Burning Bright

by Helen Dunmore

  Tony sits back on his heels, eyes black and blank. No one knows he’s back from London. He could walk out again right now and leave someone else to find her. It won’t make any difference to the old woman. She’ll die anyway. She’s been lying on the boards for hours. Why did it have to happen now, just when everything was going so well? And why should he have to deal with it? Police and doctors coming to the house. Questions.

  Carefully and almost tenderly, Tony rearranges Enid’s arm as it was. Perhaps he can fetch a cushion so her head won’t be on the hard wood. His shirt is sticking to him again.

  Enid groans. It’s a small sound. Nobody would hear it unless he was right by her, kneeling down, almost touching her. Tony jumps. He stares at Enid and a thread of sweat runs down inside his shirt. No more sound. Maybe he imagined it.

  Why is she doing this to him? Any other old woman would have been killed right off by the fall. It’s unnatural. What if she opens her eyes and looks at him? Does she know he’s there?

  He sits back on his heels, very still, thinking. After all, he argues against himself, what harm can it do? Why not? There’s nothing here. The house is clean. Even Kai can’t be that paranoid. It’s not as if it’s involving anyone else. She’s just fallen downstairs, that’s all. It’s not a crime.

  She moans again. Now he knows. It’s a sign.

  Tony stands up, steadying himself, and looks down at the old woman’s body. Yes, she’s alive. Only a pinch of life but it won’t let him go. Then he turns and goes down the stairs to the telephone and dials. Controlling a natural impulse, he gives the correct address to the placidly inquiring voice on the other end, then wipes sweat off his face. There won’t be time for a bath before the ambulance arrives, but he should still be able to go and see Clara’s nonna, who will be expecting them. Jesus.

  Less than fifteen minutes later the ambulance whoops into the square. The ambulance-men are gentle and reassuring with Tony, even though he doesn’t seem to be listening when they tell him he can go with them to the Infirmary in the ambulance. From his sweaty pallor they can tell that he is in shock.

  Twenty-one

  ‘There’s bruising on her upper arms; do you think it ought to go on her notes?’ suggests the sister discreetly. The young houseman flushes. He hadn’t noted the bruises. He’s been on duty for twenty-three hours and he’s running between six serious emergencies beside Enid. She’s just one case and he’s already spotted concussion, suspected skull fracture, shock, hypothermia and a broken arm. Accident and emergency is packed. He takes the notes from the sister and writes. His fingers are sweaty and they leave a soft place on the paper.

  After the head x-rays they make Enid comfortable for the night. Her arm’s been set. She’ll have a night in intensive care, but she should be on a ward by the morning. The bruises are inspected. The staff have had a training course on abuse of elderly people by their carers but there’s no next of kin on Enid’s form. The ambulance-men said that the young man who called them hadn’t been in the house when the fall occurred. He gave what details he could, but he didn’t accompany the patient to hospital. The police will have to get in touch with him to check the facts. The bruising doesn’t look consistent with a simple fall downstairs. Very upset, he was, apparently. Let’s hope they send a tactful policewoman.

  Everyone calls her Enid. They talk to her all the time, even though she’s unconscious. They know that patients can hear even when they give no signs of awareness. Hearing is the last sense to go and the first to return. On the operating table, anaesthetized patients have been known to twitch at surgeon’s jokes. So staff are careful now.

  ‘You’re doing fine. We’ll soon make you more comfortable. You’ve had a fall l and hurt your arm. You’re just going to have a little injection now, and then we’re going to pop you down to x-ray. Donald’s taking you on the trolley, you’ll be all right with Donald, won’t you?’ Enid’s jaunty pink sweater is cut and peeled from her body. She dreams of being swung through space, then stops dreaming.

  It is mid-morning on the ward before Enid regains consciousness. It’s nothing dramatic. The slow and intermittent process is noted by the ward sister, who came on shift when Enid was transferred from intensive care. There is eye movement under Enid’s lids, then she begins to stir. Her head moves slowly to one side.

  ‘You’re in hospital, Enid,’ says the nurse distinctly. ‘You’ve had a little accident, but you’re getting better. Don’t worry now. Just relax.’ She checks the drip, takes Enid’s blood pressure and records the figures. For a couple of hours Enid remains with eyes closed, twitching slightly, occasionally moaning. A doctor on his ward rounds lifts her eyelid, shines a light in, tests her reflexes. She’s a fighter, she’s doing well.

