I came out of this breathless. I had not fallen asleep. My eyes had remained open throughout it. The doctor had warned me about flashbacks. The trauma had been purged, to some extent, from my body, but it would be a while before I felt mentally healed.
I heard footsteps outside, voices murmuring, edged with sharpness in the crisp night air. Two people, returning from the pub. Slightly breathy, a little tipsy. A her and a him. I heard her say Don't believe the truth.
Sudden, site specific heat: I lifted my fingers (any number of muscles and nerves jangling as I did so) and dabbled my fingers in the bauble of blood sliding from my left nostril. The footsteps paused, gritted around for a few moments - him kissing her? her kissing him? - before moving on. I suddenly felt exhausted, as if I'd been reading for too long something I didn't quite understand. I wiped and rewiped my nose with my forearm until it had stopped and I looked as though I had tried to open the old Median Basilic and end it all.
I rinsed the blood off and elbowed the lever that opened the plughole. Pink water sank around me, returned to me my weight and discomfort. I dried and applied. I flinched my way into the bathrobe. Sweat greased me; ghosts of copper had settled against my skin: I could have done with another bath. Instead I moved to my bed and lay down, using the hand-held controls to dent the bed so it cradled me just the way I needed.
I closed my eyes and there was Tamara. She was wearing a grey wool duffel coat, floral print top and pale Diesel jeans. Her hood was up and her hair was down and the wind was striping her face with it. I tilted my face to better hear what she was trying to say but the wind was messing with that too. I couldn't read the message on her lips. Hair whipped across the dark red of her mouth.
I heard a sound like a horse's hooves at a gallop on hard earth. I felt it in my bones. But, I realised quickly, there was more than one horse; another was behind it, at distance, catching up. Fast, faster. The percussive sounds tumbled against and over one another, and it reminded me of something I couldn't put into words or pictures. I felt the back of my neck tighten and knew that it wasn't horses. I don't know how, but I knew that it was the worst sound in the world and that if I turned around, whatever it was would destroy me.
I opened my eyes and waited for it to pass.
I cooked dinner in Ruth's kitchen, a surprise for her, while she was sorting books downstairs. I marinated some salmon in lemon juice and soy sauce and made mashed potatoes and French beans in garlic. I slapped the fish on a hot griddle as she came up, pushing the scent of old books in before her. She took a glass of wine with only the slightest grimace and I led her into the living room. She was pale. She fidgeted on the armchair, unable to get comfortable.
'Is it kicking?' I asked.
'A little,' she said, with a pained smile. 'Sometimes he gets hiccups. Sometimes I can feel him flinch when a door slams or a car horn sounds.'
'It's a boy, then?'
'I think so, yes.'
'You don't know for sure?'
She shook her head. 'I don't want to know. I want it to be a surprise. But I feel it's a boy. Burly. Throwing his weight around.'
'Can I feel?'
Another shake. 'I don't want be touched,' she said. 'I don't... it just doesn't feel right. No matter how gentle you... it would feel like an assault.'
I digested this, keeping quiet despite wanting to protest. I thought we were friends. She'd saved my life. We were closer than friends because of that. But here she was, putting up a shield. I knew what had happened to her, but it didn't make it easier to deal with. I was a man, but I wasn't a threat.
I said, 'Have you thought of any names?'
Again, a shake of the head. There was something wrong. She was white, glassy. She seemed on the verge of tears, more so than usual. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I didn't mean to spoil the mood.'
'It's all right. It's my hormones. I'm all over the place. And it's also... the baby... whenever I think of it I think of him.'
'We don't have to talk about this. Really. I'm sorry I even started this.'
She took a sip of her wine and it seemed to fortify her. 'It's all right. I mean it. I need to get a grip. And I will.'
