I shuffled through to the kitchen and stood for a moment by the island in its centre, enjoying the blocks of amber sunlight on the wall opposite the windows. I opened the pack of pain relief and swallowed a handful of pills and vitamins with a glass of water and headed back to the front of the building, where the books on the shelves waited for fingers that never came to slide them out. Well, they would today, even if it was only temporarily.
Ruth's corner was all set up for her. Blanket over the chair, her favourite cushion. A box of Dr Stuart's herbal teas. A book on the go: Joe Tasker's
Savage Arena.
The till was open, empty. A dish of dry cat food for Vulcan lay on the windowsill. The silence and stillness of the shop seemed somehow wrong. Not because the shop felt like somewhere that ought to be all bustle, but because it didn't seem likely to ever change. It was like being in a mausoleum.
I browsed the stacks for a while, making little appreciative murmurs whenever I saw an author whose work I admired. The books were in good condition, generally, although I thought the prices were on the stiff side.
I made some tea and sat in Ruth's chair. I pinched a couple of biscuits from the pack peeking from the half-opened drawer. I thought about the B&B Tamara and I had bought on the seafront. The keys were in my pocket but I had not been able to bring myself to unlock that door and enter a new stage of my life. It was a shared project; the business was partly Tamara's. It was all there on the legal deeds. Her name. Intractable proof that she existed. Exists. Just in case I needed to be reassured. She had to be here before I could put what was left of my back into making a success of the venture. I needed something to do, I had to get back to some semblance of normality.
I finished my tea and moved to the section on local history. There were half a dozen guide books to the Suffolk coastline, its churches and cathedrals. A couple of tatty histories on the drowned city of Dunwich and some old OS maps that were probably still relevant. There was also a pamphlet, presumably locally written and produced, judging by the poor quality of the paper and printing, about the Battle of Winter Bay in 1672. I didn't plan on reading it, but the coincidence provided an added prickle.
An hour later I'd finished it. The last page was defaced. Somebody had scribbled words:
SUFFER CHILDREN... SUCCOUR TO THE CRAW. THEY WERE TAKEN!
all over it. That word again.
Craw
. I could still make out what the printed words were supposed to be beneath, though. I stretched gingerly, listening to the crackle in my back, and mused about the handwriting. It was different to the other note. What did it mean? I had seen no reference to children in the pamphlet's text.
Southwick had once been a major anchorage for the English naval fleet. Gorton Ness to the north and Dotwich to the south had formed a natural bay - Winter Bay - before erosion sanded it straight. In May 1672, a number of sailors were in Southwick while their ships were being prepared for battle: war with the Dutch was imminent. It was planned that the Allied fleets would form a blockade off Dogger Bank, so that the Dutch fleets could be intercepted if it should make a move to retreat to home ports. The Dutch fleet was anchored off Walcheren Island, biding its time before a strike designed to open a channel in the North Sea for Dutch shipping.
For three days the English fleet lay in the bay, fattening itself with men, provisions and ammunition. The Earl of Sandwich was anxious that the Dutch might attempt a surprise attack but his warnings were unheeded. A French scout ship returned at dawn, the entire Dutch fleet on her foam. By the time the careened flagship had been refloated, and the 90 ships put to sea, the Dutch were charging in from the horizon. Cue bloodbath.
I put the pamphlet back and rubbed my face. I fancied a beer. The thought of that pretty beach turned red with blood, of sunken ships, of burnt, bloated bodies drifting in with the tide for days after the end of fighting, was difficult to stomach. People came here to eat ice cream and get a suntan. They bought premium-priced beach huts and decorated them, gave them twee names, visited them a couple of weeks every year.
They come here to die.
