Breakdown (8 page)

Chris ate every scrap of the food, using the bread to mop up the egg yolk and any grease left from the ham. He felt full for the first time since London. He left the plate on his lap, leaned his head back against the pillow, and closed his eyes, occasionally lifting the mug for a drink of the cider. He considered what Pauline had said about Cooper. He could see how her assessment would fit. Cooper had talked a lot about Pauline. He had made it clear they had been occasional lovers for years, but it was also clear that Cooper had never made any firm commitment to her. Chris was nearly certain he never would, and he was glad Pauline seemed to understand that, even if she did still care for Cooper to some extent. When he finished the cider, he heaved himself painfully out of the bed and used the loo.

Pauline came back for the plate and mug. “Do you want me to leave the lamp lit?”

“No, don’t waste the oil. I have the torch.”

“Right, then. You needn’t get up in the morning if you don’t feel up to it. I’ll bring you up some breakfast.”

“I might be ready to get up by then.”

“Let’s just see how you get on. Good night.” She turned down the lamp until it was out and pulled the door closed, leaving him alone in the dark.

Something was coming for him, something dark and vile and formless, snaking through the house, slipping along the floors, trying the doors, full of pain and grief and loss. He tried to block its way, but it split around him, two foul, seething masses, one of them flowing up the stairs, relentless, unstoppable. The other surrounded him, beckoning with desolate blackness. He couldn’t get away from it, his legs wouldn’t work, and it crawled up his body, dark and anguished and heavy, dragging on him, pulling at him, until he screamed, and it filled his mouth, gagging him...

Chris jerked awake, sat up in the bed in the dark and groaned at the pain in his ribs, gasping for breath, not knowing where he was. The door opened, letting in light from a candle, and someone stood there. Pauline, he remembered.

“Are you okay?” She held the candle down low beside her. “I heard you calling out.”

He clutched at the covers, tried to control his breathing, tried to get the dream out of his brain. “I’m okay,” he managed.

“Can I get you anything?”

He shook his head, didn’t know if she could see it, but didn’t know if he could say anything else. He needed a drink of water.

She came into the room, set the candle on the bureau, and poured him a glass of water. His hand trembled as he took it from her, gulped it down. He sat holding the glass until she took it from his hand. His ribs hurt with every breath. He started coughing, and it seemed to last forever. Eventually he sagged back onto the pillows and closed his eyes. He felt her sit down on the end of the bed.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said.

“It’s okay. I could light the lamp, leave it low.”

He didn’t answer her. She got up, and he heard the clink of the glass chimney as she lit it.

“Do you want me to sit here for a bit?”

“No, I’ll be all right. Thank you.”

“You can call me if you need anything. I’m in the next room.”

“Thank you,” he said again, and he heard the door shut softly. He opened his eyes and saw the small pale flame of the lamp. It was nearly the same as the lamp at Archie’s cabin on the mountain in New York. He remembered watching the flame of that lamp as it got lower and lower and finally sputtered out in the middle of the night. All of the torches were dead by then, all the candles had been burned down to the last guttering puddles of wax, and it was the last of the oil. He had started sleeping on the couch by the woodstove, the final source of light, little shafts seeping out through the front grate.

It had been a long time since he had felt such a need for light. It had been a while since he’d had that dream. His eyes hurt, and he closed them, and eventually he slept.

Chris awoke with a shudder, fists clenched. He blinked to clear his eyes, huddled under the covers, and took an inventory of the ordinary room until he calmed. The London dreams, still new and wrenching, kept changing. How long before they became routine?
Too long.

The window was a pale rectangle of light. Chris didn’t hear anything in the house yet. He crawled out of bed and turned down the lamp wick until the flame went out. He pushed back the curtains. He gazed down on the front garden, the iron gate in the wall, the road. Clumps of trees and bushes dotted the field across from the house. Dense grey clouds pressed down, and wispy patches of fog lingered at the edges of the field. Off to the left, down the road, Chris glimpsed the top of a house that might be where Cooper had grown up. He heard a bird singing. He left the window and had a long coughing fit, hanging on to the top of the bureau until it passed, then padded in bare feet down the hall to the loo.

