Star Shot (11 page)

The river calms him; he forgets his anger and the daft complexities of tomorrow's parade in the noise of the breath in his lungs and the feel of the late afternoon sun on his back and arms. He drifts over to Paris, stands on a dusky corner in an interesting hat and watches her coming up the street laughing silently with her friends; her glance raised to meet his shocks them both; her agility on the stage, twenty years ago. Birds sing in the trees all around him. He runs for many miles, following the river, looping, diverting, making it last: he comes out at length into a network of terraces and back lanes, and weaves his way home.

He showers, cooks, and lies down on the sofa to watch the news; perhaps he sleeps for an hour. At around midnight he leaves the house again to cycle across the quiet city. Back in the silent building he spends a couple of hours dealing with the final emails; there are no real crises, no major names bailing out, no helicopters pulled from the sky for technical reasons. He sends calm and concise answers to those who will need them in the morning. Then he sets his many maps to brighten the room in their different colours, fading in and out, chasing, overlaid, gradually replaced: he sees, over and over, how the channels of silence are like the branching capillaries of lungs. At around two he packs it all up again, closes it down, locks up and leaves. And as he heads down the stairs the phone in his breast pocket pulses. He smiles and pulls it out, still lit up from the inside.
Pob lwc
, she says.

35.

The buggy and the sleeping child are parked tidily in a corner of the town library. Dan sits at a crowdsource workstation, dragging white ellipses over star-clusters with a practised hand and eye. He is somewhere in the Horseshoe Nebula, identifying anomalies for the Mapping the Heavens project, refreshing his memory with the names of certain stars, the nature and shapes of the swirling phenomena of deep space, so that he will be able to teach them to Teddy when he is older. They don't teach this stuff at school, do they; he wonders why ever not. Since he stopped paying for an internet connection at home, and since his laptop packed up, these workstations, scattered all over the city, are a lifeline, a proper lifeline, not a manner of speaking; just as the child himself is a lifeline. And so is music, and beer. He used to spend his evenings doing this, but now it's down to two or three sessions in the early afternoon, after Mother and Toddler group, when Teddy is properly worn out and his nap is deep and lasts a good hour. Long enough to get lost in space. Parent and Toddler, he means; Parent-stroke-Guardian and Toddler. There are quite a few grandparents too, of course, the parents are all out working, poor sods. As he should be, as he will be, soon.

Today it is harder to concentrate. He breaks every ten minutes to check for messages, and finds only disappointment. His sister in London is busy for the forseeable future. His parents-in-law have failed, as ever, to take the hint. Unfair. They are both ill, and old, and could not manage him for a whole day in any case, not now that he is running around. And they don't change nappies. And, to be perfectly honest, Teddy barely knows them. There are the playgroup mothers, of course. The concerned, flirtatious mothers. One of them would take him for a morning or afternoon, he thinks. But, given the travelling, he needs a whole day. A whole day would be too much. And in the quick rush of frustration and anger that follows he realises, with a helpless falling-away like sand slipping under your feet as you climb a dune, that he is not yet ready to leave the child with anyone else, not for a morning, not for an afternoon, not yet.

Tears force their way into his eyes. He gets up and walks over to get a drink of water. And as if he really can see from the back of his head, he catches the sense of a big shape lumbering over towards Teddy's pushchair. He turns very quickly and is about to cut back across the room when recognition holds him back: it is the black guy from the bench near the church, smiling and crooning and holding one of his cut-out pictures. He lays it very gently on the boy's stomach, and winks and bows at Dan, then ambles out, collecting his fat plastic bags from under a table near the door. Dan goes over to the child, still deeply asleep, and picks up the ragged cut-out, which is of a bird, a blackbird in a tree. It has a bright-eyed, university prospectus look about it. Teddy will be delighted.

Blessed by the encounter, Dan goes back to his stars with renewed commitment. And as he sizes and sorts them, he thinks of the constant mild shock, the oddness, of seeing any of the bench people out of their highly restricted context. It happens surprisingly infrequently. And then he thinks of the last time he saw the black guy, on his bench, singing and talking to himself and all the passing shoppers. It was sunny. People were responding cheerily. He had stood up unexpectedly, begun ceremoniously removing coats, three of them, each one filthy, and each one an entirely different sort of coat: a thick parka anorak; an oversized suit jacket, a big winter coat, in no logical order. He just adds layers, thinks Dan, as the benches get colder. The silence won't be driving him away just yet. But some of the others, he feels, won't be coming back. He thinks the red-haired boy is probably dead. And the busker is restless, constantly shifting his patch, his songs sounding less and less convincing.

Where we are  is among the stars

Then, somewhere deep in the Trifid Nebula, Dan thinks of Lina, and sees in a burst of clarity that she could be the answer to his problem.

36.

Long dull-red hairs choke up the bristles of the brush. She picks at them with a shudder of hopelessness, and puts another clump of hair in the bin beside her bed. A tangle of red against the layer of crumpled tissues. And under the white of the tissues, more tangled red, then more crumpled white. And so on. Stop brushing your hair, she thinks. And stop crying.

