomach.
‘Turns out one was alive when they got her to the hospital,’ Annie said, as if it wasn’t the most important thing.
‘One is alive? Which one?’ It shouldn’t matter. Someone to share the burden, that should itself be enough. Yet it did matter. Let it not be the old man, she thought, shocking herself.
‘One of the women. They said her name, but I don’t remember it. She’ll probably never be right again.’
‘Like me, I suppose,’ Alina said. ‘I will never be right either. Is that what you mean?’
‘Not at all,’ Annie was dismissive. ‘Sure, you were barely there. Weren’t you out nearly the minute it happened?’
‘Which is it, Annie? I am lucky to be alive or it was nothing at all?’
Annie looked sharply at her. ‘It can be both, you know. Don’t be getting excited about it now.’
‘I’m not excited. I’m asking what you mean. You tell me one thing and then you tell me the opposite. I should be giving thanks but not making a fuss. They are all dead, but, no, wait, one is alive. I am part of the family, but…’ She placed the butter knife carefully on the table and watched the white fade from her knuckles.
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