  Enid is aware of something yellow and kind in front of her. For a long time she doesn’t know that it’s the sunlight on the wall opposite. When she’s worked this out, she closes her eyes. Everything hurts. ‘It’s dark inside my head.’ Who said that? A little later she is awake again, and thirsty. Her mouth is very dry. She tries to run her tongue over her lips but it sticks. Anyway she’s too tired. Pain comes in pulses but she won’t let it wash her away. Each time she holds it back. Then she sleeps. A blurred dark shape has settled close to her. She squints but it hurts her eyes. She understands that the shape is a face with dark hair round it.

  ‘Nadine,’ she says, ‘Nadine,’ and her fingers pull at the crisply boiled sheet. The auxiliary nurse pats her hand and reassures her, then goes back to the nursing station.

  ‘Enid’s waking up. She said something just now.’

  ‘Did you catch it?’

  ‘I think it was a name. She’s asking for someone.’

  ‘Better tell sister. There was a policewoman in just now. She wants to sit with Enid once she’s awake.’

  The drinks trolley butts its way over polished flooring, between lockers and beds and slow-creeping patients with drip-stands attached to their arms. The air fills with smells of Ovaltine and hot chocolate. Sunlight plays warmly and gently on hurt flesh and on the skin which forms quickly on the drinks of patients who are too tired to lift their cups. The nurses move to and fro, bare-armed and strong, coming on duty with the smell of outdoors on their clothes and hair.

  The car park outside the town hall is full of young men when Kai and Nadine arrive for the dance. They are wearing jeans and leather jackets, and they sprawl against cars or stand under the two lamps, drinking cans of strong lager. It’s dark already and electric light streams invitingly from the dance hall windows. They can hear the music. There’s going to be a band tonight; it tours all round the countryside, Kai says, playing in one small town after another. It is quite famous in the Finnish countryside, he says. Older men are on the veranda, drinking from a bottle of vodka. Kai isn’t going to drink tonight: he’s promised. He’s got to drive them back, and once he starts drinking these days he doesn’t stop until his head drops on the table, or, by sheer luck, on the pillow. It’s grim drinking, with no pleasure in it. Sometimes he gets up and walks steadily, heavily, to the veranda where he can hear the night noises of the forest and smell the water.

  The hall is bright but bare. On the stage the band is warming up, but nobody’s dancing yet. Men congregate on one side of the hall, women on the other. There are some tables.

  ‘Can’t we sit together?’ asks Nadine.

  ‘No, this is your chance to meet some Finnish people,’ says Kai with satisfaction. He leads Nadine over to a table where there are three matrons drinking orange squash and mineral water. They are packed tightly into pink, bright blue and shiny black dresses, and their hair is permed into tight colour-rinsed frizzes. They are the jailers of their hair, thinks Nadine. They waft a strong warm smell of make-up and perfume. Kai explains Nadine to them in Finnish. Broad smiles are turned to her, hands are shaken and Kai leaves. Then there is nothing to say. The smiles cannot go on for ever, and none of the three ladies speaks English. After a polite minute they turn back to their conversation
and orange squash, nodding and smiling at Nadine from time to time. Nadine sits still, very conscious of her short tight dress and of having nothing to drink. A few moments later Kai comes back from the bar with an alcohol-free lager for Nadine. He points to the red illuminated panels at the end of the dance hall.

  ‘When the top one lights up, it is men’s turn to ask women to dance. When the bottom lights up it means women’s turn to ask men.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Nadine. ‘What do I do if I don’t want to dance with somebody?’

  ‘Just dance with him for one dance. You were the one who wanted to come.’

  ‘But I won’t be able to say anything.’

  ‘You’ll be dancing, not talking.’

