Home Fires (32 page)

The television cameras had zoomed into the man’s face. His eyes were moist and Caroline found she couldn’t watch. She had switched the television off.

Now, with the Cenotaph in front of her, she thinks of that man and she wonders if he is still alive and, if so, whether he wants to die, whether he feels a fraud for having survived when so many other men – men separated from him only by a split-second of fate – lay dead. She thinks about Max and she wonders, for the first time, whether he would believe it was a blessing he died in that explosion rather than survive with a maimed body and mangled limbs. She wonders if he would feel guilty at having made it through the war alive when so many others had been killed.

She walks towards the monument, feeling the cool shadow of it slide over her as she approaches. There are three steps leading up to the base, each level a square smaller than the last, flowing outwards beneath her scuffed high-heeled shoes, like water slowly icing over. Wreaths of paper poppies lie by her feet. Several large flags hang out from the side of the monument, the material draping downwards, red, white and blue against the grey. She reaches out and places her hand flat against the stone. It is rougher to the touch than it looks. She drags her palm along the rubbled surface, leaving white scratches on her hand.

All at once, she is extremely tired. She pitches forward and allows her back to slide down against the stone. She sits there and she is only half-aware of the surrounding traffic, of the concerned, mildly wary glances of strangers as they walk past. Caroline’s skirt is bunched up underneath her thighs and she hoists herself up to smooth the fabric underneath her legs. The sky above her seems to be getting brighter, the clouds bled of colour. She squints, trying to filter out the harsh brilliance of the light, feeling the blazing sweep of the sky pushing down on her forehead like a tightening clamp. Her head is so heavy that she wants nothing more than to rest it against the ground. She slides down further so that she is lying on the stone, and she curls her legs up to her chest and allows the exhaustion to claim her, waves of it lapping at her feet, coming up over her hips and waist, rising and rising and rising until she is almost totally covered by the unconsciousness she craves.

She hears a voice she recognises, calling her.

Caroline opens her eyes and at first she cannot make out his face because it is blotted black against a halo of sunlight.

‘Max?’ she says, and his features clarify and snap into focus: the blond hair shorn close against his scalp, the nose still misshapen from having been broken in a rugby match, the violet-blue of his eyes, the lopsided grin, the stubble that grows no matter how much he shaves. He is wearing camouflage uniform, the sleeves of his jacket rolled up to his elbows so that she can trace the downy hairs on his arm with her fingers.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she says and she knows, as she utters the words, how absurd this sounds. Max does not reply. He smiles at her and opens his arms and Caroline sees that his chest is covered in dried blood and that there is a pulsing red hole just to the left of his heart and through it she can see a fragment of bone, the sharpened point of it rising through the muscle. She looks up at him and he nods his head, just once, and then Caroline goes to him and he folds her into what is left of his chest and she can hear his heartbeat and feel his ribcage contract and relax against her cheek and she can smell him – that smell of forest moss and tangy sweat and open air – all wrapped up in the lost beauty of her son.

Her son.

‘I missed you,’ she whispers, in case speaking too loudly will cause him to disappear. He says nothing but he pats the back of Caroline’s head and cradles her softly from side to side and after a while, she feels herself dropping off to sleep in a state of bliss. I am safe, Caroline thinks as she goes under, I am safe.

She does not know how long she is out but it is the most complete sleep she has ever experienced. The guilt that she has been carrying around with her ever since Max died shatters into tiny pieces and is blown away in the breeze. She feels it leave her and she feels the intensity of the release.

And then, when Caroline wakes up, she realises it is not Max who has been holding her but Andrew.

He has been there all along.

Elsa

The woman comes into the room and Elsa pretends to be asleep so that she can observe. Through her thin sliver of vision, Elsa can see the woman is moving about quickly, with a careful economy of movement: there is no action that is not precisely intended, no waste or unnecessary gesture that needs to be trimmed around the edges. Elsa approves. She opens her eyes and grunts, satisfied.

