Oh Dear Silvia (11 page)

Ed has indeed written to their son to explain what has happened to his mother. He has Jamie’s reply in his pocket, but he doesn’t want to read it to Silvia.

Dear Dad.

Thanks for your letter and for letting me know. Yeah, you’re right I could get compassionate leave. I’m not going to bother, the only time I will come to see mum is when she’s in a wooden box and even that would be to make sure she really is completely dead. Sorry Dad, but you know how I feel. No time to write real letter now, but will defo do it next week. Promise. Good news re David Bentley. Allardyce making right choices. Gives all us Hammers boys out here a bit of hope. By the way, I defo have enough dosh for my season ticket (nothing here to spend it on!) so can you get mine when you get yours? Let me know about any special offers etc, yeah?

Seeya.

Jamie

PS I am smoking again. Soz.

No, Ed didn’t think it was the right letter to read aloud to Silvia. What a shame it’s come to this. Neither of her kids want to be with her at this desperate time.

Ed allows a selfish thought to flash through his mind. He hopes and indeed knows that it wouldn’t be the same if it were him in that bed. He rests assured that his kids would be there for him. He hasn’t deserted them. He knows as well as he knows anything, that what you put in is what you get out, and he’s put a lot in these last few years. Two parents’ worth of concern.

He misses being a parent alongside her. However irascible she may have been, she was always clever and saw situations looming way before he did. She watched the children very closely. Literally stared at them, fascinated and amused by their growth and their every move. He remembers it all very clearly, but when he looks at her lying there, a stationary lump, he can’t believe it’s the same woman. Who has she become?

‘Funny really, thinking about when the kids were born, and praying to God to keep you all safe. Do you remember it all, Silv? I do. So clearly. Especially Jamie. The first one. We had no clue, did we?’

Ed finds himself touching Silvia’s arm. It doesn’t feel wrong while he’s remembering their shared intimacies. If she was conscious, he wouldn’t dare. Face it, if she was conscious, he wouldn’t be here, full stop.

‘You didn’t like your belly being so big and round, you
thought it just looked fat. It didn’t. I told you again and again it didn’t. It looked … full. Actually, I couldn’t tell you this at the time, but sometimes I would catch you waddling down our path and I thought you looked like you’d had the most enormous lunch. Not fat. Not fat at all, but full, like I say. And because I couldn’t quite believe there was a living baby in there, couldn’t get my head around it, it was simpler to imagine you were full of all your favourite food. That perfectly, alarmingly round belly stuffed with toast and mackerel and fudge.

‘However prepared you were, with your bag packed ready by the door and the nursery equipped and ready for action, neither of us were prepared for the experience of that birth. The look on your face when your waters broke up on Kot Hill! You said to take you up there because you didn’t think you’d manage the steep path again ’til the baby was born, you were getting too big and out of breath. That’s the problem with Kot Hill though, you have to leave the car in the car park at the bottom and the rest is Shanks’s pony.

‘We were so nearly at the top, do you remember? You were ahead of me, further up the muddy path. You stopped still in your tracks suddenly, and turned round. I had never seen that expression on your face before, I didn’t know how to read it. It was a mixture of wonder and embarrassment. You seemed far off, as if you were solving a problem elsewhere. It was only when you looked down and I followed your gaze that I saw the spreading stain on your trousers. It’s funny really – I must
have known your waters were due to break, but I immediately jumped to the mistaken conclusion that you’d wet yourself. My brain wasn’t working on that windy hill. All I knew was that something natural but … a bit surprising was happening. God, yes, I remember now. You had the sun behind you, filtering through your amazing blowy hair, red hair, and you said “this is it Ed, it’s bloodybabybloodywater”. That’s not a word. While I was momentarily baffled, you took my hand and firmly led me, puffing with anxiety back down the hillside to the car.

‘We went straight to the hospital, didn’t pick up the perfectly packed bag, and the next sixteen hours were unlike anything I had ever known or been part of before. I watched you change from a woman I knew, into a … a grunting animal. You really did become something from another species. You were so intensely focused on getting that baby into the world, and your whole body – your face, your voice, everything – was different. Long low waves of pain to start, then gradually you began to bellow. I didn’t know you could make noises like that, they sounded like they came directly from your womb, from him, desperately fighting his way here. I wanted to protect you from him then, he was attacking you from inside, hurting you, making the veins on your forehead and neck stand out … all … livid and purple. God, yes, a blood vessel in your eye burst with the sheer effort and the white went red. Demon red. I was terrified.