We sat in a silence that was far from companionable. I fetched the plates of food and we ate it and put our knives and forks down. I felt like an unwanted, uninvited guest who has overstayed a welcome that had never really been extended. I considered turning in, or going for a walk, but merely the thought of it made my legs burn. I thought of the cockpit of a 777. Right seat. Night flight out of Schiphol, AMS. Velvet sky, deepening. The clean, superbright glimmer of the runway lights. Light wind. Cool, crisp shirt. The power hanging there in the night behind you, as near as dammit one hundred thousand pounds lbf in each engine. The winding up. The knowledge you are flying with a fine captain. Thomas Sheedy, 52. Closing in on 30,000 hours of service. We are confident. We are good. Captain Sheedy says something, but it's all wrong. I turn to him and the top of his head is gone.
'I tried to contact my girlfriend today,' I said.
'Paul,' she said. The nurse voice.
'I have to know,' I said. 'I can't just let things lie as they are.'
'She left you. She went home.'
'Her home is here,' I said. 'With me. She's my girlfriend.' It felt strange referring to Tamara like that. It was beginning to feel as though she was not real, as if she were a dream. Details were softening. One of her breasts was slightly larger than the other; I couldn't remember which one. I couldn't summon the sound of her voice. That she was somewhere else in the world, but still my girlfriend, seemed the most ridiculous idea.
'So,' Ruth said, undercover of a sigh. 'Any luck?'
'A possible lead,' I said. 'Someone who knows someone who worked with her. She's going to call me back.'
'Be careful,' she said.
'I know the risks.'
'Maybe. There might be more than you think. You discover something unpleasant, she's with another man... it might put your convalescence back months.'
'Anything would be better than this... not knowing.'
'I hope you're right. Thanks for dinner.'
She stood up and moved past me, touching my shoulder briefly.
'Ruth,' I said.
'What is it?'
'Does the word... have you heard the word "craw" mentioned around here?'
'What?'
'Craw.'
'As in "stick in the craw"?'
'Maybe, yes. Maybe, no. Anybody use it?'
'Not around me,' she said.
She moved to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. I heard the snick of her bedroom door as it closed.
I cleared away the dinner plates and had another glass of wine. Ruth wasn't coming back. She'd spent another tough day patching up the walking wounded. Perhaps I was getting her down. How miserable must it be for her to come home just to find another patient?
My things - our things - were stored in Ruth's garage. I went downstairs and into the yard. I pulled open the garage door, switched on the light in there and stared at the boxes. Vulcan made figure-of-eight entreaties at my ankles. I opened a box. I didn't recognise any of the contents. It was only after a while spent picking through books and folders and plastic tubs that familiarity began to sink in. I found a box of Tamara's blouses, individually wrapped in polythene bags. Her smell was in all of them. I found an album of photographs, most of them self-timed ones of us squeezed tight into a 6"x4" frame as if we were unsure that the camera would capture us both in the shot.
I looked hard into her eyes as if the reason for her subsequent abandonment of me could be read. Rubbed the seams and hems of her clothes, searching for splinters of doubt. I closed the boxes and repositioned the packing tape. I could not foresee an occasion when I might unpack all of this again. It was frighteningly easy to imagine taking each box to the beach and setting fire to them under the pier.
I sat and fondled Vulcan's ears for a while, thinking of Tamara, thinking of Ruth. Ruth's own little storage corner seemed pitiful in comparison, but the fruits of her life were surrounding her all the time. She had space to stretch out. She was living. A box contained a first aid kit and a vintage leather bag, the kind you might have seen a country doctor pootling around with in the 1950s. There was a chipped dinner plate with a picture of a duck in the centre - her own, from childhood? - and a clutch of old Ladybird books bound together with elastic bands. There were a few other things. Pencil cases and egg-cups and dried flowers in polythene envelopes. Junk or treasure, depending on who was looking at it.
I closed the door and walked back to my room. Vulcan followed me, weaving around my ankles. I gave him some food and patted his head, stared at my stranger's hand for a while. The scars there didn't shock me as they had at first. Sometimes I would reach out for something and flinch, as if someone else were inhabiting my clothes, a thin imposter controlled by my mind. I was getting used to the fact that my appearance had changed. I was coping. Now it looked as though I would have to come to terms with Tamara's removal from my life. There would be no plastic surgery to treat those scars. No bandages and ointment. My black, scabbed over heart would just have to chug on with the burden.