  Nadine waits in dread for the lighting up of the panels. The band is playing more vigorously now, one of Kai’s sad endless songs. The accordionist pumps, and a man in a dark blue suit comes forward, seizes the microphone and begins to sing, his eyes half shut. His voice is beautiful, sonorous, resonant. Suddenly the song makes sense. Nadine leans forward to watch and listen. She has not noticed the lighting up of ‘men’s turn’, and is surprised when a moment later a young man with very short and much gelled hair blocks her view and stands there unsmiling. The three matrons beam encouragement and explain to the young man that she is English, a foreigner, but keen to dance. Nadine stands and is taken into the young man’s arms. The dance seems to resemble a foxtrot, which she more or less knows how to do. They dance past Kai, who is deep in talk with a group of heavy middle-aged men. They dance past the singer and his voice vibrates through Nadine, making her close her eyes with pleasure. The young man holds her and does not attempt to talk. Soon they are back at the table. She smiles and says one of the few Finnish words Kai has taught her: ‘Kittos.’ Unsmiling as ever, the young man nods, then heads off outside for another beer. Nadine relaxes. But the next moment the light is on ‘women’s turn’. The three matrons get up purposefully and head off across the room. One of them spots that Nadine is missing her chance. She pulls her up, points vigorously at a likely partner on the other side of the room and shoos Nadine towards him. Nadine veers sideways to a quiet older man in a suit. She likes the look of this one. In a moment they are dancing. Nadine is triumphant. She has done it, she has coped in spite of Kai. The man even speaks a bit of English. He thinks she is very clever to understand ‘men’s turn’ and ‘women’s turn’.

  ‘Our Finnish dances are difficult for foreigners,’ he remarks, pronouncing the g firmly.

  ‘Elämä on vaikea,’ she ripostes, using the only Finnish phrase Kai has succeeded in teaching her, through constant repetition. Life is hard. Her partner beams approval. He is small and rotund, with shiny peat-coloured eyes. He reminds her slightly of Paul Parrett.

  After several dances Nadine glows with confidence. She has cracked Finnish social life successfully. None of the young men she has selected has refused her. Then a man comes to the microphone and begins to talk without stopping in lugubrious tones. Everyone in the hall roars with laughter. The matrons even have to get out their handkerchiefs to wipe off mascara which is smudged by tears of laughter. Nadine fixes a smile on her face and looks across at Kai. He doesn’t notice her, he is laughing so much. She sees the wet red inside of his mouth, laughing.

  Then the dancing begins again and it’s all right. The three ladies buy orange squash for Nadine and she buys them alcohol-free beers. The men dance energetically now, fuelled by drink. Then there is a long, slow number. Nadine is clasped against her middle-aged partner again. He becomes sentimental, strokes her hair off her forehead and tells her he always wanted a daughter. He has two sons, one at Helsinki University, one at Turku. But why doesn’t she grow her hair long? Perhaps he is a distant cousin of Paul Parrett, thinks Nadine. The evening is turning out well, though she cannot see Kai anywhere. And those men he was talking to – they’ve gone too. Everybody’s in couples, except for the matrons who are beating time and smiling from the side of the hall. Where’s he gone? God, what if he’s drinking? She stiffens inside her partner’s embrace. She excuses herself, leaving him smiling in confusion, not liking to admit that his English isn’t up to following what she’s just said. She scoops up her bag from the table, smiles again, shakes hands with the matrons, and goes.

  Yes, there he is, under the lamp-post with a whole group of them, passing vodka. He watches her with unfriendly eyes as she approaches. He’s been drinking, all right. He is shoulder to shoulder with the men, and he stares at her with deliberate blankness. He’s a different man from her English Kai.

  ‘How are we going to get home?’ she whispers fiercely. ‘You can’t drive in this state. If you get caught you’ll go to jail.’

  ‘Go to jail, go to hell. One of my friends will take me,’ he says, lordly, dismissing her.

  ‘They’re all drunk too,’ she says. She spots another bottle going round. Kai turns back to the other men and begins to talk in Finnish.

  ‘No, Kai. I want to go now.’

  ‘Then you drive, Nadine. You drive us home.’ He hands her the car keys, capitulating, challenging. The men laugh. They are used to this sort of thing. They don’t know that Nadine can’t drive. Kai shrugs and smiles, playing to the gallery.

  ‘Right,’ says Nadine. ‘Right. I will. Get in the car.’

  Luckily the Saab is parked on the edge of the car park, not locked in among other cars. She’ll never be able to reverse out. Kai gets into the passenger-seat and sits there with a smile on his face, watching to see what she’ll do. He thinks he’s called her bluff, does he? Thank God, it’s an automatic. She ought to be able to manage.

  ‘You’ll have to direct me,’ she says sharply. ‘We don’t want to end up lost in the forest.’