‘You growled your way through that stage and out the other
side, into a weird kind of beatific trance, where you were breathing deeply and staring into a holy blissful distance. For one awful moment, I thought you were dying. I did, Silv. I thought I was losing you. I suppose I was, in a way. Losing the all-to-myself Silvia, the before-kids Silvia, the not-tired-and-irritable Silvia. That Silvia was forever gone in that exact instant because that’s when he came. Little pink, wrinkled blinking Jamie, who was furious about it all. Started out in a rage and has rarely been out of one since.

‘He’d like to feel differently, I think, but just as he was crawling out of his anger – what was he, nineteen? – we split up, and he was plunged right back in. I wish he hadn’t joined up in that frame of mind, that wasn’t right. It’s like being permitted to get married when drunk in Vegas. Young men incandescent with rage shouldn’t be on the front line in Afghanistan. Mind you, who else would be as effective? Jamie. The firebrand. Tearing through his life with rage as his fuel. Totally opposite to little Miss Cassie Rose.

‘Her entrance was very different, wasn’t it? Or maybe you were different by then. You knew how it might be, and you were resigned to it, much calmer. I thought you’d lost it when you said it was all going to happen in a pool. I didn’t get it, wouldn’t the baby drown? I know, I know. Stupid. Maybe it was because Jamie was in the room, but you remained so entirely … contained throughout the whole thing, from the minute you stepped into the shallow pool and knelt down. Do
you remember repeating “yes, yes, yes” over and over? The noises this time were rhythmic murmurs, in time with the ebb and flow of your pain. Jamie was copying you and you smiled at him, so he felt included. You were sweating profusely. One final low grunt of “Christ” under your breath, and she emerged, immediately cleaned in the water, lifted up and out of it by you. You turned round and scooped her out, holding her close, and she breathed. It was phenomenal.

‘You are phenomenal Silv. You did it twice, that miraculous unbelievable thing. You gave life. Twice. From your “tissue”. No one would ever be as mighty. Your body made two other bodies. So. No, actually. They can’t have any of it. Sorry.’

He flings down the clipboard, stands and cries.

Monday 10am

‘Jump!’

Jo pleads with Silvia. She is leaning over the bed and has Silvia by the shoulders.

‘Just jump, please darling. Try it, come on, for me. Look, I know you hate this stuff but honestly Silv, it could save you. Jump.’

Silvia lies as still as she persistently has for six days now.

‘God help me Silv, you’ve got to do some of the work. Right look, listen, look, we’ll rest for a few minutes but then we’re going to give it another go missy, OK? And you are going to try harder, OK?’

Jo slumps back down on her chair. She knows it’s wrong to feel exasperated with Silvia, but most certainly, that is what she is feeling. Bloody bloody Silvia. Why won’t she respond and make Jo feel useful for once? She is shocked by the next
thought that flickers through her mind … Why doesn’t Silvia at least wake up briefly, so that everyone can witness their giant and undeniable sororal bond and then, THEN, OK, she could die, and at least it would’ve been Jo who roused her. Albeit temporarily.

As the thought ebbs away, Jo feels the flow of the guilt that accompanies such a selfish thought. She shudders and shakes it off, because surely, she thinks, Silvia waking up and getting better is more important than Jo being the one who makes it happen? Surely …? BUT … oh come on, Silvia, this particular method of rousing seems so phenomenally simple. All Silvia has to do is to take a giant leap between two dimensions. Quantum Jumping.

Jo tried it herself once, and admittedly, it didn’t really work for her, but maybe she didn’t have the powers of concentration? Silvia is good at focusing, and frankly, what else does she have to do at the moment? She might even be residing somewhere, deep inside her head, where the springboard for Quantum Jumping is more accessible. Yes, maybe that’s why it didn’t entirely work for Jo when she tried. She is too much anchored in this, earthly, first-dimensional plane. She is too distracted she realizes, by day-to-day stuff. A woman who can devote a whole week to mourning a pair of earrings she decided not to buy on holiday in Crete last year, is unlikely to be able to summon the mental acuity to change dimensions.

