Snow Garden (8 page)

‘Do you mean in the world generally,’ asks Mrs Pike, ‘or just inside my head?’

When the public-information announcement comes it is not very informative and not very public. It can only be heard in the duty-free shop and the women’s toilets at the back of the departure lounge. It is also delivered by a woman who sounds as if she has clipped her nose with a peg and placed some sort of splint between her teeth.

‘Due to un-chore-cheen chirchirmshtanches—’

Then she conks out.

‘
What
did she say?’ asks Mrs King.

And everyone around her in the duty-free shop repeats, ‘What? What?
What?
’

Her daughters shrug. They are forty-two and forty-three respectively, both freshly single, and they are worse than teenagers. At least with teenagers, you know that spots and hormones and sulking are not permanent; but when they start all that at forty the outlook is less rosy. Why did Mrs King think it was a good idea to go on holiday with her daughters? She had been planning to get away from it all, the stress, the Christmas hoo-ha. Since the death of her husband a year ago, she has been finding it hard to do the simplest things. Every day she feels his absence, and as the seasons turn she says to herself, ‘A year ago it was his birthday … A year ago it was our wedding anniversary … A year ago we went on holiday.’ With the passing of each week, she feels a little more pulled away from her husband, a little more alone. Two of her oldest friends have died in the last few months; sometimes she feels she is looking out over a field that is becoming thinner and thinner as she stands there. So she’d said to both Christina and Tracey on the phone, ‘This year I want to get out of the country on Christmas Day.’ She’d always had a thing about the Northern Lights, she’d told her daughters; in reality she was planning to close the front door and turn off the lights and sleep on and off until January. Only, would you believe it, her daughters must have picked up the phone to one another and discovered they, too, had a thing about the Northern Lights – a real thing, not a made-up one – and would be available to join her. She even had to pay for their tickets.

‘Maybe we should go home,’ says Mrs King. ‘Maybe we should cut our losses.’

Christina glances up from her book. It is some sort of complicated guide to astrology. Her face is grim. And Tracey – who has bought herself an entire new snow outfit and is overheating by the second – says something she fails to hear. Mrs King is about to ask Tracey to repeat herself, but thinks better of it. Besides, she has other things to distract her. Fifteen buxom teenage girls in blue sweatshirts have just rushed into Duty-Free, followed by an exhausted-looking woman and a boy with a turban.

‘Lambs!’ croon the girls. ‘Aww! Look at the ickle fluffy lambs! Miss! Miss! Can I get one, Miss?’

Johanna scans the waiting area but she can’t find Magda anywhere. There is so much to see it is hard to keep remembering that all she is searching for is a plain young woman in a grey hoodie. The Father Christmases have found a group of children and are performing some sort of juggling act. A makeshift tent has been set up, offering hot drinks and (cold) toasted sandwiches for breakfast. You can barely move without treading on a sleeping body. Johanna tries to remember exactly where she left Magda, she tries to spot the man and woman in their linen travel suits, but she can’t see anything she recognizes. She rings Magda’s mobile phone. No answer.

She doesn’t know whether to run, to walk, where to look. She has no idea how to do anything. She searches the women’s toilets, the café, she scans the rows of seating, but there is no sign of Magda.

A boy begins to cry. ‘I want my Buzz Lightyear outfit. I want it now!’

Johanna hears the boy’s parents shouting and telling him he has to wait until Christmas, and then she hears the boy crying that it
is
Christmas, and his parents’ confusing reply that yes, it is Christmas, but it is not
real
Christmas until they get on holiday. ‘Why? Why?’ cries the boy. ‘Because, because,’ they say. The boy’s sobs hack straight through Johanna as if a part of her is crying too. And then, for the first time, the truth hits her and she reels. I am going to be a parent. I am going to share a child. A child who will want the impossible, whose needs will constantly bamboozle me, and who will cause me to say things I don’t fully understand. I must find my partner. I must find Magda.

‘But I don’t need perfume,’ says Mrs King.

‘It’s duty-free,’ replies Christina. ‘It’s cheaper than in the shops. It can be your Christmas present.’

‘Don’t buy me a present,’ says Mrs King. ‘We agreed. No presents. If you buy me a present, I will have to buy one for you.’