When he came out, Pauline was standing by her door in a long, pale dressing gown.

“Good morning,” she whispered. “Did you sleep more?”

“Yes,” he nodded as he passed her. He stopped in his doorway. “I don’t think I’ll get up yet.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll bring you breakfast later.”

“Thanks,” he said, and closed the door. He drank from the bottle on the bureau, plumped up the pillows, and lay back carefully against them, half sitting. He thought he might not cough as much if he wasn’t lying down. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. He felt he might sleep now that it was light.

When he woke next, it was more slowly. The dream lingered, but this one was easier to deal with. It left only a deep sadness, none of the panic of some of the others. He used to wake up crying when he dreamed about Sophie, but not anymore.

Chris sat up carefully. A shaft of weak sunlight came in through the curtains. From the angle, he could tell it was near noon. He rubbed at his face. His ribs still hurt, but he felt more rested than he had in weeks. He eased his legs over the edge of the bed, and saw a note on the chair, a small scrap of paper.

“Decided to let you sleep!” it said with a little smiley face. Chris picked it up, his heart pounding, his hand shaking. He held it, stared at it. It looked a lot like Sophie’s handwriting. She used to leave him little notes with smiley faces on them. But then she would put an “S” inside a little heart. He sat holding the note for long minutes, blinking, then folded it up and left it on the bureau. He took his towel to the loo and had a wash and a shave. He changed out of the shorts and T-shirt he’d slept in. It hurt getting his shirt on and bending over to lace his shoes, and it made him cough. He went downstairs.

Grace was arranging cutlery and plates on the kitchen table. “Good afternoon, Chris. Did you get some good sleep?”

“Yes, thank you.”

George’s wife was there, taking a dish out of the oven.

“You didn’t meet Marie yesterday, did you?” Grace asked him.

“Hello,” Marie said with a smile. She was small and dainty, with light-brown curly hair cut short, and glasses. “Pauline looked in on you, but you were sleeping so soundly she decided to leave you. You’re just in time for lunch.”

“Can I help with anything?”

“You can ring the bell to call them in,” Marie said. “Just outside the door. Give it a good jangle; that will get them in here.”

Chris found the bell mounted on the wall beside the door and swung the cord back and forth a few times. He stood outside, breathing in the fresh air as deep as his aching ribs would allow, but then he had a coughing fit.

“It doesn’t sound as bad today,” Pauline said, coming around the side of the house. She wore the same mucky clothes as the day before.

“Definitely improving,” he agreed.

She took hold of the handle of a pump next to a tub and worked it vigorously. The water came spurting out. “You were so asleep earlier, I didn’t want to wake you for breakfast. Especially since you didn’t sleep so well last night.” She peeled the brown jumper off over her head. She had another shirt on under it, tucked into her cords. She pushed up her sleeves and washed her hands and arms.

“No, not a good night. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She grabbed a towel hanging on a hook, dried her hands, and rubbed it over her face. “I’ll get you a candle for tonight. Candles are cheaper than the oil.” She worked the pump again and put a bucket under it. When it was full, Chris reached for it. “Don’t even!” she scolded. “You’re resting, remember?”

“I’m not exactly an invalid. I was unloading lorries the day before yesterday.”

“Which is why you’re in the state you’re in.” She turned to keep the bucket out of Chris’s reach.

George was coming across the yard from the barn. He grinned at Chris. “I wouldn’t bother to argue with her.”

“Okay, I give up,” Chris said. He opened the door for Pauline and held it.

“Thank you.” She smiled and went in, kicking off her wellies, as she had the day before.

* * *

Chris went up to the spare room after lunch, feeling guilty, like he was skiving, but his ribs ached, and Pauline wouldn’t let him do anything anyway. He lay back against the pillows, tried to relax. He thought about Pauline and Michael. She was a strong-willed, no-nonsense type, it seemed, and he wondered why she would let herself waste time with someone like Michael. It was clear she cared for him, in the way she asked about him, the disappointed look on her face when he had told her Michael had no plans to come when he was released. But maybe it was just leftover feelings from before, more worried friendship than anything else. For all he knew, there was someone else on the scene already, someone he and Michael didn’t yet know about. It would be interesting to find out. Chris let himself drift off into sleep.

