The Night Following

“Went to your head, probably,” Tony said with forced cheerfulness. “Sure you’re OK?”

“Yes. Yes, thank you,” Arthur said, stepping out of Mrs. M’s path. “I’m all right now.”

“She’s got a point, though. You need a steak inside you,” Tony said. “Red meat, nothing like it. Sets you up. I’m the same.”

“He is,” Mrs. M grunted from the carpet. “Always has been. I mean, don’t ever give him chicken,” she said, “because he won’t thank you for it.” She got to her feet. “As for fish, practically a dirty word. Well! That won’t take long to dry. Fingers crossed. Sensible colour for a hall. Is it ‘Sahara’?”

I imagined Arthur staring at her and trying to puzzle out what on earth she was talking about. I realized I didn’t really know what his eyes looked like. There was a silence. Then Tony said, “There’s a few still over there, in the garden.”

“Yes, you want to be getting back to your guests,” Arthur said.

“Well…” Mrs. M sighed. “It doesn’t seem right. Wouldn’t you like someone to be with you?”

Tony took Arthur’s elbow and gave it a shake. “Tell you what, Arthur, why not come on over now? Get another beer. There’s plenty left. You could use a burger.”

She joined in. “Go on. There’s peach pavlova. Just for a while.”

“I’m in my slippers.”

“Don’t matter just to cross the road. Tell you the truth, mate, I don’t feel right leaving you,” Tony said. “Neither does Mum.”

“Thank you. Well, that is kind,” Arthur said. I could tell from his voice he wanted to refuse, but then they might not leave; they were wrangling, disruptive, insistent people, ready to trample wherever they liked. “Very kind indeed. Thank you.”

This pleased them. They led him away, one at each elbow, and he went quietly.

Dear Ruth

Where’s the rest of it? The story. What happens to the baby? I want to know what happens to the baby.

I like it now, thinking about the early days.

I should have put a bit more effort into getting the point of the poetry and I’m sorry for that. This seems like a second chance.

I’ve been thinking. More comes back about Overdale the more I think. That first night. We lay there looking up at the stars, didn’t we? It was so clear and so cold, and by then I had my arms tight around you trying to keep you warm.

I remember pointing out some of the constellations. You only knew the Plough. It was after I’d shown you how to spot the Great Bear and the Little Bear and was just moving on to Orion and Andromeda, and you suddenly told me to stop talking and close my eyes. Why, I said, I like looking at the stars, don’t you?

Yes, you said, but you also liked closing your eyes and not seeing them but knowing they were still there. And when we were lying like that, eyes closed, you said, can’t you just feel where we are? Can’t you just feel the size of the mountain around you and the sky above and just feel the millions of millions of gallons of water flowing through the reservoir down below? Technically speaking Kinder Scout isn’t a mountain and the water in a reservoir doesn’t flow, it’s stagnant, I said, and you punched me in the chest and told me to shut up. Playfully.

I want to live here, you said. I want to live on a hillside somewhere, surrounded by higher hills and mountains and with water at the bottom. I want to hear the wind on the mountaintops and the water lapping down below every minute of every day and all night long.

Of course I went along with all that. I said I’d like to live on a hillside, too, and just then I meant it. But I wasn’t thinking only about living. I was so happy at that moment that the thought of death suddenly came to me. That’s to say I allowed it to come, because I felt so free and strong that I didn’t need to keep it away-I knew it could not pin me down and make me feel ordinary and discouraged, just then. I thought-I could die at this moment. If I died on this hillside right now, I’d die with my life well spent (though I was glad I didn’t).

But if I had, I’d have died knowing all I needed to know-that I loved you completely, and that I was holding in my arms, wrapped up against the cold, all that was, or ever could be necessary to me now.

Arthur

Ihadn’t seen before that he can barely walk. In the house it doesn’t show so much. I was watching from the bedroom window and I saw them come back across the road and up the drive, Arthur’s feet edging along in little shuffles, his back bent. Tony, with professional tenderness for the slow and sick, was supporting him by the elbow, taking it slow and letting him rest every few steps. When they paused Arthur would look up and gaze ahead as if the house and I were miles distant and he would reach us only by the greatest exertion.

As they came through the door Tony snapped on the switches. In the burst of light Arthur vomited, suddenly and lavishly, on the floor. The sour, curdy stench rose instantly through the hall and up into the darkness of the stairs. I had come out to stand on the top step, and I craned forwards just far enough to see him being steered, groaning and stumbling, towards the kitchen. I wanted to dash straight down but I didn’t; I would be needed later, and only then would I be of real use.

Tony returned and cleaned up the mess, his scrubbing brisk and ill-tempered. When he went back into the kitchen I crept a little further down the stairs, and listened. I could hear snatches of Tony’s voice saying something to do with “doctor” and “urgent attention” and “tomorrow,” but I couldn’t make out Arthur’s replies. Then Tony spoke sharply. Arthur, he said, wasn’t being very cooperative.

“You’re not doing yourself any favours, mate,” he said. “Maybe it’s time you accepted some help.” He paused. “Look, I know what you’re going through. Loss of spouse, it’s bloody awful. I see it all the time. And it’s worse for you. Everybody knows…”

Arthur began to shout. “You know nothing! You have no idea, you hear me? Nobody knows what this is like!”

“Hey, hey there! OK, OK-I’m sorry, I put that the wrong way. Look, steady on now,” Tony said. “It’s OK. It’s understandable…”

Again Arthur interrupted. “Why don’t any of you listen? I don’t care if it’s understandable! I’m going to kill the bastard! You hear? Some fucking bastard took her away and none of you do anything about that, do you? You’re useless, the police are useless. You’re all fucking useless!”

“Look, hold on a minute. I can see why you feel that way, honest I can. But the police are doing their best. They might still get him. We’re all doing our best, mate.”

“So bloody what? That bastard’s going to get what’s coming to him. I’m going to get him myself and strangle him with my own bare hands, it’s the only way to get justice in this bloody country! Now leave me alone, will you? Fuck off and leave me alone!”

As the kitchen door opened I darted back upstairs into the darkness. Tony came out and paused in the hall, blowing out his cheeks. He rubbed at the carpet with his foot, turned back for a moment as if he had one last thing to say, but thought better of it and left.

A few minutes later Arthur appeared. He raised his head in my direction but I don’t know what he saw. He fumbled along the wall and switched out the lights in the hall. He seemed to have aged. I ventured down far enough to see his outline against the street lamps’ aura from the door but I remained in the shadow of the turn of the stairs and did not move. Then, in the dark, he called for me in a breaking, plangent voice-Ruth!

That was all. We both listened to the sound of it dying on the air. He called again. I didn’t go to him. He was sending out the name like a flare. He was experimenting, testing the house Ruth had arranged and kept for half her life to see if it would withstand the speaking of her name, if the sound of its one syllable wafting through the darkness to the edges of the walls and curving back would lapse and cease eventually, or would prove restless, an unruly echo roused easily from the corners. The quiescent, returning silence was like watching a white curtain fall back to stillness after the air has been disturbed.