After the Fall (8 page)
I remember those final moments so vividly; that last, worst goodbye. The boys were wired, rocketing around the terminal as though they’d drunk a gallon of Coke each. They were intrepid explorers, and each carried his most precious treasure for the voyage. Buccaneer Bob travelled in Finn’s pack, his knitted head sticking out so that he could see everything. Charlie had stuffed Blue Blanket up his jumper. This priceless rag used to be satin-edged and luxurious, but by now it was quite disgusting because I never dared to wash it. What if it shrunk? Throughout his toddlerhood Charlie dragged it along like Linus in
Peanuts
; towed it through muddy farmyards and chewing-gummy streets. When tired or bewildered, he held it against his cheek. In contemplative moments he would pull off pieces of blue fluff and stick them up his nose.
Dad and the twins played paper-scissors-rock in the check-in queue until Finn fell over the luggage and screamed like someone who’s been bitten by a rattlesnake. Deflated, Charlie sat down and sucked his thumb. He looked forlorn, a curly-headed evacuee child. Kit knelt on the floor to comfort his boys while I tried not to meet the sidelong glares of other passengers. I could tell what they were thinking, and I didn’t blame them:
Please don’t be on my plane, family from hell.
Sacha had plugged herself wordlessly into her iPod, unbrushed hair jammed into a messy knot. She was wearing a red t-shirt Lydia had given her, and the slogan said it all:
EMIGRATION SUX.
Her flute was in her carry-on bag; we hadn’t dared trust it to the shipping container. She was texting all her friends and crying quietly.
‘How much does a jumbo jet weigh?’ asked Finn, pulling at Kit’s ear.
‘Dunno. A million tons?’
‘Well anyway,’ Charlie took his thumb out of his mouth, ‘it’d really hurt if you dropped it on your toe.’ The thumb went back in.
There was a heaving, chaotic queue for security. It was like dying a slow death, waiting with Dad, shuffling our bags forward a few inches at a time. In the end I suggested he should get going.
‘I’ll go back to Muffin,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘It’ll be easier for you once I’ve left. You’ll be able to concentrate on shoving your toothpaste into little see-through bags.’
So that was that. Suddenly, it was time to say goodbye. Dad pulled a box out of his pocket. ‘For you,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘It was your grandmother’s.’
‘Grandma Norris?’
He dipped his head. ‘It still works, and I’ve had it serviced and cleaned.’
I opened the box to find a delicate gold watch. It was painfully familiar. I’d seen it on Grandma’s wrist thousands of times: an exquisite thing, with all the craftsmanship and elegance I’d expect of my grandmother.
‘Dad,’ I whispered, blinking.
‘Don’t imprison it in a box,’ he said, lifting it out of the velvet case and wrapping the gold band around my wrist. ‘Wear it. Better to wear such a lovely thing and lose it than keep it hidden away.’
Lost for words, I hugged him frantically as though it was for the last time. Kit did much the same. Then Dad turned to Sacha, arms held wide. ‘This is a great adventure,’ he told her. ‘Grasp it with both your hands, my beautiful girl. Grasp it.
Grasp
it!’
Sacha’s generous mouth twisted. She threw her arms around his neck and hung on. I had to prise her away. As I watched him take his leave of the twins, their cheerful ignorance almost broke my heart. They didn’t— couldn’t—comprehend that they might never see their grandpa again. They behaved as though they were just off to Wales for the week, on a jolly jaunt. Dad caught hold of one under each arm and lifted them clear off the ground. Closing his eyes, he squeezed his grandsons to his chest. It made them giggle and wriggle.
Finally, he straightened. He saluted smartly, winked at me and turned his back. Swallowing hard, I watched my father walk away. I watched until he’d disappeared down the escalator.
Long after he’d gone I kept scanning the space where I’d last seen him, hoping for another glimpse. I was still watching when Finn hit Charlie over the head with a water bottle and all hell broke loose.
*
Three hours later, flight NZ001 began its ponderous run-up to the ultimate high jump. We sat stunned in a roar of sound, vibration and bereavement. Sacha’s face was turned to the window. The boys were cheering. Kit reached across the high-fiving twins and fiercely laced my fingers through his.
With a final jerk we felt England fall away beneath us, and then a grind and shudder as the landing gear was lifted.