Yet I went to bed feeling an uneasy mix of hope and dread. I had made the first steps to finding Tamara. At the very least, I would have it from her mouth what it was she wanted to do. I would not allow her the comfort of a clean break.
Craw
, I thought. It made me think of famished black birds. It made me think of choking to death on splinters of bone.
In the night I was disturbed by the sound of Ruth moving through the house. It was late, past two, when I heard the front door open and close. Some time later, maybe half an hour or so, I heard it open and close again. I dreamed of Tamara's mouth opening and closing too, as she struggled to put into words the nightmare that she had designed for me.
Chapter Four
Black Landings
I wear the same clothes nearly every day. Soft, elasticated jogging bottoms. A hooded top with a zipper (I can't pull clothes over my head). Slip-on sandals. I consider it a uniform, just the same as the one I wore at Lufthansa. Maybe a little less glamorous. It's one less thing to worry about. I can move more freely. Sometimes I wish I could climb out of this tight, inflexible skin too. I feel hemmed in, trapped. The pills don't cancel the pain, they just move it out of reach for a while. It's still there, in view, like a dangerous thing put on a high shelf away from the children. And you can't stop glancing at it. You know it will be returned to its normal place before long.
Decide what you reasonably feel that you would like to achieve in your life and think about how using opioids can help you. Set yourself some realistic goals.
A plastic doll's head with a lazy eye. A Hähnel battery charger. A tube of discoloured Berocca vitamin tablets. A pencil case with a hole in it. An abandoned letter, one sentence long:
I don't know how to say this to you, so I'm writing it instead.
I take the box to the beach. The sky is porridge. It's unlikely to clear all day, according to the forecast. Dampness in the air, finer than mist. You can't see it, but by the time I reach my little nest of cinders, my skin and clothes are jewelled with moisture. The box too. At first I doubt this will burn, but it's as always: first match. The flame skates slowly along the lip of cardboard, darkening and warping in its wake. It moves fast, dipping into the contents like something hungry chasing down its next meal. The orange curl becomes a bright yellow fan. The smell of smoke as it thickens, turning into a pumping black column, is new, different to the last time. It smells synthetic today, probably because of the plastic. It works hard, this fire, a little industry of obliteration. It won't clock off until everything is gone. Fire is efficient, sometimes horribly so. As a pilot, you don't consider the awful ramifications of a crash. You prepare for an emergency. You do not prepare for your own death.
I toed the remnants into the shingle and stood up. I did some light stretching, trying hard not to think of my new skin separating under the stress. I walked the mile or so between the pier and the harbour wall, looking at the green bite indicators of the nightfishermen hanging above the shoreline like static fireflies. By the time I reached the wall, my top was sodden, clinging unpleasantly to my back. I sat down and pulled the length of yellow string from my pocket. My fingers itched, though I wasn't sure if this was part of their recovery or in anticipation of the task ahead. I didn't practise any of the knots I'd learned, I just played with the string, allowing my fingers to produce their own configuration of bights and falls. The sea was calm, despite the frowning sky. I saw a seal's head break the surface. It watched the beach for a while and then dived down. I looked all over but I didn't see it come back up.
I kept picking at the strands of my life, pre-crash, trying to find some reason for Tamara's departure. But there wasn't one. Not unless she was secretly disgusted by the near miss. If she was, she'd hidden it well. She stood by me all through that summer of meetings, hearings and reports. She stepped between me and the father of a young girl who had been on the flight. He spat at me, tried to punch me, his face turning black with rage as if there had been a crash and she was dead. Tamara talked me down when I was angry and talked me up when I was miserable. At night she held me and kissed me and whispered Ukrainian into my hair.
Ni zhyty, ni vmeraty.
So there was only the hit-and-run that could have driven a wedge between us. Every time I thought of her, the way she behaved prior to her leaving, it would not sit right with events. She had acted out of character.