Ibrahim & Reenie (17 page)

No one seemed to mention that these days. As if no one wanted to admit it was what they had often thought, when the rockets were falling.
What if we lose?
Because they still could have lost, even then. What if the rockets hadn't stopped falling until there was nothing left but brick dust and ashes?

Later still, when she was married, Reenie learned how the men who created those rockets were neither tried nor punished. Watching grainy black and white footage of a man climbing down onto a featureless grey world, Jonathan turned to her and said, bitterly, ‘And to think, it was a Nazi who got them there.'

She asked him what he meant. He'd often say something, as if ending a sentence started in his head, and she'd wait for him to expand on it, to fill in the gaps.

‘Von Braun,' he said. ‘Rocket scientist. A
Nazi.
Member of the SS. Twenty-five years ago he was building rockets that killed thousands. Now he's building them so the Yanks can go to the moon. If it wasn't for that
Nazi
they'd never have beaten the Russians at
this
…' And he punctuated his remark by stabbing the stem of his pipe towards the television screen.

Reenie looked at the screen, then her husband. The windows of a nearby school were filled with crayoned pictures of spaceships, moons and American flags. A neighbour of theirs, Mr Powell, had resisted buying a television until that very week, when she had seen him hoisting its oversized box from the boot of his Austin Westminster. At the hairdressers, on Monday, it had been the only topic of conversation. Incredible. Amazing. Never see another moment like it in our lifetimes. In the week when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Jonathan Glickman was, it seemed, the city's – no, the
world's
– only curmudgeon.

‘Well, at least he's done some good,' said Reenie, meaning Von Braun. ‘Maybe it's his way of making up for what he did. His way of atoning.'

Her husband laughed and lit his pipe with a match.
Puff puff puff.
‘Atoning? The man never faced up to his crimes. The slave labour he used to run his factories. The thousands killed by his inventions. So he puts a man on the moon. So what? What does a man on the moon mean if we turn a blind eye to murder just to get him there? What kind of progress is that?'

She looked at him from across the sitting room. Could he understand what his words meant to her? Had he forgotten everything about her, everything that happened to her before they met? It was, she supposed, easy for him to forget. He'd never met her father, and nor would he. His family had been British for so many generations, and they'd lost no one in Europe. His outrage at Von Braun and the Nazis was the outrage of a very British Jew; horrified and at the same time distanced from the event. He'd admitted to her, once, that there were members of his own family who, before the war, resented and distrusted European Jews. And to them, to Jonathan and his family, the atrocities were both personal and academic. Personal because German troops could have landed on the Kentish coast. Academic because they hadn't.

Bristling for a moment (how could he
not
know what his words meant to her?) Reenie thought about Von Braun's factories, about his slaves. Had her parents helped to build those rockets, unaware they'd one day fall on the city where their daughter lived? Was history's sense of humour that sick? She could believe it was.

She'd never tell him, Jonathan, how he hurt her that night. He hadn't meant to, she knew that. It would have crushed him, had he known. Perhaps he thought she'd appreciate his outrage, as if he were somehow defending her, or even her parents, so many years after the fact.

She wanted to tell him: but we don't talk about it. We never talked about it, about any of it. Some things, well… it's as if some things are too big to talk about. As if there aren't enough words.

And now, eight years a widow, Reenie saw in the night sky the blinking specks of satellites once carried by rockets, and the world had changed again and again, and the factories and the slaves had been relegated to the status of footnotes. When the rockets stopped falling on London the blackout ended and the night sky was reclaimed by the city's fuzzy orange glow. Its darkness, and the threat that darkness contained, were gone, as if the city was now cocooned safely beneath a dome the colour of rust. Only here, sat beside her tent and her trolley, could she once again feel the terrifying vastness of space above her. There was a beauty to a clear night sky – she couldn't deny that – but with it came a humbling immensity, no more so than in those places where the land was flat and the horizons distant.

Before climbing into her tent Reenie looked east, across the dark fields barely contoured by starlight. She'd thought she might see some hint of the next large town, a dull umber light, but there was nothing; only darkness and stars.

She felt very small and distant from the world that night. For the first time since leaving Cardiff it occurred to her she might never make it to London, that she could become lost between the towns and cities; that the realities and hardships of her age might catch up with her and take her in the night. She doubted there was anyone in the world thinking of her at that moment, wondering where she was, what she was doing, not even Ibrahim, who – so she imagined – was halfway to London by now and never looking back.

16

He was woken, if it could be called waking, by the sensation of movement, a gentle rocking, and by the dull throb of an engine. Only one of his eyes would open properly, and through it he saw orange lights dancing against the black sky. He was inside a moving car for the first time in four years, but even so it took a moment for the gravity of this to hit him. He tried sitting upright, but every part of him was in pain; even the slightest movement was agony.

‘Try not to move,' said the driver; female, well-spoken, a slight gravelly quality to her voice. The kind of husky voice he'd heard on countless adverts. He saw long dark hair and, in the rear-view mirror, dark brown eyes.

‘Where am I?'

‘Don't worry, I'm a nurse. We're on our way to Gloucester Royal.'

‘What's that? Is that a hospital?'

‘Yes. I work there.'

Easing himself up, Ibrahim gripped the headrest of the front passenger seat for support.

‘No hospital,' he croaked. He could taste blood.

‘What's that?'

‘No hospital. I can't go to the hospital.'

‘You've got some really nasty injuries there. You may have broken something. I'm taking you to the hospital.'

‘No. Please. Don't.'