‘Hello, Elsa,’ the woman says in a pretty, melodious voice. ‘And how are you this morning?’

The woman approaches the bed and bends over to press something located beneath the mattress that Elsa cannot see. There is a clunking sound and Elsa feels herself being lifted upwards as the bed mechanically angles itself into an upright position.

‘Now, what can I tempt you with this morning?’

Elsa looks at her in confusion, taking in the straight brown-black hair, cut severely into a bob. The woman is wearing a starched pink shirt and matching trousers with a pair of bright purple plastic slippers on her feet. Who is she and what is she doing in her bedroom?

‘You don’t remember me, do you, Elsa?’ the woman is saying, but she is asking it nicely, as though it is a joke they share. The woman gives a theatrical sigh. ‘I don’t know. A more sensitive soul than I am might take offence.’ She has a curious rhythm to her voice, an accent of some sort. ‘Sure, don’t I come in every morning to give you breakfast? You know who I am, you’re just teasing, aren’t you? A big old tease, that’s what you are. You know who it is! You know it’s Ashleigh.’ The woman laughs and all the time she is speaking, she is busying herself with various tasks: straightening the sheets, smoothing down the pillows, drawing the curtains and opening the window so that a pleasant freshness airs the room. She returns to Elsa’s bedside.

‘So Elsa, what’ll it be now? Your usual?’

Elsa nods her head and slowly, she is infused with a sense of familiarity. She is comforted by this woman. She feels safe in her presence.

‘Great stuff,’ Ashleigh says, reaching over to a wheeled trolley that Elsa had not previously noticed. ‘A delicious banana special, prepared with my own fair hands.’

She draws a chair up to the bed, lifts a small green plate patterned with blue flowers in one hand and starts spooning an indistinct yellow mash into Elsa’s mouth with the other. Elsa twists her head away. She does not want this food. She does not want to be treated like a baby.

‘Och, now, Elsa, would you stop it with your fussing?’ Ashleigh says, resting the plate on her lap. ‘You’ll be hungry later on if you don’t have any breakfast. And this is tasty, so it is. Look –’ she lifts a heaped spoonful to her lips and swallows it in one gulp. ‘Mmm. You don’t know what you’re missing out on, sure you don’t.’

Elsa still feels the heated glow of a small, leaden irritation in her chest but her stomach is starting to rumble. She takes the spoonful of banana. It tastes delicious. After a few more mouthfuls, she is happy.

That is how her feelings come these days: one after the other with no explanation. First she is sad, then she is joyful and one might last longer than the other but she never knows which. And yet lately, she has noticed a sense of contentment surprising her when she least expects it.

Elsa smiles.

‘Now that’s better,’ Ashleigh says. ‘You’ve got a beautiful smile, Elsa, and don’t let anyone tell you different.’

Ashleigh spoons the remainder of the banana into Elsa’s mouth and it tastes sweet and satisfying as it slips down her throat. She much prefers it here to that room with the cream walls and the closed windows. She has a memory of that room, of the sun beating down on her scalp as she lay in bed covered in a blanket she did not need. She had been left there by someone, waiting and not knowing why. Who was it who had left her there? She knows she should remember. She has a feeling of familiarity about the recollection and yet she cannot pin it down. It slips and shimmers beneath the muddy-brown waters of her mind like a gleaming coin thrown deep into the tide, a scrap of silver spiralling away from the tips of her outstretched fingers.

Who was it who had left her?

And afterwards, who was it who had come into the room? She can see the shadow of a figure moving towards her, removing the blanket, crouching down to talk to her.

All at once, Elsa feels a surge of agitation. She squirms and writhes underneath her bed sheets, pushing away the spoon from her mouth with such unexpected force that Ashleigh drops it and it skitters across the stripped wooden floorboards.

‘Elsa, what is it?’ says Ashleigh and she leans forwards, putting her face close. Ashleigh’s forehead is furrowed with concern, a pinch of flesh rising up between her pressed-together eyebrows. She puts a calming hand on Elsa’s shoulder.