We’d left our country.
The hospital night wears on. Hours pass, but there’s no news of Finn. No call from Kit either, and he isn’t answering his phone.
I float in a pall of dread, staring in nauseated fixation at the covers of old magazines. Every time I hear footsteps, I brace myself. Finally I’m on my feet, haunting the hospital corridors with Buccaneer Bob against my chest. The pirate doll looks sad. We are restless ghosts, he and I. We don’t exist.
Finn is five years old. Just five. He fell silently in his Mr Men pyjamas. Mr Happy. Mr Tickle. Mr Bounce, who bounced too much.
Sometime during these nightmare hours, the police pay me a visit. Two broad young men, pacing sombrely down the disinfected corridor on their shiny shoes. They’re too big for the place. They have thick stab-proof vests and murmuring radios, and they walk in step. Perfectly matched, like bookends. Like twins.
I see my Charlie walking alone through life with an empty space at his side; alone at the school dance, the graduation, the wedding. Not a ghost of his other half. Not even a shadow. Just an empty space. Perhaps Charlie will walk alone forever. You might as well cut off his arms.
Just routine, say the twins in uniform, pulling out reassuring nods and notebooks as they sit down. Sorry to intrude at this difficult time. Now, er, what happened, exactly?
I tell them how Finn wandered out of his room and climbed onto the rail, and then he fell. And I saw him falling, and I ran, but I couldn’t save him.
One of the policemen scratches his nose, glancing covertly at his watch. But the other—actually, he’s older than I thought—gazes into my face without so much as a blink. He’s losing his hair. He has pale eyes. ‘Did anyone else witness the accident, Mrs McNamara?’
‘No, they were all asleep.’
‘Your husband?’
‘Kit’s on his way back from Dublin.’
Martha!
yells my mother, arriving unannounced and uninvited.
How
can you?
But I chase her out. I chase her right out, and I slam the door on her. Mentally dusting off my hands, I look the man in the eye. ‘I haven’t been able to contact him.’
They offer to help. What flight is Kit on? He can be met.
‘Thanks,’ I say firmly, ‘but he’ll contact me once he’s landed. He’ll turn on his phone and see all the texts. I must tell him myself.’
The older one seems to think for a moment, and I stop breathing. Then he asks me who else was in the house when Finn fell.
I rub my eyes. ‘My daughter, Sacha.’
‘Age?’
‘Sacha? Seventeen. But she was out for the count. Been off school with flu. Then there was Charlie, Finn’s twin. He was fast asleep too—well, obviously, it happened at midnight.’
His pen circles above the notebook. ‘Nobody else?’
He’s watching my mouth now, as though lies might come sidling out with labels on.
He’s onto you
, hisses Mum, with her echoing sibilance. Minimum words, maximum damage; that’s always been her special skill.
He knows you weren’t alone on that balcony.
‘Nobody else,’ I whisper, and tears slide from the corners of my eyes. ‘I was too slow.’
The policemen shut their notebooks. They have other things to be doing, I’m sure. More pressing jobs: criminals to catch, reports to type, cheeseburgers to eat. The pale-eyed one gives me a leaflet with his name scribbled on it.
Once they’ve disappeared around the corner, hospital noises begin to blur in my inner ear. Sleep deprivation, I suppose, and the unreality of disaster. Squeaks of trolley wheels, murmuring of voices, shoes softly thudding on lino; all muffled in white cloud.
Missed an opportunity there
.
‘No. Yes. No. I don’t know what to do.’
You can’t sweep this one under the carpet.
‘You don’t really exist, you know. You’re just an embodiment of my conscience.’
This has gone too far, Martha!
‘Mum, I’m desperate. If I make the wrong decision my family will be obliterated. How about a bit of unconditional love?’
I hear her sniff. Honestly, I swear she sniffs. All those years being dead hasn’t sweetened the bitter tang of her.
‘Okay,’ I concede. ‘Perhaps not
unconditional
love. But do you think you could manage forgiveness, after all this time?’
Finn may die
, she retorts.
Who will you be forgiving then, Martha Norris?
She has a point.
That was a long, long journey.