Because hospital meant doctors and nurses and examinations and pills and x-rays and everything he had gone through before. It could mean the end of the road and the white flag of surrender, and he couldn't give up, not now. He clenched his fingers into the headrest until he thought the stitches in its upholstery might burst.

‘Let me out,' he said.

‘What's that?'

‘Pull over. Let me out.'

Beyond the car's windows he saw a motorway's orange lights passing overhead as if flying in formation. The glaring white headlights of the cars in the adjacent lane, and the red tail lights of the traffic ahead glowered in single file, curving off towards the horizon. All that traffic, all those people, all that chaos. He felt a tightening in his stomach, and his body seemed to shrink, as if anticipating disaster.

‘Please. Let me out.'

‘I can't do that. We're on the dual carriageway.'

‘Please. I'm serious. Let me out of the car.'

He was leaning forward, between the front seats, and as he drew close the nurse flinched.

‘What's wrong?' she asked. ‘Are you in trouble? What is it?'

‘Please. Stop the car. I'm going to be sick.'

Sighing impatiently, the nurse drove on another hundred yards until they'd reached a stretch of hard shoulder, then pulled over and hit the hazard lights. Though still in pain, Ibrahim launched himself across the back seat, opened the door, and fell out onto the tarmac. Hunched over and kneeling, he dry heaved three times, his insides clenching and unclenching, his entire body breaking out in a cold sweat. Dimly, he heard the driver's door open and close with a loud clunk, and the sound of footsteps on the road.

‘You have to go to a hospital,' said the nurse, standing over him. ‘I'm not leaving you here. D'you know, I'm
legally obliged
to help you? So I
literally
can't leave you here.'

‘What're you talking about?' He mumbled. The nausea was beginning to pass now that he was out of the car and breathing fresh air.

‘Like I said, I'm a nurse. And you need treatment. I can't leave you here, on this bloody hard shoulder. Here. Let me help you up.'

He shook his head, waving his hand to fend her off, and he tried to stand, but couldn't. ‘I can't go to a hospital,' he said. ‘Not again. Please.'

‘Well, will you at least get back in the car?'

Could he do it? He wished he could undo the last four years completely, unravel the threads that brought him here, and make so many different choices. He knew he was being ridiculous; all his choices in the last four years had been ridiculous. A rational, undamaged person would have taken the train to London, would have been there by Tuesday afternoon. Even if that rational, undamaged person found himself in the situation Ibrahim was now in, he would accept help, go to the hospital, but Ibrahim's mind no longer worked that way. His every thought was strewn with boulders and brick walls. Nothing was ever simple.

‘I can't go to the hospital,' he said, and he heard his voice breaking and felt the stinging weight of tears in his eyes.

The nurse looked down at him, and he caught her expression; one of equal parts pity and frustration.

‘Well, would you let me treat you, if I took you somewhere else?'

‘Where?'

‘My house. God… what am I thinking?' She sighed. ‘I live near here. I could take you to my house. I've got some stuff there. I can take a look at some of your cuts. But if it's anything more serious than cuts and bruises, I'm calling an ambulance.'

He nodded. ‘Yeah. Your house. That's fine. I think.'

She reached forward, hooking her arms beneath his, and hoisted him off the ground with a strength that surprised him. When she lifted him into the car he slumped across the back seat with a groan.

‘You're strong,' he said.

‘Yeah, well, I'm a nurse. Lifting pensioners out of wheelchairs works wonders for your upper body strength. Arms like a bloody navvy, me.'

He closed his eyes again, and heard her walking around the car, getting back behind the wheel, starting the engine.

‘I can't believe I'm taking you to my house,' she said. ‘I must be insane. I don't even know your name.'

They pulled out from the hard shoulder, but he stayed lying down, his eyes shut.

‘It's Ibrahim,' he said. ‘Ibrahim Siddique.'

‘Nice to meet you, Ibrahim. My name's Natalie. You okay back there?'

He nodded and grunted in reply, and tried to ignore the feeling of motion and the sounds of the road; the tug of gravity each time she accelerated. He heard sirens, growing louder, then quieter as an ambulance or police car sped past them, close enough for him to see the faint blue flicker of light through his eyelids. He remembered night-time car journeys when he was a child, the way the shadows slid up the back of the driver's seat with every street light they passed, and how those sliding shadows would often lull him into sleep.

The relief he felt when the car had stopped and the engine fell silent was overwhelming, like a moment when you don't know if you're about to laugh or cry; your breath arrested at the very line between two different emotions. She helped him out of the car, his right arm slung around her shoulder, her left arm supporting him around the waist, and she walked him to the house.

Natalie lived on a grey, nondescript terrace; the kind of street that could be in any town or city, in any part of the country. She carried him as far as the living room, where a large antique clock above the fireplace struck midnight. How many hours had passed since he was on the lane? How long was he unconscious by the roadside? How long had it taken for someone to notice him?

She lowered him onto her sofa, and turned on a lamp in the corner of the room.

‘Are you comfortable?'

He nodded, trying to smile, and felt dried blood cracking in the lines around his mouth.

‘I'm just going to get a few things,' said Natalie. ‘Then we'll see if we can patch you up.'

While Natalie went to fetch dressings and medicine, Ibrahim looked around the room, searching for clues as to the kind of woman who'd rescued him. Was there a husband or boyfriend, someone who might appear suddenly, and turf him out into the night in a fit of rage? Were there children? He saw school portraits of two boys and a girl on the mantelpiece, but no other evidence of kids; no bright plastic toys cluttering the corners of the room or Disney films amongst the romantic comedies and boxed-set TV shows beside her television.