  ‘OΚ, OK, I know the way.’

  She puts in the key and turns it. The engine ignites, then stops. She turns it again and this time it’s OK. Gently, she eases the gear from PARK to DRIVE and presses the right-hand pedal. Nothing happens. She’s being too gentle. She tries again and then she remembers the handbrake. The car creeps forward, then suddenly jumps. Kai reaches over and the lights spring on. The car moves down to the road. She knows she’s got to turn right here. The car jerks and jolts as she accelerates too much, then too little. It’s OK, she tells herself, you’ll get the feel of it in a minute. It can’t be that hard. All sorts of idiots drive. She sits bolt upright, tense, gripping the wheel. The speedometer wavers on twenty kilometres an hour. She’ll do it. She’ll defeat Kai, she’ll get them safely home. The car’s lights probe forward into a dark tunnel. They are past the last houses of the village and into the forest.

  ‘You’ve got to stay awake,’ she says, ‘I don’t know where we turn off.’

  On and on they go, mile after mile. She is driving, she’s doing it. ‘Go faster, Nadine,’ grumbles Kai, but she daren’t. Twenty-five kilometres an hour, thirty. She can’t take her attention off the road for a second. She is alone with the road and the forest, more alone than if the seat beside her was empty.

  ‘We turn off here,’ says Kai out of long silence and darkness.

  She panicks, wrenches the wheel too hard and the Saab judders across the entrance to the track, nearly hitting a post. Stones bounce up and tang off the side of the car.

  ‘Maybe I’ll drive now,’ says Kai.

  ‘No. I’m going to drive all the way home.’

  And she does. Very slowly all the way up the pitch-dark, rough forest track, flinching at moths in the headlights. And there is the unlit bulk of the summer-house, and they are home. Kai gets out, walks slowly past the house, and takes the path to the lake. Nadine switches off the engine and sits still in the seat. Her hands are trembling. It’s only because she’s been gripping the wheel so tightly. She looks at her watch. The journey has taken well over an hour, and here she is. She’s got them both back safely. Her stomach hurts. She’s got to have something to eat.

  Kai stays outside the summer-house for a long time. She wonders what he’s doing, but she
’s glad he’s out of the way. The little wooden house feels more claustrophobic than ever. It will be unbearable with the two of them in it tonight. The living-room smells of the tinned leek and potato soup she has heated. The thought of another day of silence and forest, broken only by meals, drinking and staring at old copies of Finnish women’s magazines, fills her with nausea. Kai has changed, or else she’s changed. The money in his pockets is paper. He can’t help her, and she can’t help him. He is not the rescuer.

  When he comes in she asks him where he’s been. He tells her he has been looking at the lake. It’s dark, she says, what could he see? There isn’t any moon tonight, and there’s so much cloud even the stars don’t show. Why doesn’t he have something to eat, to soak up the vodka? He’s drunk enough of it. He yawns and drops heavily on to a chair. He is red-eyed and his shirt is dirty.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he says. ‘I’ll stay up a little.’

  He’s going to start that joyless drinking again. She stands up, gathers her magazines and an apple and a glass of water, then stands holding them, looking at Kai.

  ‘Go to hell,’ he says, looking back at her smooth, young critical face.

  She’ll leave him to it, climb into the little bunk, turn to the wall and abandon him altogether in her dreams.

  *

  His mumbling wakes her. He’s sitting by the bed, saying her name over and over. ‘Nadine. Nadine. Nadine. Are you OK?’ The door to the living-room is open and the light is still on in there. She blinks and sits up.

  ‘What’s wrong, Kai? Why don’t you come to bed?’

  His weight comes at her. For a second she thinks he’s going to hit her. Then she feels him shaking. He wants her to hold him. She braces herself against the hard wooden wall and puts her arms round him. It is ridiculous, the two of them crushed into this child’s bunk. Any moment now the slats will give way. She rocks him feebly, oppressed by his heat and weight and the smell of drink. Girls at school used to say it was OK to drink vodka in dinner-hour because no one would smell it on your breath in the afternoon. Well, now she knows that wasn’t true. It’s seeping out of Kai’s skin. Funny how you learn things. She feels herself smile helplessly, stupidly, over his dark bulk. He is burning. His rough, hot, prickly face scrubs against her neck. Her lips tighten.