I winced and jerked my head, as if the words had been spoken to me. Yes, they did come here to die, eventually, but that didn't make it into some dark receptacle. It was a village with an aged population, with a reputation for being a winding-down sort of place, a place of rest. I saw old men and women sitting on deckchairs or benches or wheelchairs, staring out to sea as if unpicking a code that could be read by them alone. In the summer they shifted dune-slow across the gravel and wore their best clothes for lunch in the local pubs. They stared straight ahead and chewed and chewed. It was a sort of lethargy, this business of ageing, of dying. It was about slowing right down to a point where your body could begin the business of consuming itself.
Which was pretty much where I was up to. Was I kidding myself? Would I ever run along the beach? Would I ever kick a football again? I could not even bend over to touch my knees. I was here to die too. It was just going to take much longer than it did for most. But it wasn't this, or the ugly graffiti, or Southwick's unpleasant history, that was gnawing at me. I was leafing through books, drinking tea, pinching Ruth's fruit shortcake, and somewhere Tamara was getting on with her life. Perhaps she was wondering about me. Or was pushing me from her mind, thinking me dead. Maybe this was some kind of Ukrainian test.
I go, you find me
. Was I failing her?
Restless, I left the shop, locking the door behind me. Out of season, the streets of the village were invariably empty. All the old people were inside, staring at walls, at televisions, chewing, all Windsor knots and pearls. Waiting for the sun, or the end.
I bit down on that thought, trying to gnaw it off, spit it away. I made my way up to The Fluke and ordered a pint of Broadside. The barman told me to sit down; he'd bring me my drink. I thanked him, to divert the mouthful of abuse I wanted to spill his way. I was no invalid. I could carry my own pint. But then I caught the ghost of myself in the glass of the door as I turned. I was an old man. The skin of my face was tired; it couldn't just be the scars that were doing that. The metal in my back held me upright, but the rest of my body seemed to be railing against it, failing. I was thin and weak. I was wasted.
I sat in the corner of the pub, in shade. There was nobody else, apart from a black Labrador sleeping by the slot machine. The barman put my drink in front of me and I nodded. If Tamara had not left me, what did that mean? My mind wouldn't hold hands with that thought.
I drank half the bitter quickly and asked the barman to change a five-pound note for the phone. I pulled out my address book and flicked through it. I had tried Tamara's mobile phone number a dozen times in the past three weeks. It had not been answered once. I hadn't panicked about this; she didn't like mobiles and rarely used hers. I certainly hadn't seen her receive any calls and she had chosen not to activate an answering service. When I asked her what I would do if I needed to get in touch with her, she had told me she wouldn't be away from me long enough for me to need to call her. I had to assume it was switched off, or shut away in a drawer. It could have run out of juice. She might have lost it.
Nothing of help in the address book. Both her parents were dead. She had no siblings. She had a few friends in the airline business, including one, Catriona, who had been closer than most. They had worked together on a series of flights over the course of a year, shortly before I met her. I called Air France and asked to speak to their personnel department. I was put on hold and then a female voice, in French, asked me how she could be of assistance.
'I'm trying to track down a member of your cabin crew. She might still be working for you, but she was definitely employed by Air France throughout 2010.'
'And you are?'
'Paul Roan. I was a first officer with Lufthansa until last year.'
'Was?'
'I retired.'
'You don't sound so old.'
I laughed. 'I retired for personal reasons.'
'And the person you're looking for?'
'Catriona Beck. She was part of a cabin crew that included my girlfriend, Tamara Dziuba.'
'Ah, yes. I know both of them.'
I felt my heart pitch. 'You do?'
'Yes, Catriona and I are friends. I met Tamara on a number of occasions. Work functions. That sort of thing.'
'Do you know where I can find Tamara?'
There was a hesitation. 'You said she was your girlfriend?'
'That's right. She... We decided on a trial separation. But I haven't seen her for a while.'
'How long is a while?'
'Look, it isn't important,' I snapped. I caught the barman looking up at me in my periphery. I thumbed some more coins into the phone. 'Sorry. It's been six months.'
'I can't help you,' she said, her manner more clipped now. 'If you give me your contact details, I'll pass on your message to Catriona and - '
'Can't you put me through to Catriona now?'