But Silvia can. Silvia has intellectual muscle. Her brain is as
flashingly sharp as a Swiss Army penknife. Or was. Who knows what she is now? And, oh God, what would she be if she woke up? Perhaps this fall has permanently harmed her, and, oh God, who would have responsibility for her if she is awake and brain damaged? And … oh God … no, Jo must banish all thoughts of anything negative and think only of getting Silvia better. She isn’t good at thinking one step at a time but to do otherwise is officially terrifying. Stay in the now, Jo, come on.

‘Right Sis, I’m going to explain it one more time to you, OK? Please listen, and please try. Bert thing from America, who invented it, is hugely famous and rich for this, so to start off, we know it actually works, yeah? Otherwise he’d be in prison or something, wouldn’t he, especially in America where they sue the butt, or whatever it is, off you in a heartbeat. Bert was in the army in Korea or something, and met loads of gurus and swamis and great stuff, so he picked up some amazing insights. He says that in order to Quantum Jump, all you need is an open mind and the willingness to learn. Surely you can muster that, darling, can’t you, come on? There’s guaranteed success if only you can open the frequency. I know it sounds weird, but apparently, Bert says that all leading quantum physicists agree that alternative universes exist, maybe in infinite numbers. Even that very clever dribbly one in the wheelchair says something similar, apparently.

‘So all you have to do is harness the power of your mind,
a power previously untapped Silv, and journey to another, parallel dimension. Now when you get there, you have to find your other parallel dimension self who lives there and … sort of … feed off them. So, say you jump into a dimension where Silvia is, in fact, a ballerina. Well, just learn to dance, how to move your body, from her and then, when you jump back into this dimension, you will bring that skill with you. Honestly, you really will.

‘You should see what Bert’s brought back. I mean, obviously, he is a skilled jumper and has travelled many times, but he once met his ‘painter’ self in a far dimension and now he does amazing paintings here on earth. He displays them on his website for God’s sake! You can even buy them, I think. This was a skill he didn’t have before Sis, so explain
that
! I haven’t bought any of the paintings myself, it’s all in dollars and frankly, they’re all a bit … hm … modern for me, but hey, good luck with that, Bert, it’s still beyond belief.

‘So imagine Sissy, if you could just try to jump, you could decide to meet your well and awake happy self, and maybe even send her back here instead of … this you. I’m not entirely sure how it works … so that maybe you could leave this broken you there instead? Hm, not sure, but listen darling, Bert has had profound results, he says, and since he has achieved mental and spiritual enlightenment, he can’t remember the last time he made a bad decision. Everything he does, works. Who wouldn’t want that, darling?

‘You’ve simply got to awaken the voice of your soul, see the other dimension in your mind’s eye, and when the slipstream is right you need to jump in and ride it baby, until you get to your turn-off. I haven’t got that far yet when I’ve done it, so I can’t exactly advise you
how
to turn off actually. Probably, there are signs or something? Mystic signs, maybe? And services, maybe? Anyway, I’m sure you will know. A bit like
Blade Runner
? You will make the slipstream stop with your mind and you will disembark from … your mind … or will you be in a little rocket-type thing or something? Made by your mind to transport you to the other universes?

‘I’m not entirely clear on that practical stuff, but they must have it sorted because Bert has done many many of these journeys, and he’s always returned safely, and always always been a better person. He calls it the “Inter-Dimensional Quest For A Better You”. All these other people you will meet in the other universes are all your doppelgängers. I mean honestly, I remember being taught ridiculous unbelievable Shakespeare with doppelgängers in the stories, and I can remember thinking it was an impossible word and an impossible notion. No one is exactly like someone else, are they? I mean yes, occasionally, some people look a
bit
like someone else don’t they, like, ooo, I don’t know, Princess Margaret and Chucky the evil doll, or that hilarious picture on the internet where a cat looks like Hitler. Well, OK, not quite like that, but you know what I mean.