Hide and Seek (24 page)
Authors: Amy Bird
-Ellie-
So she calls the ambulance. She relents, and she calls, on Will’s office phone. She puts my mobile in her bag, where I can’t get at it. And finally, they are there, with their gas and air. The paramedics, from the hospital, the hospital I am already in. For a moment, we are almost a normal domestic scene – the daughter-in-law soothed and shushed by a doting grandmother-to-be, surrounded by a caring ambulance crew.
“Don’t worry, love,” they are telling me. “You’re in one of the top units in London.” And “Of all the places this could happen, this is the best. The birth centre is well-used to complications. You’re in safe hands.”
Their assurances as I – 1, 2, 3, breathe in – are welcome. But they assume that what they can see is all that’s going on. They assume that as they wheel me along, down, up, to their consultants, doctors, midwives, that all they are dealing with is the little thing of a premature birth. In Paris, I want to tell them, there is a premature death happening right now. Two deaths, three deaths, four deaths, more, if we count all who will be affected. I want to tell them: give me a phone. Because I’ve still got to tell Will. He needs me. I need him. Leo needs both of us. Maybe they can give me a phone. Gillian still has mine. I would be happy, it pressed into my hands, Will’s voice next to my ear, my voice in his. Then I could manage this.
But all they are interested in is pressing speculums, swabs, steroids into me. Telling me the amniotic sac has broken. I know, I know, I know these things. Is it not my body, my baby? They tell me the contractions should get slower now, but – there – I can feel them. Still fast. And little Leo, his heart rate is as speeding as mine. Beat, beat, beat we go. Will, leave Sophie! Come to us, not in a prison van, but in a bedazzlement of flowers and concern and awe!
They are telling me that if the contractions slow, they can monitor me for infection, for bleeding, keep me here, send me home, whichever I prefer. Gillian is hovering, feigning concern. But she does not understand what I need to do.
“Send her away,” I tell whichever person it is that is standing over me. “Send her away, I don’t want her here.”
“Poor thing’s delirious,” says Gillian. “I’d better stay.” And then she talks to me. “You’ll be quite alone, if I go,” she says. “Do you know what it is to bring a baby into the world alone?”
No, I say in my head. And nor do you! You weren’t here, you weren’t in a hospital with Will. You merely borrowed him, from a friend, for a while. A friend he is trying to kill. Apparently not a very good friend, if she can be sacrificed at the altar of Will-protection.
“I’d rather be alone than with you,” I say.
Gillian leans down and whispers in my ear. “Ellie, love. Think. You want someone that you know, for these hours. Or they’ll be dark, lonely hours. All alone, with strangers. When your child arrives, will you know what to do? How to look after him? Keep him alive?”
I jolt away from her. She is like a wasp, her words buzzing in my ear. I cannot shake them off as easily as I’d like. I’ve heard stories of people being left in wards, alone, and only a persistent relative brings the midwives running. At least Gillian will look out for her adoptive grandson, if not me. Maybe I should keep her here, not send her away? I toss my head from side to side as I try to decide.
“Try to rest,” a doctor/consultant/midwife tells me. “You’ll need all your energy, later.” In those dark, lonely hours. Perhaps Gillian can stay? “Just focus on the contractions. Are they still close together?”
I nod because they – ahh – definitely are.
And then Gillian, she does the unthinkable. She leaves me. She sort of potters off, her bag over her shoulder, leaving me alone. And I feel it then, what she has said. That now I am alone. Alone with people who take only a professional interest in me, not personal. Alone, and about to become a mother two months early. I’ve only had one antenatal class. I am not ready.
“Gillian?” I ask her retreating form.
She turns round to face me. And I see from her face that she wants me to feel this. This fear, this abandonment.
“I’m just going for some water,” she says. “I won’t be long. I know you need me.”
She is gone. And she has my phone. I’m alone and I’m no closer to Will. But there may still be a chance, while Gillian is away.
“Doctor,” I say to a man.
“I’m a midwife,” he says.
“Midwife,” I say. “I need you to phone my husband. I’ll give you his number. I need you to say exactly this: ‘It wasn’t her who did it, it was you. Who ended Max. In a tantrum. But now, I’m giving birth, early. You must come home.’”