Twenty-four hours in a metal cylinder with Finn and Charlie, and anyone would need to lie on a psychiatrist’s couch. I’m sure the four hundred or so other passengers all suffer from post-traumatic stress to this day. They probably have recurrent flashbacks of cabin-fevered fiends—one blond and cherubic, the other dark and diabolical—pelting up and down the aisle, upsetting the trolleys and howling like tortured banshees just when everyone had finally put on their eye masks and nodded off.
Mercifully, jetlag has somewhat blurred the memory. Also faded, like dreams, are the August days we spent in Auckland, struggling to stay awake during the day and sleep through the upside-down nights. We’d left our beloved English summer, hay bales in the rain, and landed slap-bang in the middle of Antipodean winter. We stocked up on warm clothes, opened bank accounts and bought a people carrier from a car shark. It all seemed fresh and hazy at the same time, like a bracing swim on a hangover. After four days as tourists in the City of Sails we headed for Hawke’s Bay.
I often think our new life began in a single moment, as we crossed the Napier-Taupo hills. Kit had taken over the wheel and was having a wonderful time on the hairpin bends, slamming the gear stick across and making very childish rally-car noises. I’m surprised nobody was carsick. We’d considered filling up with fuel as we left the lakeside town of Taupo but decided to press on. Since then we hadn’t passed a single petrol station. Indeed the hills seemed uninhabited, save for isolated dwellings with paint-peeling porches and murderous-looking hounds. I expected tumbleweed. You could almost hear the strumming of the banjo. The only human beings we saw were the drivers of monstrous logging trucks whose brakes hissed like man-eating pressure cookers.
‘You wouldn’t want to break down out here,’ remarked Kit blithely. I leaned past him to check the fuel gauge. It didn’t look too healthy.
For miles the road wound through New Zealand’s native bush: subtropical rainforest complete with giant ferns, creepers and cabbage trees that looked like palms. Every bend brought another sharp-intake-of-breath view of raw-boned mountains and white waterfalls. These weren’t quiet English hills. They were angular and rock-strewn, like a Chinese painting; jagged peaks and drifting swathes of cloud.
‘It’s the jungle,’ murmured Finn, clutching Buccaneer Bob to his cheek and stroking his left ear. ‘Jungle bells, jungle bells, jungle all the way.’
‘Are there snakes?’ Charlie’s voice was muffled by Blue Blanket.
‘No snakes!’ yelled Kit gleefully.
‘Does Bagheera live here?’ The twins had watched
The Jungle Book
on the plane.
‘There he is!’ squealed Finn, pointing into the shadows. ‘Bagheera— I seed him looking at me from out of a tree.’
Soon after that, all three children were asleep. It was night-time in Bedfordshire. The boys lolled in their booster seats, soft legs dangling, baby jaws slack. Sacha was holding Finn’s hand. The locket Ivan had given her— the one with both their photographs inside—was tangled around her hair. She never took it off.
Gradually, native bush gave way to forestry and farmland. As we crossed the last summit, Kit swerved onto a verge and cut the engine. In the sudden silence, he and I stepped out and stood leaning against the bonnet.
Above and around us rolled an immense pine forest, but the valley ahead opened its arms as though welcoming us to the coast. In the distance lay the Pacific, glittering in a mist of opal light, beckoning all the way to Chile. On the coast, as unexpectedly lovely as a mirage, we glimpsed a little city.
‘Must be Napier,’ I said, squinting at the map. ‘Hastings is beyond, but I don’t think we can see it from here.’
From our height, distance and state of jetlag Napier seemed a Greek village. White houses jumbled up the slope of a hill that rose straight out of the sea, like the shell of a giant turtle.
‘We’ve made it,’ said Kit. ‘This is home.’
We based ourselves in a motel and tried to hit the ground running. Napier was a small city—about fifty thousand people—with a Mediterranean climate, a thriving port and Pacific beaches. That much we knew from the guidebook. What we hadn’t expected was its picture-postcard beauty. Flattened by a catastrophic earthquake in 1931, it had risen phoenix-like from the ashes. The result was an art-deco town with wedding-cake buildings and a seafront boardwalk. On our first morning we had breakfast in a café by the marina. We sat out on a wooden deck in the winter sun, gazing across the clinking masts of yachts to snow-capped hills. I couldn’t quite believe it was real.