‘You haven’t bought us a Christmas present?’ gasps Tracey. She stumbles backwards like a snowy Michelin man.

Mrs King glances from one daughter to the other. They couldn’t look less forgiving. ‘But we
said
we wouldn’t buy presents this year,’ she says weakly.

‘We didn’t mean nothing
at all
,’ says Christina. ‘You’re our mother. You’re supposed to give us presents.’

‘But you’re grown-up,’ says Mrs King, feeling her words lose confidence even as they leave her mouth.

‘This is typical,’ says Tracey. Despite her anger, her eyes fill with tears. She has to pretend she is blowing her nose.

‘What is typical, Tracey?’

‘Since Dad died, you only think of yourself.’

Now it is Mrs King who wants to stagger backwards, but she doesn’t. She has noticed a change in her daughters. There was a time when they shared everything with their mother. Tracey would always ask for her advice about how to deal with problems at the school where she taught, and barely a day passed without Christina phoning, not to say anything in particular, just to check that her mother was still there, still listening. Mrs King used to hear the way her friends complained about their children, how difficult things were, and feel a touch of complacency. Even when the girls were teenagers, their mood swings had been short-lived. But since the death of their father, they’ve become formal, more removed. Spiteful, actually. As if it is their mother’s fault they have no father. As if she could have done more to save him if only she’d made the effort.

‘How about this for a plan?’ she asks. ‘We’ll each choose our own gift.’

They emerge fifteen minutes later with perfume, a golden chocolate bar and a gift box of anti-ageing cream.

‘Happy now?’ asks Christina, and even the word ‘happy’ sounds like something she has trodden in.

Magda has to hold on to the sink in order to keep standing. She remains very still, hoping the pain won’t find her again. She holds her breath.

‘You can’t stay here,’ says a woman in a white overall. She holds a mop, but confusingly is also wearing a tinsel halo and a pair of large fluffy wings. ‘These facilities are officially shut for cleaning purposes.’

‘Can I lie down?’ asks Magda. ‘I don’t feel very good.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ says the angel. ‘Have you looked at the state of the floor? If you’re ill you need to report to the medical centre.’

‘Where is the medical centre?’

‘You have to ask at the information desk.’

But there is a queue for the information desk and there is so much noise, there are so many travellers shouting at the two officials (also dressed as angels but looking on the verge of tears) that Magda feels dizzy. She waits patiently in the queue, but the queue keeps spilling outwards and sideways as more people join it, all shouting questions at the angels. Instead she spots a floor plan and discovers that the medical centre is only at the other side of the departure lounge.

The pain is more frequent now, her stomach making a tight fist and growing rock hard. She has to walk very slowly, almost in and around the pain, as if it is lying in wait for her and one foot in the wrong place will set it off. The medical centre is locked.
Seasons Greetings!
says the sign.

Then she remembers Johanna – all she wants is Johanna – and with that thought comes the realization that she has lost her bag. She must make her way back to where she was waiting before, only she can’t think where that was because it all looks the same. Her breathing is fast and high in her chest. She has to go very slowly because she is about to drop something, she can’t carry it any more. She has never felt so alone. People push past, not noticing her distress. Someone even jabs her in the stomach with a rucksack.

An arm shoots out and pulls her close and Magda is about to fight it off until she realizes it is Johanna’s.

‘You look awful. What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know,’ she moans. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you need a doctor?’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘We need to get you away from all these people.’

But it’s too late. Water – a tide of water is rising. Magda had no idea there could be so much of it. She can’t move. She can’t even get back to the toilets. She experiences a pressure mounting inside her and then a kind of pop. Her legs are wet, as if someone has thrown a bucket of warm water at her.

‘Oh my God,’ says Johanna, noticing Magda’s jogging pants.

Magda moans. ‘It’s happening.’

‘Now? Here? It can’t—’

Magda’s neck flips backwards as a new wave of contractions passes through her. Her eyes are closed and her skin is clammy and grey. She grips her fingers tightly around Johanna’s arm as if she is afraid of being pulled away by the pain.

‘I’ll ring for an ambulance,’ shouts Johanna. And then she remembers the gridlocked traffic surrounding the airport. How will an ambulance get through?