“Right, you’re giving birth, he must come home. Except, you know, the doctors haven’t decided if you should give birth yet, we might try to delay – ”
“But the first part of the message, as well, the first part. ‘It wasn’t her who did it, it was you. Who ended Max. In a tantrum.’”
“Let me get a pen, write that down,” says the midwife.
“We’re losing time, don’t you see, we’re losing time!” I say.
“Don’t worry,” hushes the midwife. “You’re the most important person here.”
But how can he say that? Because I have a role, I have a role for my family. As – ahh – nurturer. For Will, and for Leo. Must be a life preserver, a life giver.
“Bring me a phone, then,” I say. “Bring me your mobile.”
He looks me in the eye. I plead into his. He disappears. And I realise, I am alone. The doctors and consultants, they are off somewhere, discussing, looking at swabs, at liquids, at charts. Then he reappears, the midwife, with a phone. I take it from him, and I’m dialling, I’m dialling, I’m dialling Will. Gillian is still nowhere to be seen. I can tell him. Come on, Will, answer. Please.
-Tutti-
Will
My phone rings in my pocket. I pull it out. An unknown number. I could answer it, while I wait for Sophie. But look – what’s that? The children are getting up from the non-pianos, starting to leave the room. Sophie is turning out the light, her favourite trick. Now is not the time for unknown callers. I flick the phone to silent and put it in my pocket. It continues to vibrate away. I do my best to ignore it. It will ring out. I must focus on more important things.
In there, inside, I have lost sight of her now. I move my position, round to the front of the school. There are women and men at the gates. Parents, they must be, waiting for their children to emerge. How many of them are adoptive? Or killers? Or abandoners? None. They announce it just by being here. ‘We are always present when our offspring need us.’ And the offspring, they spring from the gates, into their waiting parents’ arms. So small, some of them – they seem barely three. Only just gone past the stage of being gathered up in woollen blankets.
I hang back, behind the parents. They are all chatting to each other. Each face will be known. They will be on the lookout for unknowns, if they are as obsessed with paedophiles here as we are at home. I mustn’t cause alarm, or alert. I must just stay here, under this tree, inconspicuous.
Still the phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out. Still the unknown. I put it away. Then I take it out again. And turn it off.
Ellie
Answer, Will, answer. Can’t you hear me, your wife, trying to save you? From yourself, from Gillian, from your invented Sophie. None of it is real, not even you, in your present frame of mind. The phone rings and rings and rings. And I can see the midwife looking on in sympathy. Oh well, he is probably thinking, she’ll have to go it alone, but hubby will be sure to find her later, when he notices she’s gone. He doesn’t know what I am dealing with.
If Will would just pick up… Leo, he is demanding an audience with me, cannot wait. I can feel his excitement, beating away inside me, ever faster. Will, why so slow to – the ringing stops, is this an answer? No. No. It’s a silence. My call has been cut off. He has seen me ringing, from this midwife’s number, and he hasn’t answered. Wherever he is, in Paris, out of my supervision, he has made another of his mistakes. An error of logic. Another nail in another coffin.
I call back, leave a voice message. It must still be in code, with the midwife just there. But I give it as much meaning as I can. In case he listens. But what if he doesn’t? I must take other steps. I must warn Sophie. While – ah! – I still can. I must call L’école Sainte-Thérèse.
Sophie
Somewhere in the school, a phone rings. And rings. Am I the only person here? Will no one else answer it? Am I even here? I don’t think so. I walk towards the sound of the ringing phone. If I answer it, that will be proof, I suppose, that I am here. Because it’s possible I’m my own hallucination – like that Guillaume outside. Maybe I’m not really here, in this school, in this place. In fact, that’s a given. Whatever this place is, I’m not here, I’m not in it. I’m with that image outside. That ghost from the past, come to find me.
My feet seem to be here, though. Clack, clack, clack they go in their heels along the corridor. There are no other sounds, just my shoes and the phone. Clack, ring ring, clack ring ring, they go on the linoleum. I’m not very interested if I make it in time. It will not be for me. It will be a message to take, to give to someone whose name I probably will not even remember, now.