He was in London, standing by the old stone wall topped with curled wire. He began to run, but it wasn’t fast enough. He could see them in the distance: two shadowy figures, running ahead of him. He called out to them to wait, but they didn’t hear. Behind him, the blackness got closer, sweeping swiftly toward him, occluding everything, muffling the gunshots. He tripped and fell, found himself on top of Beryl. He held her in his arms, his back to the wall, watched the blackness creeping toward them while she gasped for breath and then went still. “You have to go,” a voice said as the door slid back and bright light assaulted him.

Coughing painfully was a lousy way to wake up. Add regret and despair and guilt, and Chris remembered why he preferred to work himself to exhaustion—to limit the dreams. He blinked and shuddered. He heard Beryl’s last words in his head, over and over. He coughed more, harder than he needed to, using the pain to kill memories.

The sun hung at about the same place as when he had arrived the day before. Twenty-four hours here, most of it in bed, hard to believe. Time to get up.

At the bottom of the stairs, Chris glanced into the little sitting room. Marie was there, on her hands and knees, sweeping with a brush and dustpan around the fireplace. She glanced up.

“Oh, hello. Y’know, I used to hate hoovering. Now I realize what a lovely, easy job it was.” She laughed.

“We never realize how good we have it until it’s gone,” Chris said. It came out harsher than he’d wanted it to.

“That’s true.” Marie got to her feet, careful not to spill the dustpan. She smiled. “But then, sometimes we don’t realize what we were missing until we find it, eh?”

“Yes, I suppose,” he agreed. “Can I help?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”

“I have been. Just woke up. I’m feeling better, really. I’m not used to doing nothing. Let me help, please. I’ll sweep.” Chris put out his hand for the brush.

“All right, you can do the stairs.”

“Brilliant.”

When he’d finished the staircase, Chris found Marie in the kitchen and asked for something else to do.

“I can show you how to trim lamp wicks.”

“I know how to do that. Shall I clean and fill them, too?”

“Lovely.” She got him scissors, a rag, and a bottle of lamp oil. He did the lamps downstairs first, then went upstairs.

Marie had told him to do all the lamps in the bedrooms, but he hesitated before he went into Pauline’s room. She kept it very neat, like the spare room. There were no clothes lying about, no clutter. It was much bigger than the spare room, of course. There were more pictures on the walls, more furniture, little knickknacks on the bureau and tables.

The lamp sat on the bureau. Chris cleaned and trimmed and filled it, put it back carefully near a group of framed pictures. He stopped to look at them: Pauline and George when they were teenagers, their parents—he recognized Grace—a young Michael lounging in a punt on a river, George and Marie’s wedding photo. One picture showed Pauline and Michael together, from many years before, dressed up to go out somewhere fancy. He wore a tuxedo, she a shimmering dark-green strapless gown. They had their arms around each other.

The last two pictures showed Pauline and George, both much younger, and another young man together on the couch in the sitting room downstairs, and the young man by himself seated on a stone wall. Chris looked closely at the three of them and could see the family resemblance. It was the missing brother, obviously. Chris thought that Michael had probably told him, but he couldn’t remember the brother’s name.

He went into the other two bedrooms to do the lamps there and saw other pictures of the same young man at different ages.

When he’d finished, he went back downstairs and sat with Grace and Marie in the kitchen, doing small jobs at the table while they cooked supper. They told him about various people in the village, but didn’t ask him anything about himself. He wondered what Michael had put in the letter to Pauline and was glad he didn’t have to answer a lot of questions.

What Did Milla Say?
(excerpt)
(Wolcott/Price, 1991)

I got a call from Milla just the other day.
People always ask me, “What did Milla say?”

Was she happy?
Was she sad?
Was she asking you for money?
Was she smooth and sweet like honey?
What did Milla say?