‘It’s too late,’ moans Magda again. ‘No.’ The ‘no’ becomes more of a low, like a cow groaning. Magda rocks from one foot to the other, trying to contain the pain. Johanna forgets all about the ambulance. People are beginning to turn and look. ‘I can’t walk any more. Jo, I am going to have our baby here. Find a trolley. Get me somewhere quiet.’

‘I can’t leave you. I’ll carry you.’ Johanna tries to put her arms around Magda, but Magda shrieks as if her touch is a vice around her stomach. Several more people turn to look.

Magda whispers through clenched teeth, ‘I’ll be OK. I’ll wait. I won’t move from here. I promise.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes. It’s OK so long as I don’t walk. Find me a trolley.’

There is no sign of anyone in the departure lounge who looks vaguely official, let alone a person with a trolley. Maybe the staff are all involved in trying to sort out the unforeseen circumstances. Or maybe they are in hiding, afraid that if they go out and try to explain the situation they will be torn apart with questions and complaints. The only staff to be seen are the two at the information desk dressed as Christmas angels, as if to say,
No, no, don’t ask us for help, we are only jokes!
The six Father Christmases are now disco-dancing as the Stroud Girls’ Choir performs its entire Christmas medley.

Johanna asks the girl in Duty-Free, and the angel-woman cleaning the toilets; she asks families, women who look like mothers and should surely understand, but no one can offer her a trolley on which to transport Magda somewhere more private.

She spots a small building at the other side of the concourse. Before anyone can stop her, Johanna blunders through a door clearly marked
No Entry
and finds herself outside. The door slams behind her.

‘Apparently a little girl has rung. About the goat.’

‘The what?’ says Mrs Pike. She is trying to work out where to put the donkey. She has taken it for a walk around the concourse, and now that she wants to put it back inside its cage it keeps baring its teeth. It is definitely upsetting the four cheetahs. They whip round and round their cage, snarling.

‘The goat.’

‘Oh, that,’ says Mrs Pike.

‘The little girl says she wants to adopt it. But not the terrapin. Her mum has a van. Also there’s a woman in reception. She’s looking for a stretcher. Her wife is having a baby.’

Mrs Pike gives a laugh that verges on the deranged.

Tracey and Christina King pass the time discussing other travellers. It’s a game they always used to play when they were children. Questions like: Where do you think that family is going? Then they move on to other stories. ‘There’s this kid at school,’ says Tracey. ‘He wants to be a girl …’

‘What’s that?’ asks Mrs King, passing her daughters the sandwiches she has queued for and also the free bottled water.

On noticing her mother, Tracey appears to clam up. ‘Nothing,’ she says. Christina opens the packaging on her sandwich. Her nails are pale-blue talons.

Sometimes Mrs King feels she is searching for something without even knowing what it is. Something that will put things back together with her daughters. She wonders if she’ll ever find it, whether the search will always hurt the way it does, not exactly painful but always there, like an ache in a joint that comes with age. A miracle. That is what she is looking for. Never mind the Northern Lights.

‘What’s going on over there?’ says Tracey, pointing to the other side of the departure lounge.

Johanna puts her arms around Magda and walks her slowly through the crowds. ‘You’re just going to have to let me help,’ she whispers. ‘I know this isn’t how we planned it.’

Magda grips Johanna’s hand but she can’t do words any more, only guttural sounds that are more like animal cries. She wants to say it doesn’t hurt, not in the sense of pain that comes from the outside, but the baby gives a kick, a really hard one, as if it is thinking of booting its way out through her belly, and she stops still, her shoulders hunched, her face creased, her hands gripped into tight balls.

‘Not far, not far,’ murmurs Johanna. She wipes the slick of sweat from Magda’s forehead and kisses her hand.

Magda closes her eyes as the pain punches through her. When she opens them, she sees a girl with green hair and an older woman, frantically chewing.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ calls Johanna.

Then the voices become distant unconnected noise, like a sound beyond a window. Magda feels the clasp of firm hands beneath her armpits and others taking hold of her legs. Her feet are no longer on the ground. Her face rests on something soft and warm that smells of sweet dung and hay.