In Pieces (37 page)

‘You sure you don't want a hand, now?' offered Mike, the ambulance man.

‘No, it's only up one flight of stairs. You guys have already done more than enough. Thanks for everything.' Si shook Mike's hand and, placing his crutches gingerly on the pavement, hobbled slowly towards the front door.

The key was in his pocket. He took it out of the jeans his mother had brought him while he was in hospital—his own clothes had been shredded and blood-sodden in the blast. Balancing precariously on one crutch, he turned to wave goodbye to Mike. The ambulance pulled gently out from the kerb and swung off towards the river.

The plane trees at the end of the street refracted the thin, November sunshine, and the church clock struck the half hour. Si watched the splintering light, mesmerised by the breaking colours.

Someone, his mother he presumed, had cleared his mail from the shelf in the communal hallway; a couple of envelopes from that morning's post awaited him.

It took him a while to get up the stairs. But eventually he was home.

Si had insisted that no one should bring him home from the hospital; he'd decided he needed to complete the painful journey of the last weeks alone, to mark an ending—that was how he'd explained it to his mother. She'd seemed to understand, but he still half-expected to find her waiting for him. However, the flat was empty. It looked tidier than he'd ever seen it—except for when he'd first viewed it with an estate agent three years before. The late morning light streamed through the French windows and, although there was no heat in it, the illumination raised Si's spirits briefly. The glass table sparkled with recent polishing and a few magazines, which he'd bought almost two months ago, just before the bomb blew his life apart, sat in a neat pile to one side. He deliberately untidied them.

For a moment, Si wondered what to do next. He unloaded a few possessions from the small canvas bag: some neatly folded clothes, a personal stereo, two classical music CDs and a book. Then in the absence of inspiration, he did what he had repeatedly imagined he would do.

He'd pictured this moment of homecoming so vividly over the past weeks; his imagination had helped him during the long hours on his back, sandwiched between starched hospital sheets, trying not to breathe too deeply to minimise the pain across his chest. From the fragments of memory and the hours of solitary meditation forced upon him, he had put together the pieces, creating a picture which had previously eluded him. And one thought—his intended first action on returning home—had helped him smile when even his sapling faith bent in the howling gale of the horror, and he thought he could begin to understand what was meant by walking through the valley of death. And even after the pain had dulled and he became mobile, whizzing around the hospital corridors in between his visits to Mary's bedside, the homecoming vision continued to burn brightly.

The video camera was where he'd left it, in the cupboard next to the boiler. He brushed off half a year's dust and weighed the cyclopean box in his hands. Surprisingly light for such a valuable load. He recalled how he'd grown to dislike the machine when Mary insisted he use it. Now her nagging seemed inspired.

Si stood silently for several moments lost in thought. Like an old man in a retirement home.

Snapping to, he rummaged at the back of the cupboard for the wire he knew would be there. Then he plugged one end into the camera and the other into the back of the video machine. After a few minutes he succeeded in getting a picture and rewound the tape to the beginning.

Si felt focused, controlled and ethereally calm. Again he paused for a moment in thought, but this time quickly recovered himself and pressed the green play button.

He moved back and sat on the floor leaning against the sofa, his legs stretched out in front of him. He still found it impossible to bend them more than about forty-five degrees. As the screen came alive, he forgot his aching body.

The fragments of footage shot in Mary's flat, restaurants, the street, and even in a taxi transfixed Si. There was one ridiculous scene where Mary dripped ice cream all over herself. And he laughed out loud at some of his repartee with Jimmy in The Feathers, as seen through the unforgiving lens. That had been when Mary stood them up and they'd ended up getting hammered together. That had been a good night. The pieces began to slide gently back together, to make sense in a way they'd never done before. Si noticed that, almost magically, the ragged edges of the recent violence seemed to be smoothing out the familiar chaos, like a spatula stroking rough clay.

When the video clock said that twenty-seven minutes had elapsed, the tape ended. Si didn't move for a long time. He thought mainly about Jimmy, whose damaged eyes meant he could not have the solace of watching images from the past; tragically, it was now clear he would never again play top flight football. What would become of his friend? Si wondered. Soon after the bomb, Jimmy had been moved to a specialist eye clinic outside London; as a result, they had not met since the fifteenth of September. The few phone conversations they had attempted had spluttered to a halt after a short time as each of them stumbled into unmapped emotional marshes—for the time being, their friendship seemed inadequate, unable to offer a safe path through the suffering.

Someone went past in the street outside ringing a bicycle bell. A beam of sunshine moved slightly and lit up Si's immobile face. As the light scorched his petrified cheek, he allowed the tears to overspill his tired eyes.

The phone began to ring. The sunbeam moved further into the room and spread across Si's whole body, surrounding him with a warm halo of soft light. The phone rang again and again before Si registered the noise. Returning from within, he raised his head like the Phoenix, and slowly the world came back into focus. He pushed back his shoulders, shook his head as if waking from a deep sleep, and the anguish on his face subsided; it was replaced by a weary, but gentle and peaceful expression.

The phone was still ringing and now Si leaned forward to pick it up. He knew who it would be. The faintest trace of a smile showed at the corner of his shining eyes.

Nick Hopton was born in Manchester in 1965, brought up in York and educated at Cambridge and in Rome. He works for Foreign Office.
In Pieces
is his first novel.

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Tiger and Tyger

Copyright © 1999 Nick Hopton

Jacket image © Yves Cosentino

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The moral right of the author is asserted.

eISBN: 9781448214563

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