‘You’re all right now, pet, you’re all right.’

But Elsa can’t hear. Her gaze films over. Her mind hollows out. Her thoughts hiss and spit furiously. Her hands bat away at something just in front of her face: a dark shadow, lurking, waiting for her, ready to pounce.

The shadow is getting bigger now, broadening outwards and looming over her until it shuts out the light streaming in from the windows. It comes towards her and Elsa tries to move but she is trapped in her bed, her muscles unable to work quickly enough, and then the shadow is crushing down on her breastbone, making it difficult for her to breathe. The darkness gets larger and stronger and heavier until it is smothering her, wrapping itself around her. Elsa shrieks, but still the shadow comes, deep and dense and covering her body. She must get away from it.

There is a voice. ‘Elsa, look at me.’

She tries to listen to the voice.

‘Elsa. Elsa. You’re OK. You’re here with me, with Ashleigh.’

The shadow stops expanding. Elsa lies still so as not to provoke it.

‘Look at me, Elsa. Open your eyes. Look at me.’

She looks up and she sees Ashleigh’s face just a few inches above her own. She meets Ashleigh’s calm, level gaze. Her eyes begin to water.

The shadow bursts and trickles away.

Ashleigh has taken her hand and Elsa is reassured by her touch. She is safe with her, she thinks. This woman will not hurt her.

She has not felt that for a long time.

Elsa has good days when the shadow does not come at all. Increasingly, there are more good days than bad. She likes it here. She feels comfortable because the same things happen at the same time each day so there are no unpleasant surprises. Perhaps because of the daily routine, her memory has started to get a bit better. She no longer needs to expend mental effort worrying over what might be happening next and whether she will be able to cope with it. She is less anxious. She begins to trust in the thought that she will not be punished. It is all so much easier now. She knows that Ashleigh will be pleased if she eats all her breakfast. She knows that if she smiles, it will make Ashleigh happy. She knows that if Ashleigh puts the bed into a propped-up seating position, she can just about make out the deep orange tinge of a flowering camellia through the corner of the bay window. These are the things that soothe her.

On a good day, she will be lifted out of her bed on a mechanical piece of apparatus that resembles a livestock winch and she will be deposited in a wheelchair and then someone will wheel her around the house and give her a change of scene. Sometimes, if it is Ashleigh pushing her and if the weather is nice enough, they will go into the garden to see the camellia. Elsa likes to reach out and touch the leaves, to feel the waxiness on her fingers. She giggles when she does this. She cannot help herself. She loves the smell of the outdoors. It is not something she can remember ever appreciating before: the undiluted scent of grass and wind and salt.

She finds that she enjoys watching television, something that Elsa had always previously dismissed as a brain-rotting waste of time. She is drawn to programmes with lots of action: shouted arguments and slaps, grim retributions and promises of revenge played out across the screen. She enjoys the drama of it, secure in the knowledge that it is all happening behind a thick piece of glass, in a box from which it cannot leak out.

The television lounge appears to be the focal point of the house: there are always half a dozen elderly men and women sitting here, watching intently, their viewing pleasure punctuated by the high-pitched hum of hearing aids turned up to maximum volume. Sometimes, Elsa forgets who these people are and she feels a rising spike of panic at the base of her throat when she sees them. She starts to whimper, in an attempt to convey how she is feeling, unable to find the right words. But then Ashleigh will bend down to her level and whisper in her ear to remind her. ‘These are the other residents, Elsa. Sure, you know who they are, don’t you? Nothing to be scared of.’ And although she will never quite remember, although the facts of Elsa’s existence will never entirely shift into sharp focus again, she will be reassured and her mind will temporarily rid itself of the last droplets of fear until the next time something sparks a fit of terrified uncertainty. In this way, Elsa’s days have become an ebb and flow, a quietly played-out battle between fretfulness and tranquillity.