'She's away. Working. She won't be back until Thursday evening.'
I sighed and the sound lingered in the receiver. 'Okay,' I said. 'If you could ask her to call me, as a matter of great urgency, on... '
I gave Ruth's phone number and email address, wishing I had sorted out my own contact details since my recovery rather than plodding around in a daze, owlishly ranging to see if Tamara was anywhere close, carrying a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates. I imagined Catriona rubbing Tamara's shoulders, saying
It's for the best. You did the right thing.
Tamara nodding. Tamara turning. Tamara seeing some young thing. Tamara falling in love. Christ.
I flicked through the rest of the book and noticed the address of Tamara's old bolthole in Amsterdam. I tried calling that too, but nobody was answering. I couldn't remember the name of the guy who lived next door, and the address book didn't give up any other Amsterdam addresses.
Amsterdam
, I thought. Why would she go there?
I pocketed the rest of the change and drained my pint. I felt better. Positive action. It wasn't much, but I had made the first move; everything from here on in would be easier to decide upon, I thought. I felt a burning low in my chest. Acid reflux. Or my jigsaw ribs making themselves known. I could no longer tell when I was hungry. Too many other sensations jumped the queue. I ate according to the clock now and it was pushing on for noon.
I stayed away from the beach that morning, despite an ache to return. There was something about the expansive skies that helped me forget myself for a while, stopped me from feeling so limited. But I stayed away because Ruth had asked me to. It wasn't just that she was right, but also because it felt good to do as someone said. Being responsible for an aircraft filled with people blunted your appreciation of a command structure. You took orders that had to do with the process of flying. You requested and were either granted or denied. It wasn't down to personality or reliance. It was mechanical, on any number of levels.
I mooched about. I ate fish and chips. I read the papers. Three weeks after waking up, the world seemed no different to how it had been before my accident. One hundred and eighty nine days of people kicking footballs and arguing and fighting and killing and being rescued. Four thousand five hundred and thirty six hours of people watching TV and fucking and eating curry. Two hundred and seventy two thousand one hundred and sixty minutes of waiting for a bus and shopping at Tesco and wiping your arse. Sixteen million three hundred and twenty nine thousand six hundred seconds of watching somebody wither in Intensive Care.
Ruth came home tired at lunch time. She ate soup and went to bed for a nap. She didn't feel much like talking, beyond: 'Another couple of weeks and that's me done. I can't cope with much more of that or the baby will suffer.'
I welcomed the news. We could sit together on the sofa and watch afternoon films. I could help her eat whatever weird dietary urges her pregnancy demanded of her. It was important to find that groove again, that way of interacting with other people, develop a sense of belonging. I sensed that people brought me secrets to burn because of my detachment. I reeked of loner.
I performed my exercises. Diaphragmatic breathing. Static quadriceps exercises. Pelvic tilting. Transversus abdominus. I bathed. The sky was crowding with clouds, high and thick and grey. A storm was pressing the air into the village. I opened the bathroom window an inch to let the steam escape and sat in my hot, sudsy well, feeling my muscles slowly untie themselves. I soaped my chest gingerly, despite everything there having healed some time ago. I felt fragile, like some wet piece of bone china handled by a butter-fingered child. My ribs felt dog-chewed. They had collapsed under the punch of the radiator grille. One of them had torn into my lung. I recalled some of the literature I'd been given at the hospital from the impressively titled Therapies Directorate.
To be realistic you must give yourself two years to be the best that you can be.
Cool air eddied through the mist from the bath. The bathroom mirror fluxed in stages of opacity. Ridges of clarity formed. I saw my ribs opened out like the claws of a giant crab. I saw the ruined seagull clatter into the red fist at its centre, beak stabbing and rending. Blood pinked the tip of it and the curled cone of its tongue. Its wingtips raised like the arms of some nightmare conductor priming his orchestra. The squeal of bone grinding against metal. The best that you can be is not the same as the best that you once were.