My feet stop clacking as I reach the carpeted staff room, from where the phone rings. There, in the corner, overlooking the gates. I go to the phone. I put my hand on the receiver. And then I stop. I cannot lift it. Because there, outside the gates, almost hidden by the tree, is the image again. The Guillaume. The ringing of the phone has stopped, but there’s a ringing in my ears. I hold the chair behind me for support. The phone begins to ring again. It is too loud. I cannot answer it. It feels like the image under the tree calling me. If I pick up the phone, it will be his voice, aged four, screaming at me, screaming as he has just made the hammer-blow that will kill my Max. My Max, my Max, my Max. I cannot be in this room, with its view. I turn away from the image, from the window, from the phone, and I run. I run away from that room as the ring of the phone chases behind me.
Ellie
I redial, and I redial, and I redial. But St Thérèse will not help me in my hour of need. There is no other way to get the message through. Unless – unless I can get the number of Sophie’s flat? I phone directory enquiries again, or whatever we’re meant to call it now it’s privatised. They answer. I tell them, between puffs and pants, that I want another French number. The midwife is screwing his face up a bit, probably thinking about the costs. Or worrying, as I admit I am worrying, about the fact I can hardly get the words out. The French people answer and I don’t even bother with a bonjour, I just launch straight in, in English, with the information I need. I wait, and I wait, and wonder how much more I can wait and Leo can wait. And then they tell me – the bastards, even though it’s not their fault – that the address I want is not listed. It is ex-directory. Sophie does not want to be disturbed.
And that is when I start to weep. Because what is happening is clear: I have bet my Leo’s life against Will’s, and good mother that I am, I am preserving my Leo. As much as I want to tell Will, the fates are against it. Some force that Gillian has allied herself with has decided to intervene and – ah, Leo, please, not yet! – stop me from sacrificing Leo for this cause. But they don’t understand, these fates, how we need Will to stop. Me and my little boy, we need my bigger boy, we need – ah! I need, I need, I think, for Leo, to emerge. But my own phone, if I could just get my own phone, I could find the email, the email from the detective – oh, Christ! – agency, and in it Sophie’s number, but Gillian, she has it, the phone and – oh oh oh OHHHAHHH! And the midwife is running and the doctors are running as I cry out and they say what I think what I feel what I know:
“He will not wait. It’s happening now!”
I couldn’t stop it, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Will, Leo, Sophie, I’m sorry.
“Your little boy knows what he wants, Mrs Spears. There’s no delaying it any further. He wants to meet you, now.”
Will
And there, on the steps, is what I’ve been waiting for. A slight pause, a looking around, as the sunlight greets. But then it’s down the steps, pushing through the gate and out into the open. There she is. Standing but a few steps away. My mother.
But then, of course, she is walking past. Walking on, away from me. Leaving me, again. This time though, it will not work. Because I am following. And I will catch her up. And then, alone, I will kill her. Because there is nothing that can stop me.
-Sophie-
I had hoped that out here, in the air, the image would go. That the light and the oxygen would clear my mind. And at first, it seems I am right. It is just me again, in the world. No spectre sons hiding in my mind’s eye. No killers’ faces on the horizon. My feet feel like mine again as I walk on the tarmac. Nobody else is lurking within.
But then, on the Métro, he is back. As the train pushes on, down, through the tunnel, the lights go out for a moment. When they flash on again, there he is. The image. Except he doesn’t look like an image. He looks like a real man. A real Guillaume. Or actually, a real Max.
For perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps this is not an image of the devil son. Perhaps it is the sainted father, frozen at the age of his death. I have only been assuming it would be Guillaume, because that is my fear, projected into hallucinations. But that is an earthly concern. Perhaps this is a non-earthly issue. Perhaps the image is Max. I turn fully to look at it. But it has gone! Come back, Max, I shout in my head. Come back! Don’t force this premature vanishing on me again. Show yourself! Appear! Live!
And there, there he is. He’s trying to hide himself from me. Silly Max. Blended himself in between a group of other people. I can only see his back. That broad, beautiful back. The back that would grandly swell when he played the climax of his tunes – he would fling himself back from the piano, arms aloft and raised, so that his shoulders were fully expanded, then plunge down onto the piano again for that final powerful chord or cadence. That back, that I so variously loved and hated, as I watched it from the door of the music room. That back, that would ignore me when I asked if he fancied a duet. That back, that ignored me when I told it dinner was ready. That back, that ignored me when I shouted that for God’s sake could he try just once to remember he was a husband and a father. If only he had ignored me one more time. Then he might not just be a spectre of the Métro.