She has a thirst on her that cannot be cured by water. She cannot stop thinking about fresh lemons. Squeezed over ice-cubes. The smell of grated zest. Boiled in their skins with a bit of sugar for old-fashioned lemonade. She thinks of lemon trees, the scent of their dark glossy leaves crushed. And she thinks, so much does she crave the taste, that she could probably suck half a lemon now, without her mouth twisting in shock.

Today she submits to the morning's rituals without a word. Painkillers, blood-pressure, temperature. The nurse worries vaguely that this obedience might be a bad sign, but does not fuss her with questions. Everyone is excited about the parade, and at ten those who are well enough to move pile into the dayroom to watch the half-hour of build-up before the event begins. Those still in their beds are set up with extra pillows and the screen on the wall is adjusted to suit. In Myra's room the nurse turns the sound off and places the remote control beside her; there are still fifteen minutes to go. Then she goes off to fetch her a cup of tea, and Myra hasn't the heart to tell her, when it arrives, that she wants lemon in it, not milk.

All is quiet for five minutes, and then the cleaner arrives, apologetic. They are all quite out of their routine, this morning, she says; they have had to do some sections as a priority, before the parade, and they are short-staffed because several people wanted the morning off to see it. It's fine, Myra says, I'm not really sure I'm watching it. Please go ahead. The woman nods and smiles. Empties the bin of its red and white rubbish. Removes the wilting flowers, and wipes over the side table. Then she gestures at the cold grey tea.

Would you like me to take this away?

Myra stares hard at the tea for several seconds, fighting tears.

I wanted lemons, she says helplessly. And begins to cry, without control, without hope. The woman puts down her cloth and reaches for the box of tissues.

Here, she says. It's OK. Take this, come on, it's OK.

Myra nods and weeps, and weeps.

Do you want me to find a nurse?

She shakes her head, and blows her nose.

Do you want me to leave?

She shakes her head again, and tries to apologise, but the sobs are huge.

The woman goes back to her cleaning trolley and puts the cloth and the spray carefully in their place. She puts a hand on the trolley and hesitates, then leaves it by the window and goes back over to the bed. She bends over the crying girl and touches her shoulder. Shall I get you lemons? she asks. Myra nods vigorously, still sobbing.

Tomorrow, OK?

Another nod.

Beautiful lemons. I promise. Stop crying now. Come on. Look, they've started the parade.

The two women stare up at the screen, where dizzying numbers of people swarm and then, very gradually, as the cameras lift and the scene is filmed from above, begin to snake around the museum. Myra watches through tears, and her sobs quieten. The building looks strange, like a relative who has been away a long time. Smaller. She looks at it dispassionately through the moving stream of faces and open mouths and waving hands. Neither woman thinks to turn the sound back on, and both are preoccupied, each looking for a particular face in the crowd.

37.

Three adults and a small child crouch at the edge of the bright pond. Sunlight falls from behind them and into the water, so that, for a foot or so at least, before the light is lost in the rich brown shadows, they can see all the way to the bottom. Theo shows them how to focus for different levels, from the skin of the water dancing with flies and the tiny hectic jewels of the whirligigs, to the yellowish shallows and their wriggling determined tadpoles, and in further and deeper to where slivers of fish hang momentarily and flick away; right down to the silt, which requires patience and a good eye, where ragged twigs and leaves lumber unexpectedly across the debris of their patch, camouflaged, like tanks. Diving beetles cut diagonals, like spaceships, between their heaven and their earth. Predatory white larvae wait, suspended, for whatever comes their way; others hang dormant halfway up the thick stems of plants which burst the surface into the clear air.

Dan has Teddy clutched firmly around the waist, and tries, by pointing and holding his head, to direct his gaze down to the fish in the middle water; but it is difficult to tell if he can actually see beyond the glitter of whirligigs on the surface, and the surface is all distraction in any case, with its yellow kingcups and its sunny reflections. At the far end of the pond, which is huge, more like a small lake, a pair of wild mallards skitter to a messy halt.

After a while Theo scoops out a couple of handfuls of fat black tadpoles and puts them in a washing-up bowl with a bit of duckweed. Lina persuades Teddy away from the water and together they sit and watch, with a shared fascination, their frantic wriggling. Theo, explaining as he goes in a long, low, monologue, shows Dan how to assemble a typical starter tank. Then he makes coffee for them all on a gas ring in the battered summerhouse. There are only two chairs, but it is sunny enough to sit on rocks. Teddy wanders between the adults with a biscuit in one hand and a stick in the other, and they talk over the top of his blond head, until it seems that he is determined to throw himself and his stick in the water. Lina holds out her arms and coaxes him to her.

I'll walk him round, she says.

Good idea; he might sleep after. You sure?

Quite sure. She smiles at them both, and sets off. They go back to their tank, load it onto the pick-up.

How many of these do you do in a week? asks Dan.

Depends on the time of year. We're busy enough right now. There are four more of these up at the house, I did them first thing.

And where are they going?